Part 12

=May 23.=--After working at fossils all morning, I cycled over to Miss B---- for lunch. She was as entertaining as usual. I often think she is one of the best talkers I have met. After lunch she took me to call on Mrs. _M----_, and I followed her _kuruma_ on my bicycle. The _M----s_, of course, live in a splendid house, equally, of course, it was “foreign style,” with signs everywhere of wealth. The hall was like that of a hotel, and not a modern Waring furnished hotel either, and the drawing-room filled with chairs “upholstered” (there is no other word for it) in various brocades, with different heavy-patterned brocade curtains hung over every door and window in the stiff symmetrical style of last century’s low-water period. On the lovely verandah, looking out into a splendid garden, were round iron marble-topped tables, one was almost surprised there was no advertisement for whisky, or at least Cerebos salt match-holders. That was all I saw of the house to-day, except one little statue carved out of marble, so pure and transparent that the light shone through it as it stood in the window, among a tableful of various articles of cost. Its lovely curves were transfigured by the light behind it, so that they shone ethereal, and one could fancy it a fairy form coming in on a sunbeam--I had not realised fully before how transparent white marble is, and how suited to suggest unearthly beauty when carved in human form. I fixed my eyes on this and forgot the pink-and-green upholstered chairs.

The Women’s University owed much to this family at its foundation, and they asked me if I would like to see over it, which of course I would, so they are to take me on Friday. It will perhaps seem curious that I have made no previous effort to see this very important Institution, but I had my reasons, and the _M----s_ are the best possible people to take me now; I am glad to go. I did not know before going there, but found out afterwards, that they gave the land on which it was built, and that Mrs. _H----_ (sister of Mrs. _M----_) was, with Marquis Ito, one of the first people to whom President _N----_ went with his plans fourteen years ago, and from whom he got much encouragement and practical help.

=May 25.=--I am getting quite an expert on my bicycle. The people in the street, too, seem to have got used to seeing me, and do not bump into me as often as they used to! Though there are some who are unspeakably idiotic; one to-day, for instance, walking toward me steadily for a long way, seeing me clearly, went suddenly at a right angle into the front wheel. The traffic here is exasperating, as the roads are very narrow; there is no foot-path and no rule of the road, and people dodge about like flies, while just this week Diabolo has arrived in Tokio apparently, and is played now in the middle of the road. It is quite startling, the suddenness of this universal appearance of Diabolo, and it is made in a form that the poorest children can buy for a few farthings. Yet with it all I think there is less danger of a real accident in Tokio than in any place in England, because nothing goes fast, no motors or hansoms come on fleet-tyred wheels, and if one bicycles moderately it is really very safe. I have only knocked one baby over, but I shall never forget its eyes looking up at me through the spokes of the wheel, it looked so reproachful, but it was entirely its own fault, and it was not hurt a bit.

=May 26.=--Why do the Japanese lie so circumstantially, and then not even blush when they are found out? I had ordered some cards to be printed for the Debating Society and went round to see why they did not come. The man whom I asked went away and came back saying that the printer foreman had sent me three or four proofs, and having received no reply could not proceed with the work. I said I had returned a corrected proof some time ago, and sent him back to inquire again (knowing of old that determination generally produces the thing you want); he returned saying my proof had not come, but if I here corrected it the cards would be printed to-night; still I was not satisfied, and sent him back again, and lo, he brought the 300 cards all printed, and _with the corrections in them I had added in the proof I returned_.

And each succeeding story was uttered with such an amount of detail and an air of conviction!

=May 28.=--I got to the _M----s_, as arranged, at 9 o’clock, and there found Mrs. _H----_, who wished to come with us to the Women’s University. She was very unlike Mrs. _M----_, and dressed in European style, but her hair was very slightly streaked with grey, and I thought her 45--she told me she was 60. President _N----_ told me she herself had opened a coal mine in Kyshyu twenty-five years ago, and she was the first woman who had ever done anything of the kind here. We drove over in their carriage, as it is a long way to the University, and I was very agreeably surprised. I had heard a good deal about it, particularly that it was more of a school than a College, and not a University at all--partly this is true, but it is already a College with the foundations of University teaching and equipment, and particularly in chemistry, for which there are four laboratories, strangely enough, the arrangements are excellent. The University buildings practically amount to a village, for there are 700 or more students in residence, and more than 1000 students altogether, and there are numerous different subjects taught, from chemistry to cooking, and from flower arrangement and tea-making to law and mathematics. Law, by the way, is compulsory in the Domestic faculty--not a bad idea, is it? There are two children’s classes and schools, and a kindergarten, all part of the University--the idea being that women should be brought up in touch with children. Another very good feature is, that by far the largest number of the women graduates go back to their homes and get married, so that nearly all the students are studying to get the _culture_, not working for exams., so as to be able to become teachers.

