Amenomori Nobushige, A Conservative in Hearn's“KOKORO”

Abstract

I am the origina1 of my deceased friend Lafcadio Hearn's paper “A Conservative” in his Kokoro. (from Nobushige Amenomori's letter dated Dec. 21, 1904.)
Amenomri Nobushige had an excllent appreciation of both the Japanese and European civilization. Therefore, he could become one of the best helpers of Lafcadio Hearn. But there was no positive vidence as to whether the real man in Hearn's “A Conservative” was Amenomori himself.
While researching the Griffis Co11ection in the University of Rutgers, I found the two 1etters addressed to W. E. Griffis by Amenomori. In one of them he declared that he was the very original. On the story he looked up Mt. Fuji above the clouds in the early morning on board returning to Japan after the long visits on foreign countries, Then he determined to do some works of introducing civilization from Western countries and strengthen the new Japan.
Certainly he was apatriot, though Christian love was deeply rooted in his mind. In “The Japanese Spirit, ” an English essay written by Amenomori and admired by Griffis, his o1d teacher in Fukui, Amenomori wrote that Japan would win the Russo-Japanese War, because the Japanese had the loyalty to the Imperial House, Bushido spirit and the ancient religion of Buddhism. The idea was one that Griffis and Hearn wanted to find in Japan and the Japanese people.