Autograph Letter Signed. Tokyo, Japan. August 18, 1934, 2pp. To Marion C. Deane, a Canadian woman who worked at the Hampton Institute in Virginia
Very rare English-language letter by the author of what is now considered a cornerstone of Japanese-American literature, “A Japanese Robinson Crusoe”, published in 1898, while Oyabe was living in the US. An ordained Minister with degrees from Yale Divinity School and Howard University, Oyabe returned to his native Japan in 1901 and never again visited the United States.
Oyabe thanks Deane for sending a copy of his 1898 autobiography to the President of Howard University, where he had studied four decades before.
“If I speak frankly, it makes me almost ill to hear from the people ‘please send money’ or ‘please become our member and send fee…Remember there are two kind class people; one is living after money; and other is living to do the will of God; The second one is generally supported by the first; and I belong to the second one…When I was a poor boy in New York City, and made an application to enter Hampton Institute, Gen. Armstrong have written me with the same word: ‘It seems to me you understand very well.’ I am now about his age in those old days, and I can see one’s heart by a writing. As you have said, God comforts me with good things; He loves me always and though unworthy I am, yet never suffered from bread even one day all through my life. I am an author of many books in this country, and loved by many unseen readers. You and I never see each other before, but you called me ‘Most sincerely your friend’, and I thank you for it…I send you, the Hampton friends, an English magazine ‘Israel’s Messenger’ which my thesis and picture in it…”