Part 17

=November 25.=--After working till it was dark, and worrying the laboratory attendants (for, nominally, we should all clear off at 4 now, but I can’t get out of the habit of working later, particularly now that there is so much to do), I called on Mrs. _N----_. She is the American wife of a Japanese journalist--a writer whose articles I have noticed. We started a correspondence, and she came to see me, but I was out. It was no easy job to find the house, for she had recently moved, so I went to the old house, but as it led to a little incident which illustrates the courtesy of the nice Japanese, I will relate it. I went to the house called No. 90, but, as I have remarked before, there may be twenty houses of the same number. Of course it was the wrong one, but they told me the _N----s_ had left the house, and gone to Kamakura. The little lady of the house at which I inquired sent her maid to fetch the address, and asked me to sit down while she went. Then, with gentle voice, she asked all the polite questions--where I lived? how long I had been in the country? what was my native land? All capped by compliments on my Japanese. She fetched a book of picture post cards to entertain me, and when her maid returned, sent her again to make sure if Mrs. _N----_ was not living in the neighbourhood. When she found that she was, the lady herself came with me a little way to show me the road to follow, as if I had been an honoured guest.

As at last the gate was reached, a young lad came out in the dusk, and of him I inquired if it was really the house. He too had a soft voice and a courteous manner, and helped me to open the gate. After I had conversed with Mrs. _N----_ a little while, I learned that he was Lafcadio Hearn’s eldest son, the one he loved so, and wrote of so sweetly in many of his letters.

Mrs. _N----_ was dressed in grey: perhaps it was the shadow of the lamplight, but I received the impression that her life was in grey shadows. Her little son, however, was a bright contrast--round eyes, rosy cheeks, with a woollen cap with a long point and a dangling tassel--he was like a pixy. He was only four years old, but acted as interpreter between his mother and the maid. There was also the merriest kitten I ever saw--round, soft, and tailless, with a scatter of claws and a jump like a grasshopper, as it dashed after the shadow of the tail it never had. The grey woman spoke with such a sad lifeless voice--slowly, as though it were rather troublesome to have to speak at all, but not in unfriendly fashion. I heard much of the Hearns, as Mr. _N----_ is a very intimate friend of the family, and Mrs. _N----_ has come close to the eldest lad, and teaches him.

I heard from her what I have heard from many people, that Mrs. Hearn can neither speak nor write a single word of English. That baby English at the end of the _Life and Letters_ is either a translation or a concoction.

There are many letters of Hearn’s to his wife in childish Japanese, that, since the appearance of Gould’s atrocious book, Mrs. Hearn has placed in Mr. _N----’s_ hands for publication, though before that she had not wished to make them public.

=November 27.=--After the morning’s work, I went to the Goten for the Faculty lunch. Professor _T----_ took me from there to see the Anthropological Department of the University. They have a very considerable space, and lots of specimens of all kinds, though I did not see many European ones. The stone implements naturally interested me most. There are extraordinary numbers of arrowheads, and a good many celts of rough polished stone. It appears that there are no palaeoliths in the country; it is certainly true that none have been found, but that does not satisfy me that palaeolithic man did not live in Japan. Shell mounds of late Neolithic age seem to be the chief _fundorts_ for the tools. In many cases earthenware, beads, and such like are found with them. The arrowheads are made of flint, rather more opaque and with a duller patina than English flint. But many of them are of obsidian, some of which are beautifully clear. There are also agate and chert ones, and one perfect gem of pure quartz. Their shapes are much like those common in Scotland, but a few were a little unusual with particularly fine edges, and some were very minute. The arrowheads rather preponderated, but I was more struck by the scrapers, which were particularly beautiful, and of a type I have not discovered anywhere before. There were many variations among the scrapers, the top edge being beautifully chipped; it was evident that a thong had kept them in a handle. Of the type composed of a straight single flake, so common at home, I saw very few.

