STACKS 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/heartofjapanOObrow 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
LIBRARV 
 UNlVERSiry^nLLfNOIS 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 GLIMPSES OF LIFE AND NATURE 
 FAR FROM THE TRAVELLERS' TRACK 
 IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN 
 
 BY 
 
 CLARENCE LUDLOW BROWNELL 
 
 Fellow Royal Geographical Society 
 Fellow of the Society of Arts 
 Member of the Japan Society of London 
 
 NEW YORK 
 McCLURE, PHILLIPS 
 MCM I II 
 
 & CO. 
 
Copyright^ 1903, by 
 McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO. 
 
 Published, September, 1903, N 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. KONO HiTO AND THE PllAYER-PUMP, ... 3 
 
 II. O ToYO San, 14 
 
 III. Our Landlord, 19 
 
 IV. In the Kindergarten Days, .... 29 
 V. The Honorable Bath, 43 
 
 VI. The August Departure, 50 
 
 VII. The Guest Who Could Not Go, ... 56 
 
 VIII. The Obedient Bed, 61 
 
 IX. One Who Won, 71 
 
 X. Thinking in Japanese, 76 
 
 XI. Bo Chan, 88 
 
 XII. O Jo Sama, . 100 
 
 XIII. Happy New Year, 113 
 
 XIV. Those Who Sign Chits, 120 
 
 XV. The Censor and the Crafty Editor, . . 126 
 
 XVI. Bobby, 137 
 
 XVII. Playhouses, Players, and Plays, . . .141 
 
 XVIII. "Music,'^ 151 
 
 XIX. Blossoms always in Bloom, .... 157 
 
 XX. Signs op the Times, 163 
 
 XXI. Bows AND Ballots, 171 
 
 XXII. The Flowers of Tokio, 175 
 
 XXIII. In Trade 180 
 
 XXIV. Diving Belles, 193 
 
 XXV. Amongst the Gods, 200 
 
 XXVI. On the Earthquake Plan, . • . . 212 
 
 q899S 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 XXVII. Missionaries and Missionaries, . . . 221 
 
 XXVIII. Gilded with Old Gold, 238 
 
 XXIX. And so He Became a Saint, .... 242 
 
 XXX. Kade and the Repeaters, .... 250 
 
 XXXI. Kade Would Adventure, .... 253 
 
 XXXII. What Happened to Allen, .... 256 
 
 XXXIII. The Sportsman in Japan, .... 266 
 
 XXXIV. The Father of the Village, . . . .276 
 XXXV. The Theft of the Golden Scale, . . .283 
 
 XXXVI. The Kanji, 291 
 
 XXXVII. The Reverence of Kato, .... 298 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The Gardens of the Old Temple . . . Frontispiece 
 
 PACING 
 PAGE 
 
 Itsukushima (or Miyajima)^ Aki . . . . .16 
 Nichiyobi was Our Home Day . . . . .56 
 Japanese Nurses Carry Babies on Their Backs . .92 
 The Game of Kitsune " Fox . . . . .96 
 
 Kitsune Ken " 98 
 
 Japanese Girls at Home . . . . . .110 
 
 A Samurai with Prisoner . . . . . .138 
 
 Gakunin . . . . . . . . .152 
 
 In Japan Everyone is Always Entertaining Someone . 158 
 
 A Geisha l60 
 
 Signs of the Times . . . . . . .166 
 
 Tokio 176 
 
 Pagoda at Temple Horuji, Nara . . . . .192 
 
 Goku Temple ........ 200 
 
 The Gateway of the Miya, Shinto Temple . . . 202 
 The Tera or Buddhist Temple ..... 204 
 
 The Famous Dragon Fountain ..... 206 
 
 Amida, the Buddha . . .... 208 
 
 The Effects of an Earthquake 218 
 
 Here Hideyoshi, the Taiko, Drank His Tea . . . 240 
 
 The Old Stone Bridge 254 
 
 Night-fishing in Japan 274 
 
 Temple of Kiyomidzu, Kiyoto ..... 284 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
/ 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 
 KONO HITO AND THE PRAYER-PUMP 
 
 GARDNER and I met Kono Hito the first time 
 - we went up the west coast. He was the thriftiest 
 man in Japan. Even taken together we did not 
 compare with him in thrift. 
 
 He lived near a temple less than one hundred " ri ^ 
 from Kanazawa. If he had been farther from the tem- 
 ple he would have been just as close, but he might not 
 have discovered the fact to the world, nor have wasted 
 away on account of his unlovely trait. 
 
 Kono Hito was a farmer. Like most native farmers, 
 he raised rice. To do so he had to have water, and 
 plenty of it, enough to cover thousands of " tsubo," as 
 the Japanese say. ( A " tsubo " is the size of two mats, 
 or thirty-six square feet.) He owned some fifty fields, 
 lying side by side. They were small and fenceless; 
 only low ridges of earth marked the boundaries of the 
 fields, and these ridges, when the rice had grown, were 
 lost to view. At the time of planting they would be 
 mushy, but at harvest time they would become dry and 
 hard, so that a man could walk along them easily if he 
 had occasion. 
 
 Kono's way of cultivating them was to throw seed 
 rice — ^that is rice kernels in the shell — over the surface 
 ^1 ri =r about miles. 
 
 [3] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 of his ponds, where it sprouted, and wove into a tan- 
 gled mat of deep, rich green. When the rice blades 
 were six inches long, and had well-formed roots, he 
 would disentangle them, and, gathering them in clus- 
 ters, would plant them in the mud at two-foot intervals, 
 along rows two feet apart and parallel. This made the 
 rows regular, like the lines of a checker board, with a 
 bunch of rice wherever two lines crossed. The board 
 itself was all water at first, and had to remain water until 
 nearly time for harvest, for Kono Hito grew swamp rice 
 only. He said there was no money in upland rice. It 
 was too hard, and would not sell for the cost of grow- 
 ing it. 
 
 A drought, therefore, was about as bad a thing as 
 could happen to Kono Hito. He must have water or go 
 to the money lenders, and once he went to them there 
 would be no end of going until they had possession of 
 his rice-fields. Kono Hito knew the fate of borrowers 
 full well, and to save himself from such calamity he built 
 dams above his fields to make reservoirs, he dug ditches 
 from one field to the other, and he observed the Bud- 
 dhist fast days. In spite of all this, however, his crops 
 turned yellow earlier than those of his neighbor Sono 
 Hito, the rice grower on the opposite side of the road 
 — a highway that passed between their paddy-fields and 
 led to the temple and beyond. 
 
 " Trouble indeed ! " said Kono Hito as he came along 
 this road in his jin-riki-sha one day. " What shall we 
 do? " But though he spoke to himself of trouble, and 
 asked himself how to avoid it, he did rjot talk out loud. 
 
 [4] 
 
KONO HITO 
 He sought to succeed by keeping more fast days, work- 
 ing harder in his fields, building tiny shrines, like dolls' 
 houses, at his reservoirs, and bringing the household 
 economy down to such a fine point that Okusama, his 
 wife, dared not lose so much as a grain of rice in a 
 month. But with all his prayers and his skimping, he 
 had not water enough. His fields were brown when Sono 
 Hito's were still green. Trouble indeed! 
 
 Sono Hito, the meanwhile, was not worrying. He was 
 a patriarch in the " Home of Happy Husbandmen," and 
 never had bad years, even though he kept few fasts and 
 was not more than half careful of his reservoirs. 
 
 A lot of folk worked for him, however, and with- 
 out knowing it, though they were glad in their uncon- 
 scious service. They were good Buddhists of the Hong- 
 wan ji sect, passing daily to the grand old temple over- 
 looking the sea. They offered alms to Amida, the 
 Buddha, and ere they offered they washed themselves, 
 as good folk do before they worship. Sono Hito, of 
 course, knew this, for he went himself to the temple 
 sometimes and took the preliminary bath just as the 
 others did. It was while he was taking one of these 
 baths that the idea which resulted in Kono Hito's 
 " trouble " had occurred to Sono Hito. This is the idea. 
 
 Sono's rice-fields reached quite up to the temple grove. 
 He would build a shrine in honor of the temple's god 
 a little this side of the gate of the temple, and near the 
 road. He would sink a well there. It would needs be 
 a deep well, it is true, but Sono's crops had been good 
 and he would not begrudge the cost. Having dug the 
 
 [5] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 well he would place a tablet before the shrine, bearing a 
 declaration of the dedication of his offering to the tem- 
 ple's god on behalf of those who worshiped there. He 
 would give each worshiper all the pure water he might 
 desire for a bath, and would not charge him for it. All 
 the worshiper need do would be to pump and help him- 
 self ! It was a grand scheme, such as only a man who 
 had seen the world could have evolved. Sono had been 
 a traveler. 
 
 He knew " Yokohama, Nagasaki, Hakodate, hai,'* 
 personally, for he had been there. He had seen mis- 
 sionaries in Tokio and merchants in the treaty ports. 
 To one of the missionaries he owed his inspiration. The 
 reverend gentleman had shown him a praying water- 
 wheel from India. It was part of a collection the 
 learned preacher had gathered at various stations he had 
 occupied in the Far East. Sono Hito delighted in the 
 collection, but the praying-wheel pleased him most. If 
 he had had a place on his west coast rice-fields to set one 
 up he would have begged the missionary to get him one 
 from the ancient home of Buddhism. 
 
 Some days after he had seen this supplication-made- 
 simple apparatus, so much simpler than the man-power 
 prayer-wheels of the Tokio temples, Sono received an 
 invitation from one of the missionary's friends, a silk 
 merchant in Yokohama. This man wished to make ac- 
 quaintances on the west coast, especially in Fukui and 
 Kanagawa Kens, where the silkworms spin well. Sono, 
 always ready " to see the new thing," to learn some- 
 thing and to have a good time, took the train at Shim- 
 
 [6] 
 
KONO HITO 
 bashi station that afternoon, and within an hour was 
 at " Yama Namban," as the jin-riki-sha cooHes called 
 the merchant's house. 
 
 Sono Hito had a wonderful time at this foreigner's 
 home. The foreign dainties, the bathroom with the 
 water-taps, the high bed, the cooking-stove with its 
 chimney, were marvelous to him, but the thing that 
 tickled him especially was what he called the " midzu- 
 age kikai," or water-raising machine, not far from the 
 kitchen door. He played with this a half -hour steadily, 
 until he was all of a sweat and had flooded his host's 
 back yard and turned the tennis-court into a soppy 
 marsh. 
 
 Nothing would do but he must have one to operate 
 at his home over on the west coast, and as the kikai was 
 not in stock at any of the Yokohama agencies, Sono 
 Hito's host promised to get one for him from San Fran- 
 cisco. 
 
 " I'll send it over to you as soon as it arrives," said 
 Mo-Hitotsu-Smith San. (M. H. S. S. was the second 
 Smith to come to Yokohama after Perry's departure. 
 The first Smith was merely " Smith San," but the second 
 was Mo-Hitotsu-Smith San, i. more-one-Smith Mr.) 
 He did better than that, however, he took the apparatus 
 over himself three months later, and showed his Japanese 
 friend how to set it up and how he could use it to fill a 
 storage tank so as to have water for emergencies. 
 
 So Sono Hito had men dig the well wide and deep. 
 There was not such another well in that part of the coun- 
 try. Kono Hito, across the road, had nothing in the 
 
 [ 7 3 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 least comparable. He would not have spent so much 
 money on a well had he been never so rich, and in these 
 days he thought himself a very poor man indeed. It 
 grieved him to think that anything that cost ' money 
 should be necessary in his household. The sight of his 
 people eating made him ill, and the prosperity across the 
 road was like fire against his face. He could not endure 
 to look at it. But as Kono Hito suffered, Sono Hito 
 worked at his well shrine. The building was beautiful 
 in design as anything pertaining to Hongwanji would 
 be. Inside, over at one end, was a broad, shallow, 
 wooden tank for the bather to sit in, and, before the 
 tank, ample floor space, where the worshiper would have 
 room to use his scrubbing towel, such as all Japanese 
 carry with them. At the end opposite the tank was the 
 shrine, and beside the tank was a device strange to the 
 natives of the west coast. Sono called it a prayer- 
 machine. Over it was a panel bearing the Chinese in- 
 scription, " Bonno kuno" ("All lust is grief"). 
 
 A Yankee would not have thought of prayer in con- 
 nection with this device. He would doubt if the Jap- 
 anese used water prayer-wheels, and would have said 
 simply " chain-pump." But one may assert with con- 
 siderable confidence that Yankee or other foreigner 
 never before had seen a chain-pump boxed in an image 
 of Buddha, with a third arm, in the shape of a crank, 
 reaching out from one side dud projecting over a bath- 
 tub. 
 
 Sono Hito, however, knew all about the apparatus, 
 both from the Yankee and the west-coast view-point* 
 
 [8] 
 
KONO HITO 
 He was the only person who did; but, like Brer Rabbit, 
 " he wasn't saying nuffin'." 
 
 In fact, the two foreigners who did see this device 
 guessed right the very first time, like the young man 
 in the song, but they kept their thoughts to themselves. 
 Sono Hito might call it a prayer-machine, and each 
 bather as he sat in the tub might turn Buddha's third 
 arm with vigor and pray fervently, chanting his peti- 
 tions in unison with the rat-tat-rat-tat-tattle in Buddha's 
 stomach; to the Yankee's mind the thing would be a 
 chain-pump still. 
 
 It was soon after this visit of Mo-Hitotsu-Smith San 
 that the patriarch of the Home of Happy Husbandmen 
 had conceived his scheme of joining piety and prosperity 
 in happy combination by giving faithful Buddhists a 
 cataract bath free and a chance at the prayer-machine 
 thrown in. He had to explain his device, of course, for 
 it was such a noticeable innovation, so he told the village 
 folk that the ancient peoples of China and India had 
 used these machines with august results. He even 
 threw off his kimono, sat himself in the tub, and showed 
 them how, after pious revolutions, the Divine Pleasure 
 would give them water from above. 
 
 The idea pleased everyone, unless it were Kono Hito, 
 for Buddhists are partial to cataract baths. They take 
 them the year round, even in winter, though possibly 
 they do not enjoy them then, at least not with obvious 
 hilarity. In Tokio, the capital, in spite of its modern- 
 ization, the traveler sees native men and women standing 
 naked under a fall of water in some of the temple parks. 
 
 [9] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 In December and January this water is well down to 
 freezing point. The Japanese do this because they 
 know there is virtue in a cataract. Wherever a cataract 
 is, that place is sacred. If there is none folk often take 
 great pains to make artificial falls, especially in the 
 neighborhood of temples. 
 
 They are purifiers beyond all else, these " from- 
 heaven-descending " streams. Therefore, when Sono 
 San made his offer of a free bath — a cataract bath! 
 something the region about the beloved temple had not 
 known since the " O joshin " (the great earthquake), 
 which, hundreds of years before, had broken up the 
 country, letting out the upper waters and ruining their 
 plans of holy ablution — he became the most popular man 
 in the ken. 
 
 Sono Hito was deeply grateful to his foreign friend, 
 who had showed him how to rig the pump so as to deliver 
 the water into a tank in the roof of the shrine. This 
 tank was a distributing reservoir. Part of the water 
 that the worshipers pumped into it poured down in a 
 stream on to the head of whoever might be working at 
 the crank, as he or she sat in the tub. The greater 
 part, however, flowed away into channels through the 
 rice-fields. As the pious came, therefore, and worked 
 the prayer-machine, "they accomplished three things at 
 once, which, in the order of Sono San's idea of their 
 importance, would read — pumping, irrigation, and puri- 
 fication. This explains how Sono Hito kept things 
 green, and why Kono Hito said " Trouble indeed ! " 
 
 Poor Kono Hito worried greatly over the early yellow- 
 [10] 
 
KONO HITO 
 
 ishness of his fields. He did not understand how Sono 
 Hito managed. He never had been to Yokohama, and 
 he knew nothing of chain-pumps. He believed that 
 Sono Hito's piety had won favor in Buddha's eyes, and 
 that the gods had blessed the fields as a mark of divine 
 pleasure. If he could have a bath shrine he might win 
 favor too, but that would cost money ; and then to give 
 the baths free, not to charge even a one-rin ^ piece for 
 them — the thought was too painful. 
 
 Still, if Buddha would smile on him, it might pay, 
 thought Kono. It would pay — but to spend the money ! 
 "Trouble!" Therefore he devised how he might be 
 pious cheaply. 
 
 " Namu omahen de gisu," said the wife in the dialect 
 of her district when a man called one morning to see 
 Kono Hito. She meant he was not at home (in Tokio 
 she might have said : " Tadaima rusu de gozaimasu." 
 That would have conveyed a similar idea). So the man 
 went away. 
 
 Down the road he heard a voice calling " Korario,'' 
 which to those who live in that region means, " Come 
 here." The man went in the direction of the call, and 
 found Kono Hito busy with a carpenter and well-digger, 
 discussing plans for an opposition bath shrine. Kono 
 Hito was in agony over the cost, but the workmen had 
 reached their lowest limit, and, with many bows, were 
 protesting that if they cut their price down even a 
 
 mo " ^ further they would not have enough left to pay 
 ^ One rin equals one-twentieth of a cent. 
 ^ One mo =yV ^ ™' ^* ^- aiu ^ cent. 
 
 [11] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 for the air they breathed while digging. So Kono had 
 to give in. 
 
 Within a week the plans had materialized. There 
 was a well with a pair of buckets, a tub, and a shrine 
 dedicated to the use of worshipers. It was not a 
 cataract bath, nor was the well deep, but Kono Hito 
 hoped Buddha would take his poverty into account and 
 smile as sweetly as though the water fell direct from a 
 spring on the mountain side. 
 
 But Buddha did not smile. No one went to Kono 
 Hito's shrine bath unless too many had gathered at the 
 place across the way. " Without worshipers Buddha 
 will not smile," said the unhappy husbandman. 
 " Trouble, trouble ! What shall I do.? " This brought 
 him inspiration. 
 
 He took a station at a point that commanded a view 
 of the road, and whenever he saw those coming who 
 might be worshipers he went into Sono Hito's shrine, sat 
 himself in the tank, turned the crank, and prayed vigor- 
 ously. 
 
 This was a cunning scheme, for the pilgrims, after 
 waiting long for Kono to finish, would decide that such 
 fervent piety should not be disturbed, and, leaving the 
 zealot in Sono Hito's tub, they would cross over to do 
 as best they might with the two buckets. When they 
 had washed they emptied these buckets on the roadside. 
 But still Buddha did not smile on the fields of Kono San. 
 
 Kono San, however, as he ground and ground away, 
 taking twenty or thirty baths a day, chilling himself 
 in the cataract, and pumping three timejs as much water 
 
 [12] 
 
KONO HITO 
 over Sono Hito's fields as he brought down on to his 
 aching poll, had much tenacity, and a belief that if he 
 could keep the pious to his side of the road long enough 
 he would receive the blessings his soul yearned for. 
 
 He pumped and prayed heroically, resting little and 
 eating less, while Sono Hito took a peep at him occa- 
 sionally, and showed not the least vexation. 
 
 Kono San wondered at this, for he had been rather 
 fearful of discovery, and when he learned that the man he 
 was so jealous of had seen him and had said nothing, he 
 did not understand ; nor could he understand why Buddha 
 did not show some sign of favor. As he pumped, he 
 puzzled upon these things, and grew more and more at- 
 tenuated. 
 
 Overbathing, even with prayers, is not good. When 
 Junsa, the policeman, called Isha, the physician, to 
 Sono Hito's shrine one evening, and let his lantern 
 light fall on Kono Hito's face, the man of medicine said, 
 " Water on the brain." Two days later his family 
 buried him, and Sono Hito gave money for a stone 
 column to mark the resting-place of the dead man's 
 ashes. Why not? Kono Hito really had helped Sono 
 Hito a good deal. 
 
 [13] 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
 O TOYO SAN 
 
 KONO HITO took us over one day to visit his 
 friends at Tatsumi, an interesting old place, where 
 we had a practical demonstration of the irresisti- 
 bility of Japanese hospitality. We had intended to 
 spend only an afternoon, but our intentions might as well 
 have been non-existent for all that they availed. A 
 wooden image would have succumbed, and neither of us 
 was an image, though, in the light of native charm of 
 manner, we appeared to ourselves wooden enough. So 
 it was that that afternoon visit, under Tatsumi manipu- 
 lation, expanded into days, and the days into weeks. 
 
 We were the only foreigners the villagers had ever 
 seen, and though it was in the days of passports, the 
 police did not ask us to produce our papers. They had 
 never had occasion to look up the law about " bar- 
 barians." 
 
 Tatsumi gave us a chance indeed to see Japan at 
 home. There we were near enough to native life to hear 
 the heart beat. We did not see much of Tatsumi's 
 owner, Hikusaburo, as he was away much, but his father 
 and his mother we came to know well, and also his chil- 
 dren, his doll wife, and last, but far from least, the 
 sweet lady who had preceded her. O Toyo was her 
 name. Once, in Hikusaburo's absence, we paid a three 
 
 [14] 
 
O TOYO SAN 
 days' visit to her home, a charming place, and again we 
 saw her close to Tatsumi — but not inside. 
 
 I recall her now, as she sat tapping the ashes from 
 her silver pipe in one of the small thatched houses that 
 stand just outside the blackened walls of that old home- 
 stead. She was waiting for her kurumaya, the coolie, 
 who had dropped the shafts of his jin-riki-sha and was 
 taking a bowl of rice with some old friends at the gate 
 where he had served for many years. O Toyo San was 
 on her way to Biwa, and farther south, and had stopped 
 at the cottage that she might see her children. 
 
 There was a longing in her eyes as she sat half kneel- 
 ing on the little square mat by the brazier, now arrang- 
 ing the bits of charcoal with her tongs, and now taking 
 a bit of tobacco from the pouch beside her on the 
 matting. Her face was gentle and sweet to look upon. 
 When she smiled her eyes sparkled, and her parting lips 
 discovered pearly teeth that had never needed a dentist's 
 care. But her smile was hardly more than courtesy, 
 despite its gentle look, for a yearning was in her heart 
 that a woman of another race would hardly have con- 
 cealed. 
 
 She was a mother, but her children were growing up 
 almost as strangers to her. It is not her fault at all. 
 Her parents had arranged her marriage when she was 
 hardly in her teens, without asking her whether she 
 would or not. Obedience was the only law she knew, 
 and with filial piety (why is there not a good old Eng- 
 lish equivalent for this term.?^) she had done her parents' 
 bidding, not questioning their choice. Her lot had been 
 
 [16] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 that of many another native woman, and she must wait 
 outside to see the children born to her in Tatsumi, a girl 
 and a boy. 
 
 The boy, O Bo Chan, as the house-folk call him, 
 is heir to the ancient manor. The master of Tat- 
 sumi is lord of all the region round. He has owned 
 Hombo, the village extending northward, ever since men 
 first abode there, and the checker board of rice-fields 
 reaching far out towards the boundaries of Niu Gun, 
 one of the richest counties in the famous province of 
 Echizen. 
 
 Those, however, who have long known Tatsumi and 
 the lord thereof doubt if much but the name of these 
 great possessions will be left by the time O Bo Chan has 
 come to man's estate. Bo's grandfather has been 
 " inkiyo " (in retirement) many years. Before he retired 
 from active life to devote himself to study and medi- 
 tation he had lived like a prince, but well within his 
 income. When he handed over his estates to his son, 
 Hikusaburo, he had accompanied the transfer with much 
 good advice, which the heir had acknowledged dutifully, 
 saying, " I listen with respectful assent " and " Honor- 
 ably so augustly is " frequently. 
 
 But Tatsumi's friends said " Neko ni koban " (" Gold 
 coins to a cat") when they spoke among themselves, 
 though in public they held their peace. 
 
 Since then their prophecy has been fulfilling rapidly, 
 but the inkiyo has not paid heed. His cares for this 
 life are over, and his days are sweet and peaceful. 
 O Kamisan, his honored wife, has seen, but she cannot 
 
 [16] 
 
i 
 
O TOYO SAN 
 speak. Indeed she is O Kamisan no longer, only Obasan 
 (grandmother). Her son has become the head of the 
 house, and her duty, as a woman's duty ever is in Japan, 
 is to obey, not to criticise. So Hikusaburo has had free 
 way. Never does anyone say no to him. 
 
 His father had given to him O Toyo San before he 
 was done with school. She was the daughter of a rich 
 relation, a sake brewer. The marriage, as is usual in 
 Japan, was purely a family agreement, without civil 
 or religious ceremony, and of course both houses were 
 happy over the event. 
 
 When the bride arrived at the home of her new 
 parents, dressed in silken robes, and her face painted 
 white as chalk, the place was thronged with guests. 
 Tatsumi had thrown wide its gates, and there was feast- 
 ing for a week. The head of the house had dispensed 
 dam broth and mushrooms lavishly, and there was joy 
 throughout the whole of Echizen. 
 
 Later, when a boy was born, the old walls once more 
 overflowed with joyousness. Grandfather smiled at his 
 grandchild, and seeing that it was a healthy babe, put 
 his affairs in order and became inkiyo. Hikusaburo 
 aided him in this, for he was eager to take control. He 
 accepted everything with due humility, even to the patri- 
 archal blessing and advice. Then he began the life he 
 had longed to lead. His home saw little of him, except 
 when he came in with a band of geisha and made merry 
 till the sun rose. Wherever he went the samisen began 
 to twang, and the moon-fiddle, the koto, and the drum, 
 to fill the air with sounds. 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 One day Hikusaburo, who was now the father of two 
 children, fell in love. He had been in love before often 
 enough for a day or two ; but this time the feeling clung 
 to him, and hurt. Of course she was a geisha, for that 
 was the only sort of woman Hikusaburo had paid atten- 
 tion to since he became lord of Tatsumi. He bought 
 her release from the master who had trained her, and 
 took her home, along with a dozen other of her sisters 
 in the art of spending money. He feared lest she might 
 be lonely. 
 
 Tatsumi saw wilder times than ever it had known be- 
 fore. Sake was as plentiful as the rain in June. Hombo 
 hardly recognized itself. O Toyo San, Hikusaburo's 
 wife, only was unhappy. To see herself, the mother of 
 two children, supplanted by a doll not yet fourteen years 
 old, was too much even for her self-abnegation. The 
 cheerfulness Avhich the native code commands to woman 
 was not in evidence in her countenance. Hikusaburo 
 spoke harshly, but she would not brighten up. Then he 
 sent her home. She has not been within the walls of 
 Tatsumi since. She would not enter though not even a 
 ghost were about the place. 
 
 So it was when last I saw her that she sat outside 
 waiting while the melancholy music of the samisen 
 floated out from the zashiki, where once she was mistress, 
 and where now my lord made merry with his doll. 
 
 The kurumaya said that possibly when my lord was 
 drunk she might see her children. 
 
 [ 18] 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
 OUR LANDLORD 
 
 IT was at Tatsumi that we met Okashi Kintaro, who 
 subsequently became our landlord. He was down 
 from the north on a visit to some friends with whom 
 he had served in his fighting days. We saw him several 
 times, and so enjoyed the enthusiasm he displayed at 
 various f eastings, to which we had the good luck to 
 receive invitations, that we besought him to let us go 
 along with him a way on his return. 
 
 " Too happy," he assured us. Such an honor he 
 would not have dared to hope for. And so with mutual 
 satisfaction we started on the journey up the coast. 
 
 He was a triumph as a guide, for he knew all the 
 interesting folk along the route, and presented us to the 
 " choja," or headman, of each village we passed through. 
 Literally we had to eat our way. On the last day, which 
 was the hardest, we had nine banquets. We were in 
 Okashi's native country by this time, and, as we learned 
 later, he had advertised our coming with a showman's 
 zeal. Such schools as were in session closed, and the 
 villagers turned out en masse to see " the red whiskers " 
 and " the man with green eyes " (all eyes that are not 
 brown are " green " in Japanese, and beards that are 
 not black are "red"). We fancied ourselves Crown 
 
 [19] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Princes on a tour, but the truth was we were only 
 curiosities. 
 
 I shall never forget the breakfast of that last day. 
 It was at the house of a well-to-do farmer, Hyakusho 
 Sama, a friend of Okashi's, where we had supped and 
 spent the night. While serving us our host had noticed 
 that we liked a certain walnut sweet particularly, and 
 so the good wife had sat up all the night making more 
 of it for our breakfast. I had never eaten walnut 
 sweet for breakfast before, and I think I never shall 
 again. To be sure, it was only a side dish, but host and 
 hostess urged us so often to eat some of it that we began 
 to believe that it was the only thing on the floor that they 
 wished us to eat. This notion was quite wrong, however, 
 for there was the regular breakfast of custards, salted 
 plums, mushrooms, fish, and rice. These were served in 
 courses on tiny wooden trays of lacquered wood, and in 
 cups and bowls that would have made a collector trans- 
 gress the tenth commandment. 
 
 I should say, too, as I recall the appearance of the floor 
 whereon we sat, that the hostess had brought in a regular 
 dinner complete, after each course of the breakfast, for 
 I counted over ninety dishes in front of Hyakusho, 
 Okashi, Gardner, and me, and many bottles besides. The 
 largest dishes held the walnut sweet, more than I should 
 have cared to carry in a handbag, to say nothing of my 
 interior, but Hyakusho's wife was keen, and laid our 
 disinclination to eat these walnut slabs to our modesty. 
 This modesty she endeavored to overcome, and was so 
 assiduous in her urging that we made great eff^ort to 
 
 [20] 
 
OUR LANDLORD 
 comply. We munched and munched and munched, 
 mechanically and unhappily, until at last our hostess 
 purred — ^but, oh, dear ! 
 
 Though some years have passed since that morning 
 at Hyakusho Sama's house, the muscles of my jaws ache 
 now whenever I think of the work I did. Our efforts 
 to please the good wife put us in rather bad form for 
 the series of functions Okashi had devised for our 
 progress into his domain. Our faces pained us so we 
 could not even ruminate, nevertheless we had to take 
 part in eight more banquets, each of them much like 
 the first except for the walnut sweet. Had that ap- 
 peared again that day I should not have written of 
 our journey — there would have been no time. I should 
 have " passed on," and, being in a Buddhist country, 
 should have been duly reincarnated, doubtless as a 
 huge walnut tree for little boys to throw things at. 
 The ninth banquet was at Okashi San's own home. I 
 do not remember anything about it. When we awoke 
 the next afternoon we went out to see something of 
 the capital of Etchiu, on the west coast of Dai Nip- 
 pon, It looks out over the North Sea, as they call 
 it there, toward the frozen Siberian coast. Here 
 Okashi Kintaro had a charming home, a dutiful son, 
 and a good thing. We were the good thing. We 
 rather enjoyed being a good thing — that is, we did 
 after we had recovered; the experience was so interest- 
 ing. Okashi was a samurai of the old school, brought 
 up under the feudal system. He knew how to fight, of 
 course, as all gentlemen should in those days. If he 
 
 [21] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 knew anything else, he concealed it during the year we 
 lived with him. I do not count his knowledge of how 
 to make merry — ^to " paint the town red," so that his 
 evening environment looked as if it had been lacquered 
 with the hues of the setting sun; for such knowledge 
 was not remarkable. Every samurai in Japan could do 
 that, not to mention humble folk. He was quite regard- 
 less of expense in this employment, being of gentle 
 birth, and, besides, he had no money. It is true the 
 Government had pensioned him when it abolished the 
 feudal system and " caste," but that pension was mort- 
 gaged. Okashi Kintaro had spent forty years of it in 
 advance. 
 
 At this time, thanks to what was known as " the most 
 favored nation clause " in Japan's treaty with the chief 
 countries of the world and to general bungling in the 
 Department of Foreign Relations, outsiders could 
 neither own nor rent property in their own names, except 
 in restricted districts of some half-dozen cities, such as 
 Tokio, Yokohama, Kobe, Osaka, Nagasaki, Niigata, 
 and Hackodate. As we wished to study Japanese life, we 
 did not care to live in any of the foreign concessions, 
 where one never is quite in touch with real Japan. So 
 we had come to the west coast, to a province where no 
 foreigners had lived before and few had ever visited. 
 As we could not be our own landlord, we proceeded to 
 hire one. Okashi San then seemed just the man, and 
 we thought ourselves in great luck to secure him. 
 
 When we asked him he hailed the idea with delight. 
 He said he liked foreigners, and confided in a friend, 
 
 [ 22 ] 
 
OUR LANDLORD 
 
 as we discovered, that he considered young ones were 
 better than a pension. It is only fair to say that he 
 was brave whenever there was occasion, and exceedingly 
 generous when he had anything to give. Often he put 
 himself to great personal inconvenience to do one a 
 favor. 
 
 According to our agreement we hired him to hire us 
 as instructors in a school that offered wonderful facilities 
 for teaching the English language. Okashi rented two 
 beautiful old temples that had flourished in the Shugun's 
 time under his bounty, but now were empty. One was 
 for the school and one for our living-house. He lived 
 with his family in the school, and for the first month 
 his wife cooked for us, and both of them did our market- 
 ing. At the end of the month we called for the bills. 
 Okashi San would not hear of it. " lye, iye! " (" No, 
 no!") he would repeat. "August pardon deign, but 
 the school is a resplendent success, and I and my stupid 
 wife are overwhelmed with honor. It is we who owe 
 you." 
 
 This went on for three days, until we began to believe 
 Okashi meant it, so we proceeded to put our money to 
 other uses. When it had thus been put, he appeared 
 before us one warm afternoon with a roll of thin brown 
 paper exactly nineteen feet six inches in length. (We 
 measured it along the edge of the " tatami." ^) It 
 was a bill. Oskashi San made a bow for every foot in 
 the strip, and then began to read it to us. It was an 
 object lesson in Japanese minuteness of detail. 
 
 ^ The mats on a native floor. They measure 6x3 feet. 
 
 [23] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 Many of the items were in fractions of a mill. One 
 for pepper was 0.0153, or, as the Japanese read it, 
 
 kosho is sen, go rin, sam mo." Gardner said the sam 
 mo (/o^ of a mill) was unnecessary extravagance, as 
 we could have had quite enough for an even " is sen, go 
 rin. Three decimals was deep enough to go into such 
 hot stuff as pepper." 
 
 Okashi bowed eight times and said, " Sayo de gozai- 
 masu," which we interpreted gratefully to imply that 
 next month there would be economy in condiments. 
 
 When the reading was over we learned that the foot- 
 ing of the nineteen feet was twenty dollars, or a little 
 over eight cents an inch. This was a surprise, for we 
 had expected nothing less than one hundred dollars, 
 estimating by the length of time it took to read from 
 the beginning to the end. As we had not twenty dollars, 
 Gardner wired a friend in Tokio and received thirty 
 dollars the next morning. We paid Okashi San the 
 twenty dollars, and he returned in half an hour with a 
 red seal and a stamp at the end of his scroll, showing 
 that the bill had been duly paid. We asked him if he 
 was sure everything had been settled for, as his bring- 
 ing in a bill after so many protestations had not pleased 
 us, and we wished to clean our slate entirely while we 
 were about it. 
 
 " Indeed that is all," said our landlord. " It is every- 
 thing, even the rent." 
 
 Upon this we devised how we should disburse what was 
 remaining out of the thirty dollars. We decided to 
 study the famous " No " dancing, the most ancient of 
 
 [24] 
 
OUR LANDLORD 
 all Japanese ceremonies, and our money disappeared 
 pleasantly. 
 
 The next day as we sat on the tatami, wondering if we 
 should ever learn what to do with our legs — most incon- 
 venient appendages in rooms that have no chairs — ^the 
 " karakami " ^ slid apart and Okashi Okusama ap- 
 peared, bowing multitudinously. She had a roll of thin 
 brown paper in her hand, like the one her husband had 
 brought in, and she pushed it gently towards us as she 
 bowed. 
 
 " We squared all that up yesterday," said Gardner. 
 
 " Honorably different," said Okusama. 
 
 " ' Honorably different,' is it? " asked Gardner. " I 
 don't think so. Let's see it." And he unrolled it along 
 the tatami edge. 
 
 " By Jove ! you've added two feet," he exclaimed. 
 "And where's the stamp and the seal.?" 
 
 " Not knowing augustly am," said Okusama. 
 
 After a lengthy discussion we discovered that the 
 twenty-one feet and six inches bill was a separate account, 
 quite distinct from her husband's and as just. Gardner 
 had to wire to Tokio for another thirty dollars. 
 
 We got into such a mess trying to straighten out this 
 second account, which persisted in mixing itself up with 
 account number one, that we decided to hire a profes- 
 sional cook, and to let him pay cash for everything as 
 we went along. We gave him his money day by day, and 
 so escaped monthly bills. This really lightened the 
 
 ^Sliding doors of paper, which are the partition walls between 
 rooms. 
 
