of rail in the country, so that the incident should not be compared
with doings in some far-off highland place in Scotland), the train
suddenly drew up with a jerk, far from one station and about the same
distance from the next. The passengers were surprised, some slightly
alarmed, and the train calmly waited for some time and then started
racing back to the station from which we had come. We all resigned
ourselves to a broken bridge, overturned carriages on the track, or
something of the sort, and finally drew up at the station we had just
left--much commotion on the platform, and we learned that from the
luggage van some parcels had not been delivered! They were delivered
over to the proper person and the train started off once more, to reach
Tokio not a little late.
=February 24.=--There have been signs of the coming Dolls’ Festival,
to take place on the 3rd day of the 3rd month. I have mentioned
them already (see p. 74). The shops are now full of them, and most
fascinating they are, but too expensive to indulge in as I should like.
The figures are all in little boxes, and sit solemnly, with their stiff
robes spread out, as though they were really the nobles that they
represent, and every one is interested in buying them, or at least
gazing at them in their temporary homes. Several shops have sprung up
this week filled with these boxes of dolls, and selling nothing else.
=February 25.=--At work all day at fossils, the record so far, for
with the boy I cut and finished eleven sections in one day, some very
nice. A ball at the British Embassy in the evening, very pleasant. Many
interesting and amusing things happened, but unless given in great
detail would not appeal to any one outside local gossip. Captain von
L---- introduced me to the loveliest woman there--an American (sad
to hear their awful accent coming out of such patrician lips!), the
one who at a previous dance had so entranced me and my young partner
that we spent our sitting-out time following her around to see her eat
ices and laugh; her manner was perfection--calm, still, and gracious,
honey-sweet looks in eyes that never smiled while one was speaking to
her, and that just broke into little curls of smiles as she answered--a
suggestion of humility while waiting to hear another’s banalities, yet
with it a commanding dignity that forbade any one else to interrupt the
person who was speaking to her. Her name is Mrs. D----, and I am going
to see her, as she very graciously invited me to do. I wonder if she
includes thought-reading among her other charms and read my admiration?
Her high-heeled pink satin slippers twinkled gaily in the dance; she
did not hesitate to lift the Worth frock very high--with such ankles I
wouldn’t! On her white soft neck were the loveliest little blue veins,
I never saw anything so suggestive of living marble. She was like white
marble, with an underflush of rose and violet. The little wrinkles at
the corners of her eyes added to her charm rather than detracted from
it. She is the only woman in Tokio who has bewitched me.
There was a very striking-looking girl, daughter of a French mother
and a Japanese father, her hair done cavalier fashion, with a side
bunch of ringlets under a big white bow; her very French frock and tiny
waist became her well, and she strode through the Lancers with such a
devil-may-care manner that we could not but remark her--favourably too
in spite of it all.
Tokio is a fine soil for gossip, very good-natured and amusing. I love
it, it’s such a relaxation after gas-engines and fossils.
=February 27.=--Sunshine wonderful again--just the remains of the
recent snow left here and there. I regret to find that the people in my
house have been lying to me for long about a point on which I laid some
stress--a whole complex of lies as well as the actual disobedience.
=February 28.=--I visited the Charmer to-day, and stayed an
unconscionably long time. No one has bewitched me in this way since my
school-days. She had a lovely gown of blue-and-white chiffon. Several
people were there--Baron and Baroness S----, Count C----, and the
wife of the Swiss Minister. I had about half an hour of the Charmer
to myself--her husband is the Naval Attaché. She was simply alluring,
and her house is far the prettiest I have yet seen in Tokio. She was
telling me how all the Corps Diplomatique agree that there is no
capital in the world where the social life is so delightful, and where
there is so much gaiety and friendliness among the Corps as a whole, as
in Tokio. Also there is really no other capital where other people can
enter the charmed circle; that, of course, is the result of the small
number of Westerners in the place, and their social position; as I have
remarked before, there are almost no commercial people in Tokio.
At lunch at the Faculty to-day. Dr. _Y----_ brought me a paper on
fossils to correct the English, he is soon starting for Europe. I have
mentioned him before as being a rising paleontologist, such a shy,
young-looking creature, utterly lacking in all social gifts; I wonder
how he will fare in Europe, perhaps some of you who read this may meet
him. He is predestined to be professor in a new University about four
years hence.
