Wmmt go letters ■ FROM falll! HilEAL JAPAN IIIIBIMIIB !■ ■IHIIIIBIIIB ■ « I II M^m BLACK Class Book„ J35T GopigteM COPYRIGHT DEPOSm Touch-and-Go Letters The Real Japan Being volume one of Touch-and-Go Letters from 'round the World BY HARMAN BLACK a Author of The Real Round the World, The Real Europe, The Real United States and Canada, The Real Hono- lulu, Japan and China, Real Trans-Siberian Rail- way and Russia, Real Northern Europe, Real Southern Europe. REAL-BOOK COMPANY Woolworth Building New York .e.» I inscribe this book to my good friend and typical American, John F. Galvin. NOV 27 1922 Copyrighted, 1922 by Harman Black ©C1A689924 To whom and about Pages whom letters were written The Widow 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, 93 The Diplomat 14, 17, 21, 22, 24, 93 My Nephew Gene Jr 9 My Cousin Evalyn 12 Mr. Hayward, a Public Official 14, 48, 56, 63 Sam (a bachelor) 16 My Nephew Dave 19 Mr. Barnes (a lawyer) 23 My Mother 25, 37, 49, 54, 59, 73 Lamar (a friend) 31 Vera (a friend) 34 Uncle Charlie 67 My Brother Gene 69 My Brother Charlie 83 Aunt Kate 74 Bob (my best friend) 7S John G. (a business man) 84 Ida (a girl) 89 My Grandmother 90 Joe and Mabel 91 Leon (a tourist executive) 95 Hiram (a farmer) 100 Fred B. (a statesman) 107 Aunt Tallulah 88 Walton (a hotel proprietor) 105 The After Word Ill During my round-the-world trip I wrote letters to some relative or friend every day. On a recent vacation I put the best part of 41 of them into this book. After the success of my series of round-the-world and Euro- pean and American guides I determined to put the letters into this book. They were originally to be mailed to wounded soldiers who were unable to leave their beds and to others confined in-doors by affliction. They will still be used in that way without charge. This volume, the first of the series, relates only to Japan. The succeeding ones, being prepared now, will tell of the rest of the westward trip 'round the world. They will like this one follow the same trips outlined in my guide- books, but will describe with some detail what is only briefly mentioned in the guide-books. This volume is for people who want a sketchy descrip- tion of countries and who do not believe it is necessary to wade through volumes to learn how Japan looks, and what her people do, and how they feel and why. I have referred to just enough of the past to help us understand some of the mystery and charm of the land of the Chrysanthemum. HARMAN BLACK. New York. Those of us born in the blue of the mountains love the sea and those born in the salt smell of the waves long to see the peaks. All of us who have the spirit of investiga- tion love both. Sometimes I think everybody likes to travel because it gives the opportunity to expend our excess energy and to gratify our insatiate curiosity because it is such an easy way to get definite ideas about things; may be it is because we like to do things that others have not done. Probably on account of all this and because our spirits know no fetters we long to see it all. At any rate I know that of all the pleasures given to man travel is the one we never tire of and from which we get the most and most lasting benefits. In March I had finished the most difficult law-suit I had ever tried, and I found to my delight that there was a lull in my practice that would give me a real vacation. Without knowing just why, I had always wanted to go around the world — not because Magellan had but because I hadn't. After my clerks had recovered from the announcement that I was going, I began my preparations. My first con- sideration was time, the second where and how I should go, the third expense, and the fourth baggage, or I should say as complete lack of baggage as possible. I finally boiled this down to a big Gladstone bag and a small hand- bag. Afterwards I found that even this gave me at least a third more space than I needed. If I had already written the series of guide-books that I published after my return from my trip I could have saved weeks of study in planning my journey. The proper seasons to be in different countries first occupied my attention. I had read and dreamed of Japanese cherry blossoms, and I tied my whole itinerary around my desire to see these exquisite buds. But nobody could tell me exactly when the cherry blossoms came in Japan. If I had known enough I would have recalled that Japan is a long country running north and south and that they bloom at different times in the different latitudes. I found that the season begins about the middle of March and lasts until May, depending upon the forwardness of the Spring. The single blossoms come first and they are followed by the gorgeous double blossoms, the latter almost as big as your hand. Only through the personal influence of a friend was I able to get a stateroom on the Pacific Mail steamship "Siberia", which left San Francisco on the 29th day of March. So one morning, after I had closed up a few things I hadn't done in New York, and after writing home a final letter from the United States, I left the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco in a taxi for the Pacific Mail pier. My round-the-world ticket had been bought in New York for $441.21, and it covered the whole trip except the gap from Moscow (the Western end of the Trans-Siberian Railway) to Paris, which I afterwards bought for $109.64. Post-war prices are higher of course. I had made my will before I left New York, writing out everything that would need to be known to go right along with things in case I never came back. I felt then that it was a stupendous undertaking to go "round-the- world". Now I know how easy it is. I shall never forget just how I felt before the ship started. Honolulu, the first stop, seemed very far away, and Yokohama looked just on top of the curve my mind made of the water, China was on the slope going down the other side, and Siberia was lands-end indeed. There were not many people on board, and the prospect of sixteen days at sea was not alluring. But at that time my friend, The Diplomat hadn't called my attention to a fair girl with topaz eyes and bronze brown hair who appeared at dinner that evening. Friends sent me a lot of books, and I looked forward with keenest delight to having time to read them. I had Murray's Guide Book to Japan, and some of Lafcadio Hearn's, and Professor Chamberlain's "Things Japanese". I had often found guide books unsatisfactory, even in- cluding the cyclopaedic Baedekers, but I had no idea this feeling would ever drive me to write a round-the-world series of books ; consequently, I took not a note upon the entire trip. But I did write these letters home. If they serve to remind men of what they have seen on similar trips, or interest those who have not had the time or means to go 'round, I shall be more than repaid the work of writing them. H. B. On the Pacific Mail S. S. "Siberia", Pacific Ocean, March 29th. My dear Gene, Jr. : When we were leaving the almost completely landlocked harbor of San Francisco, the water was very muddy and everybody was asking what had become of the beauty of the Golden Gate, but presently the Siberia stood out to sea through a narrow channel between the rocky shores, and the sun came out and lighted up the blue mountains that reach down to the water, and then the picture was all that had been told of it. Floating clouds wreathed all the azure bills, and the view was like the fjords of Norway. In the first two days it was cloudy and cold and we all began to ask what had become of the "Sunset track" that the advertising folders told us of, but on the third day the sun painted with gold the waters of the Pacific, and for three days we have ploughed through trackless blue, flecked with white-caps that complete the most exquisite tints of sea and sky. The sun, as we approach the equator, sets so fast you can see it go down like a golden balloon, almost in a moment. There is no after-glow and no vivid cloud coloring, just a slight mellow light, then some dark Japanese looking clouds that float by in long curling wreaths. The smoke from the steamer adds a murky out- line, and the stars soon come out clear as points of diamonds. I saw one last night, a big red one, that "fell" for seconds, and seemed to be finally swallowed up in the sea. There are lots of flying fish that skim along the crests of the waves, then dive out of sight. Yesterday, we saw four whales spouting like a campaign orator. The ship is only six hundred feet long, but is quite comfortable and the fare splendid. There is a Phillipino band on board, and they play LaPaloma, and all the soft Spanish songs, as well as "Row, Row" and all the ragtime tunes. Our waiters are Chinamen who wear immaculate blue linen "slips" in the morning and snowy linen ones at dinner. They are noiseless and competent, but never waste any words. They insist on calling rice "lice" — but otherwise are all right. I asked one if they did any washing on board. He said "ship no washee." The dining room is about 100 feet square, and is the writing room as well, after the meals are over. The band sits in a gallery round the room, and there are little alcoves round the balcony. In the morning we are called at eight by the Chinese steward, and take a hot salt bath, having previously washed in soap and fresh water in the state-room. Then we dress and breakfast at nine. Everybody is gathered by this time round the wireless office to read the morning bulletins from San Francisco. Then a walking match around the deck where the strenuous ones play shuffleboard, or hit a striking bag. Yesterday as we reached the warm climate, they rigged up a canvas bag 25 feet x 10 feet for sea water bathing on the forward deck. It holds about forty thousand gallons. The feeding of the coolies on the aft deck is quite a show. They eat rice pulled out like mac- aroni, and chopped dried cabbage and small pieces of raw chopped meat and fish. Our Captain, contrary to all the rules of the sea, is quite a humorist. Today he met a seasick man and asked him, "Have you been 'aboard' all day ?" The man replied "Yes, leave out the 'a.' " The Captain sits at the head of the table and there are a Russian Countess and her brother, a doctor, a captain in the army, and a major to whom I had 10 a letter of introduction. The latter is going with his wife to command the Marine Corps at Pekin, and they have asked me to come to see them. A great many tourists are going only to Honolulu, while some others go on by way of China and India through the Suez. I have about decided to go from Nagasaki, Japan to Shanghai, thence up by a new railroad to Pekin, &c, and by the Trans-Siberian rail- way to Moscow. Look in your geography and see what "trade winds" are, and what the "magnetic equator" is, and how it differs from the equatorial line. Almost every mile of the Pacific is charted by our Government and the other governments in co-operation, and after having taken averages for maybe fifty years, they know about what winds will blow, and their velocity in every section we travel. The time has gone by very quickly, and after a day in Honolulu, we will have nine days more before we land at Yokohama. Our anticipations are as keen as those of Christopher Columbus when he came over in his caravels, except that we have read of what we are going to, and he knew nothing of what he was getting into. There is a man at the table with his nephew, younger than you are, and the Uncle's name is Will, so every time he speaks I wish you were with me. Never mind, next time I will go by India and take you with me. Kiss Grandma for me and Julia, and give my love to all the rest. Your affectionate Uncle, H. 11 Pacific Ocean, March 29, 10 P. M. My dear Evalyn, It seems very hard to realize that my dream of going to the Orient is about to come true. I have been thinking all day about the general belief that the East is the land of flowers and romance. I am sure that there are prettier flowers in the gardens of Europe than I shall ever see in Japan and China, and surely the history of Europe is replete with everything romantic, so I have concluded that the lure of the East is not in its romanticism but its mystery, its differ entness, and its unaccountability from our Western standpoint. It seems very queer to go West in order to reach the East ; but even in San Francisco, you get a little of the atmosphere of the Orient in its China- town and the universal employment of Chinese laborers and servants here. The good Pacific Mail ship Siberia is big enough to be comfortable, and the fare is almost as good as the Mauretania. There ar,e about 140 on board, and a very agreeable list. Army officers, and engineers, the inevitable English and Scotch tourist, and the lady from Rochester New York, who loves to pronounce her morning ablution "baaath". I was put at the Captain's table, as I had a letter tc him. The table is full of pink roses, and in the centre is a quaint little Japanese pine tree that looks like part of the decoration of a doll's house and grounds. A Chinese steward stands behind every plate, noiseless and competent, but wholly impervious to the English language. They waste no words, such as "Sir" or "very well", but follow the scriptural injunction as to "yea, yea", and "nay, nay". They dress in pa jama-looking suits, very thin 12 for this season of the Spring, and when you look around you always imagine a woman is standing there. Tonight at dinner, they have changed from the blue "ratine" effects to pure white, and they look and move around like a lot of Oriental ghosts. It seems impossible for them to use an "r". If they tried to say rats it would come out "late". Today at promptly 12 :30, the call "all ashore" was given, and promptly at 1 :00 we steamed out of foggy San Fran- cisco Bay, and in an hour we were outside the Golden Gate and coasting the blue mountains of California, going apparently due north for quite a while. Finally the fog lifted, and we found ourselves in the waters of the Pacific. In the Bay the water is yellowish and muddy. The fog-horn blew for two hours today, but the sea cleared late for a beautiful Pacific sunset, like the sunsets in Norway. As these letters are my diary, please preserve this one, which is No. 2 of the trip, and send it to my mother, compiler of this and all my other trips, and some day I will put it into a book. I thank you so much for your letter and the tracts. I am reading a few chapters every day in the Bible, which, of course, I find most interesting. I wish I had your religion. Lots of love to Grandma and Aunt Kate and Charlie, Your affectionate cousin, H. B. 13 Pacific Ocean En Route to Honolulu, March 30th. Dear Mr. Hayward: I find it was not necessary to wait for the Cherry Blos- som season in Japan. There is a peach blossom on board who is the "image" of Fritzie SchefT and is one of the j oiliest and brightest girls I ever met, so I am enjoying the trip very much. The weather the past two days has been grand, and everybody is having a fine time. We are due at Honolulu tomorrow, and I will mail this there. The view on the boat is fine and there is a very interesting crowd on board. Mr. Wickersham, former Attorney Gen- eral, gets on board tomorrow for Japan. Today, they rigged up a canvass tank of sea water on the deck for bathing. It was clear and green, while the sea it came from, under the same sky, was a beautiful blue. Can you determine from this whether the sea colors the water or the water colors the sea? The sky, of course, was blue like the sea. Cordially yours, H. B. Beyond San Francisco On the Pacific, April 3rd. My dear Frank: I must tell you of a very agreeable young fellow who is going out to China to enter our diplomatic service. He is just the age to enjoy this journey and his enthusiasm 14 is delightful. As we left the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco the day before we sailed, he pointed to a very charming young woman with bronze hair and topaz eyes. "If she was going along" he said, "sixteen days on the Pacific Ocean would be like sixteen hours". To my sur- prise, the day our ship lifted anchor I saw her waiving good-bye to friends who had come down to see her off. This morning he came down to breakfast and told me of a beautiful widow on board, but he said I would have to find out for myself who she was. Of course it was the same girl. * * * They hit it off at once, but the strangest thing is that for some unaccountable reason she has de- cided that my youthful friend, whom we call The Diplomat, has some great secret or mystery in his life and is undoubt- edly going to the Orient to forget his troubles. The only reason I can ascribe for this notion of hers is that like all well-trained would-be-diplomats he maintains a dis- creet reserve. When I told him that Edgar Saltus said there was "nothing so impenetrable as silence" he agreed with me that he must humor her in her ridiculous surmises about himself. I promised to aid all I could in heightening the mystery. He has apparently had no difficulty in getting her tremendously interested, and now I am wondering if she really does think him a mysterious personage or is merely playing the game with him. Our gallant American Commandant has already warned him, solemnly quoting Sam Weller's admonition about "bewaring of widows" — but I think he has warned the wrong person. I am still having a wonderful trip. Cordially yours, H. B. 15 Pacific Ocean, on the way to Honolulu, which is 2100 miles west of San Francisco, April 3rd. Dear Sam: These Pacific Mail boats are constant surprises. The fare especially is unusual. We have wonderful curries, at which the Chinese cooks are adepts, and pineapples and tropical fruit of all kinds, and a very excellent Phillippino band. All day we walk and talk and eat, and some of us drink. The Chinese crew and a great many of the pas- sengers gamble on the deck all day. The dealer has on a small table a pile of plain white rice buttons. He ar- bitrarily, or rather accidentally or haphazardly, separates a pile of them, say half or a third from the others, and then with a small stick rakes four of them away at a time. There are four corners for bets. At each of these you can bet that when he finished raking off four at a time, there would be left one, two, three or four. The odds were very fair, and sometimes I would play all morning. One day I saw a degraded specimen of Mongolian win two hundred dollars in gold at a single play. I first won seventy-five dollars, then hung on until I had contributed sixty-five to the Confucian fund, recalling Bret Harte's lines that "for ways that are dark and for tricks that are vain, the Heathen Chinee is peculiar." We had some missionaries on board, and their lugubrious countenances kept the other passengers away from them. What a wonderful idea it would be to send our magnetic men and attractive women to convert the Heathen! I haven't made up my mind yet about foreign missions, but I have about unattractive missionaries. 