how tired one gets of eggs and rice, even in one meal) I wandered
round the garden, tottering along with great circumspection, for I
was mounted on _geta_ (the wooden clog-like things I have previously
mentioned). The stillness was complete, as the temple was closed to
visitors and the old priest and his wife were in the house. Range after
range of hills stood back from the sea towards Fuji mountain, whose
position I knew, but who was hidden in the clouds. In the valley the
ripe barley glowed golden, and between its little fields were the bare
wet patches waiting for the rice to be planted out, and reflecting now
the clouds that hung low in the sky. Brilliant emerald squares marked
the nurseries of the tiny rice plants, growing in neat little oblongs
by themselves, and still less than 6 inches high. Suddenly I felt an
electric presence, and looked behind me at a cleft in the hill to see
the slimmest silver curve of a new moon that I had ever seen. She rode
in the sky so swiftly that, as I watched, I could fancy the waves of
blue ether tossed from the prow of the little boat, and while I gazed
she passed again behind the hill. So delicate a moon, a silver thread
curved on a bow, but its fairy light was more bewitching than many a
great round moon’s brilliance.
In the night the priest woke, and gave a cry to his wife, and I looked
out, but the night was black, the fleet moon had lured every star away.
=June 2.=--Early they rose, and though I took about an hour leisurely
eating my breakfast, it was finished before half-past eight. I went
to the cycad trees for a while and worked at them. How huge they
are! The one on which I am now sitting, eight feet or so above the
ground, spreads all round me like a grove of trees, but is only one
much-branched individual. At my feet, in the main trunk of the tree, is
a minute temple, but I think the gods have deserted it, for within is
only one image half a foot high, from which the paint has worn away.
[Illustration: THE CURIOUS BENT CYCAD IN THE TEMPLE GROUNDS.]
Opposite me is a funny old cycad, not branched at all but bent. It
grows on a slope, and is propped up with legs here and there. In the
morning I saw Mount Fuji quite magnificently. She stands alone in
the sky, three times higher in appearance (and more in fact) than any
hill near, with a coronet of snow, and a cloak of clouds round her
shoulders, which cut her off from the earth. Immensely more impressive
than when seen from Tokio.
What a peaceful day! I stop in the midst of my examination of
the cycads to fall into an aimless reverie, and am waked up by a
frog croaking from a porcelain-green throat at my side. Big black
butterflies come lumbering along, and one thinks they are stupid birds
till they settle on a crimson azalea flower, and coming up from the
rice fields is a low-toned rattling chorus of frogs and semi. Just
before supper I went up the next little hill to see the temple of
Kwannon on its top. There are 270 solid stone steps up to the temple,
all neatly squared and nearly 8 feet wide--but the temple itself is
built of mouldering wood. It commands a splendid view of the rice and
barley fields, and then the sea, which lies but a mile away. Behind the
temple is a hilly country with many trees and little cultivated patches
here and there. There are lots of white Canterbury bells among the tall
grasses, and the wild Fuji wistaria branches climb round many a trunk.
After supper the moon rode high in the pale grey sky--but it is so
small even now, only what I would have thought was a first day moon in
England. Perhaps the brilliantly clear air of Japan last night allowed
me to see the crescent before it was really a moon at all, but was the
soul of a moon before it was born.
=June 3.=--To get me to the station by 8.30 the good people started
getting up at 5, and talked so that I could hear every word, repeating
again and again the time that they must wake me. But once they had
“waked” me, not a word did they say, and crept about like mice. The
contrariness of the Japanese is incomprehensible. The _kuruma_ came an
hour before I ordered it--and I kept him waiting more than an hour by
their clock, and then got to the station sixty-five minutes too soon
for the train!
After a few stations, I was struck by a pretty beach, and hopped off
the train, determined to have a bathe and go on by the next, whenever
it might be, to-day or to-morrow. The station-master was very nice,
and took charge of my luggage, from which I extracted a towel. The
village--Kanbara by name--was very small, and there were a good many
fishing-boats at intervals along the shore, but they were nearly
deserted. The water was just delicious, so warm that one could not
feel it at all, I never bathed in such a perfect temperature, but I
expect our creeping cold water is more bracing. I sunned on the beach
for a while, and found a train at midday that will take me a good deal
quicker than the one I left, as it is a semi-express.