 [25] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 work of our landlord and landlady greatly, but they 
 disapproved the change, nevertheless; it had been 
 such fun ordering things at the various shops about 
 town. 
 
 After this affairs went on smoothly for some time, 
 until one morning Okashi San handed Gardner a slip of 
 paper on which appeared the following items: Raw 
 fish, mushrooms, eggs, sake. Mile. Cherry Blossom, 
 Peach Bud, Chrysanthemum, Golden Plum, and Thou- 
 sand Joys — a combination that suggested gayety. 
 (Not long before the public had voted for Thousand 
 Joys in the newspapers, and had elected her Grand Mis- 
 tress of the geisha by a large majority.) As our home 
 and the school had been quiet the night before, we did 
 not understand Okashi's paper. He explained, how- 
 ever. Some dear friends were leaving Etchiu for a long 
 journey, and he had been saying " good-by." As he 
 had no money he brought the bill to us. He had had a 
 jolly time and was sorry we had not been with him; he 
 would have asked us, but his friends, being strangers, 
 might have been unamusing. 
 
 Under the circumstances, Gardner had nothing to do 
 but go into his sleeve for the amount of the bill. In the 
 evening when he had recovered somewhat, he made re- 
 marks about Oriental " cheek." 
 
 We had another example of this cheek later, after 
 we had laid aside our foreign attire in Etchiu, had put 
 on the native Japanese dress, and adopted the native 
 manner of living in everything else as well. A large 
 part of our discarded clothes we gave to Okashi San, 
 
 126] 
 
OUR LANDLORD 
 
 and to his son Kitsune. They took the suits to the 
 tailor's and had them cut down to fit. Kitsune San took 
 advantage of this opportunity of giving orders, and 
 told Shitateya San, the tailor, to make a neat morning 
 coat with a waistcoat to match. We hardly knew him 
 when he presented himself in his new attire, and handed 
 us the bill for all the tailoring. He said he would like 
 some new patent leather boots, too, to wear with the 
 suit, but to his sorrow Shitateya San could not make 
 them. We allowed him to wait for the boots. 
 
 On another occasion Gardner went to Niigata to see 
 some naval friends, and while he was there I ran out of 
 funds and wired him for sixty dollars. He and a friend 
 each sent thirty dollars. It so happened I was called 
 over the mountains before the reply came, and was gone 
 three days on business connected with the Government 
 schools. When I returned I heard from afar the wail 
 of a Japanese song. The voice sounded familiar, and 
 on going into the house I found Okashi San on his back 
 in some ashes near an American stove we had set up in 
 one of the schoolrooms. His legs and arms were in the 
 aiir, and he was singing a Japanese song of Gardner's 
 composition: " Doitashi mashite abunaio isakijitsu go 
 men na sai," etc. Noisy, but altogether meaningless. 
 When he saw me he jumped up and did an old samurai 
 war-dance, explaining the while that the sixty dollars 
 had come all right, and that he had taken my seal and 
 got the money from the telegraph office. 
 
 He had not eaten anything, he said, for three days; 
 but sake ! — ah ! ah ! and he showed a snow-white tongue. 
 
 [27] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Then he untwisted his obe^ and handed me thirty-seven 
 cents, all that remained of the money Gardner and his 
 friend had wired. He said he had paid many bills and 
 had enjoyed himself, but we never learned exactly where 
 the money went to, though we had suspicions. 
 
 When Gardner decided to resign his professorship 
 and to leave Japan, there was sorrow in Etchiu. The 
 great folk of the province visited the house and brought 
 him testimonials and gifts. Together these presents 
 made a beautiful collection. About half an hour before 
 Gardner's jin-riki-sha was to start, Okashi Kintaro 
 came over with the glorious red bowl, which he gave with 
 many protestations of undying regard. Then he " bor- 
 rowed fifteen dollars. 
 
 Girdle. 
 
 [28] 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
 INT THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 
 OUR life on the west coast, especially when we 
 were among the hills with the Noto folk (most 
 of whom had never seen a foreigner), helped 
 us to understand what Japan had been and to appre- 
 ciate the gigantic work she has accomplished in recent 
 years. The difference between the Japan of to-day and 
 that of two-score years ago amazes one. She has done 
 in forty years much that other nations have been four 
 hundred in accomplishing. Her system for this ac- 
 complishment was marvelous. She had, for instance, 
 the greatest kindergarten that ever was, greater than 
 ever will be again probably. It was a kindergarten that 
 included a whole nation, both young folk and old, but 
 chiefly it was for those who had attained their growth. 
 
 This kindergarten for grown-ups was unique. What 
 other country in the world ever reorganized its " So- 
 ciety " over night, and ordered " everybody as was 
 anybody " to begin living on an entirely new plan at 
 once.'^ That is practically what Japan did. She was 
 just emerging from feudalism, the feudalism of the Far 
 East, which represented a social order developed dur- 
 ing centuries in which the outside world was shut away 
 by laws of extraordinary stringency. When Commo- 
 dore Perry appeared with his fleet and demanded treaty 
 
 [29] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 rights, Japan awoke. The civilization of the West 
 fascinated her as she opened her eyes after her long rest, 
 and she determined to win for herself a place in the first 
 rank of the nations of the world. She has been ac- 
 complishing her purpose, to the wonder and admiration 
 of all. 
 
 To understand how much she has done, one must con- 
 sider what she was some thirty-five years ago, and com- 
 pare her condition then with her condition now. She 
 was as feudal in 1870 as Europe was in 1500. She could 
 not then find entrance to the comity of nations. Now 
 she is a world power. Thirty years ago Japan knew 
 practically nothing of Western customs, though she had 
 a most elaborate ceremonial, one that provides for all 
 possible emergencies of her own social conditions. 
 
 Many of these ceremonies were of great dignity, im- 
 pressiveness, and even beauty, but they were quite out of 
 harmony with European customs, and she decided to 
 throw all overboard and to start again, to forget in a 
 day all she knew of that formal picturesqueness which a 
 thousand years had been developing. The samurai, or 
 gentleman, laid aside his swords, those symbols of the 
 spirit of Old Japan, which he held dearer than any 
 price in gold could purchase; he gave up his silken 
 robes; cut off his cue; let the hair grow on the crown 
 of his head, and put himself into pantaloons and a 
 frock-coat. 
 
 Here appeared some of the amusing features of the 
 transformation. He bought a silk hat as an aid to the 
 new civilization, a tile that settled down and wabbled on 
 
 [30] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 
 his ears as though coaxing his head to grow. This hat 
 he delighted to brush the wrong way. And in those 
 days anything did for a shirt, for the laundry man 
 had not arrived. When he did come he had to explain 
 what his business was, and why folks should patronize 
 him. Sometimes the man of New Japan went the frock- 
 coat one better, and put on a dress-suit whenever he went 
 forth. He was determined to prepare himself for the 
 time when his country should rank as high as any 
 European power, — ^^should be the England of the 
 East, — and if clothes would do it, it should not be his 
 fault were that ambition not accomplished. 
 
 To the foreigner it looked a bit odd to see a man of 
 forty and a youngster of four toddling down the Ginza 
 of a summer morning in swallow-tails and chimney-pots, 
 but their action was significant. It meant that Old 
 Japan was dead. Sometimes these dress-suits had pink 
 linings. One man, a copper miner, who had prospered 
 in his business, gave to each of his coolies that had 
 served faithfully in the mines one of these pink-lined 
 suits as a New Year's gift. The coolies were delighted 
 with the garments, and wore them proudly along with 
 their " kasa " or umbrella-like headgear. 
 
 The disappearance of the old customs went on rapidly 
 — and what a spectacle the disappearing process offered 
 onlookers. In the transformation from old to new there 
 was much that was sad, much that was joyous, and a 
 little, necessarily, that on the surface was ridiculous. 
 
 Government had established its gigantic kindergarten 
 (and in Japan, the land of topsy-turvy, a kindergarten 
 
 [31] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 for men and women is not a contradiction), it had 
 brought foreign instructors from the world over, in 
 each department, and had sent a steady stream of stu- 
 dents abroad to study in America and Europe. As these 
 students returned, the Government dropped off the for- 
 eigners, until few indeed are in Government employ to- 
 day — ^though many are living comfortably at home on 
 pensions after twenty years of service in the Land of 
 the Rising Sun. Japan owes them much, but there is 
 gratitude on both sides. 
 
 The " Kobusho," or Board of Public Works, which 
 went out of existence in 1885, had charge of bringing 
 in whatever Japan wished from the world outside. Mar- 
 quis Ito, often Prime Minister, had charge of the Ko- 
 busho in early days, and Viscount Hayashi, now Min- 
 ister Plenipotentiary at the Court of St. James, was Ito's 
 right-hand man. The work gave them grand opportu- 
 nity for learning foreign business methods, but the clerks 
 did not carry out our instructions as to orders going 
 abroad quite as a clerk in an English office would. One 
 order to the Kobusho's London agent read as follows: 
 
 Urgent. Send to Tokio at once as follows: — 
 1 Professor of Electrical Science. 
 
 1 Do. Mining. 
 
 2 Blast Furnaces. 
 
 And in due course the London agent forwarded an in- 
 voice declaring that he had sent out for Yokohama, 
 Japan, by steamer, four items as per order, to wit — 
 
 [32] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 1 Professor of Electrical Science. 
 
 1 Do. Mining. 
 
 2 Blast Furnaces. 
 
 Both of the learned companions of the blast furnaces 
 are in England now. They did well by Japan, far bet- 
 ter than the furnaces, which became part of a steel 
 plant that cost the country 6,000,000 yen ($3,000,000) 
 and came to naught. 
 
 The Kobusho was a busy place. Its duty was to 
 furnish the stuff — ^mental, moral, and physical — for 
 equipping some 35,000,000 to 40,000,000 people with 
 a brand-new civilization. It went in strong for scien- 
 tists. It imported all the kinds there were. Tokio was 
 as a white ant-hill. Engineers swarmed over the city 
 and the country round. Government contemplated a 
 minute survey of the Empire, and bought a full equip- 
 ment for a splendid surveyor-general's office in the cap- 
 ital, together with a great number of instruments for 
 the surveying parties. The temporary office was of 
 wood, and there a large corps of engineers worked for a 
 year or so. Government had engaged them for six 
 years, or until the job should be over. It found the 
 work difficult and expensive. One night the office 
 burned down and its contents went up in smoke. To get 
 out new materials and then begin all over again " would 
 be a great bother," said the Kobusho, so Governmeni, 
 thanked the engineers kindly for their work, paid them 
 in full for six years, and they returned to their respec- 
 tive countries. 
 
 [33] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 The Government scheme of Europeanization included 
 cooking in its kindergarten course. It encouraged beef- 
 steak and rice curry and bottled beer. This gave rise to 
 a unique lot of foreign signs and labels, such as 
 " Bottled by Pale Ale & Co." on an imitation of a famous 
 English stamp. Over one shop was this : " Rendezvous 
 pour la Garde Imperiale, sale for a plat of food, sale 
 for a glass of wine." Not far from this was the com- 
 bination: "Literary Coffee House cafe de Billiard." 
 (Billiards, called " Tamasuki," is a delight to the Jap- 
 anese, who are expert players.) Another sign was: " A 
 Sole Manufacturer of Confection " ; and another, 
 though not referring to food, was " Iron Foundry " — 
 it was over the gateway of an Eye Infirmary. Basil 
 Hall Chamberlain, in his delightful " Things Jap- 
 anese," has given many more. 
 
 Some of the signs that one used to see in Nagasaki, 
 an English publisher would not venture to print for 
 sale. Nagasaki is a seaport, the only kind of place in 
 Japan that possesses " dives," and these dives stated 
 their business frankly in language the dive keepers had 
 learned from sailors. These keepers had visiting cards, 
 equally frank, which they distributed smilingly. 
 
 With such misunderstandings of what the envied 
 Europeans held to be proper, as well as what they held 
 to be improper, were other misapprehensions. A not 
 unnatural digression from de rigueur was to ladle out 
 soup into finger-bowls. Finger-bowls are much the 
 shape of the pretty lacquered cups in which Japanese 
 serve their soup. The soup at a European food-feast 
 
 [34] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 might come to the table in a tureen, or a wash-basin, or 
 in anything that would hold soup. Indeed, there were 
 strange vessels on the Tokio tables at times, and the con- 
 fusion as to the purposes of European earthenware 
 utensils gave foreign guests various sensations of mirth, 
 astonishment, and even horror. 
 
 In the early days of the kindergarten, foreigners 
 traveling in Japan went to the hospitals and to the 
 chemists for their beefsteaks and their beer. This was 
 because Japan was Buddhist, and the inhabitants gen- 
 erally would have nothing to do with either of these 
 things until medical men introduced them. These 
 physicians and surgeons, with their ideas acquired 
 abroad, were shocking infidels in the eyes of the popu- 
 lace at first. But when the " infidels " pointed out that 
 the large and fair and strong barbarians, who " knew 
 everything," ate beef and drank beer — and did not have 
 the cholera — the natives gave heed. Now one finds beef 
 and beer the country over, especially beer. 
 
 The telegraph pole began to appeal to the Japanese 
 about this time. They looked upon it as a sacred Shinto 
 emblem — a thing of beauty, an evidence of civilization 
 that should adorn their highways. Therefore they 
 started to cut down the cryptomeria, the glorious giants 
 that lined both sides of the great roads of the Empire, 
 to replace them with the poles, " after the foreign way," 
 but foreigners protested so vigorously that the re- 
 formers desisted. 
 
 It was hard for the Japanese to drink milk, however, 
 harder than it is for Americans to eat high game. But 
 
 [35] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 here, too, the medical man prevailed. Foreigners drank 
 milk, therefore the natives would. Officials set the ex- 
 ample nobly. Every morning at eleven o'clock the milk- 
 man called at the various Government bureaus and made 
 his ostentatious rounds. Not an official escaped. Each 
 one received his proper portion of the potent potion, 
 and drank it — a liqueur glassful — drank it like a man. 
 At the " Kaitakushi Jo Gakko," or Girls' School, be- 
 longing to the Colonization Bureau in Sappuro, on 
 the northern island of Yezo, the young women early 
 learned to wonder at the ways of foreigners. The mis- 
 tress of the dormitories made each drink a mixture of 
 egg and claret, like our claret-flip, every night before 
 retiring. The girls did not like it, but " no flip, no 
 futon " was the order, and up so far north as Sappuro 
 futon (quilts) are desirable at night. 
 
 With the coming of the railways and the street cars 
 there were many things for the grown-up kindergart- 
 ner to learn. One was time. They had had the most 
 indefinite appreciation of that. It was odd to them that 
 trains would not wait, that 12.0 would not do well 
 enough for the 11.45, or that the engineer could be so 
 absurd as to start up at 3.29 exactly. To the native 
 mind, " exactly " did not mean " exactly exactly," it 
 meant approximately, that is to within thirty minutes 
 or an hour, or on the same morning or afternoon. 
 
 The trams, too, were disobliging. They kept to a 
 regular route, and would not diverge for those who 
 wished to do a little shopping a quarter of a mile or so 
 round this corner or round that. The guards had a 
 
 [36] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 hard time of it trying to explain clearly that a train 
 was different from a jin-riki-sha. Guards at the rail- 
 way stations had their troubles also. The natives per- 
 sisted in leaving their clogs outside when entering cars, 
 just as they were accustomed to do when entering a 
 house. It was a great bother for the guard to get all 
 the clogs into the coaches before the train started. He 
 could not pretend to sort them, and pairs that should 
 have gone half-way only often went to the end of the 
 line. 
 
 As soon as the dress-suit and the frock-coat had 
 established themselves in favor along with the white 
 gloves, which for some time all officials wore at their re- 
 spective bureaus in the morning, they became imperative. 
 A certain General of the United States Army, who 
 chanced to be in Tokio at the time of the Mikado's 
 Chrysanthemum Show, learned the value in which the 
 Japanese held the frock-coat. (The show, by the bye, is 
 far and away the most wonderful of its kind in the world, 
 one of the single plants there has over six hundred 
 blossoms growing on it.) The General loved flowers, 
 and admired the " kiku," as the Japanese call the chrys- 
 anthemums. He had an invitation to go to the show, 
 but his frock-coat was in Yokohama, and there was no 
 time to get it. Without one, nobody not possessing 
 wings could get in, and even then he would not be al- 
 lowed to alight. So the General, not a thin man, bor- 
 rowed a coat from one of the Japanese officials at the 
 Foreign Office. Thus arrayed he was a picture to re- 
 member. The only wonder greater than that the Gen- 
 
 [37] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 eral got into that coat is that he was able to get out. 
 But he saw the flowers. After that, so long as he stayed 
 in Japan, he would not go across the road unless he had 
 a frock-coat ready for emergencies. 
 
 The Empress set the new fashion for women, and ap- 
 peared at Chirini's Circus in magnificent " yofuku," or 
 foreign dress, which she had ordered from Berlin. She 
 had also a German Master of Ceremonies to educate the 
 court in the art of how to behave though uncomfortable. 
 Corsets and all came with the new apparel, and it was 
 rather difficult at first to persuade the wearers to use 
 them right side up, the Japanese figure being somewhat 
 of an inversion. 
 
 With foreign dress came the idea that a woman was 
 an individual rather than merely a thing, and that she 
 should receive consideration. In her native kimono she 
 had always stepped aside that the men might go first. 
 Men had gone first always in all things. But with the 
 aid of the yofuku Japan was able to illustrate the idea 
 that women should take precedence. Chivalry depended 
 on the petticoat, and as chivalry was a fine thing in the 
 West, the Japanese must have it. So in skirts the Jap- 
 anese lad}'^ led the way, and received attentions that be- 
 wildered her, for never before had she spoken to a man 
 other than her husband, except at the distance of several 
 mats, and with the greatest possible formality. 
 
 She had dancing lessons, too, for the Government saw 
 that balls were an institution in all foreign capitals, and 
 naturally it wished Japan's representatives to be pre- 
 pared to enjoy them in the proper spirit. All the 
 
 [88] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 Cabinet Ministers, the Governor of Tokio, and the great 
 swells generally, each gave a ball every winter, and the 
 officials went as part of their duty, but it was hard work. 
 The floors of the ballroom were so slippery. It was 
 much more fun to take a run and to slide across them 
 as boys go on the ice than to spin about top fashion, 
 holding a woman round the waist for the first time, and 
 dancing with her publicly. It must have been strange 
 for a gentleman of Japan who had never so much as 
 touched a woman's hand before in his life, and had never 
 paid even a formal call on women- folk. Except with 
 geisha at some dinner or other, he had never had con- 
 versation with a woman other than members of his house- 
 hold, yet here he was with his arm round a woman he 
 had seen for the first time that evening, who was fully as 
 embarrassed as he, for she knew how to talk to other 
 women only, and he must whirl round and round to 
 music that was altogether unintelligible to him, and must 
 try to be entertaining at the same time. Truly Euro- 
 pean civilization was wonderful! 
 
 The members of the staff at the " Gwaimusho," the 
 Foreign Office, had to pay particular attention to all 
 things relating to European customs, for they were to 
 make up the various diplomatic corps abroad. So they 
 learned French, frock-coats, dress-suits, and dancing, as 
 hard as they could. English they knew, of course, for 
 all the schools taught that more than any other one sub- 
 ject. French they needed for the Court, and for diplo- 
 macy, and to read the names of the strange things 
 they had to eat. They mastered these details with r^- 
 
 [39] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 markable thoroughness, and to-day the Japanese diplo- 
 mat is at his ease the world over — an interesting fact 
 when one considers all his country has had to learn to 
 teach him, and the short time she had in which both to 
 learn to teach and to do the teaching. He should be as 
 proud as one can be, righteously. A glimpse at the past 
 must make him so. 
 
 Less than twoscore years ago the provinces of Japan 
 were under great barons, or daimiyos, who in turn were 
 under the Shogun, the political ruler of the country. 
 The Shogun indeed acknowledged the Mikado as the 
 supreme ruler of Dai Nippon, but nevertheless kept him 
 shut up in Kiyoto in absolute seclusion, as a deity whom 
 it would be blasphemous even so much as to look upon. 
 So the people knew little of the Mikado except as an in- 
 visible god. They knew the Shogun was the real ruler, 
 though they never saw him either, for when ha traveled 
 along any street or any road the advance guard closed 
 all houses, ordered everyone to go within and bow to the 
 ground, and forbade so much as peeping. The retain- 
 ers would have cut down anyone whom they had so much 
 as suspected of looking out. 
 
 Shoguns had ruled as Mayors of the Palace, and 
 Prime Ministers and Generalissimos, since the middle of 
 the twelfth century, but an historian discovered that 
 formerly the Mikado had ruled actually as well as theo- 
 retically. This, with the rise of Shintoism, the ancient 
 mythological cult of Japan, and the growing jealousy 
 of the Tokugawa family, which held the Shogunate from 
 1603 to 1867, and the arrival of the foreigners who 
 
 [40] 
 
IN THE KINDERGARTEN DAYS 
 
 came in after Commodore Perry had made a treaty with 
 the Shogun in 1854, brought about a revolution which 
 ended in the disappearance of the Shoguns for good and 
 all, and the reappearance of the Mikado after an in- 
 visibility of seven centuries. 
 
 Since then Japan has taught the whole world decora- 
 tion. Japanese art is in evidence everywhere. How 
 innumerable are the homes it has helped to beautify ! 
 Professor Chamberlain says: " In the days before Jap- 
 anese art became known to Europe, people then used to 
 consider it essential to have the patterns on plates, 
 cushions, and what not, arranged with geometrical ac- 
 curacy. If on the right hand there was a Cupid looking 
 to the left, then on the left hand there must be a Cupid 
 of exactly the same size looking to the right, and the 
 chief feature of the design was invariably in the exact 
 centre. The Japanese artisan artists have shown us that 
 this mechanical symmetry does not make for beauty. 
 They have taught us the charm of irregularity, and if 
 the world owe them but this one lesson, Japan may yet 
 be proud of what she has accomplished." 
 
 The Japanese developed the jin-riki-sha, which has 
 now come to be the ordinary means of personal trans- 
 portation in the chief cities of the Far East, in China, 
 Straits Settlements, India, and even in Africa. They 
 lead the world far and away in biology. They are in 
 the very first rank of chemists, and their schools have 
 some features that other seats of learning lack. There 
 is, for instance, in the " Dai Gakko," or Imperial Uni- 
 versity, in Tokio, a Chair of Sanitary Engineering, 
 
 [41] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 (formerly held by Professor W. K. Burton), and a chair 
 of Seismology. 
 
 Then, too, the Japanese have the largest battleships 
 afloat, and an army that is ready the moment it is needed. 
 On the march to Peking this army led, showing the way 
 to the Europeans, even to the Russians, and its com- 
 missariat and hospital departments are the best the world 
 has seen — much the best. In diplomacy and statecraft 
 the Japanese have triumphed, as recent treaties with 
 Europeans show, and, to crown all, only last year Japan, 
 by special treaty between Viscount Hayashi and the 
 Marquis of Lansdowne, became England's ally in the 
 East, so that she ranks now on an equal footing with 
 the first of the first-class European powers* 
 
 [42] 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 THE HONORABLE BATH 
 
 GARDNER made a study of baths while he was 
 in Japan. What he did not know about them 
 when he left the country was exactly enough to 
 make him a native bathing-suit. It is odd, though, 
 that he should have taken to the " baths " so enthusi- 
 astically when one recalls his first experience in a Tokio 
 bath-tub. 
 
 This is what he told some globe-trotters at the Yoko- 
 hama United Club one day. They were asking for 
 points on "doing" Japan. 
 
 " I had just run up to Tokio to see a man in the Im- 
 perial University," he explained. " He wasn't at home, 
 but a young student who was taking care of his place 
 greeted me most hospitably. He said: ' Oh, you are just 
 from a long voyage and have a letter for the professor. 
 I am a thousand times sorry that he is not at home. He 
 has gone to Nikko for a period of two weeks. Birt come 
 in, nevertheless. I am a most stupid and contemptible 
 substitute, but I shall do my idiotic best to explain 
 Japan to you.' 
 
 " He made a noble beginning, I assure you. The first 
 lesson was chopsticks. He taught me so well that I was 
 expert in half an hour. Then he fed me with seaweed 
 and raw fish. I'll tell you about that later. And finally 
 
 [43] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 he boiled me. I am perfectly serious — he boiled me. 
 This is how it was. 
 
 " The custom here, you know, is to bathe every after- 
 noon. My young friend's bath-tub was out on the lawn. 
 It was the regulation Japanese tub, an oval arrangement 
 about as high as it is long and a foot longer than it is 
 wide. In one end there is a stovepipe running down 
 through the bottom. The top of this pipe is just even 
 with the rim of the tub. At the bottom there is a grate 
 which holds the charcoal fire that heats the water. The 
 idea is to get into the tub when the water is warmed a 
 little and then sit there while the temperature rises 
 gradually. This rising process is most effective. 
 
 " The Japanese can stand it until the thermometer 
 shows 125 to 128 degrees. So can I, now, after I've 
 been at it a year, but it's something to be worked up to 
 gradually. The first time you try a Japanese bath, 95 
 degrees will do much better. I was a little shy at first 
 about going on the lawn, but, as there was no one except 
 the student in sight, I ran out and jumped into the tub. 
 It was fine! the blue sky overhead and the wide, wide 
 world around me. ' This is luxury,' I said ; ' I shall ap- 
 ply for naturalization papers to-morrow and settle down- 
 for the rest of my life in Japan. I would not leave this 
 for heaven' (later on I thought of another place). 
 And so I sat there thinking of the things I should do in 
 this perfect land, and of the fun doing them would be. 
 
 " But while I was musing the fire burned. I didn't 
 notice it at first; not until I observed something else. 
 That was that this young student's wife and her maid 
 
 [44] 
 
THE HONORABLE BATH 
 
 had come out while I was in my tub and were busy 
 washing rice by the well, not far away. ' That's ex- 
 traordinary inadvertence/ I said to myself, or words to 
 that effect ; ' why didn't that bally rat tell them that I 
 was out here in the tub? I'd like to wring his neck! 
 They'll be gone soon, I hope ! ' But I was hot. So was 
 the water, and it grew hotter ! ' They're not in a hurry 
 with that rice,' I remarked. ' Confound a country 
 where it takes them all day to wash rice!' I'd forgot 
 about its being heaven, you see. Then I said harsh 
 things — inwardly, of course — ^but it did no good. It 
 didn't cool the water, nor me, a bit. 
 
 " The water behaved badly. It didn't warm up 
 gradually to the boiling point, thereby allowing me to 
 simmer into mock missionary broth. It ' het ' itself up 
 by jerks. It would simmer gently, then drop about two 
 degrees, just enough to fool me into the idea that the 
 fire was going out, and that I should be comfortable, 
 and then it would buck up six points, and I'd have a 
 touch of Hades. 
 
 " And still they washed that rice. If I could have 
 yelled I'd have felt better, but I was afraid. I thought 
 they would turn round and see me. Then I tried to 
 sneak to the house, but just as I'd be half-way out, one 
 of them would look round, or look as if she were going 
 to look round, and down I'd duck. Every time I 
 dropped I felt my hide peel off, just as in the stories they 
 used to tell of fellows being skinned alive in the West- 
 ern Plains by Injuns. 
 
 " All the water was too hot, but at the surface it felt 
 [45] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 like a red-hot ring bound to my body. I tried to stir 
 it up to equalize the heat, but motion was painful. I 
 felt as if I couldn't move. I hadn't enough resolution. 
 You see, I was nearly done. So I braced my feet against 
 the little partition that serves as a fender to the iron 
 pipe, and tried to endure it. The water grew hotter, 
 and I braced harder, until there was a crack and a splash. 
 The fender gave way, and my foot went plumb against 
 the sizzling pipe. 
 
 " It was just then that I forgot all about the clothes 
 that I didn't have on. I also forgot about the rice wash- 
 ers, and that they could see me. I forgot everything, 
 in fact, except that I was boiled almost to death. As I 
 jumped, I slipped backward on the edge of the tub, 
 rolled round on the back of my neck for a second or two, 
 though it seemed like as many hours, got my feet on the 
 ground at last, and then rushed into the house just in 
 time to meet two American missionary ladies, who had 
 called not knowing that the professor was out of town. 
 
 " They didn't seem to be shocked. I had sense enough 
 left to notice that. Afterwards I heard that one of 
 them had remarked how red I was. Well, I was embar- 
 rassed." 
 
 After a boy had seen to certain orders, Gardner con- 
 tinued: "Now, if you fellows want to get at the real 
 Japan — Japan au naturel — be sure and take plenty of 
 baths while here. The bath is the best point of view 
 that you can find to study human nature from. In the 
 treaty ports you will hear some statements about the 
 Japanese that are not accurate, so hold your judgment 
 
 [40] 
 
THE HONORABLE BATH 
 in suspension, at least till you have made a tour of the 
 country, and have taken, say, one thousand baths. Then 
 let the folk you meet in Kobe, Yokohama, and Nagasaki 
 tell you all they know, and you will understand them. 
 
 " Some of the foreign residents can give you many 
 points, but others will supply misinformation. When 
 you've had your baths you'll be an expert. Japan, as 
 seen from the bath-tub, is the real Japan. If you don't 
 know enough to write a book when you come back it will 
 be because you were struck blind early in the visit. 
 You'll have chances for your camera, too, and you must 
 work at your sketch-book perpetually. Take notes, and 
 come back ripe for fame. 
 
 " It is remarkable that no one has yet ' written up ' 
 Japan from the bath-tub side. Even Lafcadio Hearn, 
 who is more sympathetic than anyone else, so far, among 
 the men who write about the country, pays small atten- 
 tion to the tub. Basil Hall Chamberlain, however, who is 
 a mine of learning, has something to say on the subject. 
 He tells of the bathers at Kawarayu, near Ikao, who stay 
 in the tub a month at a time, with stones in their laps 
 to keep their bodies from floating when they are asleep. 
 He says the tub is one of two things the Japanese 
 haven't borrowed from other countries. The other is 
 their poetry. It hardly would be worth your while to go 
 in for the poetry to any extent. It would take you five 
 years to learn to read it, and twice as long to learn to 
 compose it yourself. But with hot baths it is different. 
 You can learn to take them in a few weeks; if you will 
 profit by my experience, do not begin too hard or be too 
 
 [47] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 shy. As I said before, your native friends are likely to 
 be in water at 115 degrees to 120 degrees, that would 
 take the hide right off a beginner. I got so tough after 
 a few months' practice that I could sit still in water at 
 125 degrees. I couldn't move round, of course, and I 
 had to be very slow getting in and out, but I could stand 
 the heat even on my face. 
 
 " If I were you I'd get a student from the university 
 to act as guide. He would be trustworthy, and would 
 be good company too. Don't have much to do with the 
 professional guides at the treaty ports. They may 
 take advantage of you. When you've found a student 
 that speaks English well — and most of them do, though 
 in an amusingly formal way — start off for the west 
 coast. Travel the unfrequented routes as much as pos- 
 sible, by that I mean routes that foreigners do not take. 
 You can find hundreds of charming places that few for- 
 eigners have seen. And in many of these places there are 
 hot springs and mineral baths. You must see some of 
 the more frequented baths, of course, such as Atami, 
 Hakone, Ojigoku, and Kusatsu, even if they are on 
 beaten paths. 
 
 " If any of you fellows have rheumatism or gout go 
 to Kusatsu, 4000 feet up and about thirty miles from 
 Ikao. Kusatsu will cure everything but love-sickness. 
 That is the burden of the song the maids who rub your 
 back and take charge of your clothes sing to you while 
 you bathe. Always watch the people about you. 
 You'll see everyone in the neighborhood every day — 
 villagers and the visitors alike, men and women, young 
 
 [48] 
 
THE HONORABLE BATH 
 and old, large and small, every morning and evening. 
 All come into the village square, disrobe, and let them- 
 selves down gently into the huge tank of running 
 water. 
 
 " Then the news of the day and the gossip of the 
 neighborhood are discussed from every view point. 
 Listen hard, and have your guide mix up in the talk as 
 much as possible. Get him to repeat to you all that he 
 remembers after the bath is over. Don't talk to him in 
 the bath, or the neighbors will crowd round to hear the 
 queer sounds you make. They will stop talking of their 
 own doings, which are what you wish to become familiar 
 with, and will talk about your skin and hair and eyes, 
 how large you are, and all that sort of thing. When you 
 go back to your hotel you can have a lesson in Japanese 
 from your guide, and incidentally teach him a little 
 English, which is what he's really after. 
 
 " One reason why these baths are" good for studying 
 native life is that they are the only places where the 
 sexes come together for general conversation. The 
 Government says that the presence of women keeps the 
 men from talking politics too much, and though mis- 
 sionaries say that the custom is shocking, the Govern- 
 ment does not interfere. ' We have been bathing this 
 way for two thousand years without scandal, why should 
 we change ? ' the natives say ; * there is no evil in the 
 custom to those whose minds are free from evil.' So 
 they ignore the pleadings of the ' sky pilots,' and the 
 children of Japan continue bathing in just the sort of 
 suits they wore when they were born." 
 
 [49] 
 
 i 
 
CHAPTER SIX 
 
 THE AUGUST DEPARTURE 
 
 SPEAKING of feasts and funerals," said Gard- 
 ner to the men who had listened to his words 
 on " bath," and were sitting with him at 
 One Hundred Steps the following day, " I saw an old 
 man roasting while his family sat round eating and 
 drinking and making merry. It was over on the west 
 coast, where cremation is much in vogue. 
 
 " It was a strange sight to me, for I had not been 
 in the country long and did not know anything about 
 the native funeral customs. The old man who was 
 burning had been our neighbor. He was Okashi's 
 father. That is how I happened to be at the funeral. 
 
 " He was eighty-eight years old. This is the lucky 
 age in Japan, because of the way the number is written." 
 Then Gardner made marks on the top of his tray with 
 his chopsticks dipped in shoyu — ^two little dabs point- 
 
 ing up at each other for eight; then, below, a cross for 
 ten; and below this two more little dabs. The column 
 then read eight, ten, eight. "Now if the four dabs 
 
 nee- fulled 
 
 [50] 
 
THE AUGUST DEPARTURE 
 were brought close to the cross in the middle, the eighty- 
 eight would change into the character ' rice.' The 
 dabs representing hulled kernels, and the cross, a bit 
 of the sieve, the symbol for plenty, so the man or woman 
 reaching the age of eighty-eight is held in particular 
 esteem, and my friend's funeral was more elaborate than 
 the usual affair because of his lucky age. 
 
 " Crowds came to the house, for everybody that knew 
 anybody knew Takaiyanagi Inkiyo. They came in and 
 bowed before the household shrine, where his name and 
 the age of such good omen were inscribed. As they 
 bowed they pressed their hands together as Christians 
 do in prayer. They reverenced his spirit, and by their 
 obeisance they implied that they held his memory In as 
 high esteem as they had held him when he was a living 
 man, but they did not worship, as some folk would wish 
 to have you believe. Then they laid their offerings on 
 the floor below the little image in its gilded case. Every- 
 one brought something. The well-to-do gave money, 
 others cakes or wine, and others bamboo vases full of 
 flowers. Some of these were red and some were white. 
 
 " Meanwhile the good wife of the house was busy In 
 the kitchen preparing food for the guests. In neigh- 
 boring kitchens, too, the women helped with this. In 
 my house cooking began early In the morning, and the 
 maids kept at it all day long. When the cooking was 
 over there was more food than ever I saw before: raw 
 fish, sugared fish, cuttle-fish, seaweed soups, and cold 
 boiled rice rolled up In seaweed, with a dab of horse- 
 radish in the center. 
 
 [51] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 " The feasting lasted till noon next day, when it was 
 time for the ceremony to begin. Priests came from an 
 Hongwanji temple near at hand, and saw the old man's 
 body put away properly into a jar shaped like a huge 
 flower-pot, with fragrant leaves pressed in round about 
 it. Then they stood the jar over in the comer for the 
 night, and covered it with a white cloth, so that it looked 
 quite like a bit of furniture sewed up for the summer. 
 
 " When all was ready for the procession the next day, 
 the mourners put the jar into a white box, and placed 
 the white cloth over it as before (white is the mourning 
 color in Japan), and some white-robed attendants from 
 the temple carried it ofl^ on a stretcher on their shoulders. 
 
