any.
=November 26.=--I spent the day at the Institute with the new fossils
and minor matters. At two o’clock I went to see the Marquis and
Marchioness _N----_, who have a fine house and garden in the centre
of the town near the palace. They were very kind, and showed me over
the houses and garden, the former in European style, rich, but not
quite aesthetic, the latter in Japanese style, with dwarf trees and
quaint cut bushes, placed with an eye to effect, and where the outlook
is over the tops of the town (where, I grieve to say, smoky chimneys
of factories are rising up to curse and kill the beauty of the town)
to the bay, with its ships on the blue water. Tea was served twice
in two different drawing-rooms, and I found I had to risk insulting
my hostess by speaking my low-class Japanese. I had expected her to
speak English, as the invitation had been in excellent English, but I
was forced to speak to a Court lady in the language of the vulgar. In
Japan there are more grades of language, and even more varieties of
vocabulary, than one can imagine, _e.g._ I already know for the word
_is_ the following:--
{ Gosarimasu }
{ Gosaimasu }
{ Gosaimas } (arranged according to
_is_ { Arimasu } the politeness).
{ Arimas }
{ Desu }
{ Des }
And of course there must be heaps and heaps of other forms I don’t know
yet.
=November 27.=--The morning was spent at the Institute; at 12.30
Baron and Baroness _K----_ had invited me to lunch with several of
the Japanese professors. Everything was in the best European style,
with excellent food and ten courses for lunch! After that the Baroness
kindly took me to the Japanese part of the house, where the dolls
were being aired. This, I think, must be explained. Dolls in Japan
are very important things, and have a feast and ceremony once a year,
in March; and these dolls are very valuable--wonderfully dressed
figures of ancient kings and their attendants, court ladies and
ministers, with houses and exquisite lacquered furniture, chariots and
sedan-chairs, boxes and swords and fans--the dolls from 4 to 10 inches
high, and the furniture in rough proportion, exquisitely lacquered and
finished--little gems, some of the things, and, of course, never given
to the children to play with.
I sleep just now with a sword by my hand, in case of robbers, who, by
the way, visited us every day last week but one. The dogs bark when
they come, and after ten minutes or so of furious noise my house Herr
gets up, armed with a mild wrath and a sword, and the robbers beat a
retreat. Now one day it chanced that Professor _M----_ had given me a
huge quince, hard as a stone. The quince had been given to me because
I had pined for quince jam, in the making of which I pride myself.
Well, I had made my jam one evening, and its fine smell rejoiced my
heart (and perhaps attracted the robbers), but the core of the quince
remained, weighing about half a pound, and as hard as a brick. At night
the robbers came, the dogs barked in vain for my house Herr to arise.
At last I looked out of my window, aimed the core of the stony quince
with all my might, and presumably hit the robber, for he decamped
suddenly, and with much more noise than he made coming. Hence I gather
that housewifely instincts in women may have uses hitherto undreamed of.
=November 28.=--A day at the Institute spent in soaking the fossils in
gelatine--a tedious but necessary job which I must do myself. Oh, Tokio
in the rain, what a place it is! In London we grumble if by accident we
step into a “mud pie” left by the street cleaners at some corner of
the road, but in Tokio in the wet one must walk through one continuous
soft mud pie, along roads where there is no footpath. Of course, take a
_kuruma_, is the native reply, but _kurumas_, though cheap, will easily
run up into three or four shillings a day at that rate, and they jolt
one’s spine to a jelly. The Japanese who walk do so on wooden clogs
of a curious kind, with two high stilt-like parts of quite thin wood,
so that it is difficult to balance. I fall off even the low kind, and
could not walk in them any distance, even if I didn’t fall, as one must
take such short steps.
=November 29.=--Still pouring wet. I went to lunch at the Faculty
lunch; however, the Dean was most charming, and the President of the
University did his best to be, but speaks very little English, so
that we say much the same kind of things to each other every day. How
ridiculous are the people who imagine “all Japanese are alike”; as I
look along the table I see every possible type (except the brutally
coarse or sensual one), which may be seen in the English nation, so
beyond the fact that all are rather darkly brown or slightly yellow,
what need to describe them?