Professor _T----_ has made the best arrangement for keeping the specimens I have ever seen--small _tin_ boxes, with glass tops, and fastened by a tight ring clasp. The specimens, placed on cotton-wool in it, are immovable when the lid is shut, and the boxes can be placed in any position, but directly they are open they are free, and can be handled, unlike those sewn on to the irritating museum cards.

=December 5.=--At the Institute all day. I don’t at all approve of this Saturday work, but am too busy to feel justified in taking a single day off, as I can only work in the Institute; even writing for this work I can’t do at home, because I need the specimens and books at my hand.

=December 6.=--Lovely brilliant sunshine, but a heavy wind, so I am spending the day lying on a _futon_ on the _engawa_ (open verandah all along the house), in perfect shelter, for the ∠ shape of the house keeps off all the wind and cuts off none of the sun, and I am lying in a pink cotton kimono with my hair down, and can fancy myself on an August beach! but I know directly the sun goes in, Jack Frost will pop out, and in my thickest padded clothes I shall shiver. The sunshine is everything here--no wonder they put the sun and nothing else on their flag. The sky is more blue than our August heaven--and although dead leaves are whirling, the cryptomerias are green and the maples blood-red, while my rose bush has flawless leaves, with crimson petioles. Would it were always November in Japan!

=December 11.=--I have been too busy to write all these days, and as it happened, there has really been nothing worth recording except my discontent with the artisans and trades-people, which had perhaps better be left untold. To-day I lunched at the Goten and met Baron _M----_, last year the Minister of Education. He was very friendly and “made conversation” in quite a European and un-Japanese style, though I thought him stiff last year.

In the evening we had the second dinner of the University of London Union. Viscount _I----_ was there, the first Japanese to come to London to study, and a very entertaining brusque old man he is! Count _H----_, recently Ambassador to England, took me in, and there were sixteen of us altogether, seven foreigners and nine Japanese. It was quite a jolly dinner.

Count _H----_ proposed the toast “The University,” and later on Professor _S----_ proposed the toast “M. C. S.,” which they all stood and drank with _banzai_, so I have had my health drank by an Ambassador and a Viscount. But one has to pay for these delights--and the price is heavy--an after-dinner-return-thanks speech! Now I can lecture without feeling quite a fool, and I can speak at Debates, but when it comes to after-dinner speeches I am done for. I don’t know why I remain so stupid over it; this time in the return-thanks speech I entirely forgot the thanks! After dinner there was some business, and we elected Professor L---- to the Committee. Then various of us told stories or gave recitations, and we had a little laughter. I walked my bicycle back with Professor L---- to the broad road, and we discussed Dante, Milton, and other great ones on the way, and I am much relieved to find he doesn’t approve of the translation of Dante I have been reading. I began to fear I must be a monster, as I couldn’t feel the expected respect for Dante.

I then mounted my iron steed--which was champing its bit, a habit it has lately, and I can’t break it off with any amount of oil--and rode through the silent streets with an undertoned caroling. There is something very exhilarating about a ride under brilliant stars, through silent roads where silhouettes of pine trees cut the sky--after a good dinner and jolly company.

=December 12.=--Went over to Oyeno Park to see the Imperial Museum. It is really very fine indeed, a much more extensive and beautiful collection than I had expected, particularly of lacquer, _kakemonos_, and costumes of old Japan. Their Japanese collections were magnificent. But as I expect they are described by a thousand other pens, I won’t repeat. Suffice it to say that we had planned to go out to lunch at 1, though the usual University time is 12, and when we thought to look at a watch it was half-past two! and we were very cold as well as hungry. There are nice gardens round the Museum, which lie in the Park, and it was a very pleasant morning altogether.