 " Just ahead of the jar walked a company of singers 
 with bells. They were in white also, in fact we were all 
 in white except Okashi Kintaro. He had on a wonderful 
 dress-suit, made after the foreign pattern, much too 
 large for him, and lined with pink silk. The trousers, 
 which he had rolled up some eighteen inches on each leg, 
 fitted as though they were on ' hind-side first.' His hat 
 was odd, too. It was of the good old stovepipe design, 
 straight at the sides, with a broad and flat brim. It 
 was fortunate for Okashi that he had ears, otherwise his 
 hat would have dropped down on to his shoulders. Alto- 
 gether there was a homelessness and lonesomeness in his 
 appearance, as he ambled along in this outfit, that was as 
 distressing as it was amusing. I had the honor to be 
 in the procession too. I wore a white duck suit, white 
 canvas shoes, and a white helmet, and rode in a jin- 
 riki-sha. 
 
 [52] 
 
THE AUGUST DEPARTURE 
 "At the temple the bearers put the jar on an altar, 
 and a dozen priests chanted a service. While the chant- 
 ing went on, each guest stepped forward in turn, and, 
 after bowing to the priests, knelt before the bier, and, 
 salaaming quite to the floor, took a pinch of powdered 
 incense from a bowl and dropped it into a charcoal 
 brazier, in which a tiny fire burned. Then with another 
 prolonged salaam the mourning guest returned to his 
 seat. This was a sort of ' good-by ' to the body and a 
 salutation to the spirit of the ancient gentleman. 
 
 " When my turn came I was so awkward as to put 
 my fingers into the brazier, thereby burning them, and 
 then, in confusion, I put too much incense on the fire, 
 which made such a smoke that the priests and I had a 
 coughing fit. 
 
 " Afterwards I explained that we always did that way 
 at home. We burned our fingers a little to purify them, 
 and the last man always dumped on all the incense that 
 was left so that the corpse wouldn't think we were un- 
 generous. Since then I have been regarded in Etchiu 
 as one learned in holy things. 
 
 " After this ceremony and the sneezing were over we 
 took the dead man to a crematory, the only kind of 
 building in Etchiu that has a chimney. Fire was 
 already burning under the oven, and the younger 
 priests were setting a banquet more elaborate, if pos- 
 sible, than had been served at the house. At one side 
 stood several tall vases of pure white porcelain full of 
 sake, and, near these, stacks of shallow drinking cups 
 of red lacquer. 
 
 [53] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 We seated ourselves on small cushions laid about on 
 the soft matted floor. I sat like the others, kneeling on 
 my heels. Okashi San protested much. ' You are a for- 
 eigner,' said he, ^ and are doing me such an over- 
 whelming honor by coming here to-day that I cannot 
 reconcile myself to the idea of your placing your august 
 body in a position so uncomfortable. We Japanese are 
 used to it. Augustly condescend to act in accordance 
 with the request which I have had the gross efFrontery 
 to make ! ' I persisted, however, in sitting native fash- 
 ion, and had cramps in each leg afterwards, much to the 
 amusement of the ot.her guests. 
 
 "Just then the priests took the body from the jar, 
 and, having wrapped it carefully in white, they put it 
 on an iron grating and slid it far back into the furnace, 
 though where all could get a good view of it. The 
 flames curled round it fiercely at first and then almost 
 tenderly, as though caressing it. Now and then they 
 would lash furiously and tie themselves in fantastic knots 
 about the limbs, which bent and unbent and quivered 
 as though life were not yet extinct and they could feel 
 the terrible heat. 
 
 " So while the venerable departed writhed and roasted 
 in the flames, we banqueted. It was grewsome, I con- 
 fess, especially when one of the old man's family would 
 go to the oven and turn him over with an iron rod to 
 ' do ' him better on the other side, or would straighten 
 him out so that the fire could get at him better. I had 
 always been in favor of cremation, but I'll be hanged 
 if I liked sitting there watching a man kink up and sput- 
 
 [54] 
 
THE AUGUST DEPARTURE 
 ter while his relatives turned him as a chef turns things 
 on a grill. 
 
 " I had recourse to sake to steady my nerves. Sake 
 is about the strength of sherry, so that if you drink 
 enough of it, especially hot sake, you will produce an 
 effect. I produced one in the crematory. Every time 
 any of the guests offered me a cup, I took it, and 
 poured the contents into me. It is the custom to ex- 
 change cups, you know. You rinse your cup in a bowl 
 of water provided for that purpose and offer it to each 
 guest in turn. You must do this once at least to every- 
 one present, and you always receive a cup in return. 
 There were twenty-nine of us at the funeral, and I had 
 two drinks with each of them! 
 
 " I told my host that, when my time came, he must 
 see that I was properly cremated. He replied that it 
 would be too great an honor for him. ' You had much 
 better come to cook me,' he said. Finally, we decided 
 that which ever ' augustly departed ' first, the other 
 should burn him, and that the town should have sake 
 enough to swim in. We agreed, however, not to die be- 
 fore we were eighty-eight. 
 
 " ' Just see how beautifully my father burns,' Okashi 
 San said. ' That is because of his lucky age.' 
 
 * Wait till you see me sizzle,' I replied, ' you will be 
 amazed. I intend to go off like a keg of powder.' 
 
 " Had either of us caught fire that afternoon he would 
 have burned with a blue flame." 
 
 [ 55] 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
 THE GUEST WHO COULD NOT GO 
 
 JAPANESE callers come early and stay late^ — 
 particularly if you, the callee, are a foreigner. 
 They like to look at you. They are easy enough to 
 entertain, too, if you do not mind being stared at. But 
 they never go. At least no one but Dara Santaro ever 
 went, and he did so only once. He could not do so 
 again, for he did not come back. This achievement of 
 his (which was partly ours) emphasizes the rule. Here 
 is the story. 
 
 Dara Santaro was in the habit of calling on us on 
 Nichiyobi regularly. Nichiyobi is the seventh day of 
 the Japanese week, and corresponds to our Sunday, 
 though it ha,s nothing to do with religion. It is rather 
 jollier and happier than other days, that is all. Gard- 
 ner and I had enjoyed it in peace and restfulness until 
 Dara discovered us. 
 
 Nichiyobi was our home day. We v/ere satisfied to be 
 by ourselves. It was always a comfort in anticipation 
 and a delight when it arrived. But Dara changed aK 
 that. He was the nephew of our next-door neighbor, a 
 retired naval captain, who, though a cripple, was 
 courteous and kindly in the extreme. Moreover, he spoke 
 a little English, which made him the more agreeable, 
 whereas Dara did not know more than three words. 
 
 [56] 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 Of The 
 liNlVERSITV ot ILLINOIS 
 
THE GUEST WHO COULD NOT GO 
 When Dara made his first call we were still snoozing 
 on our " futon," ^ and he had bowed twelve times before 
 we had got the kinks out of our necks sufficiently to 
 bow back to him. Japanese pillows are excellent, once 
 one is used to them; but they are hard on the neck the 
 first few years. Usotsuki, a young student who inter- 
 preted for us, said Dara was extremely sorry to disturb 
 us. Dara's sorrow was manifested by a smile that 
 divided his countenance into hemispheres. Our own sor- 
 row was as intense, but different. 
 
 We told Kintaro to make Dara comfortable and to 
 excuse us for a moment. Then we rolled out of our 
 " nemaki " ^ and into our boiling bath. When we came 
 out we were red, and breakfast was ready. Dara sat 
 with us on his shinbones and heels, with his feet crossed 
 under him, and nearly added another inch to his smile 
 in an effort to eat an olive with his knife. We did not 
 care much for olives for breakfast, but Usotsuki had 
 put them on the table and Dara San seemed to like them. 
 
 Generally, too, we discarded knives and forks and ate 
 with hashi like the natives, but this morning we brought 
 out the English implements, thinking they might inter- 
 est our guest. They did. He ate everything, even but- 
 ter, which is not usual among the Japanese. Indeed, he 
 speared the balls floating in the bowl of iced water and 
 swallowed them with an indrawn hiss, like the sound of a 
 small sky-rocket. He continued to eat until there was 
 nothing left but the utensils and a bottle of tabasco 
 sauce. He wept over that. 
 
 ^ Heavy quilts. ^ Kimono for sleeping. 
 
 [57] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 When Dara had done complimenting us he smiled and 
 said, gochiso sama." ("Honorable feast, sir.") 
 From Usotsuki's previous explanation, which seemed 
 founded on antithesis, we judged that Dara was once 
 more expressing sorrow. Perhaps he had a stomach- 
 ache. We were not surprised that he should have 
 one. But no, we had misjudged his smile a second 
 time. 
 
 " He say very glad too much eatings," Usotsuki ex- 
 plained. 
 
 " We did not know he was coming or we might have 
 prepared," Gardner remarked. This seemed to please 
 Dara greatly when it was translated to him, and he said 
 he would come again next Nichiyobi. Gardner told 
 him to come any day he liked, but Dara replied that 
 official duties hindered him except on that one day. 
 
 Then he sat and sat, we the meanwhile wondering 
 what to do for him. We showed him all our foreign 
 photographs. These interested him, and he did us the 
 honor to ask for the only pictures of our parents that 
 we possessed. He smiled when we said they were alto- 
 gether too unworthy for us to think of presenting them 
 to an august guest, but he had a puzzled look about the 
 eyes. 
 
 Then we showed him some books on Japan, over 
 which he chuckled like an infant. After that we took 
 some snapshots of him. The minute he faced the camera 
 his smile turned to haughtiness, and he looked like a 
 brazen image, which is the proper Japanese pose; but 
 when he saw the negative in our dark room a little later 
 
 [58] 
 
THE GUEST WHO COULD NOT GO 
 he was tickled. We promised to send him proofs in a 
 few days, and he bowed and smiled, and stayed. 
 
 Usotsuki announced tiffin — always an elaborate meal 
 with us on Nichiyobi. Dara San stayed, and was as 
 active as at breakfast. His compliments were loud and 
 long. As we were fond of his uncle we said nothing, 
 but we were eager For " our Sunday.'' We wanted to 
 lounge and stroll about the gardens of the old temple 
 in which we lived, and over into the older temple which 
 we were using as a schoolhouse. We wanted to chat 
 together of things at home, to finish our letters and be 
 at rest. But there were none of these things for us this 
 day, nor the following Nichiyobi either, for he remem- 
 bered the promise which we had quite forgotten. 
 
 That second day of visitation was not a keen delight. 
 Then came a third and a fourth. What should we do.^^ 
 We could not be rude. Not for a year's rent would we 
 have disturbed that kindly gentleman the captain. We 
 did not wish to flee. We wanted to have our home to our- 
 selves this one day in the week. We must resort to 
 strategy. And, in fact, to use a slang expression, we 
 must put up a job on Dara Santaro. Though out- 
 wardly polite and friendly, we had concocted and con- 
 cealed in our hearts a wicked scheme. It was done in this 
 wise: 
 
 As everyone knows, sake is the national drink of 
 Japan. Foreign liquors, like foreign tobacco, are 
 usually too strong for them. Dara knew nothing of 
 this, however. 
 
 After tiffin No. 4, we tried some foreign cigarettes on 
 [69] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 him, which he smoked until he was a httle dizzy. " Ta- 
 baka yota " (Tobacco drunk) the natives call the sensa- 
 tion. Then we gave him some of our sake highly sweet- 
 ened. He had a curiosity to taste the foreign product, 
 and, like all Japanese, he liked plenty of sweetness. 
 
 We loaded his tumbler with syrups, but also with 
 liquors, and, I fear, nearly three fingers of " fire water," 
 for it was a tall English glass, holding almost a pint. 
 Our glasses held a mixture of the same in color, but in- 
 nocent of dynamite. 
 
 Our deception was base but successful. Dara smacked 
 his lips and smiled halfway round his head over the 
 first swallow. His face reddened as he continued to im- 
 bibe, but he persisted with the courage of a sentenced 
 feudal lord in the da^^s of " hara-kiri." By the time he 
 had emptied the glass, his head stuck up through the 
 top of his kimono like a poppy and his smile drooped at 
 the ends. 
 
 He articulated, " Taihen uroshi, gochiso sama, gomen 
 na sai, syonara," ^ and then sailed sweetly, with many 
 curves, out through our garden, his kimono following 
 like a comet's tail, and his clogs playing leap-frog and 
 filling the air with their wooden clamor. 
 
 Though we have felt guilty ourselves, we have never 
 
 blamed Dara Santaro that he did not return. 
 
 ^ Very good ! Great feast, sir ! August pardon deign ! Good- 
 bye! 
 
 [60] 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
 THE OBEDIENT BED 
 ARDNER and I took a vacation of some three 
 
 made a hurried trip to Tokio. When we reached 
 thei'e the city seemed fearfully European — such was the 
 effect of a few months' experiences across the Empire. 
 Tokio was now as strange for its foreign features as it 
 had been formerly for its native characteristics. We 
 were being Japanned. 
 
 We ran into some friends who were staying at the 
 Imperial Hotel, and they led Gardner into a discourse 
 and glimpses of native life. He began with the bed, 
 which is the starting point of Japanese as well as for- 
 eign life, and the finishing point too. 
 
 " In Japan," he said, " you don't go to bed; the bed 
 comes to you. It is much easier that way, and in Japan 
 the easiest way is the only way. That is why the countr}^ 
 is so popular with globe-trotters. Nor does it make 
 much difference what part of your house you may be in, 
 or of a friend's house, for that matter, or a tea-house 
 or an hotel ; if 3^ou are drowsy the bed will come in patty- 
 pat, and will spread out before you at a moment's notice. 
 
 " If you are visiting, your host will detect your in- 
 clinations and beg you to honor his house by taking a 
 nap therein. Clapping his hands, he calls out : ' Futon 
 
 leaving Okashi and the west coast 
 
 [61] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 motte kol ! ' Quilts bring here ! ') In a moment his wife 
 is prostrate just outside the room, hearkening to the 
 august command. In two minutes she will be toddling 
 In with a bundle in her arms much larger than herself — 
 a huge, thickly wadded quilt, the ' futon,' which she rolls 
 out over the ' tatami,' the straw mattresses covered with 
 finely woven bamboos that are upon all floors in Japanese 
 rooms (excepting only the ' daidoku,' or kitchen). 
 That Is the bed, and If you will condescend augustly to 
 arrange your honorable body on anything so unworthy, 
 Okamisan (the sweet little wife) will be bewildered with 
 the honor. 
 
 " She tells you so In a sweet voice as she kneels and 
 presses her face down against the backs of her tiny 
 hands on the tatami before you. You protest that the 
 honor Is with you ; that It Is Indescribably rude of you to 
 venture to think of polluting so magnificent a futon. 
 Then, with a low bow, you stretch yourself out upon it. 
 Okamisan covers you with another futon, and doubling 
 up again, lisps: ' OyasumI nasi ' {' Condescend to enjoy 
 honorable tranquillity Mine host says the weather 
 Impresses him as being such as to encourage nap-taking 
 also, and soon he Is on another futon lying peacefully 
 beside you, to be called when the bath is ready, for if It 
 Is afternoon all Japan takes a nap and afterwards a dip 
 in the ' furo,' or wooden bath-tub, and has a rub down 
 by a maid. 
 
 " Supposing you to be a foreigner who has just ar- 
 rived, and therefore a ' griffin,' in Yokohama slang, 
 j^our first night in Japan is likely to be a new experi- 
 
 [62] 
 
THE OBEDIENT BED 
 ence, especially if you are unfamiliar with the Far East. 
 You may very well begin right here in Tokio, the 
 capital of the Empire. 
 
 " You leave your shoes outside the door on entering, 
 for the delicate texture of the bamboo matting, which 
 is the upper surface of the tatami, would be torn by 
 boot heels. If your feet are chilled, you may wear heel- 
 less slippers, but the native way is the best; that is, to 
 go barefoot — a good preventive against colds and rheu- 
 matism. If you like, you may wear * tabi.' Tabi are 
 the native socks. They come just to the ankle, around 
 which they fasten with hooks, and are like mittens in 
 shape, having separate pockets for the great toes, just 
 as mittens have for the thumbs. Tabi are convenient, 
 because when wearing them your feet fit into the ' zori ' 
 (sandals) and ' geta ' (wooden clogs), which the Jap- 
 anese wear out of doors instead of shoes, and you may 
 amble round as you please without the bother of bend- 
 ing over to lace or to button or to pull on a pair o*f 
 boots. The slit in the tabi between the pocket for the 
 great toe and the pocket for the other toes is to admit 
 the thong by which the geta and zori are held to the 
 foot. 
 
 " When your shoes are on one of the shelves in the 
 stand, where you would look for a hat-rack at home, a 
 maid will take you directly to your room along with your 
 luggage, for there is no office in which to stop to register. 
 There you will find little in the way of ornament, and no 
 furniture at all. If you like you may have some brought 
 in. There may be a ' scroll ' hanging in the alcove, and 
 ^ [ 63 ] 
 
 \ 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 an inscription on a tablet, or a motto over one of the 
 cross-beams that hold the upper groove for the sliding 
 paper doors. The tablet is by a famous chirographer, 
 and bears his seal. Likely enough the sentence is a 
 maxim of Confucius. 
 
 " As there are no chairs, you will be glad that the 
 Japanese floors are not like ours, and that the tatami 
 are really soft. You will have ^ zabuton,' or small 
 square futon-like chair-cushions to sit on, and you will 
 wish you had the chair, too. You will soon wonder what 
 to do with your legs and feet, which you will discover can 
 be very troublesome appendages. If only you could 
 hang them over somewhere, or even down a hole. But 
 there is no suitable hole. If you wish a table to use in 
 writing down your ' first impressions,' after the manner 
 of most griffins, the maid will bring you one a foot high, 
 which you may grow used to if you persevere ; but then 
 you will not be a griffin — you will have been graduated. 
 
 " If it is toward the end of an afternoon, you should 
 have a bath. You will find it amusing, refreshing, and 
 possibly embarrassing. When the maid has scrubbed 
 your back, it will be time for ' ban meshi,' or evening 
 meal. You will find the chopsticks unexpectedly easy 
 to manage. Soon after this, as you are tired, you are 
 ready for the bed to come to you. 
 
 " As you are not used to sleeping on the floor yet, 
 even a soft one, you had better order ' futon ni mai,' 
 or, if you are tender, ' sam mai.' Ni ' means ' two,' 
 and ' san ' or ' sam ' means ' three.' ' Mai ' is an auxil- 
 iary numeral used when counting flat things.) You 
 
 [64] 
 
THE OBEDIENT BED 
 clap your hands instead of pressing the button of an 
 electric bell, and from far back in the interior of the 
 house comes a drawn out ' Hai-i-i-i, tadaima.' ' Hai ' 
 is only a signal cry, meaning that the maid hears you. 
 It does not mean ' yes.' ' Tadaima,' the dictionaries 
 say, means ' now,' ' just now,' ' at present,' or ' pres- 
 ently.' In some tea-houses you will find it is the equiva- 
 lent of the Spanish word ^ manana.' Tokio maids are 
 quick, however, and in a moment the karakimi slide to 
 one side, and a little body is kneeling just beyond await- 
 ing orders. 
 
 " You say you are sleepy and would like a nap, and 
 you ask for an extra futon. ' Hai kashikomari mashita ' 
 ('I listen with respectful assent'), replies the bright- 
 eyed maiden as she bends low. Then with an ' august 
 pardon deign ' she pushes the karakimi wide open, and 
 calls out, ' Elder sister, come here a moment. The 
 Learned One would sleep ! ' 
 
 " Elder sister, who, by the way, is as likely to be the 
 younger of the two, comes along the veranda from the 
 kitchen, her bare feet sounding patty-pat on the pol- 
 ished wood. She goes to the wall and slides open the 
 door of the ' fukuro dana,' or cupboard, which you 
 thought was the entrance to another room. There are 
 the futon folded up on a horizontal shelf, which divides 
 the cupboard so that it looks like the two berths of a 
 stateroom on board ship. 
 
 " ' You want two pieces, don't you, master ? ' she says. 
 And then with the sweetest little smile, and with her head 
 a bit to one side like a bird, she asks : ' Makura f utatsu, 
 
 [65] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 desuka ? ' ' Makura ' is pillow, and she asks if you wish 
 two. 
 
 " The futon are spread out one upon the other, and a 
 sheet perhaps is laid on top. Sheets, however, are new 
 to Japan. Then comes the big ^ yagu,' or top futon, 
 which is longer than the others, and has sleeves like a 
 huge kimono. This is bunched up at the foot of the 
 bed, ready to be pulled over you when you have lain 
 down. 
 
 " The small object at the head of your bed, which 
 looks like a cigar box on edge surmounted by a roll of 
 paper, is the ' makura.' No one need envy your first 
 night's experience with it. You will discover that your 
 head is as heavy as though it were solid lead, and, there- 
 fore — which is all the comfort you'll have out of the 
 sensation — that it cannot possibly be empty. You will 
 likely dream of being beheaded or unheaded, and of 
 falling over the brinks of precipice after preci- 
 pice. 
 
 " In the morning your head will be stationary, for the 
 hinges of your neck will be too rusty to turn even a little 
 bit. It will take time to master the makura, but you 
 will like it when you are used to it. If you will ex- 
 amine closely you will see that it is not a cigar box, but 
 a truncated pyramid, four or five inches high, hollow, 
 with a rectangular base and a groove on top, in which 
 lies a slender cushion stuffed with bran. Upon this 
 cushion elder sister binds a few layers of paper, which 
 are changed every morning. 
 
 " There is a drawer at one end of the makura, in which 
 
 [66] 
 
THE OBEDIENT BED 
 
 yoo will find tobacco, extremely fine cut and of attenu- 
 ated flavor. You may take Sppuku ' (one puff^), as 
 the Japanese say, with small danger of nervous prostra- 
 tion. There may be one or two ' kiseru,' or pipes, in the 
 drawer. If not, surely there are several on the tray 
 beside the ' tabako ban,' the square little rosewood box 
 with the earthenware ' hibachi,' or brazier, in it, and the 
 ' haifuki,' as the bamboo tube is called, which is a com- 
 bination of ash-receiver and cuspidor. Bits of burning 
 charcoal are in the hibachi for lighting your pipe. The 
 haifuki is for ashes, burnt matches, and the other uses of 
 a cuspidor. 
 
 " If it is not too late in the season, you will need a 
 ' kaya,' or mosquito net. Ne san will have it unfolded 
 and hung up by cords at its four corners in almost no 
 time. It is always green, and usually has red bindings. 
 When you are inside you will be well shut off from the 
 evening breezes as well as from the mosquitoes, and will 
 not feel the need of the ' yagu ' or upper futon. 
 
 " You have watched these proceedings with amuse- 
 ment, and now that everything seems ready you wonder 
 why the ' elder sisters ' do not patter back to the kitchen. 
 But all is not ready. They must take away the ' rosoku,' 
 paper- wicked candles, or the ' rampu ' — as the Japanese 
 pronounce lamp — and put the night lantern, the ' an- 
 don,' in its place. This is a large square white paper 
 affair, standing on a frame a couple of feet above the 
 * tatami,' and lighted by a taper that juts out over the 
 edge of a small saucer of oil of sesame within. 
 
 " While you are waiting and wondering, they are 
 [6T] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 doing the same thing. They will bring the night lamp 
 as soon as you are safely under the kaya. 
 
 " ' Why doesn't honorable master undress ? ' they are 
 thinking, and you, ' Why the deuce don't those maids 
 go? ' A Japanese friend explains to you, perhaps, and 
 you get him between you and them, and, partially dis- 
 robing, slip under the kaya. Then he explains your 
 trepidation to the elder sisters, and all three have a great 
 laugh at your shyness. 
 
 " Should you wish to go out to look at the moon or to 
 study the weather probabilities for the morrow, or the 
 ' asago,' which is Japanese for morning glory, before 
 retiring, elder sister accompanies you and stands pa- 
 tiently by, humming an old love tune. She has a dip- 
 per at the ' chosubachi ' (washing basin), and will pour 
 water for you to wash your hands, and will offer you a 
 brand new Henui ' (towel) after your ablutions, on 
 which to dry yourself. Ne san is not an imaginative 
 person. She guides you as a matter of course, and takes 
 good care of you. She sees you safely in bed, and 
 doubling up into a little bunch, she says most humbly: 
 ' Oyasumi nasai.' Then sh-sh-sh-click, the karakimi are 
 pushed together, and you are in bed in Japan. You'll 
 rather like it after a month's experience. 
 
 " You will not find bedrooms in Japanese houses. But 
 wherever you go you will find futon are plentiful, and 
 wherever there is space for one, there you may have a 
 bed. The servants — men, women, boys, and girls — 
 sleep on the kitchen floor, or, more often, on the floor 
 of the room opening into the kitchen, in a long row, de- 
 
 [68] 
 
THE OBEDIENT BED 
 pending on the size of the room and the number of 
 servants. 
 
 " In a first-class tea-house or hotel, if you look in 
 early of a morning, you will find several rows of futon 
 reaching quite across the main room, each with a head 
 hanging out comfortably over the top of one of those 
 hollow wooden pillows. To the Japanese they are rather 
 neck-rests than head-rests, but to the foreign mind the 
 word rest is not applicable to makura. Except in the 
 case of young children, no two people are on the same 
 futon. 
 
 " Using futon and the floor instead of bedsteads is a 
 great saving of house space, and is convenient in many 
 other ways. The futon are easily aired, and may be car- 
 ried about readily when moving. In case of fire they are 
 quickly packed up and put out of danger. They are 
 cheap, too, except those used by the rich, which are 
 filled with pure silk wadding and covered with heavy 
 silk. Even then they cost less than hair mattresses at 
 home. 
 
 " As much of the exterior as well as of the interior 
 walls of Japanese houses is sliding doors, which grow 
 loose and wabbly with the changing of the seasons, from 
 wet to dry and then to wet again; and with the shak- 
 ing of the five hundred earthquakes that occur each year, 
 there is no lack of chinks and crevices which, however 
 admirable for ventilation, are rather too cooling in win- 
 ter, it behooves you to have heat if you would be com- 
 fortable. The Japanese have neither open fireplaces nor 
 stoves. They make no attempt to heat their houses, but 
 
 [69] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 they try to keep their toes and fingers warm by means of 
 a ' kotatsu ' — that is a square firebox, sunk in the floor 
 with a wooden frame above it. This supports the futon 
 that are laid over it and prevents their catching fire. 
 There is a grating, too, just over the fire, something 
 like a grill iron. 
 
 " In winter the beds are arranged round the kotatsu, 
 and consequently for the first half of the night your 
 feet are in an oven, but as morning approaches, and the 
 charcoal fire dwindles, the oven changes and is more like 
 an ice-box. 
 
 " When you give a party to your friends, and, the 
 wee sma' hours approaching, you would fain retire, do 
 not hesitate to do so, but do not hint anything thereof 
 to your guests. That would be a sad breach of etiquette. 
 They own the house while they are there and all that is 
 therein. Your course is quietly to disappear to the re- 
 motest apartment you have and call the bed to come to 
 you. It is good form to do this, for it allows the merri- 
 ment to continue unrestrained. Should anyone ask for 
 you, the maids will say that you are just outside, and will 
 be in ' tadaima ' — a safe term to use. In the morning, 
 if your sake was good, you will find your friends sleep- 
 ing sweetly on your spare futon, a bed having gone to 
 each of them by the courtesy of elder sister." 
 
 no] 
 
1^ 
 
 CHAPTER NINE 
 
 ONE WHO WON 
 
 WHILE in Tokio this trip, we were onlookers 
 at a poker game once, as guests of a man of 
 rank. Though we did not take a hand, we 
 had a worthy night of it. The game was of a magni- 
 tude we had never seen before^ — and in such simple yet 
 exquisite surroundings : a glorious place for the purpose, 
 or for any other purpose! Our friends were of some 
 distinction, too, and most interesting in their native 
 manner. The first words we heard were: 
 
 " ' Hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu, yotsu, itsutsu — aka ba- 
 kari ' (' One, two, three, four, five — red only.') Prince 
 Sakusama was counting at the end of the first jack-pot, 
 as he laid a straight flush, beginning with the ace of 
 hearts, on the low ebony table in one of the famous tea- 
 houses on Sumida Gawa. 
 
 " I win ? " he asked, as he paused a moment and 
 looked round at his companions. Then, with a gentle 
 inclination to those about the table, " The chips 
 and Peach Blossom, too. Shall I put her in the 
 kitty.?" 
 
 " If your Highness did so," said a young Baron who 
 had just returned with an Embassy from London, " all 
 of us would play to lose, for, as your Highness has 
 deigned to declare, the rules of the game give the kitty 
 
 [71] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 to the player who is hit the hardest. To play poker to 
 lose would be to debauch its pristine purity." 
 
 " We must never do that. Baron, surely. Let us play 
 a round of jacks," replied the Prince. 
 
 He clapped his hands, and from the far interior of the 
 tea-house, beyond many partitions of paper sliding 
 doors, an answering, " Hai tadaima," long drawn, soft, 
 and musical, floated in, telling the prince that his sum- 
 mons had been heard. A moment later and the paper 
 doors at the end of the room slid noiselessly in their 
 grooves and disclosed a bundle of daintiness on the 
 tatami just outside. 
 
 It was Peach Blossom, kneeling low, with her face al- 
 most touching the soft bamboo matting, and her tiny 
 hands pressed palm down together just before her. 
 
 She besought His Highness to deign to pardon her 
 audacious eff*rontery in responding to the august sum- 
 mons, and begged that if he would condescend to com- 
 mand so unworthy a piece of stupid mud as she, he 
 would deign to consider her ready to receive the au- 
 gustly honorable orders. 
 
 " Sake," said the Prince, and as Peach Blossom closed 
 the sliding door and pattered away for the hot rice- 
 beer. His Highness tore the cover from a fresh pack 
 of cards and began to shuffle them. The Baron cut and 
 the game proceeded. 
 
 Five better poker faces were never gathered about a 
 table. There was not a sign of nerves in any one of 
 them. Each player skinned his hand and decided 
 whether to draw or to pass or to stand pat, but never a 
 
 [72] 
 
ONE WHO WON 
 
 sign of his thoughts was given in his countenance. One 
 and all had the expression of a door-knob. Good hands 
 and bad hands come to a door-knob, but one can tell 
 nothing of them by looking at it. 
 
 These five men in the tea-hoiise on the bank of the 
 Sumida Gawa, which flows through the heart of Tokio, 
 bore some of the best-known names in the Japanese Em- 
 pire. Three of them had been " Daimiyo " and had 
 owned provinces as absolutely as anything may be 
 owned in this world. Their revenues had been counted 
 by the 100,000 " koku." ' They had lived in royal 
 state, each with his castles and his army and board of 
 councilors. 
 
 But Commodore Perry had changed all that, and now 
 these men were living in the capital with one-tenth of 
 their former incomes, but with no one to support or 
 worry about, outside their personal households. 
 
 Of the other two, his Highness, Prince Sakusama, 
 was one of the Shogun's family, which had ruled the 
 empire until the restoration in 1868, and the other was 
 of the samurai class. His fathers had been fighting 
 men for full two thousand years, as his family records 
 showed. He had studied abroad, was a graduate of 
 Harvard, an M. A. of Oxford, and a Ph. D. of Heidel- 
 berg. It was said that he had carved his name on the 
 face of a German student who had been so unlucky as 
 to challenge him. He was a vice-minister now, and had 
 married the daughter of a merchant with much money. 
 (Before 1871 he would have been sentenced to " hara- 
 * A koku is about five bushels (of rice). , 
 
 [73] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 kiri " for mesalliance.) All five had learned to play 
 abroad. They had been together in a Japanese club in 
 London, the presiding genius of which was their Consul- 
 General, who knew the great American game as well as 
 did ever a Kentucky colonel. 
 
 Now that they were at home again, they were only too 
 willing to meet wherever a chance afforded, and the tea- 
 house of the Rising Moon knew them well. Its mistress 
 was glad to see them, for the players and their friends 
 were a hungry and thirsty lot, and did not spare the 
 kitty, out of which the chief loser had to pay all ex- 
 penses. 
 
 The round of jacks was under way when Momo-mo- 
 Hana came in with the sake. When sake is ordered in 
 a tea-house food is served with it, for the host knows 
 well the evil effects of drinking on an empty stomach, 
 and besides there is profit in comestibles. So Peach 
 Blossom was followed by a procession of similar blossoms, 
 each with a dainty morsel on china dishes and lacquered 
 trays. All these bearers of nectar and ambrosia were 
 geisha, and indentured to masters of various geisha 
 houses. Rumor had it that for certain sums of money, 
 doubtless much exaggerated, the indenture papers of 
 the more bewitching of these geisha had changed hands, 
 so that the sweet singers were come under the guardian- 
 ship of men of noble birth, who in the olden days could 
 have cut in two the master of a geisha house and would 
 have been accountable to no one. Food and drink dis- 
 appeared rapidly, and then the game went on, while 
 music and singing kept accompaniment. Finally came 
 
 [74] 
 
ONE WHO WON 
 
 the last jack-pot of the last round. It bore out the 
 rumor as to the transference of indenture papers, for 
 when the last call was made and his Highness had reck- 
 oned up the contents, he found Cherry Bud, Chrysan- 
 themum, and Plum Blossom were added to his list, besides 
 Little Posy and One Thousand Joys. He had won the 
 whole procession. Each player laughed as though he 
 might have been himself the principal winner, exchanged 
 sake cups with all the others, and planned to meet again. 
 
 Looking out over the slow Sumida, and watching the 
 house-boats with their gay paper lanterns as the boat- 
 man poled them along the shores in the light of the ris- 
 ing moon, Sakusama dipped his sake cup in the basin, 
 and handing it to him who had lost just too little to be 
 entitled to the kitty, said: 
 
 " Next time your honorable luck good probably will 
 be. Graciously condescend a cupful of sake to imbibe." 
 
 [75 T 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
 THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 
 w 
 
 HAT wonders a little word will work ! It was 
 the mellifluous " tadaima," for instance, our 
 old friend of the inns and the tea-houses, that 
 
 set Gardner and me at the language. It had followed us 
 on our trip to Tokio, and at the same time that it " set " 
 us it had been floating in from Okashi's yashiki for 
 quite two hours. 
 
 Something had happened to the " fire-box " that our 
 cook had contrived for the viands we needed on our 
 feast days, so we were waiting for our dinner. We were 
 hungry, we were in a hurry, and the hour was late, yet 
 no matter how much we clapped our hands all we elic- 
 ited was " tadaima " — tadaima instead of sustenance ? 
 Every four minutes of the two hours either Gardner or 
 I had called until the fingers of our right hands had 
 raised welts on our left hands' palms, aiad further 
 " popping " was painful. 
 
 We were " na sae ticklit," as a Drumtochty man might 
 have said, over the monotony of the responses to our 
 summons, but it was Sunday and we did not speak out 
 what we thought. I had found out something about 
 " tadaima " the first night I was in Tokio, and I had 
 described my impressions to Gardner. We both knew 
 that in the dictionaries it was opposite the word " im* 
 
 [76] 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 mediately." Whoever juxtaposed it there may have 
 fancied for the moment that he was at work on a list of 
 antonyms. One could not well imagine a word more op- 
 posite to " immediately " than " tadaima." Its location 
 in the dictionary was a good one from the antonymic 
 point of view. 
 
 " I'll tell you what we'll have to do, Partner," said my 
 good friend, as he clapped his hands for the fifteenth 
 time, rather mildly, and listened to the thirtieth 
 " tadaima." 
 
 " Is it far? " I asked. I thought he was about to sug- 
 gest a tea-house. 
 
 " No, I don't mean to go anywhere," he replied. " I 
 was about to observe that we must study the language. 
 This eternal tadaima disturbs the equanimity I would 
 maintain. My soul protests. So does my appetite de- 
 partment. If we had learned Japanese we should not 
 be sitting here like a couple of blind claqueurs, we 
 should have proceeded to the kitchen at the first indica- 
 tion of delay and have remonstrated so accurately, so 
 precisely, and so emphatically, that by this time we 
 should have been within sound of the surf at Sakaiko." 
 Sakaiko is a grand place for surf some days, and Gard- 
 ner and I went there often, but to-day we should be late. 
 
 Yes, Gardner was right. If we had taken up the 
 language we should have been more comfortable inter- 
 nally. Tadaima would be a lesson to us. 
 
 " True," I replied. " We must learn the lingo " ; and 
 straightway we began. There was no " tadaima " 
 about Gardner once his mind had determined itself. 
 
 [77] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Kitsune San had various books which he said kind lady 
 missionaries had loaned to him once at a Christian school 
 in Kanazawa. While Gardner went over for them I 
 made some tea. Then we began. The book we first 
 read was by an Englishman who held a unique position, 
 considering his nationality. He was Professor of Jap- 
 anese in the Imperial University of Japan, in Tokio. 
 
