Part 2

The force of such words as these in Mr. Asakawa’s book “Russo-Japanese Conflict,” I feel as a traveller over four thousand miles of railroad controlled by Japan, from Yokohama to Port Arthur. If Japan is the country of loveliness par excellence, and Korea ranking with Greece and Montenegro, in the dramatic and picturesque, Manchuria is the majestic climax to both! Antoken, two days ride from Seoul, is the drop curtain painted in strokes of impressionism, as wonderful an introduction as the heart could wish to the farther grandeur of Asia. The Yalu has vast perspectives in its reaches into the heart of the land and moves one as do all great rivers, as the Neva, the Thames, commercially stupendous, as well as wide and deep. It seems a colossal boundary separating Korea from China, but in this respect it fails of its purpose since Japan has crossed it! The conflict which began near the gates of Pyongyang grows here more intense in retrospect and you see, still much as they were used, the sand bags and the remains of the fortifications. Sitting in a box car, with about twenty Japanese and Manchurians, we watched the unfolding of the landscape of China at our leisure. Here for the first time in our four years of the Orient we saw the horse doing his proper work as we see him in Europe and America. They were drawing the heavy vans as at home laden with harvest.

Antoken is a wild, unkempt town sprawling out in many directions, and is being revolutionized by hard labor, as fast as toil, oriental toil, can revolutionize it. The gaunt crags, the excavated cliffs, make it stern in aspect and rather alarm one as to what may lie beyond. The road seems a toy, but your admiration increases with the square of the distance, as you wind on into the first “divide” on the edge of precipices and over chasms for five hours of each day, through scenery only the passes of the Alps or the Rockies can equal, and although I have travelled through both, I think in certain aspects this trip rivals either. The gauge is to be widened in two years and the distance shortened. I was the guest on my return of the engineer in his private car, so I had the pleasure of admiring the fruit of his brain with the man who had conceived it. At the little mountain station where we passed the night and which is provided with a good Japanese hotel, I was told that here will be the centre of a health resort, and of course the game is all any sportsman can desire. At this station we met a French engineer, on his return to Paris from Tonkin, and his wit and interest in all he saw did much to enliven the stay. His grey hairs had not dimmed his delight in the superb panoramas of Nature, and his enthusiasm was added to our own. These heights covered with the rich hues of autumn are in fine contrast to the treeless, improvident mountains of Korea!

I have regretted not being able to accept an invitation to visit the American mines in Korea, but as it meant a trip in an ox cart I felt with Manchuria before me I had all I could have the heroism for. These mountains of Manchuria are supposed to be unfit for mining. The first farmyards in our home sense begin, soon out of Antoken, with the picturesque confusion of the autumn fruits. The soft greens of the intervals remind us of the country outside of Paris in spring. The cows and pigs are everywhere and in spite of the swineherds, who reminded us of our Spanish reading and the story of the “Prodigal Son” most vividly, they do get in the way of the slowly moving train. One little black fellow had his last race and fell, as so much rustic valor has before him, before the wheels we call progress, or Juggernaut according to our mood. One old swineherd in tatters came to the car door. Never off the stage have I seen a character so like the quaint creations of Shakespeare’s dramas. We made him happier with a few persimmons and a few coins, realizing from his extra crimson nose, that he was indeed in “a far country.” Now we were as the days wore on climbing ridges, now descending into abysses, every moment full of awe and of pleasure. Along one of the slopes I saw a letter carrier with just that easy lope he has on Broadway: so far gone that humanizes the letter! Caves, caverns, stupendous effects at every turn, on we climb. The mists on the heights in early morning are most exquisite. We pass military posts and one where there are rich coal mines. Being the only European on the train, and a woman, we are the “chief animal of the show.” We afford great amusement to the sightseers of Manchuria. Huge woods, men cutting logs, or at their arduous toil, it is all reciprocated and we part the best of friends, the sturdy mountaineers and the woman, strange indeed. They are, in their uncouth way, chivalrous, and as chivalry is dying out in every country we may yet have to seek it alone in Manchuria!

At one stopping place, I was attracted by a shrine, of which you see so many, and as we had an hour’s wait, went to investigate. I fell in with the native kindness and was asked in with the greatest show of hospitality to see the interior. It was of course a farm house! How bare! There was the raised platform where, as in Russia, the family slept. All was blackened with smoke and all, including the family, needed a lot of water to bring them to the original color, but the children were very bright under their coat of dirt and very graceful, in a way far more attractive than most civilized mannikins. The advent of a foreigner made an event in the village annals and we soon had quite an audience of the neighbors. It took us back again to days of the One who went about doing good. I did not see a church spire from Antoken to Dalny; am told that there are Catholic missions and a cathedral in Moukden. The villages are all inclosed in mud walls and are compact and occasionally one sees a temple much the worse for the “tooth of time.”