Mr. _A----_, the Dean, was with us nearly all the time, and was dressed in Japanese ceremonial robes and a bowler hat. When he took off the bowler, one saw that he had a fine forehead, and that his face was altogether one of considerable beauty. His was undeniably a face with ideals. Mr. _N----_, the President, was rather a similar type of man, but perhaps less artistically fine. Both were very cordial, and we had an interesting talk, for they were all-round developed men, and one could talk to them as to an Englishman--not like so many of these Japanese scientists, who are (or try to be) that and nothing more.

The _M----s_ then took me back to lunch, which was in European style; the food was excellent, but with all their wealth, they had no dainty silver on the table, whose large extent looked rather drear.

After lunch they showed me the garden, taking me to the Japanese part, which was splendid, hilly with green groves and streams, and a waterfall. I saw also their Japanese rooms, most beautiful, except that they had a blue plush carpet put over the mats; there was, however, nothing else in them but the proper appointments--and I delighted in their quiet harmonies.

I got back to the laboratory in time to get in an afternoon’s work.

=May 30.=--Fossils all morning--and preparing microscope, etc. for my Monday’s expedition, when I am going after cycads. Went along to tea with Professor _F----_, who is a little better now, and from whom I needed some information about the place I was going to.

=June 1.=--The household was up at 5 this morning, and I got off to the station a good deal too early for the train, which is a fault on the right side. After seven hours along the renowned old Tokkaido, where to-day a railway runs, I landed at Yejiri, and went in a _kuruma_ about a couple of miles farther to a very noted cycad temple. I deposited my microscope and baggage on the temple steps, which I converted into a temporary laboratory, and scratched myself sadly on the cycas leaves while examining the coming fruits. The cycads are really wonderful--so tall, and curved and branched innumerably.

After pottering around for a while, I broached the subject of stopping all night at the temple, and soon got my way. The priest is extremely old and frail, and looks stupid, but I don’t think he is; there is also an old woman, whom I presume is his wife, who will do what little cooking I shall get.

It is a charmingly situated temple, and the gardens are very sweet, so decked with the beauties of age. It lies on the slope of a hill, just midway between the top and the flat rice fields below us, and is one of the most peaceful habitations it is possible to imagine. The priest seems to spend all his time, clad like one of the poorest peasants, working in the gardens, which are very well kept, and which, like all true old Japanese gardens, suggest that the little details had been planned to please a child. On tiny islands are perched minute lanterns, and across streams over which one could step are bridges or stepping-stones.

There are such hundreds of frogs just at present, as he walks one would think the priest was spilling his basket of plants into the water, there are so many splashes where he passes, but it is only the countless frogs hopping out of his way into their native element.

After a rather meagre supper of eggs and rice (it is quite surprising how tired one gets of eggs and rice, even in one meal) I wandered round the garden, tottering along with great circumspection, for I was mounted on _geta_ (the wooden clog-like things I have previously mentioned). The stillness was complete, as the temple was closed to visitors and the old priest and his wife were in the house. Range after range of hills stood back from the sea towards Fuji mountain, whose position I knew, but who was hidden in the clouds. In the valley the ripe barley glowed golden, and between its little fields were the bare wet patches waiting for the rice to be planted out, and reflecting now the clouds that hung low in the sky. Brilliant emerald squares marked the nurseries of the tiny rice plants, growing in neat little oblongs by themselves, and still less than 6 inches high. Suddenly I felt an electric presence, and looked behind me at a cleft in the hill to see the slimmest silver curve of a new moon that I had ever seen. She rode in the sky so swiftly that, as I watched, I could fancy the waves of blue ether tossed from the prow of the little boat, and while I gazed she passed again behind the hill. So delicate a moon, a silver thread curved on a bow, but its fairy light was more bewitching than many a great round moon’s brilliance.

In the night the priest woke, and gave a cry to his wife, and I looked out, but the night was black, the fleet moon had lured every star away.

=June 2.=--Early they rose, and though I took about an hour leisurely eating my breakfast, it was finished before half-past eight. I went to the cycad trees for a while and worked at them. How huge they are! The one on which I am now sitting, eight feet or so above the ground, spreads all round me like a grove of trees, but is only one much-branched individual. At my feet, in the main trunk of the tree, is a minute temple, but I think the gods have deserted it, for within is only one image half a foot high, from which the paint has worn away.

