Part 7

The streets of Tokio are simply enchanting, the pine and bamboo at every door, and wherever there are shops, strings of gay red and white lanterns. At night it is a fairy-land. All the girls, and a good many of the boys, all in their very best, are out in the streets playing battledore and shuttlecock with gaily decorated bats and light feathered cocks--such bright, pretty groups.

In the afternoon I went to the reception at the British Embassy, held after the Court, with nearly every one in Court dress and uniforms--some too magnificent. There was quite a crush of Pomp and Circumstance, and the brilliance can only be imagined by those who have been to Court, and they need no description of it. Yes, clothes make the man, and ’tis well that gold lace is so dear, or we would all be Personages.

=January 2.=--This morning I started to the seaside, Kamakura, with the P----s. This little village is only thirty miles or so from Tokio, and one can run down in a couple of hours (quick for Japanese railways), and get a nice sandy beach and wild hills.

At the hotel, which is quite European, there was a number of other English, and we joined forces, and went picnics and had games and dances together in high feather.

The principal sight of the place is the great Dai Butsu, or gigantic metal statue of a seated Buddha. Most Japanese Buddhas are travesties of nature and abominations of art--but this one compels reverence and attracts devotion. Its stillness (a stillness far greater than that of a house, a statue, or any ordinary inanimate thing), its great size and the wonderful calm on the face, the beautiful human lips and broad-based nose, all make one dream and presently drop a tear or two if no one is looking. Several of us went together by day to see it--but in the evening I slipped off alone to its little grove and saw it in the starlight. Unfortunately there was no moon that night. For technical descriptions of its size, etc. you can see the guide-books or hear any traveller’s gossip. It is one of the sights of Japan.

=January 3.=--We all went for a picnic all day on the hills, looking out over the sea on three sides: and we had a sleep on the hill-top at noon, and came back as it grew cold at 4 o’clock for tea.

=January 4.=--Also a lovely day, only I wandered off alone and got lost in the long bamboo grass, 10 feet high, and got no lunch. I came back for tea at 4 all right, however. It is a curious sensation coming down a steep hill-side with no path through this high stuff. I don’t want to repeat it.

=January 6.=--The day was spent at the Institute: the floor of the fossil laboratory is being concreted, so it is locked up for a bit. All my time was taken up with the welcome letters which I found awaiting me, having accumulated for a number of days, during which there was an exceptional lot of mails.

=January 7.=--All day at the Institute, picking up dropped stitches. The term has not yet begun for the students.

=January 8.=--I was at the Institute in the morning, and at Professor _F----’s_ for tea in the afternoon, where some New Year customs and flowers were shown, the New Year plants being the pine, the plum, and the bamboo.

=January 9.=--The New Year decorations are beginning to be pulled down from the streets, but a little tuft of pine is left in the place of each, and sometimes surrounded with a garland of rope.

As I was at home this afternoon, I had long talks with my landlady, to whom I seem to afford a great amount of interest. The clothes of a Japanese woman are really very cold and draughty for winter, because of the way the skimpy skirt opens in front (there is no front seam, it is only folded and confined by the broad _obi_ or belt), though they may have as many as half a dozen padded garments on at once. She sees me, of course, in all stages of dress and undress, and greatly admires my warm spun knickers and stockings!

=January 10.=--I have been in this house now nearly two and a half months--except, of course, when I have been away--and _every night_ I have had _identically the same things for dinner_. Dreadful! Not at all--I have come to the conclusion that it is a most excellent plan. How many men and women are worried and bored by the never-ending question, “What can we have for dinner?” If you always have the same things this most troublesome of all domestic problems disappears. No one wants anything but water to bathe in, unless they be fairy princesses or Queens of Scots, and yet the delight of a bath never palls: in these months I have had the same things to eat daily and relished them hugely. Consciously or unconsciously, we are so much the creatures of habit that if we are led to expect variety in our dinners, the same menu repeated twice becomes tiring and three times insufferable. We even remember what we had last week--but if we have daily food always the same, we judge only its quality, and if it is well cooked, relish it. Of course the menu must be wide and well chosen. I, for example, have the same five kinds of vegetables always served with my small piece of steak, and the frying of the fish is superb. From this peace I am now driven out by my landlady, who has at last realised that some variety would be, to say the least of it, usual. She consulted me about it, and has bought a cookery book of “sea food,” as foreign cookery is called, so I gave her a lesson in soups for a beginning, that being the part of the menu she managed least well. Oh me!--those dear peaceful dinners--I recommend every one to try the plan; it is philosophically sound and practically excellent.

I went to lunch at the Faculty and found many, but not all, the Professors there. Term has only theoretically begun. The day has been gloriously brilliant, so that one could shout for joy, though after sunset it was frightfully cold. At half-past five the stars came out, brilliant points of diamond light through the trees.

