I
All the way across the Pacific we mused on the probability of getting a
glimpse of Japanese family life—not of mere inns or wide-open
lower-order hovels, but of the unexpurgated interior of a real Nipponese
home. The chance came quickly and unexpectedly, on our first day in the
country. One of those fires which rival earthquakes in strewing with
disasters the history of this flimsily wood-built land had just erased
one of the three or four hotels of Tokyo that welcome foreigners—at
least foreigners of the table and chair habit. Luckily for us; for, had
the mishap been postponed a fortnight, the likelihood of seeing all our
worldly goods, lugged thither with much mental and financial effort,
ascend in smoke, would have been excellent. It was lucky, too, that the
refugees from the chaotic ruin had filled its former rivals to
overflowing; for thereby not only did we escape the legal banditry which
they have the reputation of practising upon those who fall into their
hands as clients, but we realized our pent-up desire.
One of my few letters of introduction to the island empire did the
trick. The addressee himself lived far from his office, but one of his
subordinates requested—or consented, at a flicker of the superior’s
eyebrow—to be permitted to offer us temporary asylum in his mean and
dishonorable abode. Not that the solution was reached at once, just like
that, in an easy, offhand American manner. The Japanese mind does not
work that way. To begin with, there was an interminable session with the
telephone, actually manipulated by a boyish underling, under the
dictation of the seated man of standing. Yet, though fully half the
audible end of the conversation consisted of the endless repetition of
“Moshy-moshy”—which seems to be an abbreviation of something
corresponding to “Pardon your dishonorable servant for presuming to
exist, but have the honorable kindness to deign to listen to the
miserable noises which I shall now convey to your august ear through
this most disreputable and unethical mechanical contraption”—and though
the instrument was of as antiquated form, and the telephone system of
Japan is as deeply imbedded in the postal and telegraph department of
the Government, as in France, it was noticeable that it performed its
ends with what would there be considered vertiginous and incredible
efficiency.
Just where the hour or two went between this confirming of my
information regarding the plenary condition of Tokyo’s surviving hotels
and the actual offer of temporary refuge no one with mere American
experience could fathom, nor one without generations of schooling in the
intricacies of Japanese etiquette explain. As to the similar length of
time which elapsed between that epochal decision and its physical
accomplishment—do not housewives, even of our own often too swift-moving
land, require time to prepare themselves and their dwellings for the
fitting deception of unexpected but “highly distinguished” guests?
The mean and dishonorable abode proved to be a most delightful and
thoroughly Japanese dwelling set in its own spacious garden, at half an
hour’s dodging by “motor-car” from the modernized heart of Tokyo. So far
so good. But other difficulties quickly beset our path. Should, for
instance, “highly honorable” guests commit the uncleanly Western
barbarism of shaking hands in response to the welcoming antics of the
entire galaxy of hosts,—women, children, servants, as well as the now
lordly master himself,—who were wiping with their brows the matted
threshold a high step above us? Should the removal of one’s dishonorable
footwear and the performance of whatever might be the proper
gesticulations of greeting be simultaneous—ambidextrous, so to speak—or
consecutive, and, if the latter, in what order? What, if any, should be
the reputable means of concealing the sudden discovery that, presuming
upon its customary invisibility in one’s own scheme of life, one had
been so careless as to permit a humble nether garment to reach a state
incompatible with the publicity to which it is frequently subjected in
Japan? Certainly one must, at least, flinging aside all etiquette,
Oriental or Western, dash after that two-year-old member of the family,
who, still dishonorably shod, set off on a sudden scamper through the
frail house, in imminent possibility of racing unchecked through one of
its paper walls, the while clamoring for his overdue bath, board, and
bed in a manner not customarily used toward a chance host in any land.
Things move with a certain Oriental leisureliness even in Japan; but the
time came when, after a supper that night that might have been less
deliberately an attempt to be European, and baths which were not
particularly noted for their privacy, piles of quilts were at last
spread upon the spotless straw matting of our large second-story chamber
and cylindrical bean-bags lay ready to receive our weary heads. Beyond a
miniature gorge the darkness was sprinkled with hundreds of the lights
of Tokyo; to our ears came across the intervening gardens the mild night
noises of Ushigome-ku, one of the most populous wards of the densely
populated Japanese capital, the subdued scraping of wooden _getas_ most
conspicuous among them; surely we could not complain of delay or lack of
thoroughness in the granting of our wish for a glimpse of home life in
Japan.