SEOUL

If you should fall asleep over a volume of the “Arabian Nights” as I have done many times in childhood and should awaken in Seoul, you would not find the transition in the least startling.

There is no city which could better fit in its glowing pages. Its coloring is as fantastic as are the episodes of the “thousand and one nights,” and to be accurate when therein describing its manifold glories, as I saw them, is to me impossible.

The editor of one of the very spicy journals which keep the Japanese busy asked me to give my impressions and when I did, said they were far and away too poetical and too imaginative for a daily paper, but they did not approach the reality; not by half!

There are two railway stations in Seoul and they are modern and very brisk in their air as we whirled into the second one late at night after a day’s ride in this wonderland of amber and gold mountains. I was too sleepy to do aught but fall into the comfortable bed of the “Astor House,” one of the best kept hotels in the Orient if you refer to the cuisine.

The next morning I awoke to find myself up under the shadow of a huge Chinese wall and beyond were fascinating towers and spires and distant flag poles of consulates and not many hours were lost before we took a Sunday morning stroll uphill and thru gigantic gates flashing with mural paintings of dragons and wild impressionistic colors and weird symbolism, and found ourselves in front of a Russian church where the bells were ringing. We entered to the strains of that Slavic harmony which allures as no other and there we found blond priests, with long hair, worn in the same way as in the old Greek paintings and the profile of the angelic Northern saint type; it was a strange paradox to be in this chapel which represented a power now a removed obstacle to Japanese dominion, and see its worshipers calmly allowed to go on singing as of old. “One day they will come singing back again,” said a bright young American observer. All Korea has two influences very marked in its civilization, Arabic and Chinese, and a still more unique aspect of a Grecian tradition. It is all three and Indian above all three!

There is something of the wild free stride of all mountain peoples in their walk as you watch them in their flowing white robes and pot hats along the highroads and there is a wild glance in the eyes of the men not fierce, but the glance of some gentle animal untamed. The women, as all know, are the household drudges and are completely under the thumb of the male element, having neither name nor station apart from these very self-important masters.

They are kept in rich houses quite as in Turkey and they wear a silk mantle over their faces when in the street. You can see their large wondering furtive eyes looking out as you pass from station to station, where the dapper Japanese officials keep them in check.

They wear the most delicious shoes in the world, these same shy sisters; they are Turkish and turned up slightly at the toes and are silk besides, and very dainty in shade. The upper class wear this flowing garment and the mantle of white silk in the street and the middle class the green mantle.

The poorest class, as is so often the case, gives the most picturesque tone to the city streets and we have had our breath quite taken away by meeting some woman, whose fancy ran a riot of color which would have eclipsed Turner himself!

I was invited to an evening entertainment at one of the hospitals, where the girls were in their house costume, and it consists of a bolero jacket and baggy trowsers, or divided skirt, it appeared to be. Many of the girls were pretty and as animated as one could wish. A debate was held and for diplomatic reasons I will not give the subject, but it was as full of fire as a Greek patriot’s and carried on amid the roars of laughter a school girl’s performance usually meets with.

One of the faces of the nurses was so beautiful and so pathetic I could not help remarking on its sublimity and my chief hostess told me a little of its tragedy.

The face was minus a nose, which a jealous husband in a moment of frenzy cut off.

The woman is a christian and the meek glory of her face will remain one of the memories of a lifetime.

No Madonna I ever saw in Europe equals it for sweetness.

Another inmate of this hospital, so admirably bringing medical aid and training to Korean women, was a little girl without arms or legs, but still smiling and happy!

All the world has heard of the great wave of Christianity which swept over Korea in these last years and the glory of it belongs to the rare, very rare men and women, who are there; men and women talented in letters as in religious devotion and their fame is great, such as Dr. James Gale and others.

But oh, the streets of Seoul! Wander up on the citadel and gaze from its ramparts down on the palace gardens, the new palace where you can of a morning see the Emperor ride forth to visit his mother’s tomb or go to meet a distinguished guest as we saw him the morning the Crown Prince of Japan came, when the brilliant city was decorated with the magic talent of those past masters of scenic effect, the Japanese.

By one of the arches we saw the most unique spectacle as the Emperor and suite and the two young princes side by side swept on in that silent awe of Oriental homage, so unlike our own.

We saw Togo and Ito and the others who have made the most brilliant history of modern times, Togo laughing like a school boy, at all the parade, which without him would never have been. We wondered if thru his modest head any such thoughts passed!

Flags of Korea and Japan were in every possible nook and corner and arches of pine so solid in their construction that they did not look paltry beside the superb wall, which girts the whole city and with true Chinese irony runs up the hills and towards the sky and where the wondrous Korean mountains stand bare, bleak and awful.

