heard the Emperor chant the fact that he was at peace with all the world
save Russia, and observed that he must show origin from the gods in
other ways than in his stride. I have dined with the gracious
representative of the Stars and Stripes and his staff, who seem to have
taken on an Oriental suavity that bodes well for our interests in this
Far East, and have seen an Imperial Highness play the delicate and
difficult double rôle of hand-shaking Democrat to Americans and God-head
to his own people--while both looked on. I have eaten a Japanese dinner
at the Maple Club, while Geishas and dancing-girls held fast the
wondering Occidental eye; have heard, there, American college songs sung
by Japanese statesmen, and have joined hands with them in a swaying
performance of "Auld Lang Syne." I have seen wrestling matches that
looked at first sight like two fat ladies trying to push each other out
of a ring--but which was much more. I have been to the theatre, to find
the laugh checked at my lips and to sit thereafter in silence,
mystification, and wonder. I have tossed pennies to children--the
"babies" who here "are kings"--while wandering through blossoming parks
and among people whom I cannot yet realize as real. I have visited
shrines, temples; have heard the wail of kite and the croak of raven
over the tombs of the Shoguns, and have seen a Holy Father beating a
drum and praying a day-long prayer with a cigarette-stub behind one ear.
I have learned that this is the land of the seductive "chit" and the
deceptive yen which doubles your gold when you arrive and makes you
think that when you have spent fifty cents you still have a dollar of it
left. Moreover, I have seen the glory of cherry-blossoms. But of all
these trifles and more--more, perhaps, anon. I pulled a little red
guide-book out of my pocket.
"That word," I asked, pointing to the proper one, "would you use that
word to your--well, your mother?"
"No," she said very slowly, and with straight eyes, again
answering impersonal inquiry with response even more impersonal,
"I--don'--don't--think--you--would--use--that word--to your--mother."
The sunlight lay only on the great white crest of Fuji. Everywhere else
the swift dusk of Japan was falling. In it the cherry-tree was fast
taking on the light of a great white star. In the grove above us a
nightingale sang.
Truly 'tis hard.
III
LINGERING IN TOKIO
I might as well confess, I suppose, that these "Hardships of the
Campaign," pleasant as they are, ecstatic as they might be to an
untroubled mind, constitute a bluff pure and simple. Here goes another,
but it shall be my last, and I shall write no more until the needle of
my compass points to Manchuria. A month ago the first column got away
when the land was lit with the glory of cherry-blossoms. We have been
leaving every week since--next week we leave again. One man among us now
calls himself a cherry-blossom correspondent. He was lucky to say it
first. Clear across the Pacific we can hear the chuckle at home over our
plight even from the dear ones who sent us to Japan. If it were not such
a tragedy it would be very funny indeed.
* * * * *
The stars float high in the sky of Japan, so that when the moon rises, a
vaster dome is lit up than I have ever seen anywhere else in the world.
The first moon I saw in Japan was rising over the Bluff where the
foreigners live in Yokohama, and climbing slowly toward those distant
stars. The Happy Exile and I had climbed a narrow, winding,
bush-bordered alley, broken here and there with short flights of stone
steps, and we sat on mats in his Japanese home. Somewhere outside a
nightingale was singing and the fine needle-point of the first cicada
was jabbing vibrations into the night air. To the left of the Happy
Exile was a beautiful box of lacquer, and he reached out a caressing
hand for it. That was his _netsuke_ box, and he pulled out little
lacquer trays in which lay his diminutive treasures.
"I have only about forty here," he said, "but they are all good. The
dealers can't fool me now, and if ever a new _netsuke_ is brought in
from any part of Japan, the owner directly or indirectly lets me know it
is here. Sometimes I will strike one in some far interior town, but I
know it has been sent on there ahead of me, that I may think I have
stumbled on a treasure. My big collection is at home--and do you know
that a man in Boston has perhaps the best set in the world? They have
risen in value enormously, and are rising all the time. There are not so
many imitations as people suppose, for the reason that the carvers can't
afford to spend the time that is necessary to make even a good
deception. You see, in the old days each daimio had his carvers who did
nothing but make _netsukes_, and all time was theirs."
Then he began taking them out. Each one represented a myth, a tradition,
or a proverb.