=December 13.=--It has been a brilliant day with glowing sun, and at one Mrs. _N----_ and the Brownie son of hers came to lunch. The Brownie looked and acted splendidly, and was a pleasure, and his eyes twinkled a keen appreciation rare in men of four years old when, after warning him to be good and not to spill anything, I tipped the pheasant’s bread-crumbs into my own lap, and he got through the meal without a mishap of any sort. Almost immediately after lunch we went over to--Where do you think?--Lafcadio Hearn’s house, to see his wife and family! A rare privilege, for the sanctum is unusually well guarded. But Mrs. _N----’s_ friendship has won me the way in, for, as I said, the eldest boy learns English from her and is devoted to her.

The house is some way out of town, in pure Japanese style, with a Japanese name on the lamp, for you will remember Hearn became a Japanese and took a Japanese name, which is written in Chinese characters over his door. “Koizumi,” we pronounce it.

There is a nice garden, visible partly from the entrance, where was the children’s swing. As we entered we passed along an _engawa_ (verandah) bounding a tiny internal square of garden on our way to the reception-room. This was in the purest Japanese style, well built, with pretty woodwork, a thing one learns to notice in this country. I immediately observed the _kakemono_, which was exceptionally beautiful, tall peaks of bare rock pillars standing up against a grey sky, where a moon half shone through a band of cloud. A picture that one could never forget and yet would ever wish to see instead of merely remembering. I remarked on it to Mrs. Hearn, who told me that “Lafcadio had very good taste in _kakemonos_,” and always bought only what pleased him exactly. Wise man! when he had the cash! There was also a bronze in the room, the bent stalk of a fading lotus leaf with the collapsed blade of the leaf, and though there sounds no beauty in that, the bronze throbbed with it. Mrs. Hearn was very friendly: less shy and quiet than most Japanese women, she was yet distinctly Japanese in her shyness and quietness. Without beauty, she pleased.

She and the children were all in usual Japanese costume, and the only “foreign” things in the room were ourselves and the cakes and cups of tea she brought us. I inquired if she liked foreign food, and she told me that she did, _very_ much, and that “Lafcadio” always ate it, for though he liked all the things to be pure Japanese, and would have nothing he could help that was not, Japanese food upset him, and he always had foreign food, but that now she never prepared it. We chatted about many things, and she spoke freely of Hearn, of whom I did not dare at first to ask any questions till she had spoken voluntarily so much, to show that she liked to speak of him.

After the tea and cakes we went to Hearn’s study, and got a sight of the real Japanese garden at the back of the house. The study was lined with low book-shelves filled with many charming volumes in French and English. There was a very high table made specially for him, for his extremely short sight, and the famous pipe box, with dozens of long tiny-bowled Japanese pipes.

The children were with us freely, and also a friend, a Mr. ----, who was the first student Hearn had in Japan, and who has remained faithful through everything, and now acts as adviser and friend of the family, and lives in part of the house. He was bright and intellectual-looking, beyond the average, and speaks excellent English.

Mrs. Hearn _insisted_ on us staying to a meal, which we could not avoid doing without positive rudeness, though we had only expected afternoon tea. It was a “first-class” Japanese meal, with nearly all the things I like (sometimes the things are quite uneatable, as, for example, the “sea-cucumbers” in a raw salad, which are also first-class things), and I enjoyed it, but I got home at 8 instead of 5 as I expected.

The children were with us most of the evening, showing Brownie picture-books, of which they had a fine stock. Hearn evidently liked Andrew Lang’s fairy books, for they were nearly all there.

In his study, where we had supper, was the little family shrine, built rather like a miniature temple of plain wood; within was Hearn’s photo, and before it burnt a tiny lamp and stood dainty vases of small flowers. According to Japanese ideas, the spirit of the departed inhabits this dwelling and needs the love and attention of his kindred, and takes part in their life. Is Christianity more consoling to the bereaved than this? From the window by the shrine could be seen the grove of the tall bamboo Hearn loved, and in the room floated one or two of the mosquitoes with which he had such sympathy.