 We also had articles by Captain Brinkley, R. A., 
 editor of the Japan Mail, whose particular information 
 about Japan, and general information about everything, 
 filled us with enthusiastic awe; by Percival Lowell, who 
 would have us believe the Japanese have no souls; by 
 Lafcadio Hearn, who knows that Japanese souls are as 
 plentiful as any people's, though not always encum- 
 bered with material bodies, and has written about them 
 with such rare illumination that others may see as he 
 does. The more illusive the object towards which Mr. 
 Hearn's mind turns attention, the more brilliantly he 
 seizes it and presents it to his readers. His books, how- 
 ever, were not among those the missionaries loaned to 
 Kitsune. Mr. Hearn does not approve the missionary, 
 and says so frankly.* 
 
 We had, besides, an Etymology by Imbrie, which 
 gave us opportunity for learning by practical examples 
 
 * We had our widely known friends, Messrs. Kelly and Walsh, 
 of Yokohama, to thank for Hearn. Hearn, by the way, is no longer 
 Hearn. He has become a Japanese citizen by the only possible pro- 
 cess, that of marrying a Japanese and taking his wife's name. He is 
 now KoidzumiYakumo, and appeared thus on the list of professors 
 of the Imperial University in Kaga Yashiki, Hongo, Tokio, where 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 the uses of particular words; and dear old Hepburn's 
 Dictionary, in sombre black, the result of many years' 
 unselfish labor by a Christian missionary who was also 
 a scholar and a physician. But the books that helped 
 us most were by the Englishman at the University, Basil 
 Hall Chamberlain. His " Colloquial Japanese," 
 "Things Japanese," and "Handbook of Japan" (in 
 which Mr. Mason collaborated) were a joy — and are so 
 even to this day. May his shadow never grow less ! 
 
 We should not forget that we also had the Kobe 
 Chronicle and the Japan Mail, two papers each of which 
 sometimes said things of the other, but which every visi- 
 tor to the Mikado's realm should read. 
 
 We found out a lot of things about Japanese that 
 very afternoon, things that everyone else knew prob- 
 ably, but which we had not happened to think about — 
 to wit, Japanese is not even second cousin to Chinese, 
 though in the matter of loans Chinese had been a good 
 uncle. Japanese is an only child, and its parentage, 
 though certainly respectable, is doubtful. It has a 
 cousin in the Luchu Islands, and remote kindred possibly 
 in Corea, where there is some anatomical resemblance. 
 Gardner's sympathetic heart was touched by this ap- 
 parent isolation, and he declared he would look into the 
 matter to see if he could not find relatives among the 
 Manchus or the Mongols. He is looking now. 
 he lectured on literature. He saw little of foreigners, but I am 
 grateful to recall one delightful evening spent in his company not 
 long after his arrival in Dai Nihon. He is now once more in the 
 United States. 
 
 [79] 
 
 I 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 We had thought to learn to write Japanese, but, after 
 a cursory survey of the ground we must needs go over, 
 we decided to devote ourselves at first to speaking. The 
 written language would take time — ten years, perhaps, 
 if we kept steadily at it twenty-four hours a day as I 
 reckoned it, though Gardner was inclined to say twenty- 
 six hours, and we felt it would be hardly wise to write 
 much at first. We could not have begun at the begin- 
 ning anyway — not the kind of beginning that other 
 languages begin at, for there is no alphabet in Japanese. 
 We should have had to learn sets of syllables instead of 
 letters. There are two of these, and six ways of writing 
 the one more generally in use. Then there would be 
 four thousand ideographs to commit to memory (a num- 
 ber said to be sufficient for reading the daily paper com- 
 fortably), which the Japanese write in two different 
 styles, cursive and standard, as the spirit moves them, 
 and in various other ways if they happen to be men of 
 learning. These ideographs. Professor Chamberlain as- 
 sured us, had three or four different readings, according 
 to context. Then in the next paragraph, to give zest to 
 his description, he declared that a printed page was 
 likely enough to have all the different forms of the 
 characters scattered over it pell-mell. Perhaps Gardner 
 was correct in saying " twenty-six." 
 
 With the spoken language there was hope. In the 
 first place it was agglutinative. A language that glues 
 on its case endings, and builds up its grammatical forms 
 of speech with little pellets of cement, cannot but be 
 hedonic. Ever since we were children we had looked 
 
 [80] 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 forward to having an agglutinative language right 
 down where we could study it without getting hurt. 
 Now we had one. Then, too, to go back to my early 
 days, I recalled the cloud grammar had cast over my 
 young life — how my soul had protested against it, and 
 how it had come round at ten o'clock each school day as 
 though my soul had never spoken, or as though I had 
 no soul (I knew grammar had none). It was with grati- 
 tude to Professor Chamberlain, therefore, that I read 
 this paragraph of his: 
 
 " A word as to the parts of speech in Japanese. 
 Strictly speaking, there are but two, the verb and the 
 noun. [" The only parts I ever knew!" I purred.] 
 The particles or ' post positions ' and suffixes, which 
 take the place of our prepositions, conjunctions, and 
 conjunctional terminations, were themselves originally 
 fragments of nouns and verbs. The pronoun and nu- 
 meral are simply nouns. The true adjective (including 
 the adverb) is a sort of neuter verb. But many words 
 answering to our adjectives and adverbs are nouns in 
 Japanese. There is no article. Altogether our gram- 
 matical categories do not fit the Japanese language 
 well." 
 
 Another interesting feature was the honorific. That 
 was a delight second only to the absence of parts of 
 speech. In Japanese it seems all one's own things are 
 mean and vile, while the other fellow's are honorable, 
 august, divine. Gardner and I practiced this, and soon 
 each had the other on a throne while he himself groveled 
 before him most abjectly. We learned to apologize for 
 
 [81] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 living, and to say, " Yesterday I had the honor of being 
 rude to you," or, " To-morrow will your augustness con- 
 descend to remind decayed me to buy some honorable 
 tea? etc. 
 
 If I wished to look at the laundry marks on Gardner's 
 collars, to see if the august washerwoman was not a 
 thief, I should say : " May I turn towards your honorable 
 collars my adoring glance? but if I wished Gardner 
 to look at something of mine, I should say : " O Gardner, 
 Prince, august glance deign towards my meretricious 
 cake of Persian healing pine-tar soap,'' or whatever it 
 was. 
 
 It so happened that our kimono were quite alike, it 
 having been necessary to buy three pieces of silk to make 
 two robes — one piece, according to the new police regu- 
 lations, not being sufficient to clothe a foreigner. Often 
 we mixed these up, and in trying to explain in Japanese 
 (English being taboo out of school hours) we had some 
 difficulty in establishing which was whose, and our 
 honorifics got into a mess. For the life of me I could 
 not say whether the robe in my hand was Gardner's 
 august mantle or my unmentionable rags. Gardner 
 would be in equal mystery as to what he held. Then he 
 would deliver himself as to the august forgetfulness of 
 the honorable idiot that had disarranged the room that 
 morning under the pretense of sweeping up, and would 
 say: 
 
 " Well, let's wear them as they are. Your heavenly 
 attire may now have become by my possession even as 
 that righteousness which has not faith. Who knows? 
 
 [82] 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 Let us label them somewhere inside the sleeve where the 
 mark won't show." 
 
 Having settled this we started in on a few sentences, 
 our daily commitment. Below are some samples I give 
 on Professor Chamberlain's authority. In the first line 
 are the Japanese words, which flow easily as Italian, and 
 with as little emphasis on syllables as there is in French. 
 The consonants sound as in English generally, and the 
 vowels as in Italian. Then comes the interlinear trans- 
 lation. In the third line is the free English translation, 
 which shows how the idea hidden in the Japanese sen- 
 tence looks when it appears in English. Not only is the 
 second line literal, but it represents, as accurately as 
 English words can, the order and sequence of the ideas 
 as they exist in the Japanese mind. After this tran- 
 script of a native thought, it is not impossible to believe 
 that globe-trotting book- writers sometimes fall short of 
 perfect comprehension when they describe the workings 
 of the Far Eastern mind. A globe-trotter once uttered 
 at his guide whom he wished to peel some oranges, 
 " Boy, mikan kimono syonara," i. e,, " Boy, orange 
 clothes good-by." 
 
 That the Japanese think diff'erently from the Euro- 
 peans is evident enough. Their mental machinery is 
 of another kind — the product of a different factory — 
 and put together on diff^erent principles of construc- 
 tion. An occurrence that suggests a certain train 
 of thought to the European suggests a totally dif- 
 ferent train of thought to the Japanese. His whole 
 intellectual inheritance is diff^erent, as well as his per- 
 
 [83] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 sonal experience, his environment during childhood, and 
 the habits of the society of which he has been a member. 
 His ideals spring from a different source, and his point 
 of view is vastly different. As one instance of this, the 
 absence of the words " you " and " I " is illustrative. 
 He has no real pronouns in his language, but when he 
 would present the idea of " you " he says " honorable 
 side " — ^the idea being that the side of the room at which 
 you sit is the place of honor, while he is humbly at your 
 feet. If he would say " I " he uses the word " wata- 
 kushi " (pronounced wa-ta-k-shi), which means selfish- 
 ness. 
 
 A study of the interlinear translations is the only way 
 to get at the " Japanese mode.'' Here are some speci- 
 mens : 
 
 0 ki no doku Sama. 
 Honorable poison-of-the-spirit Mr. 
 
 1 am sorry for your sake. 
 
 Go burei moshi-agemashita 
 August rudeness (I) said-lifted 
 I was very rude to you. 
 
 Kiite itadakite gozaimasu 
 
 Hearing wishing-to-put-on-the-head am 
 I wish you would be so kind as to ask. 
 
 0 shiete itadakitai 
 Teaching wish-to-put-on-the-head 
 
 1 wish you would be so kind as to show me how. 
 
 [84] 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 Futo omoi-dashimashita 
 Suddenly think-have-put-out 
 It has just occurred to me. 
 
 Tsukai ga iki-chigai 
 
 Messengers (nominative) go-differ 
 ni narimashita 
 to became 
 
 The two messengers crossed each other. 
 
 lenai koto wa nai 
 Cannot-say fact as-for, is-not 
 It can be said. 
 
 Watakushi wa agaru koto 
 Me as-for, go-up fact 
 
 ga dekimasen kara 
 (nominative) forthcomes-not becausG, 
 
 anata ga o 
 
 you (nominative) honorable 
 
 ide kudasaru koto ga 
 exit condensed fact (nominative) 
 
 i 
 
 i dekimasu nara o 
 
 forthcomes if honorable 
 
 me ni kakarimasho 
 •I eyes on will-probably-hang 
 ! [85] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 As I cannot go to you, I can only see if you will be 
 so kind as to come to me. 
 
 Go busata itashimashita 
 
 August remissness (I) have-done 
 
 I have been sadly remiss about calling upon you* 
 
 O jama itashimashita 
 
 Honorable obstacle (I) have-done 
 Excuse me for having interrupted you. 
 
 Yoppodo beppin de 
 very extra-quality being 
 wa nai ka 
 is-not? 
 
 Isn't she very pretty? 
 
 America no o kata 
 America's honorable side 
 An American gentleman. 
 
 We said these over and over on all occasions, and even 
 invented occasions particularly for their use. We 
 became so polite that we found it difficult to speak 
 truthfully, and if we had not known each other so well 
 we should have become suspicious indeed. 
 
 One day as I returned from a conversation class of 
 young Buddhists not far away, I heard Gardner recite 
 the following. I have it exactly, for I copied it from 
 the text-book he was studying: 
 
 " No, indeed! having risen hands wash act even forth- 
 [80] 
 
THINKING IN JAPANESE 
 comes not was. Washing basin's water altogether 
 freeze-sticking having finished how doing even doing 
 way is not was." My heart beat with joy. At last he 
 had learned to think in Japanese. Should anyone be 
 skeptical as to Gardner's accuracy, let him look in Cham- 
 berlain's " Colloquial Japanese," p. 263, the second ex- 
 ample on the page. Here it is: 
 
 lya, mo ! okite te wo arau 
 
 No indeed having-risen hands ^^pSJucie)* wash 
 
 koto mo dekimasen deshita. 
 act even forth comes not was 
 
 Chozu bachi no mizu ga 
 Washing basin water ("pTtfc^^^ 
 
 maru de kori-tsuite shimatte 
 altogether freeze-sticking having-finished 
 
 do shite mo shiyo ga 
 how doing even doing-way ^'^^S'ir 
 
 arimasen deshita 
 is-not was 
 
 And this is the fa-anslation : 
 
 " No, indeed! When I got up, I couldn't wash my 
 hands. The basin was entirely frozen over, and all my 
 efforts to break the ice were in vain." 
 
 [87] 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
 BO CHAN 
 
 WE had not been with Okashi long before we 
 had made friends with the babies of the im- 
 mediate neighborhood — more than two dozen 
 of them all told. Like other bachelors, we were au- 
 thorities on infants. Our knowledge helped us with the 
 west-coast youngsters. 
 
 I am sure that it is true to-day as it was forty years 
 ago, when Sir Rutherford Alcock wrote : " And this, 
 I should say, is the very paradise of babies." Sir 
 Rutherford saw innumerable infants in the three years 
 he was in Japan, and as he was a physician as well as 
 a diplomat, and a keen observer, as all physicians and 
 diplomats should be, we may take it that he spoke the 
 truth. Judging by his descriptions of the native young- 
 sters it is small wonder that Her Majesty's Minister to 
 the Court of the " Great Prince," or Tycoon, as for- 
 eigners called the Shogun in those days, had to write 
 about them. He could not help it. His book, by the 
 way, " The Capital of the Tycoon," is a vivid and de- 
 lightful picture of the days when Old Japan was passing 
 away and New Japan was nearly ready to come out of its 
 chrysalis. 
 
 Japanese babies of the twentieth century are as irre- 
 sistible as they were when Sir Rutherford played with 
 
 [88] 
 
BO CHAN 
 them. They are precocious, too, for they are a year 
 old the moment they are born, and two years old the 
 first New Year's Day. That is the way the Japanese 
 reckon age ; counting the year in which the baby is born 
 " one," the next year " two," and so on. If you had 
 been born in Japan just as the temple bell was about to 
 strike twelve the night of December 31, you would be, 
 according to the Japanese mind, two years old at the 
 first clang. So in Japan, which to Europeans and 
 Americans is a very strange country indeed, one of a 
 pair of twins might be a year older than the other. 
 
 Some travelers to this wonderful Empire have said 
 that Japanese babies never cry. That is not quite true. 
 They have all the apparatus necessary — midriff, lungs, 
 and vocal cords in excellent condition, and they know 
 how to use these with effect; but nevertheless one sees 
 fewer tears in the Land of the Rising Sun, and hears 
 less wailing, than in other countries. This surprises the 
 visitor, for he notes the throngs of children in the streets 
 — ^the playground for almost all the youngsters in 
 Japan; he sees them tumble about so on their rather 
 awkward wooden clogs, falling often with a good hard 
 " splap " upon the roadway, that he wonders at hearing 
 only shouts of glee and laughter. The children bounce 
 about as harmlessly as rubber balls. Often when a 
 youngster stumbles and goes down with force enough 
 almost to dent the pavement, the stranger looking on is 
 sure there will be weeping. But the child is up again 
 quickly ; there is the little pause which children at home 
 use in gathering all their energy for a great boo-hoo! 
 
 [89] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 (the stranger knows it is coming and wonders what it 
 will sound like in Japanese) ; then, having recalled what 
 it was thinking about at the instant it fell, the young- 
 ster scampers on as merrily as before. The fall had in- 
 terrupted its train of thought for the moment, that 
 was all. 
 
 Because the children play all over the streets, one 
 needs a " betto " when one goes out for a drive in Japan. 
 A betto is a footman — a most appropriate word — -whose 
 business it is to run on ahead of the horse to clear the 
 way. He does not lack for exercise, for his arms and 
 legs are busy from the time the drive begins until it is 
 over. Japanese children are not too careful, and their 
 mothers do not use nearly as many safeguards as do the 
 women of Western countries, but there are fewer acci- 
 dents. This is rather a mystery, for every Japanese 
 house had an " engawa," or porch, and these porches do 
 not have fences along the edge to keep the infants from 
 falling off, nor are there gates at the tops of stairways, 
 when the houses happen to have stairways, yet I never 
 saw a Japanese child fall downstairs nor off a porch, 
 nor ever heard of anyone else witnessing such a mishap. 
 
 Another thing about these youngsters is that they are 
 all little gentlemen and ladies — merry and happy as 
 possible, but not rough. Mrs. Chaplin- Ayrton says this 
 trait may be more apparent than real, for a grown per- 
 son judges of the roughness of children's play by the 
 number of things they break, and in a Japanese house 
 there is no furniture or bric-a-brac to destroy — not even 
 chairs, for the natives sit on the floor. On the other 
 
 [90] 
 
BO CHAN 
 hand, Professor Chamberlain lays this gentleness to less 
 robust health, which means less animal spirits than 
 foreign children have. 
 
 However this may be, the health officers say that the 
 death rate for children is lower in Japan than it is in 
 Europe and in America. This is as it should be, in a 
 country where the houses are off the ground a foot or 
 two and have no cellars, and the air inside is as fresh 
 as it is out, where, too, in such places at least as Tokio, 
 everyone bathes and has a good scrubbing every day. 
 From 800,000 to 1,000,000 persons go to the public 
 baths of the capital daily, and there are tens of thou- 
 sands of private baths besides. That is a good show- 
 ing for a city with a population of less than two 
 millions. 
 
 When an infant is seven days old, its mother displays 
 her talent as a barber by shaving its head all but a little 
 bit at the back of the neck right at the base of the 
 skull, like a goatee that had strayed from its proper 
 place. Later on she experiments with various designs 
 to discover the most becoming. Sometimes she shaves 
 the top and the rim, and leaves a tonsure; sometimes 
 she leaves only the rim; sometimes a scalplock and two 
 lovelocks only, but always she is picturesque. This 
 decorative shaving process continues until the youngster 
 goes to school, say, when he or she is five or six. Then, 
 usually, the mother also weans him. 
 
 A disagreeable result often attends this shaving among 
 the children of the lower classes; not serious at all, but 
 offensive to the sight. It is eczema. Heads are sometimes 
 
 [91] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 white with it. The only thing necessary for its disap- 
 pearance is soap and water, but in this one case Japanese 
 superstition says " no " to soap and water. Poverty 
 and superstition are often hand in hand, and the Japan- 
 ese poor have many superstitions. They believe the 
 cause of the eczema is the ill health in their children 
 working through the scalp, an outward and visible sign 
 of an inward and physical wickedness. This physical 
 wickedness they wish their children to be rid of, so they 
 encourage eczema. They wash the youngsters' faces and 
 bodies daily, but omit the shampoo. Professor Cham- 
 berlain calls attention to the fact, anent Japanese 
 " topsy-turvy dom," that young subjects of the Mikado 
 stop shaving when they begin to go to school instead of 
 beginning to shave when they leave off going to school. 
 
 After what has been said about the Japanese way of 
 reckoning age it may seem strange they should have 
 birthday celebrations, or else one might think it would 
 be consistent with the native custom for everyone to 
 celebrate his or her birthday on January 1. There is a 
 grand national birthday then, that lasts two weeks; 
 but apart from this there are two more birthday cele- 
 brations — one on the third day of the third month 
 (March 3) for all the girls in Japan, and the other on 
 the jSfth day of the fifth month (May 5) for all the 
 boys. 
 
 The girls celebrate with a festival of dolls. At that 
 time Japan, which in many ways suggests a land of 
 dolls to the European, is " doUier " than ever. The dolls 
 are of all kinds and sizes, and often wonderfully life- 
 
 [93] 
 
LIBRARY 
 Of THE 
 UNIVERSITY of ILLINOIS 
 
BO CHAN 
 like, so that at first glance one is not sure whether a girl 
 is playing with a real baby or a make-believe. Japanese 
 girls carry their dolls about on their backs snugly tucked 
 away inside their jackets, just as Japanese nurses carry 
 babies. And, oddly enough, nurses in Japan are often 
 not much older than the babies they are caring for. 
 Sometimes one sees a little nurse playing hopscotch while 
 a baby is fast asleep on her back, its tiny head rolling 
 about this way and that, and its face looking upright at 
 the sun, so that were it not for the protection of its 
 thick eyelids the glare would make it blind. 
 
 The boys have a grand time of it, too, when their 
 turn comes. Then the air is full of fishes, as two months 
 earlier the streets were full of dolls. The fishes are 
 " koi," as the Japanese call them ; scientific men say they 
 are Cyprinus hcematopterus, but they are much better 
 looking than that, though fully as long. What they 
 represent is large carp swimming bravely against the 
 stream, as the parents hope their sons will do on reaching 
 man's estate. The carp, which are attached to the tops 
 of tall poles, are hollow, with wide-open mouths and 
 paper bodies, through which the breezes blow, keeping 
 them distended, and swaying to and fro in a movement 
 similar to swimming. Every house where there are boys 
 has these fishes up aloft, and many other carp down 
 below, but of a kind that taste better than paper ones 
 full of wind. 
 
 Hopscotch is by no means the only game Japanese 
 boys and girls have in common with children in other 
 parts of the world. They have battledore and shuttle- 
 
 [93] 
 
 I 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 cock, archery, bouncing-balls, tops, kites, prisoner's base, 
 snow-man, snow-forts, puss-in-the-corner, fencing, peas- 
 pudding hot, flower cards, and many forfeit games. 
 
 Their battledores are works of art. In shape they 
 are something hke a short paddle, but with square 
 corners instead of round. The face is smooth polished 
 wood, and the back ornamented with striking designs 
 in rehef, often portraits of famous actors or heroes of 
 ancient times. The shuttlecock is the same sort of 
 thing that children use in this country. Archery is 
 popular, and many Japanese have great skill at it. 
 Their bows are strong. When not strung, these appear 
 to be wrong side out, so queerly are they bent. The 
 archery rules are rather formal as to the position one 
 should stand in, and irksome to the beginner unless he 
 is an enthusiast. There is a sort of baby archery, too, 
 for indoors, which is amusing. The bows are a foot and 
 a half long, perhaps, and the arrows about twelve inches 
 from notch to point. 
 
 Japanese girls and boys are as clever as jugglers with 
 their bouncing balls. While keeping them going they 
 play at posture dancing also, spinning round, clapping 
 their hands, passing a fan over and under the ball, catch- 
 ing it on the backs of their hands and guiding it round 
 the room or along the road at will. They would make 
 pretty pictures for the cinematograph. Tops and kites 
 are much the same as those commonly seen in this coun- 
 try. The youngsters have kite battles. They gum pow- 
 dered glass to the strings and each tries to cut the other's 
 kite free. 
 
 [94] 
 
BO CHAN 
 
 The Japanese have some wonderful tricks with tops, 
 and the visitor should be sure to see the top- juggler, 
 who can send his top humming up one arm, across his 
 shoulders, and down the other arm, on to the palm of 
 his hand, or out on to the end of a fan, whence he will 
 make it jump to the edge of a sword, where it will spin 
 as comfortably as though it were on solid ground. Then 
 he can also throw it so that it will return to him, boom- 
 erang fashion. He can also spin two tops together, one 
 inside the other. 
 
 " Prisoner's base " is the same in this country, except 
 that the officer is called " oni," which means demon, or 
 ghost, or evil spirit. " Puss-in-the-corner " is an oni 
 also. " Blind-man's buff " is quite the same, but if you 
 play it with Japanese I may warn you not to say " come 
 here," in English, to anyone you may be trying to catch. 
 It will be all right to say in Japanese, " chotto oide " 
 (" come here a moment or " oide nasai " (" conde- 
 scend to come here The person spoken to will not 
 " oide," of course, if he or she can help himself or her- 
 self, but if you called out in English, " Come here," as 
 I know a foreigner did once, you may interrupt the 
 game. Come here (in Japanese characters written " ka- 
 me") means foreign dog. " Inu " is the word for 
 native dog, but the first foreigners in Yokohama, Ameri- 
 can and English folk, always said " come here " to their 
 dogs, and the expression has become the native word for 
 dogs not Japanese. 
 
 Stilts, as the children use them in Japan, would not 
 be comfortable for European children, unless they were 
 
 [95] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 accustomed to go barefoot, as nearly all native children 
 go in Japan. The long, upright pole comes up between 
 the big toe and the next toe to it, and the whole length 
 of the foot rests on the round cross piece, which sticks 
 out like one arm of a cross. The foot really grasps 
 the pole monkey fashion, for, being accustomed to clogs 
 and the thongs that hold the clogs on, the Japanese foot 
 is much more prehensile than the European foot. 
 
 Experts say that Japanese " Checkers," which the 
 natives call " Go," is more difficult than our chess. All 
 classes of society play it a great deal. Good players 
 receive diplomas. There are grand national tourna- 
 ments, and the championship brings great honor to the 
 holder and to his house. It is said that one family has 
 won this continuously for over one hundred years. 
 " Shogi," or Japanese chess, is a difficult game, but so 
 popular that even the jin-riki-sha coolies play it well. 
 
 Fencing is something that both men and women used 
 to study in the days of the " samurai " (knights) and 
 their two swords. It sounds much rougher than it really 
 it, for the long, two-handed bamboo sticks make a loud 
 report whenever they strike. 
 
 The Japanese call our cards " Turampu " (trumps), 
 and play them as we do, but they have a tiny set of 
 their own which they call " Hana " (flowers) and deal 
 round to the right instead of to the left as we deal. A 
 good lot of the fun comes in with the scoring; sometimes 
 the losers receive a black mark on the face with a brush 
 for each point they lose. The winners give them these 
 marks on the face with India ink. At the end of an 
 
 [96] 
 
UNlVEHSiTt or iLLiNUIS 
 
 ■V 
 
BO CHAN 
 evening's playing the players look not unlike tattooed 
 savages. 
 
 The game of " Jackstones " or " Knuckle-bones " is 
 common all over the country, but the children use small 
 bags instead of knuckle-bones, for J apan is not a mutton 
 country. Sheep do not thrive, because they have a 
 habit of eating bamboo grass, which is said to spoil both 
 their wool and the meat. 
 
 The game of " Kitsune " (Fox), is famous for the 
 quickness it demands. To play it, make a slip-noose 
 in the middle of a length of rope. Two players take 
 hold of this rope, one at each end, and hold it as nearly 
 taut as they can without closing the noose. The noose 
 is the trap. A third player, the fox, sits halfway be- 
 tween those holding the rope, facing the noose. Just 
 opposite to him, on the other side of the noose, is a cup 
 or a cake, which is the prize. The fox's object is to 
 reach through the noose, grab the prize, and pull it 
 back through the noose before the two players holding 
 the rope can catch him in the trap. If they catch him 
 he pays a forfeit, if they do not he takes the cake. 
 
 Another game, " Hana, hana " (Nose, nose), has 
 something of the same idea in it as " Simon says 
 ' thumbs up.' " Sight, in some cases, controls action 
 more effectively than sound, and in " Hana, hana " the 
 leader takes advantage of this by ordering one thing 
 while doing another. The other players are apt to fol- 
 low the motions rather tlian the commands. For in- 
 stance, the girl (or boy) at the head tips his nose with 
 his first finger, saying " Nose, nose, nose, eye ! " at the 
 
 [97] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 same time putting his finger to his chin. The others, 
 who must be looking into the leader's face, will find their 
 fingers on their chins too, unless they are alert. They 
 should have touched their eyes in obedience to the com- 
 mand " eyes," if they would not receive an ink spot or 
 pay some other forfeit. 
 
 Still another " Hana " game is with a lot of loops 
 of string, and is perhaps as amusing to children as any 
 game can be. The loops must be made to order, one 
 for each player, and must fit tightly round behind the 
 ear and over the tip of the nose. If it is well on, and 
 the player's nose is not too retrousse, the loop should not 
 fall off without considerable effort on the player's part, 
 especially as he or she may use the face muscles only. 
 Other things being equal, the best face-maker works his 
 loop off first and wins. 
 
 Something similar to bobbing for apples is a game 
 that even grandfathers play along with their grand- 
 children in Japan. It is easy there, because Japanese 
 floors are covered with thick, soft mats. Hard floors 
 would not do, for a part of the game is that the players 
 must walk on their knees. They hold their feet up 
 behind them, one in each hand, and toddle forward to 
 the center of the room, where a fruit or a cake or a bis- 
 cuit hangs from the ceiling by a string. The idea is 
 to bite out a piece, but biting and balancing are diffi- 
 cult to do simultaneously. There is much tumbling 
 about and rolling over. Hence the fun. 
 
 " Kitsune ken " is a forfeit game for two or for any 
 number of players. The players use signs for " kit- 
 
 [98] 
 
LIBRARY 
 Of THE 
 UNIVERSITV of ILLINOIS 
 
BO CHAN 
 sune (fox), " teppo " (gun), and " otoko (man). 
 The idea of the game is that the man is mightier than 
 the gun, the gun more deadly than the fox, and the fox 
 more cunning than the man. Hands on the thighs or 
 hips is the sign for " otoko " ; one hand at the side and 
 the other higher and in front of the body, as though 
 aiming a gun, is for " teppo ; while both hands up, one 
 at each side of the head like a fox's ears, is " kitsune." 
 The players sit facing each other, clap hands, or chant 
 a line of a song; and at the end of this each makes a 
 sign. If both signs are alike there is no count, but if 
 one makes the fox sign and the other the man sign, the 
 man sign loses and has to submit to the forfeit. So the 
 " man " sign wins over the " gun " sign, and the " gun 
 sign wins over the " fox " sign. 
 
 Exactly the same in principle is the forfeit game with 
 one hand, where a closed fist represents a stone, an open 
 palm a handkerchief, and the first and second fingers 
 extended apart with the other two fingers and thumb 
 closed, represent scissors. Stone beats scissors, handker- 
 chief beats stone, and scissors beat handkerchief. The 
 players chant as in kitsune ken and pop out their hands 
 at the end of the last word. 
 
 Thumb wrestling is a common game, too. Players 
 grasp hands with the thumbs sticking up, holding each 
 other by the four fingers onl3^ The wrestling is a battle 
 of thumbs, each thumb trying to bend the other down 
 forward and hold it there. 
 
 There are some hand-slapping tricks, too, but one 
 would need a cinematograph to explain them clearly. 
 
 [99] 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 O JO SAMA 
 
 NE needs to see Japanese girls at home if one 
 
 would know them, needs to live in the same 
 
 ^^-^ household with them the year round, for there 
 is much in their gentle lives they do not discover readily. 
 We had a roomful in a class over in Okashi San's, and 
 we saw much of the daughters of the families near by, 
 but I suspect we never quite fathomed " O Jo Sama." 
 The glimpses travelers have in Tokio and in the seaport 
 cities, where one sees native girls in the shops and the 
 bazaars, in the restaurants, in the streets, round about 
 the temple grounds, and in hundreds of the public 
 schools, do not tell the story. 
 
 It is better to go into the country to those wonderfully 
 picturesque and dainty homes along some old Kaido that 
 the railways have not yet molested, where life to-day is 
 the same that it was a thousand years ago. There one 
 may see Japanese character as ages of feudalism 
 molded it and left it hardly a quarter of a century 
 since, and may study the chief glory of this character 
 — Japanese girls. 
 
 Japanese men do not know chivalry, as Westerners 
 understand the word, but the womenfolk in twoscore 
 generations of repression are marvels of gentleness, dis- 
 cretion, and absolute unselfishness. A life that would 
 
 [100] 
 
O JO SAMA 
 be intolerable to an American or to an English girl is 
 normal to the daughters of the Rising Sun, who meet 
 its restrictions and encumbrances with tact, patience, and 
 unending cheerfulness. How she can do so is difficult 
 to understand, nor does seeing this perennial sunshine 
 make the believing in it altogether easy. At first, 
 though one may wonder and admire, and even reverence, 
 the merry little body, one doubts there may be somewhat 
 in her heart her looks belie. But on knowing her, as 
 one sees her in the household daily through the year, one 
 comes to believe that in the long line of her ancestors a 
 process has been at work, with the result that those 
 organs whose function is the display of irritation have 
 become atrophied. 
 
 The opinion of Marion Crawford's lister, Mrs. Hugh 
 Fraser, is worthy of attention. She was in Japan for 
 years with her husband while he was Minister Plenipo- 
 tentiary in Tokio. Mrs. Fraser says, " In real womanli- 
 ness, which I take to mean a high combination of sense 
 and sweetness, valor and humility, the Japanese lady 
 ranks with any woman in the world, and passes before 
 most of them." 
 
 One of these object lessons in the gentler virtues was 
 Aya San, who lived not a great way from Tokio, the 
 busy heart of the Empire; she was as jolly a youngster 
 as one often sees even in Japan, and that is saying 
 much. Though she lived so near the capital, she knew 
 little of it. Household work and studies kept her too 
 busy for sight-seeing. Her parents had come from near 
 Kiyoto. They were of a southern class that had dis- 
 
 [ 101 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 persed after the revolution of 1868. The father, who 
 was a " samurai," that is, of the military class, had the 
 luck to receive a Government appointment in Tokio and 
 then the luck to die. This left Ay a San with her mother, 
 her grandfather, and an infant brother, and a pension 
 of four yen — about two dollars — a month. 
 
 The income was not much for a family of gentlefolk 
 to live on, but in those days when the daimiyo were dis- 
 charging their retainers and handing their provinces 
 over to the central Government, many a samurai house- 
 hold had less than that assured. It was different indeed 
 compared to the days before the restoration, when the 
 Shogun ruled and the Mikado was a sacred prisoner. 
 Then the samurai had a large allowance from the rice- 
 fields of his native province. My lord, the daimiyo, had 
 seen to that. But now — six cents a day and four per- 
 sons to live on it. However, they managed honorably 
 one way or another, and so Aya's story is different from 
 that of many a samurai's daughter. 
 
 Oka San, the mother, was of a sort one rarely sees in 
 Tokio to-day, excepting on the stage, though in the 
 country she is still in evidence. In a few years she will 
 have disappeared entirely, for she is of the old order. 
 Like the women of her time. Oka San shaved her eye- 
 brows when she left her own home to become a member 
 of her husband's family, and had stained her teeth jet 
 black. When she became a widow she cut her hair. 
 Short hair, no eyebrows, and black teeth reads like a 
 combination fatal to all attractiveness, nor are they 
 agreeable to the unaccustomed eye. After a little, how- 
 
 [102] 
 
O JO SAM A 
 
 ever, one ceases to remark them, and in the case of Oka 
 San they did not destroy her charm, for her gentle 
 kindhness of manner obliterated all thought of them. 
 
 Oji San, the grandfather, was an old man long in re- 
 tirement — " inkiyo," as the Japanese say. His wants 
 were simple. He spent his time at chess, and writing 
 poetry, and reading the Chinese classics. Aya San and 
 Oka San had great reverence for him. They loved him 
 doubtless, too, though in their tongue the word to use 
 towards elders means to venerate. He it was who in- 
 structed them in " Onna Daigaku " (" The Whole Duty 
 of Women," as Professor Chamberlain translates the 
 title of the ancient treatise).^ This was their gospel. 
 Women of the West would have small patience with it, 
 but Aya San and her mother believed it was very truth 
 indeed. A man wrote it, of course, one Kaibara by 
 name, who was a famous moralist. 
 
 Oji San used to read " The Whole Duty " to them, 
 sitting on his cushion by the fire-box and arranging the 
 charcoals now and then with the tiny fire-tongs, so that 
 they would burn well and keep the water in the small 
 iron kettle hot for his frequent cups of tea. 
 
 " Onna Daigaku " begins as follows, according to 
 Professor Chamberlain's translation. One would think 
 Kaibara was discoursing upon Hooligans rather than 
 upon angels: 
 
 " Seeing that it is the girPs destiny on reaching 
 womanhood to go to a new home, and live in submission 
 to her father-in-law, it is even more incumbent on her 
 ^Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain, vol.x. p. iii. 
 [103] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 than it is on a boy to receive with all reverence her par- 
 ents' instructions. Should her parents, through ex- 
 cess of tenderness, allow her to grow up self- 
 willed, she will infallibly show herself capricious in 
 her husband's house, and thus alienate his affection, 
 while, if her father-in-law be a man of correct principles, 
 the girl will find the yoke of these principles intolerable ; 
 she will hate and decry her father-in-law, and the end of 
 these domestic dissensions will be her dismissal from her 
 husband's house, and the covering of herself with ig- 
 nominy. Her parents, forgetting the faulty education 
 they gave her, may indeed lay all the blame on the 
 father-in-law; but they will be in error; for the whole 
 disaster should be rightly attributed to the faulty edu- 
 cation the girl received from her parents. 
 
