ugh the transparent
darkness of the cloudless April morning, he caught sight of the divine
mountain. The first sight of Fuji, hanging above Yokohama Bay like a
snowy ghost in the arch of the infinite day, is a sight never to be
forgotten, a vision that, for the years Hearn was yet to traverse before
the heavy, folded curtain fell on his stage of life, was destined to
form the background of his poetic dreams and imaginings.

Mr. Henry Watkin appears to have been the first person to whom Hearn
wrote from Japan. So great was the charm of this new country that he
seemed irresistibly called to impart some of the delight to those he had
left behind in America. He told him that he passed much of his time in
the temples, trying to see into the heart of the strange people
surrounding him. He hoped to learn the language, he said, and become a
part of the very soul of the people. He rhapsodised on the subject of
the simple humanity of Japan and the Japanese.... He loved their gods,
their customs, their dress, their bird-like, quavering songs, their
houses, their superstitions, their faults. He was as sure as he was of
death that their art was as far in advance of our art, as old Greek art
was superior to that of the earliest art groupings. There was more art
in a print by Hokusai, or those who came after him, than in a $100,000
painting. Occidentals were the barbarians.

Most travellers when first visiting Japan see only its atmosphere of
elfishness, of delicate fantasticality. The queer little streets, the
quaint shops where people seem to be playing at buying and selling, the
smiling, small people in "geta" and "kimono," the mouldering shrines
with their odd images and gardens; but to Hearn a transfiguring light
cast a ghostly radiance on ordinary sights and scenes, opening a world
of suggestion, and inspiring him with an eloquent power of impressing
upon others not only the visible picturesqueness and oddity of Japanese
life, but that dim surmise of another and inscrutable humanity, that
atmosphere of spirituality so inseparably a part of the religion Buddha
preached to man. With almost sacramental solemnity, he gazed at the
strange ideographs, wandered about the temple gardens, ascended the
stairways leading to ancient shrines. What these experiences did for his
genius is to be read in the first book inspired by the Orient while he
was still under the glamour of enchantment. Amidst the turmoil, the
rush, the struggle of our m