Opposite me is a funny old cycad, not branched at all but bent. It grows on a slope, and is propped up with legs here and there. In the morning I saw Mount Fuji quite magnificently. She stands alone in the sky, three times higher in appearance (and more in fact) than any hill near, with a coronet of snow, and a cloak of clouds round her shoulders, which cut her off from the earth. Immensely more impressive than when seen from Tokio.

What a peaceful day! I stop in the midst of my examination of the cycads to fall into an aimless reverie, and am waked up by a frog croaking from a porcelain-green throat at my side. Big black butterflies come lumbering along, and one thinks they are stupid birds till they settle on a crimson azalea flower, and coming up from the rice fields is a low-toned rattling chorus of frogs and semi. Just before supper I went up the next little hill to see the temple of Kwannon on its top. There are 270 solid stone steps up to the temple, all neatly squared and nearly 8 feet wide--but the temple itself is built of mouldering wood. It commands a splendid view of the rice and barley fields, and then the sea, which lies but a mile away. Behind the temple is a hilly country with many trees and little cultivated patches here and there. There are lots of white Canterbury bells among the tall grasses, and the wild Fuji wistaria branches climb round many a trunk.

After supper the moon rode high in the pale grey sky--but it is so small even now, only what I would have thought was a first day moon in England. Perhaps the brilliantly clear air of Japan last night allowed me to see the crescent before it was really a moon at all, but was the soul of a moon before it was born.

=June 3.=--To get me to the station by 8.30 the good people started getting up at 5, and talked so that I could hear every word, repeating again and again the time that they must wake me. But once they had “waked” me, not a word did they say, and crept about like mice. The contrariness of the Japanese is incomprehensible. The _kuruma_ came an hour before I ordered it--and I kept him waiting more than an hour by their clock, and then got to the station sixty-five minutes too soon for the train!

After a few stations, I was struck by a pretty beach, and hopped off the train, determined to have a bathe and go on by the next, whenever it might be, to-day or to-morrow. The station-master was very nice, and took charge of my luggage, from which I extracted a towel. The village--Kanbara by name--was very small, and there were a good many fishing-boats at intervals along the shore, but they were nearly deserted. The water was just delicious, so warm that one could not feel it at all, I never bathed in such a perfect temperature, but I expect our creeping cold water is more bracing. I sunned on the beach for a while, and found a train at midday that will take me a good deal quicker than the one I left, as it is a semi-express.

I had to wait about twenty minutes on the platform for it, and was of course gazed at solemnly by a number of small children who did not offer a remark, they were so young that very likely I was the first foreigner they had really seen at close quarters. There was a good deal of difference of opinion as to my sex. My panama hat always bewilders them, as only men wear them here.

The station-master came up and had a little chat, and took me to his room, because there was a chair there, which was very nice of him; though the chair was no more comfortable really than the bench, the quiet and coolness of his room was pleasant.

When I got off the train I had not told him that it was my intention simply to get a bathe, but had diplomatically said I wished to see his neighbourhood, which had evidently pleased him. I told him about the bathe afterwards, which seemed also to please him, for I had enjoyed it very much. I got to Tokio quite uneventfully before night.

=June 8.=--Fossil-cutting all day. In the afternoon there was a quite terrific thunder-storm, one peal seemed to break inside the very house. Then hail! The largest known for forty years, and really the hailstones were as large as eggs, some were measured by Professor P----, and were 2½ inches in diameter!

By a really quaint coincidence it was the Festival of the God of Thunder, and the storm took place in the middle of the temple festival. There seems some justification for a folk-belief in mythology. When the worshippers prayed for mercy from the fearful hail, the sun soon shone.

=June 9.=--Professor _F----_ came to tea in my house, which he now saw for the first time--and when I think how he had to arrange everything with my landlady in the last one, I feel quite proud of my progress. He is still ill, though a little better, and to-morrow goes away to some celebrated hot springs.

=June 11.=--Working at fossils all day: I developed some photos of cycads I took at Yejiri, but the weather is so hot the gelatine dissolves!

The air is now filled with mosquitoes and minute biting flies, and I would like to be a hedgehog. They sing so loudly outside the net that I can’t sleep, and though they don’t get inside the net much they are so vexed about it, and I am “so sweet to eat,” as my little maid says, they just howl on the top note of rage.

=June 12.=--A working day, in which the only attempt at excitement was the lunch at the Goten, but as Professor _S----_ was away it was a little like flat soda-water.