I had to wait about twenty minutes on the platform for it, and was of
course gazed at solemnly by a number of small children who did not
offer a remark, they were so young that very likely I was the first
foreigner they had really seen at close quarters. There was a good deal
of difference of opinion as to my sex. My panama hat always bewilders
them, as only men wear them here.
The station-master came up and had a little chat, and took me to his
room, because there was a chair there, which was very nice of him;
though the chair was no more comfortable really than the bench, the
quiet and coolness of his room was pleasant.
When I got off the train I had not told him that it was my intention
simply to get a bathe, but had diplomatically said I wished to see his
neighbourhood, which had evidently pleased him. I told him about the
bathe afterwards, which seemed also to please him, for I had enjoyed it
very much. I got to Tokio quite uneventfully before night.
=June 8.=--Fossil-cutting all day. In the afternoon there was a quite
terrific thunder-storm, one peal seemed to break inside the very house.
Then hail! The largest known for forty years, and really the hailstones
were as large as eggs, some were measured by Professor P----, and were
2½ inches in diameter!
By a really quaint coincidence it was the Festival of the God of
Thunder, and the storm took place in the middle of the temple festival.
There seems some justification for a folk-belief in mythology. When the
worshippers prayed for mercy from the fearful hail, the sun soon shone.
=June 9.=--Professor _F----_ came to tea in my house, which he now saw
for the first time--and when I think how he had to arrange everything
with my landlady in the last one, I feel quite proud of my progress. He
is still ill, though a little better, and to-morrow goes away to some
celebrated hot springs.
=June 11.=--Working at fossils all day: I developed some photos of
cycads I took at Yejiri, but the weather is so hot the gelatine
dissolves!
The air is now filled with mosquitoes and minute biting flies, and I
would like to be a hedgehog. They sing so loudly outside the net that
I can’t sleep, and though they don’t get inside the net much they are
so vexed about it, and I am “so sweet to eat,” as my little maid says,
they just howl on the top note of rage.
=June 12.=--A working day, in which the only attempt at excitement was
the lunch at the Goten, but as Professor _S----_ was away it was a
little like flat soda-water.
=June 13.=--I went to see the Agricultural University; it is at the
end of the Aoyama tram, and quite away into the country. It possesses
a very impressively beautiful stretch of ground, over which the
different Institute Buildings are dotted. Dr. _M----_ met me and took
me over. The botanical department is not very big, but those who do
research there get every convenience. The only noteworthy thing was
the curious arrangement of the paraffin oven, stuck right down in the
ground like the hut of a cave-dweller, with steep steps into it and
a metal entrance door. This is an old arrangement as a precaution
against fire, for, of course, all the buildings are of wood. Of the
other departments, I was principally interested in the silk-worm
houses, where huge numbers of worms were reared. A scientist was there
doing experiments with hybrids, and working at Mendel’s laws and the
commercial value of different crosses. More convenient creatures for
such a purpose one could hardly imagine. They need no cages, for they
can neither fly nor run! When the moths hatch out you can pick them
up, pop them down beside any other one you like, and they stay where
you put them and mate, and you get a new generation in about thirty
days. They are kind enough to fasten their eggs themselves in series on
numbered cards, and are, in fact, as well behaved as any scientifically
constructed animal could ever be imagined to be.
It was very wet, so the picnic planned for the afternoon did not come
off, and I stayed a long time. It was interesting to notice some native
Indians studying here, and to find that they, and one or two others who
could not speak Japanese, had special classes held in English and given
by a Japanese teacher for the various subjects. Who needs to learn any
“world language” but English?
=June 15.=--An uneventful working day, but in the evening there was
the Debate. We are going to have alternately afternoon and evening
meetings, so as to try to please all varieties of people.
Miss B----’s paper was very amusing, as we all expected it would be,
but very superficial also, so that I felt she had been convinced on
the side of Hearn, for she brought no real serious argument against
him. Miss G---- opposed her well, and brought far more solid reasons
in favour of Hearn’s view of Japan; the two supporters were good,
particularly “the Poetess,” who supported Hearn. Many of the audience
spoke very well, but when it came to voting so many refrained that the
votes were level, and I had to give the casting vote, of course in
favour of Hearn.
