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Lafcadio Hearn - Kokoro
phenomena from immaterial Unity, - and the ultimate return of all into "that state which is empty of lusts,
of malice, of dullness, - that state in which the excitements of individuality are known no more, and
which is therefore designated THE VOID SUPREME."
XIII. IN CHOLERA-TIME
I
China's chief ally in the late war, being deaf and blind, knew nothing, and still knows nothing, of treaties
or of peace. It followed the returning armies of Japan, invaded the victorious empire, and killed about
thirty thousand people during the hot season. It is still slaying; and the funeral pyres burn continually.
Sometimes the smoke and the odor come wind-blown into my garden down from the hills behind the
town, just to remind me that the cost of burning an adult of my own size is eighty sen, - about half a
dollar in American money at the present rate of exchange.
From the upper balcony of my house, the whole length of a Japanese street, with its rows of little shops,
is visible down to the bay. Out of various houses in that street I have seen cholera-patients conveyed to
the hospital, - the last one (only this morning) my neighbor across the way, who kept a porcelain shop.
He was removed by force, in spite of the tears and cries of his family. The sanitary law forbids the
treatment of cholera in private houses; yet people try to hide their sick, in spite of fines and other
penalties, because the public cholera-hospitals are overcrowded and roughly managed, and the patients
are entirely separated from all who love them. But the police are not often deceived: they soon discover
unreported cases, and come with litters and coolies. It seems cruel; but sanitary law must be cruel. My
neighbor's wife followed the litter, crying, until the police obliged her to return to her desolate little shop.
It is now closed up, and will probably never be opened again by the owners.
Such tragedies end as quickly as they begin. The bereaved, so soon as the law allows, remove their
pathetic belongings, and disappear; and the ordinary life of the street goes on, by day and by night,
exactly as if nothing particular had happened. Itinerant venders, with their bamboo poles and baskets or
buckets or boxes, pass the empty houses, and utter their accustomed cries; religious processions go by,
chanting fragments of sutras; the blind shampooer blows his melancholy whistle; the private watchman
makes his heavy staff boom upon the gutter-flags; the boy who sells confectionery still taps his drum,
and sings a love-song with a plaintive sweet voice, like a girl's: -
"You and I together.... I remained long; yet in the moment of going I thought I had only just
come.
"You and I together.... Still I think of the tea. Old or new tea of Uji it might have seemed to
others; but to me it was Gyokoro tea, of the beautiful yellow of the yamabuki flower.
"You and I together.... I am the telegraph-operator; you are the one who waits the message. I
send my heart, and you receive it. What care we now if the posts should fall, if the wires be broken?"
And the children sport as usual. They chase one another with screams and laughter; they dance in chorus;
they catch dragon-flies and tie them to long strings; they sing burdens of the war, about cutting off
Chinese heads: -
"Chan-chan bozu no Kubi wo hane!"
Sometimes a child vanishes; but the survivers continue their play. And this is wisdom.
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