Part 3

Mayor Ozaki has the distinction of being one of the three best speakers in the parliament, and his rare penetration, wide travel, and far-seeing intellect, as well as his wide knowledge of affairs in a practical sense, furnish him splendid equipment in sustaining the oratorical eminence he has gained. The speakers on this afternoon were many and, judging from the rapid firing from the seats and the frequent laughter, they were both witty and well directed. The members showed every age from grey hair to the trim dapper young thirty with its brocade waist coat. Every style of Japanese dress of old feudal days, which is a most dignified and becoming garment, to the latest work of the European tailor, was in evidence.

The voices were for the most part the well-bred modulated ones of the upper class Japanese, but some were impassioned and some were silvery and persuasive.

In front of the president’s desk stand the different members expressing their views in as many fashions as there are men. Groups of men stood about laughing and talking as is usual at such places and in the lobbies there was the usual passing and doubtless buttonholing. On every hand might be seen deep eyes of astute glance and the still deeper eyes of a far-seeing statesmanship.

The sitting lasted till four, and in times of eager debate when much is at stake, they sometimes do not rise till nine p.m. This making of laws is a noble profession, but it has its humdrum side as do all professions, and men seek to escape from this tedious side in different ways characteristic of themselves.

There is a restaurant on the ground, indeed, two of them, and we dined at one with his excellency and listened to the brilliant conversation which he added as a sauce to the food. Very appetizing food, by the way!

In Mr. Ozaki, Tokyo has a very unique mayor, a man with as many sided an existence as his city! “Self made,” as he proudly said, he has been a public man all his life and yet likes the quiet of his country life and the family quite as much as the most humble man of the city. A great reader of men and of events, he is a democrat to the backbone and has a manner simple as a child and a mind as keen as one of the damioes swords. He was once exiled from his city as a dangerous character, “for I am always in the opposition,” he laughingly said, “always a fighter,” and then he told us of the first three positions he held, from which he resigned in one, two and three months respectively. He has a dash of dare devil still, this excessively quiet, self-contained man, but years, years how they take the fight out of the bravest! We learned from him of the great undertakings which he as mayor has in view: the building of a harbor for Tokyo, the new sewerage, the 10,000,000 yens to invest for the coming exposition and the other things with figures of something like one hundred million yens. It reminded us of hearing President Harper talk of laying out Mr. Rockefeller’s millions. Such a juggler in figures he seemed.

The Ginza has been widened and one of the finest systems of water works in the world just terminated. This alone would make the administration famous. Tokyo elects her mayor every six years, and this mayor has served five only to begin to learn he claims, the duties of his office.

Mayor Ozaki in his younger days was a journalist and he has an able pen. The municipality has in its care a very interesting “Alms House,” of which we may write later. It is, with other of her institutions, a most creditable one.

Japan has the quick eye that sees and puts the right man in the right place, and certainly the choice of this man was admirable for the city.

Tokyo is now expecting to buy the electric roads and make out of them something with which to carry on these gigantic schemes of improvement.

The city of Tokyo is in the hands of fifteen aldermen, a council over which the mayor is president, in addition to which is a legislative body of sixty members, elected by the citizens. The right to vote is the qualification of the tax payer and is in fact universal suffrage. This makes the city more an independent or free institution than the country, as the right to sit in parliament is only received from votes held by property owners.

The mayor is elected by the municipal assembly; there is no ceremony in the inauguration of mayor, not even a practical oath. All the members of the assembly must be citizens of Tokyo, but the mayor need not be. When he is elected mayor, the right of citizenship is conferred upon him.

All the electric car system which is now in the hands of one company, is soon to be owned by the city. It is at this present time being considered by the Diet. The city in this way hopes to meet the enormous expenses which are confronting it in the way of harbor improvement, street widening and new sewerage, all of which will cost something like 100,000,000 yen. The new water works are almost completed. The water comes from the river Fama, about fifty or sixty miles out of the city, and is a masterly piece of engineering. It will provide Tokyo with a water system second to none. Of it the present mayor is justly proud.

Tokyo is increasing in population at about the same rate as Chicago, that is, about 100,000 per year. Labor troubles have not as yet become a serious thing in Tokyo, but the prescient gaze of the administration foresees that the day is not far distant when they may become so. The municipality was only established about ten years ago and was before that under the rule of a governor. The office of governor is still a relic of the feudal times and the Governor still has some prerogatives which remain from the ancient and somewhat archaic institution.

The preparation for the coming Exposition is the most serious thing before the city now. There has been appropriated about 10,000,000 yen.