"I love these things not only for their exquisite carving and their
color and age, but because they are so significant in reflecting
Japanese life and character. You have no idea how much you can learn
about Japan from studying these curios."
Whiskey and soda were brought in. We watched the moon, listened to the
nightingale, and the Happy Exile's talk drifted to old Japanese
poetry--to the little seventeen-syllable form in which the Japanese has
caught a picture, a mood, one swift impression, or a sorrow. Here are
three that he gave me--but inaccurately he said: "A mother is sitting on
a mat, perhaps alone. The wind rattles the fragile wall and she turns:
"The east wind blowing;
Oh, the little finger-holes
Through the shogis!"
Now, _shogis_ are the little squares of latticed paper that make the
fragile wall, and mischievous children delight in thrusting their
fingers through them. Those little finger-holes were made by the
vanished hand of a dead child.
This is a picture in three strokes:
Moonlight;
Across the mat
The shadow of a pine.
Think of that for a while.
And here is another mother-cry for a dead child. There are summer days
in which every Japanese child that can toddle is chasing dragon-flies,
and the children who die must pass through a hundred worlds. So this
mother's thought runs thus:
Oh, little catcher of dragon-flies,
I wonder how far
You've gone.
But I like best the first:
The east wind blowing;
Oh, the little finger-holes
Through the shogis!
We drifted out into the night air. Every house was dark and quiet. The
Happy Exile stopped once to pat a yellow cur on the head.
"All these people know me," he said, "and I can step into any house
without a word and sleep the night." But we followed that narrow alley
up long flights of narrow, winding steps, under thick bushes that arched
above us and shattered the moonbeams about our feet. There was not a
cloud in the sky when we reached the top of the bluff, and I felt for
the first time what the magic of this land was to the Happy Exile. The
moon was soaring on toward those stars--the stars that float high in
this sky of Japan.
* * * * *
Once I took refuge in a wrestling-match. I found a great pagoda-like,
circus-like tent made of bamboo with matting for a roof. Outside long
streamers of various colors floated from the tops of long poles. High
above and on a little platform supported by four bamboos a man was
beating a drum. He had started beating that drum at daybreak. About the
entrance and around the big, fragile structure was the same crowd of men
and boys that you would find at an American circus. To get in I paid two
yen. Had my skin been yellow and my eyes slant I would have dropped but
one. The arena inside was amphitheatrical in shape with three broad
tiers of benches on which squatted the spectators. In the centre and
under a bamboo roof was a hummock of dirt about two feet high. Four
pillars swathed with red and blue supported this roof, and from each
pillar was stretched a streamer from which dangled little banners
covered with Chinese ideographs. A ring some twelve feet in diameter was
dug into the dirt hummock and in the centre of this ring were two huge
fat men, stark naked except for a breech-clout. As I came in, they rose
and took hold. To the Saxon it looked at first glance like two fat
ladies simply trying to push each other out of the ring, and I came near
laughing aloud. Before I had approached ten steps one of the two fat men
touched one foot outside of the ring. He had lost and the bout was over.
Now two more came walking in with great dignity. They mounted the arena
and turned their backs upon each other. Then each stretched out his
right leg with his right hand on the knee, raised it high in the air and
brought it down on the earth with a mighty stamp. The same performance
with the left leg, and then they strained downward until their buttocks
almost touched the earth. Turning, they squatted on their heels opposite
each other at the edge of the ring, and each man slapped his hands
together gently, stretched them out at full length and turned the palms
over. This was a salute--the Japanese equivalent of the Saxon pugilist's
handshake. Each walked then to one of the posts from which hung a little
box of salt, and his second handed him there water in a _sake_ cup. He
rinsed his mouth, spurted the water out, took a pinch of salt and threw
it into the ring. One of them stooped and plucked a few blades of grass
from the sod and threw them also into the ring. Both these acts were
meant to drive the spirits of evil away, and it was all so serious that
I was aroused at once. Four times they squatted like two huge
game-cocks, and four times they got up slowly, strolled leisurely to the
salt-box and the _sake_ cup. At last they got together, and there was a
mighty tussle, and to my astonishment, one of those giants threw the
other over his head and landed him some eight feet outside the ring.
