The Romance of the Milky Way by Lafcadio Hearn

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SHORT STORY

THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY

AND OTHER STUDIES & STORIES

BY LAFCADIO HEARN

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK 1905

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1905

CONTENTS

THE ROMANCE OF THE MILKY WAY 1

GOBLIN POETRY 51

"ULTIMATE QUESTIONS" 103

THE MIRROR MAIDEN 125

THE STORY OF IT[=O] NORISUK['E] 139

STRANGER THAN FICTION 167

A LETTER FROM JAPAN 179

INTRODUCTION

Lafcadio Hearn, known to Nippon as Yakumo Koizumi, was born in
Leucadia in the Ionian Islands, June 27, 1850. His father was an Irish
surgeon in the British Army; his mother was a Greek. Both parents died
while Hearn was still a child, and he was adopted by a great-aunt,
and educated for the priesthood. To this training he owed his
Latin scholarship and, doubtless, something of the subtlety of
his intelligence. He soon found, however, that the prospect of an
ecclesiastical career was alien from his inquiring mind and vivid
temperament, and at the age of nineteen he came to America to seek
his fortune. After working for a time as a proof-reader, he obtained
employment as a newspaper reporter in Cincinnati. Soon he rose to
be an editorial writer, and went in the course of a few years to New
Orleans to join the editorial staff of the "Times-Democrat." Here he
lived until 1887, writing odd fantasies and arabesques for his paper,
contributing articles and sketches to the magazines, and publishing
several curious little books, among them his "Stray Leaves from
Strange Literature," and his translations from Gautier. In the winter
of 1887 he began his pilgrimages to exotic countries, being, as
he wrote to a friend, "a small literary bee in search of inspiring
honey." After a couple of years, spent chiefly in the French West
Indies, with periods of literary work in New York, he went in 1890
to Japan to prepare a series of articles for a magazine. Here through
some deep affinity of mood with the marvelous people of that country
he seems suddenly to have felt himself at last at home. He married a
Japanese woman; he acquired Japanese citizenship in order to preserve
the succession of his property to his family there; he became a
lecturer in the Imperial University at T[=o]ky[=o]; and in a series
of remarkable books he made himself the interpreter to the Western
World of the very spirit of Japanese life and art. He died there of
paralysis of the heart on the 26th of September, 1904.

* * * * *

With the exception of a body of familiar letters now in process of
collection, the present volume contains all of Hearn's writing that
he left uncollected in the magazines or in manuscript of a sufficient
ripeness for publication. It is worth noting, however, that perfect as
is the writing of "Ultimate Questions," and complete as the essay is
in itself, the author regarded it as unfinished, and, had he lived,
would have revised and amplified some portions of it.

But if this volume lacks the incomparably exquisite touch of its
author in its arrangement and revision, it does, nevertheless, present
him in all of his most characteristic veins, and it is in respect both
to style and to substance perhaps the most mature and significant of
his works.

In his first days as a writer Hearn had conceived an ideal of his art
as specific as it was ambitious. Early in the eighties he wrote from
New Orleans in an unpublished letter to the Rev. Wayland D. Ball
of Washington: "The lovers of antique loveliness are proving to me
the future possibilities of a long cherished dream,--the English
realization of a Latin style, modeled upon foreign masters, and
rendered even more forcible by that element of _strength_ which
is the characteristic of Northern tongues. This no man can hope
to accomplish, but even a translator may carry his stones to the
master-masons of a new architecture of language." In the realization
of his ideal Hearn took unremitting pains. He gave a minute and
analytical study to the writings of such masters of style as Flaubert
and Gautier, and he chose his miscellaneous reading with a peculiar
care. He wrote again to the same friend: "I never read a book
which does not powerfully impress the imagination; but whatever
contains novel, curious, potent imagery I always read, no matter
what the subject. When the soil of fancy is really well enriched
with innumerable fallen leaves, the flowers of language grow
spontaneously." Finally, to the hard study of technique, to vast
but judicious reading, he added a long, creative brooding time.
To a Japanese friend, Nobushige Amenomori, he wrote in a passage
which contains by implication a deep theory not only of literary
composition, but of all art:--

