time, scenically speaking, that is to say. The first day's ride from
Tokyo to Nagoya was interesting, but not particularly so except for
Fuji, which we saw off and on for several hours, and on three sides. As
sometimes it isn't visible, and we had a fine warm day, we had good
luck. Nagoya is where the best old castle in Japan is, you may even in
your benighted country and estate have heard of the two golden dolphins
on top. The castle is an imperial palace and it turned out that you have
to have a permit from Tokyo, but we set out to try to get in, and as we
had met a nice young man at the X----'s in Tokyo who came from Nara, we
telephoned him, and while we didn't get in through him (he said he could
never get in himself under any circumstances) he promptly asked us to
dinner. Then we were taken to the swellest tea house in Nara and had
another of those elaborate dinners, on what he called the tea-istic
plan. We began with the tea ceremony without the ceremony but with the
powdered tea, the bowl being prepared for each one separately in
succession. The Nara cooking is better, we all thought, than the Tokyo,
the food being more savory and the variety of flavors greater, an
opinion which pleased our host. Expressing some curiosity about some
four-inch trout which seemed to have a sugar caramel coating, we found
that they were cooked in a kind of liquor which deposited the sweetness,
and then we were presented with a bottle of the drink known as Mirin, so
now we are lugging glassware. Then after the dinner he said that he
hoped that we would not think him guilty of improper action, but that he
had invited the best samisen player and singer in Nagoya, and also some
dancers. In other words, some geishas were introduced and sang, played
and danced before King David. There are all grades from those comparable
to chorus girls at Jack's to high grade actresses, and these were of the
upper kind. He said he wished us to see something of true Japan which
few foreigners saw, this referring to the restaurant as well as the
dancing. They won't receive anybody who isn't an old client or friend of
one of these high toned places. But the ladies of the party thought he
was especially interested in one of the girls. Personally I think the
dancing and music are much more interesting than they are reported to be
in the guide books.
The next day we went to the primitive Ise shrines, arriving cross and
hungry at about two, but bound to get the pilgrimage over, especially as
it wasn't good weather. Yamada, where the sacred shrines are, is a very
beautiful place, with wooded hills and little streams. The trees are
largely cryptomerias, which are evidently some relative of the
California redwoods, and while not nearly as tall, make much the same
effect. It is a darling spot, filled with the usual thousands of carpet
bagger (literally the old Brussel carpet bags) pilgrims. As previously
reported I toted a borrowed frock coat and stovepipe hat. Our guide said
special clothing was not needed for the ladies. I put on my war paint,
and the chief priest having been written from Tokyo of our impending
arrival, an hour had been set. At the outermost gate, the Torii, the
ceremony of purification, took place. We had water poured out on our
hands out of a little ceremonial cup and basin and then the priest
sprinkled salt on us; nobody else had this but us. Then when we got to
the fence gate, we were told that the ladies not having "visiting
dresses," whatever they are, couldn't go inside, but that I should be
treated as of the same rank as an Imperial professor and allowed to go.
I forgot to say that we had a gendarme in front of us to shoo the vulgar
herd out of our way. Then we marched slowly in behind the priest, on
stones brought from the seaside, through a picket fence to designated
spots near the next fence, I being allowed nearer to the gate than our
Japanese guide; and we worshiped, that is bowed. I got my bow over
disgracefully quick, but I think our Japanese conductor stood at least
fifteen minutes.
KYOTO, April 15.
Here we are in the Florence of Japan, and even more to see if possible
than in Italy. We have had a rainy day to-day, which is perhaps a good
beginning for a week of constant sightseeing. This morning we spent in
Yamanaka's--the most beautiful shop I ever saw, composed of the finest
Japanese rooms of the finest proportions and filled with the most
beautiful art specimens of all kinds. But the kinds are properly
assorted in true Japanese fashion. I bought a red brocade. It is a
panel, old red with figures of gold and some dark blue, peonies and
birds. It is what the Buddhist priests wear over the left arm in
procession. We have the certificate that it is over a hundred years old.
