Japanese fiction penned by the tojin!
It is a completely sad affair. I wonder why the author (God bless him)
didn’t fit himself for brooming the streets instead of scrawling.
The characters in his book—I am grateful I see no lady writer of
Japanese novels yet—remind me of the “devils of mixture” swarming in
Yokohama or Kobe, whose Jap mother was a professional “hell.” It is
lamentable to set the verdict on them that they have inherited the art
of framing lies from their mamma.
Do I vex you, gentleman, when I say that your Japanese type could only
be an unprincipled half-caste?
Your Nippon character eyed in blue, and hairy-skinned always. Isn’t it
absurd when it puts a ’Merican shoe on one foot and a wooden clog on the
other?
And if you insist on registering it as a Jap, I shall merely laugh
loudly.
One heroine I have read of placed a light summer haori over her heavily
padded mid-winter clothes.
Your Oriental novel, let me be courageous enough to say, is a farce at
its best.
Oh, just wait, my sweet Americans! A genuine one will soon be offered to
you by Morning Glory.
I stepped out to the platform, and threw out “Madame Butterfly.”
Poor “Madame!”
I trust in the mountain lions of high Nevada to cherish her lovingly.
5th—
“Matsuba Sama, the following letter creeps ‘under your
honourable table.’
“How is yourself?
“I imagine that the breeze fills your bower with the odour of
ume flowers. I am definite in saying that the Japanese ume is of
different origin from the California plum tree, which has no
expression in divine fragrance as I am told. I see your indolent
face in the air, awaiting poetical inspiration on your bamboo
piazza where the ume petals are beautifully blotched.
“There are several months yet till we shall quarrel face-to-face
over the superiority of English or Oriental literature.
“Miss Pine Leaf, I—or rather we—have said farewell to Frisco.
“It was sad that I never saw any battleship (excepting one
shamefaced gunboat) in the bay of the Golden Gate. A bay without
battleship is like a door without a lock.
“Can you fancy any Japanese city without soldiers?
“American soldier?
“I am sorry to say that I have met no soldier in my four months
at the Pacific.
“I presume that the practical Meriken jins can’t bear to see
such a useless ornamentation. Yes! Soldiers are degenerating, in
my opinion, to the rank of a fireplace on a hot summer day. How
stimulating, however, was the sound of the fearless hoofs of a
cavalier! When the sabres of a regiment flashed in the sunlight,
I could never keep from fluttering my paper handkerchief.
“I shall not excite myself in such a joy in Amerikey.
“I made the acquaintance of one colonel at Mrs. Willis’. He is a
jolly business man. Just think of a colonel plus merchant! Is it
possible? He changes his white shirt every morning, and shines
his shoes twice a day. I should say that he will carry a sheet
and opera hat, and leave his gun behind, whenever he is summoned
to a battle-field. Possibly he has hidden his colonelship in his
trunk.
“I found afterward that every old gentleman is a colonel or
judge.
“Everything in California is made for just a woman.
“California gentleman isn’t privileged to raise one question
against a lady. He is provided with all sorts of exclamations to
please the woman. If he should ever miss one dinner with his
wife, he would be divorced in court on the morrow.
“Uncle says that the Eastern gents are not so devoted to the
lady.
“If it be true!
“Am I now entering the city of Man?
“How sad!
“Have you any experience of writing by the car-window?
“I feel a strange delight in scanning my romantically tremulous
handwriting. A certain famous Jap penman takes wine before he
begins, for the sake of putting his mind in a fine frenzy, as
you know. The shaking of the car produces in me the same effect.
Isn’t this letter great enough to be honoured on your tokonama?
“Can you ever imagine how vast Amerikey is?
“Yesterday our car ran all day long, over the mountains and
prairies, seeing only a few huts.
“O such a snowstorm in the evening!