 " More precious in a woman is a virtuous heart than 
 a face of beauty. The vicious woman's heart is ever ex- 
 cited; she glares wildly around her, she vents her anger 
 on others, her words are harsh and her accents vulgar. 
 When she speaks it is to set herself above others, to up- 
 braid others, to envy others, to be puffed up with in- 
 dividual pride, to jeer at others, to outdo others, — all 
 things at variance with the ' way ' a woman should walk. 
 The only qualities that befit a woman are gentle obedi- 
 ence, chastity, mercy, and quietness. 
 
 " From her earliest youth a girl should observe the 
 line of demarcation separating women from men, and 
 never, even for an instant, should she be allowed to see 
 or hear the least impropriety. The customs of antiquity 
 did not allow men and women to sit in the same apart- 
 
 [104] 
 
O JO SAMA 
 ment, to keep their wearing apparel in the same place, 
 to bathe in the same place, or to transmit to each other 
 anything from hand to hand. A woman going abroad 
 at night must in all cases carry a lighted lamp, and 
 (not to speak of strangers) she must observe a certain 
 distance in her relations even with her husband and with 
 her brethren. In our days, the women of the lower 
 classes, ignoring all rules of this nature, behave them- 
 selves disorderly; they contaminate their reputation, 
 bring down reproach on their parents and brethren, and 
 spend their whole lives in an unprofitable manner. Is 
 not this truly lamentable.^ It is written likewise in the 
 ' Lesser Learning ' that a woman must form no friend- 
 ship and no intimacy except when ordered to do so by her 
 parents or the ' middleman.' Even at the peril of her 
 life must she harden her heart like rock or metal, and 
 observe the rules of propriety." 
 
 So the " Onna Daigaku " goes on for many, many 
 pages, which Oji San expounded, while Aya San and 
 Oka San crouched before him on their shins, their tiny 
 feet crossed under them, and their hands straight in 
 front of them resting on their knees. They did not sit 
 close by each other as mother and daughter might in 
 this country. Personal contact is distasteful to Japa- 
 nese, and in their language there is no word that is the 
 equivalent of the English word kiss, though Japanese 
 dictionaries have borrowed the Chinese word " seppun." 
 Aya San never kissed her mother, nor did Oka San ever 
 kiss her child unless when Aya was a tiny babe too young 
 to have a mind to remember with. Certainly the child 
 [105] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 never kissed her father, possibly she never touched him, 
 for nurses carried her about on their backs when she was 
 young and always had her well in charge, so that the 
 samurai never had occasion to be mindful of her. The 
 little she saw of him was " through the top of her head^'' 
 for his appearance was the signal for profound obeis- 
 ance. When he came to the room where her mother or 
 the nurses kept her she bent herself against the floor like 
 a letter Z that someone had pressed down almost flat, 
 and dropped her face into the backs of her wee dimpled 
 hands, so that should her august sire's honorable glance 
 deign to fall in her direction all it saw was a bundle of 
 delicate silks, a bare spot where the barber had shaved 
 the crown of her head, and the fine black fringe of the 
 tonsure round it. He loved her, Japanese-father-fash- 
 ion, but it would have been undignified to display emo- 
 tion toward her, or even to go to her funeral had she 
 died. 
 
 Perhaps there was a yearning in Aya's heart that 
 only loving arms could satisfy, but if there was she did 
 not understand it. She could not miss what she had 
 never enjoyed. If conventions shut in her life as a cage 
 shuts in a canary's, she did not know that the condition 
 was not normal. Her life would be like her mother's 
 life. Why not? She had not thought about it, had not 
 expected anything difl*erent. The " three obediences " 
 would be all there could be in it ; first to her parents, then 
 to her husband and to his parents; and should she be- 
 come a widow, she would obey her eldest son, or if she 
 were without a son, whoever might be the head of her 
 
 [106] 
 
O JO SAM A 
 husband's family. "Why not?" again, for ever since 
 there have been Japanese women it has been their busi- 
 ness to obey. 
 
 Oka San had Hved up to this teaching faithfully, and 
 now that Dana San (Master), her husband, was dead, 
 and his relatives were far away, Oji San, though inkiyo, 
 ruled the household. His body, that of a warrior once, 
 had long ceased to be erect, but his mind was as bright as 
 ever, and as he read aloud the passages from the " Whole 
 Duty " his face behind his huge tortoiseshell-rimmed 
 glasses was as wise as an owl's. The contrast between his 
 words, squeezed out with an intonation quite in harmony 
 with the text, and the appearance of his listeners, was 
 both ludicrous and sad. 
 
 As to the mother-in-law, indeed she was an element 
 to consider in the matrimonial equation in the days when 
 Kaibara wrote — a quantity partly known and partly un- 
 known, but with undoubted abilities for making trouble. 
 Had there been newspapers, then the paragrapher would 
 have found her fully as useful as she is to-day, but it 
 would have been Mrs. Youngwife instead of Mr. Young- 
 husband — a heroine rather than a hero in the tragedy. 
 
 If Oji San's words are true, the women before him, 
 one so young and one past middle life, must be mis- 
 tresses of the art of dissembling. To look less vicious 
 would be impossible. One refuses to believe that they 
 could " glare wildly round " even should they try. Oji 
 San is surely wasting words upon them. But he means 
 well, and they are so submissive. 
 
 " It shall be your duty when you go to your hus- 
 [107] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 band's house, Aya San," said the old man, " to rever- 
 ence your father-in-law, and to obey him and your 
 mother-in-law in all things as you have obeyed your 
 own parents. Filial piety is the chief duty of a girl. 
 You must give yourself up to their direction. It is well 
 you have learned to boil rice properly, and to speak to 
 your superiors always with your face to the floor, and to 
 control that harshness natural to a woman's voice which, 
 alas, is the cause of so much domestic infelicity. Your 
 mother-in-law would send you back to us instantly if 
 you served saggy rice or rice hard from insufficient boil- 
 ing. That is a most just cause for divorce. Be ever 
 mindful lest you bring infinite disgrace upon yourself 
 and upon this house by inattentiveness to rice. Dis- 
 obedience also will cause you to come back to us cov- 
 ered with ignominy ; and in speech be careful every in- 
 stant of your existence, for here is the truth as I will 
 read it to you — ^the sixth reason for just divorce. ' A 
 woman shall be divorced,' says the sage Kaibara, ' who 
 by talking over much and prattling disrespectfully dis- 
 turbs the harmony of kinsmen, and brings trouble on 
 her household.' Remember, too, that a woman once 
 married and then divorced has wandered from the ' way/ 
 and is covered with the greatest shame, even if she should 
 enter into a second union with a man of wealth and 
 position." 
 
 Surely Japan is severe with the girl who is not " up " 
 on rice. Imagine American custom demanding that the 
 young wife who does not bake properly should go back 
 to her parents' house with a character as black as the 
 
 [108] 
 
O JO SAM A 
 bottoms of her first loaves, and a heart as heavy as their 
 insides ! 
 
 " But how about the husband ? " someone may ask. 
 " Where does he come in ? What is there that he must 
 do or must not do? " That is hard to say. The answer 
 seemingly is, " Nothing." At least there is no " Otoko 
 Daigaku," or " Whole Duty of Man." It is a pity. 
 Japanese women should have an opportunity to write 
 one, but to let them would be indelicate, and if they had 
 opportunity they would not think of doing anything so 
 impolite. If men wrote one^ — but they have no chivalry. 
 
 Aya San bowed low as Oji San closed his book at the 
 end of each reading, and ejaculated: "Honorable 
 Grandfather, your august words are honorable truth." 
 Then she would pour hot water into the tiny teapot from 
 the kettle on the coals, and give Honorable Grandfather 
 a tall blue cupful of a mild beverage very different from 
 the dark concoction one drinks in America or England. 
 
 After Honorable Grandfather, Bo Chan, the baby 
 brother, next needed her attention, and then there were 
 her studies, for Aya San was ambitious. The spirit of 
 New Japan was in the air, she breathed it in, and wished 
 to learn something in the new schools the Government 
 was establishing. This was hard to manage, for schools 
 take time and money ; not more than twenty-five cents a 
 month, perhaps, but one " quarter " out of every eight 
 when there are four mouths to feed! No, it would not 
 do. So she worked at her books at home. They were 
 old books which she had borrowed from those of her girl 
 friends who could go to school. Dog-eared and tattered 
 [109] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 they were, when Aya's friends had done with them and 
 gone on to more advanced ones, but they were treasures 
 to the httle housekeeper; she studied them at nights, 
 sometimes when she had only fireflies in a cage to see by. 
 
 One day a missionary from Tokio out " prospecting " 
 stopped at the low thatched cottage of three rooms in 
 which Aya lived, to ask some question as to the road he 
 was upon, and heard Oji San's sepulchral wheeze as he 
 read: 
 
 " ' Let her never dream of jealousy. If her husband 
 be dissolute she must expostulate with him, but never 
 either nurse or vent her anger. If her jealousy be ex- 
 treme it will render her countenance frightful, and her 
 accents repulsive, and can only result in alienating her 
 husband completely from her and making her intolerable 
 in his eyes. Should her husband act ill and unreason- 
 ably, she must compose her countenance and soften her 
 voice to remonstrate with him, and if he be angry and 
 listen not to the remonstrance, she must wait over a 
 season and then expostulate with him again when his 
 heart is softened. Never set thyself up against thy 
 husband with .harsh features and a boisterous voice! ' " 
 
 " That is rather more of meekness, I fear, than we 
 Christians are wont to expect," said the missionary to 
 himself ; " but after ten years here I have come to be- 
 lieve that our Japanese sisters, heathen though they may 
 be, have achieved it. I have learned something from 
 them." Oji San continued: 
 
 " ' A woman should be circumspect and sparing in her 
 use of words, and never, even for a passing moment, 
 
 [110] 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 Of THE 
 
 UNIVERSITv MM 
 
O JO SAMA 
 should she slander others or be guilty of untruthfulness. 
 Should she ever hear calumny she should keep it to her- 
 self and repeat it to none, for it is the relating of cal- 
 umny that disturbs the harmony of kinsmen and ruins 
 the peace of families.' " 
 
 " Next tb the gospel that is the truth itself," agreed 
 the missionary ; " but why should it be ' for women 
 only '? " and raising his voice he cried : 
 
 " Gomen na sai ! " (" August pardon deign In a 
 moment the " shoji " (the sliding paper door), opened, 
 and Aya's pretty face appeared. The missionary made 
 excuses for disturbing the august household, and then 
 asked about the road. She replied sweetly and begged 
 him to take a cup of tea, " most good for honorable 
 weariness." Over the tea he asked more questions, and 
 talked so long that he had to hasten back to Tokio when 
 he left, lest he should miss his evening service. 
 
 A few days later he was out again, with an offer in 
 writing from his mission to take Ay a San into the mis- 
 sion school and give her an education free of all cost for 
 board and tuition. Household duties, however, said 
 " no " to this, though to the young girl the offer was as 
 an invitation to enter the gates of the Blessed Country. 
 
 The man of God was sorry, but a month afterwards 
 he established a station near Aya's home and saw her 
 frequently. He lent her books, and under his direction 
 her progress was extraordinary. The dog-eared volumes 
 she had begun with were years behind her now. Twelve 
 months later, after a public examination, she received a 
 teacher's certificate from the Government, and that 
 
 [ 111 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 household's puny income doubled. She had fallen in 
 love, too, and so had the missionary, but the romance 
 ended soon. Both were eager to marry, but the samurai, 
 Aya's father, had promised her to a friend's son. She 
 had been engaged since she was two years old to a person 
 she had never seen. The one who made the engagement 
 had long since passed beyond, yet the engagement held. 
 
 But for the dead man's hand Ay a might be among 
 the new women of her land to-day. She did not stand 
 still, however, for she is now somewhere between the old 
 and the new ; she has not shaved her eyebrows nor stained 
 her teeth, though her husband is her law and her life. 
 If there are other men in the world she does not know it. 
 
 Of the girls who lent her those old books, some are 
 teachers in Normal schools and colleges, some have 
 charge of kindergartens, some are governesses, some are 
 nurses in hospitals, and a few are wives of officials, and 
 give balls and receptions after the European fashion, 
 and wear European clothes, arrange their hair without 
 the use of the perfumed cocoanut-oil paste of former 
 days. They have long lists of male acquaintances, not 
 one of whom is their husband, play the violin and piano, 
 ride bicycles, play tennis, win prizes in archery, talk over 
 telephones, and actually precede the men when entering 
 a room. 
 
 [112] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTEEN 
 
 HAPPY NEW YEAR 
 
 JAPAN is the j oiliest country in the world at the 
 New Year. Gardner and I found it three times 
 jolly, in fact. Each January 1, 43,000,000 sub- 
 jects in the Land of the Rising Sun begin to paint not 
 a mere " town," as a band of cowboys might, but the 
 whole of the Mikado's Empire. The color is naturally 
 the glorious roseate hue of the Imperial emblem — The 
 Rising Sun. This deep red harmony, they say, is 
 eminently fitting at the beginning of the year ; and that 
 the painting may be well done, they administer three 
 distinct and separate coats right lavishly. 
 
 The bottom or foundation coat is two full weeks in 
 putting on. Joy flows in streams along the thorough- 
 fares, swelled by rivulets from every house. All the 
 city folk call on each other; all the country folk come in 
 to help them do it ; and everybody gives everybody pres- 
 ents. This may be called the official New Year. It dates 
 only from 1870, when the Japanese Government changed 
 its calendar to conform to that of the rest of the world. 
 On the 1st of February there is a second coating — ^this 
 is the New Year of Old Japan, still dear to the rural 
 heart. All the country folk call on one another then, 
 and many of the city folk go out to help them. There 
 is less formality about this celebration, less eclat, but 
 [113] 
 
 I 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 good-fellowships abounds, and joy is rampant for a 
 week. 
 
 The third coating is given in good old Chinese style. 
 Its date depends on the moon, as does our Easter festival. 
 Each household celebrates by itself in part, and in part 
 with outside friends; but this feast is more domestic, 
 though not less sacredly observed than the two preced- 
 ing. 
 
 The New Year season is the time to see Japan socially 
 at its best. It is true there are no " kiku," as they call 
 crysanthemums, nor plum nor cherry blossoms. The 
 kiku comes in the autumn and the " sakura " (or 
 cherry), and the " ume " (the plum) in April, both 
 seasons when all outdoors is a garden-party, and ex- 
 quisitely picturesque, but, with all its loveliness, it is only 
 the outside one sees then. 
 
 To look into the homes and the hearts of all Japan 
 one must be there New Year's Day. Business generally 
 is suspended, both private and public. Doors open wide 
 then, and hospitality, such as is unknown in Europe or 
 America, is the rule without exception. 
 
 The jin-riki-sha coolie is the only one that works, but 
 his task hardly is irksome. Waiting while his fare makes 
 a call, he feasts in the kitchen with the cook, so that 
 when night comes, though his load is rather heavy prob- 
 ably, he does not complain. 
 
 The geisha has her busiest season at New Year, but 
 her work is always play, and she enjoys it quite as much 
 as those whom she entertains. Her plaintive love-songs 
 are never sung more sweetly than at the beginning of the 
 
 [114] 
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR 
 year, when the heart of the nation warms anew. The 
 geisha is very near that heart, and chirrups sympa- 
 thetically. 
 
 At the first of the year the Emperor and the Em- 
 press receive for three days. On the first day only those 
 of royal blood, the highest officers of State, and for- 
 eign diplomats, make their bows. Then follow in turn 
 personages of lower degree, down to those who, having 
 some title to recognition, are honored with a gracious 
 notification of the reception at the palace, but are ex- 
 pected not to come. 
 
 The Princes Royal and their consorts, after paying 
 their respects to the Throne and to each other, in due 
 order, according to degree of kinship to the Mikado, 
 receive in their turn in petty state. The Ministers of 
 State, diplomats. Members of Parliament, distinguished 
 folk, and any foreigners who may wish to do so, ipay 
 their respects. These receptions are extremely formal, 
 and everyone connected with them is glad they continue 
 only three days. 
 
 The grand folk on the fourth day join the crowd, and, 
 like them, go hither and thither to every accessible ac- 
 quaintance, as ordinary people have been doing from the 
 early morning of " Ganjitsu" (New Year's Day). Of 
 course, no one can call on every individual of his ac- 
 quaintance in the Empire, so he resorts to postal cards, 
 which he despatches to all those friends whom he is un- 
 able to see personally. 
 
 He begins each card as follows, despite the fact that 
 in many cases he knows nothing of the honorable health, 
 
 [115] 
 
THE HEART OP JAPAN 
 or of the weather, or of other conditions at the homes of 
 those whom he is addressing : 
 
 With the rigorous inclemency of the weather so in- 
 creasing, I have the honor to rejoice at your august 
 robustness. What I have to say is, august consideration 
 honorably vouchsafed during past year, most humbly, 
 most gratefully acknowledged, deign to continue the 
 same and to pardon the contemptible selfishness of 
 selfish me, for the unspeakable effrontery of venturing 
 to address honorable you. 
 
 " Your Little ImbeciIiE 
 
 This writing entails no little labor, for there is no 
 typewriter for the Chinese characters which the Japanese 
 use in correspondence. The pen-, or rather the brush- 
 strokes, are by hand, sometimes forty of them in a single 
 name. No wonder that in January some wrists are tired. 
 
 The calls, too, have their little peculiarities, for it is 
 the callee, not the caller, who is the principal recipient 
 of favors. With each call the caller presents a gift, 
 usually some sort of food; but anything will do, even 
 money. Boxes of eggs are in demand ; so is " kasutera," 
 or sponge cake. Kasutera is from the Dutch word 
 "Casteel" (Castile), for Spanish bread. The Dutch 
 at Nagasaki in 1600 first taught the Japanese the art 
 of making that dainty. Wine, beer, all sorts of canned 
 goods, and articles of apparel are distributed too. It is 
 a great season for the brewer, the baker, the confec- 
 tioner, the distiller, and the hens. 
 
 [116] 
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR 
 
 As presents come in such profusion, they would ac- 
 cumulate beyond control were it not for the custom of 
 " passing along.'' It is not at all necessary that madam 
 should eat all the eggs that are given her. That would 
 be difficult, and to keep them long about the house would 
 not be pleasant ; so after reserving whatever she chooses, 
 she puts her card in each of the remaining boxes, and 
 when her lord comes in for the fresh supply of gifts 
 which he needs in order to continue his round of calls, 
 she hands them to him. 
 
 Thus replenished, he starts out again, and madam at 
 home gathers in a further collection. This keeps up for 
 a fortnight, during which the kasutera and the eggs do 
 not grow fresher. The dealers who supply these com- 
 modities, however, provide against damage to their 
 reputations by pasting in the box of cake or eggs some- 
 thing to this effect: " This cake was baked at 11 p. m., 
 December 31. These eggs were laid at 2 a. m., January 
 1, ' kotoshi ' (this year)." 
 
 As these presents are passing along they often com- 
 plete the circuit and arrive at the place whence they 
 were first sent out, but it is only to begin the tour again. 
 There is no rest for a Japanese New Year's gift until 
 it is eaten or drunk or lost. 
 
 All one's tradespeople will call, too, bearing samples 
 of their wares, commensurate with the amount of patron- 
 age each dealer has received. They present these 
 samples with many bows and a request for a continu- 
 ance of their patron's august condescension during the 
 I ensuing year, 
 
 I [ in ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 While the shops are closed to business they are open 
 for pleasure, and there is a banquet in each home from 
 early morning until early morning every day of the two 
 weeks. And the tradesman hopes that all those who have 
 honored the shop with their patronage will call and 
 bring their friends. 
 
 Foreigners seem to be particularly welcome at this 
 time, especially English and Americans, for the com- 
 mon people like English-speaking folk. A man from 
 England or America might begin to feast early New 
 Year's Day, and continue feasting until January 15th, if 
 he could endure it, even among strangers. The shop- 
 keepers would show him more genuine hospitality than 
 his own cousins would at home. 
 
 As there is plum-pudding at Christmas in England, 
 and turkey for Thanksgiving in America, so there is 
 " mochi " and " shirozaki " for the New Year in Japan. 
 Mochi is good, and so is shirozaki. Mochi is made of 
 rice boiled in fresh water and pounded in a mortar until 
 it is dough, then it is rolled out like a yard of baker's 
 bread, cut in slices and laid to dry till a slight crust 
 forms, when it is ready to toast. Often boiled beans are 
 worked into the dough, till the casual globe-trotter might 
 mistake it for peanut candy. 
 
 Shirozaki is white and thick, quite different from the 
 thin pale sherry color of ordinary sake. It is sweet and 
 wholesome, made of rice, with the body of the fermented 
 grain left in. 
 
 The country folk repeat these grand two weeks of 
 celebration a month later, for they are slow to adopt new 
 
 [118] 
 
HAPPY NEW YEAR 
 customs, though they enjoy the official New Year in 
 town hugely, if they have opportunity to go. City folk, 
 especially those who long for the good old days, are 
 sure to be with their cousins in the country for the second 
 feasting, and to stay a week at least with them. Then, 
 when the moon changes, comes the oldest feast of all, 
 and the country quiets down until another year is born. 
 
 This Far East custom of New Year calls, once so 
 prevalent in England and in America, was brought to 
 Europe by the Dutch merchantmen, it is said, who 
 traded with Japan in the sixteenth century and after. 
 But the Western world has been growing busier year by 
 year, and finds hardly time nowadays for so much 
 merry-making. 
 
 [119] 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN 
 
 THOSE WHO SIGN CHITS 
 
 CERTAIN moneys Gardner had expected to col- 
 lect when he ran down to Yokohama were not 
 immediately in evidence, and we therefore had 
 recourse to " chits." 
 
 " Deuced convenient things, you know," a globe-trot- 
 ter remarked to us of chits; and he was right. Too 
 convenient, if anything. Take, for instance, the man 
 with a thirst and no money. He will find the Japanese 
 seaport a joyous place. The combination so trying 
 abroad is of little inconvenience in those hospitable 
 abodes; and, besides, those petty annoyances incident to 
 having money always in one's pocket are done away with. 
 
 There you are alwaj'^s " good for a drink," or any- 
 thing else. If you do not look too much like a sailor — 
 a " Damyoureyes San," as the natives say — and are able 
 to write your name, you need not worry. The secret of 
 all this is chits. " Chits," being interpreted, means " joy 
 made easy," — ^joy and other things. They are one of 
 the pleasantest curses known to man. Great and wicked 
 was the brain that invented them. The owner of that 
 brain is already responsible for hundreds of merry-mak- 
 ing wrecks, who with all too much facility have drunk 
 themselves to death on his ingenious plan. He has been 
 their evil genius, but what he did was consummated with 
 
 [120] 
 
THOSE WHO SIGN CHITS 
 a liberality of manner that robbed death of half its sting. 
 Public opinion in the seaports is not pronounced 
 enough to emphasize the line between the use and the 
 abuse of chits. Among old residents there is opinion 
 against the abuse, of course, but there are so many 
 " transients " with homes that are far, far away. Among 
 these, in a large measure, restraint is ineffectual, and so 
 it happens that men, particularly young men, do feel 
 freer than is safe. They are a genial lot, fond of out- 
 door life, well traveled generally, and well read, with 
 charming manner^, and hospitable, with a frank gener- 
 osity that wins at once. They have leisure beyond the 
 dreams of toilers in the West. They work harder now, 
 perhaps, than formerly, those of them with occupation, 
 but their custom was to come down to work at 10 a. m., 
 and to quit usually by four. Out of these six hours one 
 and a half were spent at the clubs or in the great hotels, 
 where chit-signing is indulged in as a liberal art. In 
 the races twice a year they rode their own horses, and out 
 of respect to the turf, when the races were on, all busi- 
 ness, even banking, was at a standstill. Wine flowed as 
 fast as the laws of gravity allowed, but there was little 
 cash in sight. The boys who served the drinks did not 
 handle money. They pushed the bottle and a scratch- 
 pad towards you, and someone signed. The chit then 
 went to some hotel. 
 
 When a few months later you wished to pay, you 
 would have some trouble in finding the slip to which you 
 had put your name. Going from one place to another, 
 at each the manager would say: 
 
 [ 121 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 " I don't know. They may be here. If I find them 
 I'll send them up to you. Let's see; what is your ad- 
 dress ? " 
 
 If you were sure he had them, you might pay and he 
 would credit you. Then you owned the place. What- 
 ever you bought thereafter he might not charge against 
 you, but would say, " That goes to square us for what 
 you paid against the chits I never found." 
 
 It is only globe-trotters that carry much cash in their 
 pockets in Yokohama, and they soon give up carrying it, 
 just as they give up eating rice-curry with a fork. Rail- 
 way people and beggars are the only people who don't 
 take chits, but the railroad, though convenient, is not 
 necessary, and if one believes in the doctrine similia 
 similibus curantur, he can pass beggars by also, and 
 never know the touch of filthy lucre. 
 
 If you offer money to the barber, he may say, " Oh, 
 wait till the end of the month. We can't bother making 
 up cash now. Sign a chit." 
 
 At the tailor's you are asked, " Shall I send the goods 
 to the club or to your hotel .^^ " If you ask about pay- 
 ment, the reply is, " Oh, we'll send you a memorandum 
 now and then, to let you know how you stand with us. 
 But that is not a bill, you know. Just let that run to 
 your convenience, please. Send a chit when you like." 
 
 The jin-riki-sha man takes a chit from the hotel to 
 which he has delivered you, or the hotel pays and you 
 sign a chit. Every public-house in town passes out the 
 little pad with the pencil hanging from one corner. 
 Lodgings, meals, everything an hotel has to rent or to 
 
 [ 123 ] 
 
THOSE WHO SIGN CHITS 
 sell to its guests, may be signed for on the chit. Nor 
 is there anything that Satan can furnish to promote 
 delirium or to coax the coming of old age that a little 
 chit will not arrange for. 
 
 He who has looked on the wine when it is red, and has 
 studied the mockery of strong drink, need not moan in 
 his first waking thoughts with despair, brought on by 
 the recollection that his last penny went the night before, 
 unless, alas! he is too shaky to hold the little pencil. 
 But even then a promise to sign later will bring him 
 what he needs ! 
 
 There are settling days, of course, when the residents 
 arm themselves with courage and go forth to pay their 
 chits. Some men do this every two years. Others, who 
 consider themselves patterns of regularity, square up 
 bravely each 1st of January. Then there are men who 
 have the names of the places where their chits are held 
 arranged in groups, and each group assigned to a par- 
 ticular month of the year. At the first of each month 
 they settle a part of their debts. This system sometimes 
 gives chit-holders opportunity for guessing, though; 
 for readjustments in the scheme of grouping one's chits 
 will occur with even the best-intentioned signers, so that 
 a holder who thought his money would come in January 
 may find himself mysteriously moved into the December 
 class, but that does not matter much. 
 
 Besides these annuals, bi-annuals, and monthlies, there 
 is a class made up, it is said, of those who do not pay 
 until they die. These men have life insurance policies, 
 or assurance policies, to speak with local accuracy, and, 
 [ 123] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 being thus assured, they do not bother who holds their 
 chits, or whether the chits were signed ten days or ten 
 years ago. There are few men, however, who have 
 signed chits steadily for ten years. Three years is gen- 
 erally the limit. A man can sign a barrelf ul in that time 
 — a barrelf ul that stands for many other barrels empty. 
 When the assured man dies, his chits appear, and 
 straightway are paid, the first money collected from the 
 policy going for this. 
 
 The number of chits not paid is large considered by 
 itself, though relatively small. It is this fact that is the 
 penniless man's advantage. He lives on the fringe or 
 ragged edge of the crazy quilt of chits until he " loses 
 his face," or drinks himself into the hereafter. When 
 his " face " is gone he may sign no longer. He drifts 
 into the Consul's hands, and is sent home steerage at his 
 Government's expense. He may so dread the thought of 
 home that he flies to the natives, among the disreputable 
 of whom he must have some acquaintance, and in return 
 for a modicum of seaweeds, fish, and rice-beer, teaches 
 Peter Parley's " History of the World," or possibly the 
 art of mixing cocktails. 
 
 When he dies, the chances are that the foreign resi- 
 dents will subscribe to bury him decently, and others of 
 his class will mourn for him, hoping that some day some- 
 one will do the same for them. The class is one, how- 
 ever, that is less in evidence each year. 
 
 As the transient population of Yokohama increases, 
 chit-signing may disappear, although the habit is second 
 nature to those who live there now. Here and there a 
 
 [ 124 ] 
 
THOSE WHO SIGN CHITS 
 man rebels, and swears that he will never sign another 
 chit, but a temptation that is ever present is hard to 
 resist for long. With nothing between a thirsty man 
 and the drink he longs for but the scrawling of his name 
 on a slip of paper, the chances are that the thirst will 
 win. Other things, too, he may crave as keenly, things 
 that v/ill do him less good than a drink ; the fatal paper 
 makes it all too easy, and reform difficult. 
 
 " So they sent him out here to sober up, did they ? " 
 said a member of Parliament who was at tiffin at a club 
 in one of the treaty ports one day, and was speaking to 
 a friend of a youth whose parents thought Japan would 
 do wonders for their bright, but wayward, child. 
 
 " Might have as well sent him to Hades to cool off.'' 
 
 [ 125 ] 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN 
 THE CENSOR AND THE CRAFTY EDITOR 
 
 OKASHI SAN had given us a letter to a Tokio 
 friend, the editor of a newspaper. He had been 
 to Oxford, and to Harvard University in Amer- 
 ica, and we were eager to meet him, but inquiries at the 
 address Okashi had given us were singularly unavail- 
 ing. After much searching we found our gentleman in 
 jail. 
 
 When I learned of the vicissitudes of his profession, 
 however, I wondered how he had kept out at all. It was 
 an occupation beset with difficulties indeed. Vexatious 
 enough in all countries, in the Land of the Rising Sun it 
 has been so uncertain that it is a marvel it was even pos- 
 sible. To an Englishman, and yet more to an American 
 or an Australian, such uncertainty would be intolerable. 
 The Japanese editor, like Brer Rabbit in "Uncle Re- 
 mus," never has known " what minnit's going to be the 
 next." 
 
 In looking into the business I found that since the 
 promulgation of the Constitution in 1889, papers had 
 been suspended at the rate of one a week, while some of 
 the more outspoken writers had grown so familiar with 
 the way to the " honorable jail " that it was said they 
 could go there blindfolded. 
 
 As was natural, after the war with China, the Japanese 
 
 [126] 
 
THE CENSOR 
 did some little talking about their equality to Western- 
 ers ; but on the other hand, in the matter of the freedom 
 of the press, they cannot fail to see that they are years 
 behind the times. This has been demonstrated in the 
 trial of the editors of several papers, among them the 
 ToJcio Shimbun, for criticising the Minister of the Im- 
 perial Household. The trial aroused public opinion, 
 and Parliament has passed laws modifying the rigor of 
 press censorship to some extent. Still, to-day, an 
 editor might as well commit hara-kiri, so far as his paper 
 is concerned, as to give a line of army or of navy news, 
 or say what he thinks the Government should do to hold 
 back Russian aggression. Even in papers in the Eng- 
 lish language, which are published in the seaports, and 
 are owned and edited almost exclusively by Englishmen, 
 writers must go slowly. Before the recent treaties came 
 into effect they did not fear the red pencil of the censor. 
 Then they alone dared to discuss questions of state. 
 Now, however, they must be as careful as the editors of 
 papers published in the vernacular. 
 
 The list of " don'ts," that is, the list of things a writer 
 on a paper must not say, is long, and, worse than this, 
 no one outside the Bureau of Press Censorship knows 
 what it contains. It is only by guessing and by bitter 
 experience that an editor can approximate as to what 
 to avoid. If a paper publishes an article that is not 
 approved it has been the custom to suspend the paper, 
 and that has been all there was about it. No reason was 
 given. The disapproved article was not even mentioned 
 in the order of suspension. Small wonder, then, that 
 
 [ m] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 there has been great discontent, and that the cry for 
 reform grows louder every day. And this cry is not 
 without effect, for now Government promises to give 
 editors a pubhc trial when there has been transgression. 
 
 Here is a translation by Basil Hall Chamberlain of 
 what the editor of the Nichi-Nichi-Shimbun says of the 
 tribulations of journalism in Dai Nippon: "News- 
 papers and magazines are confronted by a special 
 danger — the danger, namely, of suspension when their 
 words are held to be prejudicial to the public order; and 
 a suspension, too, against which there is no appeal. 
 Article xix. of the Newspaper Regulations now in force 
 says : ' When a newspaper has printed matter which is 
 considered prejudicial to public order or subversive of 
 public morality, the Minister of State for the Interior 
 is empowered to suspend its publication either totally or 
 temporarily.' Nor is there a word said in the regula- 
 tions whereby the prejudicial or non-prejudicial char- 
 acter of a statement or argument is to be determined. 
 It is sufficient that the official in question should decide, 
 in accordance with his own individual opinion, that the 
 statement or argument is thus prejudicial to public 
 order, for a newspaper to incur at any moment the pen- 
 alty of suspension, whether total or temporary. It is 
 indisputable that the authorities are empowered by the 
 law of the land to act thus. The Constitution itself 
 gives them this power. The result is that we writers are 
 constantly obliged, in taking our pen in hand, to keep 
 to ourselves seven or eight of every ten opinions we would 
 fain express." 
 
 [ 128 ] 
 
THE CENSOR 
 
 When a paper ventures too far, and the censor is called 
 upon to write the order of suspension, he is brief, but 
 polite — wonderfully polite. He puts the honorific " O " 
 or " Go " before each of the nouns and verbs. Prefixed 
 to a noun " O " means honorable, to a verb it means hon- 
 orably ; similarly " Go " means august, augustly. So 
 the order, when it arrives, will read somewhat as follows: 
 
 " Deign honorably to cease honorably publishing 
 august paper. Honorable editor, honorable publisher, 
 honorable chief printer, deign honorably to enter august 
 jail." 
 
 The honorable editor with his honorable co-workers 
 bow low before the messenger of the censor, acknowledg- 
 ing the honor of the august notification, and then accom- 
 pany him to the honorable jail, chatting the meanwhile 
 of the weather, or of the flower shows, or of the eff^ects 
 of the floods on the rice crop. Centuries of breeding 
 under Japanese etiquette have rendered it impossible for 
 them to show annoyance. They do not know how. 
 
 When a paper has been suspended, the first intima- 
 tion the public has of the fact is the quiet in the compos- 
 ing-room. Few places in the world where regular busi- 
 ness is carried on are noisier than a Japanese composing- 
 room. The amount of noise therein is determined only 
 by the cubic capacity of the apartment. If it is a larger 
 room, there is more noise ; if a smaller, there is less ; but 
 in working hours it is always chock-full. The con- 
 fusion at the Tower of Babel is there vividly suggested 
 every day. 
 
 For the ordinary Tokio paper there will be at least 
 [ 129] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 twenty men and boys marching to and fro, each yelling 
 at the top of his voice. There seems neither head nor 
 tail to this confusion, but nevertheless each of these 
 Screeching persons has an object at which he looks in- 
 tently while he parades about. This object is a line or 
 stick of Japanese characters, for which he must find the 
 appropriate types. It is something of a job to find all 
 these, for to print even a four-page paper in Japan up- 
 wards of five thousand different characters are used. 
 These require many fonts, which are crowded into a 
 small space, that there may be as little traveling as 
 possible. 
 
 The " devil " goes about these fonts with a waltz- 
 ing motion, there are so many corners to turn, and 
 always with his eyes fixed on his stick, as though it were 
 a sacred relic. Indeed, to the stranger in the street 
 below who looks up through the long windows which 
 reach from floor to ceiling, it might seem that a religious 
 dance was going on, and that the devotees were wrought 
 well up to the frenzy point. 
 
 On going inside one finds an old man sitting in a 
 corner reading copy, and cutting it into strips with what 
 looks at first glance like a pair of sugar-tongs, but which 
 are really shears. As each slip falls, a " devil " grabs 
 it and starts off on his pilgrimage, singing at the top 
 of his voice the names of the characters he seeks. He 
 has to pronounce the name of each character aloud in 
 order to know what it is, for he understands by hearing 
 rather than by seeing, and his own paper would be un- 
 intelligible to him unless he read it aloud. As all the 
 [ 130] 
 
THE CENSOR 
 other imps yell also, he has to be vociferous in order to 
 hear himself. 
 
 When he has collected the types for all the characters 
 on his slip he gives them to the head-compositor, a 
 learned man with goggles, who puts in the particles and 
 the connecting words, and hands the completed form to 
 a pair of proofreaders, one of whom sings them to the 
 other. As soon as the proof is ready, the paper is made 
 up, all hind-side before, it would seem to a foreigner. 
 The reading lines are perpendicular, and the columns 
 run across the page from right to left, the first column 
 beginning at the upper right-hand corner of what in a 
 European paper would be the last page. 
 