The panel is about five feet long and one wide, the strips which compose
it are four in number, sewed in seams, which turn the corners in mortise
fashion, and yet they all match perfectly. Most of these strips are
woven in these ribbons and sewed together. I got a second one which is
purple with splendid big birds and peonies again. I like the peony in
brocade much better than the chrysanthemum or the smaller flowers. Some
fine ones with pomegranates are tempting, but I did not buy the most
beautiful on account of the prospects of spending money better in China.
I also bought a pretty tea set which I have here in my room--it cost 30
sen, which means fifteen cents for teapot and five cups, gray pottery
with blue decorations. There are many cheaper ones that are pretty too.
Tomorrow we go to the original temple where the tea ceremony originated
and are to participate in the tea ceremony, which the high priest will
perform for us. You better get a guide book and read about the temples
of Kyoto, as they are too numerous to tell about in letters. We have the
municipal car for all these occasions. Good thing we do, for Kyoto has
shrunk like a nut in its shell since the days of its ancient capital
size and the distances between temples are enormous. Next day we go to
the Imperial Palaces, and so go on and on getting fatter and fatter.
The weather and the spring time are superb. Cherry blossoms were gone
when we got here, but the young leaves of the maples are lovely green or
red and the whole earth is paradise now. The hills are nearer than in
Florence, the mountains higher, so that Kyoto has every natural beauty.
We shall only have a week here and then go to Osaka, where the puppet
theater is and where there is a school of drama, of which Ganjiro is the
leader. It is the doll theater we want to see, because that is the
origin of all acting in Japan. Many of the conventions of the theater
are based on the movements of the puppets.
Kyoto in many respects is the most lovely thing the world has to show,
such a combination of nature and art as one dreams of. These wonderful
temples of enormous size, of natural wood filled with paintings and
sculpture of an ancient and unknown kind, fascinate one to the point of
feeling there must be many more worlds when such multiplicity of ideas
and feelings can exist on a single planet, and we live unconscious of
the whole of it or even of any part of its extent. The gardens we have
seen to-day are the old Japan unchanged since they were made a thousand
years ago, when they took the ancient ideas of China and India for
models. The temples of Tokyo seem like shabby relics of a worn-out era,
but here the perfection of their art remains and is kept intact. The
landscape of the first Buddhist monastery, where the tea ceremony
originated, has the same rivers and islands and little piles of sand
which were placed in the beginning, all in miniature, and planted with
miniature trees, all imitations of real scenes in China when China was
the land of culture. Now they say even the originals are destroyed in
China, which is so out of repair that it depresses every one who sees
it. Fifty years ago they advertised for sale here in Nara, a lovely
pagoda five stories high for fifty yen. It is obviously necessary for
some American millionaire to buy up the massive gates and pagodas and
temples of China in order to redeem them from complete ruin. The
Japanese are the one people who have waked up in time to the value of
these historic things, and several of the temples have been rebuilt
before the old material was so rotted as to make them hopeless. Wood is
a magnificent material when it is used in such massive structures as it
is here. The biggest bell in the world, twelve feet high, is hung on a
great tree trunk in a belfry with a curled-up roof of flower-like
proportions, first having been hauled to the top of the high hill. We
shall hear it boom next Saturday. We heard the one in Nara, the deepest
thing I ever thought to hear, nine feet high. They are beautiful bronze
and they are very mellow and melodious and reach to the center of
whatever the center of your being may be and leave you to hope the
greater unknown of the judgment day may be a call like that sound.
We had lunch with Miss D----. She tells stories about the efforts of the
Japanese girls to get an education that make you want to sell your
earrings, even if you have none, in order to give the money to these
idealists. They are as much pioneers as our forebears who chopped down
the trees, but they can't get at a tree to chop. She says she wants me
to go back to America and to go to every Congregational church there and
tell them they must send money here to give education to the people.
One day we have the mayor's car to go about in and the next day the
University hires a car for us and we indulge ourselves in all kinds of
doings we do not deserve and sometimes wonder if we shall have to commit
suicide after it ends in order to condone the point of honor. Certainly
these people have a nobility of character which entitles them to race
equality.