“The train rushed like a maddened dragon. It was verily an
astonishingly ghastly spectacle as any human thought could ever
picture. I thrilled with a feeling of tragic ecstasy, which is
the highest emotion.
“Can you recollect that you and I once stood under the darkest
rains without an umbrella, and laughed hysterically?
“I love shocking emotion.
“Since I was touched by the continental air, I measure my lungs
dilating two inches bigger. How sorry I shall be for you when I
return! You are so tiny! I expect myself to be five inches
higher within the next few months.
“Amerikey is the country where everything grows, don’t you know?
“Even the stars look a deal larger than in Japan.
“Looking back at the Rocky Mountains,
“Yours,
“ASAGAO”
6th—The rocking of the train makes us babies in the cradle.
The car is a modern opium resort, where we sleep and sleep.
I shouldn’t wonder if we all turned into nodding Rip Van Winkles.
To-day I had a sleeping contest with uncle.
I was defeated.
CHICAGO, 7th
Chicago water is a perfect horror.
Gomenyo! That’s no way to begin, is it?
I never waver in saying that California girls borrow their fairness from
their water.
There is no question in my mind why the Chicago women—certain hundreds I
saw, if you please—are barren in their complexion.
“O Uncle, how many days have we to tarry here?” I asked, within an hour
after we had set foot in this city.
I grieve over my contact with such a city. It is no place for a lady.
(Is here any lady?) It is just the place for a man.
No show marked “Only for a Man” is respectable, I dare say.
Are Chicago men “gentlemen?”
They are not sensitive about their hats in the hotel elevator. The
laundry work isn’t superb, I judge, as not every one’s shirt is snowy as
a San Franciscan’s. I cannot blame their black finger-nails, as they
live in smoke.
Even the Frisco smoke hindered my breath at my opening moment in
Amerikey. I should have died, if it had been Chicago.
Bodily cleanliness is the first chapter in the whitening of the soul.
How many mortals are there here with a clear soul?
“Chicago is Mr. Nobody without the smoke, like Japan without a fan. The
prosperity of a modern city is measured by the bulk of its smoke,
Morning Glory. But I don’t approve of their using a cheap coal. Health
has to be guarded,” my uncle said.
A driver carried us from the station as if we were pigs.
Mind you, this is Chicago illustrious for its hams.
I barred my ears with my hands in the carriage. The thunderous noise
menaced me so.
Do roses blossom well in the turbulent air?
I have no doubt that Chicago has no poet.
“Cook County fosters three thousand poets, one paper says, my young
woman,” Uncle said in laughter.
“Don’t say so!”
“As soon as I had established myself in the hotel, I inscribed—with the
longest apologetical ojigi to Mr. Shelley—as follows:
“Hell is a city much like Chicago,
A populous and a smoky city.”
8th—How sad I felt, not to be greeted by even one star from my hotel
window last night!
I was disgusted with the poor taste of the coffee. Such a first-class
hotel! Coffee and maxim, I have said, should be of the very best.
Commonplace words with the golden heading of Maxim would be as cheap as
a negress with white powder. I would choose even a bread pudding rather
than a suspicious cup of coffee.
Uncle failed to secure a box of cigarettes.
The most delicate shape for smoking is the slender stalk of a cigarette.
The cigar ever so much impresses me as barbarous. Chicagoans might say
it was the only manly smoke.
Truly!
Chicago is the City of Man (whatever that means).
I’m glad that the young gentlemen with genteel canes under their arms
don’t open any cigar-stand conference here. Such an abomination in
Frisco!
No drones, whatever.
My uncle was going out sight-seeing with me in a silk hat.
I objected to it.
Plug hat doesn’t suit informal Chicago.
He changed his frock-coat for a sack-coat.
“Now, Uncle, you look more like a Chicago gentleman!” I said.
Yes, this is a plain sack-coat city.
He was fussing with a handkerchief. I said, laughing: “Never mind,
Uncle! I am sure the men don’t carry it here, since the women never
carry a purse in their hand.”
