of thought as much as possible. Fuji mountain, alas, I cannot see, as
the rain clouds cloak her, but on the horizon lies, dimly, Oshima, the
burning island, and round the points of the rocky shore are countless
islets crowned with a twisted pine or girt with white-fringed waves.
From the hills one looks down on a long series of bays with brilliant
blue horizon and solid white line at the shore--the Japanese artists
are much truer to nature than we think.
=September 9.=--I went early to the Institute, where there is grand
excitement over _Ginkgo_; the sperms are just swimming out, and they
only do it for a day or two each year. It is no such easy business to
catch them, in 100 seeds you can only get five with sperms at the best
of times, and may get one and be thankful. I spent pretty well the
whole day over them, and got three, and several in the pollen tube, not
yet quite ripe. It is most entertaining to watch them swimming, their
spiral of cilia wave energetically.
=September 10 and 11.=--Hunting _Ginkgo_ sperms nearly all the time;
but about 3 on Friday I began to feel so queer and feverish that I went
home and took my temperature; it was 103°, so I went to bed.
=September 12.=--Still so feverish and queer feeling that I stopped in
bed, though the temperature is down a little; but this is usually the
case with fever, and I have been almost delirious in the night with the
most absurd ideas.
All this long quiet day I lay and enjoyed the beauty of my room. I
had the quilts which make a Japanese bed laid in the drawing-room, as
several people came to see me, and for my own pleasure; it is nicer
in the room with one’s favourite vase and kakemono. How funny this
mixture of bedroom and drawing-room will sound in England! But there
is nothing “bedroomy” in a Japanese house.
People who have seen my rooms may wonder where the beauty was that
could keep me occupied a whole day in its contemplation, because
most people seem to judge rooms by the _number_ of beautiful things
massed into them, and to think that twenty beautiful vases massed
together on a stand counteract the clashing effects of three discordant
antimacassars (this word is so old-fashioned, I never learnt how to
spell it!)
As I lay I faced a wall of pale, warm, creamy distemper, with a band
of cream unpainted wood about two feet from the unpainted beams of
the ceiling, which show so beautifully their graining and the curving
designs of their natural growth. In one side of the wall is a window,
with wooden bars crossing and re-crossing till it looks like a
diamond-paned window, only the glass is replaced by semi-transparent
paper. This is taken down though, and I look out on to the smooth grey
bark of a tree whose leaves are like the shining laurel leaves in a
Burne-Jones design, and interlaid against the vivid blue of the sky.
The window-ledge is inside the room (not outside in our mad Western
way), and on it stands a low grey-green dish in which is growing a
graceful spraying plant beside a gnarled grey stone that looks like
a piece of a forest rock. Beside the window are short grey-green
curtains, edged with a broad band of Chinese embroidery in which blue,
pink, and coral run riot with half the other colours on the palette
of a Watts. The other half of the wall is occupied with a bamboo
settee, covered with the same cloth as the curtains, above which is a
square of Japanese embroidery--a great golden flower (a richer tone
of the colour of the walls) on a grey-green ground, with butterflies
hovering over it--framed in dark brocade with a thread of gold. Above
the band of wood is a picture, yellow, brown, and grey, a river scene
at dusk. At right angles to this wall I can see the Tokonoma recess--a
yard deep and two yards long and nearly as high as the room. It is
dark brown, with one long kakemono--a grey-brown bird on a withered,
gnarled branch, the work of an old and valued Chinese artist (lent me
by Professor _S----_); below it to one side a stand of ebony, with a
brilliant blue cloisonné vase round the slender stem of which curls a
fiery dragon, and its colour is living and gleams against the brown.
Then on the other side grows a little bent and twisted tree, in a flat
earthenware bowl, and in the corner stands my sword. The left side of
the house as I lie is open to the garden; there is no wall, and I look
out over my own little green plot, with its Thuya trees and glowing
“morning glories,” to the tree tops of the land around. In the verandah
hangs a square black lamp which I had lit as the swift night fell,
and from whose opaque white sides shines a light so soft that it does
not frighten the moon or the fire-flies. Then the floor of my room is
covered with _tatami_--straw mats closely fitted and edged with black,
and the sliding walls of the cupboard recesses that make the room solid
are also straw-coloured, with a narrow border of black. The wooden
fretwork of the _soji_ supports the white paper through which light
shines so radiantly and softly; then there are a few straw-coloured
chairs, a dark wood table and grey-green cushions--and that is all.
