Part 8

I think I have already spoken of the temple, the most popular one in Japan, where incessant crowds are praying or clattering through, or come with aches and pains to lay their hands on the wooden figure that will heal. It is a case of physician heal thyself, for the poor god has all its features rubbed flat by the hands of a sick humanity. The temple is so popular and so certainly described in every book of travel, that I shall not stop to do so. It is situated in the Whitechapel of Tokio, and the stalls and entertainments in the neighbouring grounds are reminiscent in some degree of a Bank Holiday--though noisy behaviour is lacking.

=February 11.=--A national holiday, so that schools, etc. are closed. To-day the Emperor ceremoniously worships his ancestors, attended by practically all the Government head officials, including Professor _M----_, who wears a uniform smothered with gold lace. I went to lunch with Mr. _Mj----_ in his house in Azabu, which is surrounded by a lovely garden, with pines and a pond and regular scenery. The party was composed of foreigners, and we sat at a table 1 foot high, and had a sumptuous Japanese luncheon. His two little girls--aged six and eight, in brilliant true Japanese kimonos--were very gay in entertaining us, pouring out the _saké_ and singing many little songs (“God save the King” among them), and bringing their dolls to table. Not at all shy, and not at all like Japanese children in this, and yet not forward, they were pretty, bright little things.

=February 13.=--Fossil-cutting all morning. We are getting on finely now; it is nice to see the actual structure at last, leaves, stems, and roots are turning up with all their cells very well preserved in the stone.

=February 15.=--Fossil-cutting all the day. The engine has a curious way of giving little explosions when it is not quite clean at the burner--they make the boy jump to such an extent that I fear he is a coward. Also, when I put the molten pans of metal into water and they fizzle, he won’t go on working near me till I have assured him that it is perfectly safe. I sometimes wonder if the Japanese are really brave except when worked up to it _en masse_. Several people who have been here some time tell me they think they are not.

=February 16.=--I spent the day out of Tokio in a country place, about an hour-and-a-half’s walk from Akabane. The country was slightly hilly, the sunshine brilliantly hot, and the jagged snow-covered hills in the distance very lovely. The fields were cultivated with wheat and green stuff, and here and there patches filled with the round tea bushes. The houses were all set amid trees, tall and red-brown trees, though “evergreens.” The same leaves, now looking so dead, revive their chlorophyll, and become green in the spring. The plum trees, pink and white, were in bloom, but they were the only flowers we saw. In the plain were rice fields, all dead and brown, but here and there along the little irrigating canals green grass roots flourished. Japanese grass all goes brown in the winter, but I am beginning to suspect that it is the dryness that does it, for here and there in damper, very shady places, I find brilliant green roots. By the broad river, with only one house near it, and that set some way back in clumps of bamboo, was a plain of tall coarse reed-like plants, partly cut down for mat-making. Here we are promised masses of pink primroses in the spring. Some young bamboos were green, and amid these we lay and listened to the absolute silence, undisturbed all the day. There was not even a bird’s song or an insect’s buzz, and one might have imagined it the top of some snowy peak for the stillness of it all.

In the evening I went to dinner at the G----s, and enjoyed it very much; there were some entertaining people there.

=February 17.=--On my way to the College I pass a small factory, whose owner keeps his coal piled up in a great heap _on_ the road against the wall. It doesn’t seriously interfere with the traffic, as the road is quite wide enough for a good-sized cart to pass even with it there, and I have never seen two trying to pass. The coal has been there many weeks now, but no one seems even to think of stealing it, though the houses around are extremely poor. I thought it wonderful honesty till I remembered that the Japanese think coal horrid, smoky, dirty stuff, quite unfit for use in rooms, but even so, in their bath-tubs they burn wood, and it might well tempt them to go after dark and help themselves. The streets, of course, are totally devoid of “street lamps.”