=June 19.=--All yesterday the Institute had been undergoing extensive
cleaning, and this morning was spent in expectation and preparation of
exhibits--the great Dr. Koch, the world-famed German bacteriologist,
was coming to see the Institute. Professor _F----_ was brought back
from the mountain before his cure was finished to be on duty; my fossil
slides were borrowed and put under microscope, and the spermatozoids
of _ginkgo_ were on show. He came, after the whole Institute and Baron
_H----_ had waited in a flutter of excitement for nearly an hour; he is
a big stout man, not very intellectual-looking. Though interested he
had evidently been trotted round a great deal. He seemed to like the
fossils, and asked me to show him a section of a leaf, as well as those
I had under the microscope.
Then he was trotted off to a purely masculine dinner at the garden
house. The newspapers have been full of his coming, his doings, and
sayings. They say they are going to put a telephone up Mount Fuji, so
as to be able to interview him from the top!
=June 22 and 23.=--Uneventful working days, with a little reading of
Matthew Arnold’s _Essays in Criticism_ in the evening. I am reading
aloud to Mrs. St----, who lives next door but one, and who must not
use her eyes at present. We are doing Arnold pretty thoroughly, life,
poems, and essays, and patted ourselves on the back when we found in an
essay on his work that he “appeals exclusively to the cultured section
of the educated classes!”
=June 24.=--At work all day; in the evening I gave a farewell party
for the P----s (who leave on Friday), and invited about 30 people, of
whom 26 or so accepted. It would have been preposterously ambitious
in England, but here my little house, with the rooms thrown into one,
and the garden lit with Chinese lanterns, made it a pleasure to play
at entertaining. The room lit with lanterns looked very pretty; chairs
and lemonade glasses I borrowed from next door, and all went merry
as a marriage bell. Though it was the rainy season, the night was
gloriously fine. The Dean and one or two Professors of the University,
two clergymen and some minor folk from the Embassy disported themselves
like children. Even the Poetess came, and entered into the games. We
had a collection of 20 sen toys for Professor P----, and some of the
things people brought were charming. By 11.30 all but a select few
departed, but it was after 12 before these went. What a simple happy
thing life in a Japanese house can be!
=June 25.=--Fossil-cutting all day. Miss _M----_, Mrs. _H----_, and
President _N----_ came to see the fossil cutting-machine at work, and
also some of the slides under the microscope. They were interested, but
of course did not fully realise their significance, for fossils are
principally for specialists.
=June 26.=--At 6.30 this afternoon Professor and Mrs. P---- left. What
a crowd there was to see them off! By the same train the wife and
daughter of the Austrian Ambassador were leaving, and that brought
all the Legations’ representatives. Really the platform was so packed
we could hardly move--and if there had been tea going round it would
have seemed like a garden party. The train looked comfortable, with
_wagons-lit_--and every one was entertained by the huge “send-off,” so
that few tears were shed--but I am deeply sorry to lose the friends
that train carries away.
=June 30.=--A good day’s work. In the evening there was a dinner
where met all the botanists of Tokio. One or two could not come,
but there were 18 men there. Seemingly foreign food is greatly
appreciated--certainly there were more courses than the laws of health
allow. It was amusing to note knives slipped furtively down after
they had touched asparagus when their owners noted me holding a spike
aloft in bare fingers--but otherwise the company behaved and looked
much as a similar set of people would look anywhere. The sky, seen
out of the windows, was the most astonishingly blue I have ever seen.
The soft velvety depth of it suggested the impossibility of stars
gleaming on its surface (as they usually do at night), they would
have been drowned. The brilliant blueness like that of a cornflower
or a solid mass of cornflowers that had flung off their colour into
the surrounding air, till every particle for miles, each separate and
distinct, was blue. Usually the sky seems a flat or a dome-shaped
sheet of colour over us, to-night it was a solid vapoury mass of
quivering blue particles--indescribable, but thrilling as an electric
shock, and as unforgettable. After we had dined we talked, until I
suggested Dr. _H----_ should give us a piece of _Nō_ recitation; he
studies its peculiar singing-like declamation and renders it well. Then
others sang, and I was convulsed by “Home, Sweet Home,” sung by one of
the young lecturers, “to prevent me feeling home-sick.” His rendering
of it was intensely funny, but his voice was pretty good. Afterwards he
sang a long Japanese battle song. We left at 9.45, and some of us, I
fear, will be ill after that dinner.
