that, whereas Moscow and St. Petersburg fell short of the romantic
dream-pictures which he had conceived of them by reason of their
fame, the reverse was the case with Nijni-Novgorod, of which
the name alone allured his ear with chiming syllables. Having
reached the town with no other premonitory bias than the spell
exercised by its magical appellation, he was ravished by the
picturesque admixture of races from every corner of the empire.
This paradoxical conflict between history and geography makes many
victims. I too had been haunted by the prestige of a great name
in Japanese annals--the name of Ashikaga. As I studied period
after period of the turbulent evolution from feudal rivalry to
military usurpation, from military usurpation to constitutional
monarchy, it seemed more and more evident that the Ashikaga
Shōguns, during two-and-a-half centuries of power, had been greater
friends of art and learning than any rulers before or since. At
Kyōto I had seen the golden pavilion of Yoshemitsu (whom Professor
Fenollosa compares with Cosmo de Medici) adorned with mural
paintings and screens by the artists whom he had imbued with the
spirit of dreamy seclusion of the Hangkow idyllists. Under his
patronage Chinese learning took root in Ashikaga University; the
religious plays, or _Nō_, acquired in the hands of Kiyotsugu their
claims to rank as aristocratic opera; the war of chrysanthemums,
between rival dynasties in Yamato and Kyōto, was composed by an
astute compromise. In short, culture was not purchased at the
cost of firm government. Nearly a century later came Yoshimasa,
whose silver pavilion, where he held æsthetic revels with his
favourites, the Abbots Soāmi and Shuko, was as pale a copy of
his great predecessor’s taste as his capacity to govern was
inferior. Effeminacy followed in the train of refinement. The
Ashikaga _régime_ left a legacy of civil war and ruined peasantry
for stronger rulers to replace by hardier methods, but it also
bequeathed the memory of a new learning and a new art. To Ashikaga,
then, urged by misleading memories and the promise I had given
to visit Ikao comrades, I gladly repaired when September rains
depressed the face of Tōkyō.
Yamada San, rightly thinking that living friends were of more
interest than dead lions, took me straight from the station to
his father’s house, and postponed all sightseeing until the
morrow. Here I first realised the patriarchal atmosphere of an
old-fashioned home. Father and mother were gravely courteous, and
took pains to show me polite attention, but the son scarcely spoke
in their presence; and pretty O Mitsu, who looked extremely pale,
became mute as ivory. The entry of two cousins, who spoke a little
English, introduced some animation; and after the consumption of
tea and oranges O Mitsu was asked to sing me an old song, playful,
if possible, because the foreigner would find it more easy to
understand. Crouching over a long-stringed _koto_, she sang (the
weather was very hot) this popular mosquito song:
“All you wives, lying
Outside the curtain,
Many mosquitoes
Often have stung,
Till the Bell Seven
Clanged from the temple:
Such things a good wife
Heeds not at all.”
It was explained that a wife would be showing disrespect to her
husband by taking rest under the mosquito-net in his absence. If,
therefore, he happened to stop out all night, she must still wait
for him, outside the net, until the bell for matins sounded the
retreat of her winged persecutors. “The Bell Seven” is named in
accordance with old reckoning: the time represented is really four
in the morning, when the Japanese day begins. That was the last I
saw of O Mitsu, for etiquette forbade her taking supper at my hotel
in company with her husband and father-in-law.
We spent the evening with the Tanaka family. There, too, I observed
the reticence imposed on women in their own homes. Tanaka Okusama,
who at Ikao had discoursed so brightly on every possible subject
from ethics to Epaminondas, crept quietly from one to another
of her guests, offering tea and cakes, but never joining in the
conversation. Her husband, who had a most genial, refined face,
made an excellent host: the four boys sat silently in a corner.
Many questions were put about European houses and habits, for the
Ashikaga of to-day, being a great centre of the trade in cotton
goods made from foreign yarn, is accustomed to the sight of foreign
commercial travellers.