Apparently there was more in it than was evident to the casual eye, and
it was very serious business indeed. The fact is, wrestling is an
ancient and honorable calling in Japan, and goes back to the sun
goddess. She had a brother once who used to annoy her by killing wild
animals and tossing them into her backyard. One day she got angry and
ran away to a cave, leaving the earth in total darkness. Her retainers,
and the brother and his retainers tried to get her out, but she refused
to come out--having blocked the cave with a great stone. So they
performed antics and made strange cries until, tempted by curiosity, she
pushed the stone slightly away and looked out, and thereupon one Taji
Karac, stamping the earth, rushed forward and tore the bowlder away, and
that is why the wrestlers stamp the earth to-day. This is myth--what
follows is historical.
"Once upon a time," said an American correspondent, as he leaned over
the bar that night at the Imperial Hotel, "a chesty noble got gay, and
remarked that he was about the best on earth. The emperor heard of this,
and sent a challenge broadcast. A big chap took it up, kicked in the
chesty noble's ribs, and brake his bones so that he died. This was
twenty-four years before celestial peace was proclaimed on earth. About
nine hundred years later, two brothers claimed the throne and they
agreed to wrassle for it. They did it by proxy, though, and one
Korishito got the throne through his champion. In the same century there
was a wrestling-match at the autumn festival of the Five Grains. The
harvest was good that year, and the emperor argued thereupon that the
coincident wrestling must be good, and so wrestling became a permanent
national custom. When the champion Kiobashi became referee the emperor
gave him a fan which proclaimed that he was the Prince of Lions. The
wrestlers were divided into east and west, and that's why they come into
the arena from the east and west to-day. Hollyhock is the flower of the
east, the gourd-flower is symbol of the west, and the path to the stage
is called the flower-path to-day. The pillars indicate the points of the
compass. The next champion the emperor called the Driving Wind, and the
family of the Driving Wind alone can hold the symbol of the referee
to-day."
These wrestlers are exempt from military service, and they constitute, I
understand, a very close corporation. When an unusually large child is
born in Japan, the father and mother say: "He shall be a wrestler."
The wrestlers are enormous men, and average over six feet in height.
Some of them are magnificent in shape, but as weight counts in the
science, they encourage fat. The present champion weighs over three
hundred pounds. Certainly, as a class, the wrestlers show what Japan can
do in the way of producing big men. Constantly I have been surprised not
only at the thick-set sturdiness, but at the average height of the
Japanese soldier as I see him in Tokio on his way to the front.
Moreover, I am told that the height of Japanese school-children has
increased three inches within the last ten years in the schools where
the students sit in chairs instead of squatting on the floor. And, among
the new types one sees in Tokio to-day, the dapper men in European
clothes about the clubs and hotels, the statesmen in high hats and
frock-suits, the half-modernized class, who wear derby hats and
mackintoshes with fur collars and show their legs naked to the knee when
they step from a rickshaw--the most interesting and significant is the
Tokio University student you see lilting on his getas through the public
gardens. He has an intelligent face, looks you straight in the eye, is
agile as a panther, and as tall, I believe, as the average college
student. I suppose the emperor issued an edict that his people should
grow taller and if he did--they will. But these students--one can't help
wondering what, when they grow up, they will do for Japan and to the
rest of the East.
* * * * *
With bird-like cries the rickshaw men turn under an arched gateway into
a little court-yard paved with stones. The wheels rattle as in a hollow
vault and come to a sudden halt. Straightway there is an answering
bustle and the shuffling of many little feet along the polished floors
to the entrance of the tea-house, and many little brown maidens kneel
there and smile and gurgle a welcome. There the shoes of the visitor
come off, and if any man has forgotten the first instruction Kipling
gave, that the visitor to Japan should take with him at least one
beautiful pair of socks, there is considerable embarrassment for him.
You are led up a narrow stairway, each step of polished wood, and into a
big chamber covered with mats--the wall toward the interior made of
beautiful screens, the other wall opening on the outer air to a balcony.
At the other end of the room from the entrance a single beautiful vase
stands on a little platform, and in that vase is one single beautiful
flower. In front of that vase is the seat of honor, and the guests are
arranged in front of it seated on thin cushions on the floor.
Straightway little nesan--serving-girls--carry in little trays, a box
filled with ashes in which glow tiny bars of charcoal, a little
ash-receiver of bamboo, a bottle of _sake_, and dainty little bowls
without handles for drinking-cups. Now one by one the brilliant little
stars of the drama appear. A geisha girl glides in at the entrance,
another and another, and in a row sink to their knees and bow their
foreheads to the mat. Rising, they approach ten steps and kneel again.