=February 29.=--I worked at the fossils till 12, and then set out for
Baron _H----’s_ long arranged luncheon party.
We were received in rooms with tables and chairs, and an oil-painting!
There were the “lace” curtains found in every “foreign style” Japanese
house, alas! The Baroness was very gracious and sweet, and acceded to
my request to play on the Koto, playing a very charming piece.
As we sat on the cushions I could just see out of the small panes of
glass put into the paper _soji_, and I delighted in the garden, with
its trees of pink and white plum just bursting into blossom. After some
time the men came in and Baron _H----_ showed us his collection of
sword rings and knives, etc., all good, and some very beautiful.
=March 1.=--It was terribly wet all night and this morning; I went to
lunch with Miss B---- (before mentioned as a very amusing lady, despite
the fact that she is a missionary). I think no one would be better
qualified to write memoirs than she. I was hearing something about the
inner life of the Court at Korea. She is a friend of the English lady
doctor who attended the royal ladies, and it was all extremely amusing,
but it is not my place to tell her anecdotes.
I returned early to do some writing, but was greeted by my landlady
with the announcement that to-day, to-morrow, and the next day are the
Festival of the Dolls. I must, therefore, drink some special sweet
thick _saké_ and eat various sweets, some nice little ones like fried
caterpillars being very tasty. I was also asked to come and see the
pictures and screens brought up from the store-house, two of them 200
years old, and one, a really magnificent one, 500 years,--gold with
plum blossom and birds. I am constantly seeing new treasures they have
in hiding.
They gave me a lovely granite hill with clustering rosy flowers growing
round its base--all 6 inches square--and we admired together the wet
pine leaves in the garden.
=March 2.=--Fossil-cutting all day; a very nice dance in the evening
after dinner with the P----s, where I spent the night.
=March 3.=--The Dolls’ Festival. Mr. _Mj----_ and his three little
girls have a very gorgeous collection; the dolls, however, are far too
exalted for any child to play with them. The _Mj----s_ must literally
have hundreds of these expensive little miniatures of the Emperor and
Empress in the old-style garments, of historical and mythological
figures, of musicians and actors from the _Nō_--all of whose dress is
a wonder of design and execution. Then there were all the household
utensils in tiny lacquered form, and on the little trays and dishes
was real food arranged, as well as large models of fish in sugar.
There was even a little temple, with most of the appointments correct.
A large room was given over to them, and looked like a bazaar, but
the arrangement was not merely chosen to display the detail, it was
all according to prescribed rule--the Emperor and Empress on the top
shelf, with their jingling elaborate head-dresses and long silk tassels
on their many robes; below them the musicians; on the lowest shelf the
tray of food, the little houses, screens and fans in inexhaustible
variety. The children are provided with special sweet food which they
themselves eat, the crisp sweet “puffed” rice, sweet blocks of jelly
and sugar concoctions of many kinds. The guests were also provided with
these dainties, and some of them were delicious, but I could not drink
the sauce-like _saké_.
In the evening there was our inaugural dinner of the London University
Union in Japan. I found there was quite a number of old U.C.L. students
in Japan, and so started the idea, which was very keenly taken up by
Professor _S----_; others joined in, Baron _K----_, Professor _S----_,
Professor _F----_, Professors L----, S----, etc. etc., up to the number
of twenty-one, are members, and the first dinner was quite a success.
Professor _S----_, Baron _K----_ and I form the Committee elected then,
and I hope the Union will live. Cambridge and Harvard, etc. all have
their Unions, why should London be less honoured and remembered by her
children?
=March 4.=--A long day at fossils.
=March 5.=--Fossils till 4--then I went to tea with Mrs. D----. She had
invited the American Ambassadress and her niece to meet me, and I liked
them both. The former is very like a slightly slimmer and handsomer
Miss S---- of Wintersdorf! Mrs. D---- had another lovely frock, and was
a dream of sweetness and beauty. Why do I always fall in love with
women!