Isn’t it awful that one (even a stranger) ought to know everything in
Chicago? A slight question to the street people would be condemned as a
nuisance.
Even the policeman shows no chivalry.
I was sorry that the colour of his suit was bitterly faded.
Isn’t Chicago rich enough to furnish a new one?
I suppose many dogs must be hanging around here, because the policeman
arms himself with a piece of wood for chasing them off.
I should like to know if there is any blacker house than the City Hall.
It will be a matter of a short time before the Chicago River turns to
ink.
Then we went to observe the Lake of Michigan from Lincoln Park.
I scoffed at my absurdity in being ready with the first line for my poem
on the lake. If you knew that “O minstrel of Heaven and Truth!” was the
beginning, you would laugh surely. The lake wasn’t a huge singer like
the Pacific Ocean, at all.
[Illustration:
Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“UNCLE. PLEASE COUNT HOW MANY STORIES IN THAT BUILDING.”
]
“Uncle, please, count how many stories in that building!” I begged.
Chicago structures “crush my little liver” completely. Did I ever dream
that I would eye such pillars of the sky in my life?
When I returned to my hotel, I declared that I would not open my trunk,
because my everyday dress was good enough for Chicago.
I regret to say that the gentlemen are so homely.
9th—How dear is the green crispy paper money.
What a historical look!
It made me feel as if I were at home.
I hated ever so much the gold coin in California. Its threateningly
mercantile aspect made me shudder as at a speculator of Kakigara Cho of
Tokio.
If I like Chicago it must be on account of its soiled paper money.
I will exchange all my gold to it.
I went to one store for a short skirt like that Chicago woman wears.
It may be a change, though shortness in hair and dress is my aversion.
It may be advantageous in showing one’s shoes, though eternal exhibition
isn’t tasty.
It would be an accurate account of my reason for buying to say that I
singularly wished to use up a few jumbles of money.
I dulled myself reading the advertising bills through my hotel window.
There’s no block free from them.
’Vertisement!
Isn’t it horrid?
I laughed, wondering why those enterprising Meriken jins don’t employ
the extensive backs of prizefighters in the ring.
Uncle and I went to see the Injuns dance.
How fantastically they sang!
There was a Japanese tea-house.
It is no “tea-house” at all. It was the saddest thing I ever saw.
I thought that Chicagoans were not fastidious with anything.
“Any old thing will do!” they might say jollily.
Open, hard-working Chicago!
Has she much education?
10th—My uncle wanted me to join him in visiting a stockyard to see the
doomed pigs groaning, “Fu, fu, fu!”
I declined.
Uncle started off alone.
There was some time before I heard someone fisting on my door.
“A Japanese gentleman wishes to see your husband, madam,” a hotel
attendant addressed me.
“Good God! My husband?” I cried.
Satemo!
How could any porter be such an ignoramus as not to distinguish between
Mrs. and Miss!
Possibly he esteemed me “modern” enough to marry an old man for money’s
sake.
Oya, he was Mr. Consul of Chicago.
“Walk in, sir! Uchino hito will return within an hour or so.”
Then I explained about “my husband.”
We both laughed.
There is nothing more pleasing when in an alien country than a chit-chat
in our native “becha becha.”
Japanese speech!
Such a beautifully indefinite, poetically untidy language!
I love it.
11th—It would be too much of a risk of one’s life to stay in Chicago.
Good-bye!
Flowerless, birdless city, sayonara!
BUFFALO, 12th
Niagara Falls was a disappointment.
Uncle says I have still to learn how to be appreciative of things.
A red brick chimney by the Fall spoils the whole affair, I do think.
My uncle was cross, saying that he had eaten the toughest beef of his
life.
He seized two Canadian dimes and a bogus half-dollar in an hour.
“Poor Uncle! Isn’t this Buffalo town awful?” I said.