Koreans have cut all timber from their peaks and left them like their kingdom exposed from shiftlessness, a prey: now Japan is to make them again, to wave with Nature’s fairest plumes the giants of the forest.

These gaunt rocks made, however, a truly majestic and fantastic background to the oriental brilliancy of the streets with their rows on rows of open shops, full of tempting wares such as we cannot often find.

You can buy in Seoul furniture that is a marvel of luxury and usefulness and the mother of pearl inlaid ornaments and the wonderful brass decorated articles are almost an enthrallment. The American Consulate in Seoul is as rich in its interior beauty of decoration, as in its hospitality. Its mistress is one of the most lovely women of our land, or of any land. There we met the forceful Englishwoman who had tutored the Crown Prince, until he left for Japan; a charming personality whose reminiscences would fill volumes of delightful romance, as she has been in the “inner circle” for years and that, indeed, in a country as full of brilliant scenes and of thrilling events as a drama of the most Victor Hugan sort.

You can buy amber and silk and the wonder of Eastern fabrication and you can exhaust your prose and your purse and your vocabulary over it both, in admiration and exasperation.

Seoul is in part modern, that is, a little modern, and it has a street car line very much like we used to have in Manila in the good old days “before de war.”

I always took it with the thrilling sense of not knowing where I was to land and indeed, altho Seoul looks easy to the traveler, you can get lost as quickly as in Boston. I was lost several times, but found myself again just where I started.

After dark the streets are lighted with huge Chinese lanterns and small Korean lanterns which are carried in the hands and you can follow your neighbor, as you do very gratefully, home this way.

Seoul has a new boulevard since the Japanese occupation and the streets are, oh, marvel of marvels, being cleaned!

Koreans would never have thought of that in all their years of philosophical wandering into the unseen, where they like so much to go!

My trip to Seoul proved to be of more importance than I anticipated, as I had a hole in one of the principal streets filled up, to my great astonishment, again proving that “where there is a will there is a way.” It had threatened for some time to break many hundreds of legs, which passed that way every hour of the day and Stygian night!

Seoul lies in a cup of gigantic hills and it must be not a little like Jerusalem, in situation a “joy of the whole earth.” It has superb moonlight nights and radiant days and it is as majestic and dreamy and sad and glorious as a Greek tragedy.

If you go into the parks of the two ancient palaces and wander for hours and hear the birds sing and watch the tall fading on castle walls and the glory that was Seoul and the grandeur that was Korea and watch thru the trees, arches and bridges of lovely shape and the pagodas richly tinted, where rested the lovely forms of long ago and see the art and the dead, forgotten beauty of an age when beauty was enough, when an emperor sued within those bowers and the days were long and careless and the great lotus flowers now on their stems, as then lulled to sleep all of man’s longings, why you will have to literally tear yourself away, not to want to drop to sleep never to wake up, as you did over the book which told it all, how they lived and dreamed and loved and hated in--Seoul, yes, so long ago when there was a king who had a son beautiful and good and a daughter as fair as the moon, you remember!

JAPANESE IN KOREA

The question of the relations between the Koreans and the Japanese in Korea is a delicate one--one which requires an insight into past causes and present issues somewhat beyond that of a casual observer.

It is a question which finds its parallel in the relations of the Filipinos to the Americans in the Philippine Islands. Taking into consideration some of the minor differences, it is strikingly the same.

Unwillingly, by the fortunes of war, both these helpless people, people loving very little the “strenuous life” and enjoying ease with little, far more than much without it, are being forced to arouse themselves to action along new paths into a complex existence to which their child-like and primitive needs do not call them. They are both more given to reflection than action, and to theory rather than practice. The same pride of those who take refuge in dreams is found in both, but in the case of the Korean it is even harder to obliterate the past tendencies, as they are not anxious to change even when at slight cost to themselves. But here we must make a second observation,--that along the normal and intellectual paths they do desire improvement. They will sacrifice much to educate their children, and will go to any privation to get an education. For example, the nurses in training in the Seoul hospital, the “Po Ku Nyo Koan,” take six years of study and pay for tuition, and do it gladly and with enthusiasm to obtain their diplomas. I saw several of these young ladies who would do credit to Johns Hopkins, so noble and self-poised did they appear. But stubborn they most surely are, and refractory to those new forms of life which mean other customs and other laws. The missionaries find them open to spiritual truth and tractable to the practice of it in their lives.

Both essentially Oriental and gentle when left to themselves, the Filipino and the Korean become sullen, and even fierce when forced against their will.