The antiquities of the place were disappointing. The Academy of
Chinese Learning, founded, if tradition may be believed, in 852,
after attaining its zenith of prosperity under Yoshemitsu, has
since gradually declined. The great library of Chinese works is
broken up; only a few books remain. Of Confucian relics there
rests only an impressive bronze tablet, with full-length figure of
the sage, from which “rubbings” are sold to the pious. A sinister
black impression of the gaunt, long-nailed philosopher, whose
teaching still broods like a shadow over the majority of Japanese
households, recalls to me, in the shape of a colossal _kakemono_,
that dusty, dilapidated school, whose students are deserting it
for Western lore. The vast temple, however, standing in a grove
of cryptomeria, is still thronged by worshippers, and forms a
worthy link with the historic glories of Ashikaga. In a side-chapel
stand wooden effigies of all the Shōguns, wearing the tall black
court-cap and the moustache with small pointed beard, fashionable
from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. It is related that
three similar figures, preserved in the Tōjiin Temple at Kyōto,
were subjected to the indignity of decapitation in 1863, when the
Restoration party wished to insult the memory of the Shōgunate, but
did not dare to outrage the still powerful Tokugawa. The heads were
pilloried in the dry bed of the Kamogawa, where it was customary
to expose the heads of criminals. But Kyōto was at once the scene
of their rise and their decline. In Ashikaga itself their memory
lives as changeless and as free from insult as the tutelary
mountain rampart of Akagisan.
There being no hotel near Yamada’s dwelling, he secured me a room
in a geisha-house, with the result that late revelry made sleep
impossible. But a bathe next morning in the rushing Tonegawa, with
the exciting diversion of shooting some rapids in a crazy punt,
invigorated me and amused a crowd of urchins, who shouted from
the bank, “We want to see the naked foreigner!” By the end of
the second day I felt at home with the older generation of both
families, and was shown over warehouse, mill, and granary. Having
not omitted to present _miage_ on arrival, I departed in a shower
of good wishes and small souvenirs. Yamada senior, who had never
before (so his son declared) been willing to make the acquaintance
of a foreigner, insisted on my accepting a roll of _habutai_ (white
silk, resembling taffeta), while Tanaka Okusama met me at the
station with a parting gift of pickles and poetry. She had made the
one, her husband the other. In fact, he had added this _haikai_ to
his published works:
“You, like a bird, pass,
Joyous, untrammelled;
Sad our farewell, when
Kiri-trees fall.”
II
The holy province of Izumo should be visited in October. Then the
Shintō gods and goddesses, deserting every other part of Japan,
assemble at the great shrine of Kizuki under the presidency of
Ōnamuji. But every year Ōnamuji must have sadder news to tell
his dwindling fellow-deities. At one time his own temples on
Mount Daisen were as many as two hundred and fifty; these have
crumbled to a few mossy ruins. The goddess _Inada-hime_, whose
lover intoxicated with _saké_ the eight-headed serpent and cut the
monster in pieces, that she might become his spouse, is invoked
by fewer youths and maidens desiring happy marriages. On all
hands the Shintō Pantheon is being undermined by two strangely
allied foes--by atheism and Christianity. Though full of sympathy
for the august descendants of Izanagi and Izanami, the creator
and creatress of the Japanese universe, I could not refuse the
hospitality of a Japanese Christian, whose unremitting kindness
will always be associated for me with the romantic beauty of Matsuë.
From my hotel, which stood on the edge of the blue Shinjiko lagoon,
I was watching the little steamers puff angrily to and fro, the
endless procession of passengers across the long curving bridge,
and one or two old fishermen wading in the shallows, when a message
arrived inviting me to take tea with Assistant-Judge Nomura at his
house on Castle-hill. Happening to arrive before the other guests,
I was first shown a curious collection of prints, illustrating the
costumes and customs of ancient Korea, and a series of pictures
of all the ironclads belonging to the Japanese navy. This mixture
of old and new was very characteristic of Mr. Nomura, who admired
with enthusiasm Western dress, furniture, and religion, but
reverenced at the same time his own national traditions. Naturally
his knowledge of the two was one-sided, and he was happily
unconscious that his fine collection of Inari and Satsuma ware
was simply insulted by the base intrusion of a sixpenny London
saucer. Four inhabitants of Matsuë--two young lawyers, a musician,
and an old painter--were announced, and the host at once took a
more ceremonious tone. We all entered the tiny tea-room, nine feet
square, containing four and a half mats, and were occupied for more
than half an hour with _cha-no-yu_, the august tea-making, which
seemed to me unnecessarily long, perhaps because it was conducted
by a wizard in a grey coat and blue tie. I preferred the dainty
witches of the Miyako-odori. Besides the formal ablution and
handling of accessory instruments, at stated intervals a bell was
rung, the room was swept, we walked from the house to the garden
and back from the garden to the house with a scrupulosity that
would have satisfied Hideyoshi himself. At last the august tea,
thick and green and hot, was presented to each visitor, who drank
with slow but noisy demonstrations of lip-homage, to testify polite
satisfaction.