=March 7.=--Fossils all day till 4.30, then to tea with Dr. _H----_
and his wife, recently married and very cordial; they live in a really
tiny Japanese house, no room more than six mats, but so spick and span,
with a dear little garden. Though I have done my best to teach that man
how to treat a wife--and he always seemed to be drinking it in quite
properly--she herself brought the tea for us two, taking none herself
(I know she has a maid), and sitting in the corner away from us, and
not even taking a cushion to sit on, when he had been shamed into
giving her one by my remarking that she had none. However, they seem
happy, and she looks quite well, and she has not a soul quivering with
every touch of the material things of life. She says he loves her very
much, and has loved no other woman.
=March 8.=--To-day I visited the sick. Poor Mrs. G---- was riding in a
_kuruma_ a week ago and the _Embassy_ carriage ran into her, knocked
the _kuruma_ to pieces, and the horse fell on Mrs. G---- and rolled
over! How she escaped fearful injuries no one knows, but a muscle is
severed and she can’t walk just now. She looked very pretty in bed, and
was holding quite a court. Horses in Japan are really dangerous and
constantly run away.
I called my duty call on Baroness _H----_ after the luncheon party, and
the conversation did not flag, though what she thought of my Japanese
(the horrors of which I am daily realising more acutely) I don’t know,
as she held it under with her fine native politeness.
I have read two interesting books this week--Lieutenant Sakurai’s
_Human Bullets_ and _As the Hague Ordains_, the supposed journal of
the wife of a Russian prisoner who comes to him in Japan, and is
gradually converted to love the Japanese. The first book was rather
a shock to all one’s preconceived notions about the unflinching
bravery and repression of feelings among the Japanese soldiers! They
were either weeping or embracing each other or writing sentimental
letters--on every other page. I was quite sick of all their tears and
self-adulation, though the writer gave a vivid picture of the ghastly
carnage of the siege of Port Arthur. Yet people praise the book and
don’t seem to notice the sentimentality as much as I do. I wonder if
those who praise it have read it.
I heard from an old resident (thirty years here) that the Japanese are
the most sentimental people under the sun. Oh, ye who stop at home and
dream your dreams about Japan! Stay there.
=March 9.=--The following happened a few days ago, and I should have
put it in then, but I forgot. The day was miserable, wet, cold, and
windy, with snow blustering about, and instead of quietly having
lunch in the warm Institute I was told we were to go to the big
state-rooms at the other side of the gardens. There I found that all
the Biology students and the Botanical and garden staff were lunching
in Japanese style. There was a special kind of pink rice, with small
beans boiled with it, and the various more or less savoury pieces of
fish, vegetables, and a kind of pancake that go to make up a _bento_.
Afterwards we all had packets of highly ornamental sticky cakes,
chiefly made of the stodgy bean-paste I cannot eat, but some were good.
This was the feast of the God Inari (the God of Rice), who is very
appropriately worshipped by the botanists. After the feast we cowered
under our umbrellas and went a pilgrimage through the gardens to his
shrine, where we found the hundred-year-old blue cotton banner put up
outside. Within the shrine was incense, lit by the Botanical Laboratory
attendant, and a great tray of cakes, the same as we had been eating.
Led by the Staff, we all rang the bell to call Inari’s attention to our
visit, and clapping our hands in prayer we gave him a few sens each,
throwing the copper coins in among the cakes. Then we ploughed our way
through the bog-like paths to the Institute.
=March 10.=--So seedy that I did not get up at all. It is the very
first day in my life that I have ever spent in bed (except for the
measles, when I was too ill to notice anything much), and I feel it a
solemn and important event. The first half of the day sped on magic
wings, and I wondered how one could be so _bête_ as to find bed a
wearisome place when one is surrounded by the lovely golden lights on
bare wood. How we spoil wood by staining and painting it! The range of
delicate colour in the woodwork of my room is a perfect delight. Then I
had also a little tree, shaped like a weeping-willow, but one mass of
rosy pink plum blossom, some flowers wide open, with recurved petals
and a flare of silver stamens, others in perfectly round crimson buds,
alluring as only roundness can be.
Till 3 o’clock in the afternoon that tree and the wood made me
blissfully happy, but the hours between 3 and 5 seemed terribly long,
and by night I was sated with the delights of bed. The next day seemed
very far off.