=February 19.=--I often wonder why I have not mentioned before the most extraordinary furs worn by the Japanese men. Though the fox is a kind of evil witch, a devil in popular imagination, yet practically every man wears a great fox skin round his neck. No pretence about making up into “boas” or anything: it is simply the whole skin, unlined, and doubled, fur outwards, along the middle of the back. The tail is then put through a hole in the animal’s head or neck, and both hang down in front of the wearer. A really rich man has so fine a skin that the bushy, brilliant red-yellow tail hangs down to his waist, waving around when he walks. Japanese ladies almost never wear furs, except when in foreign costume.

=February 20.=--Quietly busy over the fossils. There is no need to relate the innumerable details that require attention or exasperate one--the sections are yielding good results, all things considered, and I quite enjoy the cutting.

=February 21.=--Though the sun is so hot through the day that I sit in it with almost nothing on but a thin slip, night and morning are so cold that one shivers, and the ice is thick on the little pond in my garden. Yet a stark-naked youth comes to the well in the next garden, and a trim little maid works the rope and brings up buckets of cold water, which he pours over himself, and then proceeds to dry himself with a towel which he first carefully soaks in water (in the true Japanese way). This corner of the garden is the meeting-place of three gardens, and the well is common to the three households, so that sometimes a second maid may assist in his morning amusement. Behind the trees I can see the painted wood walls of the Mission church, where people go in European clothes to sing hymns.

=February 22.=--I had been really bullied into playing Hockey to represent the world against Japanese-born British. They were, of course, far stronger than we, as nearly all live together in Yokohama and practice twice a week, while none of us had played together before. We got 2 goals to their 4, however, and patted ourselves on the back.

Returning by train (Yokohama to Tokio, of course, is _the_ chief line of rail in the country, so that the incident should not be compared with doings in some far-off highland place in Scotland), the train suddenly drew up with a jerk, far from one station and about the same distance from the next. The passengers were surprised, some slightly alarmed, and the train calmly waited for some time and then started racing back to the station from which we had come. We all resigned ourselves to a broken bridge, overturned carriages on the track, or something of the sort, and finally drew up at the station we had just left--much commotion on the platform, and we learned that from the luggage van some parcels had not been delivered! They were delivered over to the proper person and the train started off once more, to reach Tokio not a little late.

=February 24.=--There have been signs of the coming Dolls’ Festival, to take place on the 3rd day of the 3rd month. I have mentioned them already (see p. 74). The shops are now full of them, and most fascinating they are, but too expensive to indulge in as I should like. The figures are all in little boxes, and sit solemnly, with their stiff robes spread out, as though they were really the nobles that they represent, and every one is interested in buying them, or at least gazing at them in their temporary homes. Several shops have sprung up this week filled with these boxes of dolls, and selling nothing else.

=February 25.=--At work all day at fossils, the record so far, for with the boy I cut and finished eleven sections in one day, some very nice. A ball at the British Embassy in the evening, very pleasant. Many interesting and amusing things happened, but unless given in great detail would not appeal to any one outside local gossip. Captain von L---- introduced me to the loveliest woman there--an American (sad to hear their awful accent coming out of such patrician lips!), the one who at a previous dance had so entranced me and my young partner that we spent our sitting-out time following her around to see her eat ices and laugh; her manner was perfection--calm, still, and gracious, honey-sweet looks in eyes that never smiled while one was speaking to her, and that just broke into little curls of smiles as she answered--a suggestion of humility while waiting to hear another’s banalities, yet with it a commanding dignity that forbade any one else to interrupt the person who was speaking to her. Her name is Mrs. D----, and I am going to see her, as she very graciously invited me to do. I wonder if she includes thought-reading among her other charms and read my admiration? Her high-heeled pink satin slippers twinkled gaily in the dance; she did not hesitate to lift the Worth frock very high--with such ankles I wouldn’t! On her white soft neck were the loveliest little blue veins, I never saw anything so suggestive of living marble. She was like white marble, with an underflush of rose and violet. The little wrinkles at the corners of her eyes added to her charm rather than detracted from it. She is the only woman in Tokio who has bewitched me.