Then we adjourned to the sitting-room, where the musician brought
out two antique Chinese objects, one bearing resemblance to a flute
and the other to a violin with shaggy, semicircular bow. On these
he produced, not without effort, very weird sounds, which I was
obliged to eulogise as being entirely novel and remarkable, for I
could not compare them with any melodies familiar to European ears.
I believe the others shared my relief when a painting competition
was suggested, for they could all handle a brush as easily as I a
pen, and the eye is less fastidious than the ear. The first bout
was in three colours, sepia, Indian black, and red, though the last
was sparingly used. The designs were rapidly and lightly touched
in--a hawk pouncing on a goose; a carp swimming against the stream;
a frog climbing up a reed; and a terrified child, with shaven pate,
running away from a temple-dancer, masked by a lion’s head. Next
a batch of fans was distributed to the competitors, who speedily
adorned them with fanciful arabesques, in which curled clouds
played hide-and-seek with Fuji, or moonlit pines peeped out from
drifted snow. We drew lots for these souvenirs of playful skill,
and to me fell the picture of the child flying from the lion-mask.
But at this point Mr. Nomura’s own children, two charming little
girls, brought us in presents of flowers and cakes wrapped in
silver paper. The rickshaws were at the door; _sayonara_ rang
cordially in our ears; one of the pleasantest calls I ever made
came to an end.
Curiosity prompted me to attend the service held by native
Christians in an abandoned Shintō temple perverted to evangelical
use. Most of the congregation belonged to the more credulous sex.
Mothers, carrying their babies on their backs, sat in rows on
mats, while one or two chairs were placed for foreign visitors. All
joined heartily in the hymns and listened attentively to the simple
prayers. Sometimes a _shōji_, or sliding shutter, was gently pushed
aside, and an inquisitive face peered in on the worshippers. The
missionary, a man of athletic frame, with the cold, fixed eyes of a
fanatic, preached with fervour on the subject of original sin. He
held the doctrine that perfection was to be realised on earth, and
believed that he had personally attained it. From all accounts he
was a hard-working idealist, who spared no pains to make converts,
but his ascetic views must seem violently out of harmony with the
Shintōist easy-going faith, which has for moral code the single
maxim, “Follow your impulses and obey the Emperor.” Although not
subjected to persecution, a native Christian hardly ever remains
in his birthplace. The Matsuë converts whom we met had come from
Hiroshima, Ōsaka, and other spots. Some estimate of the progress
of Western religion among Matsuë merchants may be based on the
proportion of believers in the middle school, to which all the boys
of the better classes are sent. Out of about five hundred boys and
sixty masters, two boys and one master profess Christianity.
Etiquette is luckily assimilated to foreign custom among
Japanese Christians. When Judge Nomura returned my call, he was
accompanied by his wife and little girls, who were delighted with
some dolls and picture-books which I had purchased for them in
London. At first O Ai San and O Dai San, diminutive damsels aged
four and five respectively, sat solemnly in a corner burning
fireworks--_hana-bi_, as they are called--with tied tongues and
eyes fixed on the spluttering flowers of flame. But gradually
they thawed, and losing all their shyness, played battledore and
shuttlecock, blindman’s buff, and other games. When the babies had
gone home with their nurse, the judge and his wife remained to
dinner, and a lay preacher, who spoke English perfectly, proved an
invaluable medium of conversation. As my guests expressed a desire
to conclude the evening with hymns, we sang a great many, from
which they derived spiritual pleasure, while my knowledge of their
language was much enlarged. The lay-preacher had always two or
three hymn-books in his pocket, English and Japanese versions being
printed on opposite pages. Suddenly this pious exercise was rudely
interrupted. A tipsy geisha, holding a _saké_-cup in her hand,
staggered into the room and addressed some bacchanalian words to
the lay preacher, who chanced to be near the door. She had escaped
from a rather noisy wedding-party, which was feasting and clapping
hands in the room below, while the bridal couple had retired and
the _shimadai_, an emblematic group of pine and bamboo, crane and
tortoise, remained for a symbolic centre of festal joy. We took
this intrusion for a hint to separate, and it certainly jarred on a
devotional mood. To my friends this apparition must have suggested
the “scarlet woman,” whose cup is full of abominations, but I could
not regard it in any other light than the opportune assertion of
_la joie de vivre_, protesting against the gloomy gospel of Puritan
restraint.
