Chapter 3

President Naruse died this morning; as he had cancer, it was fortunate he did not linger longer. He was one of the most remarkable men in Japan. Two days before he died the Empress sent him a present of five thousand dollars for his school--a very great tribute and one which will help the cause of woman's education. Speaking of this family where we dined, you can judge of the high aristocracy of our hosts of the evening by the fact that when they showed us the dolls' festival, there were some fine ones which had been sent the Countess by the Imperial Princesses. The dolls by the way are never played with--they are works of art and history to look at. These children got out their American dolls, of which they had ten, to show Mamma.

March 5.

I have now given three lectures. They are a patient race; there is still a good-sized audience, probably five hundred. We are gradually getting a superficial acquaintance with a good many people, and if I could get two or three weeks free from lectures to prepare I could make a business of finding things out, but as it is I only accumulate certain impressions. There is no doubt a great change is going on; how permanent it will be depends a good deal upon how the rest of the world behaves. If it doesn't live up to its peaceful and democratic professions, the conservative bureaucrats and militarists, who of course are still very strong, will say we told you so and there will be a backset. But if other countries, and especially our own, behave decently, the democratizing here will go on as steadily and as rapidly as is desirable.

TOKYO, Monday, March 10.

Yesterday we had our first taste of the Noh drama. We got there before nine in the morning, and I left before two to go to Mr. Naruse's funeral, but Mamma stayed till nearly three when she had to go to speak at a school. Mamma can give you a much more intelligent idea of it than I can, but the building is a kind of barnlike structure--the Elizabethan theater with a vengeance, and no stage properties except some little live pines and a big painted one, and except costumes which are rich and expensive and the masks which are likewise. It is an acquired taste, but one which can be acquired very rapidly. If they weren't done with such extraordinary art and technique they would probably be stupid, to a foreigner anyway, but as it is they are fascinating, though it is hard to say what the source of the fascination is aside from the perfection of technique. Conscious control was certainly born and bred in Japan.

Mr. Naruse had a very strong hold on people, and his funeral was an event--all the autos and most of the 'rickshas in Tokyo must have been there, and some eight or ten speakers, and even to me who could understand nothing it was very impressive. One of the civilized things is that before the speaker bowed to the audience--and they all bowed back--he bowed to the remains, Which were in a coffin on the platform with flowers, and more flowers than at an American funeral.

We were to have gone to Baron Shibusawa's for tea and dinner this afternoon, but his influenza has gone into pneumonia.

To go back to Saturday. The reception was pleasant. We met the Americans who are educators and in the missionary schools and colleges; intelligent and well disposed, so far as I have seen. The criticism of the missionaries seems to be rather cooked up. Just now there is a fuss over them in Korea, because there is some agitation going on there for independence, and it seems to have started with Koreans who had been in missionary schools. The missionaries here seem much divided, some of them blaming the missionaries over there, saying they will bring Christianity into disrepute everywhere in Japan, and some saying that it proves Christian teaching amounts to something and that it will have a good effect in improving conditions, leading to foreign criticism and publicity, and causing the Japanese to modify their colonial policy, which seems to be under military rather than civil control. There is a rumor that the ex-Emperor of Korea didn't die a natural death, but committed suicide, with the hope of putting off or preventing the marriage of his oldest son to a Japanese princess--they were to have been married very soon. No one seems to know whether the story was invented to encourage the revolutionaries in Korea or has truth in it. Meanwhile they say the wedding is going to take place, and the Japanese are sorry for their poor princess, who is sacrificed to marry a foreigner.

Thursday evening Mamma invited the X----'s and some others, eight including ourselves, to supper in a Japanese restaurant, a beef restaurant--they are all specialized--where we not only sat on the floor and ate with chop sticks, but where the little slices of thin beefsteak were brought in raw with vegetables to flavor, and cooked over a little pan on a charcoal hibashi, one fire to each two persons. Naturally it was lots of fun, a kind of inside picnic.

Oh, yes, something happened Friday. We went to the Imperial Museum in the morning and the curator showed us about--I won't describe a museum--but on the way home we were taken into a pipe store and Mamma purchased three little Japanese pipes, ladies' pipes, to take home. Quite cunning, and the dealer said this was the first time he had ever sold anything to a foreigner, so he presented her with a little ladies' pouch and a pipe holder, both made from Holland cloth, not anything very precious, but probably worth as much as her entire purchase, certainly more than the profit on his sales. These things are quite touching and an offset to the stories about their bad business methods, because it is really a matter of hospitable courtesy to the foreigner, though he said himself they generally put the price up for the foreigner on antiques.