 There are no headlines nor many display advertise- 
 ments. The paper consists generally of a leading 
 article, a lot of news items — more or less untrustworthy, 
 a jumble of advertisements sometimes printed on the 
 margin of the sheet, and a section of a continued story. 
 There is almost no telegraphic news, though in this the 
 papers are improving, and little correspondence either 
 local or foreign. There is also improvement in these 
 departments now. Occasionally a student who is study- 
 ing abroad will send a letter, but very few of the six- 
 hundred-and-odd papers and periodicals now published 
 in the Empire maintain a regular correspondent any- 
 where, not even in the large Japanese cities. 
 
 The news department is as largely " fake as it is in 
 any of the issues of the " new journalism ^' in this coun- 
 try. That it is fake the public is coming to recognize. 
 As an example of this recognition one of the achieve- 
 
 [ 131 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 ments of a particularly yellow journal in Tokio may 
 be of interest. It had a " beat " in the shape of an 
 exclusive notice of the English-Japanese alliance six 
 weeks before any other paper in the Empire had a 
 word on the subject — which was one of the most im- 
 portant subjects a newspaper in Japan could have a 
 " beat " on. But no one paid attention — ^there was not 
 a line of comment in other papers the next day, nor did 
 the public pay heed. Even in Japan it is possible to be 
 too yellow. 
 
 But it is the leaders, after all, that make one wonder 
 why the paper is published. With the sharp red pencil 
 of the censor pointing at him, ready to be thrust into him 
 behind his back at any moment, the editor has evolved 
 into a man skilled in the art of saying nothing, or, at 
 least, what reads like nothing to the uninitiated. He 
 is a marvel at double entendre. But with all his clever- 
 ness he is caught so often that he has become inventive, 
 and has devised artifices whereby he has hoped to escape. 
 
 The most successful of these was the dummy or 
 " prison editor," as he was known in the Oriental sanc- 
 tum. This functionary had an easy time. He had 
 nothing to do on the paper, never wrote a line, but when 
 those who did write said anything that the censer judged 
 might mean something, and the paper was suspended, 
 the prison editor stepped forward, bowed low, and said, 
 " What augustly must be, probably augustly must be." 
 Then he trotted off to august jail. This scheme worked 
 well for a long time, but after a while the censor de- 
 manded that the principal three men connected with the 
 
 [132] 
 
THE CENSOR 
 paper should go to the " honorable jail.'' Three dum- 
 mies were more than any paper could afford to main- 
 tain, and so there are no proxies now. 
 
 The remarkable thing about the majority of these 
 papers, however, is not that they are so meager in every 
 department, but that they exist. Here is a brief sketch 
 of their coming into being. Their birth was hardly 
 under lucky stars. The first Japanese newspaper was 
 published in 1872, by John Black, an Englishman, who 
 founded the Nisshm Shinji Shi. Before that there had 
 been only occasional terror sheets which the " yomi uri " 
 (the native chapmen) hawked about after a particularly 
 bloody murder or a catastrophe, such as a great fire, a 
 flood, or an earthquake. 
 
 Black's paper was followed by others, among them 
 the Kwampo or official Gazette; the Tokio Shimpo and 
 the Kohai, semi-official; the Mai Nichi Shimbun, the 
 Yomi Uri Shimbun, and the Ubi/n Hochi Shimbun, all 
 Liberal; the Jin Shimbun and the Ninkin Shimbun, 
 Radical ; the Nihon and the Chusei Nippo, Conservative 
 and anti-foreign; the Fuzaku Gwaho, an interesting 
 illustrated record of manners and customs; and the 
 Maru Maru, a comic paper inspired originally by Punch. 
 There are also prominent the Chuguai Shiogio Shimpo, 
 a commercial daily; the Jiji Sin Shimpo, Imperial; the 
 Tokio Nichi'Nichi-Shimbun; and in Osaka the Asahi 
 (Morning Sun ), and the Mainichi, which are read widely 
 in the south of Japan. Altogether between six and 
 seven hundred issue from the press at more or less regu- 
 lar intervals, and as a rule are improving in quality. 
 [ 133 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 The Japanese reporter makes about as much money 
 as the Japanese poHceman — that is, about three dollars 
 a month. In Tokio some of them make more, and in the 
 smaller towns they make as little as two dollars a month, 
 but three dollars is a fair average. There are reporters 
 that make far more than this — say thirty dollars — but so 
 very many make small wages that the average is low. 
 They are not sent out on regular assignments as a rule, 
 but are given a roving commission. The editor tells 
 them to get news, real news if there is any, but to get 
 news; and they never return empty-handed, A good 
 news-gatherer is rare among them, but the " fakir is 
 plentiful enough and really clever. Interviewing can 
 hardly be said to be popular. The people do not under- 
 stand it and do not like it. Japan is esoteric, and 
 doesn't tell what it knows if it can help itself. Still, 
 there are interviews in Japanese papers. Politicians 
 have themselves interviewed occasionally, and " globe- 
 trotters " usually submit. 
 
 Japanese editors are gaining in power now that the 
 press laws show a tendency to become less restrictive, 
 and consequently first-class editorial writers make what 
 in Japan are excellent salaries, despite the increased ex- 
 pense of living throughout the Empire. One editor told 
 me that as much as four and even five hundred yen a 
 month went into the envelopes of some of the first-rate 
 writers. That Avould be two hundred to two hundred 
 and fifty dollars in gold. Another thing he spoke of 
 was that Japan's new woman was learning the business, 
 and several of them were getting on well as essay writers 
 
 [134] 
 
THE CENSOR 
 on subjects connected with the advancement of their 
 sex. 
 
 All the papers use the written language, which differs 
 from the spoken language both in its grammar and in 
 its vocabulary. Mr. Chamberlain says that the Jap- 
 anese are still in the condition of Europeans of the 
 twelfth century : " They do not write as the3^ speak. 
 A man may know the spoken language thoroughly, and 
 yet not be able to understand the daily paper when it 
 is read aloud, nor even the note he has just asked his 
 native clerk in his office to write and to send up to the 
 house, announcing that he will take up a friend to 
 ' tiffin.' " 
 
 Speeches are taken down in shorthand, but are almost 
 always translated into the written language before they 
 are printed. The one exception to the rule is in the 
 Record of Parliament speeches, wherein the words are 
 published just as they were uttered. When this Record 
 first appeared the rural members were filled with con- 
 sternation, for there they saw held up to the public eye 
 all their peculiarities of provincial dialect. Old men as 
 s-ome of them were, they got themselves teachers and set 
 about learning to speak like townsfolk. 
 
 This Record is the beginning of a tremendous reform 
 which students hope will lead to the disuse of the written 
 language, first in newspapers, and finally in books as 
 well. For the spoken language is the living language, 
 the language of the people. With the present Parlia- 
 ment a new order of things will be established in Japan, 
 and the freedom of the press must follow in due course, 
 
 [ 135 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Ministers of State incline to think that the time is almost 
 come. But it is well to remember that while the present 
 laws are cruelly severe, as judged by Western notions, 
 they are, as Professor Chamberlain points out, not so 
 severe historically speaking, because it is hardly a 
 quarter of a century since freedom of speech was denied 
 to the Mikado's subjects, not theoretically, perhaps, but 
 to all intents and purposes. 
 
 It was long a capital offense to memorialize the Gov- 
 ernment. Those who did so^ — and history gives many 
 instances — were wont to write what they had to say in 
 the form of a letter to the Prime Minister, and then, 
 calmly kneeling at the gate of some public building, 
 commit " hara-kiri," or, to use the polite term, " sep- 
 puku." The police, who may have stood respectfully 
 at a .distance while the act was committing, would find 
 the letter on searching the body of the suicide, and report 
 its contents to the Minister. Sometimes they made bold 
 to hand a petition to a minister or even to the Shogun 
 direct, as Viscount Hayashi recounts in his interesting 
 book " For His People," but the result was always hara- 
 kiri or worse. His Excellency, the Viscount's hero, an 
 historical person, was led out with his wife and four 
 children. First the little ones were beheaded, then the 
 frantic mother was crucified, and, finally, Sogoro also 
 was crucified beside her. 
 
 [130] 
 
CHAPTER SIXTEEN 
 
 BOBBY 
 
 N our visits to the honorable editor in the august 
 jail we saw much of Junsa, the police officer. We 
 liked him. So do all foreigners. 
 
 This is natural, for the Japanese Bobby is a gentle- 
 man by birth, a model of courteous dignity and a good 
 fighter. In consideration of these qualifications the 
 Government gives him six yen a month, almost three 
 dollars. He is a gentleman, because he comes from the 
 highest of the social grades — the samurai — and until 
 1871 was a military retainer of a daimiyo, as the feudal 
 lords were called who ruled over the provinces of Japan. 
 He was born to the use of the sword, and even now, ex- 
 cept in seaports, it is his weapon as well as his badge of 
 office, though rarely is he compelled to use it. 
 
 Samurai, according to the dictionaries, means " mili- 
 tary class," " warriors," or " gentry." Recently the 
 Chinese word " shizoku," of precisely the same meaning, 
 has come into vogue, why, no one knows, for it adds 
 nothing to the significance of the idea. It is strange 
 that the Japanese, who look down on the Chinese, delight 
 to use their words. The samurai lived in the daimiyo's 
 castle, and received annually an allowance of so many 
 koku of rice, according to his importance and the rich- 
 ness of the province. Japanese still reckon incomes in 
 
 [137] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 koku. The samurai's business was to be a gentleman. 
 In Old Japan all gentlemen must be soldiers and all sol- 
 diers gentlemen. To-day it would not be quite wrong to 
 say policemen. The samurai attended his daimiyo on 
 all occasions, and fought for him whenever there was 
 trouble with another daimiyo. He was the embodiment 
 of loyalty, and would give his life deliberately to avenge 
 an insult to his lord. 
 
 Mitford's " Story of the Forty-Seven Ronins " shows 
 how he could do this. The ronins were samurai without 
 a master. In Mitford's story, which relates a fact of 
 Japanese history, they carried out a scheme of vengeance 
 requiring months of preparation, knowing all the while 
 that, whether they failed or succeeded, the Shogun would 
 sentence them to hara-kiri. 
 
 So to-day, the samurai, with all the instincts of ancient 
 chivalry and his three dollars a month salary, prome- 
 nades the highways and byways of Dai Nippon armed 
 with a saber and a ball of twine, and preserves order 
 the like of which no other country in the world maintains. 
 The saber is in lieu of a policeman's " billy," and the 
 twine he uses instead of handcuffs. 
 
 It is interesting to watch Bobby as he deftly weaves 
 a net about his captive until he looks as though he were 
 wrapped up in a hammock. This weaving has an esoteric 
 significance, doubtless, as no need of doing it is manifest. 
 Etiquette in Japan is against a captive's trying to escape 
 after he has been informed courteously that he is under 
 arrest and should augustly condescend to accompany his 
 captor to the police-station. 
 
 [ 138 ] 
 
A SAMURAI WITH PRISONER 
 
LIBRARY 
 Ot THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY oflLUNOiS 
 
BOBBY 
 
 The policeman always says, " Go men nasai " 
 ("August pardon deign"), and the culprit, as he 
 stands patiently to be woven in, replies, " Do itashima- 
 shite " ("Oh, don't mention it"). When the weaving 
 is over Bobby has the culprit " on a string " and, hold- 
 ing one end thereof, escorts him to the station, where the 
 captor salutes his chief in military style, and the captive 
 bows low and declares he is mortified to be the cause of 
 so much trouble. Both ends of the string are heard 
 from, and the chief then decides whether to fine or to dis- 
 miss, or to hold the offender for further examination. 
 
 Bobby wears a military uniform — white in summer 
 and blue in winter. He always salutes when a foreigner 
 speaks to him, and will walk a half-mile with one to 
 show the way. He will not accept a tip. His instincts 
 and the rules of the Police Department forbid his doing 
 so, and then, besides, there is the Government pay — 
 three dollars a month,^ on which he feeds and clothes his 
 family. 
 
 He will take charge of a foreigner in search of an 
 hotel, and will escort him to the best lodgings to be had, 
 where he will caution mine host against overcharging 
 the guest. In the monthly bazaars that are held in the 
 streets leading to various temples in Tokio, Bobby is 
 ever watchful lest the dealers ask the foreigner too much 
 for their wares. So vigilant is he that the stranger often 
 makes a better bargain than a native could. 
 
 One of them through clever detective work secured 
 over one thousand yen that a native had stolen from a 
 foreigner, but he refused the gift of money that grati- 
 
 [139] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 tude prompted. After much persuasion, however, he ac- 
 cepted a kimono, though not before the American had re- 
 ceived special permission from the PoUce Department to 
 make the present. 
 
 In Yokohama and the other seaports, where the poHce- 
 man does not carry a saber, he handles his " billy " quite 
 as well as any foreign policeman. He is as wonderfully 
 dexterous in the use of this as he is with the saber, and 
 that is saying much. Let an expert speak. Professor 
 Norman, late of the Imperial Naval College of Japan, 
 with whom fencing is a hobby, has studied fencing of 
 all sorts in England, France, Germany, Austria, Turkey, 
 Persia, Siam, China, and Japan. He says that the Japa- 
 nese policeman is the most dexterous swordsman living. 
 
 Even with his club he will enter a drinking place 
 where a half-dozen men-o^- war's men are having a 
 rough-and-tumble fight, and arrest them all with celer- 
 ity and ease. Jack has a wholesome dread of the little 
 man in blue, and trembles when he sees the " billy." It 
 is an odd sight to see him staggering to the station-house 
 in charge of a man whom it would seem he could pack 
 under his arm. It is like an ant taking home a beetle. 
 
 The entire police force in Japan is under a single 
 head, with the chief offices in Tokio and a subdepart- 
 ment in each province. The chief is a man of extraor- 
 dinary powers. His officers command such respect as 
 only military men enjoy on the continent of Europe, and 
 the entire system is as efficient, probably, as can be found 
 in the world to-day. 
 
 [140] 
 
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 
 
 PLAYHOUSES, PLAYERS, AND PLAYS 
 
 THE Secretary to the Chief of PoHce, a young 
 Viscount who spoke Enghsh well, and who had 
 conducted us on our first visit to the august jail, 
 took us to the theater one morning, and we spent the 
 day there. W^e went often after that, and on the west 
 coast brought criticism on our youthful heads by the 
 keenness we displayed in studying the stage. 
 
 The influence of Count Inouye's garden party, at 
 which the Mikado was present and saw Danjuro and 
 other great actors, had not reached Etchiu. But we per- 
 sisted in our researches and found out several things. 
 One of the first of our impressions was that a man needs 
 gymnastic eyes and a laminated throat to be an actor in 
 Japan. The eyes count for more, however. A good 
 eye-wriggler need not want for a position, nor should 
 the owner of an india-rubber face, for " making faces " 
 is an art with the Japanese stage folk. 
 
 The achievements of these artists are illustrated ac- 
 curately by the contorted countenances shown on the 
 cheap paper fans so plentiful in summer time the world 
 over. These fan illustrations, be they never so gro- 
 tesque or weird or fantastic, are exact representations 
 of stage scenes. They are not exaggerations. The gar- 
 ments shown in the pictures conceal effectively all out- 
 line of the human form, but they are stage costumes 
 [141] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 such as Japanese actors wear to-day; and the faces, in 
 spite of the distortion they display, are portraits of 
 theatrical stars which anyone familiar with the native 
 theater would recognize immediately. 
 
 I believe there are no better equipped actors in the 
 world to-day than those found on the Japanese boards. 
 The theaters, too, such as Meijiza and Kabukiza, in 
 Tokio, are excellent, with their electric lights, their re- 
 volving stages, and their simple yet beautiful scenery. 
 Many of the plays would be intelligible to an audience 
 that did not know a word of Japanese. Danjuro, whose 
 real name is Horikoshi Shu, and Kiugoro the great 
 comedian, speak a world language and will make you 
 laugh or cry at will. It is a pity they cannot be pre- 
 vailed upon to make a foreign tour. They would draw 
 well. 
 
 Their versatility is marvelous. They play comedy, 
 tragedy, and farce, in either male or female parts, with 
 equal facility and happiness. They were born to the 
 stage, as were their parents and grandparents before 
 them for ten generations, and have taken parts from the 
 time they were of sufficient size to be seen by the spec- 
 tators. With such inheritance and such training it 
 would be strange if they did not excel. 
 
 In spite of all this excellence, however, it is only re- 
 cently the theater has been in good repute in the Mi- 
 kado's Empire. Count Inouye, then Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, gave his famous garden-party in the autumn of 
 1887, for the purpose of elevating the stage. His Im- 
 perial Majesty Mutsu Hito attending, set the seal of 
 
 [ 142] 
 
PLAYHOUSES 
 supreme approval upon a profession which before that 
 time had been taboo with gentlefolk. 
 
 The records of the census-taker show the position of 
 actors under the old regime. This official counted them, 
 " ip piki, ni hikki, sam biki," etc., when reckoning the 
 number of men in the theater. That seems harmless 
 enough until it is explained that, in counting in Japa- 
 nese, " ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku," etc. (one, two, three, 
 four, five, six), certain auxiliaries to the numerals are 
 used, according to the kind of things that are being 
 counted. For instance, human beings are " mei " or 
 " nin," and are usually counted " ichi nin, ni nin, san 
 nin," etc. Flat things, such as sheets of paper, are 
 " mai " — " ichi mai, ni mai," etc. ; houses are " ken " — 
 " ik ken, ni ken, san ken," etc. ; boats are " so " — " is 
 so, ni so, san zo," etc. ; and living creatures, except 
 human beings and birds, are " hiki " — " ip piki, ni hiki, 
 sam biki, shi hiki," etc. Actors, therefore, came under 
 the general classification of beasts. 
 
 Until recently the upper classes kept away from the 
 theaters or went there only in disguise. But, in spite 
 of this, good plays were produced and, financially, at 
 least, the profession prospered. To-day distinguished 
 actors are received in the homes of persons of noble rank. 
 
 The Japanese theater is the only place left in which 
 one can study the ways of Old Japan. Though it re- 
 tains manj^ of the ancient and grotesque traditions of its 
 early days, it is accurate in presenting customs that else 
 long since would have passed from memory. Its Ian* 
 guage, too, is formal and archaic, and the intonation of 
 [143] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 the actors almost terrible. You will not find such lan- 
 guage or such voices anywhere off the stage. A half- 
 minute's attempt to imitate the sounds the native actors 
 produce would give a Westerner bronchitis. The throat 
 is contracted, the veins swell, and the blood seems ready 
 to burst from every pore in the tragedian's face. Then 
 the eyes roll, individually and independently, one up, 
 the other down, one to the east and the other to the west, 
 or only one gyrates and the other rolls, until only the 
 white shows. The iris disappears entirely. This is 
 done especially when the eye-wriggler wishes to demon- 
 strate that he represents a character that is bold and 
 bad. When you see him you will believe he does so. 
 
 The bearing of the actors cast for kings and queens 
 is comical. It brings to mind descriptions of the old 
 miracle plays. To walk like ordinary mortals would not 
 do for royalty or for personages of any sort. They 
 must strut like a German recruit breaking in. It is 
 something to remember the entrance of a Chinese Em- 
 peror as he comes down the aisle through the audience. 
 At each step his foot rises quite to the level of his chin, 
 while his revolving eyes appear to be two inches in diamr 
 eter. All this seems childish enough to ruin the effect of 
 the most excellent acting, but it does not. 
 
 In battle scenes, particularly, the exaggeration is ex- 
 treme. Japanese actors die hard — on the stage. It is 
 appalling to see how long they last. They stagger about, 
 still lashing at each other, after they are shot as full of 
 arrows as a porcupine is full of quills. The first arrow 
 would have done for them anywhere but in the theater. 
 
PLAYHOUSES 
 Stage blood is over everything ; but the audience de- 
 lights in gory scenes, and the actors must be " an uncon- 
 scionable time a-dying." Arms and legs are lopped off. 
 The wounded roll about making terrible grimaces, and 
 dummy limbs, appearing through the floor, twitch and 
 jerk about the stage in a way not pleasant to weak 
 nerves. 
 
 In place of the calcium with the colored slides, a black- 
 hooded mute with a bamboo pole, at the end of which is 
 a lighted candle, moves about with much agility and 
 illumines the chief actor's countenance by means of the 
 sputtering dip. To the stranger this jet-black elf is 
 rather an attraction in himself and a serious distraction 
 from the play, but after a while the spectator grows ac- 
 customed to the imp and is oblivious to his presence, and 
 the actor holds the entire attention. 
 
 Another distraction is the orchestra, and a dismal one 
 it is to the uninitiated. Its performances should have a 
 chapter to themselves. It is usually at one end of the 
 stage, behind a screen, which conceals the appalling 
 physiognomies of the members, but does not add har- 
 mony to the sounds. The " music " and " singing " con- 
 tinue without a pause all the time the curtain is up. 
 The songs are indescribable, for the tones are something 
 between the squealing of a pig and the wail of a lost 
 soul. It has a certain fitness, however, one discovers 
 after several hearings, especially in the ghost and goblin 
 acts — and during the carnage of the battle scenes it is 
 quite in harmony with the interminable slaughter. 
 
 The general appearance of the Japanese stage is much 
 [ 145 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 the same as the stage in a foreign theater. The stage 
 itself revolves, but otherwise the scenery is managed 
 much as it is in this country. The actors, when they die, 
 are attended to by the hooded elves, who see them safely 
 away behind blankets. 
 
 The audience does not applaud by hand-clapping ; it 
 shouts the actor's name. It is a comfortable audience, 
 with any amount of time. Plays begin at eight o'clock 
 in the morning and continue until seven in the evening. 
 Different theaters give performances at different hours, 
 however. In some places the doors open only in the even- 
 ing. The floor of an empty theater looks like a checker 
 board, otherwise the theater looks much like a playhouse 
 in this country. The difference is, that there are no 
 stalls. The entire seating space is partitioned off into 
 squares by means of railing, about a foot above the soft- 
 matted floor. This gives the orchestra and pit the ap- 
 pearance of a checker board. Each square holds a half- 
 dozen spectators. In the balcony often there are boxes. 
 Generally the spectators have tea-caddies and their 
 lunch with them, especially in the country. Folk often 
 take gourds of sake too, but in towns the tea-houses of 
 the neighborhood provide all sorts of refreshments at 
 moderate cost. 
 
 Between the acts the spectators visit about the house 
 and exchange sake cups. Occasionally some of the 
 actors come down to see them. They always receive a 
 present, just as geisha do. All sorts of hawkers of food 
 and drink run about on the railings while the curtain is 
 down, offering their wares to the spectators. 
 
 [ 146 ] 
 
PLAYHOUSES 
 
 Smoking goes on all through the performance. There 
 is no formality of dress, nor is it unusual to see a spec- 
 tator curl up for a nap to carry him through a portion 
 of the play he does not care for. When an act is end- 
 ing, the curtain-man announces it by a nerve-shattering 
 racket, made with two hard pieces of wood which he beats 
 together. As the curtain falls, all the children in the 
 place rush for the stage and have a merry game of tag. 
 Often they crawl behind to see what is going on. No 
 one interferes with them nor shows the least annoyance 
 at their pranks. The stage is theirs until the clatter- 
 man sends the curtain up again. 
 
 Queer as Japanese theatrical methods are, they are far 
 ahead of the methods that obtain in China. The Chi- 
 nese theater is familiar to some extent abroad, for one 
 may see it wherever there is a Chinese colony, notabl}^ 
 in San Francisco, in New York City, and in various 
 places in the colonies ; but the Japanese play has stayed 
 at home, though Kawakami and Yakko, the geisha, after 
 various adventures in America, made a hit in Lon- 
 don, and especially at the Paris Exposition, where they 
 showed that a good Japanese troop, aided by a clear 
 translation with intelligible notes, could do exceedingly 
 well. Their French manager knew his business. 
 
 At present there is little differentiation in the foreign 
 mind between things Japanese and Chinese. This an- 
 noys the subjects of the Mikado, for they are not re- 
 lated to the people they recently conquered. Neither in 
 blood nor in language is there any relationship what- 
 ever, unless Japan's many borrowings make China a 
 
 [147] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 sort of uncle. In Japan, foreigners enjoy the theater; 
 but in China, hardly. There is no way of stopping a 
 Chinese play. Once it is fairly started it runs until the 
 theatre is burned down, or the actors die of old age. 
 Many Japanese plays, however, are of the same structure 
 and duration as English plays. Where the theater is 
 open all day the play is broken in two, and between the 
 sections of a sketch, something like a curtain-raiser fills 
 in. 
 
 On the Japanese stage dead men are taken off by the 
 attendants. They do not jump up and trot off in the 
 merry Chinese fashion. The orchestra in Japan is not 
 entirely tomtom and squeak, either ; nor does it sit on the 
 stage, mixed up with the actors. Indeed, some of the 
 performances on the samisen are exceedingly clever and 
 full of life. Japanese scenery is well-nigh perfect, and 
 the revolving stage, of which the Chinese know nothing, 
 saves much time. 
 
 Recently, too, in Japan, mixed troops are allowed. 
 Men and women may appear on the stage together. This 
 is not so in China, nor can it be said to be in great favor 
 as yet in Japan, because the old ideas are not gone yet. 
 Japanese plays are extremely realistic, more so than 
 would be allowable were both sexes on the stage together. 
 The appearance of women in companies with men cer- 
 tainly would curtail this realism, and it is thought by 
 some that drama would lose thereby. 
 
 Since the war the theater has prospered mightily, 
 and prices have gone up. Still, two dollars is not a 
 great sum to pay for twelve hours' use of a good box, 
 
 [148] 
 
PLAYHOUSES 
 and a chance to see much that is ludicrous, but also much 
 that is admirable and instructive. 
 
 One evening Gardner beckoned two of the performers 
 to our square. We had a cup of sake with them and 
 asked them to come to see us the next day, Nichiyobi, 
 that being our one holiday in the week and therefore a 
 reception day. They did so. In fact the whole troop 
 came, so that we had to adjourn to a tea-house not far 
 away, where there was more room. The news that we 
 were entertaining players spread, and I fear we lost 
 caste sadly, but we had a grand time, nevertheless. Sev- 
 eral of the townsfolk whom we knew came also, and 
 though they may have held an actor in contempt no one 
 would have suspected it from their actions. They ex- 
 changed sake-cups with the men from the theater, 
 played chess with them, and later, when the geisha had 
 arrived, joined in a sort of grand march, which the pro- 
 fessional folk led. There was never such a Nichiyobi 
 before in Etchiu, I will warrant. We felt we were work- 
 ing along the lines of the distinguished chief of the For- 
 eign Office. 
 
 The dismay that came upon us when first we saw how 
 many the two whom we had invited were, changed rap- 
 idly to joy under the stimuli of the occasion — ^stimuli, 
 by the way, which the master of the tea-house kept con- 
 stantly in evidence. We were pleased with our good 
 work. 
 
 " I wish it continuing always," said Okashi. Then he 
 had a cask of sake set out in the road where several in- 
 dividuals had collected, and the theater folk helped to 
 [149] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 apportion it, and in this kindly work our other guests as- 
 sisted, until someone ran away with the cask. We re- 
 tired, of course, without saying good-night, feeling sure 
 that Okashi would not let the evening drag. Gardner's 
 last remark was, " Don't you think the stage will be all 
 right if only the people on it are elevated.'^ " 
 They were, so I agreed with him. 
 
 [160] 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 
 
 " MUSIC " 
 
 BESIDES the actors and the plays that we 
 I studied in the theaters, " gaku " attracted our 
 attention. It was so persistently bad we could 
 not help becoming interested. We had some of the 
 " gakunin " at the house one afternoon for a close in- 
 spection. 
 
 Okashi San treated them with some consideration, for, 
 as he said, their fame was great, but Gardner and I had 
 trouble in keeping up to Okashi's dignity of bearing. 
 I do not believe either of us ever had such another hour 
 in our lives. We were full of internal cramps through 
 trying not to laugh, and the pain was such that it was 
 equally difficult to restrain our tears. To sit there in 
 apparent peace, while trying desperately not to do two 
 things so opposite in kind, was a strain our nervous sys- 
 tems did not soon recover from. 
 
 "Gaku" is a Japanese word which the dictionaries 
 translate " music." If you ever hear any gaku you will 
 wonder what is the matter with the dictionaries, and will 
 suspect their trustworthiness ever after, consulting them 
 I fear with hesitancy. But they are rather good except 
 for such words as song, music, and tadaima. 
 
 Gaku should be translated, " a series of irregular and 
 disconnected vocal squeaks accompanied by strings 
 
 [ 151 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 twanging out of tune and interspersed with caterwauls." 
 That would be comprehensive and exact, except when the 
 vocal squeaks are omitted. Without the squeaks gaku 
 is the same in kind — unqualified and willful discord, but 
 not so much of it. 
 
 The dictionaries would have you believe also that the 
 vocal squeaks are singing. They say that " uta " means 
 song, that " utau " means to sing, and that " O uta 
 utau nasai " means " Honorable song to sing conde- 
 scend," i. e., " Please sing a song." Again your faith 
 receives a shock. " O uta utau nasai " should be trans- 
 lated " Bring me two earfuls of cotton." With your 
 ears well stuffed you may listen to gaku without going 
 mad. Otherwise much self-control is necessary. Per- 
 haps Brinkley's new edition will give uta as " song " 
 with the modifying word " Japanese " or " native " be- 
 fore it, and I trust it will do as much for gaku, too. 
 
 There are many kinds of gaku in Japan, each of which 
 is worse than any of the others, with one exception that 
 may be made occasionally in favor of classical gaku. 
 This kind is esoteric, so very esoteric at some of the 
 Shinto festivals that only the motions of producing the 
 discord are made, and the soul-piercing uta is left out 
 as well. These are the only times you will not desire 
 cotton. 
 
 When court musicians, the most classical of all gaku 
 folk in Japan, break out into sound, the atmosphere is 
 torn to ribbons. There is something in the result to sug- 
 gest that striking picture, " The March of the Con- 
 querors." One sees the chief killers that the world has 
 
 [153] 
 
" MUSIC " 
 
 known advancing between the parallel lines of dead, and 
 also a tidal- wave full of cats, pawing helplessly in the 
 foam and clamoring for succor. Yet all this pleases the 
 Japanese ear, so that the more discordant of the 
 gakunin acquire fame and are talked about. But the 
 gaku itself never attracts notice. No one discusses it, no 
 one cares who composed it. 
 
 Classical gaku is a thousand years old, two thousand 
 likely. It came over from China, back somewhere in 
 the sixth century, and no one knows how long it had 
 afflicted China before leaving for the Land of the Rising 
 Sun. It has not grown better ever since. 
 
 After watching our guests we understood how, now 
 and again, a gakunin dies of heart failure or of con- 
 gestion of the brain. The men strained so in squeezing 
 out the uta that their necks swelled and the veins stood 
 out as large as clothes-lines. Their eyes were blood- 
 shot, and their faces a dull brown purple. Each growled 
 and gagged and yapped until he reached the convulsion 
 point. One of the gakunin unlimbered his neck and 
 thrust it out like a chicken reaching for a bug, and the 
 blood receding, left his face the color of washed-out 
 leather. Then the other did the same; and they alter- 
 nated for a while, antiphonally, so to speak. I felt it 
 would be foresight to order coffins for Gardner and me 
 at once, but I could not speak. 
 
 When several gakunin unite in crime they pay no at- 
 tention to key or to harmony, for such things do not 
 concern gaku. They do, however, keep common time to- 
 gether — ^the only time the Japanese know anything 
 [153] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 about. Each " singer " strains and exhausts himself in- 
 dependently of the others, in whatever way he can pro- 
 duce most discord. Gardner estimated that with each 
 word the gakunin squeezed out he expended enough 
 energy to wind an eight-day clock. 
 
 As there was no notation for any but the classical 
 gaku, all gaku must be handed down by word of mouth 
 and learned from the living teacher. Wee girls sit 
 for hours each day before the instructor — usually a 
 woman past the flower of her youth, and no longer in 
 demand in the tea-houses — and practice at the " break," 
 the point just between the lower and higher register, 
 where all the possible raspiness of her little voice can be 
 brought to complete development. 
 
 All Japanese uta are rendered at the " break." This 
 is a cruel surprise to the foreigner when he first hears it, 
 for nothing further from his expectations well could 
 be when the dainty maid sits down before him, with a 
 winsome smile, her samisen resting on her knee, and her 
 taper fingers playing up and down the strings. He is 
 utterly unprepared for the series of weird, discordant 
 notes, which sound more like an incantation to " blue 
 devils " than what the interpreter assures you it is — a 
 love-song. 
 
 After this attempt to give the reader a suspicion of 
 what gaku is like, it need not be a surprise to hear that 
 both Professor Chamberlain and Koidzumi Yakumo 
 (Lafcadio Hearn) say that a Japanese Baj/^^reiith is un- 
 thinkable. Still there is some hope. The speaking voice 
 of the natives is soft and sweet. The vocal organs are 
 
 [ 154 ] 
 
MUSIC " 
 
 all there, and the ear does not appear to be abnormal, for 
 with the violin and the piano Japanese students studying 
 abroad have done good work. An effort is making now 
 to build up a school of foreign music in Tokio. 
 
 As yet, however, the general run of Japanese care 
 nothing for our music. It does not distress them, it is 
 true, as much of theirs does us, but they do not under- 
 stand it. It is ridiculous to them, as a charming young 
 European found out once in singing in a Japanese 
 theater. When she gave her high notes some of her 
 hearers laughed so hard they became ill and had to be 
 carried out by attendants who themselves were nearly as 
 helpless. 
 
 Those who would like to study the " music " of Japan, 
 and have not at hand the appalling facilities Gardner 
 and I enjoyed, cannot do better than get Mr. Piggatt's 
 beautifully illustrated volume, " The Music and Musical 
 Instruments of Japan." Mr. Piggatt finds in the native 
 instrumental music " some reflex of the national grace, 
 some prettily quaint flashes of melody and curious phrase 
 repetitions." 
 
 According to Confucius, China had something like 
 real music once, and Japan probably learned something 
 of this in early days. It is too bad she did not develop 
 it. The idea of the man who said " Let me write the 
 songs of a country and I care not who makes the laws " 
 is an old one. The great Chinese philosopher saw the 
 truth in it twenty-four centuries ago. He said, " Har- 
 mony has the power to draw heaven downwards towards 
 the earth. It inspires men to love the good and to do 
 
 [155] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 their duty. If one should desire to know whether a 
 kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, 
 the quality of its music shall furnish forth the an- 
 swers." 
 
 On this theory, what must a Boxer band be like? 
 
 [136] 
 
CHAPTER NINETEEN 
 
 BLOSSOMS ALWAYS IN BLOOM 
 
 SEVERAL times there were geisha in our theater 
 parties, and of course they were present at all our 
 feasts. No Japanese would think of giving a din- 
 ner without these innocent hetasrge, whether it were to be 
 in a public tea-house or in private dwelling. That is, of 
 course, unless his feast were in the foreign style. Then 
 the native buds and blossoms would be quite out of place. 
 They are indispensable for the native celebration, 
 though. In five years I never saw a gathering for 
 pleasure without them. They make everything go suc- 
 cssfuUy, so cleverly, and with so little friction. 
 
 The mission of the geisha is to make life merry. Her 
 whole education is to that end. She can dance and sing, 
 and play on all sorts of instruments ; she knows the best 
 stories and the latest jokes; she is quick at repartee; the 
 games she doesn't know are those that have not yet been 
 invented. She is as graceful and frolicsome as a kitten, 
 her manners are exquisite, and she is as beautiful as — 
 well, as beautiful as a geisha. Only dead folk can with- 
 stand her charms, and it is doubtful about them. Her 
 mirth is the best of tonics. It will mend one when any- 
 thing ails the health. She cures everything, that is to 
 say, but diseases of the heart. These the geisha has 
 been known to aggravate. In truth she doesn't need 
 
 [ 157 J 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 more than half a chance to put a heart in a terrible 
 way. 
 
 Now, in Japan everyone is always entertaining some- 
 one ! Few things happen that do not demand a feast. 
 Consequently the geisha is never out of sight for long. 
 She appears at the festal place soon after the earliest ar- 
 rivals, or about two hours before dinner is announced. 
 It is the custom in Japan for guests come ahead of time, 
 instead of on the minute or a little late. 
 
 The first sight you have of her is as she bows low at 
 the threshold, her hands palm down on the floor before 
 her, and her face pressed close against them. She says, 
 " Omina sama gomen kudasai," which means, " Honor- 
 able Mr. and Mrs. Everybody, august pardon deign." 
 " Irashai," call out some of the guests as they look up 
 from the chess boards or tiny packs of flower cards with 
 which they have been playing. Irashai means " wel- 
 come," and the geisha enter to ta,ke possession of the tea- 
 pots and to " jolly " everyone as they serve the gentle 
 stimulant. 
 
