The Spell of Japan Part 6

"I suppose you did not know," she said, "that the singer is a very naughty man."

"No, I didn't," I answered; "but I don't quite know what I can do about it--" and I'm afraid I wagged my head, too, as I added, "Don't you think we can reform him, perhaps?"

She must have seen the twinkle in my eye, for she laughed and said she didn't believe we could. We agreed that he sang very well indeed.

Our last big reception was held at the Emba.s.sy on Washington's Birthday.

We had some souvenirs made in j.a.panese style, little black lacquer ash trays with the crest of the United States in gilt upon them for the men and fans also decorated with the crest for the ladies. A good many of the missionaries came, not only from Tokyo and Yokohama, but also from the interior.

On St. Valentine's day I took some presents out to Watanabe's house, where I had asked all the children of the compound to gather. There were about a dozen of them, sitting on mats and making a very pretty group.

They had put a carpet over the mat, so I did not have to take off my shoes, and a chair was procured for me to sit in. Then I told Osame to translate and tell them how, on St. Valentine's day, people in America send each other verses--sometimes love-verses, sometimes comic verses--but that as I couldn't write any in j.a.panese for them I had brought some little gifts instead. The children all bowed to the ground, and were very, very respectful--much better behaved than young people at home! They seemed to be pleased, and after giving each one his present I withdrew, telling Watanabe to give them tea and cake or whatever they wanted. But pretty soon he asked if they might come into the Emba.s.sy and thank us. So they filed in, bowing again, and sang a little j.a.panese song to my husband and myself, which was all quite touching. We showed them a toy tiger we had bought in Paris that would spring and jump when wound up, and a bear that would drink water, both of which delighted them greatly. After a while, bowing once again, they departed.

We made some very pleasant friends in j.a.pan. Among others we met Baroness Sonnomiya, who is herself English but married to a j.a.panese.

During her husband's lifetime she had great power, as she was the intimate friend of the Empress Dowager. There were also Dr. Nitobe and his wife, who were among the most delightful people we met. I enjoyed his books thoroughly, as well as his address before the j.a.panese Peace Society, which met at the Emba.s.sy.

This gathering had its amusing side, because the president of the Society had made most of his money selling guns! Moreover, before I realized that it was the Peace Society which was coming to the Emba.s.sy, I had invited the Naval Attache's wife and an army officer's wife to pour tea! Just at that moment it hardly looked as if the cause of peace was making much headway in the world, for while we were talking about it, terrible battles were being fought in Turkey, the City of Mexico was under bombardment, and there was talk of fighting between Austria and Russia.

One day I called on Madame Ozaki, whom I had met in Italy when she was Marion Crawford's secretary. Her mother was English, her father j.a.panese; she is very pretty and writes charming stories. After living in Europe for a number of years she returned to her father in j.a.pan and taught school, finally marrying Mr. Ozaki, one of j.a.pan's most conspicuous politicians to-day. When I called on her I found her dressed in European style, but she had the true j.a.panese reserve; in fact was much more j.a.panese than I had expected after her many years abroad. Her house was partly European, but when the _shoji_ was thrown aside, the little maid who received us bowed to the ground in true native fashion.

Madame Ozaki did not speak of politics, although her husband had just made an attack on Katsura, who had been for the moment overthrown. It was said that she had received threatening letters warning her and her husband to flee to England.

At this time of political upheaval a curious article appeared in the paper to the effect that three men had attended their own funeral services, which they wished to hold because they were about to start on a dangerous expedition. It was suggested that perhaps they might be going to take some prominent man's life, but nothing happened, so far as we knew, until spring, when Mr. Abe, of the Foreign Office, was murdered.

In order to explain the political situation in j.a.pan as we found it, I am obliged to touch briefly on the political changes during the last fifty years,--that is, since the time of feudalism.

After Commodore Perry's visit, the Tokugawa government, whose shoguns had been the real rulers of the country for more than two centuries and a half, decided to open the ports to foreigners, while officials at the Imperial Court of the Mikado desired to continue the policy of exclusion. Finally the reigning Shogun was brought to see that it would be better for the country to have but one ruler, and resigned in favour of the Mikado. This inaugurated the wonderful Meiji Era--the era of the late Emperor.

Since they had always been men of action, it was the clever _samurai_, rather than the old n.o.bles, who found a chance to show their ability under the new regime. They became prominent in both the Upper and Lower Councils, which were based somewhat on feudalism, and yet showed strongly the influence of Western ideas.