=September 14.=--As my temperature rose to 104° last night I felt I
ought to have a doctor--the first doctor I have called in in my whole
life! I felt it a serious and terrible event. But I am not seriously
ill, an internal chill (probably the cold bathing at Hayama, one gets
chills here so easily) and a temperature which runs up very soon in
this country. He is taking the temperature down with drugs. I told him
I _must_ go to the Institute to-morrow, but he laughs.
=September 22–24.=--Quiet uneventful days at the Institute, working at
fossils hard. What a lot of results you will expect! But to get one
line of result often means days of labour over petty detail that does
not show.
=September 26.=--At work all day till I went to the meeting of the
Botanical Society where Professor _M----_ spoke of his visit to China
during the vacation, but I couldn’t understand very much.
=September 28.=--At the Institute all day, at night how it rained! Like
a typhoon rain, only lasting all night at high pitch; I couldn’t sleep
for it.
=September 29.=--The results of that rain! It was fair in the morning
so I bicycled, thinking that as the rain was so heavy it would have
cleaned the roads. And so it had, cleaned them just as long boiling
cleans the bones of a chicken, and there was only left the stony
skeleton of most of the roads; but in the high ground of Azabu, where
the roads are pretty well made, they were passably good.
But then I got to Koishikawa, and about a mile from the Institute the
entertainment began. Coming down a tram-line road I had been rather
astonished to see straw piled up all round the telegraph posts, and
several domestic articles such as pillows lying about the road, but
where the tram stops I saw the reason, this road, a big main high road,
was entirely under a rushing flood of water. I asked a policeman if
there was any way of getting to the Botanical Gardens without going
through it, but there was none.
I got a _kuruma_ man to take me and my cycle on a _kuruma_, and by
keeping in the central ridge of the road, he waded with me through
this mile of water. But what devastation on either side! Men walking
by their houses (placed a little lower than the road) up to their
shoulders in water, though it had subsided a good deal already, all
sorts of things floating about, and signs of ruin everywhere. The
underground channel they had made for the river burst through in one
place, and at the side of the road a regular roaring waterfall. As
we went along floating _tatami_ (heavy mats of straw, as much as one
can lift and about 6 feet long and 2–3 inches thick) rushed on the
_kuruma_, and my man had difficulty in getting round them, for he
couldn’t drop the shafts to free his hands for that would have landed
me in the water. We got there without mishap, but saw many tragi-comic
sights, for the loss and wreckage among the small one-storied shops is
terrible.
Coming back the water had subsided a little, but there was still much
to go through. It was funny to watch people wading through it; on the
shore on either side men balanced themselves on one leg on their high
stilt-like _geta_ (no easy feat I can assure you) and drew off their
trousers, but not always without a spill. Piles and piles of straw
mats, washed into pulp, were all over the place. When I returned home I
heard that in the low ground in my neighbourhood six children had been
drowned.
=September 30.=--In the papers one reads of many deaths and terrible
loss of property from the floods, which were almost universal in the
low ground of the city. There are regular hills of straw and wreckage
all along the main highway I passed yesterday in a _kuruma_ and the
smell is far from pleasing, but there is no other way into the gardens,
as the other roads are still under water.
In the evening we had a Debate, “That lies may be justifiable”; an
excellent meeting, nearly all of the people speaking, and very amusing.
One missionary got up and said she was most strongly in favour of lying
and that she told three or four every day! Shrieks of laughter, for she
spoke immediately after a very sweet missionary who spoke in favour of
truth. All the rest of us were about equally divided, and the truth
only won by three votes on more than thirty.
=October 4.=--Went to Ōmori and walked on to the temple on the hill
beyond. Its green groves and quietness were very peaceful and lovely.
It is almost woodland there, and there are few people. In the temple
grove was a scarlet high pagoda, which gleamed between the stately
trees. The spot is so peaceful and sweet and I was so tired of working
that the day was very pleasant. We collected moss, and some little
stones covered with it, and I had five _Cryptomeria_ seedlings to
make a forest, and with them I made a miniature landscape in a flat
earthenware dish when I returned home--but it isn’t half as easy as it
looks!
