Mysterious Japan

_Viscount Kaneko's Home--Some Souvenirs--A Rooseveltian Memory--Doctor Bigelow's Prophecy--A First Meeting with Roosevelt--The Russo-Japanese War--Luncheons at the White House--...

_The "Connecticut Yankee" in Old Japan--Commodore Perry--The Elder Statesmen--Marquis Okuma--Self-made Men--Viscount Shibusawa--The Power of the Daimyo--Samurai Privileges, Incl...

_The Average American and International Affairs--The Vagueness of the Orient--A Definition by Former Ambassador Morris--"They say"--The "Yellow Peril"--International Insults--Ph...

_I Entertain at a Teahouse--Folk Dances--The Sense of Form--The Organization of Society--Jitsuko Helps me Give a Party--Pretty Kokinoyou--Geisha Games--Rivalries of Geisha--The...

_A Day Goes Overboard--A Sunday Schism--A Desert Island--Water, Water Everywhere--Men with Tails--Anecdotes of the Emperor of Korea--Korean Reforms--Cured by Brigands--The Man w...

When I had been several weeks in Japan, striving continually to gain some comprehension of the people and their ways, I began to feel a little bit discouraged. Never had I been...

_Reversed Ideas--Some Advantages of Old Age--Morbidity and Suicide--High Necks and Long Skirts--Language--Chinese Characters and Kana--Calligraphy as a Fine Art--The Oriental Mi...

Elsewhere I have said that the Japanese are generally hard workers; wherefore it may seem paradoxical to add that they are also leisurely workers. But the paradox is not so grea...

My last days in Japan were my best days, for I spent them in a Japanese home, standing amid its own lovely gardens in Mita, a residential district some twenty minutes by motor f...

_Some Reflections on New York Hospitality--And on the Hospitality of Japan--Letters of Introduction--Bowing--How Japanese Politeness is Sometimes Misunderstood--Entertaining For...

_Our Difficulties with the Language--The Questionable Humour of Broken Speech--"Do You Striking This Man for That?"--"Companies, Scholars, and Other Households"--Curious Corresp...

As you reach the outskirts of Tokyo you think you are coming to another little town, but the town goes on and on, and finally as the train draws near the city's heart large buil...

Though the grip of the American national game upon Japan is sufficiently strong to have brought a Japanese university team to this country and to have taken one or two American...

It amused me to hear, a little while ago, that a party of our Congressmen, on a junket in Japan, had been implored by certain pious Americans over there, to avoid such sinful th...

Lafcadio Hearn tells us that training in the Tea Ceremony "is held to be a training in politeness, in self-control, in delicacy--a discipline in deportment"; but Jakichi Inouye,...

_A Walk in a Kimono--Dinner at the Inn--Sweet Servitors--An Evening's Enchantment--The Disadvantages of Ramma--My Neighbours Retire--A Japanese Bed--Breakfast--"Bear's Milk"--Th...

Neither the box of lunch nor the automobile to take us to the station was ready, though both had been ordered the previous night. We waited until twenty minutes before train tim...

A journey of about three and a half hours brought us to the seacoast town of Katsuura, the terminus of the little railway line. The industry of Katsuura is fishing, and there is...

Though the Japanese system of arranged marriages is sometimes likened to the French system, the two are quite different. In France the great point is the bride's dowry, but the...

_The Old-time Anti-Foreign Sentiment--Prince Yoshinobu Tokugawa--Emperor and Shogun--Prince Yoshinobu becomes Shogun--His Highness, Akitake, Goes to France--Humorous Episodes--T...

_Quakes and the Building Problem--Big Quakes--Democracy in Architecture--Narrow Streets and Tiny Shops--The Majestic Little Policeman--The Dread of Burglars--What to Do in a Qua...

The satisfying thing about Japan is that it always looks exactly like Japan. It could not possibly be any other place. The gulls are Japanese gulls, the hills are Japanese hills...

As the luncheon at the Maple Club was my first meal in the Japanese style I had not realized the volume of such a repast. I ate too much of the first few courses, and as a resul...

Some Americans are horrified because commercialized vice is officially recognized in Japan. The thought is unpleasant. But I am by no means sure that, since this form of vice do...

In an exceptionally picturesque fishing village a few miles on, I paused to take some photographs. On a platform outside an old house overhanging the gray sea-wall at the margin...

It is interesting to observe that the two races in which highly specialized artistic feeling is almost universal have, despite their antipodal positions on the globe, many commo...

Thenceforward I looked at gardens not with the unenlightened enthusiasm of the casual amateur, but with a critic's eye. Here and there I would make a mental reservation, saying...

The national travelling bag of the Japanese is a large, strong handkerchief of silk or cotton, in which the articles carried on a journey are tied up. The elasticity of this con...