Part 11

The special party to-day was to welcome the married daughter of one of the earliest and most useful of the American missionaries, a Dr. Brown, who had had a school in Yokohama, and who had as pupils many men now very distinguished. Among other people I was introduced to a very charming, thoroughly Europeanised, and handsome man--and of course did not catch his name. He walked with me a little while through the gardens, and we talked of the beauty of Tokio and the destruction of that beauty by “reformations” some years ago, before the Japanese had learned to appreciate native art as well as they do now (though much of the same sort goes on to-day), and I quoted one of the specially terrible places, the hideous red-brick Exhibition-like buildings (Government buildings) that ruin the view of the grey moat with green banks and trees and old white and grey buildings round the palace, one of the most lovely sights any city in the world can show. I exclaimed against the vandalism, the criminal folly of the architect, whom I surmised was some second-rate foreigner. “Yes,” my companion answered, “it _is_ bad. I was the Chairman of the Building Committee at that time, but I suppose the architect was morally responsible.”

You may imagine my feelings. I knew, of course, by the look of the man he was some one of importance, but how could I guess who he was? I am not sorry, however, that he heard it.

A further surprise awaited me; he made the speech of the evening, and turns out to have been Dr. Brown’s youngest and most promising pupil, and to-day to be the world-known Ambassador Tsuzuki, representative at the last Hague Conference! He said good-bye very graciously--his laurels don’t rest on the beauty of those buildings, and I had not touched him on a vital point after all.

=May 3.=--I really had to make up my mind once for all to learn to get on a bicycle by myself without the aid of a devoted male friend. Hitherto I have always ridden with people who put me on--here I am alone. I bought a bicycle from the missionaries, which had been discarded by one of their number. But after being at the bicycle shop for a little it seems in good order, for it was an excellent frame, and now I determined to ride, as Tokio’s distances waste so many hours a day that I can stand it no longer. After a few hours’ steady determination, I find I can get on very well without the male friend. But those of you who read this and have played that part, don’t think I could have got on without you at the time.

About midday I decided to go and see the renowned Azalea gardens at the village of Okabu, some few miles off, and so I took my maid as a treat for both of us (she never having seen the flowers), and shut up the house. There is no lock or key, and any thief had only to slide a paper screen and slip in, but we told the cook next door to keep a weather eye open, and set off gaily in the sunshine.

Along the main street of Okabu are a dozen nursery gardens, all filled with azaleas, and so laid open that you can walk round and see everything, and buy what you please, but not unless you please. Even when you want to buy it is rather difficult to find any one who will sell to you. When you do, he will just seize the flowering bush and pull it up, shake the mud off the roots, wrap them in paper and tie a big loop of string to it; you carry it home, stick it anywhere in your garden, and it goes on as though it had never moved an inch. The sunshine and rain make things grow so easily here, it certainly doesn’t depend on any special “skill of the Japanese” in this case, for I myself stuffed the azaleas into my garden and saw the man pull them up like weeds.

In one garden there was an entry fee--of three farthings. Here the whole garden was filled with plants all one height (about 3 feet), and all flat on the top, and all covered with flowers--a crimson sea. Generally speaking, though, the flowers individually were far less beautiful in colour, and smaller in size than our azaleas, the interest and special charm lay in the masses of them, and the number of gardens one after the other that cultivated them.

There were crowds of people in their best clothes, and stalls on the road selling sweets, and the inevitable hair ribbons of brilliant colour; with here and there a gold-fish dealer or a seedsman.

We lunched in a little tea-house and came back laden with flowers--four beautiful glowing azaleas, a brilliant fern-like green shrub, and a budding yellow broom, for which I paid a sum total of exactly elevenpence.