 Their entrance is not the last bit wabbly, as one 
 might think from the performances wherein foreign ac- 
 tresses try to represent the geisha. A singer's robes 
 (kimono) are quite too long for any gait like that. The 
 European stage-folk must have got their ideas of the 
 Japanese foot motions from a study of native women 
 dressed in European style, certainly not by watching 
 Yakko the Entrancing. Japanese women do walk 
 queerly when their feet are incased in high-heeled boots. 
 Their gracefulness is gone then, the glide that holds 
 
 [158] 
 
BLOSSOMS ALWAYS IN BLOOM 
 their sandals on becomes a shuffle, and the inward Swwing- 
 ing of the right foot, caused by the side pull of the 
 kimono, which clings so closely to the figure, develops 
 into pigeon-toe. 
 
 When a geisha has served tea all round, and had a 
 dainty bit of chaff with everyone, she glides off to the 
 kitchen to see that the sake, sashimi, the kwashi, and 
 other things are ready. She has an artist's eye, and 
 can serve raw fish — ^which sounds anything but appe- 
 tizing to Westerners — so daintily on a lacquered tray 
 that you simply have to try a little. 
 
 As soon as the portions are arranged, she glides back 
 to the guest-room with china bottles full of hot rice-beer. 
 She puts bowls of water full of tiny cups at intervals 
 about the room before the guests, who have ranged them- 
 selves along the border of the apartment. To each one 
 she offers a cup, and then pours out the sake with a 
 bow, saying, " Please condescend to drink one full." 
 With the wine come kwashi, that is different kind of 
 cakes, which she serves on little oblong brazen dishes. 
 It seems like beginning with the desert, but it is quite 
 the proper way in Japan. 
 
 While the guests are busy with this appetizer of 
 kwashi and sake, the geisha goes to the corner of the 
 room and puts on her evening robes. She does not go 
 out of the room to do this, for she is a lightning-change 
 artist, and as the daj^time garments are sliding from one 
 shoulder the clinging folds of the evening gown are upon 
 the other, and with a bit of a shrug and a wriggle the 
 thrush becomes a nightingale. 
 
 [159] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 An, assistant binds the robe with a broad sash, tied in 
 a square knot behind (which, by the way, is the original 
 bustle), and she comes purring among the guests once 
 more, bearing trays loaded with lacquered bowls and 
 china cups, containing soups and fish of many kinds, 
 until before each guest there is a fair foundation for an 
 art museum. Then she brings out her " samisen," a 
 three-stringed, square-headed " banjo," and, plucking 
 with her " bachi " or " plectrum,'' tunes it to the weird- 
 est key that sounds were ever known to give. The sad 
 melody of waters beating on a foreign shore as the surf- 
 sprite sings of loneliness — such is the spirit of the 
 geisha's song. 
 
 As she plays, her younger sister dances. Not as we 
 dance here, nor as any of the imitation geisha dance. 
 There is a little motion, but much harmony of line, 
 as she turns about and postures and wields her fan 
 so deftly that it seems to hover in the air as if it were a 
 moth circling above a candle-light. Her posing tells 
 more clearly than any words might do the story of her 
 elder sister's song. It is a love-story always. It could 
 not be anything else when a geisha sings it. It is not 
 " Chon Kino," however, unless she is a seaport geisha, 
 and a cheap geisha at that ; for " Chon Kino " is sung 
 in the lowest places only, and except in seaports there 
 are no low places in the whole Empire. 
 
 " Chon Kino " is for sailors, and men-of-war's men, 
 whom the natives call " Damyoureyes San." It is sung 
 by a class of girls unknown in Japan before foreigners 
 arrived. Its origin is not Japanese at all. It came from 
 
 [160] 
 
BLOSSOMS ALWAYS IN BLOOM 
 the early Dutch, who taught it to their temporary wives 
 at Deshima, Nagasaki. It is really part of a game of 
 forfeits, after the manner of " Simon says ' thumbs 
 up.' The usual forfeit after " Yokohama, Nagasaki, 
 Hakodate, hai," is to take off one piece of cloth. This 
 forfeiting continues until there is not anything more to 
 take off. Whoever has the most on at the end of the 
 game wins. 
 
 Geisha dancing is often pantomime, and where a half- 
 dozen of them dance together they form a theatrical 
 troop in themselves. They would be delighted with 
 their counterparts in foreign theaters, but they would be 
 amused, too, at the funny differences. Fluffy hair is 
 not Japanese; petticoats are not worn under kimono; 
 high heels would play sad havoc with the delicate tatami 
 that cover Japanese floors; waraji, or rough straw san- 
 dals, are not worn in the house except in the kitchen. 
 (Geisha either go barefoot or in tabi.) Kimono fold 
 round the body with the left side over and the right side 
 under, unless the wearer is a corpse. Real geisha never 
 hug each other nor even hold hands — ^much less kiss. 
 Geisha do not cross their hands over the breast when they 
 bow, they bend over as though giving a back for a game 
 of leapfrog. The hands are pressed against the knees 
 and the spine is horizontal. 
 
 And another thing is conspicuous by its absence in the 
 European imitations. It would be a sad thing for the 
 dear little girls if they had not even one smoke in a whole 
 evening ! Geisha carry pipes of gold and silver bronze, 
 with which they enjoy ippuku, one whiff from time to 
 [161] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 time, taking a pinch of mild tobacco from the. leather 
 pouch each one has slipped into her obe. 
 
 Moreover, it would surprise geisha to know that they 
 could be bought and sold easily, as the foreign play- 
 writers represent. A geisha is usually indentured to a 
 teacher when she is young, or perhaps the teacher pays 
 the parents for a release, and then adopts the child. 
 But even then she is not owned as a slave was owned. 
 Her contract, if she is indentured, stipulates a sum on 
 payment of which she can be released. Indenture papers 
 may change hands, they do, but there is no slavery. If 
 a man purchases a release he has no legal claim. All 
 depends upon the girPs willingness. If she is adopted, 
 and later runs away and marries, there is no legal cause 
 for her recovery. Indeed, she does this very thing occa- 
 sionally. Many a Japanese official of high rank has 
 been proud of such a helpmeet. 
 
 [162] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY 
 
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES 
 
 ONE of our amusements as we strolled about the 
 towns we visited was to study the signs along 
 the streets. There was human interest in them, 
 and a few of those we saw were unique. Yet in spite of 
 their oddity they are truly signs of the times; there is 
 some history in telling how they came to be, for they 
 are of the period when Japan was stepping from her old 
 clothes into her new. Feudalism with its daimiyos and 
 military retainers was disappearing, and so were caste 
 distinctions. The Government had just established a 
 system of schools on a German-American plan, with 
 much English and much military drill, and had set all 
 the youth of the nation to school together to gain West- 
 ern knowledge. Children of the four classes of society 
 — warriors, farmers, artisans, and merchants, and even 
 of the outcast " Etta," met on a common footing for the 
 first time. 
 
 Hasami San, the son of Kami San the barber, was the 
 equal of the son of the samurai, and the barber was 
 happ|^ in the fact. Kami San knew nothing whatever 
 of foreign ways. He was of the old regime, but he had 
 perfect faith in his Government, and if Government 
 favored foreign ways surely they were good. And this 
 English language, too, which all the schools were teach- 
 [163] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 ing, so that no matter where one went he would hear of 
 the great Peter Parley and his History, of Lord 
 Macaulay, and Clive, and Warren Hastings, of George 
 Washington and the cherry tree. Was not Hasami 
 studying about these things every day in classes side by 
 side with gentlefolk? Surely he must put up an Eng- 
 lish sign to show the world that his abode was the home 
 of learning as well as other houses, even those of great 
 pretensions. His sons should have the job — Hasami San, 
 who played with the children of fighting men and of the 
 owners of many rice-fields, who knew the characters for 
 writing Eigo " — as he called the foreign tongue, and 
 who even at this moment was in military uniform, drill- 
 ing to become a soldier in the army of the great Mikado. 
 The barber's nose was high. 
 
 Kami San talked of these things to his friend Hige 
 San while Hige was receiving a one cent's worth of 
 treatment. He had gone entirely over Hige San's face 
 with his thin narrow blade, even to the eyelids, and now 
 had hold of his friend's nose and was reaming the hair 
 from his nostrils with a tiny gouge-shaped razor, that 
 few but a native barber would dare to use. 
 
 " The times are changing," he said, as he rolled Hige's 
 head a little to the right, twirling his gouge, " and when 
 Hasami has leisure from his studies in the coming rest 
 days of the school, he shall show by the new knowledge 
 that I have the pride to make changes too, keeping by 
 the times closely in my business." 
 
 Here he lifted Hige San a little, saying, " Augustly 
 condescend honorable head to elevate," and began to 
 
 [ 164 ] 
 
SIGNS OF THE TIMES 
 shave the ears. He did so deftly and thoroughly, both 
 inside and out. When this was over, and he had taken a 
 run round the neck, he struck a tuning-fork and put the 
 handle, which had a knob on its end, first into one ear 
 and then into the other. The tuning-fork gives the 
 customer the impression that he can hear himself purr, 
 and so makes him happy. 
 
 Hige San arose shining and beaming, paid his two 
 sen [one cent], said that Kami San was augustly glori- 
 ously expertissimo and declared that an English sign 
 over the sliding-doors that made the front wall of the 
 shop would be an honor to the neighborhood, a sign, in 
 truth, befitting the new era which Tenshi Sama, the Son 
 of Heaven, had deigned to honor with the name of Meiji 
 — the Epoch of Enlightenment. 
 
 " Oh, it will be, of course, a most unworthy and dis- 
 graceful object, as is everything about my miserable 
 shop. But the new language from the wonderful people 
 of the West, that it is which I wish to place on high," 
 replied the polite Kami San. 
 
 The " rest days " Kami had referred to came soon, 
 and Hasami San had the leisure of his first vacation. 
 He had learned the alphabet, " aye, bee, shee, dee, ee, 
 efoo, jee," etc., and could tell a " dee " from an " oh " 
 if he took time to think and then made the right guess. 
 Besides, he knew many words and short sentences from 
 his first reader. He could not pronounce " el," it is 
 true ; the nearest he could come to it was " eroo," as is 
 the case with the general run of Japanese to-day; such 
 words as " literally " and " literary " are beyond them, 
 
 [165] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 but he could draw characters skillfully, English letters 
 being simple compared with the Chinese intricacies that 
 youngsters learn to write so deftly with a brush. 
 
 So when his father explained the sign idea to him he 
 set to work diligently, and by the time the holidays were 
 over he had produced an ornament over his father's 
 Chinese lettered sign that filled the old man's heart with 
 joy. It was in three lines, which he printed and shaded 
 beautifully. It read : 
 
 BARBER 
 TO SHAVE BEARD OR TO ORESS 
 HAIRS WAY 
 
 Kami San was the proudest man in town when he 
 gazed up at the completed work. He gave a dinner to 
 celebrate the event, and had all his friends in for the 
 day. Sake flowed. There was raw fish, boiled fish, 
 grilled fish, and cuttle-fish in profusion, and even the 
 hardy little fishes that submit to slicing up alive. In 
 the evening he had lanterns all over the front of his 
 shop, with special illumination for the sign. Geisha 
 strummed their samisens and danced and sang, and the 
 guests had so good a time that many of them forgot all 
 about going home until Kami San awoke them in the 
 morning. 
 
 The fame of the sign spread. Soon it was the envy 
 of every one of Kami San's brothers in the " hairs 
 way," and of the tradesfolk generally. Those of them 
 who had sons that had learned the " aye, bee, shee," 
 commanded them to do as Hasami had done, and those 
 
 [166] 
 
10 smw: BBhm « to ours^ 
 ■ ' MMmf- w&r. 
 
 
 
 
 '1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 SIGNS OF THE TIMES 
 
SIGNS OF THE TIMES 
 who had no sons sought to engage Hasami's services. 
 Kami San would not hear of his boy's neglecting his 
 studies of the wonderful Eigo, however, nor the military 
 drills. He was busy, too, he said, for customers flocked 
 to him, so that he had to hire two more assistants, and 
 he needed Hasami himself whenever the youngster had 
 any spare time. 
 
 He said to Hige San one day, as he was shaving care- 
 fully over the tip of his friend's nose and giving a curve 
 deftly to his eyebrows, that he knew when the honorable 
 good thing came his way ; he was a respecter of signs and 
 would not do anything to make a good one common. 
 Except that his son had explained to him by means of a 
 dictionary what his sign signified, he did not know its 
 meaning, but its influence as it shone down on the pass- 
 ing throng was agreeable to his ideas, and he proposed 
 not to meddle with it. • 
 
 Kami San's lack of assistance did not hinder matters 
 much, however. The sign craze was on, and it lasted 
 longer than the rabbit craze. But then the Government 
 put a stop to that, whereas it has never interfered with 
 signs. English lettering appeared in Yokohama, Tokio, 
 Nagasaki, Hakodate, Kobe, Kiyoto, and hundreds of 
 other places, even at the tea-houses along the great high- 
 ways where the jin-riki-sha men stopped for a sip of tea 
 and a whiff from their tiny pipes, as this one, for 
 example : 
 
 " The tas are restful and for sharpen the minds." 
 And another: "The Genuinely bier buy the health 
 for drink." 
 
 [167] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 And a third : " Of smokes our tobacco is preasure to 
 our Tongue and give the Healthiness to Hers and Hes ! 
 Also All People by It." 
 
 These little notices in unexpected places relieved the 
 monotony of a journey on a dull day. Their passing 
 will leave a void. Some of them have disappeared 
 already now that the railway has come, and the old Kaido 
 with their inns do little of their former business. But 
 those in the towns remain, except where they were, like 
 the language, of the " Damyoureyes San," far too frank. 
 The camera has caught them, and should Kami San and 
 Hasami San be taken up in a chariot of fire, their work 
 would live. An " Eta " who was once an outcast, but 
 is now " Heimin," that is, a member of the great class 
 that includes all but officials and nobles, expanded under 
 the radiant announcement over the entrance of his leather 
 shop: 
 
 To Trade Hair-Skin Sort Shop- 
 
 An entomologist of some repute in Yokohama, who 
 supplied collectors of insects and also silk raisers with 
 their " seeds," ornamented the front of his place of busi- 
 ness with his name and the words : 
 
 Butterfly and Worm Merchants* 
 
 (Does the plural imply that this man has been leading 
 a double lite?) 
 
 The man who safeguards against sun and rain de- 
 clared the fact publicly as follows: 
 A Shop the Kind of Parasol or Umbrella and 
 Sticks. 
 [ 168 ] 
 
SIGNS OF THE TIMES 
 and either of " parasol " or of " umbrella and sticks " 
 he had great variety. 
 
 Japan looked askance at butchers in the early days of 
 the new order. Beef and pork were taboo pretty well 
 all over the country. Even now it is not easy to get 
 animal food in the small villages of the interior, where 
 some Buddhist priests still declare war against flesh and 
 wine. But medical advice following a cholera scare has 
 had much influence, so that one may see this sign to-day 
 exposed boldly to view over a shop : 
 
 COWMEAT AND PiGMEAT. 
 
 In a country where there has been much raw fish, espe- 
 cially salmon, and not particularly good drainage until 
 William Kinimond Burton took to teaching it sanitation, 
 troublesome ailments would occur. To one of these Mr. 
 Swiftriver had turned his attention with success. His 
 sign read as one straight line : 
 
 Tape- Worm Swiftriver Shop 
 
 Mr. Pinecape, who dealt in coals, took the public into 
 his confidence and confessed the secret of his success. 
 Beneath his name and address are these two lines : 
 
 Honest, Industorious make the Cont- 
 inual Prosperity. 
 
 Mr. Seedsmall, who dealt in so-called temperance 
 drinks, which the Japanese call " gun-water because 
 of the " pop," got hold of a dictionary in which someone 
 had translated the names of his beverages into Japanese 
 phonetic equivalents. These Japanese syllables do not 
 
 [169] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 conform with extreme nicety to English sounds, prin- 
 cipally because none of them ends in a consonant, but 
 always in a vowel, and none of them has the sound of 
 " 1 " in it. This is the Enghsh part of SeedsmalFs sign : 
 Ramune Souda Sasupre Zinzinbiya Jinjyae-l, 
 
 which one sees at a glance to mean Lemon Soda, Sars- 
 aparilla. Ginger Beer and Ginger Ale. 
 
 The brilliancy of official uniforms attracted the atten- 
 tion of a tailor, and he sought to make business amongst 
 the men of the army and navy and the Government. 
 His sign read : 
 
 Gold Tail Shop. 
 
 Posterior decoration, apparently, was his specialty. 
 
 Another sign, that of a tobacco merchant on Ginza, 
 the Broadway of Tokio, was probably the best known 
 in the capital for half a dozen years. It was not amus- 
 ing, for it merely declared the maker's brand and where 
 one could find it on sale, but it was ubiquitous. The 
 merchant had taken the contract to water the city's 
 streets from one end to the other on all dry days the 
 year round. The brilliant red carts his coolies pulled 
 about told everyone that in the tobacco business Mr. 
 Pinemountain of the Ginza was supreme. 
 
 And so one might go on indefinitely quoting signs, 
 labels on bottles and cigarette packages, the covers of 
 books, and what not, all of them strange and some of 
 them incomprehensible, yet all of them signs of the effort 
 of Old Japan to become New Japan, an effort that has 
 been triumphant. 
 
 [170] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE 
 
 BOWS AND BALLOTS 
 
 GARDNER and I had the good fortune to be in 
 - Japan at the time of the first election the coun- 
 try ever had. It passed off with the greatest 
 decorum and the absence of anything approaching osten- 
 tation, or even excitement, but it was not without some 
 amusing aspects. 
 
 One wonders how the officials stand the strain. Elec- 
 tion inspectors, for instance, must have rubber backs. 
 They need them, for on voting days they have, at the 
 lowest calculation, five hundred and twenty thousand 
 bows to make, and now the franchise has been extended 
 they will soon have to "ojigi" five times as often. 
 That is a great deal of hinge-work, and demands 
 elasticity and lubrication, especially as ojigi does not 
 mean a mere nod of the head. To be done properly, 
 the body must double at the hips, folding after the 
 manner of a two-foot rule. The " tachiainin," there- 
 fore, as the inspectors are called, no matter how auto- 
 matic their early training may have made them, have no 
 easy work on balloting days. When night comes, and 
 the polls have closed, they climb into their jin-riki-shas 
 and go home, to be shampooed by some blind " amma " 
 and restored to life. 
 
 Five hundred and twenty thousand bows is a conserva- 
 [ 171 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 tive estimate. It allows each voter only one ojigi, which 
 is ridiculously low, for it is hardly conceivable that a 
 voter should approach the inspectors who are seated 
 behind the ballot boxes with less than half a dozen fold- 
 ings, and etiquette naturally demands that the inspectors 
 should fold, too. It is safe to allow three ojigi for each 
 voter, and to declare boldly that every general election 
 day in Japan has witnessed inspectorial doubling to the 
 extent of one million five hundred thousand, or enough 
 to supply the most energetic saint with genuflections for 
 a lifetime. The new franchise, by similar reasoning, 
 implies seven million five hundred thousand bows. Allow- 
 ing a hundred foot-pounds to a bow, the energy folded 
 off^ into space on voting days is found to be seventy-five 
 million foot-pounds; or two thousand two hundred and 
 seventy-two horse-power. 
 
 It costs something to be polite, and it takes time ; but 
 time is plentiful in the Land of the Rising Sun. A 
 Japanese needs about a quarter of a minute to ojigi. 
 At this rate one man would be occupied continuously for 
 345 years 6 months and 14 days if he were to do all the 
 folding himself. As Japanese draw in the breath with 
 a sucking sound when they bow, a person in a room ad- 
 joining the one where votes are cast might think from 
 the sound, if he did not see, that a file of geese were 
 marching through. 
 
 Japan's population is something over 43,000,000. 
 In area the Empire is about a quarter again as large as 
 the British Isles, and speaking roughly it has one-third 
 more of population. Only about twelve per cent, of this 
 
 [ 172 ] 
 
BOWS AND BALLOTS 
 
 land is suitable for cultivation. The people, therefore, 
 are crowded together, and large land-holdings are not 
 numerous. This accounts in some measure for the few 
 voters in Japan at present, because the franchise was 
 limited to men at least twenty-five years old, who paid 
 direct taxes on land or on incomes of at least fifteen 
 yen ($7.50). 
 
 As an instance of a result of the. operation of this 
 law, Tokio, the capital, with a population of 2,000,000, 
 has had only 7000 voters, or one to every 285 of the 
 inhabitants. Almost all of the men entitled to vote have 
 availed themselves of the privilege. The " kikensha," 
 or " stay-at-homes,'' have been rare when compared to 
 those in some of the elections here in America and Eng- 
 land. 
 
 Voting is a semi-private, semi-public act, performed 
 with much solemnity and no disorder. No one besides 
 the voter and the inspectors is allowed in the polling 
 booth while the function is in progress. The inspectors 
 are the Mayor, or the headman of the district, and two 
 or four other men chosen by him. They may be all of 
 the same political faith, and, if inclined to do so, could 
 manipulate the ballots to their own advantage materially. 
 The law says nothing about bi-partisan Inspection 
 Boards. 
 
 Another opportunity these officials have to help their 
 friends along is in advising the voter how to vote. They 
 may even fill out the ballot for him, if he does not wish 
 to do it himself. His education may not extend to 
 Chinese characters, and not caring to use the humble 
 
 [173] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 syllabic form, he begs the inspectors, with many fold- 
 ings, to do the names of the candidates for him in 
 Chinese. 
 
 The ballot-box is almost an idol in the eyes of the 
 newly enfranchised natives. Indeed, they approach it 
 with a reverence beyond that accorded to the temple 
 images of Buddha. They are used to Buddha's images, 
 but the ballot-box is still mysterious. In the eyes of the 
 older natives it is still a fearful matter for a private 
 citizen to take it upon himself to make suggestions to 
 the Government. They remember that in former days 
 they might have been punished by death. A ballot is 
 certainly a suggestion, and so the old men stand in awe 
 of it.^ 
 
 iThere had been a box for private petitions which was a means of 
 communication, at one time in the olden days, directly between the 
 Shogun and the humblest of his subjects. It seems to have been 
 essentially for private and personal appeals, however, and not 
 for the purpose of making suggestions to the government regarding 
 matters of state. Such suggestions would lead to the extreme 
 penalty whenever made. 
 
 [m] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 
 
 THE FLOWERS OF TOKIO 
 
 IT rained fire one night when we were m the capital. 
 The air was full of fl^'ing shingles all ablaze. A 
 beautiful sight to those with tile roofs over them, 
 but hardly so if one were under thatch. " Tokio no 
 hana," said Okashi, who had appeared the day before 
 to ascertain our whereabouts. Translated literally, 
 " Tokio no hana " means " Tokio's blossoms," translated 
 freely, it means " fire." Fires are the flowers of Tokio. 
 Any Japanese carpenter will tell you that, and the 
 bigger the blossom is the better he likes it, for the more 
 work there will be for him. 
 
 The carpenter ranks high in the artisan class, and in 
 the popular mind Daiku San, as he is called, is still above 
 the farmer, next to samurai, and far above the merchant. 
 He is therefore an important man, and when he is happy 
 it is well to rejoice with him. Do not be vexed if you 
 find him purring at your front gate as you rush out to 
 notify the nearest policeman that your house is on fire. 
 Rather tell him where the sake is, and beg iiim to help 
 himself and to take home what he does not drink as a 
 present to his family. 
 
 He will do his prettiest in building a new house for 
 you a few days later, and describe you to his co-laborers 
 as a man of noble birth. Thus stimulated, the product 
 [175] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 of their labor will be excellent, and you will stand well 
 with the community. In Tokio it is expected that a 
 house will burn down about once in seven years (in some 
 sections once in three years was the rule). There are 
 plenty of exceptions, but rents are calculated on this 
 basis. The owner reckons to get his money back with 
 interest in that time, and then is quite ready to build 
 anew. 
 
 A large fire in Tokio means good times, and a picnic 
 always. The first thing a man does when he is burned 
 out is to banquet all his friends. His credit is good 
 under the circumstances, and a lack of ready cash is no 
 hindrance to festivity. The more houses he has lost the 
 greater banquet he will serve, and Daiku San will be 
 much in evidence. He will assist in opening a koku of 
 sake with generous dexterity, and will stand by till the 
 last drop of the forty gallons has been distributed. He 
 will aid in the distribution of balls of rice, neatly rolled 
 up in jackets of raw fish, assuring each guest in turn 
 that there is nothing like the fires that bloom in the 
 spring, and that in Tokio it is always spring. 
 
 Figures do not lie, but in statements about fires in 
 Japan they are misleading. A " griffin reading in the 
 Mail of a fire of one hundred houses, would think it a 
 conflagration; but nothing less than one thousand is a 
 conflagration in the Mikado's Empire, and a thousand 
 make only a small one. 
 
 Bishop Williams of the American Episcopal Church 
 looked out of his study window one pleasant evening 
 watching a fire two miles away, and then retired to dream 
 
 [ 176 ] 
 
THE FLOWERS OP TOKIO 
 
 that the inevitable festivities of the morrow were inter- 
 fering with his mission services. Three hours later his 
 boy aroused him with the words, " Conflagration's wrath 
 encroaches precipitately," and the good Bishop escaped 
 in a robe not prescribed by canon. His dreams were all 
 too true. Eighteen thousand houses disappeared in 
 smoke, and Tokio was on a spree for two weeks. The 
 greatest fire of all was away back in 1557, when over 
 one hundred thousand people lost their lives. 
 
 Houses in Japan, however, signify less than in Eng- 
 land. They are really roofs on pegs. The walls are 
 sliding doors — " amado " on the outside, along the outer 
 edge of the " engawa " or verandas; " shoji " along the 
 inner edge, which shut off the engawa from the living- 
 rooms; and " karakami " or fusuma, which are the divi- 
 sions between living-rooms. All these can be lifted out 
 of their grooves easily and carried off^. Even the tatami 
 are not fastened down. They hold their place without 
 nails or other fastening because they fit the floor-space 
 exactly, and there is not room for them to move, and 
 they can be hurried away if there is a half -hour's 
 warning. 
 
 All but the poorest houses have " kura," alleged fire- 
 proof buildings, near at hand, into which everything of 
 value may be stored away. These kura are of mud, 
 plaster, and tile, and look to be impervious to heat ; but 
 the radiance of " Tokio no hana " is often too much for 
 them, and they crumble into dust. 
 
 The Japanese fire engine is used to throw water on the 
 firemeUj, not on the fire. That would be an utter waste. 
 
 [ 177 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Few of the pumps, which generally are worked by man 
 power, throw more of a stream than ordinary garden 
 hose^ — ^just about enough to keep the firemen soppy and 
 steaming. 
 
 With his heavily padded " kimono," short in the skirt 
 and bound to his waist, like a Norfolk jacket, his com- 
 bination of tights and leggings, his blue mitts and 
 pointed hood, and his long, barbed pole, Hitashi, the 
 fireman, prances about in the smoke and the glare of the 
 flames, pulling down everything to clear a path to lee- 
 ward and so starve the fire. He looks like a devil, but 
 he is only an acrobat. 
 
 Whenever there is a lull he will perform on a bamboo 
 ladder — standing on his head on the top rung, and doing 
 other difficult feats. He will be in for the picnic, too, 
 along with the carpenter. On January 4 each year the 
 firemen give a grand parade in Tokio, and do their clever 
 tricks at frequent halting-places along the route. 
 
 The combination of kerosene lamp and earthquake 
 produces many " Tokio no hana " and similar blossoms 
 in other parts of Japan. Instinctively everyone runs to 
 the lamps when the house begins to shake. Another 
 cause of fire is the lucifer match, still in use among the 
 poorer people. 
 
 A record of Tokio fires in the last two hundred and 
 seventy years shows the district where they are most 
 prevalent. This is called the fire district, and within its 
 boundary shingle roofs are prohibited. Tin roofs are 
 not yet introduced. But Tokio's future regarding her 
 famous blossoms will be much safer, if less picturesque, 
 
 [178] 
 
THE FLOWERS OF TOKIO 
 thanks to the excellent work done by the late Professor 
 W. K. Burton of the Japanese Home Office, who devised 
 an excellent system of waterworks, with extensive pipe- 
 lines and frequent hydrants. The foreign style of fire 
 engine has appeared also, with a stream strong enough 
 to destroy the average native house more quickly than 
 the blossom of Tokio, working in combination with the 
 steaming acrobat. This combination may be a legend 
 some day, but it is still in evidence. 
 
 [179] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE 
 
 IN TRADE 
 
 IT was odd to us that the " shraff should be in- 
 variably Chinese, but he was. Whenever we had 
 occasion to call at a foreign counting-house in 
 Yokohama, Nagasaki, Kobe, or wherever it might be, 
 the man that counted the money was a long-cued Celes- 
 tial in flowing robes, never a short-haired, frock-coated 
 subject of the Mikado. And this in Japan ! — where the 
 natives had held all China in contempt until they 
 whipped her so soundly and speedily that the contempt 
 changed into pity ! 
 
 " Why is it? " asked Gardner. " Can't Japanese 
 count .^^ " 
 
 Okashi said they could count well enough, but that 
 Japanese gentlemen (samurai like himself) abhorred the 
 touch of money, and no other class could be trusted to 
 count it honestly. 
 
 We knew that our precious landlord's dislike of the 
 medium of exchange would not allow money to remain 
 near him if there were any possible way of getting rid 
 of it, but we did not know that he could count. There 
 was truth in what he said, however. His statement 
 merely lacked comprehensiveness. 
 
 When Gardner asked an English friend about the 
 shraff s, the man replied: 
 
 [180] 
 
IN TRADE 
 
 Yes, we have the Chinaman every time, if we can 
 get him. We can trust him. We can't trust the 
 natives. We have tried them and it doesn't do. Come 
 over to the go-downs and I'll show you something. 
 
 " There," he said, when we had reached the ware- 
 houses, " those three buildings are half- full of stuff 
 one or other of us has got from home, on positive orders. 
 They would be full up, if we had not given a lot of 
 machinery away to make room for other goods that had 
 to come in out of the rain. The men who gave us the 
 orders are among the richest merchants in Yokohama, 
 but while the goods were on the way they changed their 
 minds, or exchange went against them. That left the 
 orders on our hands. 
 
 " Now a Chinaman would not have treated us that 
 way. He would take what he had ordered, even if he 
 lost by it, because he would be unwilling to ' lose his 
 face ' — ^that is, his credit. 
 
 " When I was first over, a Japanese merchant whom I 
 had met several times pleasantly, and had had some 
 small business dealings with in London, wanted a thou- 
 sand bolts of flannel. I gave him the price, which he 
 said was satisfactory, and then I cabled for the goods. 
 A few days later he came in and said he wanted a dozen 
 cows. I told him that cows weren't much in my line, 
 but I knew an agent in Seattle who could get him twelve 
 hundred if he wished. We talked over the price he was 
 willing to pay, and incidentally I remarked that I had re- 
 ceived word from home that the flannel was on the 
 way, 
 
 [ 181 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 " ' Yes,' he said ; ' but now I do not wish flannel ; I 
 need cows.' 
 
 " ' You do not mean cows instead of flannel? ' 
 " ' Yes.' 
 
 " ' But I have ordered the flannel. It is already on 
 the way. It is too late to change.' 
 
 " ' Probably that may be so,' he replied, ' but as I do 
 not desire the flannel I hope you will obtain cows in- 
 stead.' 
 
 " I did not order cows, but the flannel came promptly 
 enough. I have part of it still. The rest I sold at a 
 loss of twenty-five per cent, to the very man I had ordered 
 it for in the first place. No one else would touch it. 
 To all that I said to him he only answered, ' Shikataga 
 nai,' which means ' doing way is not,' — or, ' the joke is 
 on you.' It was a good lesson for me, just what I needed 
 to fit me for business over here. Why, my present part- 
 ner has been here twenty-five years and says he hasn't 
 found a man he can trust yet^ — ^that is, among the 
 natives. 
 
 " Here's a good instance, right here in your Things 
 Japanese. I knew the parties, and Professor Cham- 
 berlain has stated the case accurately. 
 
 " Kimura is rich. He used to be the manager of the 
 Yokohama Specie Bank. When this happened he was 
 a director, and even now he is president of the Yokohama 
 Guild. So you can see his Japanese standing is good. 
 Just let me read you this. It is a fair sample: 
 
 " ' May 29, 1894. Messrs. Comes & Co., of Yoko- 
 hama, sold to Mr. Kimura Reimon, for delivering in 
 
 [ 182 ] 
 
IN TRADE 
 September and October, one hundred bales of yarn, 
 ' Purple Hokuroku ' quality, but to be marked with a red 
 ticket instead of a purple. On arrival of the goods, 
 Mr. Kimura refused to take delivery on the plea of 
 difference of color in the ticket. These tickets are the 
 ordinary marks the trade uses in distinguishing grades 
 and qualities. 
 
 " Finding it impossible to get him to make a settle- 
 ment of any kind, Messrs. Cornes & Co. decided to take 
 the case into court; but, before doing so, they, for 
 reasons peculiar to this country, placed a statement of 
 the dispute before the Yarn Traders' Guild of Yoko- 
 hama. This body replied that another application 
 should be made by the firm to Mr. Kimura, failing which 
 it would endeavor to bring the two parties together, and, 
 failing that again, the case might be filed. Upon this 
 Mr. Kimura was again approached. He asked for time 
 to consider, and was given until March 10. No reply 
 having been received by March 15, and Messrs. Cornes 
 being anxious to avoid litigation, they requested the per- 
 sonal intervention of three prominent members of the 
 Guild. But Mr. Kimura refused even to discuss the 
 matter with them. The case was at length taken into 
 court. 
 
 " ' After several hearings, beginning on May 16, 
 before Judge Akiyama and two assistants, judgment 
 was postponed at the request of defendant till July 9. 
 Three days before this term, namely, on July 6, the 
 standing committee of the Guild waited on the foreign 
 firm to inform them that unless they agreed to withdraw 
 
 [ 183 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 the suit and accept as a settlement the dehvery of thirty- 
 five bales (canceling the sale of the remaining sixty-five 
 bales) at contract price, and waive all charges, no dealer 
 would he allowed to call at their office. Messrs. Cornes 
 declined these terms, but on the following day (July 7) 
 offered to withdraw the suit, provided Mr. Kimura would 
 take delivery of fifty bales at contract price, and pay 
 half interest and fire assurance. These offers the Guild 
 declined. Judgment was delivered on July 9 to the 
 following effect: 
 
 " ' Defendant to take delivery of the hundred bales, 
 and to pay the sum of $29,528.59, together with in- 
 surance ($837.70), interest ($139.61), and go-down 
 rent ($112), minus ninety days usually allowed pending 
 delivery.' 
 
 " ' On July 18 a general meeting of the Yokohama 
 Guild was held, with the result that Mr. Kimura's action 
 was fully indorsed, and Messrs. Cornes condemned to a 
 boycott in which the dealers in Tokio, Nagoya, and other 
 important towns were to be asked to join. The next 
 incident was a visit to Messrs. Comes by representatives 
 of the Tokio Guild, who came to say that they were deter- 
 mined to settle the dispute, and that unless their arbitra- 
 tion were accepted they would join the boycott. Messrs. 
 Cornes, having previously ascertained from an eminent 
 Japanese lawyer that Japanese law could afford them no 
 redress, were compelled to accept the Tokio Guild's offer 
 of arbitration, and were thereupon informed that Mr. 
 Kimura would take delivery within sixty days of the 
 hundred bales at $93^ per picul, the foreign firm to 
 
 [ 184 ] 
 
IN TRADE 
 
 pay their own legal expenses. This, which meant a loss 
 of over $2500, had perforce to be submitted to.' 
 
 " Now that is the sort of thing that happens every 
 time a foreigner tries to force a native. The native has 
 all the advantage on his side, and he uses it." 
 
 " Well, why don't you merchants unite against the 
 Guild — ^boycott the boy cotters.^ " asked Gardner. 
 
 " There are too many kinds of us," was the reply, 
 " and only one kind of native. You can't do much 
 uniting in a community that is Chinese, English, Ameri- 
 can, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, 
 Indian, Parsee, and what not. Even the white for- 
 eigners can't keep together. If we were only English 
 and Americans we could accomplish something, but when 
 it comes to getting Frenchmen to stand shoulder to 
 shoulder with Germans — ausgespielt! " 
 
 We got pretty much the same story from every mer- 
 chant that we spoke to. Some of them would allow the 
 Japanese merchants no sense of business decency what- 
 ever, while others said it was not so much actual dis- 
 honesty as total ignorance of the principles of trade, and 
 no idea of the value of credit. 
 
