Letters from China and Japan Part 2

When I got to my last bite, I inquired the name of the food, and said it and "Sayonara"--good night. This old gag was a triumph of humor. They are certainly a good-natured people. I have watched the children come out from a public school near here, and never yet have I seen a case of bullying or even of teasing, except of a very good-natured kind, no quarreling and next to no disputing. Yet they are st.u.r.dy little things and no mollycoddles. To see a boy of ten or twelve playing tag and jumping ditches with a boy strapped to his back is a sight. There are no public rebukes or scoldings of the children or even cross words, to say nothing of slappings, no nagging, at least not in public. Some would say that the children are not scolded because they are good, but it is a fair guess that it is the other way. But it must be admitted that so far as amiable exterior and cheerfulness and courtesy is concerned, they have no bad examples set them. Some foreigners say all this is only skin deep, but the manners of the foreigners who say these things aren't any too good even from our standards. Anyway, skin deep is better than nothing and good as far as it goes. However, the j.a.panese say that their courtesy is reserved for their friends and people they know, not that they have bad manners to strangers, but that they pay no attention to them, and won't go out of their way to do anything for them.

I told about the man who made Mamma a present when she bought the pipes.

Yesterday we were in that region and Mamma went in again and bought another, and paid him a compliment on what people said about the present. Whereupon he gets up and fishes out another more valuable pouch, somewhat ragged and old, the kind the actors now use on the stage, and offers it. Mamma naturally tries to avoid it, but can't. He informs her through the friend with us that he likes Americans very much. An international matter having been made of it, the pouch is accepted, and now we have to think up some present to give him. However, we have told this story to several Americans here, and they say they have never heard anything like it.

We were to have gone to the Peeress's School this morning, an appointment having been made to show us about. Mamma's cold preventing her going, we had somebody 'phone to see if the time could be changed.

And this afternoon appear for her some lovely lilies and amaryllis--these being from people we had never seen. A Freudian would readily infer how bad my own manners are from the amount I talk about this.

We went to a j.a.panese restaurant for supper. This was a fish restaurant, and we cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumerable. Instead of bringing you in a bill of fare to order from, the coolie brings a big tray with samples of everything on it, and you help yourself. One thing was abalones on the half sh.e.l.l, these being babies, about like our clams, but not so tough, to say nothing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't try the fried devil fish and other luxuries, but wandered pretty far afield. When you have leisure, try eating lobster in the sh.e.l.l with chop sticks. You will resort to something more ancient than chop sticks, as I did. This restaurant is quite plebeian, though it has a great reputation for its secret recipe for the sauce the fish is cooked in, but it was considerably more expensive than the other--probably because we sampled so many side dishes; the other one cost less than five dollars for eight people--good food and all anybody could eat.

TOKYO, March 14th.

The ceremony of breakfast is over, and I am sorry again you cannot all share in these daily festivals which add so much to the dignity of living. We are now studying j.a.panese with the aid of the maids. I missed going to the Dolls' Festival at a private kindergarten and the result--this morning by mail a postcard from the children with numerous presents made by them, all dolls, and those I will send home, as they are interesting. With the presents they say: "We made cakes and prepared for your coming and we were in the depths of despair when you did not come. Please come another time." I am sure there is no other country in the world like this. The language is an impossible one. The way given in the phrases of the guide book is the way the man speaks. So when I stammer off those phrases the girls are literally tickled to death. When they tell me what I ought to say in the more elaborated polite way of the women, then I am floored. It is all an amusing game and relieves the watch they keep on each bite we take so as to be ready to supply more.

Everything they do is marked with the kindliest att.i.tude and every act or move is one of friends.h.i.+p.

This is the program for to-day: Go to lunch at the house of some missionaries, then to father's lecture at 3:30, then to dinner for University of Chicago students. To-morrow will be an open day for me and the little secretary will take me shopping. The big department store is the fas.h.i.+onable place where all the n.o.ble and rich buy their kimonos, and I may supplement my secondhand attempts with a new one. When I get to Kyoto I hope to find a real old one, as the new style of weave are infected with foreign influence. The other evening with Y---- we found a little shop for antiques which is a gem to look at. An old man and his wife, Y---- says he bets they are Samurai, with the politeness of real n.o.bles, and their little place as carefully arranged for beauty as if it were their home--which it is. I broke an old Kutani plate and I inquired for one there. They had none, but we looked at their things, they with many bows, and when we left said we were sorry to have troubled them for nothing. They replied, "Please excuse us for not having the thing you wanted."