The roots were all tied up neatly in paper--and then they wouldn’t let us on the car! Other people were carrying them tied up in _feruskés_ just exactly as ours were in paper, so I was furious and asked a policeman why. “Had we no _feruskés_? Then we must cover them completely in paper, and the officials would not see them.” “But the roots were covered in paper,” I replied, “other people have them like that.” “Ah, they have roots in _feruskés_ or handkerchiefs, then the officials cannot see that the roots are there, but they can see the roots through paper. If, however, you cover them completely, then they will not know they are flowers at all. Roots are not allowed on the tram.”

We went to a shop and got newspapers to cover them up, and the same officials who had barred my way smiled approval!

=May 4.=--A pouring day, the roads simply awful, as it came down in torrents all night. My little plans for getting to work early on my bicycle were all knocked on the head. I saw not a soul in the Institute all day, and was glad when Mrs. P---- came across to have a little chat. I am arranging about a Debate, Tokio doesn’t seem really to know what that is! But we meet at parties and talk endless gossip, so I am going to give a tea-party, have an amusing Debate (if possible), and found a society which, I hope, will live for ever, like Mother’s Norwood one. I forgot, because in a way it came in between two days, that the other night we went to the Greek Church Easter Service. It is held at midnight, and the Russian Greek Church is by far the most successful of the churches here. It is the only one with an imposing building, the only one with a great choir, and a sense of wealth and success in the appearance of the interior. The great domed building stands high on a hill, and can be seen from most parts of Tokio. We found a huge crowd of Japanese waiting to go into the gates, and as they entered each bought a candle and lit it, so that, as well as the regular altar and other candles, the church was illuminated with hundreds of these tapers. The Bishop, in gorgeous white and gold, was seated in the centre of the church, and swung incense over the people, while a choir, quite unaccompanied, sang the whole service. This choir is splendid, though composed of Japanese, and is one of the wonders of the church. The congregation crowded into the church area, where there were no seats, but the floor was covered with carpet (which would certainly be a sea of candle grease in the morning), on which the people stood or sat. There were very many children present, some very tiny, and all in their best. A few of them were charmingly beautiful pictures. The service, sung by the choir, was followed by few of the congregation; they stood or sat reverently, seeing to their candles and sometimes crossing themselves, but they did not hesitate to go through their ceremonial bows if they met an acquaintance, some going down on the floor and touching it with their foreheads, to the peril of the tapers. The service was principally chanted, but sometimes the voices rose into a grand chorus, and all the time the Bishop and his clergy kept up a picturesque ceremonial. The altar was magnificent, vast, and gilded and lit with huge candles. We felt the whole ceremonial and its setting splendid, impressive, but almost weird. The power of the Bishop is clear, if one only knew that he got all those hundreds of Japanese out at midnight, while for social functions they find 9 o’clock too late.

We had to walk home, and came through the outer palace gardens and under the ancient Japanese gates, lovely in the moonlight, and palpitating with the lives of the past.

=May 5.=--The weather cleared up nicely and I set off gaily on my bicycle, but a dozen things went wrong with it, and I left it at a shop, hoping they would steal it, and I should never see it again. I cut fossils all day without seeing a soul to speak a word to, and went back to the shop and found they had not stolen the bicycle, but had put it right, so that it went quite well. I set off on it to cross Tokio and call on Miss H----, who had a private view of some copper-plate etchings done by a friend of hers, and very charming they were. The roads of Tokio should be simply blood-curdling. There is no rule for the traffic, the electric cars are the only things that keep any kind of order, and foot-passengers and playing children simply swarm. Fortunately there are few carts or carriages, but those few dart about anyhow, and the horses often run away. One has simply to thread one’s way through this stream of things. The children are particularly trying, and take no notice of violent bells and shouts.