TOKYO, Thursday, March 14.

We have just had a mild picnic. Mamma has a slight cold, so the maids brought her supper up to her and for sociability brought mine up too. Mamma got out a Japanese phrase book and pronounced various phrases to them; to see them giggle and bend double, no theater was ever so funny. When I got to my last bite, I inquired the name of the food, and said it and "Sayonara"--good night. This old gag was a triumph of humor. They are certainly a good-natured people. I have watched the children come out from a public school near here, and never yet have I seen a case of bullying or even of teasing, except of a very good-natured kind, no quarreling and next to no disputing. Yet they are sturdy little things and no mollycoddles. To see a boy of ten or twelve playing tag and jumping ditches with a boy strapped to his back is a sight. There are no public rebukes or scoldings of the children or even cross words, to say nothing of slappings, no nagging, at least not in public. Some would say that the children are not scolded because they are good, but it is a fair guess that it is the other way. But it must be admitted that so far as amiable exterior and cheerfulness and courtesy is concerned, they have no bad examples set them. Some foreigners say all this is only skin deep, but the manners of the foreigners who say these things aren't any too good even from our standards. Anyway, skin deep is better than nothing and good as far as it goes. However, the Japanese say that their courtesy is reserved for their friends and people they know, not that they have bad manners to strangers, but that they pay no attention to them, and won't go out of their way to do anything for them.

I told about the man who made Mamma a present when she bought the pipes. Yesterday we were in that region and Mamma went in again and bought another, and paid him a compliment on what people said about the present. Whereupon he gets up and fishes out another more valuable pouch, somewhat ragged and old, the kind the actors now use on the stage, and offers it. Mamma naturally tries to avoid it, but can't. He informs her through the friend with us that he likes Americans very much. An international matter having been made of it, the pouch is accepted, and now we have to think up some present to give him. However, we have told this story to several Americans here, and they say they have never heard anything like it.

We were to have gone to the Peeress's School this morning, an appointment having been made to show us about. Mamma's cold preventing her going, we had somebody 'phone to see if the time could be changed. And this afternoon appear for her some lovely lilies and amaryllis--these being from people we had never seen. A Freudian would readily infer how bad my own manners are from the amount I talk about this.

We went to a Japanese restaurant for supper. This was a fish restaurant, and we cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumerable. Instead of bringing you in a bill of fare to order from, the coolie brings a big tray with samples of everything on it, and you help yourself. One thing was abalones on the half shell, these being babies, about like our clams, but not so tough, to say nothing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't try the fried devil fish and other luxuries, but wandered pretty far afield. When you have leisure, try eating lobster in the shell with chop sticks. You will resort to something more ancient than chop sticks, as I did. This restaurant is quite plebeian, though it has a great reputation for its secret recipe for the sauce the fish is cooked in, but it was considerably more expensive than the other--probably because we sampled so many side dishes; the other one cost less than five dollars for eight people--good food and all anybody could eat.

TOKYO, March 14th.

The ceremony of breakfast is over, and I am sorry again you cannot all share in these daily festivals which add so much to the dignity of living. We are now studying Japanese with the aid of the maids. I missed going to the Dolls' Festival at a private kindergarten and the result--this morning by mail a postcard from the children with numerous presents made by them, all dolls, and those I will send home, as they are interesting. With the presents they say: "We made cakes and prepared for your coming and we were in the depths of despair when you did not come. Please come another time." I am sure there is no other country in the world like this. The language is an impossible one. The way given in the phrases of the guide book is the way the man speaks. So when I stammer off those phrases the girls are literally tickled to death. When they tell me what I ought to say in the more elaborated polite way of the women, then I am floored. It is all an amusing game and relieves the watch they keep on each bite we take so as to be ready to supply more. Everything they do is marked with the kindliest attitude and every act or move is one of friendship.

This is the program for to-day: Go to lunch at the house of some missionaries, then to father's lecture at 3:30, then to dinner for University of Chicago students. To-morrow will be an open day for me and the little secretary will take me shopping. The big department store is the fashionable place where all the noble and rich buy their kimonos, and I may supplement my secondhand attempts with a new one. When I get to Kyoto I hope to find a real old one, as the new style of weave are infected with foreign influence. The other evening with Y---- we found a little shop for antiques which is a gem to look at. An old man and his wife, Y---- says he bets they are Samurai, with the politeness of real nobles, and their little place as carefully arranged for beauty as if it were their home--which it is. I broke an old Kutani plate and I inquired for one there. They had none, but we looked at their things, they with many bows, and when we left said we were sorry to have troubled them for nothing. They replied, "Please excuse us for not having the thing you wanted."

