Among the more startling but characteristic of the sketches of “Old Japan,” as drawn by the skilful pen of Lafcadio Hearn, there is perhaps no one which has excited a wider interest than that he was pleased to entitle “A Living God.” The few pages which it covers illustrate all the well-known excellencies and faults of this gifted writer. Purporting to give facts, but quite careless as to what the facts really were, exaggerating impressions and twisting the meanings of quaint old-time customs and faiths, Mr. Hearn nevertheless celebrates the deed of Hamaguchi so as to initiate the reader duly into the spirit of a half-century ago, in the Land of the Rising Sun. I say, “a half-century ago”; for although the story makes its hero to have died at an advanced age more than a hundred years before, the real Mr. Hamaguchi died in New York City, as late as April 21, 1889, at the age of sixty-six. He was then only thirty-two years old when in 1855 he enabled the villagers of Hiro-mura to escape with their lives from the overwhelming wave caused by the earthquake of that year.

It is worth while to correct some of the other mistakes of Mr. Hearn, before giving the narrative of a recent visit to Hiro-mura, where we were the guests of the present head of the Hamaguchi family. These mistakes, indeed, do not at all detract from the nobility of the hero’s action, nor greatly mar the writer’s reputation for picturing graphically a certain aspect of the spiritual life and character of the Japanese. Since it does not appear that he had ever travelled in this part of the country (we were assured by our host that we were the only foreigners who had ever been seen in Hiro-mura), the topical inaccuracies of Mr. Hearn’s story are easily excusable. Instead of Hamaguchi’s watching the merrymakers of the village from a farm-house on the hill-side, he saw the ebbing of the water that followed the earthquake and presaged the incoming wave, from his own house which was in the village itself. Indeed the heighth to which the water rose in its rooms was pointed out to us as it was marked plainly upon the wooden pillars in front of the tokonoma, or alcove where the artistic and other similar interests of a Japanese household are centred. Nor was the man himself simply the principal farmer of the district. For many generations his family had been one of the largest and richest in this part of Japan. Their wealth had been accumulated in the manufacture of Shoyu—the Japanese sauce invented as a modification of a Chinese original, which was introduced into Japan some centuries ago by a Buddhist priest, and without which no food “tastes good” to the modern Japanese. Moreover, the huge wave occurred in the middle of a moonless night; and thus the stacks of grain, which were not only his own, but also all that Hamaguchi could come upon in the village, served for lights to guide the villagers in their flight; and not at all, as Mr. Hearn would have us believe, for signals that their help was needed to rescue a neighbour’s property from fire.

Mr. Hamaguchi did, however, come perilously near to losing his own life for the sake of saving the lives of others; for he was himself the last to leave the lower ground of the village and escape to the hills. As it was, he was saved only by making a marvellous jump across a stream which checked the relentless wave that was pursuing and overtaking him. His son, Mr. Tan Hamaguchi, tells us this incident, which is unmentioned by Mr. Hearn, and adds: “I can recollect well that in my boyhood I used to bathe and fish in this very stream, without realising that it had been the means of saving my father’s life.” Nor is it true that the hero “continued to live in his old thatched house on the hill, with his children and his children’s children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshipped in the shrine below.” Even before the incident narrated above, at the time of the coming of the “black ships”—i. e., Commodore Perry’s fleet,—Hamaguchi Gōryo had been prominent in politics as one opposed to admitting foreigners without armed resistance; and, after their admittance, he organised the militia of his Province and drilled them according to his ideas of the European system. At the time that the supreme power was restored by the Revolution to the Emperor, Gōryo was appointed to a position corresponding to that of Postmaster-General. And later, in 1879, when the Ken-Kwai, or system of a local body of representatives, was introduced, he was elected president of the Council of his native place. Still later he organised a so-called “conciliation society,” which, while deprecating the then rising, ignorant strife of the political parties in process of formation, urged a “careful study of politics, rather than unrestrained violence and empty vapourings of irresponsible talk.” Like other notable Japanese of his day, Hamaguchi had for years previous to his death cherished the plan of foreign travel for the purpose of studying the social and political institutions of foreign countries. Indeed, it was in pursuance of this plan that—as has already been said—we find him in New York City, where he died in 1889.