I want to find a nice quiet place to stay and come back and see the
sights at greater length. The paintings on the walls are mostly ruined,
but the kakemonas and the screens and the makemonas, those are wonderful
and I am glad to say that we have got over seeing them as grotesque, and
we feel their beauty. When once you see that the trees in the ground are
real and that they look just as the trees in the pictures have always
looked, then you begin to appreciate both nature and human nature as
depicted.
KYOTO, April 15.
To-day is rainy and we haven't done much. We got here yesterday noon.
The hotel is on the side of a hill with wonderful views, and is pretty
good, though the one at Nara which is run by the Imperial Railway System
is the only first-class one we have seen so far. In the afternoon the
University sent a car and we took an auto ride into the suburbs to a
famous cherry place--it was too late for blossoms, but the river and
hills and woods were beautiful, and we saw the usual large crowd
enjoying life. It is really wonderful the way the people go out, all
classes, and the amount of pleasure they get out of doors and in the tea
houses. I have never been anywhere where every day seemed so much of a
holiday as in Japan--there is still sake in evidence but not so much.
This month a special geisha dance is given here at a theater connected
with a training school; the dance lasts an hour and is repeated four or
five consecutive hours. We went last night; the dancing is much more
mechanical posturing than the theater dancing, or than the little geisha
dance we saw at Nara, but the color combinations and the way they
handled the scenery were wonderful. There were eight very different
scenes and it didn't take more than a minute to make any change. Once a
curtain was simply drawn down through a trap door, another time what had
looked like a canvas mat in front of the curtain was pulled up and it
turned out to be painted on one side. But they had a different method
every time.
The mayor has invited me to speak to the teachers Saturday afternoon,
and afterwards we are invited by the municipality to a Japanese dinner.
They are also putting the city auto--the only one apparently--at our
disposal, when they aren't using it, and have arranged to take us to a
porcelain and a weaving factory next Monday. This town is the
headquarters of Japan for artistic production, ancient and modern. The
University authorities also telephoned to Tokyo and got permission for
us to visit the palaces here, but they are said not to be equal to the
Nagoya ones which we missed. While at Nara we spent most of our time at
the Horiuji temples, some miles out. I won't do the encyclopedia act
except to say that they are the headquarters of the introduction of
Buddhism into Japan thirteen hundred years ago, which meant
civilization, especially art, and have the wall frescoes, unfortunately
faint, of that period, and lots of sculpture; this means wood carving,
as of course there is no marble here. Well, it happened that it was the
birthday of Prince Shotoku, who was the gentleman responsible for the
aforesaid introduction, and of whom there are many statues, age of two,
twelve and sixteen being favorites; his piety was precocious.
Consequently, everything was wide open. Every kind of peep show and
stall, and more than the usual hundreds of pilgrims who combine pleasure
with piety in a way that beats even the Italian peasants; when they have
money here they spend it; tightwadism is not a Japanese vice. Well, we
were taken into the garden of the chief priest to eat our luncheon; of
course, he was very busy, but greeted us in gorgeous robes and then sent
out tea and rice cakes. The contrast between this lovely little garden
and the drums and barkers just beyond the walls and the wonderful old
artistic shrines beyond the barkers and ham and egg row was as
interesting as anything in Japan.
You may remember Miss E---- is rather tall for an American woman, even.
Mamma is something of an object to the country people, but Miss E---- is
a spectacle. Curiosity is the only emotion the Japanese are not taught
to conceal apparently. They gather around in scores, literally. I don't
know how many times I have seen parents make sure the children didn't
miss the show. Several times I have seen people walk slowly and solemnly
all the way around us to make sure they missed nothing. No rudeness
ever, just plain curiosity. As we were going to the museum after
breakfast, a few of those children, girls, appeared and bowed. First I
knew one of them had hold of each of my hands, and went with us as far
as the museum--girls of nine or ten. It was touching to see their
friendliness, especially one evidently rather poor, who would look up at
me and laugh, and then squeeze my hand and press it against herself, and
then laugh with delight again. I haven't been able to discover when it
ceases to be proper for children to be natural. Sunday morning some
soldiers were going off to Manchuria--or Korea--and before eight we
heard the patter of the clogs down the street and some hundred of boys
and girls were marching down to the station with their teachers; the
same thing next morning, for the soldiers.
