Roving East and Roving West Part 5

To Chinese eyes it doubtless had a sombre religious character, but to us it was merely a diverting spectacle of incredible prolongation. We were not wholly to blame in missing its sanct.i.ty, for the partic.i.p.ants, who were more like mummers than mourners, had all been hired and were enjoying the day off. For the most part they merely wore their fancy dress and walked and talked or played instruments, but now and then there was a dragon and a champion boxing it and these certainly earned their money. At intervals came bearers with trays on which were comforts for the next world or symbolical devices, while, to infinity both in front and behind, banners and streamers and lanterns danced and jogged above all. A miracle-show of the middle ages can have been not unlike it.

THE LITTLE GEISHA

I left j.a.pan, as I have said, just before the cherry-blossom festivities began, but I was able to see a number of the dances--which never change but are pa.s.sed with exact.i.tude, step for step, gesture for gesture and expression for expression, from one geisha to another--as performed by a child who was being educated for the profession. Although so young she knew accurately upwards of sixty dances, and the pick of these she executed for a few spectators, in a little fragile paper-walled house outside Yokohama, while her adoring aunt played the wistful repet.i.tive accompaniments.

The little creature--a mere watch-chain ornament--had a typical j.a.panese face, half mask, half mischief, and a tiny high voice which now and then broke into the dance. But dances, strictly speaking, they are not.

They are really posturing and the manoeuvres of a fan. To me they are strangely fascinating, and, with the music, almost more so than our Western ballets. But there is a difference between the ballet and the geisha dances, and it is so wide that there is no true comparison; for whereas the ballet stimulates and excites, these j.a.panese movements hypnotise and lull.

MANNERS

The public manners of the j.a.panese are not good. In all my solitary walks about Myanos.h.i.ta I met with no single peasant who pa.s.sed the time of day, and in the streets of Tokio English people were being jostled and stared at and treated without respect. It was a moment when Americans were unpopular, and the theory was broached that for fear of missing the chance to be rude to an American the j.a.panese became rude to all outlanders indiscriminately. One indeed gathered the impression that, except in Kyoto, which is a backwater, foreigners are no longer wanted. "j.a.pan for the j.a.panese" would seem to be the motto: one day, not far distant, to be amended to "The World for j.a.pan." I shall never forget the humiliation I suffered in a stockbroker's office in Tokio, into which, seeing the words "English spoken" over the door, I had ventured in the hope of being directed to an address I was seeking.

Not a word of English did any one know, but the whole staff left its typewriters and desks to come and laugh. I was always willing to remove the gravity of j.a.panese children by my grotesque Occidentalism, but I have a very real objection to being a b.u.t.t for the ridicule of grown-ups. Such an incident could not have occurred, I believe, anywhere else. But it is not only the foreigners to whom the j.a.panese are rude: they do nothing for their fellows either. The want of chivalry in trains and trams was conspicuous.

The ceremonial manners of the j.a.panese can, however, be more precise and formal than any I ever witnessed. A wedding reception chanced to be in progress in my Tokio hotel one afternoon, and through the open door I had glimpses of j.a.panese gentlemen in frock coats bowing to j.a.panese ladies and making perfect right angles as they did so. So elaborate indeed were the courtesies that to Western eyes they bordered dangerously on burlesque.

The destination that I was seeking when I entered the stockbroker's office was a certain book-store, and when I eventually found it I was asked a question by a j.a.panese youth that still perplexes me. It was in the English section, the princ.i.p.al volumes in which, as imported to supply j.a.panese demands, were American, and all bore either upon success in engineering and other professions and crafts, or on the rapid acquirement of wealth. "How to double your income in a week"; "How to get rich quickly"; "How to succeed in business"; and so forth; all preaching, in fact, the new gospel which is doing j.a.pan no good.

There were also, however, a certain number of novels, and one of the customers, a boy who looked as though he were still at school, noting my English appearance, brought a translation of Maupa.s.sant to me and asked me what "soul" meant--"A Woman's Soul" being the new t.i.tle. Now I defy any one with no j.a.panese to make it clear to a j.a.panese boy with very little English what a woman's soul is.

THE PLAY

At Tokio I was present for an hour or so at a performance in a national theatre. It had been in progress for a long time when I entered and would continue long after I left, for that is the j.a.panese custom. In London people with too little to do are on occasion prepared to spend the whole day outside theatres waiting for the doors to open. They will then witness a two and a half hours' performance. But in j.a.pan the plays go on from eleven a.m. to eleven p.m. and the audience bring their sustenance and tobacco with them. The seats are mats on the ground, and the actors reach the stage by a pa.s.sage through the auditorium as well as from the wings. The scenery is very elementary, and there is always a gate which has to be opened when the characters pa.s.s through and closed after them, although it is isolated and has no contiguous wall or fence.