But this true patriot did not forget his own humble village in his larger interest in the political development of the province of Kishu and of the country at large. The tidal wave of 1885 had left nearly the entire village of Hiro-mura desolate, and its inhabitants homeless, destitute, and quite unable to provide for themselves. Hamaguchi Gōryo found employment for them by organising and carrying through a scheme for building an enormous dyke to protect the village from future inundations. This dyke, now shadowed with well-grown trees, under which we took a part of our Sunday’s walk, March 10, 1907, is 1800 yards in length, 16 yards wide, and 5 yards high. “With the permission of the Daimyo of Kishu” (how thoroughly of the “Old Japan” does this phrase smack!), and with the assistance of his kinsman, Mr. K. Hamaguchi, the whole cost of this expensive construction was defrayed by their private means. Moreover, Gōryo did much for the roads and bridges, as well as the farms, of this region in Kishu.

But quite apart from any curiosity to see the village where dwelt the hero who won by his courage and benevolence the name of Daimyojin, or the “divinely great and bright” (it is not true, as Lafcadio Hearn affirms in his semi-fairy tale, that a shrine was built to Gōryo during his life-time by the villagers), I had other important reasons for visiting Hiro-mura. A former pupil of mine, Mr. Takarayama, was principal of a flourishing school which has been established and patronised generously by the Hamaguchi family. An invitation from the head-master and the patrons of this school, and their representations as to what it would mean for the cause of education in the whole district, combined with descriptions of the beauty of its scenery and the as yet unsophisticated nature of the country people, were quite sufficient to make us eager to be the first of foreigners to see and describe this wholly unfamiliar part of Japan. In all these respects, as well as others, our experiences left us emphatic in the conclusion that we had seldom, or never, in any part of the world had a more rewarding three days of travel and of sight-seeing than those spent in this trip through Kishu.

In order that we might reach our destination by a single day’s travel in jinrikishas—for the village is some twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station—we went from Kyoto to Osaka on the evening of the day before and took the early morning train for the interesting and beautiful town of Wakayama. At the station in Osaka we found the reserved carriage which the Governor of Wakayama had requested to have ready for us. As the manager of the railway acknowledged “the honour which we were doing his road by condescending to travel over it,” I think we felt somewhat as the daimyo of Kishu must have felt when he granted “permission” to Hamaguchi Gōryo to pay for the dyke which the latter’s enterprise and industry had succeeded in building.

The ride between the great manufacturing and modernised city and the ancient town, with its well-preserved feudal castle, is entertaining throughout; the part along the sea is especially picturesque. On the platform of the station at Wakayama stood the Mayor, the heads of various educational associations, and others, ready to welcome the arriving guests in the customary formal but friendly fashion of “Old Japan,”—adapted, however, to modern conditions of travel and clothing. Four jinrikishas, with three runners for each, were in waiting. After a short interval of discussion as to certain details, all were arranged in proper order;—our escort from the city leading the way, then the lady and the gentleman who were guests (a reversal of the ancient order of the precedence of the sexes), with Mr. Takarayama bringing up the rear. The cavalcade started off at a brisk trot which was broken only once during the first six miles; and this was in order to pass a loaded cart where the road along the cliff was somewhat narrow and rough. In this way we reached the village of Kuroé in time for luncheon. A turn aside from the main street, a somewhat steep climb by a branch road and then by a path through the fields to the hill-side above the village, brought us to the beautiful home of our mid-day host.

