FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO
_Madame Sannomiya_
I THOUGHT her the most picturesque bit in the picture of Tokio life: a
European woman living among the Japanese, speaking their language or her
own indiscriminately, as occasion dictated, preserving her individuality
and her national traits, and yet wielding an almost incredible influence
at the conservative Court of the Mikado.
In one way my fellow-Occidentals were a great trial to me in the Orient.
Their ungainly presence was always blotching some otherwise flawless
picture of Eastern life. But in Tokio one so rarely saw a European that
one forgot to resent it when one did, and indeed welcomed it as one more
unique detail of an enchantingly novel whole.
I believe that Madame Sannomiya stands alone—the one European woman, of
high character, high intellect, and charming personality, who has become
a naturalised and potential individual at an Eastern Court.[2] I have
seen, at the courts of native princes in India, European women who, to
speak mildly, would never be received at the Court of St. James’s, and
who would be painfully embarrassed if they were. But this European woman
is very different. She is the respected wife of an eminent man. Her
position is even very unlike that of the wife of a foreign minister, who
is tolerated by diplomatic policy or welcomed by international courtesy.
She is one of the Japanese. They like and honour her. She likes, and is
certainly happy with them.
Yoshitane Sannomiya was the handsomest Japanese man I ever saw, and by
far the manliest-looking. My husband, who had much talk with Mr.
Sannomiya, found him the superior of his countrymen in general
information, in mental grasp, and in his command of English.
A card of his lies before me as I write. Beneath his name is engraved:
“Vice Grand Maître des Cérémonies, et Maître de la Cour de S. M.
l’Impératrice.”
He was a first favourite of both Emperor and Empress, and I often heard
his wife spoken of as the most influential person at the Court. The
statement seems extreme; but when I came to see and know Madame
Sannomiya, I grew to regard the expression as very conceivably exact.
Speaking broadly, the Japanese never do anything. They indicate
everything. Madame Sannomiya indicated nothing. She did everything. The
Japanese have two gifts pre-eminently: the gift of grace and the gift of
touch. Their national gift of touch amounts to national genius. Upon a
common piece of paper, with a blunt pencil, a Japanese artist (and
almost all Japanese are artists) makes four or five strokes. When he
takes away his hand you see a picture; not a thoroughly elaborated
picture, but a picture in which every detail is indicated with inspired
fidelity. He draws three petals—but draws them so that you see the
whole flower. Yes, and you can smell it too, if your soul is half as
artistic as his is! Madame Sannomiya was graceful, but hers was the
grace of a large woman. Her grace supplemented her dignity. The Japanese
admired her dignity; it was novel. It indicated a strange force of
character, and it was saved from ever grating upon them, because it was
never ungraceful. Madame Sannomiya had, rather than the gift of touch,
the gift of grasp. If anything interested or concerned her, she thrust
her supple fingers about its roots. But her fingers were white and warm.
She was superlatively a gentlewoman; and her friends at Tokio respected
her thoroughness and energy of nature, which they never dreamed of
imitating.
I first saw Madame Sannomiya in her own house. I went to her to ask her
a favour—went without a line of introduction. I wonder if any one ever
lived who liked to ask favours? I hate it so much that I have almost
never done it. I believe that I can count the times, partly because they
have been so few and partly because they have made such a nasty
impression on me. There were a number of reasons why this particular
favour should be asked of the Empress by me, through Madame Sannomiya. I
suppose every woman does her duty once in a lifetime; and I did my duty.
I remember that I felt very uncomfortable as I stepped out of the
Imperial Hotel into my ’rickshaw. But put me in a ’rickshaw and whirl me
through the streets of Yeddo, and I defy anything, short of keen
physical pain or deep personal sorrow, to keep me in discomfort over
five minutes. I forgot everything in looking. We may not all paint
pictures, but we may all drink them in, if we are blessed with real
eyesight.
It was a long ride. I had only been in Tokio a few days, and I drank
deep, intoxicating draughts of beauty. We went through streets of native
shops; not shops decked out with things affectedly, exaggeratedly, or
occasionally Japanese—things grouped to snare the heavy-pursed
Europeans—but shops stocked with the everyday necessities of ordinary
Japanese life.
