Probably they are. My own observation as a traveller on their ships
convinces me that they are efficient on the sea, and this opinion is
supported by what American naval officers have told me of their navy and
their naval men. I visited a huge cotton mill near Tokyo which was
clearly a first-class institution of the kind; also I was much struck,
in going through a penitentiary, by the evidences of their understanding
of modern and enlightened practice in the conduct of penal
establishments; and I might go on with a list of other institutions
which impressed me favourably.
But that is not the side I wish here to bring out. On the contrary, I
wish to call attention to the fact that the high degree of efficiency
shown by the Japanese in certain instances serves but to emphasize their
widespread inefficiency in others.
In an earlier chapter I spoke of the fact that in Japan one sees three
men instead of two in the cab of a locomotive, that hand-carts are used
for watering city streets, and that more servants are required there
than here in a house of given size. These are but minor items in the
wholesale waste of labour. It is as if Japan said to herself: "I have
all these people to look after and I must put as many of them as
possible on every job." And that, in my judgment, is not the way Japan
should look at it. Instead of putting on every job more people than are
actually needed, she should endeavour to develop her industries to such
a point that there will be a full, honest day's work for everyone. For,
of course, her labour wastage keeps up her manufacturing and operating
costs.
An example of the way time is wasted may be seen wherever railroad gangs
are at work. They swing their picks to the accompaniment of a song, and
the rhythm is taken from the slowest man. Wastage is also exhibited in
the way a house is built. They build the framework of the roof upon the
ground. Then they take it apart. Then they go up and put it together all
over again, in place. A whole house is constructed in this way. The
parts are not fashioned on the premises as the building goes up, but are
made elsewhere and brought to the actual scene of building to be fitted
together. The tiles are fastened to the roof with mud, but instead of
carrying this mud up in bulk they toss it up from hand to hand, six men
forming a chain for the purpose.
Or again, to cite a very simple example of domestic inefficiency,
consider their method of washing a kimono. Instead of laundering the
garment all at once, they rip it apart, wash the pieces separately, dry
them on a board, and sew them together again.
In factory management also one sometimes finds the most surprising
inefficiency. I know of a great manufacturing plant in Japan which, if
you were to go through it, you would call thoroughly modern. The
buildings are modern, the machinery is modern. But there is one thing
missing, and it is a vital thing. The plant stands a good half mile from
the railway line; coal and raw materials are transported from car to
factory in carts, or in baskets carried on the backs of coolies, and the
finished product is removed in like manner.
Though the cost of labour in Japan was trebled after the war, wages are
still low as compared with other countries. But this fact, which should
be taken advantage of in the struggle for world trade, is too often used
only as an excuse for such waste of labour as I have pointed out. And it
is because of this and similar inefficiencies that the Japanese now find
themselves unable to compete in costs, in certain lines, with other
nations, even though the labour of those other nations is much better
paid.
Among the things most criticized by visitors are the bad roads, both in
the country and in the cities; the hotels, which except in a few places
are poor (I am speaking only of the foreign-style hotels); and the
miserable conditions of what the _Japan Advertiser_ humorously refers to
as "public futilities."
Tokyo, with a transportation problem which ought easily to be solved,
has utterly inadequate street-car service. The rush hour there is only
saved from being as terrible as the rush hour in New York by the lack of
subterranean features.
But it is in all matters having to do with communications that Japanese
inefficiency is most strikingly brought to the notice of strangers. The
postal service is poor, the cable service is expensive and absurdly slow
(when I was in Japan it took about ten days to cable to America and get
an answer back), and the telephone service is unbelievably awful. All
these, like the railroads, are owned and operated by the Government.
I began to suspect their telephones when I saw the old full-bosomed wall
instruments they use, with bell-cranks to be rung; but little did I then
guess the full measure of their telephonic backwardness.
It is like opera bouffe. Though the demand for new telephones far
exceeds the supply, the Government makes no appreciable effort to remedy
the situation. Every year an absurdly small number of lines is added to
the existing system. These are assigned by lot among those who have
applied for them. Thus, if a man be lucky in the draw, he may get a
telephone within two or three years. But I know one gentleman in Tokyo
who was not lucky in the draw. At the ripe age of sixty-seven he applied
to the Government for an additional office telephone. The instrument was
installed shortly after he had celebrated his eightieth birthday. Long
may he live to use it!
If one be in a hurry to have a telephone put in, one does not apply to
the authorities, but attacks the problem in a manner more direct--either
through a telephone broker or through advertising. Thus one can get in
contact with a person wishing to sell an installation and a number. The
number must, however, be in the exchange serving the district in which
the telephone is to be placed.
Though this is a very expensive method, it is the one usually employed
in Tokyo and other large cities. A telephone for the business district
of the capital may cost as much as twelve hundred dollars, but in a
residential district it will be considerably cheaper--five hundred
dollars or less.
A curious detail of this business is that low numbers bring the highest
price in the open market. This, I was informed, is because green
operators, in process of being broken-in, sit at that end of the central
switchboard at which the high numbers invariably occur, thus
guaranteeing the owners of high numbers a grade of service calculated to
drive them to the madhouse.
It must not be imagined that the Japanese are content with their
telephone service. They are not. For some time prior to my arrival in
Japan the press had been demanding a reform, and at last it was
announced that action was about to be taken to improve matters.
But all that happened was this: Instead of increasing the service, the
government functionaries started a campaign to discourage the use of
telephones. Up to that time, unlimited service had been given. Now,
however, a flat charge of two sen (about one cent) per call was
announced, the theory being that many persons would think twice before
spending two sen on an idle telephonic conversation.
After watching the new plan in operation for a few days the telephone
authorities jubilantly announced that it was a great success--the number
of calls had appreciably diminished. Apparently it never occurred to
them that the result of such a policy, carried to its logical
conclusion, would be to eliminate the telephone entirely.
With the Japanese cables the trouble has been largely due to congestion.
The use of two important lines was cut off by the war, and as service on
these lines has not up to the time of writing been resumed, owing to the
disorganization of Russia and Germany, a heavy strain has been placed
upon the transpacific cables. I am assured, however, that conditions
would not be so bad as they are if the Japanese were entirely efficient
in their handling of cable business, and my own experiences with cable
messages, while there, would seem to indicate that this is true.
Moreover, at the time when cable congestion was at its worst, the
Japanese refused to operate their transpacific wireless for more than
seven hours a day; and even then they would take business only for San
Francisco and vicinity, for the reason, it was explained, that they did
not wish to be bothered with the details of figuring the rates to
various parts of the United States. Lately they have increased their
service to cover the states of California, Oregon and Washington; but
that, at the time of writing, is as far as they have consented to extend
it.
CHAPTER XX
_The Average American and International Affairs--The Vagueness
of the Orient--A Definition by Former Ambassador Morris--"They
say"--The "Yellow Peril"--International Insults--Physiognomy--
What the Japanese Should Learn About Us--Our Race Problems--
Racial Integrity--Assimilation--Californian Methods--The Two
Sound Arguments Against Oriental Immigration_
If public opinion is fed with distorted facts, unworthy
suspicions, or alarming rumours; if every careless utterance by
thoughtless and insignificant men is to be given prominence in
print; if every casual difference of view is to be magnified
into a crisis, sober judgment and deliberate action become
impossible.--JOHN W. DAVIS, _former Ambassador to the Court of
St. James's_.
Concerned with making a living, the Average American has as a rule
neither the time nor the inclination to study international affairs. He
expects his government to see to such things for him. He has no interest
in what his government is doing with regard to other nations unless his
personal feelings are in some way involved. Thus if he be a
German-American he may take cognizance of our relations with Germany; or
if he be a Russian-American he may desire that we recognize the
so-called government of Lenine and Trotzky; or again, if he be an
Irish-American he may wish the President of the United States to go
personally to London and knock the British premier's hat off. But if he
be simply an average unhyphenated American the chances are that he is
disgusted with the clatter of the hyphenates and bored with the whole
business of foreign relations and race problems. His main interest in
governmental affairs at the present time has nothing to do with foreign
relations but comes much closer to home. He is tired of paying heavy
taxes, tired of paying exorbitantly for the necessities of life. He
wants his government to remedy those two things. Then, because he is
sick of hyphenated citizens and internal race problems, he wants
immigration stopped.
The Orient is all vague to him. If he does not live on the Pacific Coast
or in some large city where Japanese have settled, he may never have
laid eyes upon a Japanese. Or if he has seen Japanese over here he may
have seen them in the farming districts of the Pacific slope. Whether he
has seen them or not, he has gathered some impression of them through
newspaper accounts of the trouble there has been about them in
California. He understands that their customs, religion, and food are
unlike his--which may be taken as implying a certain lack of merit in
them. He understands that Japanese women and children work in the
fields. His own women and children do not work in the fields, but wear
silk stockings, chew gum, and go to the movies--all of which, of course,
counts against the Japanese, since to work in the fields is in these
times almost un-American. And of course it is still more un-American to
do what the Japanese labourers did in California until the patriotic
Californians stopped them; namely to save money and buy farms.
Then there is this business about "picture-brides"--my Average American
may have heard vaguely about that, though probably he does not know that
the Japanese Government, in deference to our wishes, no longer allows
picture-brides to come here. He would not think of such a thing as
picking out a wife by photograph. None of his friends would do it,
either.
