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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
IV
Changes came as great earthquakes come, without warning: the transformation of daimyates into
prefectures, the suppression of the military class, the reconstruction of the whole social system. These
events filled the youth with sadness, although he felt no difficulty in transferring his allegiance from
prince to emperor, and although the wealth of his family remained unimpaired by the shock. All this
reconstruction told him of the greatness of the national danger, and announced the certain disappearance
of the old high ideals, and of nearly all things loved. But he knew regret was vain. By self-transformation
alone could the nation hope to save its independence; and the obvious duty of the patriot was to
recognize necessity, and fitly prepare himself to play the man in the drama of the future.
In the samurai school he had learned much English, and he knew himself able to converse with
Englishmen. He cut his long hair, put away his swords, and went to Yokohama that he might continue his
study of the language under more favorable conditions. At Yokohama everything at first seemed to him
both unfamiliar and repellent. Even the Japanese of the port had been changed by foreign contact: they
were rude and rough; they acted and spoke as common people would not have dared to do in his native
town. The foreigners themselves impressed him still more disagreeably: it was the period when new
settlers could assume the tone of conquerors to the conquered, and when the life of the "open ports" was
much less decorous than now. The new buildings of brick or stuccoed timber revived for him unpleasant
memories of the Japanese colored pictures of foreign manners and customs; and he could not quickly
banish the fancies of his boyhood concerning Occidentals. Reason, based on larger knowledge and
experience, fully assured him what they really were; but to his emotional life the intimate sense of their
kindred humanity still failed to come. Race-feeling is older than intellectual development; and the
superstitions attaching to race-feeling are not easy to get rid of. His soldier-spirit, too, was stirred at times
by ugly things heard or seen, - incidents that filled him with the hot impulse of his fathers to avenge a
cowardice or to redress a wrong. But he learned to conquer his repulsions as obstacles to knowledge: it
was the patriot's duty to study calmly the nature of his country's foes. He trained himself at last to
observe the new life about him without prejudice, - its merits not less than its defects; its strength not less
than its weakness. He found kindness; he found devotion to ideals, - ideals not his own, but which he
knew how to respect because they exacted, like the religion of his ancestors, abnegation of many things.
Through such appreciation he learned to like and to trust an aged missionary entirely absorbed in the
work of educating and proselytizing. The old man was especially anxious to convert this young samurai,
in whom aptitudes of no common order were discernible; and he spared no pains to win the boy's
confidence. He aided him in many ways, taught him something of French and German, of Greek and
Latin, and placed entirely at his disposal a private library of considerable extent. The use of a foreign
library, including works of history, philosophy, travel, and fiction, was not a privilege then easy for
Japanese students to obtain. It was gratefully appreciated; and the owner of the library found no difficulty
at a later day in persuading his favored and favorite pupil to read a part of the New Testament. The youth
expressed surprise at finding among the doctrines of the "Evil Sect" ethical precepts like those of
Confucius. To the old missionary he said: "This teaching is not new to us; but it is certainly very good. I
shall study the book and think about it."
V
The study and the thinking were to lead the young man much further than he had thought possible. After
the recognition of Christianity as a great religion came recognitions of another order, and various
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