There is, perhaps, no good reason why the stranger should be often
astounded, rather than merely amused at the contrasts of Japan. Any
nation, particularly so far removed and individualistic a nation,
hedging itself round for more than two centuries with a Chinese wall of
seclusion, then suddenly emerging into the sunlight of to-day and making
frantic efforts to overtake its modernized fellows, could not but
present a similar spectacle. Yet I confess myself still not immune to
shocks of this nature. To stroll from the mammoth wrestling pavilion of
Tokyo, with its wholly un-Occidental pastime, throng, contestants, point
of view, to the commonplace field a gunshot distant where a group of
Japanese youths in baseball uniforms were defeating at our national game
a similar group from one of our own universities, was like stepping
across a thousand years of time in a single stride. Side by side there
travel, carouse, and worship men of whom one seems no farther removed
from us either in garb or mentality than a Frenchman, while the other
might that very moment have stepped forth from a _daimyo’s_ train in the
“Cipangu” of Marco Polo. In the heathenish interior of an Asakusa
temple, most popular with the rank and file of all Tokyo’s myriad places
of worship, there pause to toss a copper coin into the enormous grated
hopper, to clap their hands thrice and call the wandering attention of
the gods to their prayers, even to buy tissue-paper charms written by a
Buddha-faced priest, men in faultless Broadway attire who have spent the
day in modern offices between telephone and stenographer. Under the
fantastic garb of a wandering pilgrim, with his jingling bells and his
prayer-written staff, is often concealed a doctor or a lawyer of Western
training, with perhaps a fluent command of English.
Among the cabin-passengers on the Nippon Yusen Kaisha liner that brought
us across the Pacific was a brilliant young Japanese who had been
teaching the intricacies of a medical specialty in one of the oldest and
most famous of our universities. Outwardly, at least, nothing remained
of his Orientalism except a hint of foreign accent in his English, and
his telltale eyes. Even his point of view on matters large or small
seemed that of the American colleagues he had left behind. On the dock
at Yokohama he was met by his future wife, properly chaperoned,
shrinking subserviently within her modest kimono and pillow-like _obi_.
The pair bowed solemnly to each other at some two yards’ distance, he
moderately, she almost to the stone flagging; then as he stalked away
she clattered behind him in her wooden clogs, lugging his American
hand-bag.
[Illustration: The sacred red lacquer bridge at Nikko]
[Illustration: A quiet corner of the temples of Nikko]
Our passage had been enlivened also by a naval engineer from one of
Japan’s great government shipyards, who was returning from two years of
study and observation among those of America and Europe. He was to have
remained a year longer, but both his father and his fiancée had suddenly
died. I visited him one day at his home in Tokyo, one of those frail
little houses of the capital set in its quaint, inevitable garden. His
latest European garb had been altered only by the removal of his shoes;
but an elder sister kowtowed profoundly at his curt, quick command and
hurried away, to prostrate herself before us on the matted floor a
moment later with a tray of tea and sweetmeats.
He would be going away in a few days, I suggested, to the naval base to
which he was attached?
“As soon as I have arranged my marriage,” he replied.
“But,” I said, “your fiancée is no longer living?”
“Ah, yes, that one died,” he answered, in an expressionless monotone,
“but my sister has picked out three other girls for me to choose from,
and in a few days I will decide....”
“And the marriage?”
“In about three months, as soon as everything is prepared. You see, my
father having died, I have become the head of the family, and I must
marry quickly.”