16 My cabin mate was an engineer going to the Phillip- pines; a rough big-hearted philosopher who immediately attracted one of the young women aboard. After they had sat out unusually late one night and he had come in quietly, looking rather puzzled, I said: "She seems to like you". He merely replied: "Nothing nobody says to nobody at sea don't mean nothing nohow". At San Francisco, as I hadn't time to do so in New York, I had my passport vised by the Russian Consul so that I wouldn't have delay when I started through Siberia. Then I bought light woolen over-shoes to slide through the Japanese temples. I bought baggage insurance, took out accident and health insurance, had myself vaccinated for typhoid and small pox (which is dangerous in China), bought a compass and an alarm watch, got up a cable code and registered my cable address, and mailed home a mailing itinerary. So you see I haven't had much time to enjoy myself. Your friend, H. B. Honolulu, U. S. A, April 4. My dear Frank: I am afraid The Diplomat is getting along a bit too fast, so I am preparing to stage a quarrel between them to give him a chance to catch his breath. He and The Widow start the day at the piano with some sentimental song 17 which she sings in rather an alluring voice, then they read aloud and walk the decks and look over the rail at the blue waters. They are always together at meal time. He says she has "more curiosity than forty cats" about him, and as far as she can without being rude has asked him every adroit question known to feminine minds. I have advised him to answer casually and truthfully, but to volunteer no information whatsoever as to who or what he is or where he came from or where he is going. He says she asked him last night as they sat out on deck rather late how it happened that with his brilliant prospects (which she knows nothing of) he had never thought of marrying. I had warned him to be especially reticent along this line, and he seems to be following directions explicitly. He answered by assuming a far away look and simply saying, "How do you know I haven't?" This added fuel to the curiosity flame. She told him that she and her friend who is travelling with their party had decided that he must have known sorrow, and that if she thought for sure he had had any trouble she could sympathize with him, but that he didfl't seem to trust her or want to tell her anything and so she could only guess that he was going to China. For a youngster the boy showed some signs of being a real diplomat, because he simply said "There are some things you don't want to talk about on a pleasure trip". I will write more about this when it happens, which it certainly will. I am, sincerely H. B. 18 Honolulu, United States of America, April 4th. My dear Dave: Arriving at Honolulu I expected to see the divers at Waikiki first thing, riding the surf. Instead we anchored at a modern wharf, and automobiles were waiting in droves for passengers. I was not prepared for so much modern- ness, and the surprise is greater still that upon landing you see very little in the business part of town suggesting anything more than any American City, — clean streets, and shops with American window dressing. But you do see some yellow "mammies" in stiff white mother Hub- bards. The main hotel, the Alexandria, is as modern as money can make it, with elevators and electricity and a roof garden. But you have only eight hours until the boat starts, and you drive through pineapple farms that load the air with fragrance to the Aquarium. You have passed queer old houses that remind you of the ante-bellum type in the South and grounds thick with flowers and palms and the giant flowering bouganvilla, a great red flower on trees sometimes thirty feet high. The aquarium is not as extensive as New York's or Naples', but there are fish of every color of the spectrum, wonderful oranges and blacks and velvet green and golden and pea-cock blue, so exquisite and remarkable that you think of rare Chinese silks and wonderful flowers. The colors are delicate as orchids, and worth going half round the world to see. But the main trip of this short one day stop is to the "Pali". Along splendid roads built by the United States, you go up and up through the heavily verdured mountains 19 until your motor stops at a wind-swept point where the velocity of the breeze nearly drives you over the sheerest precipice. Eighteen hundred feet below this rocky height spreads the whole fresh green island of Oahu and at every beach sparkles the green water as it breaks into white foam on the white sand. It is as beautiful as opal dust illuminated by strong lights. Every green inch of the island is covered with lichens and moss and shrubs. It is as clean as a dipped boquet, and is like some great exquisite green jade set in the foam of the sea. From the Pali we motored back along the smooth roads (built by our government) lined with palms and the sweet smell- ing pineapple plantations. When I paid ten dollars to cable home my safe arrival, I began to realize how far away I was. After a pleasant luncheon at the Service Club (army and navy) where I met the Admiral in command of these waters, I returned to the ship. After buying one of the wreaths of bright native flowers, I settled myself down for another ten days aft sea. My fifteenth day from New York had brought me to the island of Oahu and Honolulu, and, aside from a low shelving coruscating beach where the waves break into jewelled mists, I thought when I left the ship for this wonderful drive that Honolulu was like any other American town. It is the great cross roads of the Pacific, and our coaling station for the fleet. "Some coal yard" as one of the passengers irreverently said. They are great divers these Honolulans. If I tossed a coin from the deck of the ship to the water below, which swarmed with them as we sailed out of the harbor, they would catch it in the clear green water with their 20 hands or their teeth before it had time to sink two feet. They looked like animated bronzes in the bright western sunlight. This morning a Chinese took my washing, and this afternoon at four o'clock delivered it on the ship. As I broke my glasses on the ship, I walked into an occulists' shop and in less than two hours he had ground my compounded lenses and repaired the frames. From this town being only headquarters for whalers in the early days to this efficiency now is "going some". I almost forgot to tell you of the War Cloak of the Hawaiian chieftain, Kamehemeha, which it took genera- tions of natives years to make and which contains 150,000 gorgeous feathers of every hue. Then I saw a Congrega- tional Church made of coral rock. At last I did see the surf riders at Waikiki Beach, which glistens like a jewel in the twilight tropical sunlight. They are lithe little men who float their flat boards over the wave tops with wonderful balance and precision all day. Very sincerely, H. B. Pacific Ocean, April 8th. Dear Frank: If there was anything else on board to do I wouldn't be amusing myself stirring up these troubles, but after The Widow thought up such a nice improbable story about 21 The Diplomat I didn't have the heart to let him disillusion her. It would be such a jar to her intuition. But the boy is going too fast. Today they sat on the deck and she was manicuring his nails, just to show her devotion I sup- pose, and he submitted in full view of the promenaders. I am afraid my influence over him is weakening, and I am almost afraid to advise him any more. He may tell her. The worst of it is that he has for so many days lived the part of a man with a sad, sad past that he almost believes it. And I distinctly remember how excited and pleased he was two days out to get a wireless from some girl in Frisco. It looks as if I would have to suggest to him that he appoint a committee of passengers to deter- mine whom he really likes. Now that I have started in with this deception business I suppose I will have to stick, but I am becoming almost disgusted with him. He started out to be a Houdini as far as matrimonial handcuffs were concerned, but it seems to me he is acquiring the lovers lock-step. On ship-board how jve enjoy the troubles of others ! Very truly, H. B. Pacific Ocean, April 8th. Dear Frank: The pretty young widow has it all figured out, The Diplomat says. She tells him that she is sure that what- ever happened it is not his fault, and right or wrong she 22 is eternally with him. The Captain of the ship, who isn't always studying the charts, likes the widow himself, and I have decided that he is the only available excuse for their first quarrel. Acting according to my instruction, The Diplomat has told her that he didn't see why the Captain should neglect the ship all the time because the passengers have eyes of certain colors. Then The Widow, who had also concluded that it was high time things should not run so smoothly if there was any true love in it, replied that "For a man who seemed to be just recovering from a sorrow and who had no right to demand anything from anybody else in the world, The Diplomat seemed to be taking a good deal of a burden on himself in looking after the Captain's affairs." The boy looked hurt, apologized and walked away, and they have been apart all day. Tonight as he stepped into his stateroom he kicked against a glass of water on the floor. It had a small blue flower in it and I suppose indicated that she was sorry. It indicated to me that she wanted him to think she was. Next time I will have to get them really angry, because that little blue flower certainly did the trick. I am, with regards as ever, Sincerely H. B. Between Honolulu and Yokohama, April 9th, Dear Mr. Barnes: At Honolulu, former Attorney General Wickersham and his wife and two young women who are their guests, 23 came aboard. I have had the pleasure of talking a good deal to Mr. Wickersham and find him one of the few- public men who doesn't shrink on closer inspection. He is wonderfully energetic and earnest and is one of the most interesting men I have ever met. Today, we had a long talk in a walk round the decks about racial characteristics, and climatic influences; and the amount of information he had at his finger's tips was quite amazing. I asked him how he managed to get so much time for reading outside of law books. I don't recall his exact answer, but it was on the Arnold Bennett line of utilizing all the twenty-four hours of the day. It is pleasant to meet one of these men who measures up to our ideals of a real Attorney General; and what most impressed me was his exceedingly high sense of his duty as a citizen and a publicist. He seems to have a perambulating library on the Far East, and eats up a book or so of it every day. I hope the office is running smoothly. Don't work too hard. With best wishes, Yours truly, H. B. Pacific Ocean, April 12th, Dear Frank: Judging from present indications, I think The Diplomat will be an engaged man before we land at Yokohama. If he escapes until they see a cherry blossom grove 24 together, he is doomed any way. He has already cap- tivated the father, mother, and the other widow who is travelling with them. The Widow told him she had confid- ed to him that she was not a real widow, had been married to an older man who did not understand her, didn't like his relatives, and all that old stuff we hear so often in divorce trials. I really feel responsible in a way for this situation because I encouraged him to deceive, but I had no idea it was going to be so serious. It never occurred to me to put over any story about secret sorrow for myself, and I didn't know it would go half as well for him as it has. He has jumped in like a man falling off the back end of a ferry. I don't know what will happen when they get to the parting of the ways because they are going to separate at Shanghai, he to go north across Siberia, and she south by India and the Suez to Europe. Sincerely, H. B. The Grand Hotel Lid., Yokohama, Japan, April 14. My dear mother: Here I am in the antipodes sixteen days from New York and 12,000 miles from home. It is a dream-land of flowers and trees and strange temples and strange people. So absolutely different that you feel you are in a different world. But every morning I read here at least two newspapers well edited in English. I thought I had travelled in foreign countries, but this is the only really foreign one I have ever seen. This is 25 a military little nation, and the first reminder we had was when they told us no photographs could be taken within the 6 and a half mile limit outside the fortifications, the grey stone walls of which reaching down to the water's edge were the first thing we saw steaming up the bay. The ship anchored a little way out and a natty and very courteous Japanese health officer lined us up on the deck and, as one of the ladies said, "looked at our tongues". The inspection was delightfully quick and cursory. The courteous representative of the Standard Oil Com- pany met me with their tender in a driving rain, and the clouds hung so low we could hardly see the shore. I was delighted to hand him the fifty American cigars which the Japanese customs allowed me to bring in free. Yokohama is one vast temptation for foreigners who bargain-hunt for ivories, silks, embroideries, cotton crepes, bronzes, cloisonnes and porcelains. H. B. Yokohama, April 14th, My dear Evalyn: When we landed, Mrs. said "I won't get off, this in Jersey City." But we did, and there were long lines of two- wheeled baby carriages tilted over on their short shafts, the end of the latter crossed with wood and turned with some white metal. It requires an acrobat to get in one with the top up. As far back as 1905 there were over thirty thousand jinrikshaws and jinriksha 26 men in Tokio alone. It has been called a "Pull-man car". They cost very little, and when you feed the owner you are feeding the horse. The harness of the latter and the livery of the former are amazingly cheap. After one had pulled me all day, next morning he appeared with an entire change of costume even including hair-cut, and his companions jokingly announced that he was think- ing of retiring on his fortune. I had paid him sixty cents for the day, and this was much more than the tariff. Probably in a minute after touching the shore, and trying to get used to being in Japan, which the guide calls Japon, I saw the latest thing in Japanese overshoes. They are undershoes, and consist of a small piece of wood tied on with the usual thong between the two toes, and under it two vertical supports about three inches apart to keep the foot above the wet and mud. When I heard five hun- dred of these in the railroad station, they made a noise like a lot of stage horses approaching over an imaginary hill. The next thing I saw was or were babies, straddled across their mothers' backs and wadded thereto with some kind of a bandage and quilt. I saw today about 5,281,498 of these back ornaments with doll heads and chinquepin eyes (most of whom are literal * "soreheads"). They never seem to be noticing anything, and a woman said today that her "yellow lady's burden" was three and a half years old. To this habit of carrying child- ren on the shoulders of their mothers so long is ascribed * A great number of children in Japan have sybaritic eczema of the scalp, which though very disfiguring is not at all serious. It could be easily and quickly cured with an antiseptic wash, but a local superstition credits it with warding off other diseases later in life, so it is permitted to run its course. 27 in part the short legs of the Japs. Japan is fast becoming too "foreign" (American) ; the first intelligible sign read "E. M. F. automobile", the next "Singer machine". The little jinrickshaw men trot along lifting up their backs from under their round-topped hats just as a horse jogs his harness up and down. Every hat has a name, usually "Tomachi" on it, with the number of his "garage" and its name painted in white upon the blue back-ground. Their legs are about twice too big for them, and they lean forward and push their little carriages most ener- getically. The jinrickshas are not rubber tired, but are very comfortable with steel spokes and hubs. They cost about thirty-five dollars gold. The charge for a one-man rickshaw (without another man to push up hills) is 25 sen for two and a half miles, and 15 to 20 sen per hour. A sen is half a cent. The practical disuse of the horse for passengers keeps employed thousands of men who don't have to feed their steed in addition to themselves. This helps out in a little country where you pay a trans- portation tax every time you travel, and a producer's tax of twenty-five per cent, when you make anything, besides stamp tax for receipts, &c, &c. The Japanese settlement is continuously numbered re- gardless of streets, which makes no end of confusion in finding places. Along the quay to a side street from the landing, then you turn into the Bund, or foreign quarter, along the water front a mile to the Grand Hotel, which, except for being full of Japanese servants, is thoroughly American, and run by an old friend from New York. I get a good room and fine fare for $3.50 per day Amer- ican plan. Cats and frogs continued to pour all day, but the young lady whose family I have attached myself to 28 decided that we nevertheless go to see the Dai Butsu at Kamakura, 14 miles away and an hour by train. For twenty minutes we 'rickshawed to the station in single file, (the rickshaws hold one person each with the guide), then took one of the toy-like narrow gauge trains. The seats run lengthwise the car like our street cars. Second class was upholstered in what looked like "cretonne", but our first class was in that delightful Pullman car effect of plush. The seats are very low, to suit a short-legged race. Nearly everybody went second class, so we had nobody in first class except an officer in the Japanese army. We went through miles of the most picturesque rice lands under water, and saw trees and bushes and houses unlike anything else in the world, and very, very interesting. Finally we were at the little wooden station at Kamakura, and got into three 'rickshaws in the driving rain. We went through smooth alleys of road with bamboo fences on both sides, and busy bees of little Japs working on wood and carrying huge loads balanced on long poles. Some funny signs. One was "Milk and Bibles" ; another "The Waldorf Hotel by Charley" (the proprietor). The feet of our jinrickshaw men pattered along the muddy places for nearly an hour, when we were dumped by letting the shafts fall down. Got out and walked to the bronze statute of Buddha called the Dai Butsu" (Big Buddha) forty-seven feet high, hollow with a stairway to the top inside, and windows looking out on cherry trees and weeping ferns, red camelias and flowers of all kinds. We crossed a slippery stone-arched bridge, and the green placid face of the Dai Butsu loomed ahead at the end of a very artistically worked out avenue. The hands are crossed in the lap, and the ends of the thumbs just 29 meet. The eyes are solid gold, and the mouth twelve feet across. The statute made of sheets of cast bronze in 1252, is 49 feet high and 97 feet in circumference. The length from knee to knee (the knees are spread apart) is 35 feet. The silver "boss" or knob in the middle of the forehead weighs 30 pounds. Considering that he has sat in the same position seven hundred years, the expression is pleasing and not tired. It seems to say "This beats standing, and I represent a quiescent religion." Another most interesting statute is the Goddess of Mercy in the temple of Kwannon. It is of gilded brown lacquer and is over 30 feet high. Kamakura now has only eight thousand people, but it had over a million people in it between the twelfth and fifteenth century, and in 1192, it was established as the capital of the Shoguns by Yoritomo. The Khan's am- bassador, who was sent by his master to demand the sur- render of Japan, was beheaded at Kamakura. Coming back to the railway station, we stopped at the beautiful Kaihin-In fyotel, where we had tea served by a tidy little Japanese maid on a cool verandah overlooking the sea. I won't attempt yet to describe the cherry blossoms. We came back and 'rickshawed through the busy streets of Yokohama, especially Theatre Street, where the Japan- ese have moving pictures of the rarest type, generally a murder, &c, &c. This morning I left the photograph to have a group of you and father made in the gold lacquer. These photographs appear to be black on a background of gold. They say there is only one man in Japan who can make them, and he jealously guards his secret. They are framed in lacquer into which have been 30 ambered real cherry blossoms, so that the effect is very delicate and artistic. I ordered one for you, and said I would take two more if satisfactory. This is about all I have bought except some silk shirts from Yamatoya, the famous maker here, and a peanut carved out of ivory that is so natural you can almost smell the pink nut inside. At Yamatoya's I saw 350 girls making the silk shirts, in a little bamboo and paper factory. I have arranged to leave Harbin on the 29th of May so as to be in Paris about the 10th of June. I had a hard time trying to get accommodations on the Trans-Siberian, but succeeded. The State Express on this line leaves but once a week, and the number of berths is limited. I am going to Shanghai on the North German Lloyd Line, leaving Kobe May 9th, arriving there May 13th. Will be the guest of the Amer- ican Commandant at Pekin, Major Dion Williams. Lots of love to all of you until next time. As ever, H. B. In Japan, April 15th. Dear Lamar: The latter part of the fifth century marked the beginning of Japanese art, which, of course, came from China. One of its earliest examples is in the temple of Horuji. Kan- okas is the first artist of note of whom we have any record in Japan. The first native Japanese school of painters, Yamato-Ryu, was started in the eleventh century. 