=October 5.=--At work on the fossils; at 2 o’clock I gave the first
of my course of lectures at the University, the room was more than
full, several standing all through the hour, and there were several
Professors and the Dean there. I didn’t do so badly as I feared, after
being so long out of practice, but the flying chalk made me hoarse.
It was a little terrifying, and half of them didn’t understand very
much owing to the language difficulty, but the others did. It is nice
lecturing again, it is an excellent tonic.
=October 12.=--At work at fossils in the morning--my lecture at 2. I
find as I have to speak so slowly to be clear, that there isn’t much
time in an hour. There is a sort of demonstration with microscopics
afterwards which helps.
It is now very cold at night and in the early morning, but still warm
enough to wear cotton frocks in the middle of the day. The clear moon
is wonderful.
=October 13.=--At work all day on fossils, cycled back in time to dress
for a dance, to which I cycled, as it was a lovely night. It was a very
jolly dance and not the least pleasure of the evening was cycling back
with Mr. G---- instead of jolting and freezing and catching cold in a
slow _kuruma_. Out of every 24 hours the cycle saves me one to two or
more in this slow Tokio, so that I shouldn’t grumble at it.
=October 16.=--At work all the morning, lunch with the Faculty at
the Goten, and then at work all the afternoon. The fossils proved so
enticing that though I had worn a traily frock all day intending to go
to the Belgian Legation garden party, when it came to the point the
fossils won, and I didn’t go. In the evening I cycled down to dinner at
our Embassy.
When once one makes up one’s mind to a cycle, one can even go out to
dinner on it. I wondered, however, what the footman thought when he had
to lift it into the Embassy hall in case of thieves getting it in the
garden (I was told he has a brother who is an attaché at the French
Embassy! The Japanese are very quaint that way--one Count or Baron
or other is driven up to the door every day by his own brother as a
coachman). Thanks to the unmoved countenance of flunkeydom, added to
the immobility of the Japanese, I could sail into the dining-room, past
the same man, trailing a pink silk skirt with apparent dignity.
=October 21.=--Fossils all day. I cycled round on my way home and paid
my dance calls. The streets, particularly in the neighbourhood of the
_Ginza_ and the station, are now very gay and crowded for the American
Fleet, of which a really enormous fuss is being made. There are arches,
and bands, and processions, and all manner of things all over the
place. Bands of school children go about with flags, and--for the first
time since I have been in Japan--I was insulted on my cycle by grown
men, not once, but six times in the course of half an hour! Not badly,
but in a coarse rude tone I was called out to, and one madman waved a
lantern suddenly in my face on the cycle and nearly upset me. I suppose
they are over-excited, for everywhere the echo rings with protestations
of undying devotion to the Americans, for one of whom I would naturally
be taken.
=October 22.=--A horribly wet morning, but by midday a lovely sun came
out, and it felt almost like midsummer. When I got to the Embassy
garden party (it was given to welcome Admiral Sperry) I found it had
been postponed in the morning, but as the weather was now so lovely, it
was put on again. That is to say, it was half on and would be repeated
to-morrow. So we had one of the bands, and quite a lot of the American
officers and other people turned up. The chief sight was seeing Admiral
Sperry and Admiral Togo sitting side by side looking on at a kind of
sword-dance. The dance itself was very dull, as all Japanese posture
dances are unless you understand them intimately, but there were
some sparks when the swords clashed, and one of the swords broke by
accident, which was entertaining. It was rather wonderful the way the
dancer to whom this happened kept his countenance, and put it in the
sheath at the appointed time as calmly as if it hadn’t been a mere
stump.
The American officers were a sad disillusionment. One fancies good
class Americans must be all like the soulful adoring youths at the feet
of the Gibson girls, but they aren’t--at least those officers aren’t.
In fact, though they would be mad to hear it, they were mostly not easy
to distinguish from Japanese when both stood with their caps down over
their eyes, as they always wear them, except that the Americans looked
the less smart owing to the untidy appearance of their small squash
caps. So many of them were short and insignificant. Admiral Sperry,
though not imposing or impressive in any way, seemed pleasant and keen,
and was tall.