It may be well here to state the actual nature of the issue in
California. This can be done briefly in no better way than by quoting an
editorial published not long since in the New York _World_, a newspaper
remarkable for the intelligence with which it has generally treated the
Japanese question.
The _World_'s editorial was published apropos an address made by Mr.
Roland S. Morris, who served under the Wilson Administration as
ambassador to Tokyo, and whose admirable work in Tokyo might have borne
good fruit but for our unfortunate habit of relieving ambassadors,
however able, when the political party to which they belong goes out of
power.
Said the _World_:
In his address at the University Club on the Japanese issue in
California, Roland S. Morris, American Ambassador to Tokyo,
refrained from discussing the merits of the case and merely
defined the question in accordance with the facts. It is only in
the light of the facts that a sound decision can be reached
where argument and judgment run along the line of fixed
prejudices.
As Mr. Morris explained, Japan does not question the right of
the United States, subject to its treaty obligations, to
legislate on the admission of foreigners. While under the treaty
of 1911 Japanese were granted full rights of residence and
admission, the Tokyo Government accepted the condition that it
would continue limiting emigration from Japan to the United
States in compliance with the "Gentleman's Agreement" of
1908.[4]
[4] The "limiting" here referred to includes the stoppage of
labour emigration, not by us, but by the Japanese
Government, which took this amiable and dignified means of
avoiding a direct issue of the subject of racial equality.
The Japanese Government and people are not seeking the removal
of restrictions on immigration. The Japanese are not eligible to
American citizenship, but they have enjoyed in this country the
same personal and property rights as other aliens. It is here
that the friction has been created by the action of California.
In 1913 California deprived those aliens who were ineligible to
citizenship of certain property rights. In 1920, in Mr. Morris's
words, "this legislation was amplified by an initiative and
referendum act." What he does not state is that this measure was
intended to discriminate against the Japanese in buying and
leasing land.
Hence the protests of the Government at Tokyo. The Japanese
object to what they regard as the injustice of being set apart
as a separate class, suffering political disabilities and
deprived of rights other aliens enjoy.
Mr. Morris leaves the issue open when he says: "The Japanese
protest presents to all our people this very definite question:
In the larger view of our relations with the Orient, is it wise
thus to classify aliens on the basis of their eligibility to
citizenship?"
In pursuance of its local ends, California has adopted a
provocative position and played into the hands of Japanese
jingoes and militarists.
Lamentably, these simple facts have been cast adrift upon a stormy sea
of Californian prejudice. That sea, I fear, so fills the eye of the
Average American that oftentimes he fails entirely to descry the
shipwrecked waifs of Truth out there upon their little raft. Were he to
attempt to state his views upon the California question he would in all
probability quote as the source of his information that favourite
authority, "They say."
"They say Japanese immigrants are flooding into California and buying up
the farming land; they say the Japanese have large families; they say
they don't make desirable neighbours; they say that if things keep on
this way they will ultimately control the state. Certainly we don't want
any part of our country dominated by foreigners." The less familiar he
is with certain Californian traits the more he is likely to conclude: "I
guess it must be true or the Californians wouldn't be making such a row
about it."
His tendency to reason thus may be enhanced by the recollection of a
phrase he has heard: the "Yellow Peril"--one of the most poisonous
phrases ever coined. He does not know that the term was Made in Germany
for the very purpose of exciting international suspicion and ill-will.
He may not be alive to our real Yellow Peril--that of the yellow
press--but may, upon the contrary, actually acquire his views on
international affairs from such inflammatory sheets as those published
by William Randolph Hearst, himself a son of California and a leader in
the anti-Japanese chorus.
My Average American knows little of Californian politics, and nothing of
politics in Japan. He does not realize that Californian politicians are
largely responsible for the stirring up of anti-Japanese sentiment,
precisely as earlier politicians of the state were responsible for
anti-Chinese sentiment, and that in both cases vote-getting was a chief
motive. It is sometimes very convenient for a demagogue to have a
voteless alien race at hand to bully.
My Average American is probably unaware that more than two hundred
thousand Californian voters cast their ballots against the
discriminatory laws passed in November, 1920, even though the press of
California was generally closed to spokesmen representing sentiment
opposed to undue harshness toward the Japanese. Still less is he likely
to be aware that politicians in Japan know all the tricks familiar to
their Californian counterparts; that they, too, know how to gather votes
by stirring up race feeling. So, when he sees in his newspaper-headlines
that a Japanese whose name he has never before heard, but who, the paper
says, is high in politics, has been talking of war with the United
States, he begins to wonder whether those people over there are not,
perhaps, looking for trouble. And when he reads of Japan's great naval
building programme the notion becomes a little more concrete in his
mind.
Of course he does not understand that, meanwhile, in Japan there has
been going on a process precisely similar: that hostile and insulting
things said by American politicians are cabled to Japan and published
there, where they carry undue weight; and that while we are reading of
Japan's naval programme and wondering what it signifies, Japan is
reading of ours, and likewise wondering.
That any one could suspect the United States of aggressive purpose is
inconceivable to my Average American. Though the United States has
lately shown that she can fight, she has also shown she is loath to do
it. The Average American has no feeling of hostility toward Japan, and
the idea of war with Japan seems to him absurd to the point of being
fantastic. There is, as he conceives it, but one way in which such a war
could be started, and that is by Japanese aggression.
Assure him that the exact reverse of this view represents Japanese
sentiment and you will stupefy him. "You must be wrong about that," he
will tell you. "The Japanese must know that we hate war and that we have
no more desire to fight them than to select our wives out of a
photograph album." And he may add something about Japanese
"inscrutability."
That is another point:
When my Average American meets a stranger of his own race, or of almost
any European nationality, he can form, from the stranger's physiognomy,
some estimate of his character. It is a type of face he understands. But
the Oriented physiognomy baffles him. He cannot read it. To him it is as
a book in an unknown tongue--a very symbol for mystery.
That it may be equally difficult for the Japanese to judge of us would
not occur to him. Our faces are--well, they are regular _faces_; there
is nothing queer about them. _We_ aren't queer in any way. It is other
people who are queer.
* * * * *
If certain simple facts about Japan were understood in the United
States, and certain simple facts about the United States were understood
in Japan, it might not follow that the two nations would thereafter
cordially approve of all each other's policies and acts, but it ought
certainly to follow that they could view such policies and acts with
eyes more tolerant.
You and I, for instance, might not approve the aggressive methods of
some canvasser we had encountered, but if we knew that his wife and
family were crowded into a single room wondering where to-morrow's
breakfast would come from, we could forgive the man a good deal.
Similarly, if he were to see you or me bulldozing a helpless guest in
our own house, his disapproval of our action might be mitigated if he
understood that the entire neighbourhood had fallen into the habit of
using our house as a common camping ground for undesirable members of
their families, and that we had been goaded by these unwelcome visitors
into a state of desperation.
What are the essential things for the Japanese to learn about us?
They must get a better understanding of our various race problems. They
must realize that, important as the problem involving their settlers on
the Pacific Coast appears to them, it is to us a minor problem--being
one of the least of a number of race-problems with which we are
confronted.
They must know that our population is derived from all the countries of
Europe. And they must be made aware that though we have in the past
viewed this situation with fatuous complacency, we no longer do so. Our
old beautiful theory that the United States was properly a refuge for
the oppressed of all other lands has lost a wheel and gone into the
ditch. Some of us have even begun to suspect that the oppressed of other
lands were in certain instances oppressed for what may have been good
and sufficient cause. We have found that some of these individuals, on
arriving in the United States, become so exhilarated by our free air
that from oppressed they turn into oppressors who would fain take our
government out of our hands and run it in the interest of the Kaiser,
the Soviets, or of Mr. De Valera's interesting Republic.
With these and other hyphenated racial problems we are continually
contending. We no sooner meet one than another arises. Now we must needs
create an Alien Property Custodian to take a hand. Now we deport a band
of the more violent Bolsheviks. Now we summon glaziers to put new
windows in the Union Club in New York, where the British flag (flying in
commemoration of the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, three hundred years
ago) was hailed with bricks by members of a congregation emerging from
St. Patrick's Cathedral, across the way.
We used to speak with loving confidence of something called the "Melting
Pot," which was supposed to make newly arrived immigrants into good
American citizens. Sometimes it did so, but we have lately learned that
its by-product consisted too often of bricks and bombs.
We do not boast about the Melting Pot any more. Having overloaded it and
found it could not do the work we put upon it, we want time in which to
catch up with back orders, as it were. Meanwhile no new ones must be
taken.
But while the problems growing out of European immigration have of
recent years troubled us most, they do not constitute our greatest race
problem. Always in the background of our consciousness, like a volcano
quiescent but very much alive, looms our gigantic negro problem--the
problem which for the sins of our slave-importing and slave-holding
forefathers we inherit, and from which, according to our characteristic
way of "meeting" great quiescent problems, we are always endeavouring to
hide. For it is not our way to advance upon a bull and take him by the
horns. If a bull seeks to be taken by the horns he must do the
advancing. We Americans all know this about ourselves, but it is our way
to excuse the failing by boasting of the tussle we will give the bull if
he ever gets us in a corner.