Political questions were freely discussed, political parties appeared, and the first conventions were held. The first cabinet was formed in 1885, with Prince Ito as Premier.

The Administration was divided into ten departments:--The Imperial Household, Foreign Affairs, Interior, Finance, Army and Navy, Justice, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, and Communications. A Minister of State was appointed head of each department. The Empire was divided into provinces, each ruled by a governor. In 1890 a national a.s.sembly was granted, and the first Diet was convened.

The government to-day is Conservative, and is controlled by the _Genro_, the elder statesmen. The Progressive party, the Seyukai, is led by Ozaki. The Socialists make a good deal of noise, but are still far from powerful; their opposition to the Russian war weakened their influence greatly. The Socialist party in j.a.pan was largely responsible for the recent anti-American demonstrations.

For many years Prince Ito was considered the ablest man in the country.

Okubo and Ok.u.ma were also noted leaders, while Prince Katsura, in recent times, held great power. Katsura was quite unpopular with the people while we were in j.a.pan. It was felt that he had delayed a meeting of the Diet in order to form a party which would be stronger and at the same time more completely under his control. Each time when the a.s.sembly was postponed by a command from the Emperor, the blame was placed on Katsura. Finally Yamamoto was chosen to form a cabinet, which took a long time to do on account of the different parties. Ozaki, as head of the Progressives, wished to dictate to Yamamoto, but the latter would not comply, so things came to a standstill. People seemed to think that Ozaki was going too far, and that he had better take half a loaf instead of insisting upon a whole one. It appeared that the j.a.panese were not as yet advanced enough for his ideas, or else that he was too advanced for theirs. Later on, his party yielded somewhat, and Yamamoto made up his cabinet with Ozaki left out.

After the trouble had all blown over, people said that it had all been worked out by clever Katsura. If this is true, it was one of his last achievements, for the Prince, who is considered the greatest Premier j.a.pan ever had, died in October, 1913. His career was an interesting one. His father belonged to the _samurai_ cla.s.s, and the boy, Katsura Taro, became a staff officer when only twenty-one. During the Franco-Prussian war he was in Germany studying military tactics. Later he was given charge of the reorganizing and modernizing of the j.a.panese army. The success of the j.a.panese in the Chinese and Russian wars is attributed to his genius and to his "silent and unrewarded toil." Only after the battle of the Yalu, when he was made viscount, did his work begin to be appreciated. Later he was created prince. After the Chinese war he changed from soldier to statesman--was four times Prime Minister, and "almost a whole cabinet in himself."

Internal politics do not run any more smoothly in j.a.pan than they do in our own country. On account of the frequent changes of cabinet there was often rioting in front of the Diet during the winter we were at the Emba.s.sy. Newspaper offices were attacked and burned, and the mob seemed to have an especial grudge against the police, who were hardly able to cope with the situation. Hearing that there was rioting near the Emba.s.sy one evening after dinner, several of us walked to a _matsuri_ not far away, but the crowd was dispersing when we arrived, and only the policeman's sentry-box, which was overturned, remained to tell the tale.

Clubs are an important element in our modern civilization, and especially for foreigners in the Orient, where bachelors so greatly predominate--I believe the proportion is even more than that of forlorn damsels in Ma.s.sachusetts. At Yokohama there are two organizations, the Yokohama United and a German club, besides the two American societies, the Asiatic and the Columbia.

The Tokyo Club has the reputation of being the most charming in the East. It is splendidly situated on a hill near the American Emba.s.sy. The charges are moderate, and the service is generally good. j.a.panese as well as Europeans belong to it. While we were in Tokyo my husband was invited to become the foreign vice-president, the president being an Imperial Prince. At first he begged off, but a committee of the club visited him and urged him to accept the office, saying that the j.a.panese were anxious to pay our country a compliment. The Tokyo Club is more than a register of social prominence in the city--it is also important as a political barometer, and this polite insistence upon L.'s accepting the place was, in its way, a tribute to America.

Many adventurers come to the East to seek their fortunes, and one hears strange stories, tragic or romantic as the case may be. A lover waits on the dock for his fiancee on the steamer, only to find that she has decided at the last moment to marry another whom she has met on the voyage; a wife returns from a long vacation at home to find her husband consoling himself with a _geisha_; a father who comes out to look for his son discovers him deep in debt and drinking himself to death. Such are a few of the many tales we heard.

