Letters from China and Japan Part 1

Letters from China and j.a.pan.

by John Dewey and Alice Chipman Dewey.

PREFACE

John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C. Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in this book, left the United States early in 1919 for a trip to j.a.pan. The trip was eagerly embarked on, as they had desired for many years to see at least something of the Eastern Hemisphere. The journey was to be solely for pleasure, but just before their departure from San Francisco, Professor Dewey was invited, by cable, to lecture at the Imperial University at Tokyo, and later at a number of other points in the j.a.panese Empire. They traveled and visited in j.a.pan for some three to four months and in May, after a most happy experience, made doubly so by the unexpected courtesies extended them, they decided to go on to China, at least for a few weeks, before returning to the United States.

The fascination of the struggle going on in China for a unified and independent democracy caused them to alter their plan to return to the United States in the summer of 1919. Professor Dewey applied to Columbia University for a year's leave of absence, which was granted, and with Mrs. Dewey, is still in China. Both are lecturing and conferring, endeavoring to take some of the story of a Western Democracy to an Ancient Empire, and in turn are enjoying an experience, which, as the letters indicate, they value as a great enrichment of their own lives. The letters were written to their children in America, without thought of their ever appearing in print.

EVELYN DEWEY.

NEW YORK, January 5th, 1920.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND j.a.pAN

TOKYO, Monday, February.

Well, if you want to see one mammoth, muddy masquerade just see Tokyo to-day. I am so amused all the time that if I were to do just as I feel, I should sit down or stand up and call out, as it were, from the housetops to every one in the world to come and see the show. If it were not for the cut of them I should think that all the cast-off clothing had been misdirected and had gone to j.a.pan instead of Belgium. But they are mostly as queer in cut as they are in material.

Imagine rummaging your attic for the colors and patterns of past days and then gathering up kimonos of all the different colors and patterns and sizes and with it all a lot of men's hats that are like nothing you ever saw, and very muddy streets, and there you have it. The 'ricksha men have their legs fitted with tight trousers and puttees to end them, and they are graceful. They run all day, through the mud and snow and wet in these things made of cotton cloth that are neither stockings nor shoes but both, and they stand about or sit on steps and wait, and yet they get through the day alive. I am distracted between the desire to ride in the baby cart and the fear of the language, mixed with the greater fear of the pain of being drawn by a fellow-being. They are a lithe set of little men and look as if they had steel springs to make them go when you look at their course. Still I have been only in autos, of which there are not many here. I get tired with the excitement of the constant amus.e.m.e.nt. This morning a man came out of a curio shop. Bow. "Exguse me, madame, is this not Mrs. Daway? I knew you because I saw your picture in the paper. Will you not come in and look at our many curios? I shall have the pleasure of bringing them to your hotel. What is the number of your room, madame?" Bow. "No, please do not bring them to my room, for I am always out. I will come in and see them sometime." "Thank you, madame, please do so, madame, we have many fine curios." Bow. "Good-morning, madame."

The looks of the streets are like the clothes, just left over from the past ages. Of course Tokyo is the modern city of j.a.pan, and we shall watch out for the ancient ones when it comes their turn. I wish I could give you an idea of the looks of the poor. The children up to the age of about thirteen appear never to wipe their noses. Combine this effect (more effect than in Italy) with several kimonos, one on top of the other, made of cotton and wool of bright colors and flowered, with a queer brown checked one on top; this wadded and much too big, therefore hitched up round the waist. Swung in this outside one a baby is carried on the back, the little baby head with black bangs or still fuzzy scalp sticking out, nose never yet touched by a handkerchief, wearer of the baby with a nose in the same condition if at a tender age--I scream inside of me as I go about, and it is more exciting than any play ever. We are as much curiosities to them as they are to us, though we live where the most foreigners go. Now on top of it all we can no more make a car driver understand where we want to go than if we were monkeys. We can't find any names on the streets, we can't read a sign except the few that are in English; the streets wind in any and every direction; they are long and short and circular, while a big ca.n.a.l circles through the part of the city where we are and we seem to cross it every few minutes; every time we cross it we think we are going in the same direction as the last time we crossed it. About this stage of our search your father goes up to a young fellow with an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that is like a fedora except for a few inches taken out of its height, and says to him, Tei-ko-ku Hotel, which would mean the Imperial Hotel if he had p.r.o.nounced it right, and the boy turns around and says, "Do you want ze Imperialee Hoter?" And we say, "Yes" (you bet), and the fellow says, "Eet is ze beeg building down zere," so we wade along some more with all the clog walkers looking at our feet till we come to this old barn of a place where we are paying as much as at a Fifth Avenue hotel, and get clear soup for dinner. Just like any one of those old-fashioned French places where they measure out with care all they give you, and where the head is a most distinguished and conspicuous jack-in-the-box who jacks at you all the time, bows every time you go down the hall and all and all and all. It is all so screamingly funny.