=January 11.=--I spent all the morning testing copper disks and the gas-engine, etc., though it was Saturday. Late in the afternoon I called on a Mrs. _K----_ with a card of introduction. Unfortunately, I have been far too busy to present half my introductions, but I wanted to know some more Japanese ladies, so called on this one. What a contrast she was to the others I have met! Running downstairs to meet me and chattering all kinds of greetings, expostulating against my removing my shoes (a thing, by the way, which is absolutely essential in all true Japanese houses, because of their beautiful floors), commenting on the weather, and thanking me for coming till my breath was quite taken away. Soon I discovered the reason for all these unusual things--she had been eleven years in America, and had studied at one of the Universities. Her husband had been eight years in America. She was exceedingly nice, but so unlike a Japanese! with her thickly scattered adjectives of “dear,” “sweet,” and “lovely,” though she was dressed in Japanese style.

We were comparing the marriage customs of the different nations. In Japan a man asks, “Whom does my father and mother wish for me,” if he does ask anything at all. In New York the man asks, “How much money has she?”--in Boston, “In which College did she study?”--in Philadelphia, “Who were her ancestors?”--and in England, “Does she love me?” Mrs. _K----’s_ marriage seems to have been made in Boston: her subject was zoology and her husband’s medicine--all very unusual in a Japanese. She informed me that Japanese clothes are so much more difficult to make than foreign, which astonished me, for there are only straight lines in a Japanese dress. But it has to be evenly padded and lined, which makes the trouble. She also informed me that all the English and Americans married to Japanese are so “sweet and dear”--the different customs making their characters patient and charming.

It is true that in their eyes the average Westerner is childishly quick-tempered and troublesome.

=January 12.=--New Year calls on Professor and Mrs. _S----_, and a dinner-party at Professor _F----’s_, where every one but I was Japanese. Though the food was all European, we sat on the floor all the time and ate off a table a foot high. After dinner numerous reproductions of famous pictures were brought out, and I amused myself (and them also, I expect) by making them give their real opinions on the beauty or otherwise of the people in them. Most of our beautiful women would be wasted in Japan. Blue eyes are hard and unloving! Burne-Jones’ chins are laughable; Botticelli’s Madonna has no beauty and the saints are ugly. But Burne-Jones’ women’s hands are lovely, and the reflection in the water of one of his attendants of Venus very lovely too. Turner’s pictures are too crowded with detail!! Kaulbach was much admired.

=January 13–15.=--These three days have been very cold, and I have been at the Institute practically all the time cutting fossils; the machine going at normal speed, giving finally very good results. But who would have imagined that on the amount of water dropping on the revolving wheel depends the rate at which you cut through your stone--or that carborundum put on at 1 inch or 2 inches from the cutting point makes all the difference in the world? These and a thousand little details like them have to be learnt by series of experiments. The weather has been lovely, and even wonderful. One day there was snow, and it covers these little Japanese houses so picturesquely, picking out the detail and making them more like picture-book-land than ever. The sky is brilliantly blue, and the hot sun melts the snow on the little pine trees, so that they are like fountains of glittering drops, while from the grassy banks beneath them soft wreathing clouds of white steam curl up and are lost in the blue, and I long to be a poet. But the next day! The roads were quite unspeakable, and for many days following.

=January 17.=--At the Institute all day again. At 2 o’clock Sir Claude Macdonald (the Ambassador) and Mr. Clive (the Secretary) came to see me and the stones. The former is huge, and with his glorious fur-lined coat and pale-green suède-edged waistcoat, looked sadly out of place in my work-room, which is nearly filled with packing-cases and lumps of coal, but they stayed ever so long. The people are much honoured that the representative of his Britannic Majesty should have visited their Institute.

=January 18.=--I worked at fossils all day, and this evening, commencing at 5, was the Biologists’ supper. Every biologist in Tokio comes, from head professors to first-year students, about 130 in all, and I was the only lady, of course. This time we ate from high tables, sitting on European chairs, but we ate Japanese food with chop-sticks! The most thrilling things were sagittaria and _ginkgo seeds!_ cooked quite soft in a dish which is a kind of cross between a soup and a custard (a gay thing to eat with chop-sticks any way!), and by carefully biting the tiniest piece off the top of the seed one can see the embryo and suspensors; the endosperm alone, of course, is the only part eaten. Just as we have chocolates or almonds on the table through the meal, they had tins of tiny dried fish, about half an inch or so big and quite crisp, like roasted pea-nuts. It was a very frivolous meeting; there was story-telling with much laughter, and comic pictures of various professors and students under amusing circumstances; and a drawing by lot for gifts of all sorts of things, from an old newspaper or a turnip to books or ornaments.