In one way, how much more important the University professors are
to their country than is a similar body of Englishmen to England!
They represent practically all the science in the country, and the
Emperor receives them at Court thrice a year, when they wear beautiful
uniforms covered with gold lace, and in their hands lies largely the
honour of the country, the old spirit of nobility, as distinct from
commercialism and apart from mere militarism, both of which are now
getting so rampant here.
=November 30 to December 6.=--No time to write this up, though I have
been doing a lot of things.
=December 7.=--There was an interesting meeting at the University
to-day, when Professor _S----_ was fêted, because it is the 25th
anniversary of his professorship, as well as his silver wedding. The
meeting was held in the hall in the Botanical Gardens, where the
room opens out Japanese fashion on to the garden, just where it is
prettiest, with its ponds and landscape trees. About 200 were there, I
should imagine, and I was the only foreigner--his wife and daughters
the only other ladies. The speeches, of course, were in Japanese, so
I understood very little, but things were explained to me. They have
collected about £300, and will devote it to a prize for research in
chemistry. They have also got a nice likeness of him, which goes to his
family. Baron Kikuchi made the chief speech; he had met him first in
England, when they were university students together.
As I cannot understand enough to follow the sense of the speeches, my
attention is concentrated on the eloquence or otherwise of the speakers
and the musical qualities of the language. Judged from the individual
words one would expect it to be a very flowing and beautiful speech,
as every syllable ends in a vowel, but alas, it loses so much from
the abrupt breaks they make in the middle of the sentences, _e.g._
“Ano-né--anata nó--kiodai wa--uchi ní--mairimasho ká.” It is impossible
to give the rather staccato effect with pauses between the words. Also,
even the good speakers are very apt to hesitate for exactly the right
word, even more than our speakers do. This is not to be wondered at,
for, as well as their own language, they have incorporated the entire
Chinese language and classics (with a special pronunciation of their
own), as well as a good many words from other tongues. I know a man
who has studied steadily for forty years and is making a dictionary
which surpasses any that the Japanese themselves have produced, and yet
_every day_ he learns some new fact about a word, or some new word.
=December 8.=--To-day was wet and cold, so I stopped at home (it was
Sunday) and had visitors in the afternoon. We have had some frightfully
cold weather these last few days, and my furs are very useful. One
curious thing that I have noticed here, the gravel of the path to the
Institute is lifted several inches up in the air by little delicate
ice pillars, and these support the pebbles and sheets of mud so that
the path looks quite as usual until one treads on it, when, of course,
down one goes. The pillars are of clear ice, 1 or 2 inches high, and
less than a pencil stem in thickness, growing in a forest like moss
together. They even raise very heavy slabs of solid stone 20 or 30
pounds in weight, but they only come when the night is clear and still.
=December 11.=--A beautiful, warm, sunny day, the sky as blue as
midsummer and the air sweet. At the Institute doing nothing worth
recording in the day-time. In the evening I had been asked to give a
short address to some of the students of the Law Department of the
Imperial University. I spent more than an hour getting there, for “No.
3” _Y----_ Street represents at least thirty houses, as is so often
the case in Tokio, so that one must go from door to door asking the
householder’s name. Indeed, this is a “Land of Approximate Time.”
The club was small and very jolly, and I quite enjoyed the evening.
There was only one Japanese lady there, the mother of one of the
students, who was herself half German. She was very charming and much
more intelligent-looking than the pure Japanese women. There was a
small earthquake this evening.
=December 12.=--Another earthquake this morning! but quite small, and
still a third at midday, also too small to be any fun. We are having
lovely, hot, sunny weather, and for the first time there were a number
of house flies in my room.
=December 13.=--A bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and ice
pillars on the ground--such heavenly weather that I hated to remain in
the Institute. Dinner with the G----s at the Embassy in the evening.
=December 17.=--The machinery for the fossils is now installed and
very fine it is. It is far and away more compact, more ingeniously
contrived, and grander than our English outfit. I have been endlessly
astonished at the resource displayed by Professor _F----_ in the whole
business.
=December 18.=--A day at the Institute testing the cutting-machine.