“After the Exposition we hope to have the Aoyama Parade ground as a permanent park, and the construction for this gigantic affair involves the closest attention from now on,” said His Excellency. A huge building is projected, which will become permanent and will adorn Shiba park. The model which we saw is very imposing indeed, and is the work of the city engineer. It is rather of Roman style of architecture and is massive and admirably proportioned.

JAPANESE RAILWAYS

Dr. Hirai, Director of the Government Railway Bureau, graduated in the Van Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute just after the exhibition in Philadelphia in 1878, and on graduating was employed in the Mississippi River Commission by the United States Government, and did not return to Japan till 1882.

His pioneer railway service was in the Hokkaido, on the line which was built by Col. J. U. Crawford, an American, and run on purely American plans and methods. It has changed since, as after Dr. Hirai left the engineer introduced English customs, but retained the American cars.

“In my day,” said Dr. Hirai, “the New York Central and the Pennsylvania were the leading roads in America. I hope to see myself what thirty years have brought about, on my trip to that country next year. I had intended visiting Europe and America during the war time, but was prevented on that account from travelling. On my return I shall have seen and investigated modern railroading as it actually is in America and Europe. What I shall see will naturally bring benefit to my system.”

“What do you think of American railroad men, Dr. Hirai?” we asked.

“I think they are the greatest men that you have in any line. We are working at this moment for the amalgamation of seventeen private railroads and are reducing them to the same standard of rates, fares, and working staff. Our railroad system is just a little over 45,000 miles, which does not show very large, but its significance is in the fact that it includes all the main lines of this Empire and is therefore important. It includes the lines in the Hokkaido, Kyushiu, all of the main island, and Shikoku, one third of which belonged before to the Government, the rest having been acquired since 1906-07. The method by which these seventeen railroads have been acquired is based on the calculation that the stockholders will receive Government bonds bearing interest at the rate of 5 per cent., equal to the average of the dividend they have been receiving during the three years previous to the time of nationalization. When the railroad has been paying less on the capital than that, the amount of the bonds to be paid for the railroad is to be agreed upon between the Government, and the representatives of the stockholders. The whole amount of bonds to be issued for nationalization will be nearly Y450,000,000, or Y500,000,000, which we calculate will be paid off, interest and principal, in 60 years. The actual result since acquiring the railways is better than had been anticipated. Rates for goods and fares for passengers have been reduced to a single standard. The reduction on some lines has been more than 30 per cent., but still on the whole our receipts are about 10 per cent. on fares and 20 per cent. on freight more than the receipts of the previous year. The results are, therefore, most gratifying. The total receipts for the fiscal year ending the 31st of March this year will, I think, approximate Y70,000,000; the net receipts are about 32 to 35 millions. The actual net receipts for nine months to the end of last December are a little over Y28,000,000. This is a showing which speaks for itself.

“The most marked results of nationalization of our railroads is seen in the Hokkaido, where the best part of the railway was under the control of the Hokkaido Colliery and Railway Company. Naturally this company transported their coal in preference to all other freight, and the development of paper mills and other manufactures was slow. Since the Government has taken over the railway, no preference is given to any particular freight, and in consequence the development of other industries is facilitated.

“The steel works at Wakamatsu are supplying the army and navy, so we are short of materials from this source, but we obtain the greater part of our rails from them. We are building our cars in our own shops and in three private shops, but we import our locomotives from foreign countries, and you see English, German and American locomotives on our road. The most economical engines so far in use we find to be English. We hope to introduce greater ease and luxury in our cars every year. We are now exporting wood for ties and sleepers to America. Our first aim is for cheap and quick transportation of goods. Heretofore our receipts have been mostly from passengers, over 70 per cent., but of late we are giving more facilities to freight. We expect to build a central station in Tokyo, beginning the work this year, and Shimbashi will be like an old horse which in pride has once drawn his master’s carriage, but is later relegated to a dray, for it will be used for goods alone. We expect to connect the elevated line we are building now to Uyeno and Ochanomidzu. The plan of the new central station is already complete. It will be located in Marunouchi and will be a thoroughly modern station costing about Y2,000,000. It will be completed in time for the exposition, and we expect to have a station hotel in connection with it, after the plan of the Canadian Pacific hotels. But, when it is all finished, we shall have, like the man in the scripture, to pull down and build bigger, so fast does the tide and onward sweep of modern life outreach even the large projects of man’s brain. We have something like 70,000 employes, a good standing army, and our Society for the relief of the injured and disabled has on its list 50,000 members; this provides for medical treatment and care for those laid aside in any way. It is a society in which the railroad and the men co-operate. The men pay in every month 3 per cent. of their wages, and the government 2 per cent., so that 5 per cent. of the income of all wages is appropriated for this relief fund. The officers of the road get a pension after 15 years’ service amounting to one quarter of their salary. We have to supply the staff of the Korean, Manchurian and Formosan times, who are men trained with us.