=July 1.=--An uneventful and solitary day’s work. Professor _F----_
too ill to come. I only suffered spasmodic anger from an outraged
digestive mechanism, and continued my usual occupations, and dined with
the Sh----s in the evening. The little Japanese girl I have mentioned
as staying with her is pretty nice. Alas, to-morrow she is going to be
put into foreign dress! She is going to marry Prince _S----_, however,
who is very pro-English, and as she will be much about the court, is
compelled to wear it by that sad decree of the Empress.
I heard one good story of a little English girl who went home after
having spent all her early years in Japan. In the train between
Southampton and London she was much interested with the outlook, the
sheep particularly fascinating her, and she called on her mother to
admire them: “Look, what a lot!” “Why, here is another!” “There,
mother, look, look!” she kept exclaiming, when a benevolent old
gentleman said, “Why are the sheep so interesting, little girl? Haven’t
you seen a sheep before?”
“Of course I have,” she answered, drawing herself up; “of course--we
have _two_ in the Zoo in Tokio.”
=July 2.=--Fossil-cutting all morning--I seem to be followed by
misfortune, for the boy who works the engine has been away all this
week, and my scientific colleague here only one afternoon! However, I
keep at it, and slides are slowly accumulating, with a few nice things
in them.
=July 3.=--Fossils in the morning and lunch at the Goten; Professor
_S----_ jolly and talkative, and a great pleasure to meet. Professor
_F----_ came in the afternoon, and we did a lot of looking through
slides. There are a number of pretty little things among the fossils
that puzzle us completely.
=July 5.=--There was a luncheon party with some nice neighbours to-day,
and while we were there some strolling Japanese singers came to the
door, and we gave them a few sen and watched them. There were an old
woman and a young woman, both good-looking, and with the quaint huge
round hats of their class, the young man wore a battered European-style
hat--a jarring note, that was repeated in the little girl’s hat, red
stockings, and European shoes. It is always the men and the children
who wear the horrors of civilisation.
The child danced, clumsily and heavily with her feet, but moving her
little body in all kinds of ways with wonderful grace and agility,
and a strength in holding difficult curves; her hands too, so prettily
shaped, were carefully posed and moved, now rigid, almost bending back,
and now swiftly fluttering; she had an old gilt fan, which she opened
and manœuvred, but her round pretty face was absolutely set. There was
a haunting suggestion of bedraggled beauty in it all, beauty that had
once adorned a noble’s palace and had been cast into the streets, and
from soft white _tabi_ and silk robes had taken to tight cotton gowns
and old red stockings, with a hole showing above the down-trodden heel
of a shoe.
Yesterday the Ministry resigned--and the commercial people are on the
verge of revolt against the fearful expenditure on army and navy, while
the country is so poverty-stricken. I could weep with Hearn over this
country, and the hats they wear are enough to start me off!
I have read every word of the cross-examination and trial of Bethell
over the Korean matters; you have probably heard of it at home; in
many ways I feel that the Japanese use their catch phrases, “love of
country”--“love of Emperor,” as cloaks for unscrupulous behaviour
public and private, just as our county councillors seem to lose private
honesty in dealing with public affairs. The Japanese have 20,000
troops active in Korea, and cannot keep order--my only surprise is
that any Koreans submit at all without decent open warfare; they were
not conquered, but tricked and coerced into having their Government
absolutely controlled by the Japanese Government. Were I a Korean I
should at least demand to be properly conquered. Yet, of course, from
the point of view of world politics Japan must control Korea, only--God
pity the Koreans who have themselves a spark of “love of country” or
“love of Emperor.”
=July 6.=--A solitary day’s work--on the way home I called to inquire
after Mrs. _M----_, who has been in bed for about a month, and I
noticed that the ceiling of their big drawing-room is all of satin,
_embroidered_ with huge flowers and life-size peacocks and other birds.
One can only think of the cost of it, and deplore that it was not put
as hangings where one could admire the work.