To-morrow we go to lunch here in the neighborhood with a very clever and interesting family (of a professor). None of the women call, at least none of the married ones, all being afraid of their English for one reason, but I am learning to just take things as they come and not to bother over formalities, never knowing whether that is the best way or not. The wedding of last Tuesday was the most interesting function I have seen. The marriage ceremony was the Christian one. The company represented the rich and fas.h.i.+onable of the city. The ladies all wear black crepe kimonos, that splendid crepe which is so heavy, next under the black is an all white of soft china silk, then the third of bright color. K----'s was that bright vermilion red. Her sleeves were not very long, as she is a mother, but the young girls wear bright colored kimonos and long sleeves that almost touch the floor. The bride wears black, too. All these dress-up kimonos have decorations in color, sometimes embroidered and sometimes dyed on the lower points of the front. The bride's was spread out on the floor around her just like the old pictures, embroidered in heavy rose peonies, her undergarment and the lining of the black, in rose color. Her hair was done in the old conventional way shown in the prints with the long pins of light tortoise sh.e.l.l with bouquets of tiny flowers carved at the ends, which stuck out about three inches, making a crown over her head. The receiving party is as follows: First, father of groom; second, mother of bride; third, groom; fourth, bride; fifth, father of bride; sixth, mother of groom. The line is straight and the bride is perfectly arranged like an old print, she and the groom with their eyes cast down.

As each person pa.s.ses, they make bows all along the line at once, but they do not move hand or eyes or a fold of these perfect clothes. I forgot to say the men, unfortunately, wear European dress. Then we moved on to two large rooms, the men all seated and smoking in one, and the women in the other. Those who knew me were very kind. Countess H---- introduced me to the bridesmaids; at least they would be the maids at home. They were the sisters and young relatives all dressed in the most brilliant kimonos and embroidered and decorated to the limit; they looked like all the parrots and peac.o.c.ks and paradise and blue birds and every lovely color imaginable, while the uniform black of the guests, decorated with the pure white of their crests which stand out in such a group, formed the perfect background, free from all the messiness which is so apparent in a diversified gathering of all sorts of color and shape and materials in our land. At tea, which was very elaborate and taken sitting at the tables, the family of the two filled one table, a long one at the end of the room. The bride now wore a green kimono, equally brilliant; about two feet away from her sat the groom, both in the middle of the long table.

TOKYO, Thursday, March 20.

We have had a number of social events this week. Tuesday evening General H----, who speaks no English but who came over on the _s.h.i.+nyo_ with us, gave a party for us in the gardens of the a.r.s.enal Grounds. We could not have entered the a.r.s.enal Grounds in any other way. There were about twenty-five people there, mostly Christian a.s.sociation people, and the clergyman of the j.a.panese church where I had spoken the night before. He is keen about introducing more democracy in j.a.pan, and I spoke on the moral meaning of democracy. Well, the garden isn't a garden at all in our sense, but a park, and the finest in Tokyo outside of the Imperial ones. It is quite different from the miniature ones we know as j.a.panese gardens, being of fair size, with none of those cunning little imitations in it; big imitations there are in plenty, as it was a fad of the old landscapists, as you might know, to reproduce on a small scale celebrated scenes elsewhere. The old Daimyo, who built this one two hundred years ago, was a great admirer of the Chinese and reproduced several famous Chinese landscapes as well as one from Kyoto. The extraordinary thing is the amount of variety they get in a small s.p.a.ce; they could reproduce the earth, including the Alps and a storm in the Irish Channel, if they had Central Park. Every detail counts; it is all so artistically figured out and every little rock has a meaning of its own so that a barbarian can only get a surface view. It would have to be studied like an artist's masterpiece to take it all in. The a.r.s.enal factory fumes have killed many of the old trees and much of the glory has departed.

