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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
Japanese life, is that Japan has nothing whatever to gain by conversion to Christianity, either morally or
otherwise, but very much to lose.
Of the twenty-seven sketches composing these volumes, four were originally purchased by various
newspaper syndicates and reappear in a considerably altered form, and six were published in the Atlantic
Monthly (1891-3). The remainder forming the bulk of the work, are new.
L.H.
KUMAMOTO, KYUSHU, JAPAN. May, 1894.
GLIMPSES OF UNFAMILIAR JAPAN by LAFCADIO HEARN
Chapter One My First Day in the Orient
'Do not fail to write down your first impressions as soon as possible,' said a kind English professor [Basil
Hall Chamberlain: PREPARATOR'S NOTE] whom I had the pleasure of meeting soon after my arrival
in Japan: 'they are evanescent, you know; they will never come to you again, once they have faded out;
and yet of all the strange sensations you may receive in this country you will feel none so charming as
these.' I am trying now to reproduce them from the hasty notes of the time, and find that they were even
more fugitive than charming; something has evaporated from all my recollections of them - something
impossible to recall. I neglected the friendly advice, in spite of all resolves to obey it: I could not, in
those first weeks, resign myself to remain indoors and write, while there was yet so much to see and hear
and feel in the sun-steeped ways of the wonderful Japanese city. Still, even could I revive all the lost
sensations of those first experiences, I doubt if I could express and fix them in words. The first charm of
Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume.
It began for me with my first kuruma-ride out of the European quarter of Yokohama into the Japanese
town; and so much as I can recall of it is hereafter set down.
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It is with the delicious surprise of the first journey through Japanese streets - unable to make one's
kuruma-runner understand anything but gestures, frantic gestures to roll on anywhere, everywhere, since
all is unspeakably pleasurable and new - that one first receives the real sensation of being in the Orient,
in this Far East so much read of, so long dreamed of, yet, as the eyes bear witness, heretofore all
unknown. There is a romance even in the first full consciousness of this rather commonplace fact; but for
me this consciousness is transfigured inexpressibly by the divine beauty of the day. There is some charm
unutterable in the morning air, cool with the coolness of Japanese spring and wind-waves from the
snowy cone of Fuji; a charm perhaps due rather to softest lucidity than to any positive tone - an
atmospheric limpidity extraordinary, with only a suggestion of blue in it, through which the most distant
objects appear focused with amazing sharpness. The sun is only pleasantly warm; the jinricksha, or
kuruma, is the most cosy little vehicle imaginable; and the street-vistas, as seen above the dancing white
mushroom-shaped hat of my sandalled runner, have an allurement of which I fancy that I could never
weary.
Elfish everything seems; for everything as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the
little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in
their blue costumes. The illusion is only broken by the occasional passing of a tall foreigner, and by
divers shop-signs bearing announcements in absurd attempts at English. Nevertheless such discords only
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