There is not, I believe, a European shop in Tokio. Think of it! It is
the only place of any considerable size I have ever been in that was
entirely destitute of a European shopkeeper.
We went through the quarter of the frail. I noticed that the women were
moving slowly, and that they were clad in soft and dainty raiment. Then
I saw that their eyes were deeply ringed with khol, saw that the lips
that parted about their gleaming teeth were thickly painted. I passed
one woman whose lips, parting about her blackened teeth, were gilded!
Then I recalled some half-forgotten page of Mitford, and knew that I was
in the famous Yoshiwara quarter. I afterwards found that I had not been
in the old walled Yoshiwara, but in one of the many new Yoshiwaras, or,
to speak more correctly, one of the flower districts.
Sexual morality is on so un-Western a basis in Japan that only a long
and careful essay could possibly give untravelled Europeans any
glimmering of its real character. In one brief passing sentence, the
women of whom I am writing have in Japan an acknowledged and assured
position. It is not the highest or the most respected, but it is
tangible and unimpugned. The courtesans of the world are unmistakable in
their resemblance to each other. They may crouch in tattered tinsels on
the steps of a crumbling temple in old Ferozepore; they wear furs in St.
Petersburg; they drink champagne in Paris; they may huddle together from
the sudden rain in a corner of Regent Street; but there is, the world
over, an unmistakable sign upon the faces of the women who have taken
into their own hands the highest law of life and broken it—the women
who have made the great mistake! But this sign is faintest in Japan. The
women in the quarter of Tokio through which we were passing looked at me
quietly. They neither shrank from my eyes nor peered into them. The
jewels flashed on their hands and in their hair. But the wearers did not
flaunt. They walked with a deliberate indolence—these tawny lilies of
the town—an indolence which said, “They toil not, neither do they
spin.”
My coolies ran into the Shiba Park. I was in a hurry, but I made them
rest. Not that they were tired! No self-respecting ’rickshaw coolie ever
owns to being tired until the journey’s end. But I halted them that I
might look. It was the trees! The “big trees” of California are more
huge, the “Black Forest” is denser, but for majestic beauty there are no
trees like to those in the Shiba Park.
Next we passed into the country. In the distance the farm coolies stood
ankle deep in the wet of the yellow “paddy” fields. Here and there,
where some peasant farmer had planted the young rice plants earlier, the
yellow had turned to the softest, brightest green. Now and again I saw a
peasant’s house, with its cool, clean verandah, its quaint paper
windows, and its sliding paper-door. At least I knew it was there. It
was daytime, and every door was open. We passed a funny little company
of Japanese soldiers. The Japanese play at war far less gravely than
your boys and mine do. Frankly, they are very droll in their martial
aspect; and their exquisite good taste makes them conscious of this. The
land of the Hara-kiri is not the land of men who lack fortitude in
death. The Japanese know how to die, but they do not know how to fight;
at least, not against Occidental forces. And, if they did, the odds are
so preposterously against them that they must be beaten in any conflict
with a Western power. They know this; and they avoid war, and will avoid
it in every way consistent with their national self-respect, of which
they have plenty. The present moment seems to give me the lie. But,
elated as the Japanese are over the outcome (so far) of the
Chino-Japanese war, I doubt if they would be mad enough to throw down
the gauntlet to a Western power.
Then we came to pretty, home-like places where liveried servants—or
their Japanese analogies—were working in the ample grounds. We had
reached the suburb where the Sannomiyas lived. Their house, which was a
peculiarly dark red, sat far back amid graceful shady trees and profuse
fragrant flowers. I sent up my card with a pencilled message; for the
servant who answered the door could not understand the most rudimentary
English.
The drawing-room in which I waited was furnished very handsomely. The
necessary articles of furniture had been made either in Europe or after
European models. The bric-à-brac and the ornamental pieces of furniture
(except the piano) were principally Japanese. It was a delightful
collection. The pictures, which were very fine, were both Japanese and
European.
A door opened noiselessly, and I thought of some lines of Scott’s—lines
I had so often had the pleasure of parsing:—
The mistress of the mansion came,
Mature of age, a graceful dame;
Whose easy step and stately port
Had well become a princely court.