To see the eldest son, after having read that tender, wonderful letter of Hearn’s about his birth, was, I believe, a mistake. Hearn’s words had made me love the child--but he isn’t a child any longer, and is now a thin lanky youth, shy of manner and slow in English speech. But perhaps--for there is promise in his face--I shall like him well as a man in the years to come. How Hearn wove words into an opalescent cobweb! I could imagine him feeling intoxicated with the beauty of words--nay, he must have been, for as a reader I am intoxicated by words of his, which must have affected him a thousand times more strongly.

=December 16.=--It has been blowing a perfect hurricane, and is blowing still, so that I panted on my cycle to the University, but enjoyed the ride back, for by a most unusual chance the wind didn’t turn and face me on my home way also, as it generally does, but stopped respectfully behind me and blew me gaily at full speed up hills which always make me dismount on usual days. The sky was brilliantly clear, and Mount Fuji shone blue-and-white in the morning, and purple-black in front of a copper-and-gold sky at night. Wonderful mountain! “The only thing in Japan that is not overrated,” as some one told me he felt it was.

=December 20.=--Writing all the early part of the day, but went along to tea with the D----’s and met Ambassador O----. We had a cosy time; in the course of conversation the Ambassador told me to listen,--and then said that it was not necessarily the _cleverest_ people who made the most mark in the world, but the people who wrote what they knew, who gave to the world of their knowledge, instead of letting it die with them, as so many of the truly great have done. The D----’s house is peculiarly charming--it is not, of course, a “salon” in any sense of the word, but more there than anywhere I know people really converse and sometimes say things that the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table might pop straight into his book. Though what they actually are I cannot record, the after effect is much the same as reading a chapter of a light, well-written book.

And the rooms too are so pretty, a charming mixture of Japanese and Western daintiness, like a black-eyed rosy-cheeked Eurasian, who sparkles with the beauty of both the parent countries.

=December 21.=--I worked hard all day. Professor _F----_ is back and we got quite a lot done. In the evening I went to some pretty tableau from _Pride and Prejudice_, arranged by a number of people I know, and at 10 went into the Opera House, where I met a party of friends. This Opera House merits a word of description. As in the newspaper it said--“For the first time we in Tokio can sit in a foreign theatre, listen to a foreign orchestra, and see a foreign play played by foreigners all at one time.” The theatre, or Opera House, built partly on the Vienna model, was opened only a few days ago, and is now playing _Dorothy_, by amateurs, but many of them have professional talent and training. The white-and-gilt interior, the brilliant lights without, and the real “home” effect of the piece were delightful after all these months without the possibility of anything of the sort. To permanent residents here it will be a very great boon, and is already patronised by all the Legations and many of the best Japanese. Outside were panting motors, and--I discovered that the smell of petrol is delightful in its reminder of home!

=December 23.=--I learn that last evening the D----’s house was burnt to the ground! That pretty house I liked so much! I am indeed grieved. The danger of the houses, which are all wood, is very great here. I have been in Japan about eighteen months, and in that time the Naval Attachés of both the British and American Embassies have been utterly burnt out. If a Japanese house goes, only one or two of the curios which are in use will be destroyed, the rest are safe in a “go-down,” but in a foreign house all the curios are about and in use, and a fire sweeps the whole away. How extravagant we foreigners are!

=December 24.=--I went up to the University intending to have a day’s quiet work--but at 9.30 Mrs. _M----_ (one of the family who gave the gas-engine) brought her sons to see the fossils being cut. Not much was done before lunch, when Dr. _Mk----_ was there. Soon after that the Dean came, and made a delightful stay, and we had just finished tea with him when the President, Baron _H----_, came and wanted to see some fossils, so we showed him some of the prettier ones under the microscope. I am glad he came and really saw the things. So that, after all, the Christmas eve I had expected to work through became a series of “parties” all the time, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected to, though I worked less.