As to-day the machinery goes for the first time, all the workmen have
to be treated to _Soba_ (a kind of macaroni made of buckwheat), and
we had the chief engineer from the factory to tea. The machinery goes
almost noiselessly, and the ingenious shield round the wheel makes
it very clean. At present, however, it cuts rather slowly, probably
because the wheels are new and have not got thoroughly penetrated by
the carborundum. In the evening I went to a nice dance.
=December 19.=--A quiet day at the Institute. The Japanese fossils are
harder than the English ones, and take a lot of cutting.
In the evening the Geologists of Tokio gave me a dinner--European
style, of course; they cannot understand that I would much prefer
Japanese style. There were no other ladies, and no foreigners, and the
dinner was very enjoyable; as nearly all of them could speak English or
German, conversation did not flag. I am beginning not to be so afraid
of after-dinner speeches, though I make them very short.
Afterwards we sat round and talked music the whole evening, some
examples of all their kinds being given by a dear old fat professor,
whose name I have forgotten, and who looked very German. It seemed
rude to refuse to let them hear English and other European music, so
_I_ sang a Norwegian, a Scotch, an English, and a German song; the two
latter they did not like--the two former pleased them, as I knew they
would. Their music is so fundamentally different that they cannot like
our music without training, particularly soprano singing; the minor key
Scotch things appeal to them much more directly. I rather like their
music, which is somewhat unusual for a foreigner--but the strained
sound in it which they cultivate (a question largely of breathing)
spoils it for me. On the other hand, our clear notes, with no sound of
the breath, do not please them!
But, as they are always telling me, a foreigner cannot understand their
tastes.
Two of the party saw me home at the modest hour of half-past nine, but
as the dinner began at five, my entertaining powers were pretty well
exhausted.
=December 20.=--A day at the Institute cutting slices of the fossils.
=December 21.=--I spent the morning at the Institute and the afternoon
shopping for Christmas, and the latter was most entertaining. The shops
are delightful, but the _kankobas_ are much nicer. They are a kind of
bazaar or arcade, where all manner of things are sold, and one walks as
through a maze between the stalls in little winding alleys. They are
filled with lower and middle-class Japanese, all buying their year-end
presents. Gifts are given from the 25th to the 30th of the month, and
every one has to give every one something. Also every one _has_ to pay
every farthing he owes by the New Year, so that it is a great time of
settling up, and those who cannot make two ends meet, though honest for
the rest of the year, are very apt to turn burglar for the few days
before the 1st. Householders have to be very careful just now.
=December 22.=--The fascination of Tokio streets is upon me. How often
does one come out into a lonely country lane, or turn into a gem of a
little temple garden so near a busy street!
Coming home down a steep hill at sunset I saw the great Fuji Mountain
standing out in all its calm magnificence, black and grey against a
crimson sky. The huge single cone, with sweeping curves, was like a
silhouette, and below rolled a tumbled wave of smaller hills, while
high above the one clear evening star shone over the great peak.
Every evening on my way home I see the clear evening star, that seems
larger and more brilliant in this land than anywhere else I have been.
The days and nights are heavenly now.
=December 23.=--All to-day I worked at the Institute--the
cutting-machine is now getting finally smartened up. The Hokkaido
fossils are unfortunately harder, and therefore slower to cut, than the
English ones were at home, as we have been testing to-day.
=December 24.=--More presents, and further work on the cutting-machine.
=December 25.=--A brilliant sunny Christmas. I was taken to church by
the P----s. Then went to midday dinner with Mrs. W----.
After that I went for tea (though after the dinner it was quite
impossible to eat anything) to the English Sh----s. Then in the evening
had dinner at the P----s, where I spent the night. We had a very jolly
time, and I won the prize (a silver spoon) at the Geography Game, of
all things!
=December 26.=--In the morning we all spent the time skipping in the
garden to work off yesterday’s feeds, and as the afternoon was my day
at home, I went home: several nice people called, among them Professor
_S----_, who brought gifts, one of which was a huge and beautifully
executed enlargement of the group at the University the day of his
silver professorship celebrations.
=December 27 and 28.=--The fossils fill all my time, so I cannot have
Christmas holidays. I worked at the Institute; nothing special arose.