"Now with regard to your own sketch or story. If you are quite
dissatisfied with it, I think this is probably due _not_ to what you
suppose,--imperfection of expression,--but rather to the fact that
some _latent_ thought or emotion has not yet defined itself in your
mind with sufficient sharpness. You feel something and have not been
able to express the feeling--only because you do not yet quite know
what it is. We feel without understanding feeling; and our most
powerful emotions are the most undefinable. This must be so, because
they are inherited accumulations of feeling, and the multiplicity of
them--superimposed one over another--blurs them, and makes them dim,
even though enormously increasing their strength.... _Unconscious_
brain work is the best to develop such latent feeling or thought. By
quietly writing the thing over and over again, I find that the emotion
or idea often _develops itself_ in the process,--unconsciously. Again,
it is often worth while to _try_ to analyze the feeling that remains
dim. The effort of trying to understand exactly what it is that moves
us sometimes proves successful.... If you have any feeling--no matter
what--strongly latent in the mind (even only a haunting sadness or
a mysterious joy), you may be sure that it is expressible. Some
feelings are, of course, very difficult to develop. I shall show you
one of these days, when we see each other, a page that I worked at
for _months_ before the idea came clearly.... When the best result
comes, it ought to surprise you, for our best work is out of the
Unconscious."

Through this study, reading, and brooding Lafcadio Hearn's prose
ripened and mellowed consistently to the end. In mere workmanship the
present volume is one of his most admirable, while in its heightened
passages, like the final paragraph of "The Romance of the Milky Way,"
the rich, melancholy music, the profound suggestion, are not easily
matched from any but the very greatest English prose.

In substance the volume is equally significant. In 1884 he wrote
to one of the closest of his friends that he had at last found his
feet intellectually through the reading of Herbert Spencer which
had dispelled all "isms" from his mind and left him "the vague
but omnipotent consolation of the Great Doubt." And in "Ultimate
Questions," which strikes, so to say, the dominant chord of this
volume, we have an almost lyrical expression of the meaning for him of
the Spencerian philosophy and psychology. In it is his characteristic
mingling of Buddhist and Shinto thought with English and French
psychology, strains which in his work "do not simply mix well," as
he says in one of his letters, but "absolutely unite, like chemical
elements--rush together with a shock;"--and in it he strikes his
deepest note. In his steady envisagement of the horror that envelops
the stupendous universe of science, in his power to evoke and revive
old myths and superstitions, and by their glamour to cast a ghostly
light of vanished suns over the darkness of the abyss, he was the most
Lucretian of modern writers.

* * * * *

In outward appearance Hearn, the man, was in no way prepossessing. In
the sharply lined picture of him drawn by one of his Japanese comrades
in the "Atlantic" for October, 1905, he appears, "slightly corpulent
in later years, short in stature, hardly five feet high, of somewhat
stooping gait. A little brownish in complexion, and of rather hairy
skin. A thin, sharp, aquiline nose, large protruding eyes, of which
the left was blind and the right very near-sighted."

The same writer, Nobushige Amenomori, has set down a reminiscence, not
of Hearn the man, but of Hearn the genius, wherewith this introduction
to the last of his writings may fitly conclude: "I shall ever retain
the vivid remembrance of the sight I had when I stayed over night at
his house for the first time. Being used myself also to sit up late, I
read in bed that night. The clock struck one in the morning, but there
was a light in Hearn's study. I heard some low, hoarse coughing. I was
afraid my friend might be ill; so I stepped out of my room and went to
his study. Not wanting, however, to disturb him, if he was at work,
I cautiously opened the door just a little, and peeped in. I saw
my friend intent in writing at his high desk, with his nose almost
touching the paper. Leaf after leaf he wrote on. In a while he held
up his head, and what did I see! It was not the Hearn I was familiar
with; it was another Hearn. His face was mysteriously white; his
large eye gleamed. He appeared like one in touch with some unearthly
presence.

"Within that homely looking man there burned something pure as the
vestal fire, and in that flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and
poetry out of dust, and grasped the highest themes of human thought."

F.G.

September, 1905.

THE ROMANCE, OF THE MILKY WAY

Of old it was said: 'The River of Heaven is the Ghost of
Waters.' We behold it shifting its bed in the course of the
year as an earthly river sometimes does.