=October 23.=--Lunch at the Goten, with quite a lot of foreign
visitors,--two Russians, a geologist and a botanist, and two Germans
interested in law or some such thing. I hear we are to have Sven Hedin,
which will be really interesting. I hope I shall see him.
=October 24.=--The Fleet left to-day, and the following was put in
the paper: “Gentlemen will not be allowed on the platform except in
frock-coats and silk hats; ladies in corresponding dress.”
The passion of the Japanese for the silk hat is intense, fervid, one
might almost say it has become a fetish. But _we_ have hitherto been
spared a corresponding dress!
Think of its parallel in England--no gentleman allowed into Euston
Station without a silk hat.
After working at fossils all morning (as you can imagine, I didn’t
go to the station) I went along to preside at a Debate at Baroness
d’A----’s. This Debate was on marriage. I had asked a very cultured
missionary lady, with silver hair, to take a literary debate. No, said
she, she was not interested in that, but if she might propose that “The
unmarried life is the happier, then she would take the Debate.” So we
had quite an amusing Debate, fortunately rather superficial.
The people here are not in touch with all our modern types, and I
did not need to speak against the ranting type, who rave against men
and marriage and prove themselves deformed. No, there were no such
“problem” people here, only young spinsters who didn’t dare to say
they would like to be married, and wives who didn’t dare or wish to
speak against marriage, and elderly spinsters who were clever enough
to be amusing without touching a fundamental note. The ranting type
seems mercifully to be confined to big communities; I suppose it is an
inevitable result of city life, where some must sterilise, but it is a
pity when they have the power to write books.
In the evening I had a few of the Japanese botanists to dinner, and
they seemed pretty well amused, or were sufficiently polite to pretend
to be so. Fortunately they are not accustomed to violent amusement,
nor have they the jaded palate of the European city dweller, so they
are less exacting, for which I am thankful, as it was the first
dinner-party I have given.
=October 25.=--In the afternoon I went to tea with Professor _F----_
and met Professor R---- from Russia, and others. We taught Professor
R---- to use chop-sticks, and we examined dwarf trees, of which
Professor _F----_ has some beautiful specimens. In a room in which
dwarf trees are displayed everything must be specially simple and
dignified. If the tree is not in the _tokonomo_, for instance, the
screen behind it must be white, pure white, not even flecked with
gold-dust. And when one sees it arranged rightly, one realises the true
rightness of it, and the beauty seems to stand out clearly, with the
outline of the tree against the background of white. I love more and
more the simple culture of the old style Japanese when in harmonious
surroundings. Though they have quite lovely and valuable dwarf trees
in Kew, they are lost in the greenhouse with all the other things; the
rays and suggestions from the other plants around them intermingle and
conflict, till they produce a grey haze of mist in which the spirit of
beauty envelops herself and is invisible; but if you place but one of
those trees in the right place, she steals out and is radiant before
you.
=October 28.=--A long quiet day of work. While we were at lunch an
envelope was brought to Professor _F----_ containing 75 sen, partly
in copper coins. It was a present from the Emperor! When I had done
laughing he explained to me the reason. It is soon the Emperor’s
birthday, and therefore all Government officials are expected to go
to the palace to pay their respects, when they would receive a cup of
_saké_ and some light food. But to go one must have a grand gold-laced
uniform, and many of the younger men don’t have it, also if every one
went there would be an impossible crush, so that only the seniors go.
The juniors now dispense with the formal letter stating that they are
ill, but continue to receive the price of a cup of _saké_ from the
Emperor! Though the sum may seem ridiculous, it is an interesting
survival, and as there are about ten thousand officials in the country,
it is no joke for the Emperor!
=October 30.=--An uneventful day lunch at the Goten. I had been invited
to go to the Peeresses School for their sports, as the Emperor was
to be there, and I wished to see the school and the Royalty watching
sports--but was prevented by the fossils.
=October 31.=--Frightfully cold and raining in torrents. I lit the lamp
in my room in the Institute to try to warm me a little, but with lots
of thick clothes as well, I shivered all day. In the evening I put on a
fur-lined coat over my gown, and even then was too cold to write. There
will be floods again if the rain continues so torrential.
=November 1.=--Gloriously sunny and clear. In a tussore silk frock
I sat all day writing in my garden. One need never despair during
rainy weather in Japan,--it doesn’t leave one in the clouds for long.