There was a very striking-looking girl, daughter of a French mother and a Japanese father, her hair done cavalier fashion, with a side bunch of ringlets under a big white bow; her very French frock and tiny waist became her well, and she strode through the Lancers with such a devil-may-care manner that we could not but remark her--favourably too in spite of it all.

Tokio is a fine soil for gossip, very good-natured and amusing. I love it, it’s such a relaxation after gas-engines and fossils.

=February 27.=--Sunshine wonderful again--just the remains of the recent snow left here and there. I regret to find that the people in my house have been lying to me for long about a point on which I laid some stress--a whole complex of lies as well as the actual disobedience.

=February 28.=--I visited the Charmer to-day, and stayed an unconscionably long time. No one has bewitched me in this way since my school-days. She had a lovely gown of blue-and-white chiffon. Several people were there--Baron and Baroness S----, Count C----, and the wife of the Swiss Minister. I had about half an hour of the Charmer to myself--her husband is the Naval Attaché. She was simply alluring, and her house is far the prettiest I have yet seen in Tokio. She was telling me how all the Corps Diplomatique agree that there is no capital in the world where the social life is so delightful, and where there is so much gaiety and friendliness among the Corps as a whole, as in Tokio. Also there is really no other capital where other people can enter the charmed circle; that, of course, is the result of the small number of Westerners in the place, and their social position; as I have remarked before, there are almost no commercial people in Tokio.

At lunch at the Faculty to-day. Dr. _Y----_ brought me a paper on fossils to correct the English, he is soon starting for Europe. I have mentioned him before as being a rising paleontologist, such a shy, young-looking creature, utterly lacking in all social gifts; I wonder how he will fare in Europe, perhaps some of you who read this may meet him. He is predestined to be professor in a new University about four years hence.

=February 29.=--I worked at the fossils till 12, and then set out for Baron _H----’s_ long arranged luncheon party.

We were received in rooms with tables and chairs, and an oil-painting! There were the “lace” curtains found in every “foreign style” Japanese house, alas! The Baroness was very gracious and sweet, and acceded to my request to play on the Koto, playing a very charming piece.

As we sat on the cushions I could just see out of the small panes of glass put into the paper _soji_, and I delighted in the garden, with its trees of pink and white plum just bursting into blossom. After some time the men came in and Baron _H----_ showed us his collection of sword rings and knives, etc., all good, and some very beautiful.

=March 1.=--It was terribly wet all night and this morning; I went to lunch with Miss B---- (before mentioned as a very amusing lady, despite the fact that she is a missionary). I think no one would be better qualified to write memoirs than she. I was hearing something about the inner life of the Court at Korea. She is a friend of the English lady doctor who attended the royal ladies, and it was all extremely amusing, but it is not my place to tell her anecdotes.

I returned early to do some writing, but was greeted by my landlady with the announcement that to-day, to-morrow, and the next day are the Festival of the Dolls. I must, therefore, drink some special sweet thick _saké_ and eat various sweets, some nice little ones like fried caterpillars being very tasty. I was also asked to come and see the pictures and screens brought up from the store-house, two of them 200 years old, and one, a really magnificent one, 500 years,--gold with plum blossom and birds. I am constantly seeing new treasures they have in hiding.

They gave me a lovely granite hill with clustering rosy flowers growing round its base--all 6 inches square--and we admired together the wet pine leaves in the garden.

=March 2.=--Fossil-cutting all day; a very nice dance in the evening after dinner with the P----s, where I spent the night.