=December 29.=--Round my house the garden is now ready for the
onslaught of winter. All the delicate shrubs done up in straw, and
decorated with little top-knots, they look quaint. Then the bare ground
is covered with straw, and very neatly edged with rope to look pretty.
Some of the pine trees which have rather brittle branches have a kind
of tent of string over them, which is to prevent the weight of the snow
breaking them, so that everything looks neat and well prepared for the
cold.
[Illustration: THE PINE TREE TIED UP FOR THE WINTER]
The Camellia tree has still opening flowers, out in this neatly
packed-up little garden, and they look gay among its glossy leaves.
It is only at nights that it is so cold, and then often there is more
than an inch of ice on our little pond, all to be melted in the sun of
midday.
=December 30.=--The University is shut for the New Year holiday, so I
cannot work there now, and played tennis in the morning and spent the
rest of the day “domestically.” The climate rots one’s clothes so,
that there is plenty to do. I also made up some writing.
=January 1, 1908.=--This is _the_ greatest day of the year in Japan.
Until long past midnight the people in my house were up preparing for
it. Outside the door of every house is a pair of leafy bamboos and
pines, and over every front door a line of pointed straws. Most also
have a wreath with fern leaves, sea-weed, fish, and a large kind of
bitter orange--each of these symbolic of some special aspect of good
luck. In the house are found the _mochi_ cakes, a kind of round cake
made with much-pounded rice-paste, a horrid glutinous sticky mass,
but very essential for the future welfare of the household! These are
put two together in little piles; and there is a pair of big ones,
10 inches or so across, and a number of little ones all round it.
The little ones are distributed on white papers in various nooks and
crannies of the house, and are said to be for the rats, though those I
have watched have not appealed as yet to those ubiquitous creatures.
At the end of the year there is a rampage of present-giving, in which,
of course, I had to join. The gift from my house lord overwhelmed
me with its splendour: he presented a beautiful ancient sword, with
pearl-inlaid sheath, a handle richly set, and ornamented with gold
flowers. I had given very small things, only cotton dresses to the
maids, and a silk bag to the lady. The sword is a gem, and I love it
very much--but perhaps it is only lent me for the year I am here: I
don’t quite know, but gathered from their flow of words that I was to
take it to England.
On the first day of the year every one wears their very grandest silk
robes, and instead of my usual breakfast I was requested to partake
of the prescribed New Year dishes. The two maids and the mistress,
all in their best (and in their best the Japanese women are truly
butterfly-like and fascinating), brought a tray, and on the tray a
stand of old valuable lacquer with three lacquer drinking-cups, out of
all of which I should have drunk, and exchanged with her, the special
sweet _saké_ that is a vital element in the proceedings. To pacify
my hostess I sipped from one, and handed it to her. She raised the
cup to her forehead and drank also a sip. Then I had to eat the three
foods. A kind of paste, or rather “shape,” of finely-pounded fish, a
kind of rolled omelette, and a mash of sweet stuff made principally of
chestnuts, and, of course, _mochi_. The three subsidiary dishes I did
not eat, one of which looked too queer, a kind of foundation of small
brown beans with brilliantly coloured pickles. The dishes were covered
with beautifully embroidered silk crape, representing a gold tortoise
or turtle (old age luck), storks (ditto), pine, plum blossom, and other
New Year symbolic plants and animals.
I had a present from one of the men at the Institute of a dear little
dwarf plum tree, with sweet-smelling pink blossoms, which scented the
room. There is not a sign of a leaf on the little tree, which is now
covered with blossom.
The streets of Tokio are simply enchanting, the pine and bamboo at
every door, and wherever there are shops, strings of gay red and
white lanterns. At night it is a fairy-land. All the girls, and a
good many of the boys, all in their very best, are out in the streets
playing battledore and shuttlecock with gaily decorated bats and light
feathered cocks--such bright, pretty groups.
In the afternoon I went to the reception at the British Embassy,
held after the Court, with nearly every one in Court dress and
uniforms--some too magnificent. There was quite a crush of Pomp and
Circumstance, and the brilliance can only be imagined by those who have
been to Court, and they need no description of it. Yes, clothes make
the man, and ’tis well that gold lace is so dear, or we would all be
Personages.