Mr. Kimura, who entertained us at luncheon that day, is a younger brother of Mr. K. Hamaguchi, who, as so often happens in Japan, has been adopted into another family and in this manner changed his family name. Over the gateway to his private grounds were hung the flags of Japan and of the United States; and the family, which still retains something of its patriarchal constitution in the country places of Japan, including a number of the principal servants, were all in waiting to welcome the foreign guests. Mr. Kimura’s residence is charmingly situated; the house, which is purely Japanese, although a part of the structure is more than two hundred years old, is still in excellent repair; in sunny and fairly warm weather it has the beauty which is peculiar to the best Japanese dwellings when set in one of those picturesque landscapes that abound here as nowhere else. In the room where we were received were a few treasures of art, which had been brought from the go-down for the occasion, such as a princess might covet; some rare old kakemonos, a piece or two of the finest lacquer, and one of the most interesting and artistic of bronze vases for flowers which I have ever seen. The base of this vase represented, or rather suggested in barest outline, the surf of the sea, with sea-birds flying here and there above the curling waves.

This entire district is an interesting example of the persistence in modern times of artisan and artist work, as done in humble houses by private individuals and families, with a certain independence and pride of craft, and on their own account as it were. In and about this small and obscure village of Kuroé there are as many as one thousand houses in which work in lacquer is going on. Most of this work is, of course, of cheap and ordinary character; although some of the older forms of cheap utensils of lacquer have a certain artistic beauty. Other specimens of the work done to-day in these houses of the village and the adjoining fields may, however, well lay claim to a rather high order of merit. For if there is not much initiative or originality shown by the peasant workers, the designs of the celebrated Korin, made a century and a half ago, are still being faithfully and skilfully copied by them. But there surely was not much work done, whether in fields, shops, or houses, during the hours of our stay. For the people, of all sorts, ages, and sizes, were gathered in groups, with that mild-mannered and unabashed curiosity which characterises the old-fashioned country folk of Japan, to watch the doings of the strangers who had so suddenly and unexpectedly appeared within their borders.

If further experience had been needed—as, indeed it was not—to convince me of the ease with which one, properly introduced and conducted, can make acquaintances among the good people of Japan, our short stay with Mr. Kimura and his family would furnish it. We met at noon as strangers; we parted at two in the afternoon of the same day as friends. As a souvenir of this friendship both host and guests cherish a photograph in which four generations of this Japanese family, and its trusted and aged head-steward, are grouped around the foreign visitors.

From the village of Kuroé to Hiro-mura the jinrikisha ride is one of almost unexampled charm. Indeed the landscapes through which we were passing combined the three qualities of such charm—beauty of form, beauty of colour, and human interest—in a higher degree, I think, than does either the drive around the Bay of Naples or along the Bosphorus. The day was superb—bright with the light of the sky and the sparkling of the sea, and just cool enough for comfortable travelling. We had changed runners and vehicles at Kuroé and so our men were fresh and ambitious to show how well they could do. The first part of the course took us over the tops and along the sides of the cliffs above the Bay of Shimidzu, or “Clear Water.” Here the landscape had its beauty of form contributed by the very configuration of the coast-line and, as well, of the mountain’s slopes and crests. But the curious and graceful curves of the terraces, both above and below the road as it wound along the bay, and up and down, were added features of delight to the eye that appreciates this kind of beauty. The reddish brown of the rock, where it shone through the sombre green of the lichens, emphasised by the light green and fawn colour of the dried grasses, or the dark and almost blackish green of the pines; the reaches up Between the cliffs, with the variegated colours of the vegetable gardens, the ooze of the as yet unplanted rice-fields, the shiny foliage of the orange groves, with the various shades of yellow fruit showing in places through the leaves; the limpid blue waters of the Inland Sea and of the Italian sky, which combined to reveal all the many hues of shell, and pebble, and seaweed, and reflected rock and tree and shrub,—all this made an unsurpassed beauty of colouring to give warmth and feeling to the beauty of form.