To-morrow we go to lunch here in the neighborhood with a very clever and interesting family (of a professor). None of the women call, at least none of the married ones, all being afraid of their English for one reason, but I am learning to just take things as they come and not to bother over formalities, never knowing whether that is the best way or not. The wedding of last Tuesday was the most interesting function I have seen. The marriage ceremony was the Christian one. The company represented the rich and fashionable of the city. The ladies all wear black crepe kimonos, that splendid crepe which is so heavy, next under the black is an all white of soft china silk, then the third of bright color. K----'s was that bright vermilion red. Her sleeves were not very long, as she is a mother, but the young girls wear bright colored kimonos and long sleeves that almost touch the floor. The bride wears black, too. All these dress-up kimonos have decorations in color, sometimes embroidered and sometimes dyed on the lower points of the front. The bride's was spread out on the floor around her just like the old pictures, embroidered in heavy rose peonies, her undergarment and the lining of the black, in rose color. Her hair was done in the old conventional way shown in the prints with the long pins of light tortoise shell with bouquets of tiny flowers carved at the ends, which stuck out about three inches, making a crown over her head. The receiving party is as follows: First, father of groom; second, mother of bride; third, groom; fourth, bride; fifth, father of bride; sixth, mother of groom. The line is straight and the bride is perfectly arranged like an old print, she and the groom with their eyes cast down. As each person passes, they make bows all along the line at once, but they do not move hand or eyes or a fold of these perfect clothes. I forgot to say the men, unfortunately, wear European dress. Then we moved on to two large rooms, the men all seated and smoking in one, and the women in the other. Those who knew me were very kind. Countess H---- introduced me to the bridesmaids; at least they would be the maids at home. They were the sisters and young relatives all dressed in the most brilliant kimonos and embroidered and decorated to the limit; they looked like all the parrots and peacocks and paradise and blue birds and every lovely color imaginable, while the uniform black of the guests, decorated with the pure white of their crests which stand out in such a group, formed the perfect background, free from all the messiness which is so apparent in a diversified gathering of all sorts of color and shape and materials in our land. At tea, which was very elaborate and taken sitting at the tables, the family of the two filled one table, a long one at the end of the room. The bride now wore a green kimono, equally brilliant; about two feet away from her sat the groom, both in the middle of the long table.

TOKYO, Thursday, March 20.

We have had a number of social events this week. Tuesday evening General H----, who speaks no English but who came over on the _Shinyo_ with us, gave a party for us in the gardens of the Arsenal Grounds. We could not have entered the Arsenal Grounds in any other way. There were about twenty-five people there, mostly Christian Association people, and the clergyman of the Japanese church where I had spoken the night before. He is keen about introducing more democracy in Japan, and I spoke on the moral meaning of democracy. Well, the garden isn't a garden at all in our sense, but a park, and the finest in Tokyo outside of the Imperial ones. It is quite different from the miniature ones we know as Japanese gardens, being of fair size, with none of those cunning little imitations in it; big imitations there are in plenty, as it was a fad of the old landscapists, as you might know, to reproduce on a small scale celebrated scenes elsewhere. The old Daimyo, who built this one two hundred years ago, was a great admirer of the Chinese and reproduced several famous Chinese landscapes as well as one from Kyoto. The extraordinary thing is the amount of variety they get in a small space; they could reproduce the earth, including the Alps and a storm in the Irish Channel, if they had Central Park. Every detail counts; it is all so artistically figured out and every little rock has a meaning of its own so that a barbarian can only get a surface view. It would have to be studied like an artist's masterpiece to take it all in. The arsenal factory fumes have killed many of the old trees and much of the glory has departed.

Probably Mamma has written you that she has one young woman, Japanese, coming on the ship with us under her care, to New York to study; and to-day another young lady called, and said she wanted to go back to America. About the young women going home with us, Y---- said we would have to be careful, as one time his mother was offered seventeen damsels to escort when she was going over, of whom she took three. You may not appreciate the fact that going to America to study means practically giving up marriage; they will be old maids and out of it by the time they return--also those who have been in America do not take kindly to having a marriage arranged for them. At a lecture I listened to yesterday, a Japanese woman, close to thirty, was pointed out to me as about to get married to an American architect here. There are exceptions, but this case is evidently a famous romance. The lecture was on Social Aspects of Shinto; Shinto is the official cult though not the established religion of Japan. Although nothing is said that wasn't scientifically a matter of course to be said--I mean supposing it was scientifically correct--one of the most interesting things was the caution that was taken to avoid publication of anything said. On one side the Imperial Government is theocratic, and this is the most sensitive side, so that historical criticism or analysis of old documents is not indulged in, the Ancestors being Gods or the Gods being Ancestors. One bureaucratic gentleman felt sure that the divine ancestors must have left traces of their own language somewhere, so he investigated the old shrines, and sure enough he found on some of the beams characters different from Chinese or Japanese. These he copied and showed for the original language--till some carpenters saw them and explained that they were the regular guild marks.