III
And yet the joy of living, dissociated from any principle but that
of self-indulgence, is apt to produce strange types of Anglo-Saxon
degeneracy. Dr. Silenus, whose hospitality and frankness are a
byword in Azabu, would seem to have fallen victim to that fatal
fascination which Mr. Kipling ascribes to the lands “East of
Suez, where the best is like the worst; Where there ain’t no ten
commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst.” Thirst was never
absent, and the decalogue rigidly banished from the epicurean
establishment, which I take leave to describe as a warning and a
comfort to the “unco’ guid.”
Sunday afternoon was regularly set apart for pagan revels, to
which the whole neighbourhood was admitted, for the large-hearted
Doctor loved to see his house full of friends and acquaintances.
When you had skirted the moat which encircles the imperial palace,
and climbed the steep _daimachi_, you hailed with relief a row of
houses, mostly inhabited by Europeans and surrounded by similar
high fencing. But, the gate once passed, all similarity between
Liberty Hall and its respectable neighbours ceased. In no other
courtyard would you be greeted by the sight of a hawk, an owl, a
goat, and several monkeys dwelling together in unity. Lucullus,
the goat, was an epicurean like his master, but less eclectic,
for his diet included wood and iron and stones, nails and lighted
cigars and boxes of matches. Indeed, he might still be living, a
triumph of desire over digestion, had he not one day tried a dose
of refined camphor, which brought death and a costly Shintō funeral.
Having penetrated the bodyguard of animals, you would enter a large
room, adorned with fine bronzes and screens, which you had not
leisure to examine, for so many unusual sights claimed attention.
At the back would be masked dancers or musicians, rather cramped
for space by reason of the motley, semicircular crowd of men,
women, and children, who filled the foreground as far as a row of
chairs set in the verandah for barbarian friends. Dominating all
sat the master of the revels, his huge torso bare to the waist and
profusely tattooed with elegant designs. As he passed the whisky
to the “parasites” (for so he was accustomed to call the band of
adherents who made his house their own), the genial, rotund Doctor
looked the very incarnation of Ebisu or Silenus.
[Illustration: Lion-Dance on New Year’s Day.]
The first dancer on the afternoon of my arrival was Kabukei-jishi,
the boy in a lion’s mask, whose figure is so familiar in Japanese
streets on New Year’s Day. Kabukei, a native of Echigo, is said
to have originated and given his name to this realistic dance.
Though the children must have seen it often before, some of them
laughed and others cried with terror, as the clever mimic crawled
up to them roaring, or scratching himself, or shaking his ears.
Then followed a comic scene between two peasants and a Daimyō, who
was obliged to defend himself with sword and fan against the heavy
hoes of his disrespectful henchmen. A medical comedy, probably
inspired to some extent by Dr. Silenus, had for _motif_ a quarrel
between a physician and a farmer, whose wife was expecting to give
birth to a child but had no wish to complicate an old-fashioned
process by new-fangled medicine. The outspoken dialogue did not
shock the unsophisticated audience, for whom Nature is not swathed
in conventional veils of reticence, but the actors observed the
_ne coram publico_ maxim to this extent, that the birth took place
in the wings, to be followed by a rather thrilling infanticide.
Bloodshed is always pleasing to the playgoers of Tōkyō. The last
piece to be performed was a duologue between Kitsune, the fox-god,
and a greedy rustic. Kitsune carried a bag of rice, and offered a
mouthful in reward for every athletic or acrobatic feat which the
other should succeed in imitating. When the gilt-snouted fox had
set the example of leaping or balancing with adroit agility, the
sly lout would make a clumsy pretence of doing the same, and always
managed to obtain the rice by chicanery. At last the god discovered
that he was being tricked, and killed the peasant with a blow from
his rake. Nothing seemed to amuse the Azabu children so much as the
antics of these two.
On another occasion Dr. Silenus invited a large party to witness
a still more interesting exhibition in his garden. If I have used
the word “degeneracy” to express his repudiation of certain moral
ideas to which the Anglo-Saxon race pays the compliment of formal
adherence, it should yet be added that his “self-indulgence”
included the laborious pleasure of teaching himself the art
of sword-making. Under Japanese tuition he had attained great
proficiency, and if his blades did not rank with those of Masamune
and Muramasa, at least they excited the admiration and envy of
experts. Between him, therefore, and those martial patriots of
his adopted country who in their hearts regret the swashbuckling
days of old, before barristers and deputies were minted from
a foreign model, latent sympathy could not but exist. Now the
_sōshi_, to whom allusion has already been made, and whose nominal
profession might range from that of vagabond actor to that of
political agent or bravo, have this in common--they love a life
of roving independence, while owning loose allegiance to some
momentary chief. As constitutional methods take deeper root among
their compatriots, it becomes more difficult for them to practise
an avowed calling which shall serve as a centre of organisation.