=March 3.=--The Dolls’ Festival. Mr. _Mj----_ and his three little girls have a very gorgeous collection; the dolls, however, are far too exalted for any child to play with them. The _Mj----s_ must literally have hundreds of these expensive little miniatures of the Emperor and Empress in the old-style garments, of historical and mythological figures, of musicians and actors from the _Nō_--all of whose dress is a wonder of design and execution. Then there were all the household utensils in tiny lacquered form, and on the little trays and dishes was real food arranged, as well as large models of fish in sugar. There was even a little temple, with most of the appointments correct. A large room was given over to them, and looked like a bazaar, but the arrangement was not merely chosen to display the detail, it was all according to prescribed rule--the Emperor and Empress on the top shelf, with their jingling elaborate head-dresses and long silk tassels on their many robes; below them the musicians; on the lowest shelf the tray of food, the little houses, screens and fans in inexhaustible variety. The children are provided with special sweet food which they themselves eat, the crisp sweet “puffed” rice, sweet blocks of jelly and sugar concoctions of many kinds. The guests were also provided with these dainties, and some of them were delicious, but I could not drink the sauce-like _saké_.

In the evening there was our inaugural dinner of the London University Union in Japan. I found there was quite a number of old U.C.L. students in Japan, and so started the idea, which was very keenly taken up by Professor _S----_; others joined in, Baron _K----_, Professor _S----_, Professor _F----_, Professors L----, S----, etc. etc., up to the number of twenty-one, are members, and the first dinner was quite a success. Professor _S----_, Baron _K----_ and I form the Committee elected then, and I hope the Union will live. Cambridge and Harvard, etc. all have their Unions, why should London be less honoured and remembered by her children?

=March 4.=--A long day at fossils.

=March 5.=--Fossils till 4--then I went to tea with Mrs. D----. She had invited the American Ambassadress and her niece to meet me, and I liked them both. The former is very like a slightly slimmer and handsomer Miss S---- of Wintersdorf! Mrs. D---- had another lovely frock, and was a dream of sweetness and beauty. Why do I always fall in love with women!

=March 7.=--Fossils all day till 4.30, then to tea with Dr. _H----_ and his wife, recently married and very cordial; they live in a really tiny Japanese house, no room more than six mats, but so spick and span, with a dear little garden. Though I have done my best to teach that man how to treat a wife--and he always seemed to be drinking it in quite properly--she herself brought the tea for us two, taking none herself (I know she has a maid), and sitting in the corner away from us, and not even taking a cushion to sit on, when he had been shamed into giving her one by my remarking that she had none. However, they seem happy, and she looks quite well, and she has not a soul quivering with every touch of the material things of life. She says he loves her very much, and has loved no other woman.

=March 8.=--To-day I visited the sick. Poor Mrs. G---- was riding in a _kuruma_ a week ago and the _Embassy_ carriage ran into her, knocked the _kuruma_ to pieces, and the horse fell on Mrs. G---- and rolled over! How she escaped fearful injuries no one knows, but a muscle is severed and she can’t walk just now. She looked very pretty in bed, and was holding quite a court. Horses in Japan are really dangerous and constantly run away.

I called my duty call on Baroness _H----_ after the luncheon party, and the conversation did not flag, though what she thought of my Japanese (the horrors of which I am daily realising more acutely) I don’t know, as she held it under with her fine native politeness.

I have read two interesting books this week--Lieutenant Sakurai’s _Human Bullets_ and _As the Hague Ordains_, the supposed journal of the wife of a Russian prisoner who comes to him in Japan, and is gradually converted to love the Japanese. The first book was rather a shock to all one’s preconceived notions about the unflinching bravery and repression of feelings among the Japanese soldiers! They were either weeping or embracing each other or writing sentimental letters--on every other page. I was quite sick of all their tears and self-adulation, though the writer gave a vivid picture of the ghastly carnage of the siege of Port Arthur. Yet people praise the book and don’t seem to notice the sentimentality as much as I do. I wonder if those who praise it have read it.

I heard from an old resident (thirty years here) that the Japanese are the most sentimental people under the sun. Oh, ye who stop at home and dream your dreams about Japan! Stay there.