=May 8.= Professor _M----_ came to take me to the Faculty lunch. A serio-comic incident happened just before we started. He came for me to the fossil laboratory, and waited a minute while I was finishing a stone. As he stood there, a stone, which I was heating in molten zinc, exploded, and the zinc flew in drops all over the room, and settled on all of us, but fortunately only on our clothes. The bright hard drops looked quite funny on his coat and hat, and some of them wouldn’t peel off. There must have been some internal moisture or gas in the stone; it is the first time such a thing has happened. After lunch Professor _S----_ took me and Professor _Y----_ to see his garden (he lives within easy walking distance of the University), and it was a delightful sight. I have described the house and garden before, and now it was gay with pink roses and many different coloured azaleas. His tiny daughter was running about with “bells on her shoes.” Little bells were fastened on the under-side of the wooden clog, “on the same principle,” the Professor said, “as the bell is round the neck of a kitten--it is convenient to know where it is.”

After an hour’s rest I returned to the fossils, and at 4 bicycled off to Baroness d’A----’s garden party,--bicycled in a white muslin frock, which, had the people not thrown buckets of water into the roads, would have come through scathless, but as it was, was heavily specked with mud all up the front, and I felt all the carriage folk staring at me. Otherwise I had a good time, and arranged some details about the forthcoming Debate.

=May 9.=--At work all day on fossils. Dr. _M----_ came to the laboratory about 2, and we had a long chat; he is one of the very few Japanese who know enough of my work to be really interested.

=May 10.=--On Sunday Professor _S----_ asked me to go to see the celebrated Buton flowers (paeonies), and I set off at 9 and met him and his wife at Ryonokubashi at 10. We then drove to the gardens, which lie across the river, in quite a slummy part of the town. The south part of Tokio, across the river, corresponds in a way with the south of London, and is distinctly its working quarter.

The paeonies were under the shade of straw mats, which roofed them and the spectators in, and a lovely sight they were. Each flower was really huge, about a foot across, but, as a rule, there was but one on a plant. White, pink, crimson, and almost black, and all the shades so beautiful and artistic, they were infinitely more pleasing than the chrysanthemums.

In the same garden were also a number of dwarf trees--now I have bought several at various times, and was always astonished at the cheapness and prettiness, but here, a very (to me) inartistic one cost £4, and the only one I really liked was £9!

After lunch we took the train, and went out of Tokio for some distance to a place where there was a very renowned wistaria flower. The trunk of this enormous tree was twisted and gnarled with intertwining branches, and all together was about 12 feet in diameter. The branches were all trained on props over bamboo, and formed a great flat roof, over an appreciable part of an acre! The flower clusters hang so thickly and evenly as to give the appearance of a ceiling of long tassels. The tails seemed to be only a foot or so long, but when measured were found to be 2 or 3, some even 3 feet 6 inches long! The whole sight was very charming, and quite startling, but perhaps less romantically beautiful than one had imagined it. The gardens had only this one tree on show, and under it the people sat and walked about and drank tea.

On returning we missed the connecting train and had an hour and a half to wait; it was cold and began to rain. I didn’t mind, for Professor _S----_ was very interesting, and we talked of nearly everything under heaven and earth--but the more I see of him the less I think he is a typical Japanese; he is an exceptional one. I was sorry for poor Mrs. _S----_, however, who could not follow our conversation very well, and who had no one else to talk to. We dined at a restaurant in Tokio, and I got back home after a thirteen-hours outing, practically _tête à tête_ with a Japanese man--and bored I had not been for a moment, and people here say you can’t get any real companionship from the Japanese. I say it is those people’s own faults.

=May 11.=--Torrents of rain all day, so that I did nothing but work at the Institute--which was somewhat hampered by the absence of the boy who runs the engine. I got home in an awfully bad temper, after battling with everything all day--but the bright dripping green of the trees all round me, and the peace of my little house, soon soothed me up.