KYOTO, April 19.
We have just come from another Geisha party, given by the mayor and
about fifteen of the other officers of the city. Papa is quite stuck up
because they say it is the first time the city of Kyoto ever entertained
a scholar in that fashion. But if he is stuck up what should I be when a
woman appears for the first time in history at a men's carouse in Japan?
The Geisha girls are all the way from eleven years old to something like
fifty. One of the older ones is the best dancer in the city, and she
gave us one of the wonderful pantomime dances that so fascinate one
here. She has been in jail for her political activities, said activities
consisting in the active distribution of funds in order to elect someone
she favored. It is against the law for a woman to take any part in
politics here. Like all the older women of that class that I have seen
she has a sad look when her face is at rest. But they all talk and
entertain so busily that the sadness is not seen by the men. They are a
very cultivated lot of women so far as we have seen them; of course we
see only the best. They talk with the composure of a duchess and the
good nature of a child. It is a rare combination. They are very curious
about us and ask all sorts of questions. One girl of seventeen said she
loved babies and how many did I have? When I told her five she was
delighted. She had a rosebud mouth just like the old prints and danced
with the old print postures. The girls pass the drinks and the rice
which always comes at the end of such feasts. The little eleven-year-old
gave a dance called "Climbing Fuji." Wonderful flat-footed movements
that make you feel exactly as if you were climbing with her. In the
middle part she puts on a mask which is puffy in the cheeks, and then
she wipes the perspiration and washes her little face and fans herself
and goes on again, flatfooted. All the motions are most elegant and
graceful and subtle and serpentine, never an abrupt or sudden gesture,
and never quite literal in any sense. After the dance was finished she
came and sat by me and her skin was hot as if she had a fever. All the
men were older and I must say they treated her very nicely.
This is the way those feasts go. We enter the restaurant in stocking
feet, and are usually shown to a small room where we kneel on the
cushions and take tea while waiting for all the guests to assemble.
About six this time, we were shown to the large room, which is always
surrounded by gold screens and shoji, which slide back before the
windows. Cushions are placed about three feet apart on three sides of
the long and beautifully shaped room. In the middle of one side they are
piled up so the foreign guests of honor may sit instead of kneeling
Japanese fashion. We place ourselves after having all the guests one
after another brought up. We shake hands because their bows are rather
impossible and they have adapted themselves to our way. Then we all
squat again. Then the pretty waitresses come slithering across the
floor, each with a tiny table in her hands. The first is for Papa, the
second for me, then the mayor, and so on. The mayor is down at the end
of the line. After each one has his table before him the mayor comes to
the center of the hollow square and makes a little speech of welcome. He
always tells you how sorry he is he has such a poor entertainment and
that he could not do better for these distinguished guests who do him so
much honor by coming, and how this is the first time the city has ever
honored a foreign scholar by this kind of entertainment. Then Papa does
his best to make a reply, and after he sits down we lift the cover of a
lovely lacquer soup bowl and lift the chop sticks. You take a drink of
soup, lift a thin slippery slice of raw fish from its little dish, dip
it in the sauce and put it in your mouth. To-night this first soup is a
rich and rare green turtle, delicious. So you drink it all and take a
little fish, but our guide warns us not to take too much raw fish as we
are not accustomed it. By this time another tray of pretty lacquer is
put beside you on the floor and on it is a tiny tray or platter of
lacquer on which are placed two little fish browned to perfection, and
trimmed with two little cakes of egg and powdered fish, very nicely
rolled in cherry leaves. Every dish is a work of art in its arrangement.