Probably Mamma has written you that she has one young woman, j.a.panese, coming on the s.h.i.+p with us under her care, to New York to study; and to-day another young lady called, and said she wanted to go back to America. About the young women going home with us, Y---- said we would have to be careful, as one time his mother was offered seventeen damsels to escort when she was going over, of whom she took three. You may not appreciate the fact that going to America to study means practically giving up marriage; they will be old maids and out of it by the time they return--also those who have been in America do not take kindly to having a marriage arranged for them. At a lecture I listened to yesterday, a j.a.panese woman, close to thirty, was pointed out to me as about to get married to an American architect here. There are exceptions, but this case is evidently a famous romance. The lecture was on Social Aspects of s.h.i.+nto; s.h.i.+nto is the official cult though not the established religion of j.a.pan. Although nothing is said that wasn't scientifically a matter of course to be said--I mean supposing it was scientifically correct--one of the most interesting things was the caution that was taken to avoid publication of anything said. On one side the Imperial Government is theocratic, and this is the most sensitive side, so that historical criticism or a.n.a.lysis of old doc.u.ments is not indulged in, the Ancestors being G.o.ds or the G.o.ds being Ancestors. One bureaucratic gentleman felt sure that the divine ancestors must have left traces of their own language somewhere, so he investigated the old shrines, and sure enough he found on some of the beams characters different from Chinese or j.a.panese. These he copied and showed for the original language--till some carpenters saw them and explained that they were the regular guild marks.

KAMAKURA, Thursday, March 27.

This weather beats Chicago for changeableness. Monday, at midnight, it was storming rain; when we got up the next day it was the brightest, warmest day we have had. We spent it sightseeing and went out without an overcoat. The magnolia trees are in full bloom. Yesterday and to-day are as raw March days as I ever saw anywhere; there would have been frost last night but for the wind. Tuberculosis is rife here and no wonder.

Three of the University professors have called on me this morning. They wish to arrange in every detail for our movements when we leave here. I suppose I was asked twenty times how long we are to stay in Kamakura.

When I said I didn't know, it depended on weather and other things, they said, "Oh, yes," and in five minutes asked the same question again.

Whether they arrange everything in minute detail for themselves in advance or whether they think we are helpless foreigners I can't make out; some of both, I think. But they can't understand that we can't give an exact date for everything we are going to do till we go to China. At the same time I never knew anybody to change their own plans, especially socially, as much as they do.

There is a great anti-American drive on now; seems to be largely confined to newspapers, but also stimulated artificially somewhat, presumably by the militaristic faction, which has lost more prestige in the last few months than in years, with a corresponding gain in liberal sentiment. They have consequently found it necessary to do something to come back. Criticism of the United States is the easiest way to arrest the spread of liberal sentiments and strengthen the arguments for a big militaristic party, like twisting the lion's tail with us. Discussion about race discrimination is very active and largely directed against the United States in spite of Australia and Canada, and also in spite of the fact that Chinese and Korean immigration here is practically forbidden, and they discriminate more against the Chinese than we do against them. But consistency is not the strong point of politics in any country. Excepting on the subject of race discrimination, foreigners in contact with j.a.panese do not find the anti-American feeling which is expressed in papers. If the Anglo-j.a.panese treaty of alliance should lapse because of the League of Nations or anything else, America will be held responsible, even if the British are the cause. Two years ago there was a similar anti-British drive here, and pretty hard bargains were driven with the British ally in all war matters. Now that Germany and Russia are out of it, England has no apparent reason for snuggling up much and the shoe is on the other foot. Which makes the attack on the U.S. all the more stupid, as they are internationally quite lonely, even if they tie up with France on account of similar Russian interests, financial and otherwise.

TOKYO, Wednesday, March 28.