NEW YORK, 13th
Miss Morning Glory has stepped into Greater New York, at last.
Thirteenth of March, 1900.
To-day will be the special day of my family history.
My entrance was delightful to the full.
The train stole gracefully into the city at early morn. The sky was
distinct like the lake of Biwa. The respectable face of the city
accepted us charmingly.
I bounced my little body in my happy thought of another chapter of life.
I felt like Dante crawled out of darkest Hell, after the torture of the
terrible show. (O Chicago!)
Our kind Japanese consul of New York was looking after our arrival with
a carriage.
I saw a horse-car trotting.
It encouraged me to think that even an ignorant Jap girl might find her
own living here, since such an old-fashioned thing exists perfectly.
I secretly fixed in my mind that I will adventure my independent life
when the crisis demands.
Our carriage rolled up Fifth Avenue to Central Park.
How often had I imagined laying me in this celebrated ground!
“Pray, let me off to smell the smell of the New York breeze!” I
exclaimed.
When I was stationed on the third floor of an edifice on Riverside
Drive—what a brisk name in the world!—which was Mr. Consul’s home, my
bubbling fancies hastened down with the waters of the Hudson River under
my window.
Hudson River?
It is my dear old acquaintance, introduced by the ever so pleasing Mr.
Irving.
See its classical profundity before my face!
Where’s “Sleepy Hollow,” I wonder!
The spectacle of the river reminded me of the Sumida Gawa of Tokio,
mirroring the clouds of affectionate cherry blossoms which border its
bank. It would be a remarkable idea, I thought, to petition the Mayor of
New York for the Japanese cherry-trees to parade on this side of the
Hudson. When they are in flower, I will open a tea-house under them, of
course. My attire as a mistress should be a little red crape apron to
begin with. My head will be wound with a Japanese towel to endow my
Oriental eyes with certain better results. I will raise my voice,
calling, “Honourable rest! Honourable tea plucked by the choicest
musumes!” What a novel!
Romance!
How can I live without it!
In that case I must entreat the removal of the characters on the other
side, which are:
“Lots For Sale!”
Because I don’t see any such unaristocratic sign by the Sumida Gawa.
14th—O snow, yukiya fure, fure!
The season of the city is still within the fence of winter. I was
grateful to my fate that conveyed me here to overtake my loving snow.
I settled me by my window in absorption with the snow view of Hudson
Gawa.
How busily the snowflakes fall!
Their cautiously silent hurry made me recollect the drama of the
China-Japan war. How stealthily the soldiers marched at midnight! Can I
ever forget how I tugged my shoji, crying “Victory, Dai Nippon!”
I raised the window, stretching out my arm. I collected the snow-petals
in the hollow of my palm. I tasted them.
“Uncle, New York snow is as deliciously savoured as at home,” I said.
Central Park must have been artistically attired.
“Oji San, let us go to the park for snow-viewing! I advise you to till a
bit more poetry in yourself, Uncle,” I announced.
I began to change my dress before his decision.
15th—We went to the famous Brooklyn Bridge.
Verily, New York gentlemen are interested with their papers in the car.
Newspapers, O newspapers! There’s no slip of a doubt that they would die
without the sight of their newspapers. The unheroic part about them is
that they forget neatly to offer their seats to a lady. Woman loves an
absent-minded man once in a while, but never on the car, I do say.
I suppose every woman of this city has to be rich.
Must I equip a carriage?
I do not see why I could not win the first prize with my Louisiana
ticket.
How I wish to fabric an every-inch-a-Japanese mansion on Fifth Avenue,
and welcome a thousand tojins to hear my Jap song on Sunday!
“Is this bridge built for Americans or Europeans, Uncle? People crossing
here use no English,” I said.
“Liberty Statue!”
I will let the Beauty statue hail from the Bay of Yedo, when I am
wealthy enough to afford it.
Doesn’t Nippon signify beauty?