And then there was that indescribable picturesqueness of human interest which belongs to the country places where most of the life of “The Old Japan” is lingering still. In the succession of villages through which we were passing, the houses, boats, costumes, means of carriage, forms of labour, and modes of social intercourse, were little changed from one and two centuries ago. The highway was by no means solitary at any point of the twenty-five miles between Wakayama and Hiro-mura. Indeed the absence of steam-cars and of trolley made all the more necessary an active life on the road in order to do the necessary business for this busy and not unprosperous district. All along its course men were trudging with baskets and buckets and immense packages slung on poles over their shoulders. Peasants were going to and from their work in the fields with old-fashioned mattocks and rakes in hand or over the shoulder. Men and boys were pushing up, or holding back, along all the slopes of the hills, the long dray-like carts, loaded with boxes of oranges, or with bales of raw cotton to be spun, or of cotton yarn or cotton cloth already prepared for the market. For just as a thousand houses in the district nearer Wakayama are making things of lacquer, so a thousand houses in this district are spinning cotton yarn or weaving cotton cloth. We can hear the cheerful rattle of the looms as we approach the way-side cottages—a noise which is suspended as the cavalcade of curiously loaded jinrikishas draws near; only to be resumed again when the workers have seen the foreigners pass by. Indeed, a considerable percentage of the products of the Fuji Cotton-Spinning Company, of which our host at Hiro-mura is the president, is manufactured in the homes of the villagers and farmers of this district. May a kindly Providence prevent this sort of domestic industry from being displaced by smoky mills, in crowded centres, under conspiracies of monopolies and trusts!

But bye and bye we leave the cliffs along the shore of Shimidzu Bay and come to the Arida River. Here the scenery is still interesting and beautiful, but of quite different character. Our road lies, much of the way, along the dykes built to restrain the overflow of this stream, down which, at the present time, an almost unbroken succession of rafts of lumber is being driven by the lumbermen. Upon the banks of the river is an equally endless succession of orange groves; for we are now in the Florida of Japan. With as much propriety, we might call it, so far as orange culture goes, the California of Japan. In these groves, or rather yards,—since the fruit seems to be for the most part cultivated in small patches in the gardens of the cottagers,—are grown the small free-skinned and deliciously sweet oranges for which this region of Kishu is particularly celebrated. But here, too are the groves of Navel oranges, the trees for planting which were imported from California some eight or ten years ago. (I noticed, however, that this variety is deteriorating in Japan. The one small hard semblance of an orange which is at the navel of the California variety in this country, seems there to be multiplying itself three- and four-fold, until it threatens to occupy most of the inside of what from the outside appears to be a fine, large specimen of fruit.)

The quieter rural beauty, with its commerce along the river rather than along the shores of the sea, is satisfying enough, however, to prevent the fatigue of travel until we reach Yuasa, a village separated only by about one mile from Hiro-mura. At the outskirts of this place it is necessary to pass under an arch of “Welcome” which the townspeople have erected; and then between lines of school children, who, drawn up on either side to the number of three hundred, greet us with bows and waving of flags. A little further on, we are handed a large card which announces that twenty-five of the chief men of the village of Yuasa have also come out to welcome us. And there they are—friendly and yet dignified in their bearing—in a single row along one side of the highway. Evidently the demands of politeness cannot be satisfied in such a case by allowing one’s self to be drawn in one’s jinrikisha slowly by the line, with uncovered head and frequent exchange of bows. So the male of the two guests dismounts and on the common level of the highway exchanges salutations with the numerous representatives of the party of the host.

While passing through the streets of Yuasa we noticed entire blocks of houses which, sometimes on one side and sometimes on two or more sides, were railed off from the highway, at a short distance from their fronts, by a barrier of galvanised iron about two feet and a half high. At the time, this strange sight only aroused a momentary curiosity. It was not until we were about leaving Hir-omura that we learned the meaning of it all. In July of the previous Summer some boatmen from Osaka had landed in Yuasa and had brought to the villagers the dreadful bubonic plague. It had taken until the following December for the authorities to stamp out the scourge effectually. By this contrivance of an iron wall it was intended to trap the rats and prevent their carrying the infection from house to house and from street to street, before they could be killed. Aided by the barrier of the little river, although there were several hundred cases in this village, the other village, which was less than a mile away, wholly escaped. In general, it is only by the most untiring and intelligent diligence, extended into all the smaller places upon the coast and into the remotest country districts, that Japan prevents the plagues which are endemic in China, India, and Korea, from ravaging her own land.