=May 12.=--Pouring rain all day again; it was so hateful ploughing through these streets, with no side-walks and mud 6 inches deep, that I decided not to go to-morrow, but stop at home. There was a dance at the K----’s, and I had a good time. A charming American was there, who smiled all the time and made one happy just to look at him. There was also a young, fair-haired Mr. B----. His teachers must have been very proud of him; he had the bright smile and the “good” look of a favourite boy, and an ornament to the Y.M.C.A. I felt sure he must be a missionary, but he turned out to be an artist, just out, and to stay a year, painting all sorts of things, Japanese portraits among them. He seemed much astonished when he found I had travelled alone--I am sure his sisters never would,--and when I tried to soothe him by quoting my French and other tours (to show I thought it an everyday sort of thing to do), he seemed so very astonished that I drew in the rein and got him to talk of his own character, which causes him trouble and interest.

=May 13.=--The rain cleared off, but the roads are still bad, yet by the time I came home they were beginning to be dusty.

They dry here at a quite wonderful rate, and in the most terrible weather one has always the consolation of knowing that when it clears it will do so thoroughly and completely.

=May 14.=--After the day’s work I called round to see how Professor _F----_ was, as I had heard nothing of any kind for a fortnight. I saw him for a short time--his face was rather swollen, for they have been injecting strychnine, but otherwise he _looked_ all right, only he could see so little. The cure seems to make almost no progress.

As I was near, I called on the _S----s_ as a duty (and pleasure) call, and came away with a lovely bunch of roses, the Professors, when caught unawares like this, are always in true Japanese dress--and look so nice in it.

In the evening was the last Cinderella--and a very nice dance it was.

=May 16.=--I stopped at home to-day--as the great Debate began at 3, and I had to borrow chairs from several neighbours. I hope to-day to found a Debating Society in Tokio (there is such a dearth of anything more than dances and gossip, you at home couldn’t believe!), and have been raking people out--I have got Miss C---- and Miss H---- to oppose each other on the subject, “Chaperons should be abolished.” Frivolous enough--but one must put the pill in jam here in Tokio, and I hope gradually to get sober and instructive. The Debate was really more of a success than I had dared to hope, and I got nearly every one to speak by the little device of drawing numbers by lot, even Baroness d’A---- and Mrs. P----, who swore they wouldn’t. I had thought, after founding it to-day, to leave it till the hot season passed, but people are keen to have one in June--so it is encouraging. The use of a Japanese house came out strikingly to-day--when I took out my sliding partitions and made nearly my whole house one big room. The weather and the garden behaved themselves--and mercifully everything went off well. Of course the motion was lost, only two people wishing to abolish chaperons.

=May 18.=--A nice bright day. I bicycled home by the library and got some books of Hearn’s; I am thinking of getting up a Debate on Lafcadio Hearn next time, if I can; most people here knew him personally--and so few seem to realise that he was great, and almost all run him down! So I expect a very interesting time of it; there will be no difficulty in getting speakers to condemn, but who is going to stand up for him!

=May 19.=--I just called in on Miss B---- on my way home, and asked her to propose “That the picture of Japan presented in Lafcadio Hearn’s books is totally fallacious.” She consents--I anticipate some fun, and she is (I believe I have remarked before) quite the best conversationalist in Tokio, and a missionary (whom Hearn detested) to boot.

=May 20.=--Fossil cutting and examining all day. I have been arranging the fossil slides, the series got mixed, and it is no joke to keep them straight. Professor _Y----_ called in to see me (he is off to Europe very soon); and invited me to “tiffin at 5” in a few days. The wording is a little puzzling, isn’t it?

I called to inquire how Professor _F----_ is, and was glad to find him a little better, though very little, but with no prospect of perfect recovery.