=December 26.=--I got to the University at 9.30, though this same morn I crept into bed at 1 A.M. Work did not seem very exciting, but it was soon laid on one side, for the Dean came again. This time in an official capacity, bearing a huge box tied up nicely. This he solemnly opened up, and we found another box inside tied with broad green silk cord, which when opened revealed cotton-wool and yellow wrappings, which when removed gave place to squares of heavy rich white silk brocade, which were wrapped round the most wonderful blue-grey silver cloisonné vases--not the ordinary, but the special, new, rare and precious kind, made with very few silver wires, so that the colours melt into each other, and it looks like Markazu or Copenhagen porcelain. Far more than half are marred in the manufacture, so that a perfect pair are gems. These two of mine (for now I am the proud owner of them) are as beautiful as can be, on little carved ebony stands. Only far too beautiful for me. They are an official present from the University, in “recognition of the stimulus I have been to botany in Japan!”

I went round to call on Baron _H----_ (the President) on my way back home, to say my few halting words of thanks--but what can one say on such occasions, when, moreover, the present should come _from_ me, who have accepted their hospitality so long? But they, out of their goodness of heart or courtesy, reverse everything, and profess to be indebted to me! I cannot cope with it at all.

=December 27.=--Time is now so precious, and the College will be shut for the New Year very soon, so I went to the laboratory to-day and worked till nearly 4 o’clock. A miserable wet day, with the streets ankle deep in slush. The pines and bamboos of the New Year are beginning to appear before the doors, and at the corners are stalls which sell the knotted rope festoons which every house will have over its gate. But the weather has a depressing effect to-day, and lanterns and gay street stalls are few and far between.

=December 28.=--A bright sunny day, but the roads are just unspeakable. My bicycle got quite blocked up a dozen times, so that the space between the mud-guard and the tyre was filled tight from top to bottom.

Hard at work at the Institute all day, for this is the last day before we are locked out for the New Year’s holiday.

=December 29.=--The Institute was quite locked up to-day, not even the attendant coming, but as we are so hard pressed I got permission to go and the garden porter unlocked the door for me, and let me into the cold echoing building. I was dripping wet and very cross at coming in the rain, no one who could possibly arrange otherwise would ever go out in the rain in Tokio. The old man brought me a little fire of charcoal, which started the stove, and then left me all alone in the place, where the only sound was the rain dripping and the scratching of an occasional rat, which made me think robbers had come to the place when the whole responsibility lay on me. After an hour I heard soft stealthy footsteps, and stood prepared to pounce on the unlawful intruder--when there was a knock at the door and in walked the Dean. He came nominally about the farewell party the University Union is getting up for me, but I expect it was also semi-official, as to have the place open was rather an anxiety, I fear. His stealthiness was the result of the rain, for he came in rubbers!

Later on Professor _F----_ came, and we got on well with the work, because there were none of the usual disturbing demands of the other workers in the Institute. On the way home it was forced in upon me that life was not worth living in Tokio when it rained.

=December 30.=--At work again in the locked Institute, but the sun shone and we were consequently more cheerful.

=December 31.=--As it is the day before the New Year, Professor _F----_ is too busy to work, so I brought home my microscope and some fossils to do here, and had a nice quiet day at home. The days before the New Year are the busiest of the whole three hundred and sixty-five for every Japanese. In the evening Flora and I went down to the _Ginza_ to see the big _Matsuri_ and buy what took our fancy, provided our purses were large enough. This _Ginza Matsuri_ is one of the features of Tokio this time of the year, and is particularly attractive on the last night of the year. The pavements on both sides of the streets are thronged with people, and lined with mats on the kerb, covered with curios and oddments and modern articles of all kinds. The pavement spaces are marked off and numbered, and let out by the police long before. As every one _must_ pay all his debts by the end of the year, lots of curios go cheaper then than at any other time--though great bargains are not to be had in Tokio any more, too many foreigners have visited it. It was entertaining to watch the crowds, and lots of the curios were very nice. Gold screens I should love--but their size would make them terrible to pack for the journey. Fortunately the rain held off to-night, else many a poor person would suffer for his debts!