31 At the end of the thirteenth century, the leader of the Yamato-Ryu assumed the name of Tosa, and the Tosa-Ryu school exists to this day. The two motives that moulded the Japanese school were, of course, the Chinese and the Indian Buddhist, which showed strong traces of the classic. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Buddhist Priest So jo started the caricature. Then began the recrudescence of Chinese influence in Japanese art. Sesshu born in 1421, after a novitiate in Pekin, founded still another school in Japan. Kano Montonobu, who was born in 1477, became the founder of the greatest school in Japan, and it lasted three hundred years. Maruyama Okyo started the last period in Japanese art in the latter period of the eighteenth century. The pop- ular school (Ukiyo-e-Ryu) was composed of the workers who originated the wonderful Japanese illustrations, and this same class began to draw for the engravers. To love art is to love lacquer. It is gum from the lacquer tree and is afterwards treated to give it different colors and characteristics, with charcoal, turpentine or iron fil- ings. Exposure to a bright light turns it black before it is made up. It dries quicker in a damp than a dry spot. The lacquer surface is built up by covering an object with glue and hemp, then lacquer, than hempen cloth, then drying, and laying on additional coats of the gum. Between the different coats it is polished with a rough flat stone. The final touch is a powder of deer's horn. The design to be made is put on thin paper sized with a gum. On the side away from the lacquer the outline of the figure to be carved is drawn with a rat's hair brush. When this paper design has been rubbed into the lacquer it leaves the outline. This is rubbed with 32 a soft substance in which is used a stone a little harder than pumice, which white stone brings out a pattern of the same color. This pattern is then filled in with lacquer, which is powdered with gold, silver or colored dust. This is in turn varnished twice and again rubbed with a char- coal whet-stone with powdered deer's horn and oil. The makers of lacquer suffer from poison, and the lacquer rubbers protect their hands with gloves. The most exquisite carving is done in red lacquer, and the Japs work in it nearly as skilfully as the Chinese who invented it. The early seventeenth century marked the beginning of real ceramics in Japan. The "Old Satsuma" belongs to the next 150 years, and the best of that odd ware was made in the early nineteenth century. With Buddhism came carving, especially in wood and ivory. The wood is in addition usually lacquered. Japan's greatest sculptor was Jingoro in the sixteenth century. His best pieces are two elephants, and the "sleeping cat" at Nikko. Speaking of cats, most of them in Japan here have no tails. — The lower classes buy charms with the picture of the god invoked and generally a short prayer. These are religiously gathered from the sacred places visited by pilgrims. They are frequently made from the timber of destroyed temples, some of which art cut down at the end of twenty-five years. The oldest picture in Japan is in the Horyuji Temple at Nara. It is of the seventh century period, by a priest from Korea who selected a Buddhist subject. One painter is said to have depicted horses so natural that a rope had to be added to the sketch to keep them from going off daily to a neighboring pasture. Some of the finest pictures here are in the form of 33 kakemonos or scrolls, which is the Chinese as well as the Japanese way of making picture frame and all together. Your friend, H. B. Yokohama, Japan, April 15. Dear Miss Vera: You are the only one of my friends interested in Oriental history, and you will doubtless laugh at some of the things people have told me and at others I have read. Buddhist priests in 57 A. D. brought Chinese customs into Japan by way of Corea. Then the great families with their chiefs became the real rulers of Japan, although they made at least nominal obeisance to the Mikado. It seems that Corea was conquered in 200 A. D. by the Empress Jingo. The mists of antiquity veil early Japanese history up to the fifth century of the Christian era. After that, the Japanese rulers were Mikados descended from the Sun-Goddess. Their sway did not extend to the north, however, where the aboriginal Aainos still lived. The first Mikado, Jimmu Tenno, ascended the throne 660 B. C. The Chinese calendar was put into force in 602 A. D. Kojiki, the first Japanese book, was published in 712 A. D., and printing was introduced in 770 A. D. Kyoto was made the capital (in all there have been over sixty capitals) in 794 A. D. In 809 A. D. the Hirogana syllabary was invented. In 1192 A. D. Yorimoto, head of the Minoto family, under the title of "Shogun", started Japanese feudalism — the Mikado and the Shoguns making a combined govern- 34 ment in which the Mikado had the nominal and the Shoguns the real power. From 1332 to 1392 there were two rival lines of Mikados, those ruling the southern and those ruling the northern courts. In 1542, the Portuguese discovered Japan and in 1549 St. Francis Xavier appeared upon the scene. In 1624 Christianity was proscribed. In 1853 our own American Commodore Perry arrived and insisted that the splendid isolation of Japan should cease. This marked the complete restoration of the Mikado's power, and ended the dual rule of Shoguns and Mikados. In 1857 the first treaties were made with European powers, but it was not until 1860 that the Japs sent their first Embassy abroad. Now Japan is, of course, thoroughly foreignized. Before 1868 the Catholic missionaries were sent out of all Japan, and except Nagasaki, Japan was closed to foreign trade. Even in Nagasaki, only the Dutch were allowed to trade, and there only within a very restricted sphere. In 1868 the Shogunate was abolished, and in 1871, after a war between the followers of the Shogun and the Imperialists, the feudal system was abolished. In 1872 the railroad was built from Yokohama to Tokio ; in 1873 the Gregorian calendar was adopted, and between 1880 and 1906 the new codes were promulgated and the new constitution adopted. Since Kublai Khan and his Mongol fleet were defeated, Japan was never attacked by a foreigner until the Russo-Japanese war. Japan's first Diet met in 1890, and in 1895 Japan was victorious over the Chinese. The Anglo- Japanese Alliance followed, and in 1902 and in 1905 Japan was successful in the war with Russia and established the Korean protectorate. The native religion of the Japanese is Shinto, a Chinese 35 word which means "the way of the gods". Upon this Indian Buddhism was grafted, coming by way of China and Corea. Each of these religions has so encroached upon the other that neither can be said to exist now in Japan in its purity. In the province of Satsuma alone is now found original Shinto. An annual visit to the festival is all that Shinto demands of its devotees. It leaves to Buddhism the morals and the future of its devotees. At birth every Japanese is assigned to the care of one of the gods of the Shinto faith, and at his death the occult Buddhist officiates. The Shinto belief is a strange mixture i of a mythology like the Greeks, and reverence for an- cestors. The principal deity is the sun-goddess, who was born from the left eye of the builder of Japan. From her are descended all the Mikados. All religious Japanese make pious pilgrimages to her shrine at Ise. The Shinto priests can marry, and Professor Chamberlain says the Shinto cult teaches : "Follow your natural impulses and obey the decrees of the Mikado". The architecture of the Shinto temples is. simple and in front there are always the two dogs which can drive off devils, and are known as the Corean dog and the Heavenly dog. Japanese Buddhism is divided into six sects which are in turn divided into at least thirty-five sub-sects, which furnish as many creeds as the different Christian denom- inations, and unlimited time is spent in highly metaphysical disquisitions which probably get the converts nowhere, because as Sir Ernest Satow says : "Except to those who attained to Buddhaship their highest truths are incompre- hensible. The only consolation for the ordinary penitent is that ignorant and obtuse minds are brought * * * by * * * truth under a form suited to their capacity". 36 Today I ran across the curious claim by the Japs that one Fu Daishi, one of the earliest Chinese priests who came to Japan, is the inventor of the revolving book case, and he decreed that if a man didn't have time to read the six thousand odd volumes of the sutras, he could, by turning this revolving bookcase three times, receive a reward. By the census of 1905, there were in Japan forty-nine millions of people. I find that the rate for letters parcel post and telegrams and money orders is ridiculously low. A telegram of 15 words costs only 20 sen each additional character five sen more. Parcels can be left at the railroad stations for two sen per day. Likewise the railroad fares are low, 2y 2 sen per mile, but there is a minimum government tax of two sen for journeys under fifty miles, and for two hundred miles fifty sen. The American plan rate at foreign hotels in Japan is from four to ten yen per day, that is to say two to five dollars a day. The native hotels charge from one to three yen per day. The season was too late and we missed the Ume- Yashiki where bloom the five hundred very old plum trees that creep along the ground like grapevines. With sincere regards, Cordially yours, H. B. Tokyo, Japan, April, 17. My dear Mother: Our pleasant party is quartered at the Seiyoken hotel, which is just as modern as the Ritz. There were not 37 rooms enough, so the big parlor was divided by the largest and highest screen I ever saw; and the ladies occupied one side and the men the other. From Yokohama it is only eighteen miles to Tokio by the railway, the first built in Japan. British engineers did the job in 1872. Today I called at the office of the Japanese Welcome Society, where they gave us tickets to the private gardens of Mr. Kajima and to the jiu-jitsu school, and presented us with souvenirs that looked like Japanese coins. I got your laconic wire today saying you are "not com- ing" to Paris. I am so sorry I will not see you until I come home, but I know you would not have cared for seventeen days on the Pacific. Yesterday morning I went in Yokohama up the big hill that takes two 'ricksha men (one pusher and one puller) to the "tea house of a hundred steps." It doesn't amount to much, except to see a fine view of Yokohama's multitudinous roofs of gray tile. (The only place they don't color them.) *The ride up was exquisite, like the Italian lake villas, only a great deal more artistic. There is a wonderful view here of Mississippi Bay. I saw a big tree piled around with heavy poles, showing how they make them bend so gracefully over the sides of their hills. I went to a nursery of dwarf trees beautifully arranged, but even my valise is too small for trees. I passed a girls' and boys' school, and when they saw me and her (the daughter of the old gentleman and his wife, who is a widow) all the little girls over seven went into hysterics and screeched and laughed and clapped their hands and ran around and yelled until the teacher had to ring the bell and call school. They thought we were great curios- 38 ities. When the bell rang, a woman teacher went in the gravelled play ground under bamboo trellises, and on a small organ played "Shall we gather at the river", to which the whole crowd minuetted or turkey-trotted around for an hour. Finally she changed it to "Clementina". We stayed an hour before going to the tea house through the most exquisite public garden. There were half a million people in Yokahoma in 1913. In the afternoon saw the funeral of a great friend of the poor. We intruded into this private affair at the wooden temple, and found ourselves in midst of the 400 of Tokio. A man at the temple gate asked card. I said "no got card". He pushed us inside. We lost our two human taximeters in shape of jinriksha men in the crowd of over 100,000. First came shaved-headed priests, then fifteen more priests in cloth of gold and silver and lacquer cloth, then professional mourners, then 110 arti- ficial lilies, lotus flowers and flowers of gold, all about ten feet high and borne by men. Also cherry blossoms and plums same height in wooden holders with "laundry" inscriptions, banner or standard bearers without number, flags with strange inscriptions, &c, &c. The word "Japan" is a corruption of "Jihpen" which means "where the sun comes from". Marco Polo, the great Venetian traveller referred to it as Zipangu. Going to catch train. Good-bye until next time. As ever, Affectionately, H. 39 Tokio, Japan, April 18. My dear Mother: In the funeral I was describing in my last letter the coffin was borne like a huge palanquin and evidently the body was laid at full length. The palanquin was gor- geously carved in natural wood, and hysterical crowds followed so close that the pall-bearers had all they could do to carry the heavy burden on their sturdy shoulders. The ordinary Buddhist coffin is square and the body is folded head to knees like the position of an infant as it is carried before birth. The funeral of Empress Dowager in 1897 lasted for weeks, the procession was miles long and cost about three hundred thousand dollars. The lacquered two wheeled ox-cart which carried the body in the coffin was pulled by three oxen, tandem style, the first black, the next light brown and the third black and white. The grave diggers represented big black birds. Toyko, the eastern capital, formerly Yeddo, became the capital of the Shoguhs in 1203. But Kyoto was also the western capital and home of the Mikado. Though only fourteen miles from Yokohama, it takes nearly an hour to get there by train. Every morning here I read local papers very well edited in English. Yesterday morning I went to trie Imperial Palace grounds, and they make all the other palace grounds I ever saw look cheap. The spaciousness and uncrowdedness, the peaceful moat and the massive walls that slant down to the water, and the great field beyond, without a struc- ture of any kind, and the wonderfully trained pine and willow trees, give an air of repose that befits the home 40 of such an exalted personage as the great Mikado of Japan. The roads are at least 200 feet wide, and go entirely round the moat which surrounds the palace yards. Visitors see nothing of the buildings except some curved white roofs on a background of black shingles. From here we went through miles and miles of the queerest flat gravelled streets, very muddy lately, with doll houses on both sides, Japanese squatting at work on the clean mattings, fashioning the wonderful little bamboo baskets and cleancut wooden articles. Babies fill every nook and corner, always tied on the backs of their little sisters. They rock them by teetering up and down or swinging side-wise, and these things they do all day long. When we start out, it looks like an ostrich farm on parade. First the one with a Japanese umbrella over her dark brown hair and big hat, then her friend, both from Los Angeles, under another paper umbrella, then her mother and then her father, the latter 71 years old. Then comes "I", and lastly the guide. The latter I pay $2.00 a day and his expenses, and he does all my worrying for me. He speaks nearly as much English as I do Japanese, but he is slower about it than I am. He has an unbroken record so far of not giving any information on any question, but he is very faithful and honest and we might get a worse one, so we hang on to him. She says he is a "total loss", but I read the guide book, and I am independent of him. He can tell when you expect to laugh, and "beats you to it" with a small Japanese gargle that sounds as if it came from the throat of a gargoyle. He got up at daybreak to meet me at the ship, and I think will be a galloping consumptive in another week of this cool weather. Yesterday we took a motor to Koganei, the 41 avenue of cherry blossoms. It is too late for the single, but the double pinks are something glorious. The road running through them at Koganei is raised about 4 feet and the trees planted on both sides, so that there is just room for a high carriage or auto to pass. Yesterday there was the final fete of cherry blossoms, and the road was full of thousands of tipsy and "full drunk" men, who would try to stop the auto, push it, stand in front of it, peer in and leer at the ladies, and strike at the car with sticks, and refuse to get out of the way of it. Once I lost my temper and struck at one of them, but I found by laughing at everybody they would at once change their demeanor and roar back a welcome. Some threw cherry blossoms in the car. Our chauffeur was wonderful (he was our second, as the first car broke down) and wormed his way among the thousands until he got back to the city, where we ran into a bicyclist, entirely through the latter's fault. A great crowd gathered, and he was taken to the hospital practically unhurt. When our car had difficulty in turning back in the narrow road, a Jap policeman said in English that he was very sorry and would lodge a "complaint" with the Inspector of Police. I told him no, we were "very happy", and thanked him, &c. There were thousands of little booths like fete days everywhere, but I never saw one-tenth as many drunken men. I felt a great deal relieved when I got the ladies home. I won't attempt to tell you about the blossoms. They are the most beautiful pink tint, with double blos- soms almost as big as a small hand, and the trees are the most remarkable shapes, and the freshest, coolest green imaginable. It has been raining a good deal, and they were as washed as a bouquet just from a vase of water. 