Some differences in social customs may be noted here. It is polite, for instance, to remove your shoes at the door on entering a j.a.panese home.

After you have entered it is only polite, as well as modest, to remain near the door! When you are offered tea or anything of the sort, it must be twice declined, but the third time it may be accepted.

In conversation one must exalt the person addressed, while everything belonging to the speaker must be held of no value at all. A father, on taking a bright boy to the teacher, would naturally say, "O honourable teacher, here is my idiot son!" And a mother, no matter how deeply she may feel the death of a child, must shed no tears but continue to smile and say, "Oh--child no good!"

What Hearn says about poetry is also true of the j.a.panese smile. When in danger, smile; when angry, smile; when sad, smile; in fact, it is etiquette always to smile! In so many ways the j.a.panese are an admirable race, and in none more so than in this. Their instincts are all for good taste and good manners.

Speaking of manners--of course, standards vary. It used to be a common thing in the country villages to see men and women bathing together in large tanks, but as Westerners disapproved of this custom, a few years ago an order went forth that men and women bathing together must put on suits. The result is that to-day they sit on the edge of the tank, or on the seash.o.r.e, and dress and undress as they have always done, before one another, and wonder why they are obliged to put on bathing-suits when they go into the water! But an order is an order, they say, and must be obeyed.

In 1897, when we were in j.a.pan, foreign clothes and top-hats were very popular, and to-day queer combinations of clothes are still noticeable.

The foreign cap is much worn by the men, and a sort of loose-sleeved overcoat of English cloth, like an opera coat, is used in winter, worn over the kimono. But the _tabis_, or linen socks made like a mitten, and the clogs, are worn as before, while often an unmounted fur skin is wrapped about the neck. People well dressed in European clothes are called "high-collared"--in fact, this expression is applied to almost anything that is Western and modern. Many of the men who have been abroad are very correctly and smartly clad, but they usually put on a j.a.panese costume in the evening, for they call the European dress an "uncomfortable bag."

Some of the "high-collared" j.a.panese have at least one meal a day in European style, and part of the house is usually devoted to foreign furniture. They also believe that milk and meat should be eaten in order to make the race grow larger. Most of the men are anxious to learn Western ideas, and take great pride in showing inventions that have been introduced. They consider themselves quite up to date, and so they are in many ways.

When my husband was first in j.a.pan, in 1889, a woman's highest desire was to wear European clothes, and if she could hire a costume and be photographed in it, she was perfectly happy. But I do not think they feel like that to-day. The novelty has worn off. Besides, j.a.panese dressmaking is a very simple matter; a kimono is made of straight breadths of cloth basted together. Compared with that, the plainest Western frock must offer many problems.

It is certainly better for us not to attempt to talk j.a.panese, for if one cannot speak it well it is safer not to try at all. One is very liable to address a n.o.bleman in the language of a coolie, or to mystify a servant by speaking to him in the tongue of the higher cla.s.ses--there are three ways of making a remark, according to the rank of the person addressed! No one can believe the difficulties of the language till he has tried it. To master it in any degree requires years of study.

To ill.u.s.trate this I will quote from Dr. Gordon, the missionary, who gives a bit of dialogue between teacher and pupil during a lesson. "The pupil says,'The child likes _meshi_.' 'No,' says his mentor, 'in speaking of a child's rice it is better to use the word _mama_--the child likes _mama_.' Undiscouraged, the student tries again: 'Do you eat _meshi_?' But his teacher stops him and tells him that it is polite, in speaking to another of his having or eating rice, to call it _gozen_.

Having taken this in, the student goes on with his sentence-building: 'The merchant sells _gozen_.' Again the teacher calls a halt, and tells him that _meshi_ and _gozen_ are used for cooked rice only, and that for unboiled rice _kome_ is the proper word. Feeling that now he is getting into the secrets of the language, he says, '_Kome_ grows in the fields,'

but he is again stopped with the information that growing rice is called _ine_."

More than one scholar in European tongues has declared j.a.panese to be the most difficult language in the world. One has said that a man "can learn to understand as much of Spanish in six months as he can of j.a.panese in six years." Chinese ideographs are said to outnumber the j.a.panese characters to-day, and in numerous instances have actually displaced them, even among the common people. Many characters have two meanings and only in combination can you know which is intended. There are no p.r.o.nouns in the language, nor are there any "swear-words" or imperatives, the people are so polite.