There is no need here even to outline the tragedies of the negro
problem, but there is one aspect of the matter which should be spoken
of. Experience has shown that whereas immigrants from Europe can
ultimately be absorbed into what we may term the American race, the
negro, wearing the badge of his race in the pigment of his skin, is not
to be absorbed. Even the octoroon is clearly distinguishable from the
white. The negro race must, so far as the future can be read, remain a
race apart.
The case of the Indian affords another example of the failure of two
races, separated by colour and other physical markings, to fuse. In the
early days of this country's settlement, when the Indians strongly
predominated, they did not absorb the then few whites. When the time
came that there was an equal number of Indians and whites, still they
did not fuse. And now, when but a handful remains of the once mighty
Indian nations, that remnant still retains its racial integrity.
Here, however, is involved no question of racial inferiority. Whites and
Indians have to some small extent intermarried, and when both parties
represent the best of their respective races, not only is there no sense
of degradation to either, but the white descendants of such alliances
are often proud of their Indian blood.
In this whole matter of the fusibility of races there is, then, no basic
principle of inferiority or superiority. Such questions are here as
extraneous as in the case of oil and water, which though they will not
mix are not therefore designated as a superior and an inferior fluid.
The fact is that some inner consciousness tells us that the
characteristic physical markings of the chief races of the world were
not given them for nothing; that Nature intended the broad lines of race
to be maintained; and we are told that crosses which disregard these
natural race divisions are usually penalized by deterioration.
To find in this truth the faintest implication of insult would be
absurd. It would be as ridiculous to resent the statement that "like
seeks like," as to resent the statement that "honesty is the best
policy."
No people insists more firmly than the Japanese upon racial integrity.
The most fanatical English horseman could hardly be more finicky about
the maintenance of pure thoroughbred stock. Marriages between native
Japanese and foreigners are not encouraged and seldom occur. Among the
upper classes they almost never occur. A citizen of Japan cannot enter
into a legal marriage with a Korean or a Formosan, although Korea and
Formosa are Japanese colonies. (I am informed that steps were taken in
1918 to make such marriages legal, but up to the time of writing this
has not been accomplished.)
The law regulating the acts of the Japanese Imperial Family does not
permit the marriage of members of that family with persons other than
those of Japanese Imperial or noble stock. This law had to be amended in
order to make possible the marriage, several years ago, of a Japanese
Imperial princess, the daughter of Prince Nashimoto, with the heir to
the Korean Royal Family--which family, by the way, now ranks as a sort
of Japanese nobility. The marriage, it may be added, was unpopular with
the Japanese masses, because of their strong feeling that Japanese
blood, and especially Japanese Imperial blood, should not be diluted.
Had the prince been a European it is not improbable that a louder
protest would have been heard, for the Japanese does not, as a rule,
look with favour upon Eurasians. There are exceptions, but in the main
the man or woman of mixed Oriental and Occidental blood lives socially
upon an international boundary line, on neither side of which is
exuberant cordiality displayed.
The intelligent and patriotic sentiment of the United States is at
present overwhelmingly in favour of the stoppage of all immigration; and
even if there comes a time when it is felt that the floodgates may again
be opened, they will not, if wisdom prevails, be opened wide, but will
admit only such aliens as are susceptible to assimilation.
What does assimilation mean?
It means that the immigrant shall lose his racial identity in ours. It
means that he shall be susceptible to absorption into the body of our
race through marriage, or at the very least that his children shall be
susceptible to such absorption. And this in turn means, among other
things, that he shall have no ineradicable physical characteristics
which strongly differentiate him from our national physical type.
This is one chief reason why, in my opinion, Orientals should never
settle in the United States. Broadly speaking, they are no more suited
to become citizens of the United States than are we to become citizens
of Japan or China.
Another chief reason why Japanese labour immigration is not acceptable
to us is that the Japanese can live on less than we can. They are
willing to work longer hours for less pay. Also they are thrifty. These
are virtues; but the fact that they are virtues does not make Japanese
competition the more welcome to white labour.
This point also should readily be appreciated by the people of Japan,
who find it generally necessary to exclude Chinese labour on precisely
the same ground--that is, because a Chinaman can live on less than a
Japanese, and can consequently work for lower wages.
Had California, in her desire to prevent the further acquirement of land
by Japanese settlers, rested her case on these two clean-cut issues:
namely, unassimilability and economic necessity; had she refrained from
vituperation, taking up the matter purely on its merits; had she
recognized her duty as a state to the Nation and coöperated with the
Washington Government, instead of ignoring the international bearing of
the question and embarrassing the Government by radical and independent
state action; and had she, above all, shown any disposition to deal as
justly with the Japanese as the circumstances would permit; then,
without a doubt, the entire Nation would have been behind California.
And what is perhaps as important, the whole matter could then have been
presented to Japan in a reasonable and temperate manner, without
offence, yet with arguments the force of which Japan could hardly
escape.
But it is not apparently in the nature of the average Californian to go
at things in a moderate way. Moderation is not one of his traits. His
father, or grandfather, was a sturdy pioneer whose habit it was to
express resentment with a bowie-knife and answer antagonism with a Colt
.45. In the descendant these family traits are modified but not
extinguished. If he does not approve of the manner in which an amiable
alien wears his eyebrows he is likely to call him something--without a
smile.
Antagonism? Why should he mind antagonism? He likes it. He feels the
need of it. He must have something to combat--something to neutralize
the everlasting sunshine and the cloying sweetness of the orange-blossom
and the rose.
And alas, there is Senator Hiram Johnson, of whom the New York _Times_
recently remarked that, "he would lose his proprietary political issue
if the differences with Japan were peacefully composed. And we know,"
the _Times_ continued, "that it is better to meet a bear robbed of her
whelps than a politician deprived of his issue." And again, alas, there
is ex-Senator Phelan--though the ex-, which has recently been added to
his title, may tend, to some extent, to moderate his effectiveness as a
baiter of the Japanese. And thrice alas, there is Mr. V. S. McClatchy,
the Sacramento apiarist, whose "Bee" is trained to sting the Japanese
wherever it will hurt most.
* * * * *
That the difficulties between the two countries must be harmonized, all
thoughtful citizens of both will agree. For myself, I do not see how
this can be fully accomplished without some modification of the present
discriminatory alien land law of California--a law which, aimed at one
alien group alone, is not in consonance with the American sense of
justice.
The Japanese labourers who are already legally here--many of them
originally brought here, by the way, at the instance of Californian
employers--should be treated with absolute fairness. They should not be
deprived of the just rewards of their industry and thrift. Their racial
virtues should be appreciated and might well be emulated.
It should be clear, however, that for our good and the good of the
Japanese, no further immigrants of their labouring class should ever
enter the United States. And it should be equally clear that in such a
statement there is no cause for offence.
The United States does not invariably act wisely. Neither does Japan.
But the American heart is in the right place, and so is the Japanese
heart.
Let us try, then, on both sides, to look at these problems with honest
and disinterested eyes. Let us try to get each other's point of view.
Let us even go so far as to make due allowance for the frailty of human
nature, as exhibited on both sides of the Pacific.
But let us have no thought of straining good will by attempting to
become on any larger scale inmates of the same house, dwellers under the
same national roof.
CHAPTER XXI
_Some Reflections on New York Hospitality--And on the Hospitality of
Japan--Letters of Introduction--Bowing--How Japanese Politeness is
Sometimes Misunderstood--Entertaining Foreigners--Showing the Country at
its Best--What is the Mysterious "Truth" About Japan?--Japanese _versus_
Chinese--Leadership in the Far East--Will Japan Become a Moral
Leader?--A "First-Class Power"--The New "Long Pants"--How to Treat
Japan--The Wisdom of Roosevelt and Root._
A vigorous and sustained display of hospitality must always be
astonishing to one who calls New York his home; for New York is without
doubt the most inhospitable city in the world. In the jaded hotel-clerk,
the bored box-office man, and the fish-eyed head waiter, the spirit of
its welcome is personified.
There is no dissimulation. The stranger is as welcome in New York as he
feels. If there be a hotel room, a theatre seat, or a restaurant table
disengaged, he may have it, at a price. If all are occupied he may, so
far as New York cares, step outside and, with due regard to the season
and the traffic regulations, die of sunstroke or perish in a
snowdrift--whereupon his case comes automatically under the supervision
of the Street-Cleaning Department--and whatever else that Department may
leave lying around the New York streets, it does not leave them littered
with defunct strangers. Space in our city is too valuable.
The visitor arriving in New York with a letter of introduction to some
gentleman who is important, or who believes he is, may expect a few
minutes' talk with the gentleman in his office, and may regard it as a
delicate attention if his host refrains from fidgeting.
Should the stranger have some information which the New Yorker desires
to possess, he may find himself invited out to lunch. They will lunch at
a club in the top of a down-town skyscraper. Or if the letter of
introduction has a social flavour, the outlander will presently receive
by mail, at his hotel, a guest's card to a club up-town.
Let him make bold to visit this club and he will find there no one to
speak to save a rigid doorman and some waiters. The doorman will tell
him coldly where to check his hat and coat. He will see a few members in
the club, but will not know them, nor will they desire to know him. All
New Yorkers know more people than they want to, anyway. The stranger
with a guest's card to a New York club is as comfortable there as a cat
in a cathedral.