None of our Western morbid desire for novelty, I am told, troubles the j.a.panese play-goer, who is prepared to witness the same drama, usually based on an historical event or national legend thoroughly familiar to him, for ever and ever. It is as though the theatres in England were given up exclusively to, say, Shakespeare's Henry IV, V and VI sequence.

On the occasion of my visit there was little of what we call acting, but endless elocution. During the performance the attendants walk about, with the persistence of constables during a London police-court hearing, carrying refreshments and little charcoal stoves. The signal for the next act is a deafening clicking noise made by one of the stage hands on two sticks, which gradually rises to a shattering crescendo as the curtain is drawn aside. It must be understood that the theatre that I am describing was set apart for national drama. In others there are topical farces and laughter is continuous; but I did not visit any. On board ship, however, we had a series of performances of such pieces by the j.a.panese cabin attendants and waiters, many of whom were professional actors. The j.a.panese pa.s.sengers enjoyed them immensely.

MYANOs.h.i.tA

A whole week of my too short stay was given to Myanos.h.i.ta, whither I was driven by the impossibility of retaining a room in either Yokohama or Tokio, and where I stayed willingly on, out of delight in the place itself. After being cooped up for so long on ships, and kept inactive under the heat of India, it was like a new existence to take immense walks among these mountains in the keen rarified air, even though there was both rain and snow. Myanos.h.i.ta stands some four thousand feet high and is situated in a valley in which are many summer cottages and health resorts. The heart of this Alpine settlement is the Fujiya Hotel, where I was living, which is kept by an enterprising Americanised and Europeanised j.a.panese proprietor and his very charming wife, Madame Yamaguchi, whose father was the founder of the house, and, I believe, the discoverer of the district, and who herself is famous as a gracious hostess throughout j.a.pan. No hotel so well or so thoughtfully administered have I ever stayed in; nor was I ever in another where the water for the bath gushes in from a natural hot spring. But hot springs are numerous in this region, while there is a gorge which I visited, some four miles distant, where boiling sulphur hisses and bubbles for ever and aye.

Many of the Myanos.h.i.ta dishes were new to me and welcome. There is an excellent salad called "Slow," and the bamboo, which is j.a.pan's best friend--serving the nation in scores of ways: as fences, as walls, as water-pipes, as supports, as carrying-poles, as thatch, as fishing-rods--here found its way into the salad bowl and was not distasteful. The custom of drinking a gla.s.s of orange juice before breakfast might well be adopted with us; but not the least of the oddities of England which I realised as I moved about the earth is our unwillingness to eat fruit. j.a.pan also has a perfect mineral water, "Tansan."

When not making long expeditions to catch new glimpses of Fuji I roamed about the hill-sides among the little villages, or leaned over crazy bridges to watch the waterfalls beneath; for there is water everywhere, tumbling down to the distant ocean, a wedge of which can be seen from the hotel windows. This j.a.panese valley might be in Switzerland, save for the absence of any but human life. Not a cow, not a goat.

The labourers wear blue linen smocks, usually with some device upon them, and they merge into the landscape as naturally as French or Belgian peasants. These men, whether working on the soil or the roads, or engaged in cutting bamboos or building houses, wear the large straw hats that one sees in the old j.a.panese prints. Nothing has changed in their dress. But the modernized j.a.panese, the dweller in the cities or casual visitor to the country, pins his faith to the bowler. The bowler is so much his favourite headgear that he wears it often with native costume on his body. Perhaps it is to j.a.pan that all the bowlers have gone, now that London has taken to the soft Homburg. It was odd to meet groups of these bizarre little men among the precipices: even stranger perhaps were their little ladies, especially on Sunday, in the gayest j.a.panese clothes, their faces plastered with rice powder and cigarettes in their mouths. Too many of them are disfigured by gold teeth, which are so common in j.a.pan as to be almost the rule. An English resident a.s.sured me that I must not a.s.sume that the j.a.panese teeth are therefore unusually defective: often the gold is merely ostentation, a visible sign that the owner of the auriferous mouth is both alive to American progress and can afford it.

Even in Myanos.h.i.ta Fujiyama has to be sought for and climbed for, the walls of rock that form the valley being so high and enclosing. But the result is worth every effort. Immediately above the hotel is a hill from whose summit the upper part of the enchanted mountain can be seen, and I ascended tortuously to this point within an hour of my arrival. The next day I walked to Lake Hakone (where the Emperor has a summer palace), some eight miles away, in the hope of getting Fuji's white crest reflected on its surface; but a veil of mist enshrouded all. And then twice I went to the edge of the watershed at the head of the valley: once struggling through the snow to the Otome Pa.s.s, on an immemorial and nearly perpendicular bridle path, and once by the modern road to the tunnel which, with characteristic address, the j.a.panese have bored through the rock, thus reducing a very steep gradient.