=January 24.=--Canada Balsam is causing much trouble in the fossil work-shop, and I spent most of the day over its little fads and vagaries. The young man who is to learn how to cut the fossils (after we have learnt ourselves and can teach him) is very quaint in his personal appearance, and reminds me constantly of the Golliwog, his hair grows so far down his neck and the back of his head is so flat. I fear some day I shall give vent to the amusement he causes me. But he is undoubtedly quick in some ways and very tidy in his methods.

=January 25.=--I had to mess round over the gas-engine all the morning, and in the afternoon (Saturday) went to watch some of the mad foreigners playing, or trying to play, I should say, Hockey. They were only six a side, but I really wouldn’t join in spite of their entreaties, for they were not playing on grass, but on _bare earth_! The dust was awful, and I should think very unhealthy. It is simply impossible to get any grass in Tokio, it is only to be seen in small quantities in a few sacred places, and even then dies down all through the winter, so that it is quite unusable. Moss and liverworts grow here so well that it is very curious that grass is so impossible to cultivate. Professor _M----_ is trying experiments with English grass seed at the gardens, but it isn’t very successful, though better than the native product.

=January 26.=--I called on Mrs. G---- at the Embassy. I heard a true story of certain small children in Yokohama, a girl and a boy: the former caused her mother much sorrow because of her habit of fibbing. Her brother fell out of the window and was helpless in bed for some time, and she was left to amuse him one Sunday afternoon. When the mother returned she found pencil scribbling all over her white dimities, and said, “Who did this?” (a form of question she usually avoided, using subtler means). “Brother,” promptly answered the maiden. When asked why she told that lie, said, “Because I forgot Brother couldn’t get out of bed to do it!”

=January 27.=--A day spent on work of various sorts on the fossils. A terrible wind suddenly arose in the afternoon, and going home along the streets it blew first on one side and then on the other, and the dust it raised hung like a fog all over the city, while the sun, usually a fiery brilliance at which one dare not blink, hung like a disk of pale gold in the fawn-coloured sky. Along the road, as one walked, fancying peace, suddenly a snake-like form would rise, its cobra head would expand till it formed a huge surging wave, that spit and stung and blinded; or a little whirlpool would start at one’s feet, shake itself and open in a second into a great torrent, that showered upwards instead of downwards. I never saw such dust, but they say it will be worse in February.

=January 30.=--A national holiday, so no work was allowed at the Institute. I gave a tea-party, only to about twenty people, of whom the merriest and jolliest was Baron _K----_! When I have seen him hitherto it has been in solemn manners. The intense agitation this caused in my house all day cannot be imagined by you English people who give tea-parties every little while! The entire household for the entire day was quivering with excitement; and I must add to their credit that they produced several treasures of art, _kakemonos_ and gold screens, from the _go-down_ (or safe), where they are kept.

=January 31.=--I was fossil-cutting all day, a nice new stem and leaf turned up to cheer us on. The following cutting may be amusing; it was in the Japan _Gazette_ a few days ago:--

An amusing incident occurred at an “At home” in Tokyo this week. A matron, talking to a slender young woman in a pretty art gown of blue velvet, said, “Oh, I hear Dr. Stopes is here. I want to meet the delightful old party. I understand he is strong on fossils.” Later on she said to her hostess, “Who is that girl I’ve been talking to, in the blue dress? seems a nice girl.” “That is Dr. Stopes, the learned geologist,” said the hostess, and the Yokohama matron collapsed.

=February 1.=--I was fossil-cutting all morning. Aluminium, of all metals, seems to be forging ahead as the prize saw-maker.

=February 2.=--A dull day, so I didn’t go out exploring as I had intended, but snuggled into bed all the morning to counteract the cutting-machine, which is really rather wearing.

=February 3.=--At work all day on the fossils. Dinner at the P----s, after which I had to give the long-promised lecture on fossils to the Literary Society of Tokio. Naturally, to an audience in which missionaries played an important part, but little science was desirable. However, they seemed pleased to hear about the various adventures connected with fossil collecting.

=February 4.=--At work in the Institute over fossils all day. In the course of my walk to the Institute, which takes about forty minutes, I pass quiet streets which are little frequented by the foreigner. In all these months I have never yet met a single foreigner between my house and the Institute, though in other parts of the town they are common enough.

Every day I see something or other I long to record, and forget when it comes to writing this journal what it was.

The shops are now full of oranges. Small ones, like our “Tangerines,” but native grown, and _seedless_. They are sent to the shops in little boxes, universally the same size. How sensible the Japanese are about such things--in spots! But oranges are a little tedious, and there is really almost nothing else to be had but tasteless and expensive apples. This country is still in that primitive state when we can only get the fruits and flowers that are locally in season. Even well-off people, who at home could command strawberries in March and roses in December, must here eat the things at the time Nature intended. It has a certain charm but--I am a Londoner.