In the West it is different.
And again it is different in Japan.
Those who go well introduced to Japan meet there an experience such as
is hardly to be encountered in any other land. Japanese courtesy and
hospitality are fairly stupefying to the average Anglo-Saxon. The
Occidental mind is staggered by the mere externals.
You see two Japanese meet--two gentlemen, two ladies, or a lady and a
gentleman. They face each other at fairly close range. Then, as though
at some signal unperceived by the foreigner, they bow deeply from the
waist, their heads passing with so small a space between that one half
expects them to bump. Three times in succession they bow in this way,
simultaneously, their hands slipping up and down their thighs, in front,
like pistons attached to the walking-beam of a side-wheeler.
In conjunction with this profound and protracted bowing, especially when
the bowers are Japanese of the old school, or are unaccustomed to
associate with foreigners, the bystander will oftentimes hear a sibilant
sound made by the drawing in of air through the lips. According to the
Japanese idea, such sounds denote appreciation as of some delicious
spiritual flavour. This ancient form of politeness is, however, being
discarded by sophisticated young Japan for the reason that foreigners
find it peculiar; and the practice of audibly sucking in food as an
expression of gustatory ecstasy is also going out of fashion for the
same reason. The old ways are, nevertheless, held to by many an
aristocrat of middle age, or older.
The American, accustomed to regard hissing as a sign of disapproval, and
noisy eating as ill-bred, is naturally startled on first encountering
these manifestations. Japanese bowing, when directed at him, he finds
disconcerting. He may wish to be as polite as the politest, but he has
in his repertory nothing adequate to offer in return for such an
obeisance.
In this country we have never taken to bowing as practised in some other
lands. Our men look askance at Latin males when they lift their hats to
one another in salutation, and it may be observed that some of us tend
to slight the lifting of the hat a little bit even when saluting ladies,
clutching furtively at the brim and perhaps loosening the hat upon the
head, then hastily jamming it back in place.
The fact is that very few American men have polished manners. We rebel
at anything resembling courtliness. It makes us feel "silly." The
dancing school bow we were compelled to practise in the days of our
otherwise happy youth was a nightmare to us, and now in our maturity we
have a sense of doing something utterly inane when, at a formal dinner
party, it devolves upon us to present an arm to a lady, as if to assure
her of protection through the perils of the voyage from drawing room to
table. We much prefer to amble helter-skelter to the dining room.
In these matters, then, as in so many others, we find ourselves at the
opposite pole from the Japanese; and though Americans of the class
willing to appreciate merits of kinds they themselves do not possess
feel nothing but admiration for Japanese courtesy in its perfection, it
sometimes happens, lamentably enough, that others, less intelligent,
going to the Orient, utterly misread the meaning of Japanese politeness,
mistaking it for servility, which it most emphatically is not. Far from
being servile it is a proud politeness--a politeness grounded upon
custom, sensitiveness of nature, delicacy of feeling, which cause the
possessor to expect in others a like sensitiveness and delicacy and to
make him wish to outdo them in tact and consideration.
Nor does the failure of certain Americans to appreciate Japanese
courtesy and hospitality for what it is, stop here. Our yellow press and
organized Japanese-haters, aware that the higher hospitality of Japan
has oftentimes an official or semi-official character, are not satisfied
to seek a simple explanation for the fact, but prefer to discern in it
something artful and sinister.
It is perfectly true that the stranger going to Japan with good letters
of introduction meets a group composed almost entirely of government
officials, big business men, and their families. It is also true that he
is likely to meet a selected group of such men. The reason for this is
simple. While English is the second language taught in Japanese schools,
and while many Japanese can speak some broken English, there are still
relatively few men, and still fewer women, who have been educated abroad
and are sufficiently familiar with foreign languages, customs, and ideas
to feel easy when entertaining foreigners. This class is, moreover,
still further limited by the financial burden of extensive entertaining.
Thus it happens that there exists in Japan a social group which may be
likened to a loosely organized entertainment committee, with the result
that most Americans who are entertained in that country meet, broadly
speaking, the same set of people.
The Japanese are entirely frank in their desire to interest the world in
Japan. The Government maintains a bureau for the purpose of encouraging
tourists to visit the country and making travel easy for them. The great
Japanese steamship companies, the Toyo Kisen Kaisha and Nippon Yusen
Kaisha, are energetic in seeking passenger business. Journalists,
authors, men of affairs and others likely to have influence at home, are
especially encouraged to visit Japan. The feeling of the Japanese is
that there exists in the United States a prejudice against them, and
that the best way to overcome this is to show Japan to Americans and let
them form their own conclusions. They are proud of their country and
they believe that those who become acquainted with it will think well of
it.
Some Americans charge them with endeavouring to show things at their
best, as if to do that were a sly sin.
The attitude of the Japanese in this matter may be likened to that of a
man who owns a home in some not very accessible region, the advantages
of which are doubted by his friends. Being proud of his place the owner
is hospitable. He urges those he knows to come and see it.
When his guests arrive he does not begin by taking them to look at the
sick cow, or the corner behind the barn where refuse is dumped, but
marches them to the west verandah--the verandah with the wonderful view.
To the average person such a procedure would seem entirely normal. Yet
there are critics of Japan who do not see it in that light. Their
attitude might be likened to that of someone who, when taken to the
verandah to see the view, declares that the view is being shown not on
its own merits, but because the host has cut the butler's throat and
does not wish his guests to notice the body lying under the parlour
table.
Let an American of any influence go to Japan, be cordially received
there, form his impressions, and return with a good word to say for the
islands and the people, and the professional Japanese-haters have their
answer ready. The man has been victimized by "propaganda." He has been
flattered by social attentions, fuddled with food and drink, reduced to
a state of idiocy, and in that state "personally conducted" through
Japan in a manner so crafty as to prevent his stumbling upon the
"Truth."
The precise nature of this "Truth" is never revealed. It is merely
indicated as some vague awfulness behind a curtain carefully kept drawn.
Having so often heard these rumours I went to Japan in a suspicious
frame of mind. Arriving there, I made it my business to dive behind
whatever looked like a veil of mystery. As the reader who has followed
me thus far will be aware, I found a number of mysteries--the
fascinating mysteries of an old and peculiar civilization, out of which
an interesting modernism had rapidly grown.
I was considerably entertained in Japan; my sightseeing was oftentimes
facilitated by Japanese friends; but the significant fact is that no one
ever tried to prevent my seeing anything I wished to. And I wished to
see everything, good and bad. I visited the lowest slums, a
penitentiary, a poorhouse, a hospital, and some factories. I asked
questions. Sometimes they were embarrassing questions--about militarism
in Japan, about Shantung, about Korea and Formosa, about Manchuria and
Siberia. And though I do not expect any Japanese-hater to believe me, I
wish to declare here, in justice to the Japanese, that they gave me the
information I asked, even though to do so sometimes pained them.
I saw and learned things creditable to Japan and things discreditable,
just as in other lands one sees and learns things in both categories. I
found the Japanese neither angels nor devils. They are human beings like
the rest of us, having their virtues and their defects.
I came away liking and respecting them as a people. This fact I proclaim
with the full knowledge that those who do not like them will accept it,
not as a sign of any merit in the Japanese, but as proof of my
incompetence, or worse.
"But you have not been to China," some of my friends say. "You would
like the Chinese better than the Japanese."
That may be true or it may not. I am inclined to believe that there is,
on the surface, more natural sympathy and understanding between
Americans and Chinamen than between Americans and Japanese. The Chinaman
is more easily comprehensible to us. Also he is meek. We can talk down
to him. He will do as we tell him to. He is not a contender--as the
Japanese very definitely is--and is therefore easier to get along with.
As an individual he has many qualities to recommend him, though neither
patriotism nor cleanliness seems to be among them.
If I ever go to China I shall hope and expect not to fall into the
mental grooves which lead travellers in the Orient generally to feel
that if they like a Chinaman they cannot like a Japanese, and vice
versa. I hereby reserve the right to like both.
China appears to be an amiable, flaccid, sleepy giant who has long
allowed himself to be bullied, victimized, and robbed. Japan, on the
other hand, is a small, well-knit, pugnacious individual, well able to
look after himself, and profoundly engaged in doing so. Naturally the
two do not get on well together, and equally naturally the impotent
giant comes off the worse. One is, to that extent, sorry for him, but
one can hardly respect him as one would were he to rise up and assert
himself. One may, on the other hand, wish the little Japanese less
obstreperous, but one is bound to respect him for his prowess.
Physically and materially he has earned for himself the undisputed
leadership of the Far East. There remains, however, the question whether
he is spiritually great enough to become, as well, a moral leader. In
that question is bound up the future of the Orient. Some signs are
hopeful, some are not. The answer is locked in the vaults of time to
come.
It is not surprising that the Japanese are proud of the leadership they
have already attained. Being relatively new members of the hair-pulling,
hobnailed family we call the Family of Nations, and having rapidly
become important members, they are inclined to harp more than necessary
upon this importance, so novel and so gratifying to them. They like to
talk about it. They delight in proclaiming themselves a "first-class
power." They rejoice exceedingly in their alliance with Great Britain,
not because the alliance itself has any very real importance (in view of
the attitude of Australia and Canada toward Japan, and of Britain's
regard for American sentiment, it cannot have), but because of the
flattering association. Japan likes to be seen walking with the big
fellows. In this she reminds one somewhat of a youth in all the pride
and self-consciousness of his first pair of "long pants."