Strawberries are beginning in the shops; it is such a treat after having had only apples and oranges for all these months. The temperature is delightful, like our July, and I enjoy it greatly, but the nights are still very cool, so that I have a hot-water bottle and the winter quilt. Things are beginning to bite me again, great horrid things of all kinds. Spiders and centipedes come out at night, and all sorts of creatures I never saw before; already I am rendered unnecessarily hideous with bites, what it will be later on I don’t know. I saw the J----s to-day, who once lived here twenty years; they said that Japan is a country that “grows on one” till it is heart-breaking to leave it. I feel that already, it is a pity I have stopped so long. I don’t ever want to go now except to escape insects. The horrid “semi” have begun to sizzle to-night. They are the things that sit in the trees all night and make a sound as though you have a headache; only when they stop for a second or two, you realise you haven’t got one inside your head--but outside. Well, even in Eden there was the serpent, and I suppose sizzling semis aren’t as bad as serpents, at any rate their influence is less far-reaching.

=May 21.=--Fossilising all morning, and in the afternoon I was “at home”--blessed day! These two days in the month I look forward to hugely. A number of people came, among them Mrs. H----, a charming woman, young Mr. _M----_, son of the man who was Dean of the University before Professor _S----_, and Professor _S----_ himself. He came at an interval between Mrs. G----’s call and some others, and we started on Japanese poetry. It seems to be very subtle, so subtle, in fact, that even such a cultivated man can’t understand it right away. Though there is no rhyme and the form lies in the middle of syllables, there is great ingenuity shown in finding words with double meaning suggestive of some poetical idea. The G----s, who called also, have been here thirty years, at least the Mrs. G---- has, and both she and her daughter like the Japanese greatly, and are much liked by them. I am going to get Miss G---- to oppose Miss B---- in the Debate on Hearn. I am glad to find some one who will stand up so sincerely and heartily for Lafcadio Hearn.

=May 22.=--After fossil-cutting walked along to the Faculty lunch with Professor _M----_ and talked nothing particular, as usual. At 5 I went over to Professor _Y----_ “for tiffin,” and was received in a foreign style room, and sad it was. Though so tiny a man, he has a large family, as all the Professors seem to have, unlike the corresponding men in our country. A Mrs. _N----_ was there, and a Miss _X----_, a teacher in a school. I resent very much the fact that all women school teachers (as well as girl pupils) have to wear a special kind of skirt (and very hideously ungraceful it is) over their kimonos, so that every one knows them to be teachers, just as we know hospital nurses. Perhaps it is the hideousness of the skimpy skirt, all open at both sides, that I resent, as much as the fact that it is a uniform marking these women out as apart from their fellows. Once, when I asked why it was all the teachers I saw were so plain featured, I was answered by a Japanese man, “well, if a girl is pretty, she can be married and does not need to go in for teaching.” And we hear so much of the “reverence of the Japanese for teachers.” It seems to me the Japan that we Europeans have at last learned to know, and whose characteristics we have had drummed into our ears, is already a thing of the past, and as _altmodisch_ as our early Victorian furniture, which the Japanese are picking up as “new styles.” But though our furniture may change so fast as to bewilder them, does our national character too change with a startling rapidity equal to the Japanese?

The streets to-day looked unusually upset, and the reason of it is that it is the time of universal spring cleaning,--a spring cleaning that does not originate from the domestic tyrant, but from the main Government, and that is inspected by the police before you have a little yellow tab of paper pasted on your door to say that you are clean. All the _tatami_ must be taken up and beaten, all the boards in the kitchen floor, under which lie hidden oil cans and charcoal, shoes or saucepans, according to the pleasure of the maids, must be taken out and the glory holes cleaned and smothered in white disinfectant powder; the front step of your hall, which, of course, is also a box in disguise, is cleared of its winter _geta_ and powdered white, while the props of your house (all Japanese houses are raised about 1½ feet above the ground) are smothered till one thinks it has snowed. When the policeman is satisfied that all this has been done, and then only, will he give you the yellow ticket. It seems to me an excellent plan--one which would be applied with advantage to some of our slums. The smaller streets to-day were perfect markets, as from the little houses every single thing is turned out on to the road, and the mats beaten there. It added not a little to the thrills of bicycling, and was an instructive illustration of the simplicity of the smallest households.