Hearn continues his Matsue years with the household shrine, women's hair, a garden of frogs and lotus, ancestor worship and the Japanese smile, then sails to the remote Oki islands and the farewell of Kumamoto. Ghost-lore, Buddhist funerals, student essays and the Shinto roots of the family religion fill out a portrait of old Izumo giving way to the new Japan.
Books mentioned in Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan: Second Series (13)
Kojiki by O no Yasumaro: “or the ancient story from the Kojiki, that the Emperor O-Jin, being augustly intoxicated, 'smote with his august staff a great stone in the middle of the Ohosaka road, whereupon the stone ran away!'”
Lotus Sutra: “and the chant is the chant of the Chapter of Kwannon in the Hokkekyo, with its magnificent invocation: 'O Thou whose eyes are clear, whose eyes are kind, whose eyes are full of pity and of sweetness--”
Kwammu-ryojuko: “and this text is the entire text of two famed sutras--the Kwammu-ryjo-kyo and the Amida-kyo--'text no larger than the limbs of fleas.'”
Amida Sutra: “and this text is the entire text of two famed sutras--the Kwammu-ryjo-kyo and the Amida-kyo--'text no larger than the limbs of fleas.'”
Nehan-gyo: “as the high-pitched voices of the leaders of the chant begin the grand Nehan-gyo, the Sutra of Nirvana, the song of passage triumphant over the Sea of Death and Birth;”
The Dhammapada: “'If a man conquer in battle a thousand times a thousand and another conquer himself, he who conquers himself is the greatest of conquerors.' 'Not even a god can change into defeat the victory of the man who has vanquished himself.'”
Dammikkasutta: “And the whole moral idealism of the race seems to me to have been imaged in that marvellous Buddha of Kamakura, whose countenance, 'calm like a deep, still water' expresses, as perhaps no other work of human hands can have expressed, the eternal truth: 'There is no higher happiness than rest.'”
First Principles by Herbert Spencer: “He has read various epitomes of the history of philosophy in the Occident, and everything of modern philosophy which has been translated into Japanese--including Spencer's First Principles.”
La Cité Antique by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges: “much after the manner in which M. Fustel de Coulanges, in his wonderful book, La Cite Antique, has shown the religious public institutions among the Greeks and Romans to have been developed from the religion of the hearth.”
Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings by Edward S. Morse: “if you want to know more about stones and their names, and about the philosophy of gardens, read the unique essay of Mr. Conder on the Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan, and his beautiful book on the Japanese Art of Floral Decoration; and also the brief but charming chapter on Gardens, in Morse's Japanese Homes.”
Landscape Gardening in Japan by Josiah Conder: “if you want to know more about stones and their names, and about the philosophy of gardens, read the unique essay of Mr. Conder on the Art of Landscape Gardening in Japan, and his beautiful book on the Japanese Art of Floral Decoration; and also the brief but charming chapter on Gardens, in Morse's Japanese Homes.”
Japanese Girls and Women by Alice Mabel Bacon: “The reader will find it well worth his while to consult the chapter entitled 'Domestic Service,' in Miss Bacon's Japanese Girls and Women, for an interesting and just presentation of the practical side of the subject, as relating to servants of both sexes.”
The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: “It was the weakness indicated by Percival Lowell in his Soul of the Far East, a book of which the consummate genius cannot be justly estimated without some personal knowledge of the Far East.”