=June 13.=--I went to see the Agricultural University; it is at the end of the Aoyama tram, and quite away into the country. It possesses a very impressively beautiful stretch of ground, over which the different Institute Buildings are dotted. Dr. _M----_ met me and took me over. The botanical department is not very big, but those who do research there get every convenience. The only noteworthy thing was the curious arrangement of the paraffin oven, stuck right down in the ground like the hut of a cave-dweller, with steep steps into it and a metal entrance door. This is an old arrangement as a precaution against fire, for, of course, all the buildings are of wood. Of the other departments, I was principally interested in the silk-worm houses, where huge numbers of worms were reared. A scientist was there doing experiments with hybrids, and working at Mendel’s laws and the commercial value of different crosses. More convenient creatures for such a purpose one could hardly imagine. They need no cages, for they can neither fly nor run! When the moths hatch out you can pick them up, pop them down beside any other one you like, and they stay where you put them and mate, and you get a new generation in about thirty days. They are kind enough to fasten their eggs themselves in series on numbered cards, and are, in fact, as well behaved as any scientifically constructed animal could ever be imagined to be.

It was very wet, so the picnic planned for the afternoon did not come off, and I stayed a long time. It was interesting to notice some native Indians studying here, and to find that they, and one or two others who could not speak Japanese, had special classes held in English and given by a Japanese teacher for the various subjects. Who needs to learn any “world language” but English?

=June 15.=--An uneventful working day, but in the evening there was the Debate. We are going to have alternately afternoon and evening meetings, so as to try to please all varieties of people.

Miss B----’s paper was very amusing, as we all expected it would be, but very superficial also, so that I felt she had been convinced on the side of Hearn, for she brought no real serious argument against him. Miss G---- opposed her well, and brought far more solid reasons in favour of Hearn’s view of Japan; the two supporters were good, particularly “the Poetess,” who supported Hearn. Many of the audience spoke very well, but when it came to voting so many refrained that the votes were level, and I had to give the casting vote, of course in favour of Hearn.

=June 19.=--All yesterday the Institute had been undergoing extensive cleaning, and this morning was spent in expectation and preparation of exhibits--the great Dr. Koch, the world-famed German bacteriologist, was coming to see the Institute. Professor _F----_ was brought back from the mountain before his cure was finished to be on duty; my fossil slides were borrowed and put under microscope, and the spermatozoids of _ginkgo_ were on show. He came, after the whole Institute and Baron _H----_ had waited in a flutter of excitement for nearly an hour; he is a big stout man, not very intellectual-looking. Though interested he had evidently been trotted round a great deal. He seemed to like the fossils, and asked me to show him a section of a leaf, as well as those I had under the microscope.

Then he was trotted off to a purely masculine dinner at the garden house. The newspapers have been full of his coming, his doings, and sayings. They say they are going to put a telephone up Mount Fuji, so as to be able to interview him from the top!

=June 22 and 23.=--Uneventful working days, with a little reading of Matthew Arnold’s _Essays in Criticism_ in the evening. I am reading aloud to Mrs. St----, who lives next door but one, and who must not use her eyes at present. We are doing Arnold pretty thoroughly, life, poems, and essays, and patted ourselves on the back when we found in an essay on his work that he “appeals exclusively to the cultured section of the educated classes!”

=June 24.=--At work all day; in the evening I gave a farewell party for the P----s (who leave on Friday), and invited about 30 people, of whom 26 or so accepted. It would have been preposterously ambitious in England, but here my little house, with the rooms thrown into one, and the garden lit with Chinese lanterns, made it a pleasure to play at entertaining. The room lit with lanterns looked very pretty; chairs and lemonade glasses I borrowed from next door, and all went merry as a marriage bell. Though it was the rainy season, the night was gloriously fine. The Dean and one or two Professors of the University, two clergymen and some minor folk from the Embassy disported themselves like children. Even the Poetess came, and entered into the games. We had a collection of 20 sen toys for Professor P----, and some of the things people brought were charming. By 11.30 all but a select few departed, but it was after 12 before these went. What a simple happy thing life in a Japanese house can be!

=June 25.=--Fossil-cutting all day. Miss _M----_, Mrs. _H----_, and President _N----_ came to see the fossil cutting-machine at work, and also some of the slides under the microscope. They were interested, but of course did not fully realise their significance, for fossils are principally for specialists.

=June 26.=--At 6.30 this afternoon Professor and Mrs. P---- left. What a crowd there was to see them off! By the same train the wife and daughter of the Austrian Ambassador were leaving, and that brought all the Legations’ representatives. Really the platform was so packed we could hardly move--and if there had been tea going round it would have seemed like a garden party. The train looked comfortable, with _wagons-lit_--and every one was entertained by the huge “send-off,” so that few tears were shed--but I am deeply sorry to lose the friends that train carries away.