Another striking thing about this country’s products is the extraordinary richness and variety of the vegetation,--palms and pines, bamboos and magnolias, chestnuts and orange trees, rice and roses; the number of plant species in the little country of Japan alone exceeds that in all Europe. Also the number of species of birds and insects is extraordinarily great, and their brilliance and beauty quite unusual. Yet it has been said by one who knows the country, “The flowers have no scent, the fruit no flavour, and the birds no song!”

To this, I myself would add, “and the people no souls.” And in the whole saying there is truth enough to justify its existence, probably as much truth as there is in any saying, for in all our sheaves of words there are but a few ears bearing the grains of truth. Now I hasten to add that a spray of plum blossom in January scents a whole room with its fragrance; that the native-grown figs are the most luscious and sweet I ever tasted, and the nightingales’ thrilling melody to be heard even in the cities; while I have met men and women who are as the plum, the fig, and the nightingale. And yet on the whole, that hard saying is true.

=February 5.=--At the fossil workshop all day. Nearly every day in this clear weather I see the great Fujisan, its whiteness high up in the clouds on the horizon. The pearl of mountains, that, alas, I have not seen yet except from this great distance. From her superb height she looks down on this grey-roofed city, and I wonder if she sees in it all the things I see! The dirt, for instance, and the horrors of disease. I have praised so much in Tokio that I think you can bear to hear something of the other side, of the sights that sicken and appal. Of these, the ones that struck me first were the numerous children (only very young ones) with frightful eczema; the one that now haunts me is the sight of lepers. They are not allowed to _live_ in the city, when in an advanced state of disease, but they are allowed to come in and beg. One may easily touch one by accident! To-day I was within a foot of one before I noticed it. They hold out their hands, with the fingers eaten away, gruesome sights, and mumble prayers for alms. Once one died, or nearly died, on the road, a crowd formed round, with a policeman on guard, but no one would touch it to give assistance.

On the whole, the Japanese do not fear leprosy nearly so much as we do, they say we over-rate its contagion; but how can they pretend to civilisation with such sights in their streets?

One hears on all sides, from themselves and from others, that the Japanese are pre-eminently a _clean_ people. _In_ their houses that is true, but just outside! Even to-day in all the smaller streets of Tokio a little gutter or ditch runs along on either side and carries away, or is blocked by, as the case may be, all the refuse and drainage of the houses near by. No wonder that even Ambassadresses get typhoid. I am thankful there are chickens kept by so many poor people, that roam the streets and pick at the dainties, but I wonder if it is wise to take a raw egg beaten into milk.

=February 6.=--There are more stars in Japan than in (or over, should I say?) England. After the glowing sun sinks from the cloudless blue sky, the stars spring out at once, and by 6 o’clock the heavens are crowded. In the milky way one sees not a haze of white, but a glittering stream of bright minute gems. Sometimes too the stars have haloes, quite big ones, such as we only see round our moon, and when they shine out of the clear sky they almost dazzle.

=February 7.=--I was at the fossil laboratory all day, cutting away at my stones. Dinner with the P----s, and after that the Tokio Bachelors’ Ball--a truly delightful function. I left at 2 A.M. and walked the 3 odd miles home with two nice men. It was really too cold to ride in these open _kurumas_, even with two rugs and an eiderdown. The walk through the quiet streets under these ever enchanting stars was delightful. One of the men was a military attaché here, and has been to camp with Japanese regiments. I find every one who knows only military men thinks less highly of the Japanese character than do those who mix with the University men. It is not unnatural that the army is rather suffering from “swelled head”--and then, who would give a German Professor for half a dozen or more of the German officers!

=February 8.=--Though Saturday, and though I did not get to bed till 4, I went to the fossils from 10 till 4, and then to tea with Professor _F----_, where we discussed dancing, which does not seem to find favour in his eyes, or in those of most Japanese.

=February 9.=--A nice quiet morning in bed; after lunch I went with Miss C---- and J---- to see the temple of Kwannon at Akasaka. People who habitually drive in carriages see less of the truly Japanese streets than do the _kuruma_ riders. Most of the old roads are so narrow that a carriage cannot pass, and they must perforce go through the newer or widened streets, where they encounter electric trams and maybe glass-windowed stores for “Foreign Goods.” Not that these latter do not afford amusement--one may see a Store that carries on the “Import and Manufacture of Grocers”--another that sells “Unnecessary Provisions.” Of which latter I may add there are many in Tokio, to wit, the beaded mittens, crochet atrocities, Paisley shawls, etc., _ad infinitum_, that are destroying the beauty and harmony of the national costume, and are making the people ludicrous in their hybrid garb. An irritating little habit the coachman and _Betto_[4] have, is to cry in hoarse duet to every child or old woman (of which not less than several thousand seem to be encountered in a drive) to warn them off the road. It becomes inexpressibly irritating to the unfortunates in the carriage.

[4] _Betto_, name for native groom.