I never learned who Madame Sannomiya was in Europe, nor how she came to
decide upon so unusual a marriage and the consequent residence. But I
knew before she spoke that she was no adventuress. She had had character
and position all her life. Her every word and motion proclaimed it. She
had been facile in the ways of many a Western Court before she became
one of the Court circle of Japan.
She was a tall, large woman, with a plain, strong face. She had a
quantity of waving fair hair which she wore elaborately dressed. Her
even teeth were large and white. Her hands were over large, but
surpassingly beautiful. When I first saw her she wore a soft pink
cashmere house-robe; it was touched here and there with sage-green,
which might have been Japanese; but I was sure it was French.
I have rarely met a better-informed woman than Madame Sannomiya, and
never one who gave me more the impression of quiet force. She had just
come back from Kioto, where she had been sent as the representative of
the Empress to the Tsarevitch; for I am writing of a time a few days
after the attempt upon the life of his Imperial Highness.
Great preparations had been made in Tokio for the reception of the
Russian prince. The Japanese Court was like a nursery full of children
about to give a tea-party. All the detail of the elaborate arrangements
had devolved upon the master of ceremonies, Mr. Sannomiya. Everything
had been so admirably planned that I shall always believe it had in
reality evolved from the active, capable brain of his English wife. Then
the attempt was made upon the life of the son of the “Great White
Monarch” just as he was entering Japan. The Japanese Court was like a
beehive turned upside down! It was a burlesque reign of terror. Every
one that could went to bed. The Empress set the example; her Majesty
kept her bed for weeks and spent the time crying. The entire nation
seemed to expect the Russian fleet to swoop down upon their little
island and sink it for ever in the deep ocean. The Mikado hastened to
the Tsarevitch at Kioto, and the Empress sent Madame Sannomiya with him.
It was the most sensible thing she could possibly have done. Madame
Sannomiya was charmed with his Imperial Highness, and with his princely,
generous way of passing over and making light of an incident which very
nearly cost him his life, and which did curtail his pleasant trip, for
his Imperial mother very naturally insisted upon his immediate return
home. What mother would not have done so? For weeks the Japanese Court
eschewed all festivities.
A reaction against Western influence had already begun. This
_contretemps_ fanned it into a flame. That is not altogether to be
regretted. It was a pity to see the clear, bright tints of Japanese life
shrouded by the gray of our duller Western existence. It was a crime for
the women of Japan to disfigure their forms (or lack of form) with
inappropriate European gowns. I gloated over Japan; it feasted my eyes
and my mind. I rejoice to feel that the characteristics of her people
are to be preserved yet a little longer. Madame Sannomiya, who, I am
sure, loved Japan and sought its welfare, felt this keenly. She was,
however, ambitious for the Imperial family to have the broadest
cosmopolitan culture. Nor was she a woman of passive ambitions. She told
me how she had deplored the adoption of European dress by the women of
Japan.
It was the second time I visited Madame Sannomiya that she took me into
her dining-room. Above the wainscoting hung a remarkable collection of
framed photographs. They were all of “great folk” and all were
autographed. Almost every crowned head in Europe was represented there.
The largest and the most handsomely framed of the photographs was of
Queen Victoria. Madame Sannomiya was very proud of it, and of the letter
her Majesty had sent with it. The Duke of Connaught was ill in Japan.
Madame Sannomiya nursed him. When his Royal Highness had returned to
England, his Queen-mother sent a note of thanks and her picture to the
woman who had the good fortune to serve the Duke.
I do not know why she was called “Madame” Sannomiya. Her cards are
engraved “Mrs. Yoshitane Sannomiya,” but “Madame” she invariably is
throughout Japan.
She always spoke of the Empress with great and almost tender affection.
I can well understand that her sovereign lady has come to lean upon her,
and often finds it easier to bid Madame Sannomiya decide for her than to
decide for herself. Certainly “Madame” is extremely influential, and I
think she enjoys her influence. No woman in Japan, not of the immediate
blood-royal, is so free of her Majesty’s bedchamber; yet no one seems
jealous. Added to the gift of strength, she has the grace of tact.
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[2] In that I was wrong. Viscountess Aoki, the accomplished wife of the
Japanese minister to the Courts of St. James’s and Berlin, is also
European.