I had to go by tram to-day, as the bicycle is in hospital, and noticed
such a quaint sign over a shop. Most of the very funny ones have been
gradually weeded out by thoughtless people informing the owners of
their eccentricity, so that the streets are not nearly so entertaining
as they were years ago.
This I saw, however:--
“Au Klnds wool are sell in her.”
I also noticed “Fruit’s Shops.”
How lazy a bicycle makes one, it feels a serious imposition to have to
walk 2 miles of city road, though the Tokio streets do not seem to get
any less entertaining because I am accustomed to them.
=July 7.=--We had a fine afternoon, so I did a little tidying up in
my garden. During these many days of heavy rain the leaves have grown
luxuriantly, but the flowers have quite ceased to come out in a world
where they are only drenched with unkind torrents instead of being
kissed by the warm sun they will get if they wait a few weeks longer.
My four little lawns, altogether no bigger than a billiard table, are
now like a jungle, and I planted them so few weeks ago. It is very
pretty to watch the little side paths, where the moss and lichens and
liverworts seem to grow every day; the small paths where O Fuji-san (my
maid) does not walk are now quite green--more aged-looking than paths
a hundred years old with us. The little stone lantern I bought the day
of the paeony flowers, is also green, with a faint haze of centuries
over it! It is the lovely greenness of Tokio that marks it out from
every city I have seen before. To-day, bicycling along the road above
the moat, I could well have believed myself far in the country, with
the high green grass on the steep banks of the moat and the grey-green
pines growing above and shading it. The green and the grey and the blue
that lies in and over this city, blue in the sky and blue in the gowns
of every one; grey on the tree trunks, the moats, and the houses; green
everywhere there is foot-hold for a moss plant, are a harmony that
thrills one’s very soul.
=July 9.=--Work till 5.30, and then dinner at 6, with Professor
_S----_. This was arranged to suit Professor B----, from New Zealand,
who goes to bed at 8.30 or so. Professor _O----_, the seismologist,
and Professor _T----_, the anthropologist, were also there. It was, of
course, a “foreign style” dinner, and was done with great magnificence.
Professor B---- talked with almost no comments from any one, but the
conversation was never dull.
Professor _S----’s_ garden was more of a dream than ever,--lit with
stone lanterns and with a few red roses among the green, the moon being
in a watery mist, and we turned the light down, and listened to the
bell-like tones of a little “Bell insect,” hanging in a 2-inch cage in
the garden. The note was slightly muffled, but musical, penetrating,
and sad--one of those notes that act as an “Open Sesame” to the gate of
emotions--that is, I should say, to some people’s emotions. Professor
B---- had the insect under a “scientific scrutiny” for a whole minute,
and then produced his note-book, and the light was turned up while he
wrote down his observation that the noise is made by the rubbing of the
wings where they slightly overlap.
=July 10.=--The last day’s lunch at the Goten, and a lot of work of
one sort and another got out of hand. Collecting plant-material, etc.,
takes more time than one would think. The fossil lab.-boy is ill again,
and fossils are hanging fire a little, for I can’t do more than three
things at once.
=July 12.=--Writing all morning; the weather is glorious, and the rainy
season seems to be pretty well over, and has been a record one. The
rain came at the right time, lasted the right length of time, and was
cool instead of “steamy hot,” as it often is--we cannot be too thankful
for these mercies. Even as it is, the inside of my writing case and the
whole of my shoes and straps are covered with blue mould.
I paid several calls in the afternoon--my neighbours are off to the
mountains first thing to-morrow morning--lucky people! How I wish I
could feel free to do the same, instead of grinding over these old
fossils. Soon Tokio will be empty of all the sane people who inhabit it
in the winter.
As I am writing I hear the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” set to Japanese
and sung lustily. It is one of the favourite foreign tunes among the
Japanese, and many sing it without knowing it isn’t Japanese, I believe.
=July 13.=--I was in the garden with Professor _F----_ for the first
time this year. We were getting some gymnosperm material, and found a
brilliant green frog sitting in the sunshine on a brilliant green leaf.
He told me he would be brown on a barky branch, so I picked the frog up
and put him on the curve of a broad brown branch, and, sure enough, the
webs of his feet went quite brown in a minute, and his back went a much
darker, duller green, but we couldn’t wait to see him all turn brown,
it took too long.