On the other side of the Hiro,—the stream which gives its name to the village where Hamaguchi Gōryo lived, and across which he made his famous jump when closely pursued by the incoming wave, in 1855,—the “guests” were met by another “Welcome” arch, and another yet longer array of school-masters and school-children. Indeed, both villages, in the persons of as nearly all their inhabitants as could get about, were obviously playing the part of welcoming hosts. All doorways were crowded; all the streets along which the jinrikishas passed were lined with citizens curious to see the “first-arrived” foreigners in this part of Kishu.

On reaching his hospitable gateway we were met and welcomed by Mr. K. Hamaguchi and his entire family, and were ushered into a room which was such a surprise as can now be met by those who have access to the houses of the cultivated and wealthy, even in remote country districts of Japan. The floor of the large parlour or drawing-room was entirely covered by a beautiful Chinese rug, spread over the soft Japanese mats. In violation, to be sure, of the native custom, but presumably for the delectation of his guests, a temporary display of numerous art treasures had been arranged by our host. Kakemonos painted by Enshu and other celebrated native artists were hung upon the walls. Screens of the greatest artistic interest and of almost priceless value were to be admired on every hand. Nor were these art objects limited to the best specimens of Japanese, or Chinese, or other Oriental workmen. Mr. K. Hamaguchi in his travels around the world had made judicious selection of things of beauty from many places. It was his boast, for example, that he had collected flower-vases to represent the best work of a score of different foreign countries.

This room, with its shoji drawn aside, looked out upon one of those gardens which the Japanese are able, without exhausting a large space, to make so very exquisite. In a darkened cage, which hung in the verandah outside, a nightingale occasionally burst forth in song. And when, after a dinner cooked in foreign style by a cook imported from Osaka, the shoji were drawn and we were put to bed within a small space curtained-off, in a bedstead brought expressly for this purpose all the way from Tokyo, and covered with thickly wadded Japanese futons of the winter variety, our only wish was that we might have been allowed the much more comfortable but less dignified spread of the same futons upon the floor of the large room, with the sides still left open into the garden, so that we could breath its delicious air, and go to sleep to the murmur of the fountain and the song of the nightingale. But the return to the improved and more elegant use of the better points in the art of comfortable and healthful living, which were enforced before foreign customs were introduced into the “Old Japan,” will come through the growth of understanding and the added appreciation of a comfortable and healthful simplicity, in the “New Japan.” Meantime we hope that the genuine and delightful, if somewhat too elaborate, courtesies of host and guest will not be wholly changed.

The next day was the time of work, the day for which the other days of the rather lengthy but altogether delightful journey had been undertaken. Its experiences were calculated to strengthen the conclusions derived from all my other experiences during three different visits to Japan,—namely, that no other nation is now, in comparison with its resources, giving the same care to the intellectual and ethical education of the common people. For Hiro-mura, the reader will remember, is an obscure village, not even mentioned in the guidebooks, some twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station, and never, according to the testimony of their leading citizen, visited by foreigners before.

But the day was also calculated to impress yet more deeply another characteristic of the social and public, as well as of the domestic, life of Japan. The spirit of Hamaguchi Gōryo was everywhere in the air. And here is where Mr. Hearn shows his insight into, and his appreciation of, a momentous truth. It is, indeed, a truth which cannot be argued with the Westerner,—easily or without embarrassment, for lack of a sufficient standing upon common ground. It is a truth which must be profoundly felt. Japan, perhaps more than any other civilised nation, is constantly under the prevailing influence of a belief in what Mr. Hearn is pleased—not altogether aptly—to call “ghosts.” These are the ghosts—I should rather say, the felt spiritual presences—“of great warriors and heroes and rulers and teachers, who lived and loved and died hundreds or thousands of years ago.” As he says truly: “You cannot mock the conviction of forty (now more than fifty) millions of people while that conviction thrills all about you like the air,—while conscious that it is pressing upon your psychical being just as the atmosphere presses upon your physical being.” Even to-day, in the school-rooms and university halls and public playgrounds of the children and youth of Japan, it is not the trophies of some individual player or team of athletes, but the mottoes and injunctions and other relics of the great and the good, not only of the present, but also and chiefly of the older, and the most ancient times, which excite their feelings of pride and emulation.