The shops are nearly as big as our bedrooms at home with enough s.p.a.ce to step in and leave your shoes before you mount the takenomo and walk on the mats. We could not go into any shop, except the foreign book stores, because we were too dirty and had no time to unlace our shoes even if we wanted to wear out our silk stockings. We shall have some nice striped socks before we begin to do shopping. I am possessed with the notion of trying the clogs.

Tuesday, February 11 (TOKYO).

To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the bank, but we can go to a meeting where they will discuss universal franchise and democratization generally. The Emperor is said to be indisposed, so he will not come to the celebration. His illnesses, like everything else about him, are arranged by the ministers and mistresses, as near as we can make out.

We are having so many interesting experiences and impressions that it is already difficult to catch up in writing them down. Yesterday morning we went to walk and in the afternoon we were taken out in a car so that we have got over the first impression of the surface. We saw the university and the park where the tombs of the shoguns are, and those tombs are wonderful, just to look at from the car. About to-morrow we may be able to go to the museum. The rows of stone lanterns are impressive beyond anything I had imagined; hundreds of them which must have given to the nights they illuminated a wonderfully weird spectral look.

It is not fully true that the j.a.panese are not interested in their history. At least the educated are, as in any other country. A friend told us about the revival of interest in the tea ceremony. He is going to arrange for us to go to one somewhere, he did not say where, but it will be accompanied by a grand dinner and will express the magnificence of the new rich as well as the taste of old j.a.pan, to judge from the impressions he gave us. He told us of an old Chinese cup for the tea ceremony that a certain millionaire has recently paid 160,000 yen for. That means $80,000. He says the collectors have various sets, and each set will often represent a million dollars.

This particular bowl is of black porcelain with decorations of bright color. He told us also of a tea which is now produced in China by grafting the tea branches on to lemon trees. He has some of this tea which was given him by the Chinese amba.s.sador and so I hope we may get a taste of it.

Apropos of this hotel you will be interested to know the manager who runs the house has just come home from the Waldorf and from London where he has been learning how to do--people. The exchange rates they offered Papa seem to be an index of their line of development and they are going to build more. This is _the_ one first-cla.s.s hotel in j.a.pan.

At present they have only about sixty rooms or a little more.

In general, things are coming along promisingly. I should be through lecturing by the first of April here, which is _just_ the time to begin traveling. It turns out a good scheme to come in winter, for the weather, while not cheerful, is far from really cold, though it is not easy to see just how the palms thrive in the snow. j.a.pan seems to have developed a peculiar type of semi-tropical vegetation which endures freezing and winter. I can foresee that we are going to be busy enough, and for the next few weeks your mother is going to have more time for miscellaneous sightseeing than I. It is indescribably fascinating; in substance, of course, like the books and pictures, but nothing really prepares you for the fact that it is not only real in quality but on such a vast scale---not just specimens here and there.

TOKYO, Thursday, February 13.

We have done our first independent shopping to-day. I can't get over my astonishment at the amount and quality of English spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in this store, the big department store, as it is at home--much easier as respects attention and comfort. They give us little wrappers or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Think of what an improvement that would be in muddy weather in Chicago.

This afternoon is sort of a lull after the storm of sociability and hospitality which reached its temporary height yesterday. Let me give the diary. Before we had finished breakfast--and we have eaten every morning at eight until to-day--people began to call. Then two gentlemen took us to the University in their car and we called on the President again. He is a gentleman of the old school, Confucianist I suppose, and your mother was much impressed at being taken in, instead of staying in the car, but I think he was much more pleased and complimented by her call than by mine. Then we were taken to the department store to which I have already alluded. Many people do all their buying there, because there are fixed prices with a reward for a discovery of any place where the same goods are sold cheaper, and absolute honesty as to quality. But they also said that was the easy way to visit j.a.pan and learn about the clothes, ornaments, toys, etc., and also to see the people, as the j.a.panese from all over the country come there to see the sights. There were a group of country people in; they are called red blankets, not greenhorns, because they wear in winter a red bed blanket gathered with a string, instead of an overcoat. Then at night it comes in handy.