Now there is this to be remembered about a youth in his first "long
pants": he requires careful handling. If you treat him like a child,
either patronizing or ignoring him, you will offend him mortally, and
not impossibly drive him to some furious action in assertion of his
manhood. But if, on the other hand, you are misled by his appearance of
maturity, and expect of him all that you would expect of a thoroughly
ripened man, then you are very likely to find yourself disappointed.
There is but one course to be pursued with a youth in this intermediate
stage. He must be managed with tact, firmness, and patience. In dealing
with the young, many adults fail to understand this, and in dealing with
a nation in a corresponding state of evolution, other nations are as a
rule even stupider than adult individuals.
Britain, wisest of all the world in international affairs, has not made
this mistake in her relations with Japan. The alliance is one proof of
it. The visit of the Crown Prince of Japan to England in the spring of
1921, is another. Nor was the tact of Britain in this situation ever
better displayed than in King George's speech, when, toasting the
Imperial guest, he said:
"Because he is our friend we are not afraid for him to see our troubles.
We know his sympathy is with us and that he will understand."
Would that the United States might draw the simple lesson from these two
short sentences spoken by England's king. Would that we might learn to
take that amiable tone. Would that Americans might understand how
instantly the Japanese--yes, and all other nations--respond to such
approaches.
The problem of maintaining friendly relations with this neighbour on the
other side of the Pacific is not, in truth, nearly so difficult as many
of our other problems. It has been rendered difficult chiefly by our own
incredible bungling.
Among men a bungler is oftentimes feared and disliked exactly as if he
were malevolent, and among nations the situation is the same. No nation,
however strong, can afford to give offence unnecessarily to other great
powers; and the United States can least of all afford to irritate
needlessly those powers with which her front yard and her back yard are
shared: namely, Britain and Japan. Yet we are constantly annoying these
two nations without accomplishing any counterbalancing good purpose.
Britain, feeling, as we do, the tie of consanguinity, and having,
moreover, a shrewd eye to her own interest, forgives us, or at least
appears to. But in the case of Japan we are dealing with a very
different situation. There is no blood relationship to ease the strain;
nor is there always in Tokyo the calm, phlegmatic, self-interested
statesmanship of London. Tokyo is sometimes temperamental.
If we continue to bungle we shall ultimately gain the lasting ill-will
of Japan, and if we do that we shall almost certainly find ourselves
looking out of our back window not merely at a frowning Nippon, but at a
coalition between Japan, Russia, and Germany--a coalition into which we
ourselves, by our attitude, shall have driven Japan.
It is for us to decide whether we wish to encourage such an alliance.
With Mr. Hughes in the State Department we have, it appears, good reason
to be hopeful, but Mr. Hughes has not as yet had time to accomplish much
of an improvement in American-Japanese relations. If he does so he will
be the first American statesman to have made headway in the matter since
Roosevelt was in the White House and Elihu Root in the State Department;
for not since their time has there been evident in our dealings with
Japan a definite and understanding policy. The failure of our diplomacy
is all too plainly reflected in the steady diminution of the good
feeling which then existed.
Though he never visited Japan, Roosevelt, with his amazing understanding
of people, managed to sense the Japanese perfectly. He knew their
virtues and their failings. He realized precisely the state they had
attained in their evolution from mediævalism to modernity. He knew their
samurai loyalty and pride, their sensitiveness, their love of courtesy.
"Speak softly and carry a big stick," he used to say. In those words is
summed up a large part of his foreign policy. He knew when to send a
bearskin to the Emperor, and when to send a fleet.
Even when he sent that fleet of sixteen battleships, the visit paid was
one of courtesy. And courtesy, as I have tried to show, is never, never
lost upon Japan.
PART IV
CHAPTER XXII
_The Missing Lunch--The Japanese Chauffeur--The Little
Train--Japanese Railroads--The Railway Lunch--The Railway
Teapot--Reflections on Some American Ways--Are the Japanese
Honest?--A Story of Viscount Shibusawa--Travelling Customs--An
Eavesdropping Episode_
Neither the box of lunch nor the automobile to take us to the station
was ready, though both had been ordered the previous night. We waited
until twenty minutes before train time; then made a dash for the station
in a taxi which happened along providentially--something taxis seldom do
in Tokyo.
The drive took us several miles across the city. Through a picturesque
and incoherent jumble of street traffic, over canals, past the huge
concrete amphitheatre in which wrestling bouts are held, across a steel
bridge spanning the Sumida River, through a maze of muddy streets lined
with open-fronted shops partially protected from the hot sun by curtains
of indigo cotton bearing advertisements in large white Chinese
characters, we flew precariously, facing collisions half a dozen times
yet magically escaping them as one always does behind a Japanese
chauffeur. It is said that the Japanese chauffeur is not, as a rule, a
good mechanic. As to that I cannot say, but I assure you he can drive.
At an incredible speed he will whirl you through the dense slow-moving
crowds of a street festival or around the hairpin curves of a muddy
mountain pass with one wheel following the slippery margin of a
precipice, but he will never hurt so much as a hair of your head,
unless, perchance, it hurts your hair to stand on end.
The Ryogoku Station, where we found our friends awaiting us, is a modest
frame structure, terminus of an unimportant railway line serving the
farming and fishing villages of the Boso Peninsula--which depends from
the mainland in such a way as to form the barrier between Tokyo Bay and
the Pacific.
The train seemed to have been awaiting us. It started as soon as we had
boarded it, and was presently rocking along through open country at
twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. There was something of solemn
playfulness about that little train. The cars were no heavier than
street cars and the locomotive would have made hard work of drawing a
pair of Pullmans, yet in its present rôle it gave a pompous performance,
hissing, whistling, and snorting as importantly as if it had been the
engine of a great express. The little guards, too, joined gravely in the
game, calling out the names of country stations as majestically as if
each were a metropolis. And the very landscape took its place in the
whimsy, for our toy train ran over it as over a flat rug patterned with
little green rice fields.
The Japanese Government, which so woefully mishandles its telephones and
cables, does better with its railroads. They are fairly well run. Trains
are almost invariably on time, and the cars are not uncomfortable,
although the narrower gauge of the Japanese roads makes them necessarily
smaller than our cars.
The ordinary Japanese sleeping-car is divided into halves. One half is
like an American Pullman sleeper, very much scaled down in size, while
the other half resembles a European _wagon-lit_ in miniature, with a
narrow aisle at one side and compartments in which the berths are
arranged transversely to the train.
As in Europe, there are three classes of day coaches. Except where
trains are overcrowded, as they often are, one may travel quite as
comfortably second-class as first. Coaches of all three classes are like
street cars with long seats running from end to end at either side.
Usually the car is divided in the middle by a partition, the theory
being that one end is for smokers; but in practice the Japanese, who are
inveterate users of tobacco, seem to smoke when and where they please
while travelling.
Express trains carry dining cars which are like small reproductions of
ours. Some of these diners serve Japanese-style meals, some European,
and some both.
Much thought has evidently been given to making travel easy for
English-speaking people. Each car of every train carries a sign giving,
in English, the train's destination; time-tables printed in English are
easily obtained, railroad tickets are printed in both languages, and the
name of each town is trebly set forth on railroad station signs, being
displayed in English, in Chinese characters, and in kana.
As in the United States, station porters wear red caps but they have the
European trick of passing baggage in and out of the car windows, so that
the doorways are not blocked with it when passengers wish to get on and
off. Also at stations of any consequence there are boys wearing green
caps, who peddle newspapers, tea, and lunches.
The Japanese railway lunch is an institution as highly organized as the
English railway lunch. On the platforms of all large stations you can
purchase almost any sort of lunch you desire, neatly wrapped in paper
napkins and packed in an immaculate wooden box. On each box the date is
stamped, so that the traveller may be sure that everything is fresh. You
may get a box containing liberal portions of roast chicken and Kamakura
ham, with salad and hard-boiled eggs and a dainty bamboo knife and fork;
or if you wish a light repast, a box of assorted sandwiches, thin and
moist as sandwiches should always be but so seldom are. Or, again, you
may get a variety of Japanese dishes, similarly packed.
On this trip I selected a box of that delicacy known as _tai-meshi_, and
was not sorry that my order for lunch had been overlooked at the hotel.
Tai-meshi consists of a palatable combination of rice and shredded
sea-bream cooked in a sauce containing saké which obliterates the fishy
taste of the sea-bream. The box cost me the equivalent of seventeen
cents, chop-sticks included. From the green-cap boy who sold it to me I
also purchased, for five cents, an earthenware pot containing tea, and a
small cup, and when I had drunk the tea I learned that I could have the
pot refilled with hot water at practically any station, for a couple of
cents more.