In the summer of 1898 one of them hit on the brilliant idea of
founding an Association for the Revival of the Noble Art of
Self-defence; that is, the euphemism was closely akin to the
title by which lovers of boxing in England and America glorify
their taste, while the object was to promote skill in the use of
lethal weapons. The Doctor, whom I regard as a thorough _rōnin_,
or unattached “wave-man,” refusing to bow the knee to social or
ethical Baals, became at once a subscribing member. He used to
declare that this adhesion procured him privileged places at
almost every public function which he attended, so potent is the
freemasonry of his brothers-in-arms. At least I can certify that it
procured for us a spectacle of unique and amazing skill.
The first combat was between a swordsman and a spearsman, in which
I fully expected that the lighter arm must easily prevail over
the cumbrous and more lengthy one. But I had reckoned without the
swivel, which made the lance in dexterous keeping a formidable
instrument. When the swordsman, abandoning the defensive, tried
to strike down his opponent’s spear and deal a close thrust,
the latter with the rapidity of lightning drew in his weapon,
and shooting it out again before the other could recover his
ground, drove the point home. In four bouts out of five the spear
proved mightier than the sword. Then it was pitted against a more
archaic compound of pickaxe and boomerang. To a small-headed axe
was attached an iron ball by a long cord, with which the holder
tried to entangle his adversary’s lance. He slung the ball with
his right, and if successful drew a dagger with his left hand to
plant the conquering blow. That many of the fencers could use
either hand with equal effect was proved by the next series of
encounters between two-sworded and one-sworded men. These had been
very carefully matched, and the superior skill of the man who was
armed with but a single sword in three cases out of seven decided
the result. Like a wise _entrepreneur_, the Chief of the Sōshi had
reserved his most sensational contest for the end. Female warriors
are no novelty in Japan. The Emperor, even up to the time of his
restoration to actual sovereignty in 1868, counted among his
troops a corps of Amazons, whose training was as severe and whose
prowess as remarkable as those of the _Samurai_ themselves. When a
stalwart woman came forward armed with a halberd and wearing the
same wide _hakama_ as her opponent, whose arm was a sword, she
astonished us all by the vigour and dexterity of her onslaught. The
war-cries which she uttered were very terrifying, and I am inclined
to attribute her victory rather to them than to any hypocritical
chivalry on the part of her adversary. I wondered if this muscular
virago obeyed the Confucian ordinance, “A woman should look on her
husband as if he were heaven itself, and never weary of thinking
how she may yield to her husband, and thus escape celestial
castigation.”
IV
I was seated in the office of that flourishing Tōkyō newspaper,
_Yorodsu Chōhō_--waiting for my friend the sub-editor, whose name,
Kishimoto Bunkyo, will one day be famous, when my tedium was
enlivened by an apparition. In spite of the care taken to entertain
foreigners in the waiting-room of that popular journal, I had
been bored. The square of Brussels carpet, the presence of table
and chairs, the permission to keep one’s shoes on, the literary
delights afforded by Macaulay’s “Essays,” Washington Irving’s
“Sketchbook,” and Mr. Stead’s “If Christ came to Chicago”--all
these things failed to dispel that _ennui_, born of perpetual
waiting, which only Oriental patience can endure. Suddenly entered
this welcome apparition, feminine, furious. “Is there any one here
who speaks English?” it asked impetuously. The old door-keeper,
catching at the sound “English,” muttered the word “Kishimoto,”
and climbed the stairs in quest of my friend. The apparition and
myself were thus left alone, and eyed each other furtively, with
embarrassment. At any other time I should have been delighted
to make the acquaintance of this pretty, smart American, but an
instinct warned me that her business was private and delicate. I
pretended to be absorbed by the dreary violence of Mr. Stead.
Kishimoto descended, alert and smiling. The apparition, thrusting
a lady’s visiting-card before his eyes, did not smile, but said
rapidly:
“That’s who I am. About that paragraph in yesterday’s paper; who
wrote it?”