In the tunnel the icicles were hanging several feet long and as big as masts, and the air was biting. But one emerged suddenly upon a prospect the wonder of which probably cannot be excelled--a vast plain far below, made up of verdure and villages and lakes, with distant surrounding heights, and immediately in front, filling half the sky, Fuji himself.

It is from this point, and from the ancient Otome Pa.s.s, a mile or so away on the same ridge, that the symmetry of the mountain is most perfect; and here one can best appreciate the simplicity of it, the quiet natural ease with which it rises above its neighbours. There was more snow on the slopes than when I had seen it from the train a few days before; and the sky again was without a cloud. I have never been so conscious of majestic serenity, without any concomitant feeling of awe.

Fuji is both sublime and human.

No other country has a symbol like this. When the j.a.panese think of j.a.pan they visualise Fuji: returning exiles crowd the decks for the first glimpse of it; departing exiles with tears in their eyes watch it disappear. There is not a shop window but has Fuji in some representation; it is found in every house; its contours are engraved on teaspoons, embossed on ash-trays. You cannot escape from its counterfeits; but if you have seen it you do not mind.

When on my way home I found myself in an American picture gallery, either in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston or New York, I lingered longest in the rooms where the coloured prints of the j.a.panese masters hang--and America has very fine collections, particularly in Boston--and I stood longest before those landscapes by Hokusai and Hiroshige in which Fuji occurs. Hokusai in particular venerated the mountain, and in many of his most beautiful pictures people are calling to each other to admire some new and marvellous aspect of it. It was he who drew Fuji as seen through the arch of a breaking wave! I was looking at the British Museum's example of this daring print only a few days ago, and, doing so, living my Myanos.h.i.ta days again.

There is much in j.a.pan that is petty, much that is too material and not a little that is disturbing; but Fuji is there too, dominating all, calm and wise and lovely beyond description, and it would be Fuji that lured me back.

AMERICA

DEMOCRACY AT HOME

My first experience of democracy-in-being followed swiftly upon boarding the steamboat for San Francisco, when "Show this man Number 231" was the American steward's command to a cabin boy. I had no objection to being called a man: far from it; but after years of being called a gentleman it was startling. This happened at Yokohama; and when, in the Customs House at San Francisco, a porter wheeling a truck broke through a queue of us waiting to obtain our quittances, with the careless warning, "Out of the way, fellers!" I knew that here was democracy indeed.

I confess to liking it, although I was to be brought up with another jolt when a notice-board on a gra.s.s-plot suddenly confronted me, bearing the words:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEEP OFF. THIS MEANS YOU.]

But I like it. I like the tradition which, once your name is written in the hotel reception book, makes you instantly "Mr. Lucas" to every one in the place. There is a friendliness about it: the hotel is more of a home, or at any rate, less of a barrack, because of it. And yet this universal camaraderie has some odd lapses into formality. The members of clubs in America are far more ceremonious with each other than we are in England. In English clubs the prefix "Mr." is a solecism, but in American clubs I have watched quite old friends and a.s.sociates whose greetings have been marked almost by pomposity and certainly by ritual.

Yet Americans, I should say, are heartier than we; more happy to be with each other; less critical and exacting. They certainly spend less time in discussing each other's foibles. That may be because the dollar is so much more an absorbing theme, but more likely it is because America is a democracy, and the theory of democracy, as I understand it, is to a.s.sume that every man is a good fellow until the reverse is proved. I should not like to say that the theory of those of us who live under a monarchy is the opposite, but it seemed to me that Americans are more ready than we to be sociable and tolerant.

Try as I might I could never be quick enough to get in first with that delightful American greeting, "Pleased to meet you," or "Glad to know you, Mr. Lucas." I pondered long on the best retort and at last formulated this, but never dared to use it for fear that its genuineness might be suspected: "I shall be sorry when we have to part."

SAN FRANCISCO

It was in San Francisco that I learned--and very quickly--that it is as necessary to visit America in order to know what Americans are like as it is to leave one's own country in order to know more about that.

Americans when abroad are less hearty, less revealing. They are either suffering from a constraint or an over-a.s.sertiveness; and both moods may be due to not being at home. In neither case are they so natural as at home. I suppose that on soil not our own we all tend to be a little over-anxious to proclaim our nationality, to maintain the distinction.

In our hats can perhaps be too firmly planted the invisible flag of our country.

Be this as it may, I very quickly discerned a difference between Americans in America and in England. I found them simple where I had thought of them as the reverse, and now, after meeting others in various parts of the country, even in complex and composite New York, I should say that simplicity is the keynote of the American character. It is in his simplicity that the American differs most from the European. Such simplicity is perfectly consistent with the impatience, the desire for novelty, for brevity, of the American people. We think of them as always wishing to reduce life to formulae, as unwilling to express any surprise, and these tendencies may easily be considered as signs of a tiring civilisation. But in reality they are signs of youth too.

ROADS GOOD AND BAD