Both Americans and Spaniards, as a Spanish gentleman said to me, become heady and inflated with their own importance as soon as they “round Corregidor.” The least desirable traits come into focus when vulgar people are in the foreground. The Japanese have suffered somewhat by crossing the Tsushima Straits. Insolence and a swagger of “we are the people” we fancied we had left behind us in the “Pearl of the Orient,” and which is slowly passing away, however, is recognizable at a glance in Korea. A jinrikisha man, who seems to be a “thorn in the flesh” of Yokohama, becomes a festering sore in Korea; he runs over unwary men and women without a grimace, and bullies the rider into double fare with the air of a bandit.

The meddling “in other men’s business,” conspicuous also where ignorance and lawlessness come into play, as in the Philippines and Korea, is also characteristic. There is no bound to the impertinence of those who feel like the bad boy of the nursery that the governess will never dare tell, for she would get the worst of it if she did. Fair play is not conspicuous in Korea, nor always in the Philippines. Great complaint is made by foreigners in Korea as to the wholesale disregard of property rights, the absolute impossibility of getting justice before the law. Fortunately the parallel stops here; we have Filipino judges who enjoy nothing better than sending an American up for a long term! I hope the time is not far distant when a Korean judge can enjoy the same ironical pleasure. Of course the greatest difficulty lies in this adjusting of ignorance to another ignorance in the lower classes, the ignorance of both being absolutely impenetrable. The educated Japanese recognize this and acknowledge their inability to cope with it at times. Occasionally this takes a tragic aspect, as when in working on the telegraph wires in the streets of Seoul they warned to no purpose over and over again a poor Korean, to whom electricity and its deadly power was as unknown a quantity as a Sanskrit root to a London fishwife, and at last they hit him a blow, and he fell--dead!

But force is always the weapon of men who have power over others and none over themselves, whether in Bombay, Manila or Seoul. But that the patience of English and American and Japanese is often tried to the uttermost is also true, doubtless. “Patience conquers all things”; this saying of Saint Theresa is needed by them all; and by the Filipino and Korean, above all. In conversation with foreigners, with Japanese and with Koreans, you feel this absolutely.

A Korean boy said to me pitifully, “Oh, they do not understand,” and a very astute and able man of prominence in finance in Seoul, a Japanese, acknowledged the same difficulty of harmonizing such divergent elements, meaning exactly what the boy could not express. Some of the foreigners are strongly influenced by their hearts in favor of the Koreans, citing incidents of their ill-treatment by the coolies and the merchants. Others, relying on their heads, say, “No, Japan is doing as well as under the circumstances is possible with a delicate, obstinate, inflexible people, who do not wish to develop in the modern sense.” As to the Japanese soldiers and their behavior, I heard only praise, which is certainly, considering the opportunity they have to be otherwise, admirable.

The Korean has by no means the courtesy towards strangers of the Japanese, but it is said that once you show yourself their friend they go further in their cordiality and are far more unselfish in their devotion.

The less attractive qualities of the Koreans have been greatly overdrawn. They are kindly and attractive, the women especially so, even winsome, graceful, and possessing that dignity and poise, partly characteristic of the British Indian and partly of the Mohammedan. They are sticklers for tradition and punctilious in etiquette, and like such people usually are rather more anxious for the “letter” than the “spirit.” Sensitive to the feelings of a stranger as the Japanese are, they certainly are not. The prosperity of Korea is tempting to the avaricious Japanese, and they have been guilty of such transactions as are some of the monopolies of America, crushing to the wall the less clever. It is an old story; Japan can show England and America nothing new in greed. We have exhausted the repertoire!

Seoul is one of the most enchanting cities in the world; its situation is marvelous, its picturesqueness only Constantinople can rival.

Korea is a land of stupendous beauty and attractiveness, the kingdom of toil, and it is to this they are looking. To the onward marching lines of men who see the future, Korea and Manchuria are the stepping stones. The wide fields extend in every direction, the hills “rejoice on every side.” Japan marches her soldiers at every station, law and order go with her, and out of chaos, Asiatic chaos, she will bring--who that sees her at work can doubt--civilization in the modern sense.

TOKYO AND ITS MAYOR

One of the most interesting experiences of my stay in Japan was my visit to the parliament, where I was privileged to have as a guide the mayor of Tokyo, Mr. Ozaki, a man who has had a seat in that body every year since it has had its existence.

The buildings are not in the least imposing. They show the same paradoxical simplicity which we find in so much of this most stately people’s ways.

Over the president’s desk hang eight portraits in oil and on a raised platform under them a group of distinguished workingmen, whom I took to be in part officials and visitors.

Our seat in the diplomatic gallery was directly opposite that of the president, Mr. Sugita, a most distinguished appearing man who looked not a little like our late John Hay. The vice president, Mr. Minsura, sat by the president’s side, a serious man of sedate face.

The chief secretary is Mr. Hayashida.

It was a most curious thing to look about the room and to contrast the individualities with those scenes we had watched in Congress, the German reichstag, and in Paris in the senate chamber.