To-morrow we are going to Kamakura again; it is only an hour and a half from here. We are going to take a little trip into the mountain and hot-spring district also, but the cherry blossom season is much advanced, ten days earlier than usual, and we are afraid it will spring itself in our absence if we go far, so probably we shall be back here in a few days for about a week. Then we shall take a five-day trip on our way to Kyoto, going to the shrine at Ise. This is the oldest and most sacred s.h.i.+nto shrine in j.a.pan, which means that it is the central spot for imperial ancestor wors.h.i.+p. Speaking of ancestors, you remember our references to the Count. The father of his first wife has recently been made a Baron. Parliament being over, the Count has left for the southern Island to inform the ancestors of his first wife, who are buried there, of the important item of family gossip. The oldest liberal statesman of aristocratic descent, who was quite intimate with the late Emperor, won't go to the annual meeting to celebrate the granting of the Const.i.tution by the late Emperor because he is so disgusted that no more progress has been made in const.i.tutionalism, and says he cannot meet his late master until he can report progress to him. Otherwise he would be ashamed to meet him as he feels responsible to the Emperor. This would not be any place for a spiritualist to earn his living. They are clear past mediums.

We have chiefly been eating lately. I had two j.a.panese meals, a la chop sticks, yesterday and one to-day. Luncheon yesterday at a restaurant, where we had lots of things you never heard of, to say nothing of eating them, and a dinner at a friend's. There were twelve courses at table and two or three afterwards--not counting tea, and much the same at another dinner to-night. We have a bill of fare written on fans, only in j.a.panese, and little silver salt cellars as souvenirs besides. One feature of both dinners was soup three times, at the beginning, about the middle and again at closing, at these functions rice is not served till near the last course. Then there were one or two semi-soupy courses thrown in. I can eat raw fish and ask no questions; and in a bird restaurant, Sunday for luncheon, I ate raw chicken wrapped in seaweed; abalone is my middle name, and some of the sh.e.l.l fish we eat is probably devil fish.

We have been here over six weeks now, and in taking an inventory it can be said that while we have not done as much sightseeing as some six-day tourists, I think we have seen more j.a.panese under normal home conditions than most Americans in six months, and have seen an unusually large number of people to talk to, not the official crowd but the representative intellectual liberals. I have seen less but found out more than I ever expected about j.a.panese conditions, which is quite the opposite of European experience in traveling. When I come back I shall try to see a few of the official people, since I now know enough to judge what they may say. On the whole, America ought to feel sorry for j.a.pan, or at least sympathetic with it, and not afraid. When we have so many problems it seems absurd to say they have more, but they certainly have fewer resources, material and human, in dealing with theirs than we have, and they have still to take almost the first step in dealing with many of them. It is very unfortunate for them that they have become a first-cla.s.s power so rapidly and with so little preparation in many ways; it is a terrible task for them to live up to their position and reputation and they may crack under the strain.

TOKYO, Tuesday, April 1.

The j.a.panese do one thing that we should do well to imitate. They teach the children in school a very nice lesson about the beauty and the responsibility of being polite and kind to the foreigner, like being so to the guests of your own house. This adds to the national dignity.

Yesterday the Emperor got out and I caught him at it. Quite an amazing and lucky experience for me and no harm to him, as I had not known he ever went out before I picked him up in the street. I went down our hill as usual with a friend to take the car. At this side of the street where the car pa.s.ses, we walk across the bridge on the ca.n.a.l and then turn and walk one block to the car stop. When we got to the other side of the bridge all the people on both sides of the street were ma.s.sed in a nice little quiet line and three policemen were carefully and gently placing each one according to his height so he could see as well as possible. So we lined in with the rest while the policeman looked on in an encouraging fas.h.i.+on. n.o.body spoke out loud, and after I had noticed the friend with me having a conversation with the officer, I ventured to ask why we were left standing there. With the same quiet, she said: "The Emperor is pa.s.sing on his way to the commencement exercises of Waseda University." Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I don't suppose I should have known what was happening at all unless I could have figured it out from the Chrysanthemums on the carriage doors.