=March 13.=--I went to the Institute in the morning and cut some
fossils. It has simply been an influenza cold, but it has rather played
havoc; after lunch at the Faculty and a long and varied talk with the
Dean, I wasn’t fit to do any more, so I called on the B----s and went
to tea with the Charmer on my way home to bed. I went to bed before
6 o’clock, and was so worn out that I howled for an hour, but dinner
revived me, and I am now as cheerful as if I hadn’t contemplated
suicide two hours ago. Tokio is a terrible place for ups and downs.
To-day it is fearfully cold, even my bath towel frozen; and a week ago
it was like summer for two days--one day a miserable snowstorm, the
next glowing blue skies.
=March 14.=--In the afternoon a party had been arranged to visit a
noted plum garden at Omori, and have tea in a tea-house. As the H----s
had asked me to go home with them to dinner and sleep, I went, though
by the end of the day I was far too tired out. We carried cakes,
trusting the tea-house for cups and hot water. The plum garden was
indescribably beautiful, and a typical “Japanese” scene. The garden
sloped in the double hollow of a shell-shaped valley, and the rich
white bloom on the trees surged up it as the thick drifting mists
surge up a mountain pass. Standing out from the cloud-sea of blossoms,
like peaks from out the mists, were two or three tea-houses, white
papered and inhabited by gaily-decked maidens, and men who admired the
plums, in grey silk. The sky was clear sapphire, and the sea beyond lay
like a blue gauze veil along the horizon. While the others went on into
the midst of the trees, I left the garden and sat in the sun on the
steps of a little temple, which was a perfect harmony of curves, and
behind lay a bamboo grove.
Tea was amusing, for Captain S---- would not take off his boots, and
therefore had to walk with his feet in the air; which he did on his
knees or hands. The tea-house was perched on the side of a hill, and
looked down on rice fields and woody patches on little elevations.
After tea we explored the temple and its pretty groves, and had a
lovely merry-go-round ride on the old revolving library, a huge thing,
but so perfectly poised that we could all sit on it and go round
without its even creaking.
=March 16.=--Called on Mrs. P---- on my way to the Institute in the
morning. She captured me, and then and there my clothes were taken off
and I was put to bed--and was secretly thankful to be there. She is
quite exceptionally kind to take me in in this way.
=March 25.=--At work all day over fossils--then dressed in my
green-and-gold Venetian dress and called on Mrs. G---- on the way to
the Embassy dinner. She and her children were having a preliminary
view of some of the gowns--she is, alas, still in bed. The party was
splendid--several Japanese were there in magnificent old court dresses
and simply marvellous arrangements for their hair. Baroness _S----_
also wore Japanese court dress. Perhaps I had better shortly describe
it. The lower part consists of scarlet trousers with extremely wide
stiff legs, and the garment is much like our “divided skirt” of some
years ago, but the cloth is much stiffer. Over it is a gorgeously
embroidered kimono, with sweeping train. Some of the hair ornaments are
extremely bizarre, others (according to the period) rather simple, the
hair falling down the back and tied in three places.
[Illustration]
One, something like the sketch, was very effective, the funny little
brush of hair coming straight out at either side being its speciality.
Several of the Englishmen came as Japanese pirates, etc., with great
wigs of long hair, rich gold-embroidered robes and swords; the girls
were not remarkable. After dinner we all went along to the German
Embassy, and met there the parties from all the other Embassies. The
scene in the reception-rooms and in the beautiful white ball-room was
vivid and gorgeous beyond my power to describe. Whom to describe, when
nearly all were beautiful or striking, and nearly all of the important
folk in Tokio were present? Count _H----_ (the foreign minister) was in
old daimio dress, with two swords and rich brocade--and one could not
imagine how he ever came to wear anything else! The evening was one to
remember, with its brilliance and beauty and courtliness.
=March 26.=--Yesterday morning at breakfast I had imagined I would
remain in my present house as long as I was in Japan. This morning by
ten o’clock I had taken a house and garden of my own and engaged a maid!
Apparently, one can do things quickly sometimes in Japan, though it is
usually a terrible business to get a house. Of course, I haven’t yet
moved in, and “there is many a slip,” etc.
The house is tiny, but is said to have five rooms--the paper walls
between these can be taken out at will to make two, or even one room.