42 I am having a good time, as I am running the trip. Last night we went to a Jap play at the Imperial Theatre. I am mailing you a program, which please keep. The play was a joke of course, but the orchestra wasn't. No Japanese music should ever be heard by the naked ear. The voices are worse than the samisens, which are like old banjos I used to make out of a cove-oyster can, and the voices are worse than anything else except the samisens. The tragedy you see outlined in the program was punctuated by a shrill knock from a mallet in the wings every time a murder or other interesting event was to occur. The mallet made the only "hit" in the troupe. Nearly every character was killed at least four times. Finally, when the stage had been depopulated, there was a so-called dance. It was beautiful in the costume coloring, but was mostly a series of posings by the dancers, without expression or particular grace. The stage settings were very beautiful, especially the interiors of the houses repre- sented. We fiinally escaped about 11 :30 and came homle in the entirely closed 'rickshaws, very cold. This morning it was quite cold, so I travelled in heavy clothes and big overcoat. After an hour's ride we got to the public park and saw more wonderful "weeping cherry trees" and de- formed maples, and maiden hair ferns 75 feet high and twenty feet in circumference. The pines are all trained down, or trained to completely twist. We went through the art galleries and museums which contain many interest- ing things, especially the car which bore the late Emperor's coffin, a great two-wheeled thing magnificently lacquered and decorated, which was drawn by the white bullocks. In this same museum are the curious trampling boards of metal containing representations of Christ before Pilate, 43 Descent from the Cross, &c. Those suspected of being Christians (a crime in those days) were compelled to stamp on these to show their contempt for Christianity. Then I saw roosters from Tosa with tails 14^ feet long. These birds when alive were taken out by a man for a walk and he held their tails off the ground to keep them clean and unworn. Their tails were carefully washed every once in a while. Then there were white peacocks, and the sacred cranes, and an elephant as big as a house, chained by one leg. He seemed twice as big as any one I ever saw. The zoo is a tangled dream of flowers and trees and vines. We came back through "Curio" street where all the antiques are sold to foreigners. At the start we were so cold, we stopped at a little open air tea house. They served us a concoction made of beans and sugar wrapped in big leaf cornucopias, and another of chestnut sweetened in a pink pastry flavored with cherry blossoms, and the same color. THE IMPERIAL PALACE. The new palace, inhabited by the Emperor and Empress since 1889, is not accessible to the public, only those who are honored with an Imperial Audience being admitted within its walls. Nevertheless the following description, abridged from the Japan Mail, may be of interest : Entering through long corridors isolated by massive iron doors, we find ourselves in the smaller of two recep- tion rooms, and at the commencement of what seems an endless vista of crystal chambers. This effect is due to the fact that the Shozi, or sliding doors, are of plate glass. The workmanship and decoration of these chambers are truly exquisite. It need scarcely be said that the 44 woods employed are of the choicest description, and that the carpenters and joiners have done their part with such skill as only Japanese artisans seem to possess. Each ceiling is a work of art, being divided by lacquer ribs of a deep brown color into numerous panels, each of which contains a beautifully executed decorative de- sign, painted, embroidered or embossed. The walls are covered in most cases with rich but chaste brocades, except in the corridors, where a thick embossed paper of charm- ing tint and pattern shows what skill has been developed in this class of manufacture at the Imperial Printing Bu- reau. Amid this luxury of well assorted but warm tints, re- main the massive square posts — beautiful enough in them- selves, but scarcely harmonizing with their environment, and introducing an incongruous element into the building. The true type of what may be called Imperial esthetic decoration was essentially marked by refined simplicity — white wooden joinery, with pale neutral tints and mellow gilding. The splendor of richly painted ceilings, lacquered lattice-work, and brocaded walls was reserved for Buddhist temples mausolea. Thus we have the Shinto, or true Imperial style, presenting itself in the severally colorless pillars, while the resources of Buddhist architecture have been drawn upon for the rest of the decoration. In one part of the building the severest canons have been strictly followed ; the Six Imperial Studies, three below stairs, and three above, are precisely such chaste and pure apartments as a scholar would choose for the abode of learning. By way of an example in the other direction, we may take the Banqueting Hall, — a room of magnificent size, (540 sq. yds.), and noble proportions, its immense expanse of 45 ceiling glowing with gold and colors, and its broad walls hung with the costliest silks. The Throne Chamber is scarcely less striking, though of smaller dimensions and more subdued decoration. Every detail of the work shows infinite painstaking, and is redolent of artistic instinct. A magnificent piece of tapestry hangs in one of the reception rooms. It is 40 feet by 13 feet, woven in one piece by Kawashima of Kyoto. The weaving is of the kind known as Tsuzuri-ori, so-called because each part of the design is separated from the body of the stuff by a border of pin points, so that the whole pattern seems suspended in the material. The subject represented is an Imperial procession in feudal Japan, and the designer has succeeded in grouping an immense number of figures with admirable taste and skill. The colors are rich and harmonious, and the whole forms one of the finest pieces of tapestry in existence. The furniture of the palace was imported from Ger- many. Externally the principal buildings are in pure Japanese style. The Buddhist temple of Sengakuji is the burial place of the Forty Seven Ronins. The story is an interesting one of the retainers of Asano, who at one time by order of the Shogun at Yeddo entertained the Mikado and his suite. He asked a nobleman, Kira, how it should be done to meet the formality of the occasion, and he told him, but Asano didn't pay him for the information and he ridiculed him in every way possible, finally asking him to tie his shoe for him. Asano, although he may have been a "cheap man", had a certain amount of pride and he slashed Kira across the face. For this Asano was con- demned to hari-kari, and his family declared extinguished 46 and his retainers disbanded. In revenge the forty-seven retainers afterwards captured Kira and offered him the polite alternative of death or suicide, and as he failed to avail himself of the latter, they killed him. They took his head and reverently placed it on Asano's grave. Then they were all condemned to hari-kari, which they cheer- fully committed in the various homes they had taken up in order to fulfill their vengeance. This afternoon we visited Uyeno park and some famous temples that I will not attempt to describe, and the tomb of the "Second Shogun". It is a marvelous work of lacquer and stone and gold. By these tombs is the local Coney Island, and there were jugglers, and barkers, and tents and moving picture shows innumerable. We 'rick- shawed again through the Imperial grounds and came back by the pearl store and there we saw how the oysters are planted with a small piece of nacre as a nucleus, and after four years produce the most exquisite pearls of what- ever colors the Japanese desire. They call them "culture" pearls. I cannot realize that I am in a real world with these cute little people of minature, and I am constantly won- dering what they think of us. Leave here Sunday for Nikko for two days, then South. Sail for Shanghai from Kobe, arriving Shanghai the morning of the 13th after going through the Inland sea. I miss you and Gene, Jr., who will come with me next time I hope. This is a fine modern hotel, except the servants stick to Jap language. Lots of love for you always. I feel stingy seeing so many interesting things without you. Devotedly, H. 47 Tokyo, Japan, April 19. Dear Mr. Hayward: In 793, the Mikado Kwammu bestowed the name of Kyoto on his new capital, which, in Chinese, means "metropolis". It was first laid out like Pekin. But in 1177 the palace was burned, and this changed the general plan of the place. The present palace sits within plaster walls that surround twenty-six acres of ground. We entered through the "Gate of the August Kitchen", and here signed our names and waited in an ante-room, where there were some very remarkable sepia drawings upon the walls and screens. From there we approached the "Pure and Cool Hall", under the steps of which runs a small rivulet. Here there is a Chin- ese chair inlaid with mother of pearl, where the Mikados used to sit. The Seiryo-den in later times has been used for receptions and festivals. One part of this place, which is sixty-three by forty-three feet, was filled with fresh earth every day, so that the Mikado might truthfully say that he had paid homage to his ancestors on the ground every day. His throne is of chamoecyparis wood. Then we went through the Shishen-den, which, being intrepreted, means the "purple hall of mystey veiled from the vulgar gaze". On each side of the modern throne are stools upon which reposed the Imperial Sword and the Imperial Jewel. Fifteen steps below is the court — the government offices having been formerly divided into fif- teen grades. The men of lowest rank were down on the earth, the other persons who ascended into the hall. Then we went through the minor palace, whose windows dom- 48 inated a pretty garden. Then to the Imperial study with coffered ceilings. One of the three rooms composing the Audience Chamber was for those of higher rank, one for lesser rank, and the last for the Mikado. There are really marvelous picture of wild geese and cherry and plum blossoms here. Kinkakuji is the "Golden Pavilion", whose owner built a palace for retirement and assumed the dress of a Budd- hist priest, and shaved his head. From the verandas of this building, visitors amuse themselves feeding the Ger- man carp, about the only thing left German in Japan now. The third story, restored in 1906, is crowned with a bronze phoenix three or four feet high. Near this temple is the "mountain of the silk hat" because Mikado Uda in a hot July long ago directed the high hill to be covered with white silk so that it would at least look cool. H. B. Tokio, Japan, April 20. My dearest mother, This morning I started to the Courts. On the way our cavalcade suddenly stopped in front of the steamship office, which our guide had solemnly told us was "no such here". Upstairs a Scotchman named Smith and a Swede who represented the company offered to telephone for us. He called up central by saying "mushy-mushy". This was too much, we all had to laugh. In less than twenty minutes he had secured central. The object of the 49 call was a Mr. Yezae, to whom; one of the ladies had a letter of introduction. Nearly everybody she has letters to is dead. This man's brother had typhoid fever, but was himself alive. From there I went to the Welcome Society of Japan and got letters to see private houses, gardens, &c, &c. I saw the courts, in a great dingy wandering structure of brick. The lawyers appear in black gowns embroidered around the shoulders in silver, and they wear black silk caps with a long tail hanging from them. In the criminal courts, I saw four women, hand-cuffed, and wearing straw basket-shaped hats clear down over their heads to hide their shame at being brought to court. A Japanese reporter took charge of me and showed me through the Court House. It was quite un- interesting. They have no juries, but usually three to five judges sitting. From there I went to the House of Representatives, and the House of Peers, about three hundred members in each. They were most cheap and unattractive. I went through with about fifty Japanese school boys who were there with their teacher. Yesterday I saw the school where they teach jiu-jitsu. It was a big one story wooden building with high trussed roof, the floor covered with squares about a yard each way of matting, on springs, so when the wrestlers fall they don't hit as hard as it sounds. They are very skilful, and after three years are allowed to wear a black sash, starting in with a white one and going through several intermediate colors. The rules of the wrestlers provide twelve throws, twelve lifts, twelve twists, and twelve throws over the back. Like Turkish wrestlers they are fat and heavy but enormously strong. The highest form of it is jiujutsu in which skill out-does brute strength. Its teachers know 50 certain places in the human anatomy that are extra sen- sitive and where merely a touch will completely conquer an opponent. It is interesting to know that the succession to the Japanese throne was once won by one of two sons of the Mikado who out-wrestled his brother. The Charge d' Affaires of the American Legation had already called on me at the hotel and left me permits to see a lot of other private grounds, &c, &c. The weather was warm today for the first time, it having been quite cool. We met an interesting Swedish gentleman at the steamship office, and he showed us all around all the morning. He asked us to guess the name and nation- ality of his companion in the office. We guessed every- thing from Russian to Australian, but it was just "Smith" from Scotland. The bank was closed today and I had no money to go to Nikko tomorrow (Sunday), but the hotel loaned me one hundred yen on my due bill, so I go there tomorrow at 9:25. Here we will spend probably two days at least, as it is said to be the finest place in Japan for real beauty. Last night we motored through the busy part of the city, and the sight was very exquisite. Every one of the small globes over the lights is frosted and it gives a very soft mellow effect. Every house they are on is a toy house, with little verandas in front too small for anything except flowers and the dwarfed trees you see everywhere. Paper is not used so much now for glass as they say it used to be, but you will frequently see whole house fronts of it, always white. The population here is much cleaner and better dressed than at Yokohama, where the lower classes are lower than little negroes at home, and look more stupid. I was told today that the brother of an emperor who 51 flourished before Christ died, and the members of his Court were buried alive in a standing position around him. Instead of dying they wept continually which saddened the Emperor so that he decreed that when he died images of men and animals should be buried near him instead. Houses here are built on top of the ground without any walls except the sliding paper shoji, and the rooms are divided by paper screens. The floors are highly polished and covered with mats, which are so uniform in size that they are used as units of computation in measuring the size of rooms. The houses are "heated" by a miserably small charcoal brazier which is a travesty on warmth. I don't think in years I would get used to the unreality of this country. I will have something to think and write and talk about for many years to come. As ever, your devoted son, H. B. Nikko, Japan, April 20, 2000 feet above sea level. My dear Mother: It is 90 miles north of Tokio and takes 4^2 hours to get here. On the way at Utsonomiya I changed cars for Nikko, which is the name for that whole mountainous section where the temples are. From Imaichi the Nikko-Kaido road runs twenty miles through the shade of glorious cryptomerias (pines) hundreds of years old. They are about seventy feet high. 52 From the station at Nikko it is a long pull of a mile or so for the rickshaw men up through the prin- cipal street of the village, past the famous red lacquer bridge. This is the one General Grant was invited to go over, but as none except royal feet have ever pressed its sacred boards, he tactfully and graciously declined. It isn't such a big bridge, but in a graceful curve it spans the raging torrent of a river, and the workmanship and coloring are superb. The lacquer must have been of remarkable quality because here it is successfully exposed to every disintegrating element. Nikko is one of the few spots in the world where a letter of credit is not cashable, so I borrowed a hun- dred yen from the proprietor of the Seiyoken in Tokio. I had never met him until the day before, but "he was a wonderful judge of human nature" one of the irreverent young women in the party said. One of the men added that he was also a great gambler. I left Tokio at 9:25. Hotel lost my overcoat but found it and sent it on next train. Poured rain on arrival, but probably clear tomorrow. Very wild and beautiful spot. Came through interesting rice fields. Men, women and horses working in them up to knees in mud and water. This very Japanese Hotel on top of a high hill. Stoves in halls and open fires in rooms. One jinrick- shaw man and two pushers to bring us up hill. We were the only first-class passengers on trains except one. This Japanese pulled out a travelling rug, re- moved his shoes, and coiling himself up like a tailor at work, soon lost himself in an American novel. To- day lost except the getting here, account of rain. I 53 will write tomorrow. Still wishing you were with me. Lots of love for my dear mother. As ever, H. B. Nikko, Japan, April 21st. My dear Mother: They say "Do not say magnificent until you see Nikko," the temple and scenic district of Japan, four hours by train from Tokio. Started early this morn- ing, and after short 'rickshaw ride through giant cryptomeria grove (pines one hundred and twenty-five feet high) whose branches meet over your head, went by a smooth wide approach to the temple yards. A great red lacquer torii stands at entrance, and the red black-roofed temples inside the grounds are so much more beautiful than I can describe that I will not essay it. These* Buddhist shrines are great grace- ful lacquered wooden buildings, so exquisite they are like some heavenly dream of gold, blue, and yellow. There is a great deal of brass in and on them and the whole effect is half that of metal, for the great pil- lars and timbers are many of them the color of bronze, brass and gold, but when you sound them by striking you discover that they are all of wood. Out- side they are a glory of color combination, and in- side the softest effects of gold and a deep red. The great effect is, of course, in the setting of these won- derful trees, surrounded by stone walls four feet thick, grown deep with green moss, and over the 54 whole the effect of the cool solemn earth and the wonderful workmanship in the interiors. There is a simplicity about the main lines of the buildings that is most remarkable ; but, nevertheless, every nook and cranny is rilled with some exquisitely colored carving of a bird or a dragon or a fish. I am sending you some pictures, but they show little of the skill used in the details of these wonderful houses. Up two hundred and thirty-seven great massive stone steps, and at the top is the bronze tomb of the first Shogun, and even Napoleon's tomb fails to im- press you as this one does. The guide called it a "tumor." The wooden walls surrounding the temples are of red lacquer as fine as any Japanese tray, and polished until they shine like mirrors, Japs being con- stantly busy cleaning them. In front of every altar are little pieces of Japanese white paper in which the devout have put contributions rolled up like small bags. At all the temples, we had the nuisance of having to pull off shoes and put on soft felt slippers (not just slipping on overshoes as at Constantinople). Like all guides, ours is an utter failure, being one- tenth of one degree above no guide at all ; but I read the guide-books and know what I am seeing. This afternoon we went in 'rickshaws to the "Back View Cascade," the "Seven Cascades," the "Mist-fall- ing Cascade" and the "Pitch-Dark Cascade," all pretty waterfalls, which are nothing to compare with Tal- lulah in Georgia, and some of our lesser American falls. The mountains are very pretty, having the same gray look you see in all the Japanese prints the world over. 55 After we got back the crowd was tired out, but I went again to the temples. I was the only man there, and I was immensely impressed, especially at the tolling of the great mellow-toned bronze bell. It was as soft as music, and the echoes reverberated and billowed through the great pine trees for almost a minute. I could not help feeling how presumptuous we are to try to wean these people from a religion that has produced such beautiful sights and sounds. Nothing has happened to mar the great joy, and instruction as well, of my trip so far. I have secured my room on the Siberian train leav- ing Mukden for Russia on May 29th, which will put me in Paris about ten or twelve days later. Three weeks I find will give me plenty of time in Japan, and ditto China. Tomorrow by 'rickshaw and Sedan Chair to Chuzenzi Lake, the Toxaway of Japan. With a heart full of love for all of you. ■ Your affectionate son, H. B. Lake Chuzenji, Nikko District, Japan, Seven and a half miles from Nikko, April 22nd. My dear Mr. Hayward : I