Fresh green peas were brought in the pods for my approval, which they
naturally got. There is a kind of second spring in November, and the
roses are blooming in beauty. In the evening I went up the mound near
me and looked down on the tree-covered country below, where curled
white mists between the black trunks. Straight opposite stood Fuji
mountain, with a coronet of golden clouds and a cloak of crimson, while
in the deep blue behind began to peep out tiny stars.
=November 3.=--A national holiday, so the laboratory was locked up, and
I couldn’t get work done there.
In the afternoon I went to a tea-party with friends. Coming home we did
a lot of shopping, and had quite a festive time, as there was a kind
of fair on and the streets were gay with lanterns and a bright crowd,
and the shops full of the most delightful trifles. This street near our
hostess is one of the best for shopping, as it is little frequented
by foreigners and is a well-known shopping place for the Japanese. We
went into both the _kankobas_ (a kind of open bazaar I have described
before), and I only wished for a bottomless purse. Nevertheless one
must not run away with the idea, so often suggested by tourists, that
_all_ the native Japanese things are artistic and beautiful. Many are,
but by far the greater number are not, and even when prepared to buy
I often have to wait long and examine many stalls before finding the
thing I want.
=November 4.=--Fossils all day. On the way home I called at the
American Embassy--had the good luck to find the O----s alone.
I often wish Mrs. O---- were not the Ambassadress, as she is so
charming and beautiful, I should like to know her intimately, but as it
is, of course she is always overrun with people.
=November 7.=--Work in the morning. In the afternoon I went to a garden
party at a Japanese Professor’s. He has a pretty garden, with houses
in it for the various scions of the family. He had a lottery and all
the guests had presents, some very pretty Japanese things. There were
a number of remarkably bright and attractive little Japanese girls in
brilliant kimonos, and some pretty maids a little older. At 4 we sat
down to a typical “first class party” tea--cold meats of a dozen kinds,
savoury jellies, hot soup, cakes, sweets, fruit, beer, ginger-beer
and tea (at the end) were served to every one. And yet if you ask a
Japanese about the old customs of the country he will assure you that
simplicity and frugality is the chief note in their entertainments,
and so it is and was in the pure Japanese style, but when they touch
anything “foreign” they must outdo the foreigners.
We were placed curiously at the tables, the Japanese ladies put
_indoors_, where the room opens wide on the garden, the foreign ladies
in the garden, and the gentlemen somewhere else in the garden, quite
out of sight of the ladies! And the men were perhaps quite happy that
way, for they could smoke in peace.
The weather is lovely, and one could not imagine it was really
November, but for the swiftly waning light. The roads riding home are
terribly dark, but fortunately fewer children play in them at night
than by day.
=November 8.=--I rode over to Shingawa to lunch with the D----s (he
is Naval Attaché). They haven’t been in the house long, but they had
brought out with them treasures given to their parents years ago, and
so have many gems of Japanese carving and porcelain. The house is
pretty within, and it was nice to meet some one who had recently come
from home.
Afterwards I rode over to Hongo--an awful way across the country and
city, to dinner with Professor _S----_, his wife and family. He had
his lovely dream of a garden lit by a brilliant full moon, and the
translucent stone lanterns among the trees. Roses grew on the trees,
huge dainty ones, and sweet-scented rose-hearted buds. It was a vision
of perfect beauty to be remembered. Afterwards he and his brother, who
is an excellent singer, sang me some _Nō_ songs, and everything was so
harmonious, so lovely, so simply dignified.
=November 9.=--At work on fossils all day after my lecture, which was
the last. Professor _S----_ spoke and “made me blush,”--his English
is simply wonderful, I know few Englishmen who speak better,--the
substance of what he said for me was more than kind, though I must
deduct something from him, as from all Japanese, for, whatever faults
they may have, they really are polite to people they know.
=November 11.=--Fossils all day. In the evening the great event--my
farewell dinner from the University, given at the famous Maple Club. A
farewell dinner, and they all know quite well that I do not sail till
January! The reason it is given now is partly to thank me for the
lectures and partly because of the weather! As the entertainment is to
be true Japanese style, in a Japanese house, it is deemed necessary to
have it before it becomes really cold.