There are lots of cupboards, for in this, as in all true Japanese
houses, the solid walls are all lined with great cupboards, a yard deep
and reaching from floor to ceiling. The rent of the house with its
garden is about 7s. a week! Less than I have been paying for my two
rooms.
The joy of these houses is that one needs almost no furniture, they are
provided with the soft, thick straw mats (_tatami_), and these serve as
carpets if one likes. I infinitely prefer their delicate straw colour
and black borders, which harmonise with the cream walls and unpainted
woodwork, to the clashing carpets most people have. Then fireplaces
being absent, overmantels, fenders, coal-scuttles and fire-irons are
all represented by a little china bowl of ashes, manipulated with metal
chop-sticks. Beds, though introduced by many foreigners into such
houses, I dispense with, and use the native mattresses on the mats, so
that they are folded away in the big cupboards by day and the room is
used for what one will. Wardrobes are also needless incumbrances, the
wall cupboards serving excellently--wash-stands are but eyesores, as
the little bath-rooms are so arranged that one can splash at will and
the water all runs away from the sloping floor. So I am a householder,
and prepared to lead the simple life.
Providence must have arranged it all, for the cook next door (that is
at Mrs. P----’s, I forgot to state) has a protégée who wants an easy
place in a foreigner’s house, and doesn’t care so much for money, as
she is timid and wants experience before going to a big house--but she
can bake bread and Scotch scones and cakes! I pay her 18s. a month
and give her no food at all! She even brings her own saucepans and
mattresses! Well, it all looks too good to be true, and until I have
moved in I had better say no more about my own little house.
I went back to my present abode, for it was my At Home day, and I
entertained some Japanese, who were charmed with Arthur Rackham’s
illustrations of _Rip Van Winkle_, and thought they showed something of
the spirit of Japanese art, which I think is true.
I flew down to the station for Yokohama, and dined there with Mrs.
L----, and dressed in a fancy dress costume and set out with her and
her daughter to a _mi-carême_ ball. I enjoyed the dance hugely.
=March 27.=--Rushed up to Tokio in the morning; to the University
for lunch, where I had a long talk with the Dean. The Mitsui family
(the Japanese Rothschilds) gave the money for the fossil laboratory
and part of the apparatus, and the Dean proposes (now that everything
is practically finished in the making of the arrangements) to give a
tea-party in the Botanic Gardens to show the building apparatus and
slides (I have cut 221 so far), as well as the new herbarium buildings.
As I have often remarked, he is very English in his tastes and culture,
and he planned to give what would be usual in England--tea and coffee
and cakes. But when I saw him yesterday, how he had fallen! Nothing
less than meats and wines and jellies would satisfy him. It was not
his own wish, but he had been driven into it by the strength of the
custom in Japan, which demands that if you have guests at all (even at
3 or 4 in the afternoon) you must give them a meat feed, and that they
must eat like greedy schoolboys. Whence comes it? This mad ostentatious
display, and the guzzling, which is so foreign to their real culture.
A mutation derived from crossing such distinct cultures as those of
Japan and Europe, not even a hybrid with the characters of one of the
parents. Well, I laughed at Professor _S----_, for he said he hated
the custom and had hoped to set the fashion for simplicity in this
party of his, but that he was really afraid to do so; he would be
the laughing-stock of the Japanese if he _only_ gave tea, coffee, and
chocolate, ice-cream, cakes and sandwiches from 3 to 6 o’clock! I asked
him where the spirit of his Samurai ancestors lay sleeping--asked him
who could set the fashion for reasonable entertainments if not himself,
in his exalted position of Dean of the University--and got him to swear
to me that he would be a pioneer, that he would be brave and face the
ordeal of being the laughing-stock of the Japanese. I wonder how it
will go.
This unwritten law, which demands such a lavish hospitality if any
is given, is, I see, one of the chief causes that there is so little
social life, in our sense of the thing, among the Japanese. It is a
real strain on their purse and their time, and they naturally ask
guests seldom when they give so much trouble.
To ask a guest to come to your house and give him only tea and cake, or
a dinner of no greater magnificence than the one you eat yourself every
night, is almost impossibly rude.
After cutting fossils till 5, I went home to entertain a Japanese to
the same food that I eat every day. Am I a laughing-stock among them?
Doubtless, and for more things than one.