Just as your English traveller leaves the railway lunch basket in the
train when he is done with it, your Japanese traveller leaves the teapot
and cup. Drinking the philosopher's beverage I found myself wondering
whether such a system would be successful in the United States. I
concluded that it would not. Some of the lunch-baskets and teapots would
get back to their rightful owners, but many would disappear. There is a
certain type of American, and he is numerous, who has a constitutional
aversion to conforming to a nice, orderly custom of this kind. He has
too much--let us call it initiative--for that. If he thought the
lunch-basket and teapot worth taking home he would take them home; nor
would he be deterred by the mere fact that they were not his, having
only been rented to him. His subconscious sense of the importance of his
own "personality" would lift him over any little obstacle of that kind.
Without thinking matters out he would feel that because he had used them
they were his. What he had used no one else should use--even though its
usefulness to him was past. Wherefore, if he thought the basket and the
teapot not worth taking, he would stamp his "personality" upon them. He
might take the basket apart to see how it was made, or he might draw out
his penknife and cut holes in it. Then he would consider what to do with
the teapot. Finding that it fitted nicely in the palm of his hand, and
sensing by touch its brittleness, he would want to use it as a missile.
If he prided himself on the accuracy of his pitching he would throw it
at a telegraph pole, but if he felt quite certain that he could not hit
a pole he would wait for a large rock pile or a factory wall, and would
hurl it against that with all his might, to make the largest possible
explosion.
* * * * *
People often ask me whether the Japanese are honest. Doubt on this
subject is, I believe, largely due to the old story that Chinese tellers
are employed in Japanese banks--all Chinamen being trustworthy and all
Japanese the reverse. I know of no better example of the vitality of a
lie than is afforded by the survival of this one. It is a triple lie.
Japanese banks do not have Chinese tellers. The Japanese as a race are
no more dishonest than other people. The leading bankers of Japan, many
of whom I have met, are men of the highest character and the greatest
enlightenment, and would be so recognized in any land. Nor is this
merely my opinion. It is the opinion I have heard expressed by several
of the greatest bankers and manufacturers in the United States--men who
have done business with Japanese bankers and who know them thoroughly.
It is true that trademarks and patented articles manufactured in other
countries have been stolen by some Japanese manufacturers and merchants,
and that this abominable practice is to some extent kept up even to-day.
But conditions in this respect are improving as business morality grows.
Nor should it be forgotten that the present standard of international
commercial ethics, which so strongly reprehends such thefts, is
comparatively a new thing throughout the entire world. It must, however,
be admitted that Japan is not, in this particular, fully abreast of the
other great nations.
As for the average of probity among the people at large I can say
this--that if I were obliged to risk leaving a valuable possession in a
public place, on the chance of its being found by an honest person and
returned to me, I should prefer to take the risk in Japan, than in most
other countries. Certainly, I should prefer to take it there than in the
United States--unless I could specify certain rural sections of the
United States, where I should feel that my chances were better than in
the neighbourhood of New York.
The Japanese are respecters of property, private and public. One may
visit the historic buildings of Japan without seeing a single evidence
of vandalism. I was immensely struck by this. It was so unlike home!
More than once, over there, I thought of a visit I paid, some years ago,
to Monticello, the beautiful old mansion built near Charlottesville,
Virginia, by Thomas Jefferson, and of what the caretaker told me. All
visitors, he said, had to be watched. Otherwise vines would be torn from
the walls of the house, bricks chipped, and marble statuary broken. They
had even found it necessary to build an iron fence around Jefferson's
grave to protect the monument from American patriots who would like to
take home little pieces of it.
The custom of visiting historic places and the graves of historic
figures is much more common in Japan than in America. Many of Japan's
most famous monuments are entirely unprotected, but instead of knocking
them to pieces to get souvenirs the pilgrim will burn a little incense
before them, and perhaps leave his visiting card on the spirit of the
departed. Or he may write a poem.
Dr. John H. Finley has told me a story which well illustrates the
delicate and reverential attitude of the Japanese in such matters.
When Baron--now Viscount--Shibusawa came to the United States several
years ago, a banquet was given in his honour in New York by the Japan
Society, of which Doctor Finley was then president.
At the banquet Doctor Finley remarked to the guest of honour that he
heard he had sent an emissary with a wreath to be laid upon the grave of
Townsend Harris, first American Minister to Japan, who is buried in
Brooklyn.
"No," said Baron Shibusawa, "that is not exactly what occurred. I did
not send the wreath. I took it myself and laid it on the grave. And I
wrote two poems in memory of Townsend Harris and hung them in the
branches of a Japanese maple tree overhanging his resting-place."
* * * * *
But let us get back to our little railroad train.
The men among our Japanese fellow travellers were sitting on the seats
with their feet on the floor, as we do, but the women and children had
slipped off their clogs and were squatting in the seats with their backs
to the aisle, looking out of the windows or dozing with their heads
resting upon their hands, or against the window-frame. One elderly lady
was lying at full length on the seat, asleep, with her bare feet resting
on the cushions.
The Japanese are much less fearful than we of the interest of fellow
passengers, and indeed, so far as concerns strangers of their own race,
they are justified in this, for Japanese travellers pay little or no
attention to one another. In foreigners they are more interested. A
Japanese who can speak English will frequently start a conversation with
the traveller from abroad, and will almost invariably endeavour to be
helpful. Rustics stare at the stranger with a sort of dumb interest,
just as American rustics might stare at a Japanese; and young Japanese
louts sometimes snicker when they see a foreigner, and comment upon him,
just as young American louts might do on seeing a Japanese passing
by--especially if he was wearing his national costume.
"Pipe the Jap," a New York street-corner loafer might exclaim; while
similarly an ill-bred youth of Tokyo, Kobe or Yokohama might remark:
"_Keto_," which means "hairy foreigner." The term _keto_ is not intended
to be complimentary, yet no more real harm is meant by its user them
would be meant by an American smart-aleck who should speak of "chinks,"
"kykes" or "micks." Such terms merely exemplify the instinctive
hostility of small-minded men the world over, for all who are not
exactly like themselves.
Some Japanese country folk who sat opposite us on our journey to the
Boso Peninsula were clearly much interested in us--particularly in the
ladies of our party, and as so few foreigners understand the Japanese
language, they felt safe in talking us over amongst themselves.
"What a strange little thing to wear on one's head!" said the husband,
to the wife referring to a neat little turban worn by one of our ladies.
"Yes," said the wife, "and I don't see how she can walk in those shoes
with their tall, thin little heels. Aren't they funny!"
These remarks and others revealing their interested speculations as to
which women of our party were married to which men, were translated to
us by the friend who had organized the excursion. Being a good deal of a
wag, he let them talk about us until the subject seemed to be exhausted.
Then he addressed a casual question, in Japanese, to the husband across
the way. I have seldom seen a man look more disconcerted than that one
did just then. He answered the question, but that was the last word we
heard him speak. Though an hour passed before he and his wife got off
the train, and though they had until then talked volubly together, the
complete silence which came over them was not broken by so much as a
monosyllable until they reached the station platform. There, however, we
saw that they had begun to talk again, and with gestures showing not a
little agitation. I had a feeling that each was blaming the other for
the whole affair. Relations between husband and wife are, in some
respects at least, a good deal more alike in all countries than is
commonly supposed.
CHAPTER XXIII
_Katsuura and the Basha--A Noble Coast--Scenes on a Country
Road--The Fishers--A Temple and Tame Fish--We Arrive at an
Inn--I See a Bath--I Take One--Bathing Customs--The Attentive
Nesan--In the Tub_
A journey of about three and a half hours brought us to the seacoast
town of Katsuura, the terminus of the little railway line. The industry
of Katsuura is fishing, and there is a kind of dried fish put up there
which has quite a reputation. Almost every town in Japan has some
specialty of its own, whether an edible or something else--something for
the traveller to purchase and take home as a souvenir. Many of the best
Japanese colour-prints were originally made for this purpose--souvenirs
of cities and towns, celebrated inns, famous actors, and notorious
courtesans.
Leaving the train we got into a _basha_--a primitive one-horse bus with
tiny wheels--and took a highway leading south along the shore. The day
was brilliant and our road, skirting the edge of the lofty coastal hills
half way between their green serried peaks and the yellow beach on which
the surf played below, was white and dusty in the hot sun. On level
stretches and down-grades we rode in the basha, but we always got out
and walked up hills to spare the venerable horse. Nor will travellers
who have ever followed such a system be surprised that, of the twenty
miles we covered on our way to Kamogawa, fully fifteen seemed to be
up-hill miles.
This shore continually reminded me of other shores--Brittany, in the
region of Dinard and Cancale, and the cliffs between Sorrento and
Amalfi. But here the contours were more tender. Many a beach I saw, with
tiny houses strewn along the margin of the sand, fishing boats drawn up
in rows, and swarthy men and women bustling about among the nets and
baskets, which made me think of the Marina at Capri. Even the air was
that of Capri in the springtime. But here there was no song.
[Illustration: Tai-no-ura--Tiny houses strewn about the margin
of the sand, fishing boats drawn up in rows, and swarthy men and
women bustling about among the nets and baskets]
A succession of lofty promontories jutting aggressively toward the sea
gave interest to the road. Sometimes they turned its course, forcing it
to swing out around them; in other cases tunnels penetrated the barrier
hills, and we would find ourselves trudging along beside the basha,
through damp echoing darkness, with our eyes fixed on a distant point of
light, marking the exit, ahead.