“During the war we sent 15,000 men to work the military lines in Manchuria and Korea. A Railway School is situated near Uyeno Station in Tokyo, where the course is preliminary. After graduation the men come to us and work up. For high grades we employ university graduates or those from high commercial schools. The most urgent work we have on hand in the coming year is the extension of station facilities, doubling of tracks, extension of repairing shops for the existing lines, for which we have an estimate of eight millions for the coming year. In the line of new construction, we have an estimate of about 25 millions yearly extending over twelve years, which will add about two thousand miles to our railway when completed.”

Dr. Hirai speaks the English of a generation gone, with the clear cut pronunciation of another age when men and women had time to do things well, and as he speaks English, so he stands at the head of one of the great railroads of the world, with the gentle suavity and calm reflective face of a scholar, not a man of affairs, with a serene self-possession which is the unmistakable mark of genius combined with self-mastery. He is more like the great Dr. Charcot than any man I ever met, and I remembered on coming home that in Dr. Charcot’s Paris house was placed, in his vast library, a statue of Buddha.

MADAME SHIMODA

Madame Shimoda is one of those rare beings, who have the singular fortune to have not only fame, but what is far more to be coveted, a place, in the hearts of thousands of her countrymen and women.

Hardly any one in Tokyo, who reads at all, but could guide you to the little wooden house, on the hill, one of a million homes of her city, where this virile and delicate woman lives, surrounded by the care of relatives and friends, who it is easy to see give her, not only care, but love.

Born in a feudal castle in the picturesque country of the Japan mountain region, with the country spirit still in her, which the life for many years in the palace of Tokyo could not destroy, that spirit you feel in the touch of her diminutive hand, in the glance of her powerful eyes, where dwells unquenched the freshness of free spaces.

Before she was twenty she was a reader to Her Majesty the Empress and began the severe training of court etiquette, with its demands, more than those of a soldier for self-control, yet even after years of such experience and the still more severe drill as a teacher of young ladies she has as charming a naturalness as a girl, so great is the gift of the “kind old Nurse” Nature.

These men and women of Japan, who have crossed the half century line, are all of them, more or less, the inheritors of the chivalry of the ages gone by, and of all those ideas which Japan once held as absolutely necessary to the making of a lady or a gentleman.

They tell us with a soft resigned sigh, that those ideals are passing away before the inroads of western civilization, and who can not regret it?

A volume of this little lady’s work with her round, generous hand-writing, is one of my treasures, as she stands first among the “singing birds” among the women of her land.

Her tastes are as varied as her life, with always that passionate love of nature in the foreground.

The heroic, as is natural in a Japanese woman, comes next, and the late war comes often into the short simple lines, where self-poise is again so marked.

Her fondness for youth and the sentiments of youth come into play on every other page.

I had spent a number of hours in the school which is her greatest monument, the “Peeress school,” where the daughters of the nobility are educated, and found there a duplicate of a first class European institution, from the kindergarten to the graduating class.

I had listened to the eloquence of the teachers as they spoke of the French Revolution, and watched the faces of the English class, as they went over the ever imperial verses of Tennyson.

In those pretty, demure eyes, there was just the passion for the “good, the true and beautiful,” which all fine youth has, the same we know so well, before the Dawn has left them.

We passed a group in the hall and there was the daughter of the greatest admiral of modern times, Miss Togo!

We saw them in the cooking school and heard their bursts of laughter as they made the interesting and doubtless indigestible dishes they were soon to partake of.

From the Auditorium to the garden, where the children play and make those queer shapes and forms in the sand which latter are enlarged in the vaster designs of manhood and womanhood, we found everywhere the mark of this woman, her care and her genius.

On one Sunday, we were invited to her house, and a very bright Yokohama girl, who spoke Japanese fluently, was our enthusiastic companion to the home of the first teacher and first poetess of the land.

