ulled from the
unsophisticated hearts of the peasants and the common folk. "The people
make the gods, and the gods the people make are the best." Hearn did not
attempt, therefore, a mechanical repetition of social and religious
tenets; but in the mythological beliefs, in the legendary lore that has
slumbered for generations in simple minds he caught the suggestion of
obedience and fidelity to authority, the strenuous industry and
self-denial that endowed these quaint superstitions with a potency far
beyond the religion and meaning, or the primitive idea that caused their
inception. Merely accurate and erudite students would call the
impressions that he collected here, in this unfamiliar Japan, trifling
and fantastic, but he is able to prove that the details of ordinary
intercourse, however trifling, the way in which men marry and bring up
their children, the very manner in which they earn their daily bread,
above all, the rules they impose, and the punishment and rewards they
invoke to have them obeyed, reveal more of the manner by which the
religion, the art, the heroism of this far eastern people have been
developed, than hundreds of essays treating of dynasties, treaties and
ceremonials.

Aided by that very quality which some may look upon as a mental defect,
Hearn's tendency to over-emphasise an impressive moment at the expense
of accuracy stood him now in good stead. Physical myopia, he maintained,
was an aid to artistic work from one aspect: "The keener the view, the
less depth in the impression produced. There is no possibility of
attraction in wooded deeps or mountain recesses for the eye that, like
the eye of a hawk, pierces shadow and can note the separate quiver of
every leaf." So mental myopia united with the shaping power of
imagination was more helpful in enabling him to catch a glimpse of the
trend of thought and characteristics of the folk whose country he
adopted than the piercing judgment that saw faults and intellectual
short-comings.

Many people, even the Japanese themselves, have said that Hearn's view
in his first book of things in their country was too roseate. Others
have declared that he must have been a hypocrite to write of Japan in so
enthusiastic a strain when in private letters, such as those to
Chamberlain and Ellwood Hendrik, he expresses so great a detestation for
the people and their methods. Those who say so do not know the nature of
the man whom they are discussing; compromise with