=March 9.=--The following happened a few days ago, and I should have put it in then, but I forgot. The day was miserable, wet, cold, and windy, with snow blustering about, and instead of quietly having lunch in the warm Institute I was told we were to go to the big state-rooms at the other side of the gardens. There I found that all the Biology students and the Botanical and garden staff were lunching in Japanese style. There was a special kind of pink rice, with small beans boiled with it, and the various more or less savoury pieces of fish, vegetables, and a kind of pancake that go to make up a _bento_. Afterwards we all had packets of highly ornamental sticky cakes, chiefly made of the stodgy bean-paste I cannot eat, but some were good. This was the feast of the God Inari (the God of Rice), who is very appropriately worshipped by the botanists. After the feast we cowered under our umbrellas and went a pilgrimage through the gardens to his shrine, where we found the hundred-year-old blue cotton banner put up outside. Within the shrine was incense, lit by the Botanical Laboratory attendant, and a great tray of cakes, the same as we had been eating. Led by the Staff, we all rang the bell to call Inari’s attention to our visit, and clapping our hands in prayer we gave him a few sens each, throwing the copper coins in among the cakes. Then we ploughed our way through the bog-like paths to the Institute.

=March 10.=--So seedy that I did not get up at all. It is the very first day in my life that I have ever spent in bed (except for the measles, when I was too ill to notice anything much), and I feel it a solemn and important event. The first half of the day sped on magic wings, and I wondered how one could be so _bête_ as to find bed a wearisome place when one is surrounded by the lovely golden lights on bare wood. How we spoil wood by staining and painting it! The range of delicate colour in the woodwork of my room is a perfect delight. Then I had also a little tree, shaped like a weeping-willow, but one mass of rosy pink plum blossom, some flowers wide open, with recurved petals and a flare of silver stamens, others in perfectly round crimson buds, alluring as only roundness can be.

Till 3 o’clock in the afternoon that tree and the wood made me blissfully happy, but the hours between 3 and 5 seemed terribly long, and by night I was sated with the delights of bed. The next day seemed very far off.

=March 13.=--I went to the Institute in the morning and cut some fossils. It has simply been an influenza cold, but it has rather played havoc; after lunch at the Faculty and a long and varied talk with the Dean, I wasn’t fit to do any more, so I called on the B----s and went to tea with the Charmer on my way home to bed. I went to bed before 6 o’clock, and was so worn out that I howled for an hour, but dinner revived me, and I am now as cheerful as if I hadn’t contemplated suicide two hours ago. Tokio is a terrible place for ups and downs. To-day it is fearfully cold, even my bath towel frozen; and a week ago it was like summer for two days--one day a miserable snowstorm, the next glowing blue skies.

=March 14.=--In the afternoon a party had been arranged to visit a noted plum garden at Omori, and have tea in a tea-house. As the H----s had asked me to go home with them to dinner and sleep, I went, though by the end of the day I was far too tired out. We carried cakes, trusting the tea-house for cups and hot water. The plum garden was indescribably beautiful, and a typical “Japanese” scene. The garden sloped in the double hollow of a shell-shaped valley, and the rich white bloom on the trees surged up it as the thick drifting mists surge up a mountain pass. Standing out from the cloud-sea of blossoms, like peaks from out the mists, were two or three tea-houses, white papered and inhabited by gaily-decked maidens, and men who admired the plums, in grey silk. The sky was clear sapphire, and the sea beyond lay like a blue gauze veil along the horizon. While the others went on into the midst of the trees, I left the garden and sat in the sun on the steps of a little temple, which was a perfect harmony of curves, and behind lay a bamboo grove.

Tea was amusing, for Captain S---- would not take off his boots, and therefore had to walk with his feet in the air; which he did on his knees or hands. The tea-house was perched on the side of a hill, and looked down on rice fields and woody patches on little elevations. After tea we explored the temple and its pretty groves, and had a lovely merry-go-round ride on the old revolving library, a huge thing, but so perfectly poised that we could all sit on it and go round without its even creaking.

=March 16.=--Called on Mrs. P---- on my way to the Institute in the morning. She captured me, and then and there my clothes were taken off and I was put to bed--and was secretly thankful to be there. She is quite exceptionally kind to take me in in this way.