I said to her: "How is he coming, in an automobile? How long are we to stand here?" I had visions of the stories about the streets being cleared, and the doors shut for some hours while white sand was sprinkled over the car tracks, and all the rest. "No," she said, "just a little time." I saw by now that I was not likely to have much gossip poured out to me about the Emperor, so I just fixed a nice little thing about three years old in front of me and then we waited with the rest of the school children. Soon the procession came, first a body of horse in plain khaki uniforms, then one very j.a.panese-looking man alone on the back seat in one of the light victorias, very clean and s.h.i.+ny, with the Chrysanthemums on the door. He was dressed in a khaki wool uniform just like the rest of the army with a cap on his head. Then came some other s.h.i.+ny, light little victorias with two horses, all just alike. I rubbered my best and I had a very good look at the one little man alone in the middle of the seat, and sitting up and looking straight ahead of him pleasantly. In the midst of the pa.s.sing I asked the companion with me, "Which is the Emperor?" and she answered "The one in the first carriage," and still there was that quiet of perfect breeding; and by and by all the nice little soldiers on horseback pa.s.sed, and after I had stood a little longer on the edge of my bridge I started our little procession moving towards the car. The Emperor had gone the opposite way. After a little I said: "I did not know the Emperor went to commencements and things like that," and I chattered on, and then my companion said in her slow, proper, calm tone: "That is my first experience to see the Emperor, too." And I said "Is that so?" and asked some more questions, still wondering that no one had called out a Banzai nor made a sound, and it is not till to-day that I learned that all the people were standing with their eyes cast down to the ground, and that I was the only one who looked at the Emperor, and their reverence was so great that that was the reason I had not heard them breathe. For another thing, Waseda is the liberal university and private, so I wondered still till I learned then that the Emperor was going to the Peers' School commencement, and that is the one commencement he goes to every year. So you see I had luck, and my conscience was clear for having rubbered, and I have seen the Emperor.

The Imperial Garden party comes off the week after we leave Tokyo. To this party all the n.o.bles of the third rank and above, and all the professors in the Imperial University, and all the foreigners of latest arrival, are asked. So a foreigner can go just once and no more unless a Professor. We put our names down in the Amba.s.sador's book for an invitation before we knew all the niceties of the case. So now that we have learned that we can go once and no more, and that we are expected to go if we are invited, we will take back our request for an invitation as the party is on the 17th of April, and we are to be in Kyoto on the 15th. So in our good luck, a daughter of a Baron, who is a member of the Imperial household, has asked us to go with her to-morrow to see the Imperial Garden where the party is to be and we may see the gardens all the better. This Imperial Garden is one of the prince's gardens and not the one behind the moat where the Emperor lives. It seems the fall chrysanthemum party is in that garden, though never inside the inner moat where no one goes unless he has an audience. The moat and the surroundings of the palace are lovely, but as you can read the guide book if you want a description, I will not bore you with an attempt. The walls of the moat were built by labor of the feudal dependencies, and like all such labor it spared no pains to be splendid. Some of the moats have been filled up long ago, but there are still three around the palace. Inside the outer one you may walk part of the time and see the grand gates with their solemn guards. In these gardens the air is fresh and the birds sing in the trees, and the dust of the city never gets there.

To-night I am wearing tabi, those nice little toe socks which will not fit my feet, but which are so much nicer than the felt toe slippers that fall off your feet every time you go upstairs. As a matter of fact, I wear ordinary house slippers in this house, but it is nicer not to and we always take them off when we come in from outdoors. Truly, the j.a.panese are a cleaner people than we are. Have I told you we bathe in a j.a.panese tub? Every night a hot, very hot wooden box over three feet deep is filled for us. This one has water turned in from a faucet, but in Kamakura the little charcoal stove is in the end of the tub and the water is carried in by buckets, and is reheated each night. It seems all right and I regret all the years our country went without bath tubs, and all the fuss we made to get them when this little, simple device was all there and as old as the hills. But we can catch up with the heating and cooking with charcoal hibas.h.i.+.

We have learned to eat with chop sticks very well, and it is not a bad way. The main objection I see to it is that one eats too fast, and Fletcherizing is not known in this country. The nice little way of doing your own cooking is something to introduce for cuteness in New York.

These last few days we have just been sightseeing in the real European sense, running about town and buying small things all day and then having the wonderful advantage of coming back to this delightful home of perfect comfort at night, which is quite unlike Europe, and spoils us for the common lot of knocking about.