It was a much-travelled road. We were continually meeting other bashas
creaking slowly through the white dust, or drawn up before inns and
teahouses where passengers were pausing for refreshment. During the
entire afternoon we met not a single automobile, and when, after an hour
or two, a Japanese lady, beautifully dressed and sheltered from the sun
by a large parasol, flashed past in a shining ricksha propelled by two
coolies, she made a picture strangely sophisticated, elegantly exotic,
against the background of that dusty country highway so full of humble
folk.
All the women of this region were hard at work. Some were labouring
beside their husbands in the mud and water of the paddy fields, others
were occupied upon the beach, piling up kelp and carrying it back to
huge wooden tubs in which it was being boiled to get the juice from
which iodine is extracted, still others were transporting baskets of
fresh shiny fish from the newly landed boats to the village markets, or
were drawing heavy carts laden with fish-baskets from one village to
another. For this coast is the greatest fishing district of all Japan.
On the streets of every village we saw fish being handled--large,
brilliant fish laid out in rows on straw mats, preparatory to shipment,
huge tubs of smaller fish, and great baskets of silver sardines. Nor was
our awareness of piscatorial activities due only to the organs of sight.
Now and then a gust of information reached the olfactory organs
disclosing with a frankness that was unmistakable, the proximity of a
pile of rotted herring, which is used to fertilize the fields.
Winding down a hill through a grove of ancient trees, with the sea
glistening between the trunks on one side of the way, we came upon a
weathered temple, and, rounding it from the rear, found a tiny village
clustered at its base, in as sweet a little cove as one could wish to
see--low, brown houses nestling among rocks and gnarled pines, a
crescent of yellow beach with fishing boats drawn up beyond the reach of
the tide, and children playing among them looking like nude bronzes come
to life.
This place, known as Tai-no-ura--Sea-bream Coast--small and remote as it
is, has a fame which extends throughout Japan. For it was the abiding
place of the thirteenth-century fisherman-priest Nichiren, who, though
he antedated Martin Luther by about two and a half centuries, is
sometimes called the Martin Luther of Japanese Buddhism. The Nichiren
sect is to this day powerful, having more than five thousand temples and
a million and a half adherents. Its scriptures are known as the
_Hokkekyo_, and I find a certain quaint interest in the fact that,
because this word suggests the call of the Japanese nightingale, the
feathered songster is known by a name which means "scripture-reading
bird."
The old weathered temple, which we visited, is known as the _Tanjo-ji_,
or Nativity Temple, and is said to have been established in 1286, but to
me the most appealing thing about this district is the respect which to
this day is accorded Nichiren's prohibition against the catching of fish
along this sacred shore. The fishermen of Tai-no-ura go far out before
casting their nets, and this has been the case for so long that the fish
have come to understand that they are safe inshore, and will rise to the
surface if one knocks upon the gunwale of a boat.
[Illustration: The gates of the Tanjo-ji temple, dedicated to
Nichiren, "the Martin Luther of Japan"]
I should have liked to linger at this place, but the afternoon was
waning and we had still half a dozen miles or more to go.
Sunset was suspended like a rosy fluid in the air when our basha drove
down the main street of Kamogawa and stopped before the door of the inn.
To an American, accustomed to the casual reception accorded hotel guests
in his native land, the experience of arriving at a well-conducted
Japanese inn is almost sensational. The wheels of our vehicle had hardly
ceased to turn when a flock of servitors came running out to welcome and
to aid us. A pair of coolies whisked our bags into the portico, and as
we followed we were escorted by the gray-haired proprietress and a bevy
of nesans, all of them beaming at us and bowing profoundly from the
waist.
While I sat on the doorstep removing my shoes, two coolies came from the
rear of the building bearing between them a pole from which two huge
buckets of hot water were suspended. Pushing back a sliding paper door
they entered an adjoining room. A moment later I heard a great
splashing, as of water being poured, and looking after them saw that
they were emptying their buckets into a large stationary tub built of
wood. Nor was I the only witness to the preparation of the bath. Two
Japanese women and three children stood by, waiting to use it. And they
were all ready to get in.
There was something superbly matter-of-fact about this whole performance
which gave me a sudden flash of understanding. All the explaining in the
world could not have told me so much about the Japanese point of view on
matters of this kind as came through witnessing this picture.
Adam and Eve were not progenitors of these people nor was the apple a
fruit indigenous to Japan.
The other members of our party were preparing to bathe in the sea before
dinner, but I desired a hot bath and had asked for it as soon as I
arrived. While in my room preparing I found myself wondering whether I
was about to have an experience in mixed bathing, and if so how well my
philosophy would stand the strain.
But the peculiar notions of foreigners concerning privacy in the bath
were, it appeared, not unknown to the proprietress of the inn. When I
descended the stairs arrayed in the short cotton kimono provided by the
establishment, I was not shown to the large bathroom near the entrance,
but was taken in tow by a little nesan, who indicated to me that I was
to put on wooden clogs--a row of which stood by the door--and follow her
across the street to the annex.
The bath was ready. Entering the room with me the nesan slipped the door
shut and in a businesslike manner which could be interpreted in but one
way, began looping back her sleeve-ends with cord.
"She intends to scrub you!" shrieked all that was conventional within
me. "Put her out!"
"But don't you like to be scrubbed?" demanded the inner philosopher.
"Her being a woman makes me self-conscious," I replied to my other self.
"It shouldn't. Your being a man doesn't make her self-conscious. What
was it we were saying a little while ago about false modesty?"
"As nearly as I can remember," replied Convention, evasively, "we agreed
that Americans are full of false modesty."
Whereupon I turned to the little nesan and with a gesture in the
direction of the door exclaimed, "Scat!"
Understanding the meaning of the motion if not the word, she obediently
scatted, closing the door behind her. She did not go far, however.
Through the paper I could hear her whispering with another nesan in the
corridor. I went to the door with the purpose of fastening it, but there
was no catch with which to do so. This left me with a certain feeling of
insecurity as I bathed.
A well-ordered Japanese bathroom, such as this one was, has a false
floor of wood with drains beneath it, so that one may splatter about
with the utmost abandon. One does one's actual washing outside the tub,
rinsing off with warm water dipped in a pail from a covered tank at one
end of the tub. Not until the cleansing process has been completed does
one enter the water to soak and get warm. Bathtubs in hotels and
prosperous homes are large, and the size of them makes the preparation
of a bath a laborious business; for running hot water is a luxury as yet
practically unknown in Japan, the water for a bath being heated either
in the kitchen, or by means of a little charcoal stove attached to the
outside of the tub. To heat the bath by the latter system, which is the
one generally used, takes an hour or two; wherefore it is obviously
impracticable to prepare a separate bath for each member of the
household. In a private house one tub of water generally does for all.
Foreigners newly arrived in Japan are unpleasantly impressed by this
system of bathing, and in a Japanese inn they generally make a great
point of having first chance at the bath.
Though I do not expect to convince the reader that what I say is so, I
must bear testimony to the truth that it is the idea rather than the
fact of the Japanese bath which is at first unpleasant. You must
understand that the Japanese are physically the cleanest race of people
in the world; that, as I have already said, they bathe fully before
entering the tub; that the tubbing is less a part of the cleansing
process than a means for getting warm; and finally that the water in a
tub which has been used by several persons looks as fresh as when first
drawn.
I once asked a cosmopolitan Japanese whether he did not prefer our
system of bathing. He replied that he did not. "I don't think your way
is quite so clean as ours," he explained. "Not unless you take two
baths, one after the other, as I always do when I am in Europe or
America. I wash in the first bath. Then I draw a fresh tub to rinse off
in."
Just as this gentleman prefers his native style of bathing I prefer
mine; yet I should not object to succeeding him in the bath. Nor am I
alone in liking the deep spaciousness of the large-size Japanese
bathtub. An American gentleman who was in Japan when I was is having a
Japanese bathroom built into his house near New York.
With the bath of the proletariat the system is the same, but the tub is
smaller and less convenient. It consists of what is practically nothing
more nor less than a large barrel with a small charcoal stove attached
to one side. Often it stands out-of-doors.
* * * * *
On emerging from the hot water I found myself without a towel. I went to
the door, opened it sufficiently to put my head out through the aperture
and summoned the nesan who stood near by.
"Towel," I said.
She smiled and shook her head, uncomprehending.
I opened the door a little wider, thrust out one arm and made rubbing
motions on it.
"_Hai!_" she exclaimed, brightly, and went scampering off.
As it was chilly in the room I returned to the hot tub to wait. There I
remained for some minutes. Then it occurred to me that, understanding my
desire for privacy in the bath, the nesan might be waiting outside with
my towel, so I got out again with the intention of looking into the
hall.
Just as I emerged, however, the door opened and in she came.
"Scat!" I cried. Whereupon she handed me two towels and fled.
It was well that she did bring two, for the native towel consists of a
strip of thin cotton cloth hardly larger than a table napkin. The
Japanese do not pretend to dry themselves thoroughly with these towels,
but, as I have elsewhere mentioned, wring them out in hot water and use
them as a mop, after which they go out and let the air finish the work.
I dried myself as best I could, slipped into the cotton kimono, and
returned to the main building of the inn.
In the corridor I encountered my friend the linguist.
"I want to take a photograph of that bathtub," I told him.
"It won't explain itself in a photograph," he returned, "unless there's
somebody in it."