The stores are already displaying the things for the girls' festival though it doesn't come till early March--this is the peach fete, and the display of festive dolls--king and queen, servants, ladies of the court in their old costumes, is very interesting and artistic. They have certainly put the doll to uses which we haven't approached. Then we had lunch at the store, a regular j.a.panese lunch, which tasted very good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then they brought us back to the hotel, and at two a friend came and took me to call on Baron Shibusawa--I suppose even benighted foreigners like yourself will know who he is, but you may not know that he is 83, that he has a skin like a baby's, and shows all the signs of the most acute mental vigor, or that for the last two or three years he has given up all business and devoted himself to philanthropic and humanitarian activities. He does evidently what not many American millionaires do; he takes an intellectual and moral interest, and doesn't merely give money. He explained for about half an hour or more his theory of life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a religionist of any kind), and what he was trying to do, especially that it isn't merely relief. He is desirous to preserve the old Confucian standards only adapted to present economic conditions; it is essentially a morality of feudal economic relationships, as perhaps you know, and he thinks the modern factory employers can be brought to take the old paternal att.i.tude to the employees and thus forestall the cla.s.s struggle here. The radicals laugh at the notion here much as they would in the United States, but for my part if he can get in a swipe at the Marxian theory of social evolution and bring about another type still of social evolution, I don't see why he should not have a run for his money. According to all reports there is very little labor and capital problem here yet, though the big fortunes made by the war and the increased prosperity of the workingmen have begun to make a change, it is said. Up to the present labor unions have not been permitted, but the government has announced that while they are not encouraged they will not be any longer forbidden.

But I must get back to the story. Another friend had asked us to go to the theater with him, the Imperial Theater, which has European seats and is a fine and large building, as fine as in any capital and not overdecorated like a New York one. The theater began at four, and, with about half an hour intermission for dinner, continued till ten at night; the regular j.a.panese theaters begin at eleven in the morning and continue till ten at night and you have your food brought to you; also they have no seats and you sit on your legs. None of the plays was strictly of the old historic type, but the most interesting one by far was adapted from a cla.s.sic--it centers to some extent about a faithful horse, and the people are country farmers of several centuries ago. The least interesting was a kind of problem play--mostly philosophical discourse of the modern type--the right to expression of self and an artistic career, aphorisms having no dramatic appeal to even the j.a.panese audience. These people certainly have an alert intelligence--almost as specialized as the Parisian, for the audience was distinctly of the people, and no American audience could be got to pay the close attention it gave to performances where the merits, so far as they are not strictly artistic, in the technique of acting which is very highly developed, depend upon catching the play of moral emotions rather than upon anything very theatrical.

However, the cla.s.sic drama which is based upon old stories and traditions is more dramatic and melodramatic. The j.a.panese also say the old theater has much better actors than the semi-Europeanized one which is, I suppose, supported by the government. In the Imperial, the orchestra seats are one dollar and a half; they are more--on the floor at that--in the all-day theaters. Even in this one they have not introduced applause, though there was slight handclapping once or twice when the curtain went down. The j.a.panese have always had the revolving theater as a means of scene shifting; it works like a railway turntable apparently. Well, that ended the day yesterday.

Except we had invited two gentlemen to dinner, and when we told our friends about it, they said, "Oh, just telephone them to come some other day," which appears to be good j.a.panese etiquette, as it is also to make calls at any time of the day, so we did. But unfortunately they had to telephone to-day that they couldn't come to-night.

To-day has been comparatively calm; we have only had four j.a.panese callers and two American ones. Of the two j.a.panese, one is a woman who is the warden of the Girls' University, and the other is a teacher in it, a young woman of a wealthy and aristocratic family who has become too modern, I judge, for her family. I hope all you children will make a bow to every j.a.panese you meet and ask him what you can do to be of service to him. I shall have to spend the rest of my life trying to make up for some of the kindnesses and courtesies which so abound here.

I am afraid much of this is more interesting to me to write about than it is to you to read, to say nothing of being more interesting to go through than to read about. But you can then save the letter for us to re-read when we get old and return from our Odysseying, and wish to recover the memories of the days when people were so kind that they created in us the illusion of being somebody, and gave us the combined enjoyments of home and being in a strange and semi-magic country; semi-magic for us. For the ma.s.s of the people, one can only wonder at their cheerfulness and realize what a really old and overcrowded country is and how Buddhism and stoic fatalistic cheerfulness develop.