Soon after nine o’clock Mr. Takarayama, the head-master, came to conduct us to the school. Our way there was lined with villagers, some of them with chubby babies strapped upon their backs or held aloft in the arms, and all eager to see the wonderful sight. A yet more beautiful arch than any we had before seen had been constructed by the pupils at the entrance to the school-grounds. Inside the gateway, too, was a most elaborate system of decorations, arranged by displaying many flags of all nations which had been laboriously painted by the same youthful hands. Teachers and scholars made a thick-set avenue by which the building where the addresses were to be given must be approached. This and all the other buildings, now newly completed but already paid for, stand within grounds that are ample for the future expansion of the school. The site is lovely. It is a gently sloping ground, with the water in sight. The bay which washes its feet is called “Nagi,” or “The Peaceful”; and it is rightly named.

The morning exercises, including the address by the foreign Sensei, or Teacher, were to be devoted to the pupils and patrons of the school; while the afternoon meeting was more particularly intended for the several hundred teachers in the district, many of whom had come by jinrikisha or, more often, on foot, from twenty and even thirty miles away. But even the morning’s programme was sufficiently elaborate to impress the visitors from surrounding parts with the great importance of an occasion so unique. A study of the somewhat quaint translation of the Japanese original disclosed the following particulars, duly itemised and correctly numbered:

(1) Visiting the recitation rooms; (2) Salutation (all together); (3) introduction (the Principal); (4) singing a welcome song (the pupils); (5) address of welcome (a pupil); (6) sketch of the school (a pupil); (7) welcome (Mr. K. Hamaguchi); (8) Address (Professor Ladd); (9) Thanks (the Principal); (10) singing of a school song; (11) (dismission).

Under certain circumstances it is no small advantage not to be familiar with the language in which you are being addressed. This is especially true when one is either excessively praised or excessively blamed and denounced. In this way the foreign speaker at this morning gathering in Hiro-mura was spared the temptation which would have accompanied the knowledge that the youth who gave the address of welcome—No. 5 upon the programme—was comparing his fame to Fuji and his graciousness and charm to the cherry-blossoms on Mount Yoshino; but this is what the translation of the address subsequently revealed. Such things, however, were commoner and more congenial to the poetic license of the Old Japan. Now, in spite of certain attempts at modernising, this part of Kishu remains much the same as of old; and so, both the youthful reader of the words and the adult hearers of them were quite properly solemn and unmoved by the sight and fragrance of such flowers of flattery.

Nature, however, was preparing to give the audience another sort of reminder of the days and deeds of Hamaguchi Gōryo. For the foreign guest had scarcely heard his last sentences interpreted by the head-master, when a loud explosion, followed by rumbling noises like those which would be made by scores of huge ten-pin balls rolling over a wooden alley, startled us all. It was within a few seconds of noon; and the watches of those who had them came out promptly in order that their owners might note the exact time. The lady of the foreign guests indeed interpreted it all to mean that the noon-gun had just been fired. She was alone in this impression; every one else knew that there was no noon-gun to be fired, within many miles; but that some stratum of rock under the neighbouring sea could no longer bear the strain, and so had parted in this sudden and demonstrative way. In brief, it was an earthquake—just such an one as is peculiar to this region, and such as caused the incoming wave which overwhelmed Hiro-mura in 1855. This, however, was only a small quake; although the building shook under the first blow upon its foundations. Nor was there any perceptible disturbance of “Peaceful Bay” to follow. And if there had been, it would not easily have surmounted the high and broad earth-works, with their avenue of stately trees, which were a half-century ago made the guardians of the future safety of the village.

After tiffin it was necessary almost immediately to return to the school for the address to the teachers of Hiro-mura, Yuasa, and the country districts far around. Nearly five hundred of these teachers were present at the afternoon meeting. The subject of the address was “The Ideals of the Teacher.” Here, as quite uniformly in the country at large, the speaker’s heart went out to the audience with warm feelings of respect, sympathy, and even pity.