_Ancient Scholar_

Among the many charming festivals celebrated by Old Japan, the most
romantic was the festival of Tanabata-Sama, the Weaving-Lady of the
Milky Way. In the chief cities her holiday is now little observed; and
in T[=o]ky[=o] it is almost forgotten. But in many country districts,
and even in villages, near the capital, it is still celebrated in a
small way. If you happen to visit an old-fashioned country town or
village, on the seventh day of the seventh month (by the ancient
calendar), you will probably notice many freshly-cut bamboos fixed
upon the roofs of the houses, or planted in the ground beside them,
every bamboo having attached to it a number of strips of colored
paper. In some very poor villages you might find that these papers are
white, or of one color only; but the general rule is that the papers
should be of five or seven different colors. Blue, green, red, yellow,
and white are the tints commonly displayed. All these papers are
inscribed with short poems written in praise of Tanabata and her
husband Hikoboshi. After the festival the bamboos are taken down and
thrown into the nearest stream, together with the poems attached to
them.

* * * * *

To understand the romance of this old festival, you must know the
legend of those astral divinities to whom offerings used to be made,
even by, the Imperial Household, on the seventh day of the seventh
month. The legend is Chinese. This is the Japanese popular version
of it:--

The great god of the firmament had a lovely daughter,
Tanabata-tsum['e], who passed her days in weaving garments for her
august parent. She rejoiced in her work, and thought that there was
no greater pleasure than the pleasure of weaving. But one day, as she
sat before her loom at the door of her heavenly dwelling, she saw a
handsome peasant lad pass by, leading an ox, and she fell in love with
him. Her august father, divining her secret wish, gave her the youth
for a husband. But the wedded lovers became too fond of each other,
and neglected their duty to the god of the firmament; the sound of
the shuttle was no longer heard, and the ox wandered, unheeded, over
the plains of heaven. Therefore the great god was displeased, and he
separated the pair. They were sentenced to live thereafter apart, with
the Celestial River between them; but it was permitted them to see
each other once a year, on the seventh night of the seventh moon. On
that night--providing the skies be clear--the birds of heaven make,
with their bodies and wings, a bridge over the stream; and by means
of that bridge the lovers can meet. But if there be rain, the River of
Heaven rises, and becomes so wide that the bridge cannot be formed. So
the husband and wife cannot always meet, even on the seventh night of
the seventh month; it may happen, by reason of bad weather, that they
cannot meet for three or four years at a time. But their love remains
immortally young and eternally patient; and they continue to fulfill
their respective duties each day without fault,--happy in their hope
of being able to meet on the seventh night of the next seventh month.

* * * * *

To ancient Chinese fancy, the Milky Way was a luminous river,--the
River of Heaven,--the Silver Stream. It has been stated by Western
writers that Tanabata, the Weaving-Lady, is a star in Lyra; and the
Herdsman, her beloved, a star in Aquila, on the opposite side of the
galaxy. But it were more correct to say that both are represented, to
Far-Eastern imagination, by groups of stars. An old Japanese book puts
the matter thus plainly: "Kengy[=u] (the Ox-Leader) is on the west
side of the Heavenly River, and is represented by three stars in a
row, and looks like a man leading an ox. Shokujo (the Weaving-Lady)
is on the east side of the Heavenly River: three stars so placed as
to appear like the figure of a woman seated at her loom.... The former
presides over all things relating to agriculture; the latter, over all
that relates to women's work."

* * * * *

In an old book called Zatsuwa-Shin, it is said that these deities
were of earthly origin. Once in this world they were man and wife,
and lived in China; and the husband was called Ishi, and the wife
Hakuy[=o]. They especially and most devoutly reverenced the Moon.
Every clear evening, after sundown, they waited with eagerness to see
her rise. And when she began to sink towards the horizon, they would
climb to the top of a hill near their house, so that they might be
able to gaze upon her face as long as possible. Then, when she at last
disappeared from view, they would mourn together. At the age of ninety
and nine, the wife died; and her spirit rode up to heaven on a magpie,
and there became a star. The husband, who was then one hundred and
three years old, sought consolation for his bereavement in looking at
the Moon and when he welcomed her rising and mourned her setting, it
seemed to him as if his wife were still beside him.