Once more they approach shuffling along the floor in their socks of
spotless white (the big toe in a separate pocket) walking modestly
pigeon-toed that the flaps of their brilliant kimonos may part not at
all, and then they are bowing in front of the little trays where they
sit smiling and ready to serve you with food and drink.
There for the first time we saw Kamura--Kamura-san you must say, if you
would be polite. She was pretty, and dainty, and graceful, and her years
were only fourteen, which by our computation, would be thirteen only,
since the Japanese child is supposed to be a year old when born. She
spoke English very well, for she had lived in Shanghai once where she
had played with American children. She was an Eurasian--that is a
half-caste--but that was a secret which she told a few in confidence,
for you could not tell it from her face, and the fact would be no little
obstacle to the success of her career as a geisha girl. Straightway
little Kamura-san was the favorite of the dinner party, with the women
as well as with the men, and she acted as interpreter and said many
quaint, shrewd, unexpected things. The women petted and caressed her,
and the men doubtless would have liked to do the same, but that is not a
Japanese custom. She turned to one man of the party, and she spoke
slowly and with no shading of intonation whatever:
"Who was the very young gentleman with red cheeks who was here with you
the other night?"
The man told her.
"Why?" he asked.
"He came back to see me alone. He wanted to see me here alone, and he
wanted the nesan to leave the room, but I would not let the nesan leave
the room, and I did not understand."
That innocence aroused considerable interest in everybody and, later,
the young gentleman's cheeks got redder still, when the incident was
told him. Three days later I went to the tea-house again. Kamura-san,
baby that she was, was to be sold soon to a Japanese.
* * * * *
She already spoke such excellent English and was so very intelligent
that I wondered straightway if it might not be feasible to buy little
Kamura-san myself and send her to school. Her mother, I was told, wanted
her to go to school, and Kamura-san said that was what she wanted to
do--how sincerely I was soon to learn. That mother had sold her several
years before to the master of the tea-house and to get his money back
the master of the tea-house must sell her again. So the price of the
child, body and soul, was 750 yen or $375 in gold. For $50 a year she
could be sent to school in Tokio, and I doubtless could find people to
take care of her, though Kamura-san said that she would live with her
mother and go to school, which was better still. So I set about
negotiations, which were many and intricate. I had to see her own
mother, her house-mother, with whom she and other geisha girls lived in
Tokio, and who made engagements for her and them to dance at various
tea-houses (she would be a female manager of chorus-girls in this
country), and I would have to see the master of the tea-house. I saw
them all, and not one of them believed that my purpose was what I said
it was, though all of them, except Kamura-san herself, politely
pretended to believe. As Kamura-san had played with American children
and knew English well, I told her about America, and strove to explain.
She sat with her little face downcast, her eyes dreamy and apparently
taking in every word I uttered. When I got through she said simply:
"Yess, you will buy me out; you will give me a house; I will be your
Japanese wife and wear European clothes." With her next breath she would
be saying how much she wanted to go to school.
* * * * *
The mother of Kamura-san lives in Yokohama. Soon there was an amateur
theatrical performance there and I got the mistress of the tea-house to
let Kamura-san and a friend go down to see it. In the afternoon I went
to see the mother, who was young, pretty, and very lady-like. The little
girl acted as interpreter, and from her mother's lips told this story:
Kamura-san's father was an Austrian, and therefore she was a half-caste.
That, however, was told me in confidence, and the fact I must not
repeat, since it would interfere with her future. The mother had been
his Japanese wife, and she had loved him very much. After a time the
Austrian had been obliged to go home. He left the mother well provided
for--gave her a house and a good deal of money. But she was, she said,
young and foolish and extravagant, made bad investments, and lost it
all. It was then that she sold Kamura-san to the tea-house. She would be
very glad to have the little girl live with her at home, and wanted her
to go to school. Her father, her mother said, would be humiliated and
chagrined if he knew that Kamura-san was a geisha, and she wanted her
daughter to give the life up. Before the interview was over I could see
very plainly that the mother was still expecting the daughter to follow
in her own footsteps.
The three went to the amateur theatrical performance that night, and
from another part of the house I could see the little girl explaining it
to her friend and to her mother, and the next night at the tea-house she
rehearsed several features of it to her fellow-geishas, and her
imitation of a barytone soloist, the way he stood, lifted his shoulders,
opened his mouth and puffed out the volume of sound, was very funny, and
made her companions squeak with laughter.
Now, there was a young American officer who was going around with me on
these expeditions, who was having considerable fun over my
philanthropical purpose, and was scornfully sceptical of any success. He
was on hand that night and suddenly Kamura-san said:
"My mother says I must not love young and handsome gentleman."
"Why?" I asked.
"Because young and handsome gentleman changes his heart."
"Well, I suppose I fill the bill."
"Yess," she said, "you are a little handsome and a little old."
"But you aren't going to love anybody, you are going to school."
"Yess," said Kamura-san obediently.
Once more that night I tried to explain that we did not rob cradles in
America, and again she looked dreamy and seemed to understand, but when
I started to go, she beckoned me behind a screen:
"Did you bring the 750 yen?"
* * * * *
It was the interpreter of the tea-house that made me permanently
hopeless. The interpreter was soft-voiced, gentle, and spoke excellent
English. She had lived several years with an American missionary--a
woman whom she had loved, she said, very tenderly. The interpreter had
been a widow for several years, and had a little girl. She would never
marry again, she said, because she would have to give up her child. So
she spoke English in the tea-house and taught the children of the master
for a pitiful salary. I cannot recall ever having met such frankness in
Japan, and this is what she said:
"If you have 750 yen to spare, give it to the poor families of Tokio
whose sons have gone to war. You buy Kamura-san from the tea-house and
you go away to Manchuria; you will not know whether she goes to school.
Most likely her house-mother will sell her again. Anyhow it is useless.
She really does not want to go to school. She likes the tea-house, the
music, the lights and gossip, and the coming and going of strangers. You
cannot change her, and it is no use. Give your money to poor people in
Tokio."
* * * * *
After this Kamura-san's instincts told her that something was wrong, and
she began to take perceptibly more notice of the young officer. Once, as
I was told, she said to him:
"I always liked you best--you are so pretty."
I charged her with this statement.
"Who told you that?"
"Never mind."
"He is a liar," said Kamura-san calmly.
And once I caught her making eyes at him behind my back--something that
she had never done with me. With this, too, I charged her.
"No," she said in denial, "he is your brother. He will be my best
friend. He will be godfather to our child."
I staggered half-way across the room--that infant talking of a child!
"In heaven's good name," I said, "what do you want with a child?"
"That I may not be lonely when I old," said little Kamura-san.
* * * * *
Still, out of curiosity now, I went to see the house-mother of
Kamura-san. Her head was poised on her shoulders like a snake's, and her
eyes were the eyes of a snake--black, beady, and glittering. A face more
hard, cunning, cruel, and smilingly crafty I never saw, and it took her
but a little while to discover that I was an unsatisfactory customer,
and I couldn't help wondering what that Austrian father would have
thought and felt had he seen that snake-like hag trying to barter with
me for his own flesh and blood. I left the young officer there and
naturally the house-mother tried to sell the child to him.
Kamura-san I never saw again. When I came back from Manchuria I heard
that she was gone--whither I don't know, but I'm hoping that the
Austrian father by some chance may some day see these lines.
* * * * *
But no more now of temples, blossoms, pictures, _netsuke_, tea-houses,
wrestling-matches, theatres, and the what-not that everybody with a pen
has so wearisomely done to death. News of the battle of Nanshan has come
in. Next week we leave again.
An explanation has occurred to me. You know the Japanese does nearly
everything but his fighting--backward. Of course he reads and writes
backward. At the theatre you find the dressing-room in the lobby. Keys
turn from left to right, boring-tools and screws, I understand, turn
from right to left, and a Japanese carpenter draws his plane toward him
instead of pushing it away. Sometimes even the Japanese thinks and talks
backward. For instance, suppose he says:
"I think I will go wash my hands." That, in Japanese, is:
"Te-wo aratte kimasho." Now, what he really has said is literally:
"Hands having washed I think I will _come back_."
Perhaps then our trouble is that the Japanese tells the truth backward
and we can't understand. He might even be fighting that way--say, for an
alliance with Russia--and we still should not understand--at least, not
yet.
IV
MAKING FOR MANCHURIA