=January 2.=--This morning I started to the seaside, Kamakura, with the
P----s. This little village is only thirty miles or so from Tokio, and
one can run down in a couple of hours (quick for Japanese railways),
and get a nice sandy beach and wild hills.
At the hotel, which is quite European, there was a number of other
English, and we joined forces, and went picnics and had games and
dances together in high feather.
The principal sight of the place is the great Dai Butsu, or gigantic
metal statue of a seated Buddha. Most Japanese Buddhas are travesties
of nature and abominations of art--but this one compels reverence and
attracts devotion. Its stillness (a stillness far greater than that
of a house, a statue, or any ordinary inanimate thing), its great
size and the wonderful calm on the face, the beautiful human lips and
broad-based nose, all make one dream and presently drop a tear or
two if no one is looking. Several of us went together by day to see
it--but in the evening I slipped off alone to its little grove and saw
it in the starlight. Unfortunately there was no moon that night. For
technical descriptions of its size, etc. you can see the guide-books or
hear any traveller’s gossip. It is one of the sights of Japan.
=January 3.=--We all went for a picnic all day on the hills, looking
out over the sea on three sides: and we had a sleep on the hill-top at
noon, and came back as it grew cold at 4 o’clock for tea.
=January 4.=--Also a lovely day, only I wandered off alone and got lost
in the long bamboo grass, 10 feet high, and got no lunch. I came back
for tea at 4 all right, however. It is a curious sensation coming down
a steep hill-side with no path through this high stuff. I don’t want to
repeat it.
=January 6.=--The day was spent at the Institute: the floor of the
fossil laboratory is being concreted, so it is locked up for a bit. All
my time was taken up with the welcome letters which I found awaiting
me, having accumulated for a number of days, during which there was an
exceptional lot of mails.
=January 7.=--All day at the Institute, picking up dropped stitches.
The term has not yet begun for the students.
=January 8.=--I was at the Institute in the morning, and at Professor
_F----’s_ for tea in the afternoon, where some New Year customs and
flowers were shown, the New Year plants being the pine, the plum, and
the bamboo.
=January 9.=--The New Year decorations are beginning to be pulled down
from the streets, but a little tuft of pine is left in the place of
each, and sometimes surrounded with a garland of rope.
As I was at home this afternoon, I had long talks with my landlady,
to whom I seem to afford a great amount of interest. The clothes of a
Japanese woman are really very cold and draughty for winter, because of
the way the skimpy skirt opens in front (there is no front seam, it is
only folded and confined by the broad _obi_ or belt), though they may
have as many as half a dozen padded garments on at once. She sees me,
of course, in all stages of dress and undress, and greatly admires my
warm spun knickers and stockings!
=January 10.=--I have been in this house now nearly two and a half
months--except, of course, when I have been away--and _every night_ I
have had _identically the same things for dinner_. Dreadful! Not at
all--I have come to the conclusion that it is a most excellent plan.
How many men and women are worried and bored by the never-ending
question, “What can we have for dinner?” If you always have the same
things this most troublesome of all domestic problems disappears.
No one wants anything but water to bathe in, unless they be fairy
princesses or Queens of Scots, and yet the delight of a bath never
palls: in these months I have had the same things to eat daily and
relished them hugely. Consciously or unconsciously, we are so much
the creatures of habit that if we are led to expect variety in our
dinners, the same menu repeated twice becomes tiring and three times
insufferable. We even remember what we had last week--but if we have
daily food always the same, we judge only its quality, and if it is
well cooked, relish it. Of course the menu must be wide and well
chosen. I, for example, have the same five kinds of vegetables always
served with my small piece of steak, and the frying of the fish is
superb. From this peace I am now driven out by my landlady, who has
at last realised that some variety would be, to say the least of it,
usual. She consulted me about it, and has bought a cookery book of “sea
food,” as foreign cookery is called, so I gave her a lesson in soups
for a beginning, that being the part of the menu she managed least
well. Oh me!--those dear peaceful dinners--I recommend every one to try
the plan; it is philosophically sound and practically excellent.