One summer night, Hakuy[=o]--now immortally beautiful and
young--descended from heaven upon her magpie, to visit her husband;
and he was made very happy by that visit. But from that time he
could think of nothing but the bliss of becoming a star, and joining
Hakuy[=o] beyond the River of Heaven. At last he also ascended to the
sky, riding upon a crow; and there he became a star-god. But he could
not join Hakuy[=o] at once, as he had hoped;--for between his allotted
place and hers flowed the River of Heaven; and it was not permitted
for either star to cross the stream, because the Master of Heaven
(_Ten-Tei_) daily bathed in its waters. Moreover, there was no bridge.
But on one day every year--the seventh day of the seventh month--they
were allowed to see each other. The Master of Heaven goes always
on that day to the Zenh[=o]do, to hear the preaching of the law of
Buddha; and then the magpies and the crows make, with their hovering
bodies and outspread wings, a bridge over the Celestial Stream; and
Hakuy[=o] crosses that bridge to meet her husband.

There can be little doubt that the Japanese festival called
Tanabata was originally identical with the festival of the Chinese
Weaving-Goddess, Tchi-Niu; the Japanese holiday seems to have
been especially a woman's holiday, from the earliest times; and
the characters with which the word Tanabata is written signify a
weaving-girl. But as both of the star-deities were worshiped on the
seventh of the seventh month, some Japanese scholars have not been
satisfied with the common explanation of the name, and have stated
that it was originally composed with the word _tan['e]_ (seed, or
grain), and the word _hata_ (loom). Those who accept this etymology
make the appellation, Tanabata-Sama, plural instead of singular, and
render it as "the deities of grain and of the loom,"--that is to say,
those presiding over agriculture and weaving. In old Japanese pictures
the star-gods are represented according to this conception of their
respective attributes;--Hikoboshi being figured as a peasant lad
leading an ox to drink of the Heavenly River, on the farther side of
which Orihim['e] (Tanabata) appears, weaving at her loom. The garb of
both is Chinese; and the first Japanese pictures of these divinities
were probably copied from some Chinese original.

In the oldest collection of Japanese poetry extant,--the
Many[=o]sh[=u], dating from 760 A.D.,--the male divinity is usually
called Hikoboshi, and the female Tanabata-tsum['e]; but in later times
both have been called Tanabata. In Izumo the male deity is popularly
termed O-Tanabata Sama, and the female M['e]-Tanabata Sama. Both are
still known by many names. The male is called Kaiboshi as well as
Hikoboshi and Kengy[=u]; while the female is called Asagao-him['e]
("Morning Glory Princess")[1], Ito-ori-him['e] ("Thread-Weaving
Princess"), Momoko-him['e] ("Peach-Child Princess"), Takimono-him['e]
("Incense Princess"), and Sasagani-him['e] ("Spider Princess"). Some
of these names are difficult to explain,--especially the last, which
reminds us of the Greek legend of Arachne. Probably the Greek myth and
the Chinese story have nothing whatever in common; but in old Chinese
books there is recorded a curious fact which might well suggest a
relationship. In the time of the Chinese Emperor Ming Hwang (whom the
Japanese call Gens[=o]), it was customary for the ladies of the court,
on the seventh day of the seventh month, to catch spiders and put them
into an incense-box for purposes of divination. On the morning of the
eighth day the box was opened; and if the spiders had spun thick webs
during the night the omen was good. But if they had remained idle the
omen was bad.

[Footnote 1: Asagao (lit., "morning-face") is the Japanese name for
the beautiful climbing plant which we call "morning glory."]

* * * * *

There is a story that, many ages ago, a beautiful woman visited the
dwelling of a farmer in the mountains of Izumo, and taught to the
only daughter of the household an art of weaving never before known.
One evening the beautiful stranger vanished away; and the people knew
that they had seen the Weaving-Lady of Heaven. The daughter of the
farmer became renowned for her skill in weaving. But she would never
marry,--because she had been the companion of Tanabata-Sama.