The greatest actor of the country is here. He belongs in Osaka, his name is Ganjiro, and we have a box for Thursday. The play is the one that was given in New York called "Bus.h.i.+do." It is much longer than as given there. It is called by another name and is acted quite differently. On Sunday we are going again to the Noh Dance, or if no good tickets are to be had for that, we are going to a theater where women act all the parts to offset the usual way here of having only men in the company. The men who act women's parts here do make up very well. They live and dress and act as women all the time so as not to lose the art. Only when they stand in pose they cannot conceal the fact that they are men. The play begins at one in the afternoon and lasts until ten at night. Tea and dinner is brought into your box in those nice little lacquer lunch boxes. Ganjiro is on the stage in every scene for eight hours, so you can see the actors work for their art here. The costumes are superb, but the actors do not simply strut to show off. Their speech being very affected in manner they have had to depend upon expression to get results, and as a consequence their acting is done with their entire body more than any other school in the world. The best ones, like the ones we are to see, can express any emotion, so 'tis said, with their backs and the calves of their legs when you can't see their faces.

TOKYO, April 1.

Our activities of late have been miscellaneous; we spent three days, counting coming and going four days, at Kamakura last week. It is on the seaside and is a great resort, summer and winter, for the j.a.panese, and at the hotel for Europeans over weekends. For summers the foreigners go to the mountains, while the j.a.panese take to the seaside, largely because there is more for the children to do on the seash.o.r.e, but partly because mountains seem to be an acquired taste. Kamakura is about ten degrees warmer than Tokyo, as it is sheltered by the hills. Peas were in blossom and the cherry trees all out. It was cold and rainy while we were there, however, except one day, when we crowded in so much sightseeing we got rather tired. Mamma and I are now catching up on calls, prior to leaving and doing some sightseeing. To-day we went to a shop where they publish very fine reproductions of the old art of j.a.pan, including Chinese paintings owned in j.a.pan, much better worth buying than the color print reproductions to my mind, though we have laid in some reproductions of the latter. There are so many millionaires made by the war in j.a.pan, that lots of the old lords are selling out part of their treasures now; prices I think are too high even for Americans. The old Daimyo families evidently have enough business sense to take advantage of the market, though some are hard up and sell more for that reason. A week ago we went to an auction room where there was a big collection of genuine old stuff, much finer than appears in the curio shops, and this weekend there is another big sale by a Marquis. However, it is said they keep the best things and unload on the nouveau riche; not but what a lot of it is mighty good as it is.

My other experience that I have not written about is seeing Judo. The great Judo expert is president of a normal school, and he arranged a special exhibition by experts for my benefit, he explaining the theory of each part of it in advance. It took place Sunday morning in a big Judo hall, and there were lots of couples doing "free" work, too; they are too quick for my eye in that to see anything but persons suddenly thrown over somebody's back and flopped down on the ground. It is really an art. The Professor took the old practices and studied them, worked out their mechanical principles, and then devised a graded scientific set of exercises. The system is really not a lot of tricks, but is based on the elementary laws of mechanics, a study of the equilibrium of the human body, the ways in which it is disturbed, how to recover your own and take advantage of the s.h.i.+ftings of the center of gravity of the other person. The first thing that is taught is how to fall down without being hurt, that alone is worth the price of admission and ought to be taught in all our gyms. It isn't a good subst.i.tute for out-of-door games, but I think it is much better than most of our inside formal gymnastics. The mental element is much stronger. In short, I think a study ought to be made here from the standpoint of conscious control.

Tell Mr. Alexander to get a book by Harrison--a compatriot of his--out of the library, called "The Fighting Spirit of j.a.pan." It is a journalist's book, not meant to be deep, but is interesting and said to be reliable as far as it goes. I noticed at the Judo the small waists of all these people; they breathe always from the abdomen. Their biceps are not specially large, but their forearms are larger than any I have ever seen. I have yet to see a j.a.panese throw his head back when he rises. In the army they have an indirect method of getting deep breathing which really goes back to the Buddhist Zen teaching of the old Samurai.

However, they have adopted a lot of the modern physical exercises from other armies.

The gardens round here are full of cherry trees in blossom--and the streets are full of people too full of sake. The j.a.panese take their drunkenness apparently seasonly, as we hadn't seen drunken people till now.

TOKYO, April 2.