am up here some nine thousand feet above the sea, after an interesting trip, first on a 'rickshaw for four miles, then in a chair suspended between two long bamboo poles borne by four men. 56 This was my first expression with a "kago," and I at once awarded it first price for discomfort. These chairs suspended between the poles carried by the four men have an unhappy way of preceding me down the mountain, and following me up, which kept me doing balancing tricks the whole way. When I wanted rest I got out and walked. The chair I was using I think came out of the ark, and is painted green, and has a comfortable pad in it of a bright red. There is a foot-rest tied on by such flimsy strings that the first time I used it the strings broke, which delayed the procession a few minutes. The sensation of riding in one is very much like at- tending your own funeral. It is equally as slow, and along the mountain roads the outcome is fully as doubtful. The mountains are full of great bay trees, not in leaf yet, and some big pines, and a net-work of bamboo which with its roots make a mat on the rocks fully three feet thick. The four men walk in unison, and I counted one hundred and twenty-three steps before they shifted the bamboo from right to left shoulder. They carry a bamboo stick sawed off square, and when they change the burden they prop the contrivance, so as not to have to put you down. As we began to ascend a hill, it was only fifty-three steps before they changed again, and they varied the length of time of their shifting as the climb was steep or easy. On the way we stopped at three tea- house rests, where tea was served in little handleless cups (a light green tea) for all of us, for a total cost of ten cents. The mountains are hard to describe. The highest are an almost vivid blue, with streaks 57 of snow where the sun cannot reach them, and the lower ones are just like those in America and else- where, except that the stone seems to be nearly all gray, a sort of shale that breaks off into flat pieces or into blocks of very uniform shape. There are a great many pretty cascades, and while the effect is not so grand, I believe it is more picturesque even than Norway. This is the comparatively dry season and the streams are fairly low. The climb up takes nearly four hours, altogether. I walked fully half way up the mountain, where there is generally a very good zig-zag road with very unusual retaining walls made (at great expense) of square rock cubes. The lake is not, to my mind, as pretty as Lake Yellow- stone, but is a very sweet and peaceful little body of blue water. The government has planted a great many trees on the mountain sides where they will produce artistic effects and at the same time replenish the forests. These add greatly to the scenic beauty, as the Japs are "wpnders" on such things. The peo- ple are exceedingly kind and courteous, and I don't think one-thousandth part of them know anything about the California troubles. The Americans are pouring too big a stream of gold into Japan for them to want any trouble. Here for the first time I ate bamboo root. It has an orris root taste and also, I fancied, a sachet smell. Yesterday I spent at the beautiful and gorgeous temple which I am forwarding some photos of. When you have read this kindly mail to my mother, and I have asked her to send you some I am sending to her. I want to keep them finally as a sort of 58 diary, because I don't want any of the memories of this country to get away from me. Japan is full of the above-enclosed leaves, which are, however, ex- ceedingly small as compared with ours. I send a wild azalia bloom, and a double, and a single cherry blossom. With kindest regards to all there, Yours truly, H. B. Hakone district, Fujiya Hotel — Miyanoshita, Japan, April 24. My dear Mother: After we left Tokio, we cooped ; the old gentleman and his wife at Yokohama, as he had a cold, and came here today to see the prettiest place in all Japan, and Fujiyama. From Yokohama to Kozu station it taks a little over an hour on the train. To Yumoto it is ten miles further and a hard push of four miles more in rik- shaws brings you to Miyanoshita. Three men pushed each rickshaw in order to negotiate the steep hills, but it was a fine road with retaining walls of splendid masonry. Fujiyama's 12,365 feet tower over a fair country and fade into a mirrored likeness in Lake Hakone. The picture nestles there like the mirage of a snow storm. The legend is that before the time of Christ the mountain was born in one night. The peasants 59 near call it "the Honorable Mountain," and formerly no woman was allowed to climb higher than the eighth of its ten stations. Nearly twenty thousand pilgrims ascend the mountain every year, much as Mohammedans go to Mecca. They say "Fuji," as they familiarly call their beauti- ful sacred mountain, is one of the illusions of Japan, as the clouds frequently obscure it for days together. After two hours on the train, we got to the first stop. In the main town the ladies had tea handed in very nice little pots with a cup over the top of each. The courier I have travelling with me paid for the tea. I asked him how much, and he said four cents Japanese, or two cents United States money, for five cups of tea, three pots and three cups. The latter are yours if you want to keep them. So you can see I am not in an extravagant country. At the station we went into a little tea house to eat the luncheon our courier had brought from the hotel. We had sandwiches in wooden boxes and the queer little rice cakes stuffed with a paste made of beans and sugar. , The doors and windows all slide, and the sashes are filled with paper instead of glass. The top is made of wooden squares, and the whole effect is that of a doll's house. The whole country impresses you the same way. After an hour on a train (and we could have ridden on the auto for the same price) we again took jinrickshas for a two hours climb up here. The tram car, which was divided into first and second class, ran its five miles very slowly, and constantly rang a large din- ner bell to keep people off the track. We passed the 60 most interesting little villages where we could see the real Japanese life in the open houses. The climb up thq zig-zag mountain road was very, very beautiful. This place is much south of anything we have seen, and is between the two bays of Odawara and Suruga. The foliage is just as I always imagined a tropical forest. Giant feathery bamboos are side by side with great cryptomerias, and every shade of the coolest and sunniest green imaginable. There are white-blos- somed pear vines that they train on arbors here as we do grapes, and very deep red "weeping cherry trees," also the single-blossom cherries and the double- blossom, almost as big as hydrangeas, and big pink camelias, as large as American beauties, on trees thirty feet high, and a tangled mass of grass and brambles and bamboos that certainly is a surprising thing to find on mountains. After a two hours' climb, with our eight 'rickshaw men pulling and pushing our four baby carriages, we got to this hotel, which is on the side of a rocky hill full of cascades. Back of the hotel is a very beautiful garden with fountains and Japanese effects. The hotel is a group of cottages all joined in a long crescent. After a certain hour at night every door is locked except the front door in the main office of the middle building, and you must go through that to get to your cottage. It is a typical Japanese hotel. The rooms are fur- nished in light materials, and on each bed is laid a suit of pajamas corresponding to the wall paper for the men, and kimonos and a sash for the ladies. The fur- niture is all covered with Japanese cretonnes (if I 61 have the right word) and the windows have bamboo sash without glass or anything in them. The servants are curiosities, all dressed with their quaint little kimonos and obis. Their hair is done up carefully with always a flower or other ornament in it. The whole effect is like, as I believe I told you, the opera "Mikado." At four o'clock the three of us walked up to see Fuji. The guide always "ducks" these climbs, and this one took an hour to the tea house on Senegayama Hill where you see the great sacred snow-capped peak. At first it was obscured by clouds, but later they lifted and showed by far the most impressive mountain I have ever seen. Nothing is visible except the clean snowy sides, and it looks like a great cone of sugar with the top clipped off in irregular lines. There are three distinct ridges we could see from here, which seem to divide it into great over-lapping sections. After waiting an hour, where it was quite cold so high, we saw the sun »set. Strange to say, after the sun went down we could see the mountain much more dis- tinctly ; and the outlines were gilded by a mellow glow, looking half gold, half silver. One of the prettiest walks near Miyanoshita is to the Gold Fish Tea House, where the little lake in front is rilled with gold fish which the visitors feed with small bags of crumbs. This is one of the most exquisite spots anywhere, and the resort of everybody who loves the beautiful. Miniature rivulets and cascades tumble through great fresh masses of green into the pretty pond bordered with flowers and cherry and maple trees. There is also a beautiful T / 2 mile walk to 62 Kojigoku (which means "Small Hell") hot sulphur springs. Coming back to the hotel, we saw at the roadside the famous collossal image of JIZO which is carved cameo style like the lion of Lucerne, on a perpendicular block of andesite (granite). Moonlight is "predicted" tonight, but I will not see Fuji by it. Tomorrow we go to Hakone where they say you can see it from its base in the Lake to its white top. From here we join the old gentleman and his wife at Nagoya about day after tomorrow. I find three weeks will give us ample time to finish up here and sail for Shanghai the ninth of May. I wish you were here to help me enjoy it, but the trip would have been too hard for you. Your loving son, H. B. Miyanoshita, Japan, (57 miles Southwest of Tokio), April 25th. My dear Mr. Hayward : You get so many impressions of Japan and so many of them are obvious, that it is hard to choose among them to write about. The first thing I noticed was all the 'rickshaw men and nearly all the coolies wearing cheap blouses with the most Japanese figures on them. 63 I was very curious about it and finally found that many of them were advertisements given the wearers, who were literally "backing" the enterprise. Of course, the next things are the babies. It is quite usual to see one of them strapped on its older sister's back, because most of them are carried until they are three years old in this unique fashion. The babies' arms are placed in position to embrace the bearer's neck. Then a heavy cotton string ties him close to the back. Then clothes are thrown over him and then another string around his waist that is also wound round his mother's shoulder. By this time, it is hard to see where the sister or mother leaves off and the baby begins. Men who have studied the question say that this "babying" of the Japanese chil- dren for such a long time is a great drain upon the vitality of the mother, and also that the short legs of the Japanese are the result of being carried until they are three or four years old. At Yokohoma, I saw a great number of them with the most atrocious skin diseases on their usually shaven tops. It seems to be against the law to use their handkerchiefs, so the whole effect is not pleasing. But the clean ones are so cute that you forgive the others. The following is a somewhat brief diary of what we do. After breakfast, — just about the same things we eat in America — our guide gets four 'rickshaws. One for the pretty girl, one for the widow, one for me, and one for himself. They never make them wide enough for two. The Fritzi Scheff girl looks pretty good under a big American hat and a blue and white paper um- 64 brella, and our cavalcade attracts a good deal of atten- tion from the peasants. They are very polite and don't laugh where we can see them, but I can look back frequently and see them as nearly convulsed as Orientals ever get at our strange clothes and hats. Every once in a while we pass one of the practically naked children. We pretend not to see and pass on. A great many of the kids say "Ohayo" which means "good-day." And sometimes in the morning they will say quite distinctly "good evening." Most of the well-to-do Japs wear their kimonos with American or English felt hats. The people are as busy as bees in their little shops that front the streets, wide open in the day and closing with sliding shutters at night. The peculiar thing I have noticed is that notwith- standing the enormous number of babies, you hardly ever see any indication of an expected increase in the population. I don't know whether the mother's re- ligion requires her to keep herself secluded, or whether her clothes are worn looser. Another thing, you hardly ever see any lame or blind people. The latter are nearly all shampooers or masseurs, and blow a small whistle to announce their coming. Every night in the small towns a watchman parades round and round with a lantern. He constantly rings a bell so that spooners or burglars can have timely notice. The native water here cannot be used by foreigners, because the sewage is used for fertilizer and the mountain streams wash over it in the local system of irrigation. The lower classes seem to have a hard time. I have often seen one small man pull with his hands and the shoulder strap a cart of two wheels carrying a big 65 telegraph pole. Frequently, if the load is too heavy, a pusher assists at one end of the back corners of the wagon. I have seen a small woman with a baby on her back pushing this way. Then they carry no end of things on the bamboo poles that they wear across the backs of their necks. In the country, you see women standing knee-deep in the rice fields at work. Most of the lower class of working women wear a sort of cotton jeans breeches, generally of blue material. Some places in the mountains you will see long bamboo pipe lines to carry water from very numerous hot springs. We passed yesterday from Miyanoshita to Nagoya through miles of tea plantations. This tea shrub, as you know, does not grow big and seems to be usually not more than three feet high, always with an umbrella-shape like a box-wood. It seems to re- quire uplands or hill-sides. The rice, as you know, grows in the water, and the rice lagoons, which are quite shallow, are about fifty to one hundred feet square. There are thousands of these lagoons. The Japs plant the green oats in rows, and fre- quently between them are roAVS of pretty pink flowers. There are thousands of accurately marked squares of mustard, and often side by side with the same sorts of squares are some purple flowers. When we get to sacred spots, off go our shoes and over our socks we put slushy, flimsy, felt cotton sandals. The only way you can get on is to turkey- trot over the polished floors. 'Rickshaws cost about fifteen cents an hour. They are very comfortable, and you get to like them very 66 much. Today, as I passed along, I saw inside a great many of the little one story houses. The people in them were beating short tom-toms. The guide says that they were trying to make it stop raining. In front of the drum is set a plate of raw rice, then paper flags, and nuts and raw fish to appease the deities. It hasn't stopped raining yet. Your friend H. B. Nagoya, Japan, April 27. Dear Uncle Charlie : The Nagoya Hotel is the best hotel in Nagoya. It is the only hotel in Nagoya. There are nearly 450,000 people here. The Nagoya castle is a disappointment inside, al- though from the outside the lines are very good from a Jap's point of view. It is white, as you know, with two gold dolphins about nine feet high at the end of the ridge pole. Including the eyes of silver, these birds cost a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I am sending you the original of my special permit to see this castle. The apartments of the castle con- tain very remarkable pictures, mostly on wood, of tigers, bamboos, cherry and plum blossoms, and pheas- ants by the greatest artists that Japan has ever pro- duced. There is nothing else in Nagoya, so I go to- night to Nara to spend a day before going to Kioto. 67 At the railroad station the guide carefully checks our luggage and we go over the tracks by steps and an over-pass to the passenger cars. "First class" has the seats run lengthwise and divided by arm-rests which fold up and can be put out of the way. Just before starting, an attendant wipes up the oil-cloth floor with a wet rag, to lay the germs. The window sashes are about like ours and they have little red curtains on a tiny rod. The other night I believe we discovered where the fashion of Damascene started. We had been watching for the moon (and the watchman with the lantern and the bell) for some time. Finally it arose and lighted a pine tree on the horizon with a beautiful golden light. Here was Damascene. The outlines of the pine made the black line, and the moon fur- nished the gold just as the Demascene pattern is. It was very beautiful and fully lived up to the guide books description of "enjoying at Nagoya". This is all until I try again to write in a jiggly little Japanese train. With best regards to all, Yours very truly, H. B. 68 Nara Hotel, Nara, Japan, April 28. Dear Gene : Here I am 7 hours southwest of Nagoya at Nara, which for seven reigns was the capital of Japan. I have been very busy comparing Oriental and Occi- dental civilizations for two weeks. I find that the job takes longer. There are a great many amusing things here, and a great many suggesting serious thought. I saw in a local paper last night two striking articles. One in which Lord Wolsey was quoted as saying the Chinese was the greatest Oriental race, and that some day there would be a great war between China and the Oriental allies, and America and the Oc- cidentals. In the same paper there was a telegram from China that the new Chinese parliament had formally asked the prayers of the Missionaries in China to guide them in framing new laws. You know I am not as much of a religionist as you are, but it is a very peculiar thing that progress followed Commodore Perry's coming to Japan, and that development goes hand in hand with Christianity everywhere. The ene- mies of the Missionary Idea say that it is not because the Christian religion is introduced, but because the Missionaries teach a great many useful things to the natives. Japan is a fairyland of gardens and pink and yellow fields and quaint houses and temples, but most of all in interest are the people. They are as busy as bees all day at their work, but they never hurry. They 69 live on very little food, seem to be always well and happy, and the country seems to be very prosperous. Of course, from our point of view, they are very super- stitious and spend no end of time praying over rice cakes and beating tom-toms to make it stop raining, but in the temples themselves I don't see many people except the sight-seers and pilgrims from the country. The three predominant characteristics seem to me to be love and care of trees and flowers, ancestor worship, and industry, all of them good enough for any moralist. I went to the courts the other day in Tokio. The lawyers wear black gowns and a queer peaked cap. In the waiting rooms the lawyers smoke cigarettes and drink tea while awaiting their cases. There is one divorce to every three marriages, generally obtained by the man, as a woman who applies for one loses caste. Frequently when divorced (the man always wins) the wife commits suicide — "hari-kari". The roads, especially when you consider they are made only for small wagons and jinrickshaws, are very fine, with great protecting walls of the blocks into which the rocks here crumble. At night the jin- rickshaw men solemnly attach a Japanese lantern (candle inside) as a headlight, and merrily plod along. To day I saw all growing on a single tree trunk a cambia, a cherry, wistaria, and four other kinds. In its twigs optimistic lovers had tied prayers and vows written on tiny pieces of paper. In a temple dedicated to Kwannon, the god of mercy, there is a small copper effigy which fable says is always as warm as a living body. On the 18th of each month it is exposed for adoration. 