* * * * *

Then there is a Chinese story--delightfully vague--about a man who
once made a visit, unawares, to the Heavenly Land. He had observed
that every year, during the eighth month, a raft of precious wood came
floating to the shore on which he lived; and he wanted to know where
that wood grew. So he loaded a boat with provisions for a two years'
voyage, and sailed away in the direction from which the rafts used to
drift. For months and months he sailed on, over an always placid sea;
and at last he arrived at a pleasant shore, where wonderful trees
were growing. He moored his boat, and proceeded alone into the unknown
land, until he came to the bank of a river whose waters were bright as
silver. On the opposite shore he saw a pavilion; and in the pavilion
a beautiful woman sat weaving; she was white like moonshine, and made
a radiance all about her. Presently he saw a handsome young peasant
approaching, leading an ox to the water; and he asked the young
peasant to tell him the name of the place and the country. But the
youth seemed to be displeased by the question, and answered in a
severe tone: "If you want to know the name of this place, go back
to where you came from, and ask Gen-Kum-Pei."[2] So the voyager,
feeling afraid, hastened to his boat, and returned to China. There he
sought out the sage Gen-Kum-Pei, to whom he related the adventure.
Gen-Kum-Pei clapped his hands for wonder, and exclaimed, "So it was
you!... On the seventh day of the seventh month I was gazing at
the heavens, and I saw that the Herdsman and the Weaver were about
to meet;--but between them was a new Star, which I took to be a
Guest-Star. Fortunate man! you have been to the River of Heaven, and
have looked upon the face of the Weaving-Lady!..."

[Footnote 2: This is the Japanese reading of the Chinese name.]

* * * * *

--It is said that the meeting of the Herdsman and the Weaver can be
observed by any one with good eyes; for whenever it occurs those stars
burn with five different colors. That is why offerings of five colors
are made to the Tanabata divinities, and why the poems composed in
their praise are written upon paper of five different tints.

But, as I have said before, the pair can meet only in fair weather.
If there be the least rain upon the seventh night, the River of Heaven
will rise, and the lovers must wait another whole year. Therefore
the rain that happens to fall on Tanabata night is called _Namida no
Am['e]_, "The Rain of Tears."

When the sky is clear on the seventh night, the lovers are fortunate;
and their stars can be seen to sparkle with delight. If the star
Kengy[=u] then shines very brightly, there will be great rice crops
in the autumn. If the star Shokujo looks brighter than usual, there
will be a prosperous time for weavers, and for every kind of female
industry.

* * * * *

In old Japan it was generally supposed that the meeting of the pair
signified good fortune to mortals. Even to-day, in many parts of the
country, children sing a little song on the evening of the Tanabata
festival,--_Tenki ni nari!_ ("O weather, be clear!") In the province
of Iga the young folks also sing a jesting song at the supposed hour
of the lovers' meeting:--

Tanabata ya!
Amari isogaba,
Korobub['e]shi![3]

But in the province of Izumo, which is a very rainy district, the
contrary belief prevails; and it is thought that if the sky be clear
on the seventh day of the seventh month, misfortune will follow. The
local explanation of this belief is that if the stars can meet, there
will be born from their union many evil deities who will afflict the
country with drought and other calamities.

[Footnote 3: "Ho! Tanabata! if you hurry too much, you will tumble
down!"]

* * * * *

The festival of Tanabata was first celebrated in Japan on the seventh
day of the seventh month of Tomby[=o] Sh[=o]h[=o] (A.D. 755). Perhaps
the Chinese origin of the Tanabata divinities accounts for the fact
that their public worship was at no time represented by many temples.

I have been able to find record of only one temple to them, called
Tanabata-jinja, which was situated at a village called Hoshiaimura,
in the province of Owari, and surrounded by a grove called
Tanabata-mori.[4]

[Footnote 4: There is no mention, however, of any such village in any
modern directory.]

Even before Temby[=o] Sh[=o]h[=o], however, the legend of the
Weaving-Maiden seems to have been well known in Japan; for it is
recorded that on the seventh night of the seventh year of Y[=o]r[=o]
(A.D. 723) the poet Yamagami no Okura composed the song:--

Amanogawa,
Ai-muki tachit['e],
Waga ko[:i]shi
Kimi kimasu nari--
Himo-toki makina![5]

It would seem that the Tanabata festival was first established
in Japan eleven hundred and fifty years ago, as an Imperial Court
festival only, in accordance with Chinese precedent. Subsequently
the nobility and the military classes everywhere followed imperial
example; and the custom of celebrating the Hoshi-mat-suri, or
Star-Festival,--as it was popularly called,--spread gradually
downwards, until at last the seventh day of the seventh month became,
in the full sense of the term, a national holiday. But the fashion of
its observance varied considerably at different eras and in different
provinces.

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