These two fish are the favorite of the last emperor, and you do not
blame him. They are cooked in mirin, a kind of sweet liquor made from
sake, and you eat all you can pick off the bones with your hashi. As
soon as this tray is in place you see a lovely little girl with her
long, bright-colored kimona on the floor around her, and she has in her
hand a blue and white china bottle placed in a tiny lacquer coaster, and
you know the feast is really under way. She is followed by the older
girls, and little by little one at a time and quite gradually the
dancing girls come in and bow to the floor while they pour out the
sake. They laugh at the ways of the foreigners who always forget it is
the part of the guest to hold out his tiny cup for the poison. Everybody
drinks to the health of everybody else and there stops my sake, but the
Japanese drink on and on, one cup at a sip and the hand reaching out for
more. Talk gets livelier, the girls take more part in it. They are said
by some to be the only interesting women in Japan. At any rate, no wives
are ever there but me, and the girls are beautifully cultured, moving at
the slightest suggestion of voice or gesture and always seeing quickly
and very pleasantly what each one wants. As soon as they see we do not
drink sake they bring many bottles of mineral water for us. Then they
do their beautiful dances. Two, about seventeen years old, did one
called "Twilight on the east hill of Kyoto." In Nagoya, in Tokyo, or
wherever you are, the theme is always some natural event connected with
the nature near by. Always simple and classic. Then the famous old
dancer did a subtle thing called "The nurse putting the child to sleep."
That is another favorite theme. This was lovely, but sometimes too
subtle for us to grasp all the movements. These girls all dress in dark
colors like the ladies, only with the difference prescribed by the
profession, such as the low neck in the back and the full length of the
kimona on the floor like a wave around her. With the young ones the obi
is different, being tied to drop down on the floor in a long bow. The
young ones also have the bright hair ornaments and the very long
sleeves. But so do other young girls wear the long sleeves for company
dress.
There are other courses of fish; one of four strawberries, two slices of
orange, some mint jelly cut in cubes, and sweetened bamboo slices in the
middle of the list. Then more fish courses, many of them bright-colored
shell fish which are always rather tough. Then a very nice mixture of
sour cucumber salad and little pieces of lobster or crab, very nice and
any sour thing is good with these many courses of fish. At the end bowls
of rice, which is brought in in a big lacquer dish with a cover looking
some like a small barrel. This is put into bowls by one of the older
dancers and handed about by the younger ones who get up and down from
their kneeling posture by just lifting themselves as if they had no
weight, on their toes. Many of the Japanese take the regulation three
bowls full of rice, and eat it very fast. I must say their rice is
delicious, but I cannot get away with more than one bowl, partly because
I cannot gobble. Then, for the last, your bowl is filled with tea.
All this time the gentlemen from the other parts of the room are
kneeling one at a time before you asking you if you like the cherry
dance and what your first impressions of Japan were, and all such talk,
and you have become intimate friends with the dancers as well, maybe
with no common language except "thank you" and "very nice" and
"good-bye," and constant smiles and interpretations now and then from
others who know a very little English. One thing no one expects is for a
foreigner to know a word of Japanese. Therefore, when you pop out an
awkward word or two, you are applauded by laughter and compliments on
your good pronunciation. To-night we had the very tiniest of green
peppers cooked as a vegetable with one of the dishes. That was good as
it had flavor; three of them about as big as a hairpin were served in
the dish. You always get tiny portions and are usually warned not to eat
too much at the first part of the meal. In the tea-dinner the rice comes
along at the beginning so it can be eaten with the fish, and that is an
agreeable variety though you are told not to eat too much of it as there
are other courses to follow. I forgot to say there is always a course in
the middle which is a hot custard made with broth instead of milk and
seasoned with vegetables. That is good, too. In fact, I have become
quite fond of this fish food.
When we got in the motor car at the gate of the restaurant, all the gay
little dancers were standing there in the rain waving their hands in
American fashion till we went out of sight. Then I suppose the tired
little things went back and danced for more men. We were home at 8:30.
All the dinners seem to be early here in Japan, except what are called
the foreign ones and they follow our hours as well as our style.