70 The most interesting object at Nara is a great Buddha fifty-three feet high, larger indeed than the Kamakura one but vastly inferior from an artistic point of view. Of the curios in the Sho-so-in Museum behind the Daibutsu, Captain Brinkley says in his Japan and China : "The story these relics tell is that the occupants of the Nara palace had their rice served in small covered cups of stoneware, with celadon glaze — these from Chinese potteries, for as yet the manufacture of verifi- able glazes was beyond the capacity of Japanese cera- mists ; ate fruit from deep dishes of white agate ; poured water from golden ewers of Persian form, having birdshaped spouts, narrow necks and bands of frond diaper; played the game of GO on boards of rich laquer, using discs of white jade and red coral for- ieces ; burned incense in censers of bronze inlaid with gems, and kept the incense in small boxes of Paul- lownia wood with gold laquer decoration — these of Japanese make — or in receptacles of Chinese celadon ; wrote with camel's hair brushes having bamboo handles, and placed them upon rests of prettily carved coral ; employed plates of nephrite to rub down sticks of Chinese ink; sat upon the cushioned floor to read or write ; placing the book or paper on a low lectern of wood finely grained or ornamented with laquer ; set up flowers in slender, long-necked vases of bronze with a purple patina ; used for a pillow a silk covered bolster stuffed with cotton and having designs em- broidered in low relief; carried long, straight, two- edged swords attached to the girdle by strings (not 71 thrust into it, as afterwards became the fashion) ; kept their writing materials in boxes of colored or gold laquer; saw their faces reflected in mirrors of polished metal, having the back repousse' and chiselled in elaborate designs ; kept their mirrors in cases lined with brocaded silk; girdled themselves with narrow leather belts, ornamented with plaques of silver or jade and fastened by means of buckles exactly similar to those used in Europe or America to-day ; and played on flutes made of bamboo wood." But we first saw the Shinto temple Kasagujinsha, which is approached through a walk bordered by three thousand stone lanterns. No two men ever arrive at the same result in counting them, and no one man gets the same result twice. At the telephone, (which in this country is not "in- stantaneous") the opening words are "mushy-mushy" (honorable good morning). The good-bye is "please excuse the disgusting effrontery of my existence". You can see how speedy this is. You can beat a government telegram to its destination, and can on an uphill climb distance any train. Americans are very ac- tive here, and so far as I can see, there is no feeling against us. Probably the great mass of the people don't know where America is. "Pidgin English" is a remarkably expressive lingo in which the Japanese and the Chinese especially make themselves understood by English speaking people. It contains only three hundred words, but the Chinaman is not a verbose individual and he finds all he needs in this dialect of positives and negatives. For instance "can do", and its negative "no can do". 72 A word about Japanese girls and women. I saw a great many of them beautifully and artistically dressed, but I only saw one really beautiful Japanese woman in Japan. I believe she was an Eurasian because her features were very clear cut and she had a majesty about her walk that these women of Japan don't have. As usual in miscegenation, she follows her Japanese an- cestors in being dark. This is all except that I haven't eaten the wish-bones of any rats yet. I thank you and mother so much for your steamer telegram. Your loving brother, H. B. Nara Hotel, Nara, Japan, April 28th. My dear Mother: I left Nagoya and a very bad hotel last night, and reached this beautiful spot at 9 o'clock. Nara is very attractive, but as usual, I will not try to describe it. Instead, 1 am sending the photos. We went to the Temples today, saw the hundreds of tame deer whose horns are sawed off as a religious ceremony once a year, and then fashioned into canes and ornaments. I am going to buy Julia a full regalia of a Japanese maiden's obi, kimono, and hair ornaments. I think she will look very sweet in it. I will get your silk in China. 73 I cabled you as I thought you might be worried about the Japanese-American friction. We hear nothing of it here, and nothing has occurred to mar the perfection of the trip. I hope you are all well. I have heard nothing from America since I left. With lots of love to all of you. Your loving son, H. B. Kyoto Hotel, Kyoto, Japan, April 30. My dear Aunt Kate : Kyoto is only 3 hours south of Nara. The weather is always the same in the Spring in Japan. Every day nearly there is a soft misty rain so gentle and mild that it is more like a caress than a shower. You get used to it and go out just as if the sun was shining. I don't believe I have written since Miyanoshita. That is the resort for the beautiful mountain scenery of Japan, and I never imagined anything could be so beautiful. After two fine days I got to Nagoya, and there one night was enough. Nothing there except one untenanted castle, as bare as a barn floor. From there we went to Nara, through the very green tea fields where the plants are covered with matting to keep out the frost. There were some very pretty 74 temples there and the best hotel I ever stayed in. But one day is enough to see the fawns in the park and the museum, and the very lovely wistarias. We got here night before last, where we found the "old folks" again. Yesterday, we went to the private gardens of a Japanese gentleman who took great pains to show us through, but who spoke not a word of English. I told him "arigato" (in Japanese "thank you") and he seemed repaid. He gave us the souvenir postals I am mailing you. Next to the Earl of Kenmare's, his was the finest garden I ever saw. Last night I saw the Damascene process of making the same work that they call "Toledo" in Spain. Cloisonne is the ware that is made by filling between the little silver cloisons (wires) the artificial paste that hardens into lovely enamels. After the copper or brass or silver wires have been stuck in and the paste has been polished, the effect is an exquisite mosaic of metal and enamel. Afterwards, we went to the famous cherry dance. It was the queerest experience I have yet had. In a beautiful one story wooden theatre covered with mat- ting, we removed our shoes and put on sandals, and went into an ante-room. After a tedious half hour's wait, we went to the "tea ceremony". About fifteen people seated on little stools with mats on top to make them soft (the stools not the heads) in front of lac- quered black tables about knee high. After much more waiting, a geisha came in and solemnly seated herself at a table in full view of "us foolish ones" and in a very mechanical way poured out a teaspoonful of tea in a large three gallon pot of hot water, then with a red 75 silk handkerchief she gave a few more mechanical twists and took the top off the pot of boiling water, while we, "the imbeciles" as the French call them, kept waiting for something to happen. Finally a little baby Japanese girl about two feet high and dressed just like a doll, arose and made a low bow before the tea-making geisha, who handed her a bowl of something. She toddled over to me, as I was nearest, and placed the bowl before me. All the Eng- lish looked jealous, and everybody from the United States was trying to keep a straight face. I picked up the bowl and found it was almost an extract of tea, green as pea soup. I tasted it and set it down again. Other Geishaettes about the size of Mrs. Tom Thumb, then served everybody with bowls of tea and a little snowball of rice, with a sweet paste made of beans inside. The guests took away the queer looking saucer and chop sticks. Not a word was spoken except by a crying baby, who was taken out. Then after another interminable delay, the "tea ceremony" being over, we left the sweet little children and went into the main theatre. This was exquisite in natural wood with silk curtains on both sides and red silk lanterns hanging close together the whole way round. The drop curtain was of embroidered white silk and across it was a very handsome trailing pine tree. After the hoi polloi had squatted on the cheap floor in front of our gallery seats (the best) and been told to take off their hats, the curtains on both sides rose at once disclosing on the right twelve samisen (a musical instrument for ear torture) players dressed alike in very sober pretty costumes, and on the left twelve tom-tom punishers, 76 who held their hands horizontally in front and in this stiff attitude beat their little drums, occasionally strik- ing a horrible sounding triangle every time our ears were about to get rested. They sang in a screech that was a cross between a back fence yeowl and the soft purring of a file across the teeth of a saw. Then the dancers (geishas) came on in very beautiful blue kimonos embroidered with the most exquisite cherry blossoms, and each carried part of the time a fan, and part a red umbrella. When they finished with one or the other of these, they would drop them behind them, and a "Supe" would walk in and pick them up. There was absolutely no action in the dancing, and the tom- toms and samisens kept up a frightfully strident noise, but the posturing of the dancers was very sweet, and the coloring of the costumes was like a wonderful dream. The amusing and very ingenious feature of the show was the totally unexpected way in which a wistaria arbor, or a cherry tree, or a snow mountain would suddenly pick itself up and go up into the air, or slide off to the right or the left of the stage. In one case a whole scene went through the floor and everything turned wrong side out and into something else. I am sending you a little pamphlet about it which partially describes some of the changes. The whole cherry dance cost for best seats seventy-five cents. This morning I went, by special permit from the government, through the two Imperial palaces. They are jewel boxes of carved wood with wonderful pic- tures and grounds. This afternoon I saw the biggest temples in Japan, almost as big floor space as St. 77 Peters and with columns like those Solomon's temple must have been. They are not painted and lacquered like those at Nikko, and are therefore less interesting. I spent an hour in a silk store buying Julia a little pink kimono to go with the "obi" I have for her. Today I went to see the beautiful cloisonne. The new style is very fine, pretty and cheap. A heart full of love, and wish you were with me. I think of you all the time. Your loving nephew, H. B. Kyoto, Japan, May 1, Dear Bob : I am sending you a picture of my house and garden in Kyoto. It is a £pot to forget your troubles in, and the grounds occupy all of the court and yard of the Nakamurara Hotel. In the centre of the garden is a little doll sized lake with rocks at the edges that gives it the striking Japanese effect, and there are little islands, on one of which has been carved from the stunted pine tree a full rigged ship, and there are lovely little paths, and in the back a wilderness of azaleas, white and pink all in bloom. The little trail around to the small wooden gate that opens into my private grounds passes over a pretty stone bridge with lan- terns on each side (the whole thing is not four feet long) and the front door of my wood and paper house 78 is apparently only a small outside wall. But it is a shoji that slides as far open as you care to have your door. Then there are four little rooms, with not a stick of furniture in them, and cool green matting on the floor. There is a sort of kitchen, and water runs cold and clear through a little bamboo pipe that brings it from the mountain above. Facing the little lake is a moon-gazing veranda that I am afraid will not be used, and by it a big stone font into which the mountain water trickles all day. On the little veranda there are pots of flowers, just, one or two, and when I come in there are always flowers on a shelf in a big high vase. My factotum is a constant nuisance; he wants to know every minute if there isn't something the "master" wants, when all the master wants is to be let alone and live in this unreal life for two or three days. At night he comes in and solemnly pulls the bed clothes (there are no mattresses) out of a drawer at the bottom of the wall and makes up the bed. But I have quit sleeping here since the rains began because it is too cold, so I sit around in the day time refusing, to his great disgust, to pull off my shoes when I come in, and in the afternoon have some of our party to tea. At night we frequently walk down here and sit for an hour listening to the geishas strumming their samisens in a sort of cabaret which is run by the hotel across the lake. The place was so fascinating that I ordered the photographer to make some photographs for members of our party. And I told the "master's" servant I wanted to buy the big Japanese paper lan- terns. When I paid for them I found they had charged about ten times their price, and when I paid my bill 79 they were on the bill too and I paid for them again, and when I started to go the master's servant rushed up with a wash-list-looking piece of paper and said he had forgotten to put the lanterns on the bill. I paid again, because for all my three days house and grounds and meals and drinks and three times for the lanterns and for the photographs, T only handed him eleven yen, five dollars and a half. After a few more minutes the ceremonious "boy", as he announced him- self, came in and made a low bow and said the master was so impressed with the American appreciation of his hospitality that he begged that I would take the lanterns with his compliments as a souvenir. This broke the camel's back with a loud report, and we couldn't keep straight faces any longer. The last day I was there a friend and I had quar- reled over some small matter, and when we had each about decided we were wrong, an enormous black butterfly fluttered into the open shoji and fell dead at our feet. Fortunately, neither of us was supersti- tious. Sincerely, H. B. Kioto Hotel, Kyoto, Japan, May 1. My dear Aunt Mary : Yesterday we passed near a Japanese kindergarten. The guide got permission and we went in. It looked like a doll factory, and you should have seen the 80 antics the children cut with their funny little clothes and the sandals which only covered their soles. I sent out for a dollars worth of the foolish little cakes they have here, and after nearly an hour's honorable delay, the teacher put five pieces wrapped in colored tissue paper on each child's desk. After another long ceremonial delay, each child wrapped his cakes up and took them home to his parents, to get their permission to eat them. Imagine anything like that in our family ! In the morning we went to the beautiful "Imperial Summer Gardens" designed by the government land- scape architect, and it was like a beautiful dream — too exquisite to be real. Today I saw the great Buddhist temple with "thirty-three thousand" images of KWAN-NON, the goddess of mercy. I made a rough estimate and there are probably twelve hundred, which is enough. In the head of one of these images is a skull which found its way there as follows : Go Shirakawa, a Mikado, had head-aches. One night, while praying, an Indian monk told him that he had in a former life been a priest, but that when he was changed into a mikado, they forgot his skull. This lay at the bottom of the river with a willow sapling growing out of it, which veered with varying winds and caused the head-ache. When the Mikado found this particular skull, he ordered it put into the head of the aforesaid Kwannon — result, no more headaches. The unthinking ascribed that headache to too much spiritual exaltation the night before. Cormorant fishing, done nowhere else, is practiced 81 here by the fishermen of Japan. The cormorant having been caught with bird lime is tied round the body with a strong string, with which it is let into the water to fish. Around the bird's neck at the lower end is a metal ring or band which prevents them from swallow- ing completely the big fish they catch but is big enough to let small ones pass in. A dozen or so birds fish at once. In the meantime the fish are attracted by the noise made with a piece of bamboo by one of the men in the boat. When one of the birds catches a fish, which is lodged between its mouth and the ring at the lower end of its neck, the fisherman pries its mouth open and presses out the fish. A fisherman will catch a hundred or so with each bird an hour. After the fishing is over if the birds have failed to squeeze enough through the ring to satisfy their hunger, they are solemnly fed. I will go on the Buelow for Shanghai on the 4th of May. I have bought you a beautiful black Damascene vanity case. It is black steel with gold Japanese inlaid work, and has a mirror inside and a place for powder puff, &c. I have bought Julia a beautiful little kimono and obi (or Japanese sash). I also have some Japanese hair ornaments for her. I am so busy seeing things that I have not much time to write. The weather is bad, as it is cloudy or rains a bit every day, usually in the morning. I arrive at Shang- hai on the 8th of May. Lots of love again, and wish you were with me. As ever, affectionately, H. 82 Kioto Hotel, Kioto, Japan, May 1st. Dear Charlie : I am about through with what you call my "work" in seeing Japan. Sometimes, I almost agree with you that sightseeing is tiresome, but I never expected to see half the beautiful things and none of the marvelous scenery I have (as "Uncle" Jimmie says) "saw". I am going down the Inland sea to Nagasaki and will arrive in Shanghai the night of the 12th of May. I finished here about a week earlier than I expected, which will give me that much more time in China. I am leaving here at the time the war scare seems to be getting a little acute, but all I see of it is in the newspapers. The people, especially the children, greet us every foot of the way with "Konichi-wa", which, as you know perfectly well, means "honorable good morning". I believe I can stay any war feeling that may arise, at a total cost of one "yen" (50 cents in United States money.) I certainly see no signs of jingoism in the 'rickshaw men or the tourists hotels. But I see by the papers that the Chinese are also trying to get up a North and South war. I am in favor of it if we can get our silk, rice and fans any cheaper. Besides, I like the Chinese system of warfare, which is a combination of speed and long distance, much better than the Japanese style. I think in baby dolls, jinrickshaws, and yen, and temples, and have forgotten I ever lived in a real land. I expect to wake up about July 1st when I will probably give a few promissory and renewable notes just to show 83 that I have not forgotten my early training. I am getting up a line of Gulliverisms to accompany the costly bric-a-brac that I am collecting at enormous expense (of time). A great many Japs have made me valuable presents, consisting of bamboo shoots, native herbs, and what appear to be wash-lists, so that I feel that my coming has not been in vain. After three weeks study of the language, I find I can understand myself when I give my whole mind to a Japanese word, and speak slowly. Love to all. Your affectionate brother, H. Kyoto, Japan, May 2nd. Dear John G. : If I write too much about Kyoto, it is because it is "the soul of Japan". Yesterday I went to the wonder- ful gilt shrine of Shaka in Saga-no Shaka-do Buddhist temple. It is behind the altar and two sets of doors and two beautiful embroidered curtains. The fable is that the image was carved while Shaka was on a journey to Heaven. On his return from the celestial regions, the image came down to meet him at the foot of the monastery steps, after which it went in again with him. The Nijo castle is not open to the public. It was here that in 1868 the last Mikado granted to the people 84 the right to settle matters by popular voice, and gave them their assembly. After going through the Kara- mon, which has some remarkable metal work and painted wood carvings, you go through the apartments. The word used is hinokei, except the doors, which are of cryptomeria. The nails and irons are concealed by gilded copper fastenings, beautifully wrought by hand, depicting peonies and birds. On one side of some of the exquisite wood carvings are shown birds or animals and on the other side flowers or trees. Through doors on which lions, tigers and storks positively look you in the eye, we went to the "Hall of Audiences", which actually dazzles you with the gold of its decorations. There are secret closets in the walls here where guards kept vigil, and there are two levels of the floor, where the mighty, and the humble sat. The walls are decor- ated with exceedingly large pictures of the crypto- meria. The Katsura Summer Palace is also interesting with its moon-gazing platform, and its formal garden, one of the best in Japan. At the Tojii temple, legend tells us that the pagoda began to lean a la tower of Pisa. But after Kobo had prayed awhile, it rose to its upright position. The skeptical think this was due to the fact that the wise Kobo dug a pond on the hill- side. But why spoil a perfectly good story? At the Buddhist temple of Myoho-In are the gold image of Shaka, with the diamond eyes which the king of Siam gave in 1902; the Daibutsu, which is hollow; and the great bell fourteen feet high and nine feet across, which weighs nearly one hundred and thirty thousand pounds. 