I have been in more or less familiar intercourse for nearly twenty years with thousands of this class in Japan. In spite of the sincere and largely intelligent interest which both Government and people take in matters of education, the public-school teachers of the country are heavily overworked and lamentably underpaid. But the ideal of His Majesty’s celebrated Imperial Rescript is steadily held up before them—namely, that there shall be no household in the land, and no member of any household, to whom the benefits of education shall not have been supplied in liberal measure. To realise this ideal, Japan must have an entire generation or more of peace and of peaceful development. At present its Normal Schools, Higher Schools (those of the so-called Koto grade), and Universities, can scarcely provide for more than one-tenth of those who are desirous of fitting themselves for advanced positions and larger influence in the service of the nation. As a result, in many of the country places the scholastic training of the teachers cannot be of a high grade. But the eagerness with which these humble men (for, unlike-the case with us, the great majority of the common-school teachers are males,—many of them in middle life and beyond) avail themselves of every opportunity to see and hear anything which may help them in their work, is both encouraging and pathetic. Where in the United States, for example, could a voluntary class of more than eight hundred teachers be held together for twenty hours of lectures on education,—each session more than filling up the period between four and six o’clock of the afternoon, during the busiest part of term-time? Yet—as I have already said—this was readily done in Kyoto, the ancient capital, in the Winter of 1907.

Nowhere else, therefore, in Hiro-mura, not even in the strong protecting dyke, is the spirit of Hamaguchi, with its affectionate interest in the welfare of his fellow villagers, more prominently and powerfully displayed than in the planting of the school on the beautiful grounds in full sight of the bay which is called Nagi, or “The Peaceful.” The dyke shall continue to push back the sea; and the school, under its protection, shall continue to push back the forces of ignorance and immorality.

After the lecture and the inevitable photographing of the group—a species of photographing in which the Japanese peculiarly excel—a considerable party accompanied the guests to a grove, high up upon the hillside, from which the fields, and school and villages, and bay, could be overlooked. There chocolate and cake were served. And from there, after the descent to the plain was made, we walked to the house of our host along the dyke, under the shadow of the pine-trees, and looking down upon the waters which had once deluged the place—all speaking to the memory, sympathetic with Japanese ideas, of the spirit of Hamaguchi Gōryo.

The plan had been to start our jinrikisha ride back to Wakayama not later than half-past six the following morning. But things in the country places of Japan have not yet learned to occur at the expected hour. Or rather, the experienced traveller has learned not to expect to start his journey exactly at the promised time. We were doing well when we bade our friendly host and hostess good-bye an hour later than the one appointed. The return ride was indeed pleasant; but it lacked the charms of brightness and of novelty; for the sky was overcast and the air was that of March rather than of May. We changed kurumas at Kuroé, as before, but did not stop there; and making the run of some eight miles without a single pause, we arrived at Waka-no-Ura about half-past eleven o’clock.

Now Waka-no-Ura, as the very name signifies, is the “coast” (Ura) for which the old feudal town, the capital of the Province of Kishu, Wakayama, is the “mountain” (Yama). It is one of the most notable for its beauty of all the sea-coasts of Japan. The picturesque features of the landscape, which have been celebrated in innumerable poems by centuries of poets and poet-asters, were all in evidence on that day. There were the storks standing on one leg in the water, or flying low above the rushes. There were the rocks and the pines—not straight, of course, like ours, but by their knarled and knotty shapes, irregularities and eccentricities of outline, provoking in the mind of the Japanese all manner of sentimental expressions and similes touching human life. There were the boats of the fishermen, at sea or lying in the offing; and nearer by were the boats of the women who were gathering sea-weed for their food or for sale.