KAMAKURA, Thursday, March 27.

This weather beats Chicago for changeableness. Monday, at midnight, it was storming rain; when we got up the next day it was the brightest, warmest day we have had. We spent it sightseeing and went out without an overcoat. The magnolia trees are in full bloom. Yesterday and to-day are as raw March days as I ever saw anywhere; there would have been frost last night but for the wind. Tuberculosis is rife here and no wonder.

Three of the University professors have called on me this morning. They wish to arrange in every detail for our movements when we leave here. I suppose I was asked twenty times how long we are to stay in Kamakura. When I said I didn't know, it depended on weather and other things, they said, "Oh, yes," and in five minutes asked the same question again. Whether they arrange everything in minute detail for themselves in advance or whether they think we are helpless foreigners I can't make out; some of both, I think. But they can't understand that we can't give an exact date for everything we are going to do till we go to China. At the same time I never knew anybody to change their own plans, especially socially, as much as they do.

There is a great anti-American drive on now; seems to be largely confined to newspapers, but also stimulated artificially somewhat, presumably by the militaristic faction, which has lost more prestige in the last few months than in years, with a corresponding gain in liberal sentiment. They have consequently found it necessary to do something to come back. Criticism of the United States is the easiest way to arrest the spread of liberal sentiments and strengthen the arguments for a big militaristic party, like twisting the lion's tail with us. Discussion about race discrimination is very active and largely directed against the United States in spite of Australia and Canada, and also in spite of the fact that Chinese and Korean immigration here is practically forbidden, and they discriminate more against the Chinese than we do against them. But consistency is not the strong point of politics in any country. Excepting on the subject of race discrimination, foreigners in contact with Japanese do not find the anti-American feeling which is expressed in papers. If the Anglo-Japanese treaty of alliance should lapse because of the League of Nations or anything else, America will be held responsible, even if the British are the cause. Two years ago there was a similar anti-British drive here, and pretty hard bargains were driven with the British ally in all war matters. Now that Germany and Russia are out of it, England has no apparent reason for snuggling up much and the shoe is on the other foot. Which makes the attack on the U.S. all the more stupid, as they are internationally quite lonely, even if they tie up with France on account of similar Russian interests, financial and otherwise.

TOKYO, Wednesday, March 28.

To-morrow we are going to Kamakura again; it is only an hour and a half from here. We are going to take a little trip into the mountain and hot-spring district also, but the cherry blossom season is much advanced, ten days earlier than usual, and we are afraid it will spring itself in our absence if we go far, so probably we shall be back here in a few days for about a week. Then we shall take a five-day trip on our way to Kyoto, going to the shrine at Ise. This is the oldest and most sacred Shinto shrine in Japan, which means that it is the central spot for imperial ancestor worship. Speaking of ancestors, you remember our references to the Count. The father of his first wife has recently been made a Baron. Parliament being over, the Count has left for the southern Island to inform the ancestors of his first wife, who are buried there, of the important item of family gossip. The oldest liberal statesman of aristocratic descent, who was quite intimate with the late Emperor, won't go to the annual meeting to celebrate the granting of the Constitution by the late Emperor because he is so disgusted that no more progress has been made in constitutionalism, and says he cannot meet his late master until he can report progress to him. Otherwise he would be ashamed to meet him as he feels responsible to the Emperor. This would not be any place for a spiritualist to earn his living. They are clear past mediums.

We have chiefly been eating lately. I had two Japanese meals, a la chop sticks, yesterday and one to-day. Luncheon yesterday at a restaurant, where we had lots of things you never heard of, to say nothing of eating them, and a dinner at a friend's. There were twelve courses at table and two or three afterwards--not counting tea, and much the same at another dinner to-night. We have a bill of fare written on fans, only in Japanese, and little silver salt cellars as souvenirs besides. One feature of both dinners was soup three times, at the beginning, about the middle and again at closing, at these functions rice is not served till near the last course. Then there were one or two semi-soupy courses thrown in. I can eat raw fish and ask no questions; and in a bird restaurant, Sunday for luncheon, I ate raw chicken wrapped in seaweed; abalone is my middle name, and some of the shell fish we eat is probably devil fish.