85 Near the Hobuku-Jinja is the curious mound where are buried some three hundred thousand Corean ears and noses which were brought here by the Japanese soldiers in the five years war which began in 1592. In the Nishi Hongwanji temple is a queer panel of the Chinese hero who is washing his ear to rid it of the contamination caused by the Japanese Emperor's pro- posal to him that he resign his throne. The opposite side of the picture represents a cow whose Japanese owner objects to the Chinese hero's pollution of the stream where he was watering the cow. The apart- ments contain some very wonderful decorations of bamboo and sparrows, musk-rats, wild geese, monkeys, flowers, a sleeping cat under peonies. In the stork chamber, "the room of two hundred and fifty mats", are rare Chinese court scenes, birds, flowers, and trees. At the Higashi Hongwanji, a Buddhist temple, are the twenty-nine enormous cables made of human hair contributed by peasants of the Buddhist belief, to haul the great timbers of the temple. The building has two distinct roofs on which there are one hundred and seventy-five thousand tiles. It is one of the biggest houses in Japan, being 230 by 195 feet. The most important monastery in Japan is the Chion-In at Kyoto. It is on a fine hill reached through avenues of cherry blossoms. Its every available space is filled with ornamentation. On the right is the great bell of Japan, which weighs nearly seventy-four tons. It is rung by striking the end with a thick wooden beam. In front of the building are two lotuses of metal in bronze vases twenty feet high. Under one of the eaves of this house is carved an umbrella said to 86 have been blown out of the hands of a boy. In the library nearby there is a full set of the Buddhist canons. In the palace adjoining is the celebrated sparrow pic- ture, where the birds were so real they flew away. The pines painted on the veranda are so true to nature they are said to sweat rosin. Gonkakuji in Kyoto, the Silver Pagoda which its owner never had time to silver, is also very pretty. On entering the handsome garden, I was shown a silver sand platform where Yoshima held his "esthetic revels'*. His moon-gazing mound is just behind this. He had also a moon-washing fountain, and in his pond the "stone of ecstatic contemplation". The Pavilion houses an altar with a thousand small images of Jizo. The Shinto temple of Kami-Gamo carries with it a fable like Pharoah's daughter's discovery of Moses in the bull-rushes. A daughter of a god saw floating towards her a red-feathered arrow. Shortly she dis- covered that she was to become the mother of a son. The parents were skeptical ; and when the son was old enough to understand, they invited all their friends to a big feast where the child was told to give a wine-cup to his father. He rushed out and put it in front of the arrow which the mother had stuck into the thatch of the roof. Then after he had turned himself into a thunderbolt, he and his mother flew straight to Heaven. The guests departed, I believe, more or less disap- pointed. Faithfully yours, H. B. 87 Kioto, Japan, May 3rd. My dear Aunt Tallulah: I went for a beautiful trip through the country today to the "most beautiful garden in Japan". A place so very enchanting that I sat and looked at it for an hour, which is a long time for an Occidental to con- template anything. Of course, it seemed a rush view to these Orientals, one of whose gods sat nine years in solemn contemplation, until both his legs rotted and fell off. The country was very fresh, and the flowers were in even greater profusion than I have seen here be- fore. I am sending you some very inadequate photo- graphs of these gardens, which were designed by the most famous landscape artist here. His idea is to have no flowers, but get all his effect from trees, because they are part of the picture all the year round, while flowers fade .with the coming of the late summer and autumn. I saw yesterday the first sunset since I came. The mountains were as blue as indigo, and the going out of the day was as if a great golden ball was being let slowly down behind the line of deep azure. There was no after-glow and the twilight lasted but a short time. It was just yellow and blue with none of the other vivid colors we see in Georgia. I have bought some very interesting books, which I am mailing back to you as I read them. I have not had one line from my office or home, but hope the letters will catch me somewhere. We are getting away before we experi- 88 ence any of the acute stages of the feeling between Japan and America. I have spent my odd minutes lately reading Lefcadio Hearn, and about him. While he was a poseur, he was a wonderful painter of words, and the people swear by him here just as the Spaniards do by Washington Irving and Tales of the Alhambra. Coming here has given me a new interest in the East, and I will never get enough to read about the queer people and their beautiful land. I am sorry Evalyn and mother are not coming, but I suppose I ought to be as philosophical as possible, and spend the money I contributed to Evalyn's trip on the won- derful knick-knacks (if that's the way to spell them) that I find here. Kiss grandma for me. With lots of love, As ever, H. B. Kobe, Japan, May 4th. Dear Ida : This is where we begin the southwestern trip to Shimonoseki, through the Inland Sea. It is three- quarters of an hour's ride by train from Osaka, and the same distance from Kyoto. Kobe's imports and ex- ports are the largest in Japan. Here is made the best sake, and the beautiful basket work of Arima. Very near, and southwest of Kobe at Hyogo is the other big Buddha in bronze, forty-eight feet high and eighty-five feet around the waist, with a face eight and 89 a half feet high. Professor Chamberlain says the face is better than the Daibutsu's at Kamakura. Visitors can go inside the statue where there are many mirrors hanging — gifts of the devotees. Nearby in another Buddhist temple is an Amida in bronze set on a pedestal of stone in a lotus pool, and across the road from this is the thirteen storied pagoda monument to Kiyomori. The Nunobiki waterfalls are but a short distance from the splendid Tor Hotel in the City. Sincerely, H. B. Kobe, May 4. My dearest grandmother : I am here at Kobe, forty miles south of Kyoto, from whence I sail to Shanghai. I have been to Yokohoma where we landed in Japan ; Tokio, the Capital ; Nikko where the beautiful lacquered temples are in the pine tree groves ; back to Tokio ; then to Miyanoshita where the mountains are the most exquisite in the world; then to see the great snow-capped sacred mountain of Japan, Fujiyama, nearly thirteen thousand feet high ; then to see the Imperial castle at Nagoya ; then to Nara, where the priests cut the horns of a thousand fawns every year ; then to Kioto, the most interesting place in Japan. Here we saw the famous cherry dance, one of the most beautiful spectacles I ever saw, — not a dance, but a series of poses. After nearly a week 90 there we came through a beautiful blue mountain coun- try to Osaka, the biggest port in Japan. The Europ- ean influence here is so strong that it hardly seems a Japanese city, although the shops are full of interest- ing things, ancient and modern. Tomorrow we go down the "Inland Sea" to Shimonoseki, and from there to Nagasaki. This takes two days, and from there to Shanghai two days longer. I expect to finally reach New York early in July. I have seen so many beauti- ful things I am ashamed not to have brought all of you along with me. I hope you are well and strong and that you will take good care of yourself during the summer. I haven't seen any place I love as much as Atlanta, al- though I must admit it is not as beautiful as Japan. Lots of love to all of you. As ever, Your affectionate grandson, H. On the Inland Sea of Japan, May 4. Dear Joe and Mabel : On a comfortable modern steamer, we are ploughing through the dimpling waves of Japan's Inland Sea. There are two hundred and forty miles of it between here and Shimonoseki, through whose straits the ships pass south to Nagasaki or west to Tsing-Tau as I did. The widest part of the sea is less than forty miles. 91 The natives divide it into five sections, one of which is hardly wide enough for two ships to go through at once. The smaller islands are of every conceivable shape, and the larger ones are picturesquely moun- tainous and blue. The banks are studded in many places with small huts and the waters are always alive with small fishing smacks and other craft. There are so many near facts about this remarkable inside pas- sage that I will only tell you something of Miyajima the loveliest island in it. It is sacred ; likewise, it is rated as one of the three beautiful sights of Japan. In places it reaches an alti- tude of nearly two thousand feet, and it boasts some three thousand people. The island has many tame deer on it, and its maple and cherry trees, its tea houses, its picturesque huts and its torii, combine to make it one of the pretty spots of Earth. They say the first temple was built there in 593 A. D. No births or deaths are allowed on Miyajima. Mothers are sent to the shore of the Inland Sea thirty days before their children are expected. Neither are live nor dead dogs permitted there. The temple back of the torii which are pillared in the sea, at high tide itself appears to be built in the sea. On the right of the temple is the natural wood "Hall of a Thousand Mats", said to have been built entirely of one camphor wood tree. Very near the great Hall is a five storied pagoda, which, like the Chinese structures, follows the rule of always having an odd number of stories. I must tell you of the Bridge of the Damask Girdle crossing the Mishagawa at Iwakuni. Its five arches, one of which is repaired every five years, measure 92 450 feet. The piers are of stone and some of them held together with lead. No time to write more. Your friend, H. B. Inland Sea, May 5th. Dear Frank : They separated at Kobe, because ship accommoda- tion could not be had for her entire party and for The Diplomat too. If I had not known that it was built upon such a fictitious foundation the parting would have seemed heart-rending. All the afternoon they sat together in a secluded nook out of the sun, and even the Inland Sea of Japan didn't seem any too beautiful for their feelings. They would look far off to the horizon and just sit there and breathe, slowly. But the Worst part of it came when she took a tender to get out to his boat. She came down with eyes really red, and carried a big bunch of roses in her hands, and a full smoking-set she had ordered for him in the pretty Japanese Damascene of black and gold, and another package wrapped up like a small book. This he was told not to open until after she left, and he didn't. We left them alone in the moon-light and discreetly watched the sampans and the laborers, and after a last lingering glance she got on the tender and went back ashore with her friend, the other 93 widow. The Diplomat looked rather foolish with the bouquet of roses and his other packages, but he stuck to them until we steamed out of the harbor. Then he came over and thanked me for the interest I had taken and told me he was very happy, as he was going to be married as soon as God would let him. Then with a good deal of curiosity he tore open the small package. It was a copy of the Japanese "Sword and Blossom Poems" and it was turned down at the one called "Dew". It was short and to the point and it read (lest he should forget) : "Thou wilt return to me, Why should I I grieve For such short parting? Yea, thy words are true I will not weep — see these Are drops of Dew Not tears — not tears, That glitter on my sleeve". The author Kino Toshisada, evidently wrote this verse to order. Mashed between the leaves was an- other of those blue talismanic flowers. But just as he started to close the book there fell out of it a letter written by her in a sweet womanly hand, which he also read me. It was so good that anybody who could write it deserved any old diplomat she wanted, and it was written on soft table-napkin crinkled white paper with delicate bamboos across it. And bamboo in Japan is the emblem of loyalty. She hadn't over- looked a thing. Here is the letter, and I wish you could know what a delicate perfume it exhaled. I 94 asked him to let me copy it because it seemed like Kyoto, the "Soul of Jajan" — "What shall I wish for you ? Cherry blossoms beau- tiful, fleeting-wistaria, fragrant, suggestive of peace- ful twilights and unfrequented paths — violets, the shy heart of spring in color vanishing with the first warmth of summer — all lovely flowers and dreams — But for you of the great world realities must be woven in the fabric of life. So I choose bamboo-fidel- ity — to all the highest promptings of your nature — good fortune in all you undertake — success through perseverance — this loved plant though weighted to earth by winter's snows bends only — never breaks — evergreen at all seasons — May the spirit of eternal youth accompany you always, and lastly, happiness in its most radiant form constantly a companion be, making every day sweet and perfect as a Japanese landscape. Not only now but always will I hope for the fulfilment of my wish. I kiss thee honorable farewell comrade of dream days and beloved ever-by." H. B. Leaving Japan, May 7th. My dear Leon: The Buddhist priests managed Japan's education in medieval times. In the seventeenth century Confu- cianism took root, and then his analects were studied. 95 Some colleges were started in 1868, and now there is the great Imperial University at Tokyo. There are departments of law, agriculture, science, literature, en- gineering, and medicine, with thousands of students. Then there are commercial, normal, language, and technical schools, Blind and Dumb schools, and a col- lege of agriculture. As far back as 1905 there were 27,000 primary schools with 118 teachers and over five millions of pupils, and there were over 250 middle schools with 95,000 scholars and nearly five thousand teachers. There are now many more government schools, teachers, and scholars ; as well as kinder- gartens, private colleges and missionary schools, an industrial school for girls, a female normal school, and a great Woman's University at Tokyo. A religious cousin of mine will I know be inter- ested in learning that the great Island of Formosa, which has been the subject of much diplomacy, was evangelized by pulling the teeth of the natives. They are great sufferers from tooth-ache because of the "severe malaria, beetle nut chewing to blacken them, cigar-smoking, and other filthy habits". One mis- sionary in particular, Rev. Dr. Mackay, pulled over twenty-one thousand teeth. The Japanese love to be clean and they are willing to endure over 110 degrees Fahrenheit to become so. Five hundred thousand people wash themselves daily in over 1100 public bath houses in Tokyo alone at an average cost of less than a penny each. Generally a barrier separates the male from the females, fre- quently this barrier is merely a small cord across the 96 water. Family bathing is economical because "the same bath does for all the members". The gentlemen usually take it first "then ladies, then children. At one mountain bathing-resort, bathers put a rock over their bodies to keep from floating — Japanese weddings are arranged by the families of the bride and groom. A schachen arranges for people mutually suited, to see each other. They may not like the proposed partner, but the parents continue to manage. If they are satisfied, they send clothes, money, sea-weed or something equally sentimental. Then the bride dresses in mourning (which is white in Japan) symbolizing her death to her family, and goes with the marriage broker to her new home. In the old days a bon-fire signalized her leaving. The wedding occurs at the house of her "in-laws" and both drink three times three out of three different sized wine-cups. The bride also changes into a new dress, the gift of her husband. Before the festivities are over, she again changes into a colored costume she has brought with her. The bride-groom also changes his costume. The go-between then leads them into the bridal chamber, where they drink nine more cups of wine, the husband taking the first sip. The third day the happy couple visits her parents. In the mean time her official registration has been changed to that of her new husband. After marriage all the bride has to do is literally to obey both husband and mother- in-law and live happy ever after. Before 1901 there was one divorce to every three marriages, since and up to 1905 it was about one to five. Marrying blood relatives is unknown in Japan. 