Don't ever fool yourself into thinking of j.a.pan as a new country; I don't any longer believe the people who tell you that you have to go to China and India to see antiquity. Superficially it may be so, but not fundamentally. Any country is old where birth and death are like the coming and dropping of leaves on a tree, and where the individual is of as much importance as the leaf. Old world and New world are not mere relatives; they are as near absolutes as anything.

We heard a whistle making its cry outside and Mamma thought it was the bank messenger, so I rang the bell for the boy to bring him in--but alas, it was much less romantic; it was the call of the macaroni peddler.

TOKYO, February.

Here we are, one week after landing, on a hill in a beautiful garden of trees on which the buds are already swelling. The plums will soon be in bloom, and in March the camellias, which grow to fairly large trees. In the distance we see the wonderful Fuji, nearby the other hills of this district, and the further plains of the city. Just at the foot of our hill is a ca.n.a.l, along which is an alley of cherry trees formerly famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a few years ago.

We have a wonderful apartment to ourselves, mostly all windows, which in this house are gla.s.s. A very large bedroom, a small dressing room, and a study where I now sit with the sun coming in the windows which are all its sides. We need this sun, though the hibashi, or boxes of charcoal, do wonders in warming up your feet and drying hair, as I am now doing.

We are surrounded by all the books on j.a.pan that modern learning has produced, so we have never a waiting moment. The house is very large, with one house after another covering the hilltop and connected by the galleries that are cut off the sides of each room in succession. I shall try to get a photo. At the extreme end of the house is Mr. X----'s library of several rooms, and at the limit of that the tea room for the tea ceremonies. Our host is not one of the new rich who buy sets at a million dollars for performing this ceremony. He laughs at that. But there is a gold lacquer table which is like transfixed sunshine, and there are other pieces of old furniture, which are priceless now, and which have come down in his family. You would be amused to see us at breakfast, which O-Tei, the maid a.s.signed to us, serves in our sun parlor. First we have fruit. Two little lacquer tables to move wherever we want to sit. The dishes and service are in our fashion in this house.

Nice old blue Canton plates and other things j.a.panese. After fruit she makes toast over the charcoal in the hibashi, two little iron sticks stuck in the bread to hold it. On these p.r.o.ngs she hands us the toast.

Meantime she teaches us j.a.panese and we teach her English which she already knows, and she giggles every time we speak. Well, we put our toast down on the plate and she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side table and we desperately look for cups for ourselves, though with some fear of disturbing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them. After a while she comes up again with the cups and we get coffee, then she goes down again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice old blue plates. Then she giggles a little more and talks in that soft voice that is like nothing else we ever heard, as she hands us a nice hot piece of toast on an iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles because I tell her the toast is not harmed by dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks off into the big bedroom to bring the coffee from the gas heater. It is all like a pretty play unmarred by any remote ideas about efficiency, and time and labor-saving devices. Then two maids make our beds; then they dust the floor, one holding up the sofa on edge while the other whisks underneath it, and they smile and bow and take an interest in every move we make as if we were their dearest friends.

Enter now the housekeeper who, with many bows, announces v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y that she would like to accompany me to go about the city and to explain things to me, as I would thus teach her English. I asked if she were going to church and she said she wasn't a Christian. Think what a funny sound that has. She is the secretary of Mr. X---- and a student in the new Christian college of which he is the President. She comes in now to wait on us at breakfast and she stays and repeats English after us. She knows a lot of English, but it is so literary that it is quite amusing to turn her into the ways of ordinary talk. To get her to open her mouth and break the polite j.a.panese whisper, in which the j.a.panese women speak, is what I work most on. Yesterday we visited the Women's University which is within walking distance of this house. The President, Mr. Naruse, is dying of cancer. He is in bed but is able to talk quite naturally. He has made a farewell address to his students, has said good-bye to his faculty in a speech, and has named the dean, who is acting in his place now, as his successor. At this University they teach flower arrangement, long sword, and j.a.panese etiquette, and the chief warden is a fine woman. She says I may come in as much as I like to see those different things.

In the afternoon we had callers again, among them two women. Women are rare. One, a Dr. R----, is an osteopath who has practiced here for fifteen years and is an old friend of our host's. The second, Miss T----, has just returned from seven years in our country. I heard much of her at Stanford and brought letters to her. She has a chair in the Women's University. It is a chair of Sociology, but she says the authorities are afraid the time has not yet come for her to start on sociology, so she will begin with the teaching of English and work into sociology by the process of ingratiating it into her cla.s.ses. She is an interesting personality. She was sent to me to say I might be lonely because your father was away so she was to take me, with any other friends I wanted, to the theater. As we had already been to the Imperial Theater and sat in the Baron's box it was finally arranged to go to the Kabuki, where we sit on the floor and see real old j.a.panese acting, which I am very anxious to do. I understand it begins at 11 in the morning and lasts until ten at night.