Family names are also very confusing--to the j.a.panese themselves, I should think, as well as to us--because of the frequency of adoption.

Each family feels that it must have an heir to take care of the aged members while they live and to pray for them when they die, so a child is adopted and given the patronymic. Blood doesn't seem to count at all, for even if a son is born later, it is the adopted child who inherits.

Sometimes children brought up in foreign countries take foreign names. A naval officer told me of a charming j.a.panese girl whom he knew, named Bessie. One day she confided to him that she was going to marry Charlie.

"Marry your brother!" exclaimed the astounded officer. "Yes," replied Bessie sweetly, "you not know--I not father's real child, and Charlie not father's real child. Charlie and I, we no relation--both adopted!"

Adoption is not always necessary, however, for if a man has no children he can easily divorce his wife, simply by telling her to return to her father's house, and he may then marry another woman. The modern law also gives this privilege of divorce to the wife, but custom is so strong that she never leaves her husband of her own accord.

Marriages are generally arranged by the parents, with the a.s.sistance of a mutual friend. The man and girl are allowed to see each other, but although they are not actually forced into marriage, few would dare to disobey their parents' wishes in the matter. They have a wedding feast, at which the bride and groom sit on the floor facing each other. The ceremony sometimes consists of their both drinking from a two-spouted tea-pot. The bride is clad in a white kimono and veil, which she keeps all her life, and wears once more when she is dead. Many presents are received, but the gifts of the groom, which are as costly as he can afford, are offered by the bride to her parents in grat.i.tude for all that they have done for her in the past.

After the wedding the husband takes his bride to his home, no doubt to live with his father and mother. The wife must not only obey her husband, but is also much under the rule of her mother-in-law. A man sometimes brings his concubine into the house, and often her children as well, and these his wife is obliged to adopt. If husband and wife disagree, the go-between is usually consulted, and occasionally succeeds in arranging matters.

j.a.panese ladies, as a rule, do not go about very much, except those who have married foreigners or have lived abroad. A few ladies appear at foreign dinners with their husbands, but very often the men have dinners at which their wives do not appear. This may be partly owing to their inability to speak English.

But, as a whole, the women have little pleasure. When the man of the house entertains, he either takes his guests to a tea-house or calls in a _geisha_ to help him do the honours, while his wife sits apart in a room by herself and is neither seen nor heard. The diversions, even of the well-to-do, are few, comprising the arrangement of flowers, the composition of poetry, and an occasional visit to the theatre.

Women are employed in manual work, in the fields, and in the loading of coal in the big ports, and more and more in the new industries. The kitchen-standard of wifehood is disappearing. Last winter a woman made a speech in public; this caused great excitement--in fact, it was said that she was the first j.a.panese woman to do such a thing. In spite of the many changes which are coming about, they are as far from being suffragists as we were a hundred years ago. The s.e.x as a whole are a long way from anything like economic freedom.

A woman has recently been made bank-president in Tokyo--a quite unheard-of innovation. She is Madame Seno, a sort of j.a.panese Hetty Green. In spite of the fact that she is over seventy, she goes to her office every morning punctually. Her tastes are very frugal. She wears plain cotton kimonos, and travels third-cla.s.s. At the outbreak of the Russian war, however, she was the first to offer her subscription to the Government.

The children have a very good time, spinning tops, flying kites, and playing battledore and shuttlec.o.c.k. In the life of j.a.pan everything has its place and period, and the children's games succeed one another in such due order that it is almost impossible to buy the toys of one month when the season has pa.s.sed into the next month. It is extraordinary how the little people combine their work and play, for you see a small boy carrying a baby on his back staggering around on stilts, and another small boy pulling a loaded cart and rolling a hoop at the same time, and little girls with littler girls on their backs tossing b.a.l.l.s into the air or bouncing them in the streets. It is really an unusual thing to see a woman or young girl in the street without a baby attached to her.

I think one of the reasons why the j.a.panese race has not grown larger is because the children from a very early age carry such weights on their backs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_Little girls with littler girls on their backs_"]

Mr. Brownell tells a story of a j.a.panese girl which shows the filial duty and faithfulness that prevail. It seems she fell in love with a foreigner, and he with her. His intentions were good, and, although he was obliged to go away on a trip, he wrote her that he would soon be back to make her his wife. During his absence, however, her parents arranged another marriage for the girl, and on his return he found this letter from her: