UNDER THE RED SUNSET
The slowing of the train awoke Barbara from her reverie. The three boy
students got out, casting sidelong glances at her. More Japanese
entered, and two foreigners--a bright-faced girl on the arm of a
keen-eyed, soldierly man with bristling white hair, a mustache like a
walrus, and a military button. The girl's hands were full of
cherry-branches, whose bunches of double blossoms, incredibly thick and
heavy, filled the car with a delicate fragrance. The bishop folded his
newspaper and put it into his pocket.
As he did so the owner of the expansive waistcoat leaned across the
aisle and addressed him.
"Say, my friend," he said, "you've lived out here some time, I
understand."
"Yes," the bishop replied. "Twenty-five years."
"Well, I take it, then, you ought to know this country right down to the
ground; and if you don't mind, I'd like to ask a question or two."
"Do," said the bishop. "I'll be glad to answer if I can."
The other got up and took a seat opposite. "You see," he pursued
confidentially, "I came on this trip just for a rest and to settle the
bills for the curios my wife"--he indicated the lady, who had now moved
up beside him--"thinks she'd like to look at back home. But I've been
getting interested by the minute. It's quite some time since I went to
school, and I guess there hadn't so much happened then to Japan. I wish
you'd run down the scale for me--just to hit the high places. Now there
was a big rumpus here, I remember, at the time of our Civil War. They
chose a new Emperor, didn't they?"
"No. The dynasty has been unbroken for two thousand years."
"Two thousand years!" cried the lady. "Why, that's before Christ!"
"When our ancestors, Martha, were painting themselves up in yellow ochre
and carrying clubs--what was the row about, then?"
"It was something like this. To go back a little, the Emperor was always
the nominal ruler and spiritual head, but the temporal power was
administered by a self-decreed Viceroy called the _shogun_. Japan was a
closed country and only a little trading was allowed in certain ports."
His questioner nodded. The girl beside the white-haired old soldier had
touched the latter's sleeve, and both were listening attentively. "Then
Perry came along and kicked open the gate. Bombarded 'em, didn't he?"
The bishop's eyes twinkled. "Only with gifts. He brought a small
printing-press, a toy telegraph line and a miniature locomotive and
railroad track. He set up these on the beach and showed the officials
whom the _shogun's_ government sent to treat with him, how they worked.
In the end he made them understand the immense value of the scientific
advancement of the western world. The visit was an eye-opener, and the
wiser Japanese realized that the nation couldn't exist under the old
_régime_ any longer. It must make general treaties and adopt new ideas.
Some, on the other hand, wanted things to stay as they were."
"Pulling both ways, eh?"
"Yes. At length the progressists decided on a sweeping measure. Under
the _shogunate_, the _daimyos_ (they were the great landed nobles) had
been in a continual state of suppressed insurrection."
"Some wouldn't knuckle down to the _shogun_, I suppose."
"Exactly. There was no national rallying-point. But they all alike
revered their Emperor. In all the bloody civil wars of a thousand
years--and the Japanese were always fighting, like Europe in the Middle
Ages--no _shogun_ ever laid violent hands on the Emperor. He was half
divine, you see, descended from the ancient gods, a living link between
them and modern men. So now they proposed to give him complete temporal
power, make him ruler in fact, and abolish the _shogunate_ entirely."
"Phew! And the big _daimyos_ came into line on the proposition?"
"They poured out their blood and their money like water for the new
cause. The _shogun_ himself voluntarily relinquished his power and
retired to private life."
"Splendid!" said the stranger, and the girl clapped her gloved hands.
"So that was the 'Restoration,' the beginning of _Meiji_, whatever that
may mean?"
"The 'Era of Enlightenment.' The present Emperor, Mutsuhito, was a boy
of sixteen then. They brought him here to Yedo, and renamed it
Tokyo----"
"And proceeded to get reeling drunk on western notions," said the man
with the military button, smiling grimly. "I was out here in the
Seventies."
"True, sir," assented the bishop. "It was so, for a time. And the
opposition took refuge in riot, assassination, and suicide. But
gradually Japan worked the modernization scheme out. She sent her young
statesmen to Europe and America to study western systems of education,
jurisprudence and art. She hired an army of experts from all over the
world. She sent her cleverest lads to foreign universities. In the end
she chose what seemed to her the best from all. Her military ideas come
from Germany and her railroad cars from the town of Pullman, Illinois.
When the best didn't suit her, she invented a system of her own, as she
has done with wireless telegraphy."
"So!" said the other. "I'm greatly obliged to you, sir. I've read plenty
in the newspapers, but I never had it put so plain. It strikes me," he
added to the old soldier, "that a nation plucky enough to do this in
fifty years, in fifty more will make some other nations get a move on."
He brought a big fist smashing down in an open palm. "And, by gad! the
Japanese deserve all they get! When we go back I guess me and Martha
won't march in any anti-Jap torch-light processions, anyway!"
The fields were gone now. The train was rumbling along a canal teeming
with laden _sampan_, level with the paper _shoji_ of frail-looking
houses on its opposite bank. Beyond lay a sea of roofs, swelling gray
billows of tiling spotted with green foam, from which steel factory
chimneys lifted like the black masts of sunken ships. A leafy hill of
cryptomeria rose near-by, and an octagonal stone tower peeped above its
foliage. Crows were circling about it, black dots against the bronze.
The train was entering Tokyo.
A door slammed sharply. From the forward smoking carriage a man had
entered. He was an European and Barbara was struck at once by his great
size and the absence of color in his leaden face. The bored-looking
diplomatist in the corner gathered himself hastily into a bow, which the
other acknowledged abstractedly. Seemingly he had been occupied in some
intent speculation which spread a kind of glaze over his sharp features.
A book drooped carelessly from his heavy fingers.
"That is Doctor Bersonin," said the bishop, as the girls collected their
wraps. "He came just before I left, last fall. He is the government
expert, and is supposed to be one of the greatest living authorities on
explosives."
"Oh, yes," said Patricia, "I know. He invented a dynamo or a torpedo, or
something. I saw him once at a reception; he had a foreign decoration as
big as a dinner-plate."
The big man made his way slowly along the aisle and, still absorbed,
took a dust-coat from a rack. As he ponderously drew it on, the daylight
was suddenly eclipsed, and the rumbling reëchoed from metal roofing.
They were in Shimbashi Station.
"Isn't he simply odious!" whispered Patricia, as the expert stepped
before them on to the long, dusky, asphalt platform. "His eyes are like
a cat's and his hands look as if they wanted to crawl, like big white
spiders! There is the Embassy _betto_," she said suddenly, pointing over
the turnstile, where stood a Japanese boy in a wide-winged _kimono_ of
tea-colored pongee with crimson facings and a crimson mushroom hat. "The
carriage is just outside. You'll come, too, of course, Bishop," she
added. "Father will expect you."
He shook his head and motioned toward a dense assemblage comprising a
half dozen of his own race in clerical black, and a half hundred
_kimono'd_ Japanese, whose faces seemed one composite smile of welcome.
"There is a part of my flock," he said. "There will be a jubilation at
my bachelor palace to-night. I shall see you to-morrow, I hope."
They watched him for a moment, the center of a ceremonious ring of
bowing figures, then passed through the station to the steps where the
carriage waited.
The station debouched on to a broad open square bordered with canals and
lined with ranks of _rick'sha_, some of which had small red flags with
the name of a hotel in white letters, in English. The space was gray and
dusty; pedestrians dotted it and across it a bent and sweating
street-sprinkler hauled his ugly trickling cart, chanting in a half-tone
as he went. A little distance away Barbara caught a glimpse of a busy
paved street, lined with ambitious glass shop-fronts and with a double
line of clanging trolley-cars passing to and fro beneath a maze of
telegraph wires seemingly as fine as pack-thread. Her nostrils twitched
with strange odors--from stagnant moats of sticky, black mud, from
panniers of dressed fish, from the rice-powder and pomade of women's
toilets--all the scents bred in swarming streets by a glowing tropic
sun.
At one side waited a handful of foreign carriages. All the drivers of
these wore the loose, flapping liveries and the round hats of green or
crimson or blue. "They are Embassy turn-outs," explained Patricia. "Each
one has its color, you see. Ours is red and you can see it farthest." As
they took their seats an open victoria rolled up, with cobalt-blue
wheels, and a _betto_ with a _kimono_ of dark cloth trimmed with wide
strips of the same hue ran ahead, clearing the way with raucous cries.
"There goes the Bulgarian Minister's wife," said Patricia. "She's got
the finest pearls in Tokyo."
A hundred yards from the entrance the Embassy carriage halted abruptly
and Barbara caught her companion's arm with a low exclamation. At the
side of the square, seated or reclining on the ground was a body of
perhaps eighty men dressed in a deadly brownish-yellow, the hue of
iron-rust, with coarse hats and rough straw sandals. They were disposed
in lines, a handcuff was on each left wrist, and a thin, rattling iron
chain linked all together.
"They are convicts," said Patricia; "on their way to the copper mines, I
imagine. They will move presently and we can pass."
At the head of the melancholy platoon stood an officer in dark blue
cloth uniform and clumsy shoes, a sword by his side. He stood motionless
as an idol, his sparse mustaches waxed, his visored cap set square on
his crisp, black hair, his bronze face impassive. The prisoners looked
on stolidly at the stir of the station, the flying _rick'sha_, the
crowded _sampan_ in the canal, and the noisy trolley-cars passing
near-by. Some talked in low tones and pointed here and there, with
furtive glances at the officer. Barbara noted their different
expressions, some stolid, low-browed and featureless, some with
side-looks of sharper cunning, all touched with oriental apathy.
A bell now began to clamor in the train-shed and there came the rasping
hoot of an engine. The officer turned, gave a sharp order, and the
prisoners rose, with light clanking of their chains. Another order, and
they moved, in double lines of single file, into the station.
Patricia heaved a sigh of relief as the halted traffic started.
"_Hyaku_, Tucker," she called to the driver. "_Hyaku_ means quickly,"
she explained aside. "His name is Taka, but I call him Tucker because
it's easier to remember."
As they rolled swiftly on, through the wondrous panorama of teeming
Tokyo streets, the sun hung, an elongated globe of deep orange-crimson,
streaked with little whips of rosy cloud. Beneath it the mountains lay
like coiled, purple dragons, indolent and surfeited. One star twinkled
palely in the lemon-colored sky. Yet now to Barbara the splendor of
color seemed tragic, the poured-out beauty but a veil, behind which
moved, old and apish and gray, the familiar passions of the world.
Before her eyes were flowing and mingling a thousand strands of orient
life, yet she saw only the red light glowing on the stone entrance of
Shimbashi, with those hideous saffron jackets filing perpetually into
its yawning mouth, like unholy spectres in a dream.