“How dear is that sign, ‘Beware of Pick-pockets!’ It makes me just feel
as if I were at Shinbashi station in Tokio, doesn’t it you, Uncle?”
Humbly humble ’rikisha men!
If I were besieged by them imploring me to take a little honourable
ride, the scene would be complete.
I miss such a merry car in Amerikey.
We walked down Broadway. We came to a graveyard.
Tombstones in the midst of commerce!
O romantic New York!
I wondered how Wall Street gentlemen would be struck glancing at them.
What a soft silence hovered!
The old Gothic Church was my own ideal.
“Uncle, let us fall in and rest!” I cried.
The morning service was proceeding.
Alas and alas!
Not one soul was there.
Is this a religious city?
The inside was compact of heavenly purple air. Mr. Bishop—whatever he
may be—gestured like another being from a loftier realm. A beautiful boy
(there’s no greater fascination than a boy with a prayer-book) supported
the service. Intangibleness of speech is itself a divine charm.
“Will you mind asking Mr. Bishop whether he wants a sweeping girl? I
wish I were given just a chance to clean such a holy church, uncle.”
Then I looked up to Mr. Secretary.
16th—It seems to me a recent style that New York ladies discard their
babies to leave them in the hands of European immigrants (very likely
they want them to learn an ungrammatical hodge-podge, as respectableness
is old-fashioned) and accompany a dog with mighty affection.
O my dear “chin” that I left at home!
Shall I call it to Amerikey?
Little loyal thing, pathetic, clinging!
I am sure it would beat any other in a dog contest.
17th—I never saw such hungry eyes in my life as those of an
organ-grinder, set upon the windows for a dropping penny.
To an artist they would hint of a prisoner’s bloodshot eyes numbed by
useless gazing toward the light of the world.
Poor Italians!
They don’t know one thing but turning the handle.
The last two days they placed their organ—read their sign, “Garibaldi &
Co.”—under my apartment at the same hour for my bit money.
I thought one of them might be a grandson of the renowned Italian
patriot. How interesting it would be to be told of his shipwreck in
life!
Now three o’clock.
There’s one more hour before their frolic music will gush.
I must wrap some money in paper for them.
God bless them—simple creatures who work hard!
18th—Mr. Consul—an old man who sips the grayness of celibacy—never
strays out from his official duty. He calls society and novels two
recent pieces of foolery.
The family of Uncle’s intimate is off in Europe.
The possibility of a nice time for me is verily illegible. Tsumaranai!
Last night I sketched an adventure of enlisting in the band of
domestics.
“Capital idea to examine a New York household!” I said, when I left my
breakfast table.
I humbled myself to a newspaper office with the following shamefaced
advertisement:
“Jap girl, nineteen, good-looking, longs for a place in a family of the
first rank.”
I used every kind of oratory to bring my uncle to agree to my two weeks
of freedom.
19th—Two letters were waiting me at the office.
One from No. 296 of a certain part.
296?
Unfortunately it sounds like “nikumu” in Japanese, meaning hatred.
And the other was from Fifth Avenue.
Parlour maid.
Twelve dollars for a month.
I shall accept it, since it is the proper quarter for seeing the
high-toned New Yorker.
I feel already a servant feeling.
I am sorry that I didn’t discipline myself before in dusting.
I will style me an honest worker for awhile. “Toiling for my daily
bread,” does ring an American sound, doesn’t it?
“Domestic girl has no right, I think, to sit with Messrs. Consul and
Secretary,” I said, moving my dinner plate to the kitchen table.
Morning Glory, isn’t it time you changed the book of your diary?
Really, sir!
Let me close now with a ceremonious bow!
My next book shall be entitled:
“THE DIARY OF A PARLOUR MAID.”
[Illustration]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
● Transcriber’s Notes:
○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
○ Typographical errors were silently corrected.
○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only
when a predominant form was found in this book.
○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_);
text that was bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).