97 Ever since 1500 the Japs have enjoyed incense snif- fing, or rather incense guessing, because the prize at these parties is given to the sniffer who can tell which of five or six kinds is offered for his smelling. Fans used to be prohibited, but now they are a requisite feature of court and formal dress. Even today one of the inferior class will hide his mouth behind a fan in the presence of his superior. In 1905 there were six orders of knighthood, the Chrysanthemum, the Golden Kite, the Rising Sun, the Sacred Treasure, and the order of the Crown. The last is for women only. The most exalted honor con- ferred by the Japanese Court is the Grand Cordon of the Chrysanthemum, which is enjoyed only by royalty. I was told that cremation is much more "popular" in Japan than in the United States, as poor candidates are given cut rates, running sometimes as low as seventy-five cents for grown people and fifty cents for children. It takes about three hours after which the ashes are urned and buried in the ground. It used to be a regular thing for the rulers of Japan to give way to their sons. Sometimes there would be three Mikados, the youngest reigning, with a father alive, and a grand-father also alive, who had abdicated. One of the queerest treatments in Japan used to be the perforation of the skin a half to three-quarters of an inch with gold, steel, or silver needles a fiftieth of an inch in diameter with spiral grooves in them. The epidermis is punctured by a blow upon the needle, which is then twisted like a gimlet as far down as desired, then withdrawn. This is done one to twenty 98 times generally in the abdomen. I think the theory is that it is so painful that the patient concludes before the twentieth punch that he is quite well and needs no further treatment. It is Christian Science with a reverse English, and is called "acapuncture". Pro- fessor Chamberlain is authority for the statement that hand-shaking, unknown years ago and practiced little now, is a proof of Japanese good sense; and "as for kissing, that is tabooed as utterly immodest and re- volting". The professor does not add that that is another proof of Japanese good sense. I have already told you the manifold uses of bam- boo — One kind is used for pipe stems, others for doors, staves, window blinds, pen staffs, brooms, umbrellas, canes, hats, baskets, torches, bird cages, nails, sieves, fans, vases, shoes, cables, trays, and a great many other articles of daily use. Until she learns for herself Japan has no hesitancy in employing French, German, American or English experts to run her mint, build her navy or organize and drill her army. The women in the cities here no longer blacken their teeth with a mixture of water, wine, iron and gall- nuts. They used to paint this tooth-mixture on with a little feather. The Japanese play flower cards, and Hundred Poets "which is like our authors, but money is not often wagered. The "Ainos" now live only in the northern Yezo, where they were finally driven by the Japanese. Aside from the heritage of place names they left, they have affected Japanese civilization but little. They are among the hairi- est of men and very strong, but miscegenation between 99 them and the Japs is not successful because they die out after a few generations. The tattooed moustaches on the lips of the women and strange designs on their hands distinguish them from any other race. They abhor bathing. There are now but about sixteen thousand of them left. They worship and propitiate only the gods of cereal and appetite. I hope the International Sleeping Car Company con- tinues to thrive under your American management. I am, Sincerely yours, H. B. Inland Sea, May 7th. My dear Hiram: I am writing you some of my impressions of a trip through rural Japan. To an American today Japan seems as primitive in agriculture as Egypt under the Pharaohs. Farmers use wooden spades, three-pronged hoes, and a wooden plow with its share made of a heavy piece of wood sharpened at the end. While the Japanese plan of irrigation is good, the methods employed are Methuselan. The only way used which is faster than a well bucket is for the almost naked man to step with his bare feet on the paddle-wheels of a pump that lifts the water from a slightly lower level. One of the ancient poetic names of this beautiful land was "fertile reed-clad country, rich in grain". Six out of every ten Japanese live in the country, although only twelve per cent, of the land is arable. Nearly all Japan 100 is volcanic, and mountainous, and consequently terracing here reaches its perfection. The horse and the ox have none of the machinery aid that American farmers employ. When the dearly raised crops are gathered the scythe and harrow and threshing apparatus employed are the same as those used by Japanese ancestors thousands of years ago. Threshing is done in Japan through wooden frames with teeth of metal. It is probably because the land is divided into small holdings whose owners have little cap- ital, that modern agricultural machinery is unknown. An- other reason for the lack of machinery is that Japan has none of the great expanses of prairie or desert lands known in the United States. The wood gathered for fuel is packed on horses or women or men or children, and tea and rice are laboriously picked and carried in baskets. The rice is first sown "broadcast", and when it comes up in the water each sprout is separately pulled up by hand and transplanted. Indeed raising it has become so expensive that in China especially the coolie class can not afford it, and in China the principal food for the lower classes is the soya bean, which is so rich in nutriment Before being sown on the 88th day of the spring season the rice seeds are soaked seven days in salt water, after which it is planted in beds. It is not transplanted into these paddy fields until the end of May or early in June, frequently to the music of "rice planting songs". The greatest danger to the crop comes on the two hundred and tenth day when the typhoon may damage or destroy the crop. There are two festivals connected with the harvesting of rice, one in October and one in November. At the latter held at Ise Shrine, the Emperor tastes the new 101 grown rice. At the time of this latter festival the schools frequently give vacations. In the fall there is an annual festival of the farmers to Ebisu the god of Hard Work, and in some provinces when the procession reaches the teniple the man in charge exhorts the celebrants : "Let us laugh, according to our yearly usage". This country produces over 3900 kinds of rice and two thirds of the cultivable land of the country is devoted to its culture. The quality is the best produced in the world, and it raises the third largest amount. Rents are frequently paid in rice. The market price of rice is quoted by the bag. Japan produces twenty-five millions of dollars worth of tea yearly. It is picked from the bushes after they reach three years growth. All day long and all night too I presume, the natives sip a very weak brew of tea from little handleless cups, and they invariably take it Without sugar. The tea cere- mony which I have described in detail on page 75 is the most formal thing in Japanese society, and mixing, blend- ing, making, and serving tea is the high polite art in this fascinating country. According to a strictly reliable fable, tea started thus. An Indian saint prayed and watched ceaselessly, finally he fell asleep. On awaking he showed such disgust at his weary eye-lids for closing that he cut them off. They were miraculously changed into tea shrubs, the extract from whose leaves frequently keep Americans awake long through the night. Tea drinking which at first was a ceremonial of the court, became universal near the begin- ning of the eighteenth century. The tea plant belongs to the camelia family. 102 Silk produces a hundred millions a year and the worm that produces it is called "The honorable little gentleman". He feeds on mulberry leaves. A Buddist Saint brought tea from China into Japan in the beginning of the 9th Century, but it was not until the end of the 12th Century that shrubs were propagated from Chinese seeds, after which the tea drinking became a national custom among the higher classes. The seeds are planted in terraces, and the bushes are only allowed to grow three or four feet to make picking easier. This starts in April and there is a second and sometimes more frequent picking beginning in July. The leaves are put in a wooden tray with a wire bottom under which there is boiling water. This brings the oil to the surface and then the firing is done in a wooden frame, heat being supplied by charcoal at 120 degrees. After manipulations of the leaf it changes color and becomes separately crumbled. Then it is fired twice more at different tem- peratures and becomes dry. "All genuine Japanese tea is what we should term 'green/ * * * Other tea-like infusions sometimes to be met with are made by pouring hot water on a mixture of fragrant substances, such as orange peel, etc. * * * an infusion of salted cherry blossoms ; an infusion of parched barley; * * * and similar preparation of beans. * * * 'luck tea* is made of salted plums, seed- weeds and xanthoxylon seeds, and is partaken of in every Japanese house hold on the last night of the year. "Japanese tea must not be made with boiling water, and the finer the quality the less hot must be the water en> ployed." And he says that "frequently the first brew is thrown away as too bitter." 103 There are 2782 different trees and plants in Japan. The Lewisohn chrysanthemum exhibited in the foyer of the Waldorf in New York, a few years ago had eighteen hundred blossoms on it, but of course, so many buds could not compare with the Japanese "Sleepy Head". "White Dragon", "Golden Dew, Fishers Lantern", "White Dragon" or the exquisite Starlit Night. The Japs make no bouquets in our sense of the word, but flowers are loosely and artistically arranged. Conder in his Floral Art of Japan says a "floral composition" must be made up of three sprays the longest middle one bent, and at half its length another branching out, and at half its length a third branch a quarter as long. From the Island of Formosa comes more camphor than anywhere else. Camphor is made by cutting down and chipping the trees which are then boiled and condensed. The trees are frequently from 30 to 50 feet around. One of the odd sights of Japan is to see women old and young carrying great mats of brush or bamboo or wood on their heads protected only by a small mat to soften the pressure. It is not unusual even in the cities to see one man or two men pulling on a two- wheeled cart a long and heavy telegraph pole. Cattle are very scarce in Japan because there is little demand for meat. The butter is imported mostly from Denmark, and I have never heard of any cheese being made here. Bread, milk, butter or coffee is seldom seen in use by the natives. The fruit in Japan is very inferior. They say the best season in the country is autumn, when it is clear and the maples fling out their flags 104 of gold upon the background of some clashing color that shows the wonderful contrasts here. The children fly kites of inflated paper representing animals or fish, and spin tops, but most of the time seem to be acting as little fathers and mothers to the younger members of the family. The lotus is used as an "emblem", because of the wheel like form, the spoke-like petals symbolizing perpetual cycles of existence. Buddhist representations show Buddha standing on lotus flowers and the flower is universally associated with death. The Jap says, "As the warrior is first among men, so is the cherry the first among flowers". Tea is made from the blossoms, which has a delicious aroma. The blossoms are also preserved in salt. I am with cordial good wishes, Faithfully H. B. Beyond Shimonoseki, going to Tsing-Tau, May 8. Dear Walton: When you make purchases in Japan the shop-keeper will very probaby use the abacus, a small wooden frame about two-thirds of the way up which there is a horizontal line of division. Above and below this are rods or wires. On the part of each of the rods above the division line there are two buttons or count- 105 ers like those we use for keeping the score in billiards. Below, on each of the seven rods, there are five of these buttoms. Your purchases are figured on this cryptic device, which has been explained to me over and over again, but which I don't get the hang of yet. It is some kind of a half decimal system, and when you buy it costs you more and when you sell it pays you less. It is about as nearly "esoteric" as is any- thing else in the East, and won't hurt you if you don't try to use it on an Oriental. I prefer a National Cash Register. For further details see the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, which is clear only in the picture of it and not in the description. In line with the calculations on the abacus is the method of reckoning ages. "A child is born in Decem- ber, 1901. By January, 1902 the child is said to be two years old, because it has lived through a part of two separate years". Even the old maids if there are any such things in Japan, use this system. There are almost as many feast days in Japan as in Italy, ranging from feasts for the birthday of the Emperor to the feast of the first of the dog days. Massage is done in Japan by the blind, who before 1870 constituted themselves into "one big union" divided into grades, to join the highest of which cost a thousand dollars. Geishas, who are paid conversationalists, dancers, and singing girls, sometimes begin their training at seven years of age. The licensed courtesans of Japan complain bitterly of the lure of some of the geishas. Everybody in Japan is privileged to use any crest he may suggest. Hence the first thing that strikes the 106 stranger in Japan is to see heraldic or at least descrip- tive signs on the back of the shirts of the most humble rickshawman or coolie. These had their origin among the soldiers of this military nation. The Imperial crests are two in number, the sixteen petalled chrysan- themum, and the paulownia flower. The Japanese character is so imitative that it readily takes on almost any fad for a season. Once it was cock-fighing, again it was rabbits, at another time dancing the European dances, at another time wrestling, another speculating, and so on. Even suicide had its vogue. Japanese boys have their annual holiday in March and the girls in May. At the latter time, the doll shops are filled with small people and animals. For the boys there are cloth and paper fish, flat or inflated. Today I heard the secret of the old fire-walkers and their ordeal, which consisted in walking over burning embers. It was done by fanatics like the whirling dervishes at Constantinople, and was accom- plished by the supposed victim stepping in wet salt before going across the coals. H. B. On the Yellow Sea, May 9. My dear Fred B. : I am on my way to China (Shanghai) and this is the first time I have had leisure to try to analyze my impressions of the Japs. The books you read don't settle any of their strange contradictions. If they 107 were all women I could decide the question by giving it up. As a race they are so full of anomalies that a solution of their character is impossible. It seems hard to believe that people so different from all the other peoples of the earth and so set in their ways of differentness, could be so wonderfully adaptive. They have the same bodies and the same brains their an- cestors had for two thousand years at least. And I can not conceive a progressive nation such as we call our- selves ever adopting or adapting any of the Oriental notions; and yet they, who until lately have never called themselves progressive, have assimilated and are still rapidly assimilating all the good things of all the civiliza- tions. And, furthermore, they do it without in the least changing their religion, their morals, their ideals or their customs of living, except, of course, in so far as these customs must necessarily change to meet the innovations they adopt and adapt. I saw a curious illustration of their adopting things. You have seen, of course, at home the postal czrds with the bathing pictures on them. The Japs have taken these bodily, all except the faces, and are selling them by the hundreds all over Japan. I don't believe our missionaries do much to change their religious ideas, because they are an aesthetic people who love form and color too much to be moved by a religion whose churches are so cold and formal to them. Their temples are a delight to the eye, and their religion, the ancient Shinto, is like what the Irishman said the Epis- copal Church was, you did not want to quit it because "you could do what you liked inside and they never put anybody out". In A. D. 636 when Buddhism came over at the instance of the clever priests from China, the Japs 108 at once adopted it and today there are Shinto temples and Buddhist temples side by side. All the Jap's training is to be considerate, and I think that much of their attitude towards our and other beliefs is pure courtesy and nothing else. In America we are all taught that the introduction of labor-saving machinery and of our great enterprises both tend to dwarf the individual and make him a simple cog in the big machines. Our orators constantly refer to the good old days when every shoemaker made a whole shoe, etc. But this trip has exploded that theory, because here where everything is done with the greatest care by hand- power alone, I find no more individuality, indeed not as much, as at home. While here every man is a factory in himself and the smoke is seldom seen to rise from factory chimneys, they are all alike in dress, in manners, their mode of transportation and everything else. It is remarkable to how many uses bamboo is put in Japan. The shoots and roots are eaten, usually boiled in cream, and are almost as succulent as celery, with a slight turnipy taste. There are two kinds of the reed, one with light feathery leaves that are as graceful as ostrich feathers, the other as high as thirty feet, often more, with a dark green stalk and very dark green leaves. They seem to be harder than reeds, and when I tried to cut a small one it made three big dents in my knife blade. Every form of ornament and utensil is made of it, from toast- racks to water pipes for the hot springs. In the beds of the rivers the Japs make great baskets of it and put rocks in them to deflect the course of their streams. In the cities and towns a great many of the houses are built of them, even the joints and beams being made of bamboo. 109 The houses, by the way, are of a very flimsy character, and every guest in a Japanese hotel hears everything that every other one does. The walls are lathed with about as much bamboo lathing as a cane-seated chair, and over this a soft mud plaster with more hair in it than we use is daubed, then a cheap wall paper. Of course, most of the house is "Shojis" or sash, sliding on shutters and filled with paper. All through their architecture runs this idea of imper- mianency, due, to some extent, to fear of earthquakes which shake down a more substantial structure. But the whole Japanese theory is one of impermanency. They have some great temples that are deliberately destroyed every twenty years and rebuilt, the debris of the destroyed building being sold as souvenirs to the faithful Shinto religionists. Going back once more to their contradictory characteristics, the most striking thing is the adaptation of Buddhism, the religion of peace and tranquility, to Shintoism, the religion of war and fighters. I think all the jingo talk in Japan is caused by the jingoes of this country who are trying to 'stir up race hatred for their selfish purposes only. They are like the little men who know the big fellows will not fight them, and who bluff accordingly. I haven't heard one word from home, and I only hope you are all well and happy. I will take the Trans- Siberia at Harbin on 29th. The pretty girl, who is just your style, sits by while I am writing, and says, from what I have told her, she would like to meet you. Best regards to everybody in the office. Yours truly, H. B. 110 AFTER-WORD. I hope I have given you some idea of this enchanting land of Japan, where filial reverence and patriotism and gentle courtesy go hand in hand. It is a wonder-land of pink cherry blossoms, and lacquered houses, and quaint grave interesting men and women. Nature here is at her best, and art is at its height. Every place is redolent of that old Japan that was as impenetrable as Silence and as mysterious as Time. Here the flowers are more exquisite, the setting more artistic and the scenery more picturesque than in any part of the world that I have seen. Upon this background of the past there is being painted to-day a picture of modernity. With telephones, and telegraphs, and radio, and electricity, and aeroplanes, and battle-ships, and victorious armies, and European clothes, education and customs, this nation of sturdy men and obedient women is the ally of the four leaders of civiliza- tion. To-day they exhibit an enterprise as amazing as their land is beautiful, and a patriotism as refreshing as their courage is exalting. If we must have allies, let us congratulate ourselves that we are allied with the descend- ants of those same brave Japs who threw wide their gates to Western civilization when they welcomed our own American, Admiral Perry. H. B. 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