February 22.

Yesterday we went to the theater, beginning at one and ending about nine; tea is constantly in the box, and little meals--and a big one--between the acts. We liked the old j.a.panese theater better than the more or less modernized one. Baron Shibusawa presented us with a box--or rather two of them--and his niece and another relative and the two young people from the house went. I won't try to describe the dramas, except to say that the way to study j.a.panese history and tradition would be to go to the theater with some one to interpret, and that while the theater is as plain as a medieval European one, the dresses are even more elaborate and costly. The stage is a beautiful spectacle when there are forty old Samurai on it, as the garments are genuine, not tinsel. Mamma went more than I, because I had to leave at half-past four to go to the Concordia Society--in fact, I hadn't expected to go at all at first, as the Baron said that he sent the offer of the box because he feared Mamma might be lonely when I was away! There were about twenty-five j.a.panese and Americans at the meeting and after I had spoken for half an hour we had dinner in an adjoining restaurant, and then sat around and visited for an hour or so.

The great event of the week, aside from the theater yesterday, was visiting the Women's University--you mightn't think that a great treat, but you don't know what we saw. We started early to walk, since it isn't far and we had been shown the way once, but we were rubbering so busily at the shops that we failed to notice where we were till we got to the end of things and then had to turn around and walk back, so we got there late. The forenoon we spent in the elementary cla.s.ses and kindergarten, which are their practice school. Those very bright kimonos for children you see are real--all the children wear them, as bright as can be, generally reds, and then some. So the rooms where the little children were are like gardens of flowers with bright birds in them--gay as can be. The work was all interesting, but the colored crayon drawings particularly. They have a great deal of freedom there, and instead of the children imitating and showing no individuality--which seems to be the proper thing to say--I never saw so much variety and so little similarity in drawings and other hand work, to say nothing of its quality being much better than the average of ours. The children were under no visible discipline, but were good as well as happy; they paid no attention to visitors, which I think is ultramodern, as I expected to see them all rise and bow. If you will think of doing all the regular school work--including in this school a good deal of hand work, drawing, etc.--and then learning by the end of the sixth grade a thousand or more Chinese characters, to make as well as to read, you will have some idea of how industrious the kids have to be, and of course they have to learn j.a.panese characters, too. Then we had a luncheon, ten of us altogether, cooked and served by the girls in the Domestic Department; some luncheon!--and garnished in a way to beat the Ritz--European food and service. Then the real show began. First we had flower arrangement, ancient and modern styles, then examples of the ancient etiquette in serving tea and cakes to guests, and then of inferiors calling on superiors; then Koto playing--a thirteen-stringed harp that lies on the floor--first two girls and the teacher, and then a solo by the teacher.

He is blind and said to be the best player in j.a.pan; he gave "Cotton Bleaching in the Brook," and said he rarely played it, only once a year.

Well, you could hear the water ripple and fall, and hit the stones, and the women singing and beating the cotton. I could hear it better than I can hear spring in our music, so I think perhaps my ears are made to fit the j.a.panese scale, or lack of it. Then we were taken into the tea house and shown the tea ceremony, being served with tea. Mamma sat tatami, on her heels, but I basely took a chair. Then we went to the gymnasium and saw the old Samurai women's sword and spear exercises, etc. The teacher was an old woman of seventy-five and as lithe and nimble as a cat--more graceful than any of the girls. I have an enormous respect now for the old etiquette and ceremonies regarded as physical culture. Every movement has to be made perfectly, and it cannot be done without conscious control. The modernized gym exercises by the children were simply pitiful compared with all these ceremonies. Then we were taken to the dormitories, which are in a garden, simple wooden j.a.panese buildings, like barns our girls would think, but everything so clean you could eat on the floor anywhere, with the south side all gla.s.s and sun, and the girls sitting on the floor to study on a table about a foot and a half high; no beds or chairs to litter up the rooms. Then after we were taken over some of the other rooms, we went back to the dining-room and had a most exquisite j.a.panese vegetarian Buddhist lunch served--just a sample, all on a little plate, but including the sweets for dessert, five or six things all quite different and elegantly cooked. Also three kinds of tea.