I was amused as we sat and she talked for an hour in the quiet soft toned parlor of the higher education of the women of her land, to see how her glance would wander from my pencil to the face of the young girl, and of how she would interrupt her most serious remarks of history, which she has at her finger tips, of philosophy, bred in her bones, of the highest ethics of life, when she would cast one of those bewitching smiles on the girl as she pressed her to take more sweets. Life is ever the master passion of all such souls and they live only in to-day. Higher education is not new, but like all great movements, this of Japan began long, long ago, and once women held the place of almost the equal of their lords, but the strange story of reaction and retrogression, which marks the advance of the East, came in to disfigure the wonderful march of the thought life of women.

Madame Shimoda is a pioneer in her work, and to-day thousands of modern Japanese women rise up to call her blessed.

She was left a widow after a very brief married life and then all her pent up love and devotion went out to her sex.

She has travelled extensively in Europe and America, and with that master power that all Japanese seem to have, she has taken much of the good, and left the bad of the West.

The great need of physical culture for the future mothers of Japan was what appealed to her most strongly and this has been the first note in her educational scheme.

We had sought for the motto which gives the keynote to the social life of a Japanese home, and in the house of Viscount Kaneko we had found it to be: “Wealth and rank are but a fleeting show, the merit is the man.” Here it was, as we might have known: “Duty First.”

What would one expect of a woman who had spent her middle life in educating the upper classes of her people, that she would want to rest? Oh, no! for the remaining years she is to devote herself just as earnestly to the educating of middle and lower class Japanese women.

This frail but purposeful woman had fire in her eyes as she spoke of the future, a future which to such as she must only mean vaster and vaster horizons and more radiant conquests.

PEERESS’ SCHOOL

If you walk from Hibiya Park between two imposing public buildings, up the broad avenue to the top of the hill, you will come to the high wall which encloses the Peeress’ School, with the court, a fine entrance space, with porter’s lodge and a porte cochere of Gothic arches, and the whole a good bit of English architecture, with wide door and a lofty hall. Opposite you as you enter is the refectory, with its low tables and the plain and substantial effect of age and use. Two pretty portresses will meet you at the door, with their eyes full of fun, as all boarding-school maids have, as they are the secret ambassadors of much mischief and are initiates of that occult society of fun. Their demure manners, assumed for the occasion, do not blind you to their roguery, for you have been a boarding-school girl long ago.

The instructor in English is as courteous as a guide as he is clever in the use of your mother tongue, and you begin with a keen relish the tour of inspection.

The reception room is rather like the meeting room of a committee, for which purpose it is doubtless often used. Here the wise heads are doubtless laid together and those plans for the education of Japan’s future wives and mothers laid. Out of this room leads the Empress’ reception room, with the heavy damask curtains, the high ceilings and the empty walls where, on the two yearly visits, the gracious and “first woman of the land” receives the homage of the director and his staff and gives in return the interest of all true women, be they high or low, in the education and welfare of their sex.

The school has three terms,--one week’s vacation in April, and more than two months in summer, and a short vacation at the New Year. About the end of October is the exhibition in physical exercises, and about the end of March that awe-inspiring epoch of graduation, when the high functionaries of State and the distinguished clientele of Tokyo come to see their girls step out of the schoolroom into the school of life--a moment mingled in every land and school with gaiety and pathos.

The children enter the kindergarten at the end of the toddling age, and the little lads and lassies sit side by side in their delightful rooms and make their first songs of life, as they end them, together, their little arms and hands making the first efforts at rhythm together, awkward movements full of grace. They pass at eight years to the primary department and begin the toilsome upward pull of real study, and here their ways part,--the boys for the Peers’ School and the ruder ways of masculine effort. From the primary course they enter at about the age of fourteen the “middle course,” and that is in grade substantially our High School. From this they can take post-graduate courses in special studies, such as the classics, music and other branches. The branches are technical departments, music, needlework and embroidery, and a thorough course in cooking. Of the painting we will speak later.

The Literary department must include courses in advanced Japanese classics and English and French literature. The Science department comprises a small laboratory, not overstocked with apparatus, and a good class-room for experiments. This department has few devotees, as might be expected, and also mathematics, and there is “little Latin and less Greek” in the regular curriculum.

These sparkling-eyed young damsels take mostly to the gentler arts and the gentler paths of learning. Our first visit was to the painting department, as was fitting in a land which is above all things an amateur of art. Here some ten young girls were painting on silk the flowers and butterflies so dear to the Japanese heart. They were fifth-year students and were very clever. The first year’s work hung about on the walls. We looked for still-life subjects and casts, and were told we would find them later, as we did, and some good work in oil, and were told that animals and more ambitious subjects were attempted by these embryo Rosa Bonheurs. The work was about on a level technically, without being as original, as similar work of the same age at home.