A regular “shore dinner” of fish and birds was somewhat hastily concluded, in the company of the Governor of the Ken, the Mayor of the City, and a representative of the Educational Societies. Immediately after this, the Governor excused himself and, mounting his bicycle, went on ahead of us, who followed in jinrikishas. The highway along which we passed rapidly, was, for much of the three miles between the coast and the city, made picturesque with its shading of pines; and once within the more thickly settled streets of Wakayama it circuited the castle walls and brought us to the Government-building where the afternoon’s lecture was to be given. Here, as everywhere, the audience, which numbered about eight hundred teachers and officials, many of whom had come from considerable distances away, bore convincing testimony to the interest of the Japanese people at large in questions of education and ethics. But we were not to carry out the plan of seeing more of the sights and of the people of Wakayama. For a telegram informed me that Marquis Ito had already left Oiso and would reach Kyoto that evening, where he would plan to see me the next morning. Directly from the hall, therefore, we were taken in haste to the station, and by late evening we had reached our hotel in Kyoto.

But Hiro-mura and Hamaguchi Gōryo cannot be dismissed with propriety from our present thought, however pleasant its purely personal reminiscences may be, without recurring to the more impersonal and important impressions, such as are made by Lafcadio Hearn’s story of “A Living God.” In a little book published in England about five years ago, the son, Mr. Tan Hamaguchi, tells us of the following incident: He had been reading a paper on “Some Striking Female Personalities in Japanese History,” before the Japan Society of London; following which a lady in the audience raised the question of a possible relationship between the reader of the paper and the hero of Mr. Hearn’s tale. The question led, not only to the exposure of the intimate character of this relation, but also to the correction and amplification of the more fanciful of the points emphasised by the celebrated foreign romancer of Japan’s characteristic ideals and forms of behaviour. It was admitted that “Mr. Lafcadio Hearn throws around the facts a golden aureole of fancy.” But it was justly claimed that, although the long list of posts held, and services rendered, by a good patriot to his country may “lack the glamour of a single action, which has the fortune to attract the genius of a sympathetic writer, and so carry his name and fame on words of English eloquence across the world,” discerning readers will none the less see in these offices and services “so many fresh titles to veneration and regard.” There was—we have already said—no shrine built to the hero during his life-time by the villagers of Arita. The shrine was “metaphorically erected in their hearts and on their lips.”

In at least two important respects, however, the facts are more honourable to Hamaguchi Gōryo and to his countrymen than are the fancies of Mr. Hearn. For it was not one seemingly supernatural deed of heroism, but a life-time of service such as all may try to perform, which constituted this hero’s claim to immortality; and the time, instead of being more than a hundred years gone by, was in the generation of yet living men. It is, therefore, thoroughly representative, both of the spirit which still animates many of the leaders and principal citizens of Japan, and also of the kind of recognition and grateful remembrance which Japan accords to those who serve her in this spirit. Thus much, which tends to foster the “worship of ghosts” and the multiplication of “living gods”—to borrow phrases from Mr. Hearn—is a fairly effective and most praiseworthy force in the country down to the present hour.

Nor is this force evanescent, ineffective, and limited to politicians and promoters of large business enterprises, as is for the most part the case at present with us. It is the “ghosts” of great “rulers and teachers,” as well as of warriors and heroes; of those “who lived and loved and died hundreds and thousands of years ago,” as well as of the successful and influential man of the passing hour. And the hope of being numbered among the innumerable host that have served their country, and that are regarded as all of one band, whether here on earth or members of the “choir invisible,” is no impotent factor in that spirit with which Japan met its enemy (now its friend) in the war of 1904-’05. As one of her generals said to me: “It is the spiritual training of the soldier which we find most difficult and on which we place the greatest emphasis.” This worshipful attitude toward the great and the good of the past, which is something more than admiration and even something more than mere reverence, and yet is not quite what we call “worship,” it is that binds the living and the dead together in a peculiar bond of unity; that fills the actor of to-day with an inspiration and a hope which takes a hold upon the universal and the eternal; and that makes the sacrifice of what is temporal and selfish more prompt, cheerful, and easy to bear. And who shall say that there is not something admirable and eminently hopeful for the nation in this? Or, at least, such are the thoughts connected in my mind with the visit to Hiro-mura and with the facts, even when stripped of the pleasing but not veritable fancies of Mr. Hearn, concerning the history of Hamaguchi Gōryo.