I knew what he meant. An American or European, accustomed to the style
of bathtub that stands upon the floor, would naturally assume from a
picture of this one that it was similarly set. But that was not so. It
extended perhaps two feet below the level of the floor; there was a step
half-way down the inside to aid one in getting in or out; it was so deep
that a short person standing in it would be immersed almost to the
shoulders.
"You get in it, then, will you?"
"You ought to have a Japanese."
"But that's out of the question."
"No, it isn't."
Nor was it. By the time I got my kodak and put in a roll of film he had
a subject for me.
It was the little nesan to whom I had said "scat!" Nor could a _grande
dame_ in an opera box have exhibited more aplomb than she did when I
photographed her.
[Illustration: Nor could a _grande dame_ in an opera box have
exhibited more aplomb than she did when I photographed her]
CHAPTER XXIV
_A Walk in a Kimono--Dinner at the Inn--Sweet Servitors--An
Evening's Enchantment--The Disadvantages of Ramma--My Neighbours
Retire--A Japanese Bed--Breakfast--"Bear's Milk"--The Village of
Nabuto--An Island and a Cave--The Abelone Divers--A Sail with
Fishermen_
"Let's take a walk before dinner," said the linguist when our
photographic enterprise had been accomplished.
"All right. I'll go and dress."
"Come as you are."
"After a hot bath I might take cold in this thin kimono."
"No. That's a curious thing about hot baths in Japan. The reaction from
them is much like that we get at home from cold ones."
"But, dressed this way, won't we look queer?" I surveyed the lower hem
of my kimono which hung only a little below my knees.
"It's the costume of the country."
"But it's awfully short on us. It seems to me we ought to put on
underwear at least."
"Nonsense. A man doesn't know what comfort is until he has strolled out
in a kimono after a bath."
Our costumes were identical. We looked equally absurd. I consented.
My one difficulty on that stroll was with my clogs. I could not walk as
fast as my companion, nor did I dare to lift my feet from the ground
lest the clogs should fall off. And yet I can see that if one is brought
up on clogs there is much to be said in their favour. They are durable
and cheap. They neither suffocate nor cramp the foot.
Once I spoke to a Japanese friend of the merits of the clog, but though
he admitted that his clog-wearing countrymen had no trouble with their
feet, he thought clogs, on the whole, a bad thing. "The movement for
good roads in Japan," he said, "started when people began to wear shoes.
Those who wear clogs do not object to bad pavements, and we shall never
get good ones until clogs are discarded by the majority."
We had not walked a block before I perceived that my companion had not
overstated the case for the kimono as a costume for a stroll on a balmy
evening. It does not bind one anywhere, but leaves one's arms and legs
delightfully free. Moreover the air penetrates to the body, and the
feeling of it after a very hot bath is as refreshing as an alcohol rub.
The streets were full of people many of them fishermen dressed much as
we were. But though reason told me that in our kimonos we were less
conspicuous than we should have been in our customary attire, I could
not rid myself of the feeling that we were masqueraders, and that if
people were to recognize us through the darkness for foreigners, we
should have a crowd following us. Wherefore, though our promenade proved
absolutely uneventful, I was upon the whole relieved when, after having
gone the length of the main street and back, we re-entered the hotel.
Our dinner that night was purely Japanese; the nesans brought the usual
little foot-high lacquer tables laden with covered bowls of porcelain
and lacquer; we sat upon silken cushions on the matting in the
linguist's room and struggled bravely with our chop-sticks.
The room was on the second floor. Through the open shoji we could look
across a tiny garden into other rooms, open like ours to the soft
evening air, and we could see the nesans gliding back and forth between
these rooms and the kitchen, moving along the polished wooden floor of
the gallery with their characteristic pigeon-toed shuffle.
In an American hotel our little party would have been served by one
waiter; here we were attended by three nesans, one of whom squatted on
the matting beside the rice bucket, ready to help us when we held out
our bowls for more (for we had rice with our soup, our fish, and our
tea), while the other two brought things from the kitchen, below stairs.
And no matter how many times they had been in the room before, they
always dropped to their knees, on entering, and bent their foreheads
nearly to the floor in respectful salutation, ere they served the new
course.
This courtesy, so natural to them, made me feel very, very far from
home, for in it seemed to be crystallized the romantic charm of the
antipodes. The whole environment, moreover, enhanced my feeling. The
exquisite simplicity of our room, and of the other rooms across the
garden; the soft lights shining through the rice paper of shoji here and
there; the silhouettes, so Japanese, which passed across them; the
shimmering of the dark green leaves of small trees whose upper branches
reached a little bit above the floor level; the tinkling note of a
samisen played in some remote part of the building; the almond eyes and
massed ebony hair of our gentle little servitors, their butterfly
costumes, the strange, soft rattle of their language, the curious
unfamiliar flavours of the viands; all these combined to make me feel as
one transported into an enchantment, vivid and fantastic as a painting
by Rackham or Dulac.
And yet, fascinated as I was with all this magic loveliness, I felt a
gentle melancholy. For the shoji at the rear of the room were pushed
back like the others, and from the beach on which they opened there came
to me through the darkness an insistent note of definite and almost
terrible reality: the murmur of that ocean, black, restless, turbulent,
ominous, unimaginably vast, by which I was cut off from home.
* * * * *
My own room was next to that of the linguist, but the room beyond mine
was occupied by a Japanese couple. The rooms were divided by walls
consisting of opaque paper screens, sliding in grooves, and even these
frail partitions were incomplete, for, as in all Japanese houses, there
were _ramma_, or grills, over the tops of the screens. The purpose of
these ramma is to give ventilation at night, when the building is
solidly encased in wooden shutters; but though it is true that they do
permit some air to circulate, it is equally true that they permit the
circulation of sound and light. Herein lies the foreigner's chief
objection to the Japanese style of house--it is utterly without privacy.
I endeavoured to be quiet as I made ready for bed, and I am sure my
Japanese neighbours likewise tried, but their whisperings and the little
rustling sounds they made as they moved about, enhanced rather than
diminished my consciousness of their proximity.
After I had put out my light my room continued for some time to be
illuminated by the glow which came through the ramma on both sides.
Presently the linguist's light went out, but that from the room of my
other neighbours persisted, keeping me awake. This was the first time
that I acutely missed chairs as an adjunct to Japanese life; if I had a
chair I could hang a kimono over it to make a screen for my eyes. At
last, however, I heard a little click, which was immediately followed by
darkness. Then a sound of soft steps. Then a comfortable sigh. Then
silence.
It was my first night in a Japanese bed. The bed consisted of two thin
floss-silk mattresses, laid one above the other on the matting, and
partly covered with what seemed to be a towel. It was all very clean.
The pillow was a cylinder of cotton about six inches in diameter,
stuffed with some substance as heavy and as crackling as pine needles,
but odourless. I think the stuffing was of rice-husks. My nightgown was
a cotton kimono like the one in which I had gone walking, and my
coverlet was the usual bed-covering of Japan--a quilted satin robe, very
long, with armholes and spacious sleeves: a cross between a comforter
and a kimono. I did not use the sleeves, but pulled it over as one would
if sleeping under an overcoat.
In all but one respect it was a comfortable bed. The thing that troubled
me was the hard round pillow. I moved it about; I tried to flatten it; I
tried my hand under it, and over it, between it and my face.
"I shall never be able to sleep on such a pillow!" I thought, irritably.
And the next thing I knew it was morning and time to get up.
This inn, being exceptionally well appointed, provided separate
wash-rooms for men and women. We trooped down and bathed. Then we
breakfasted. The breakfast was much like the dinner of the night
before--rice, soup, fish, and tea.
"If any one feels the need of coffee," said the linguist, "we may be
able to get it, but the chances are it won't be very good. I've got a
can of condensed milk here, too." He held up the can. I noticed that it
was called "Bear Brand" Milk, and that the label bore the picture of a
bear.
"Don't they have fresh milk at these inns?" someone asked.
"A few of them have it now," he replied, "but it is only in the last few
years that the people of this locality have learned to use milk at all."
This reminded him of a story which he told us.
On one of his walking trips he had stopped at an inn which boasted of
having been patronized by an Imperial Prince. The friend who accompanied
the linguist on that trip wanted coffee for breakfast, and the innkeeper
managed to supply it. The linguist had a can of "Bear Brand" Milk in his
haversack, but he did not wish to open it if milk could be produced at
the inn.
"Can you get me some milk?" he asked the nesan.
"What kind of milk?" she inquired.
Perceiving that she knew nothing of our custom of using milk in tea and
coffee, he amused himself by replying:
"Whale's milk."
The nesan went downstairs and presently returned to say that there was
no whale's milk to be had.
"This inn has been patronized by an Imperial Prince," exclaimed the
linguist, affecting astonishment, "yet you have no whale's milk?"
The nesan admitted that such was the case.
"Then," said he, "bring me elephant's milk. I'll try to make it do."
Again she departed.
"The proprietor is very sorry," she reported when she came back, "but he
has just run out of elephant's milk."
"Let me see the proprietor."
When the latter appeared he was most apologetic. There had been an
unprecedented demand for elephant's milk in the last few days, he
explained, and his supply had been exhausted. He expected to have some
more shortly, but the express was slow.