 The Japanese, on the other hand, told us that it was 
 not their fault, for they had not enough capital to take 
 great risks or to wait long for things to come from 
 Europe. One man said: 
 
 " It is very hard to take things that we do not need. 
 It is not our fault that the foreign merchant has to order 
 things from a long way off. Nor is it our fault if ex- 
 change varies. Why should we lose money by such 
 [185] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 causes? Then, too, when we began to trade with for- 
 eigners they sold us many worthless things. We could 
 not judge values of imports in the early days of foreign 
 intercourse. We trusted foreign merchants, and they 
 took advantage of our ignorance. Now they are suffer- 
 ing from the bad examples they set us." 
 
 It is probably true that those samurai who tried to 
 be merchants after the break-up of the feudal system 
 were soon in a bad way. They trusted foreign agents 
 implicitly, with sad results. It was not only the for- 
 eigner, however. Merchants of their own race treated 
 them badly. There have been many queer instances of 
 these business methods. Some of them show that a 
 native can " do " another native as complacently as he 
 can do a foreigner. One lager beer brewing company, 
 for instance, which does an enormous business, abstained 
 a long time from paying dividends because it needed the 
 money for bottles which had to be imported. The direc- 
 tors, as individuals, bought the bottles and sold them to 
 the company. The stockholders paid, and the individ- 
 ual directors pocketed the profits, which quite ate up all 
 chance for dividends. A native told us that the bottle 
 business was very pleasant, the net gain being about 
 six hundred per cent. 
 
 Another lot of directors who were pretty well under 
 the control of one of the wealthy merchants put up a 
 hat factory under American supervision, and fitted it 
 with the best English machinery. The merchant re- 
 ceived $27.50 for every $5 he spent for the machinery, 
 — so the superintendent told us. The merchant had the 
 
 [ 186 ] 
 
IN TRADE 
 advantage of knowing what machinery was worth, while 
 the stockholders to whom he sold it had no idea at all. 
 Business was dull on account of the low duty on imported 
 hats, so the merchant made less money than he had hoped. 
 He must devise a plan. What his plan was none ex- 
 cept himself knows, but one night the factory burned 
 down. 
 
 The fire was a good example of " Tokio no hana," for 
 the whole force of working men and women had a grand 
 picnic by the ruins the next day. There was no limit 
 to the sake and the rice and fish, and other things that 
 Japanese picnickers are fond of. Then the directors 
 ordered a new set of machines from England, and 
 charged the company seven prices instead of five. 
 
 Japanese courts recognize the lack of business sense 
 and training on the part of those who appear before 
 them, and deal paternally with the contestants. When a 
 breach of contract comes up for investigation, the inter- 
 ested parties go over the contracts and agreements care- 
 fully and explain every item to the best of their ability. 
 Then the court studies the conditions under which the 
 contract would needs be carried out if the contractor 
 should go on with his work. If it finds no obstacle in the 
 way of fulfillment, it decides against the contractor ; but 
 if it finds the contractor had miscalculated, and would 
 lose money were he to go on with the work, it decides for 
 him, as manifestly it would be a hardship were he forced 
 to work without profit. 
 
 The court communicates with the man who let the 
 contract, saying, " Oki no doku Sama " and " Shikata 
 
 [187] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 ga nai " most graciously. Then it suggests that he 
 make a new contract and give the other party a better 
 chance. This is a method of procedure hardly calcu- 
 lated to develop business acumen or the courage that is 
 so often necessary for successful enterprise. 
 
 Feudalism had much to do with the disgrace attach- 
 ing to trade — feudalism and the policy of isolation, 
 which early missionary meddling with Japanese state 
 affairs forced upon the country early in the seventeenth 
 century. The Shogun, Tokugawa lyeyasu, was in con- 
 trol then. He discovered that the Dominicans and Fran- 
 ciscans had political as well as spiritual ends in view. 
 He believed they were advance agents of Spain and Por- 
 tugal, and, being adverse to having Japan become the 
 possession of a foreign power, he cleared the country of 
 Christians, though only after furious persecutions, and 
 then shut it up. One Dutch ship a year visited Naga- 
 saki, and that was the extent of Japan's foreign inter- 
 course until Commodore Perry's arrival in 1853. 
 
 During these years, whatever Japan may have known 
 of foreign business ways she naturally forgot, while at 
 the same time the class organization of society continued. 
 The feudal idea was that the only honorable men, except 
 scholars and some priests, were military. The merchant 
 was at the foot of the social ladder. He had almost no 
 rights at all. Politically he was a cipher. He did not 
 venture to call his life his own. His wit and his cunning 
 were all he could depend upon. If he had a dispute with 
 samurai, and the samurai cut him down, there would be 
 one less merchant for the next census to report ; the law 
 
 [188] 
 
IN TRADE 
 would not call a member of the military class to account 
 for trying his sword on a mere tradesman ; and anyway 
 merchants should be patient and respectful. So it was 
 that society, having denied honor to merchants for many 
 centuries, its possession became valueless, and apprecia- 
 tion of it disappeared. 
 
 Now, however, there is a serious attempt at improve- 
 ment, as we learned in talking to one of the leading men 
 in the Japanese Consular service. Gardner had quoted 
 the Cornes-Kimura incident, and the Consul had deplored 
 the conditions that made such a thing possible. 
 
 " We are working hard," he said, " to show merchants 
 the value of credit. I think the fact that the Chinese 
 have good credit is rather shaming our folk into better 
 methods. I sometimes quote to them what one of the 
 Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation's man- 
 agers said in favor of the Chinese. He puts them quite 
 at the top of the list of those who are trustworthy. He 
 told me that in the Shanghai Bank the business with 
 Chinese in twenty-five years amounted to over $1,600,- 
 000,000, and that there had never been a def alcation, so 
 far as he knew. I show our merchants how much more 
 business they would do if they had credit, and I make a 
 point of having the Japanese merchants abroad give 
 data from time to time to illustrate foreign business 
 methods. Besides this, the Minister of Agriculture and 
 Commerce is sending out ' Jitsu Renshiu Sei,' or prac- 
 tical trade students, whose business it is to study markets 
 all over the world, and report to the various Chambers 
 of Commerce in Japan. These students are under the 
 [189] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 consuls in various parts of the world, and really supple- 
 ment their work. 
 
 " This has helped us to develop our manufactures on 
 paying lines, and has already increased the nation's 
 wealth. With every recommendation from these sources 
 the minister has coupled the strongest possible plea for 
 fair and honorable commercial dealing, and the various 
 Chambers are awaking to the fact that credit is a most 
 desirable asset.'' 
 
 One reason to help explain the unfortunate relations 
 between native and foreign merchants is mutual misun- 
 derstanding. From the beginning of intercourse each 
 has not had a clear idea of the other's ways in business. 
 The Japanese looks upon the foreigner as harsh, and the 
 foreigner looks upon the native as a rogue. Until for- 
 eigners arrived the Japanese knew nothing at all of busi- 
 ness methods of the world outside. As they slowly 
 learned a little they found them different from their 
 own — incomprehensibly different. The Japanese in 
 their own country had dealt with friends mostly, or at 
 least with acquaintances. 
 
 It was the custom for friend to oblige friend, and even 
 mere acquaintances did business with some little cere- 
 mony of courtesy and politeness, and avoided brusque- 
 ness as much as possible. Generally they did not press 
 too hard if the friend's need were apparent. They modi- 
 fied the contract or postoned the date of payment. It 
 was courtesy to do so, and even acquaintances expected 
 it. Custom and courtesy determined their actions. 
 
 That a contract should be enforced from an idea of 
 [ 190 ] 
 
IN TRADE 
 right that was purely abstract did not occur to them. 
 An abstract idea of right that produced concrete discom- 
 fort and unhappiness was a thing they did not and could 
 not approve. That a man should do a thing merely 
 because he said so, when by so doing he would cause per- 
 sons to suffer, was not and is not in the Japanese code. 
 This is one difference between the Western and the 
 Eastern idea of right. 
 
 Another cause of the wrath of travelers and even of 
 foreign residents in Japan is that they often have to 
 pay more for an article than would a native. In the 
 first place, the native takes it that foreigners are rich. 
 As a rule they live more expensively than he, therefore 
 they must be rich, and if they are rich they should pay. 
 For according to the Japanese idea it is not right that 
 rich and poor should pay alike. There may be one law 
 for rich and poor, but not one price. It is best in their 
 view to sell to the poor man for little or no profit, and 
 then to make up for this by charging the wealthy man 
 more. The wealthy can stand it. If they object they 
 are not nice. Their hearts are hard. 
 
 This, too, explains how it is that in some shops, even 
 now, in Japan, the price per piece increases as a larger 
 number of pieces is asked for. If you ask the price of 
 a cup you may be told that it will cost a cent, but if you 
 say you wish for one hundred the price per cup will be 
 a cent and a half. The Japanese mind reasons that if a 
 man wants a hundred cups he must be able to pay more 
 than if he wishes for only one. 
 
 It is not business, but it is not miles away from some 
 [191] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 of the ideas of the Founder of Christianity. Nor is it 
 just to say that the idea of credit did not exist in feudal 
 Japan. There was good faith as the Japanese under- 
 stood it. The commercial regulations were minute, ex- 
 acting, and even severe in the punishment of roguery. 
 They were too restrictive, in fact, for they went far to 
 hinder trade between one province and another, and ham- 
 pered breadth of view and wide knowledge, keeping the 
 dealers confined to little groups, one might almost say. 
 
 But in spite of all this, one house, the Mitsu Bishi, 
 arose to eminence and obtained Government recognition, 
 so that it did much business for the state. Socially it 
 was far from the foot of the ladder where the common 
 run of merchants were. But when the foreigner ap- 
 peared the Mitsu Bishi did not wish to deal with him, 
 simply because it had no experience of foreign methods. 
 It was only on the direct command of the Government 
 that the company came into commercial relations with 
 the " Outside Barbarians.'^ The student of Feudal 
 Japan should look to the career of the Mitsu Bishi com- 
 pany for much enlightenment. 
 
 [192] 
 
UNIVERSI^V ,nu»NOts 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 
 
 DIVING BELLES 
 
 T IS odd that in a country where woman counts for 
 so little there should be some households in which 
 she rules supreme. 
 
 Our New Woman would faint with envy if she could 
 see the way some of her Japanese sisters run things in 
 their homes," said Gardner in one of his discourses. He 
 was talking to some globe-trotters at the Club Hotel one 
 day. " She would realize that with all her bloomers, 
 cigarettes, canes, and masculine shirt fronts, she is yet 
 so far from her goal that she could hardly hope to reach 
 it in this life. She'd either quit living or come to 
 eTapan. 
 
 " Yes, I know it sounds a little strange. Mrs. Hugh 
 Eraser, Sir Edwin Arnold, and Lafcadio Hearn say that 
 the Japanese woman is the gentlest person in the world, 
 and that she is as sweet and charming as she is mild. 
 Sir Edwin Arnold writes about the ' three obediences ' 
 — ' As a child she obeys her father, as a wife she obeys 
 her husband, and as a mother she obeys her eldest son.' 
 That's true of almost all the women, but had Sir Edwin 
 been with us he might have seen something to make an- 
 other story out of. 
 
 " I first heard of the Japanese New Woman, who, by 
 the way, isn't at all new, when I was over in Noto, that 
 
 [ 193 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 little peninsula on the west coast that juts up into the 
 Japan Sea. 
 
 " I had been knocking about there for a couple of 
 months, and had lost my identity as a foreigner alto- 
 gether and turned so brown that I was sure I'd never 
 bleach out again. I lived in a temple; and that is a 
 point to remember if you roam off the beaten tracks in 
 Japan. Temples are better than hotels. The priests 
 I lived with were of the Hongwanji sect. They had 
 wives, and their wives could cook. Board and lodging 
 cost me three dollars a month. I never saw the country 
 inn that could do better. 
 
 " Worshipers from every part of Noto came to this 
 temple, for it was older than any man could say, and 
 famous. Through the good offices of these priests I 
 made friends in many conditions of life. The folk I 
 grew most interested in were some fisherwomen who came 
 from a cluster of tiny hamlets down the coast. In trav- 
 eling by the hill-roads one wouldn't see a sign of this 
 hamlet, although one might be only a stone's-throw 
 away. This was because it was hidden under the cliff. 
 
 " I noticed these women at the temple several times, 
 but there were never any men with them. Women from 
 other places came with their husbands. These women 
 didn't, but they had children who called them ' mamma,' 
 so I knew there must be husbands somewhere. They 
 were handsome, with clear skin, bright eyes, and rounded 
 limbs which their peasant garb scarcely at all concealed. 
 I couldn't understand why there were no men with them. 
 
 " One evening as my best friend among the priests 
 
 [ 19* ] 
 
DIVING BELLES 
 sat with me, enjoying a feast the inhabitants offered up 
 that day to the astral body of the dead headsman of the 
 village, I learned the reason. My friend was born in 
 one of those hamlets, and would have been there yet if 
 his mother hadn't said that he should be a priest. His 
 mother, mind you, not his father. That sounded 
 strange, for I had been in the country so long that I 
 had forgotten that women ever expressed an opinion. 
 
 " ' Yes,' my friend went on, as he rubbed his hand 
 over his shaven poll, ' it was fortunate for me, because 
 a man doesn't have a good time down there. He has to 
 stay in the house to do the cooking and to keep things 
 clean. That is because he can't swim. At least, he 
 can't swim as well as a woman. Why, my mother can 
 swim two days in the busy season and not be used up, 
 but my father would be tired out if he stayed in the 
 water six hours. 
 
 " ' That's the way the women earn a living,' added the 
 priest. ' If none of the people could swim they would 
 have to go somewhere else, for there is no other work to 
 do there. These shell-fish that you like so well,' he said, 
 picking up a portion of the offering to the august de- 
 parted, ' come from there. They are difficult to get. 
 The women go down twenty-five to fifty feet after them. 
 While the woman is diving for shell-fish the man is at 
 home caring for the house. That's the custom in every 
 household. 
 
 " ' Once I remember a man got drunk, and did not 
 have the dinner ready when his wife came up. She told 
 her friends, and they pulled him into the sea. Then 
 [ 195 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 they sat on him, and pushed him down till he was almost 
 drowned. He was crying " Go men nasai " all the time. 
 He wept, and the women laughed — all except his wife. 
 She struck his head with her hand, and called him 
 " dara," which means " lacking " or stupid. When 
 they brought him to the beach again the intoxication 
 was all gone, and he was humble. 
 
 " ' People in Japan generally do not know about this 
 place,' continued my friend ; ' a foreigner never saw it. 
 
 " ' One day when I was a small boy I went with my 
 mother to sell shell-fish on Kashima. When we were 
 there a ship anchored off the shore. A boat full of men 
 with green eyes and white clothes came to land. They 
 took my mother's shell-fish and all the pickles on the 
 island. Then they went away. Someone said they were 
 " Rokoku no hito " (Russians). I don't know, but they 
 are the only foreigners most of us have ever seen.' 
 
 " * Does your mother ever come here? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' Oh, yes ; she is coming to-morrow, and I am going 
 back with her. Wouldn't you like to go too? If you 
 would condescend to travel in such rude company, and 
 to enter our unworthy hovel, we shall be honored 
 greatly.' 
 
 " ' I should be very glad indeed,' I said. It was quite 
 too good a chance to lose. 
 
 " The next day his mother came. He said she was 
 his mother, though she did not look to be thirty years 
 old. She was plump and graceful and merry. On her 
 back was a boy, her grandson as I learned afterwards, 
 just past his sixth birthday. She had carried him six- 
 
 [ 196 ] 
 
DIVING BELLES 
 teen miles that morning. When she had bowed to us 
 a half-dozen times she took a dip in the sea, gliding 
 through the water like a seal, and then entered the 
 temple. 
 
 " Then we all seated ourselves in the guest-room, and 
 she nursed the six-year-old at her breast. (Grand- 
 mothers do that here in Japan.) 
 
 " She was going back that afternoon, she said. 
 
 " ' It will be moonlight, and we can be there by ten 
 o'clock,' she explained. ' I do not like to leave the hus- 
 band there all alone.' 
 
 " I flattered her a little, and when dinner was served 
 ofi^ered her my sake cup so often with my profoundest 
 bow that she said she would wait till morning. 
 
 " She woke us about four o'clock, and by five we were 
 on our way, she carrying the child. 
 
 " Before noon we were in her home. The tide was out, 
 so we did not see the women, who were in the water, and 
 were hidden from view beyond some rocks. The men 
 were at home doing chores in a shy, submissive way. 
 Some were preparing shell-fish and laying them on the 
 sandy beach to dry, while others were grinding buck- 
 wheat flour, of which they would make ' soba,' the 
 native substitute for macaroni. Some were bringing in 
 faggots, and were putting in order the square holes in 
 the floor that in every peasant's hut serve as fireplace, 
 or were burnishing kettles and doing other odd jobs. 
 No wonder my friend was glad he was a priest. 
 
 " With the rising of the tide the women came up. 
 Even the older were good-looking. They had pouches 
 [197] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 hung to belts about their loins, and in these they placed 
 the shell-fish they found upon the bottom. All of the 
 pouches had something in them, many of them were full. 
 As each one came out she emptied her pouch into a 
 common pile on the beach, and one of the older women 
 called off the name from a book, and made a mark op- 
 posite. The marks seemed all alike, so I suppose the 
 women were communists. The priest told me that all 
 the villagers were in one company, and that each member 
 did the best she could for the good of all. If anyone 
 grew lazy there was a penalty, but it had not been used 
 for so long he had forgotten what it was. 
 
 " As I stood watching the heap grow, the priest's 
 father came to us, and bowing low, said, ' Honorable 
 pardon deign ! There is absolutely nothing either to 
 eat or to drink, but please honorably condescend to 
 partake.' 
 
 " I followed him into the house, and was just sitting 
 down to a banquet of many shapes and sizes, the like 
 of which I had never seen before, when there was a com- 
 motion outside. 
 
 " ' Nan deshoka ! ' exclaimed the priest. ' What's- 
 up? ' ' Ah, korario ' (' Come here '). I hurried after 
 him. There was a luckless man in the midst of a mob of 
 women. He was protesting, and they, talking all at 
 once, were heading to the sea, just like the case of which 
 my friend had told me. The man was ducked, and then 
 laid out to dry. 
 
 " ' Was he drunk ? ' I asked. ' Oh, no. That woman 
 in the tub over there fell in love with him, and his wife 
 
 [ 198 ] 
 
DIVING BELLES 
 found them talking together this morning. Now she is 
 teUing him that he must not have eyes or ears for other 
 women. He will be careful after this, for he doesn't 
 like the sea.' 
 
 " The woman in the tub was burnishing her arms with 
 a small bag of rice powder, and paid little attention to 
 what was going on. No one said anything to her, 
 though she was the cause of the trouble. 
 
 " I wonder what will happen if the shell-fish become 
 Bxtinct? " 
 
 [199] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE 
 
 AMONGST THE GODS 
 
 LIVING in the temples, as we did during the 
 greater part of the time we were in Japan, we 
 -^grew familiar with the images of the saints and 
 heroes and the gods and goddesses whom the temples 
 honor. This familiarity did not breed contempt, but 
 gave us a personal interest and a feeling akin to rever- 
 ence. Certainly we could reverence some of the ideas 
 for which, in Buddhist minds, those strange images 
 stood. The gods had their humorous side, too. 
 
 When pious Japanese are ill they rub Binzuru. If 
 they are very ill, they ask the priest to hang a bib about 
 his neck or to put a cap on him and mitts. Binzuru is 
 the head of the great faith-cure of Japan; a sort of 
 Buddhist science, like the so-called Christian science of 
 America, of which, indeed, it might have been anciently 
 the prototype, though the rubbers do not call their rub- 
 bing " science." But it is fully equal scientifically to 
 the orisons of the ogygian healers on the other side of 
 the Pacific, and its efficacy is similar. 
 
 Binzuru shows the eff*ect of so great faith. His nose 
 is gone and his abdomen, his kneecaps also, and there is 
 a great hollow in his chest. The process of his wearing 
 out — or rather in — does not worry him, however. What 
 matters it if all his organs go, so long as his disciples 
 
 [ 200 ] 
 
UNJVERSITV oflLLfNOIS 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 
 rescue theirs from the ravages of disease? And, besides, 
 the simple faith of those who believe in him is agreeable 
 to his contemplation. Therein is his reward. 
 
 The story goes that this far-famed healer, whose 
 image is ubiquitous in Japan, was one of the sixteen 
 Rakkan once, that is one of the perfected saints whom 
 Buddha chose for his immediate disciples ; but he back- 
 slid a little in a way that shows that early Buddhism 
 looked upon the female sex much as did early Christian- 
 ity centuries afterwards: he noticed one day that a 
 woman was beautiful, and said so in the hearing of 
 another perfected saint, who straightway reported him 
 to the Master. Buddha put poor Binzuru down a full 
 hair's-breadth in the scale of virtue, but to offset this 
 punishment gave him power to cure all human ills. 
 
 Generally in Buddhist temples Binzuru sits outside 
 the chancel because of his unfortunate remark, but he 
 is all the easier of access for this reasbiij, and is probably 
 as popular as Jizo, the patron saint of children and of 
 travelers. He has small opportunity for loneliness un- 
 less he wakes up of nights, for rubbers are about him 
 from the first opening of the temples doors until their 
 closing. Even at night some say the holy images com- 
 mune together. If this is so, what a wondrous tale the 
 pigeon-hunting owl might tell of what he sees as he looks 
 in upon the sacred precincts on his rounds. 
 
 One finds Binzuru in temples of all degrees of wealth, 
 and of many sects. He is on good terms with the Kami 
 or Shinto gods and the Hotoke or Buddhist deities. He 
 is more often in the " tera," or Buddhist temple, how- 
 [ 201 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 ever, than in the " miya," the Shinto temple, for Bud- 
 dhism is the popular religion of Japan and receives the 
 Shinto gods into its pantheon with cordial welcome. Sc 
 in looking for the Healer, the man with faith and a pain 
 he would be rid of, does not look with much expectancy 
 beyond the gateway of the miya, in shape like that of the 
 Greek ;r, but goes through the tera's gate with con- 
 fidence. 
 
 We watched a man one day as he approached Binzuru 
 in all humility and childlike faith. How gently, almost 
 caressingly, he runs his hand along the Healer's side and 
 then up and down his own ! He was badly bent when he 
 came in, but he walked away erect and grateful. For 
 him Binzuru is far better than a plaster. Just by the 
 man stood a woman. She was well, but the infant in her 
 arms had trouble with its eyes. So the mother stroked 
 the image's old worn face, her hand scarce hiding more 
 than half its eye, and then touched the baby lids, say- 
 ing, " Namu Amida Butsu " ("Behold Amida the 
 Buddha"). It reminded one of Lourdes. 
 
 Amida is Boundless Light. He and Binzuru are great 
 friends. His image is not far away. His " goku," or 
 halo, is widespread, typical of his radiance. Sometimes 
 it is like a great oval screen of gold behind him, but his 
 almost certain sign for recognition is the position of his 
 hands lying in his lap, the fingers crossed and the thumb 
 tips barely touching. 
 
 On the other side, so near that the babe's wee hand 
 touched him as the mother passed with her infant, cooing 
 now, is Daruma the Abstracted, or, as some say, " leg- 
 [ 202 ] 
 
H 
 
 2 
 
 CO 
 
 O 
 
 H 
 
UNIVtKSlTY jHUlMOlS 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 less," who lost himself in contemplation of the Infinite 
 fourteen centuries ago, and withered slowly as he sat 
 until his nether limbs dropped off. Looking at his 
 features, one fancies that this contemplation is still in 
 progress, and that it will continue until all beings are 
 united into the Eternal Absolute. 
 
 It is Daruma, by the way, whom legend credits with 
 the origin of tea. Before he went off into his present 
 trance he had made another effort at permanent con- 
 templation, and had failed through falling asleep at the 
 end of the ninth year. When he awoke he was so vexed 
 at his eyelids for their drooping that he cut them off. 
 No sooner had they fallen to the ground than, lo ! they 
 took root, sprouted, and sent forth leaves. As the old 
 monk looked in wonder, a disciple of the Buddha ap- 
 peared and told him to brew the leaves of the new shrub 
 and then drink thereof. Daruma plucked the leaves, 
 which now all the world knows as tea, did as the vision 
 commanded him to do, and has not slept a moment since. 
 
 The " Heavenly Shiner " is over opposite the Daruma. 
 Ama-Terasu is her name. She is a most important per- 
 sonage in Japan, for she was the mother of the first 
 Mikado. One of her images is so sacred that only the 
 holiest of priests and personages of Imperial blood may 
 look into the room where it is kept. The image itself 
 no one ever sees. It is wrapped in a silken sack, in a box 
 of chamaecyparis wood, which rests on a stand under a 
 white silk cloth. For centuries this box w^as the special 
 charge of a virgin daughter of the Mikado. Even she 
 never saw the sacred relic, for as age began to tell upon 
 
 [203] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 the silken sack she put a new sack on over the old one 
 without undoing it. Before she did this, she had to fast 
 three days, to bathe three times each day, and during 
 the ceremony to wear garments of material fresh from 
 the loom — garments that no one had ever worn nor would 
 ever wear again. 
 
 A Minister of State lost his life for being curious as 
 to the appearance of the apartment wherein the image 
 of this Imperial ancestor reposes. He pushed aside an 
 intervening curtain with his cane, and peeped. A young 
 Government clerk in Tokio, Nishino by name, hearing 
 of this peep some months later, went to Ise, to Goku 
 Temple, the scene of the sacrilege, to confirm the story. 
 Then he returned to Tokio and stabbed the Minister 
 with a kitchen fish-knife, so that he died. This was Vis- 
 count Mori, who had been Minister Plenipotentiary to 
 Washington and to London, and at the time of his 
 death was in the Imperial Cabinet as head of the Depart- 
 ment of Education. 
 
 As affording a glimpse into the Japanese mind, it is 
 interesting to note that popular sympathy was alto- 
 gether with the murderer, whom an officer of the Min- 
 ister's household cut down, striking off his head with a 
 single blow of his sabre. The newspapers abused this 
 officer, but not a word for the Viscount nor for his fam- 
 ily, whom Nishino's act had plunged into grief on the 
 greatest gala day of Japan's history. It was February 
 11, 1889, the day on which the Mikado presented a 
 Constitution to his people. 
 
 The young fanatic's grave in the Yanaka cemetery 
 [204] 
 
lIBRARy 
 UN<V£K8ITy'oflLUN0IS 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 
 I became sacred as though it were a saint's. There was a 
 great pyramid of wreaths on it, which daily pilgrim- 
 ages replenished till at last the Government had to in- 
 [ terfere and forbid all ceremonies there except by rela- 
 tives. The assassin is now to all intents and purposes a 
 saint, for though this happened fourteen years ago na- 
 tives still pray to Nishino to intercede for them with 
 Heaven on their behalf. 
 
 The priests at Ise tell you that Ama-Terasu was born 
 from the left eye of Izanagi, the Creator, just after a 
 visit to Hades, where he had been to see his wife. Ama 
 had trouble with her brother, the Impetuous Male, Susa- 
 no-o, who was born of Izanagi's right eye. In her vexa- 
 tion she hid herself in a cavern, which was a thought- 
 less thing for a sun-goddess to do, as it made the whole 
 world dark. The other gods and goddesses came to the 
 cavern's mouth to coax Ama-Terasu out. Ama would 
 not come. Then they danced and sang, and the sun- 
 goddess ventured just to peep, when one of the gods 
 held up a mirror, and catching sight of the reflection of 
 her own lovely face Ama-Terasu came out and the uni- 
 verse had light once more. 
 
 Not far away from the sun-goddess is an eight-armed 
 image of Marishiten, whom in India folks call Krishna. 
 She lives in Ursa Major, whence she oversees the sun and 
 the moon, using two of her arms in guiding them.. 
 
 Within speaking distance sits a sweet-faced image 
 whose lap is full of children's tokens, dolls and bibs and 
 little caps, the offerings of mothers whose children the 
 gods have called. She is Kishi Bojin, Protectress of 
 
 [205 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Children. Often she speaks of her miraculous conver- 
 sion. Like St. Paul, she changed from an enemy into 
 the friend of a new religion. She had determined to de- 
 stroy the Buddhists, " being exceedingly mad against 
 them." But she turned into a dragon, and gave birth to 
 five hundred children whom Heaven decreed she should 
 eat — at the rate of one each day. 
 
 Gautama, the Buddha, taking pity, restored her to 
 womanhood and taught her the Doctrine, whereupon she 
 entered a convent, and ever since has been the protectress 
 of those whom formerly she would destroy. She holds 
 a pomegranate in one hand, which emblem is her crest. 
 
 Just over Kojin, the Kitchen god, whom the house- 
 wife looks well after, are the Sam-biki-Zaru, or three 
 monkey gods. Saru means monkey. In combination 
 with other words it is pronounced Zaru. One of these 
 gods of the prehensile tail has his hands over his mouth, 
 he is the Iwa Zaru or Dumb Monkey god ; another stops 
 his ears, he is the Kita Zaru, Deaf Monkey god ; and the 
 third covers his eyes, he is Mi-Zaru, the Blind Monkey 
 god: a good trinity these, for they refuse to speak evil, 
 to look upon it, or to listen to it. Mrs. Grundy does not 
 stand well with them. 
 
 There is an image of Kompira also, who has especial 
 care of those who go down into the sea in ships. Some 
 call him Kotohira. For centuries he was a Buddhist 
 pure and simple, and at one time so eager was he to 
 bring mankind to the true faith that he took on the form 
 of a crocodile with a body one thousand feet long, pos- 
 sessed of one thousand heads and one thousand arms. 
 
 [ 206 ] 
 
MNlVERSily jt ILLINOIS 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 Thus arrayed he made many converts. There was a 
 grand Buddhist temple in his honor at the foot of Zozu 
 San Shikoku until recently. It dated back nearly twelve 
 centuries. Thirty years ago the Shintoists came into 
 power for a little, and claimed this temple, saying that 
 Kompira belonged to them, for they had worshiped him 
 since the world began. So the Government let them 
 have their way. They tore down nearly all of the 
 ancient tera and put a miya in its place. But the people 
 throng there regularly on the tenth and eleventh days 
 of October each year, just as they did anciently, for 
 whether Kompira is Buddhist or Shinto is a small mat- 
 ter in their eyes; they love him for himself alone. 
 
 Monkeys are not the only animals natives reverence 
 in Japan. There are pink-eyed horses, alive and fat, 
 within their sacred stalls just inside the temple gates. 
 Those who desire grace give these pink-eyed ones a shell 
 full of beans, which the attending Doctor of Divinity 
 supplies at a ha'penny a shell. Besides the horses there 
 are Imari, stone foxes, goddesses of the fruitful rice- 
 fields. Farmers' wives decorate these images with bibs, 
 and then if the good women have faith, proper seed, 
 sufficient water, good fertilizers, and the right sort of 
 weather, they may expect crops. 
 
 Another acquaintance of Binzuru's is Fudo, the god of 
 Wisdom, whose throne appears to be on fire. Appar- 
 ently his wisdom has not made him happy, for his 
 countenance is anything but joyous. He is armed with 
 a sword in his right hand and a lariat in the other. It 
 is rumored that he ropes in the wicked and dispatches 
 
 [207 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 them. Emma O, sitting opposite, glares quite as fiercely 
 as Awful Wisdom. He is regent of the Buddhist hells, 
 and receives all comers according to their deserts. His 
 attending scribe and reader have kept a record of each 
 soul. The record is true, and there is no escape from the 
 sentence that Emma O pronounces. Tradition says that 
 the regent was a great Chinese general, whose love of 
 truth exceeded every other love, so that he turned his 
 back upon the throne of the Heavenly Kingdom when 
 his legions offered it to him, sought out one whom he be- 
 lieved should have it by right of birth, established him, 
 and then retired to the obscurity of private life. How- 
 ever this may be, Emma O is the patron of many a joss- 
 house the world over, and it is before his image that 
 Chinese administer their most sacred oaths and make 
 compacts binding by chopping off the heads of cocks. 
 
 Despite the furious faces of Fudo and Emma O there 
 is no fear upon the countenances of the seven gods of 
 Luck, the Shichi Fukujin, whom Binzuru looked kindly 
 on before his eyes were rubbed away. There is the 
 Honest Labor god, Ebisu the fisherman, whose name all 
 drinkers of good beer in Japan must be familiar with. 
 He has just caught a noble bream, a fish the Japanese 
 call " tai." Next to him is Daikoku with his bales of 
 rice. He is richer than a Trust. The Tokio folk are 
 laying out a pleasure park in his honor, with a grand 
 Daikoku statue, malet and rice bales included, in the 
 midst thereof. Benten is a lady, and is musical. She 
 can charm snakes, and uses one to go about with instead 
 of a motor-car. Fukurokuji has a long head, and a pet 
 
 [208] 
 
iJNlVEHSiry of ILLINOIS 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 crane with a neck almost as long. Both he and his pet 
 signify longevity. Bishamon, with his spear and Pa- 
 goda, in protective armor like unto a battleship, is the 
 lucky god of War. Jurokujin has the great good for- 
 tune to know the thoughts of animals. They come to 
 him in perfect trust, for friendship's sake. No menag- 
 erie should be without Jorokujin. Singularly enough, 
 Hotei, the seventh god of Luck, who is supposed to 
 represent good-nature, is stout, one might say fat, and 
 has a high sack of sustenance to lean back against. 
 
 Of course there are many Shakas in this temple of 
 gods — images of Gautama, the Buddha, to whom ex- 
 istence as he had known it in Far Eastern countries was 
 a weariness. Where he journeyed to and fro, human 
 vitality was at low ebb and life a constant struggle. He 
 sought escape therefrom, and found it in the knowledge 
 which contemplation and pure living give. Having con- 
 quered all desire, the illusions of the world revealed them- 
 selves to him and he was ready for Nirvana, but he de- 
 clined to enter until he had shown the truth to every 
 other living creature and they too had become worthy of 
 the great reward. When the others were safely in he 
 would follow after. 
 
 The goddess of Mercy has many images, too. Her 
 name is Kwannon. She possesses the omnipotent gem 
 " nyo-i-rin," and has the Twenty-eight Constellations to 
 wait on her. Professor Chamberlain likes Kwannon, and 
 knows all about her thousand arms, her liorse's head, her 
 eleven faces, and her wondrous gem, as well as about the 
 " Saikoku Sanju-san Sho," or Thirty-Three Shrines, 
 [209] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 sacred to her. They are all near Kiyoto. This is what 
 the Professor discovered as to their origin: 
 
 Many years ago lived a famous Buddhist Abbot, 
 Tokudo Shonin by name. Suddenly, as the Japanese 
 say of holy men, he " divinely retired " — that is, he died. 
 He went to the Underworld, where two dignitaries from 
 the court of the regent Emma O met him with respectful 
 salutations, and conducted him with much ceremony to 
 the August Presence. 
 
 " I have sent for your Holiness," said Emma O, " be- 
 cause I know from the piety of your life that I may 
 trust you even as your children upon earth have learned 
 to trust you. I have an important mission for you." 
 
 Then he told the Abbot of thirty-five places the god- 
 dess of Mercy was interested in particularly, and of her 
 labors to save the world. In her great love for mankind 
 she had divided herself into three-and-thirty parts or 
 bodies, and each of these bodies had become the guardian 
 spirit of one of the Thirty-Three Holy Places; each 
 Place having power to cure one of the spiritual ills that 
 flesh is heir to. 
 
 " At present," said Emma O, " the men and the women 
 of the world above do not know of the existence of these 
 Places. They do evil instead of good, and come drop- 
 ping into hell as rain falls in a sudden summer shower. 
 It shall be your work to inform them how they may 
 avoid this horrid fate. Tell them to make pilgrimages 
 to the Three-and-Thirty Holy Places, and then, having 
 worshiped at them all, they shall radiate light even 
 from the soles of their feet and shall have power to crush 
 
 [210] 
 
AMONGST THE GODS 
 all the hells there ever were. So sure am I of this that 
 should one that has made this pilgrimage backslide, I 
 myself will suffer in his stead. Here is my seal to take 
 up with you as a testimony of the authority of the 
 message which you bear." 
 
 Now while Tokudo had been in hell his body had lain 
 in the Abbey three days and three nights, the priests 
 thinking he might return, as the body did not grow cold. 
 At the beginning of the fourth day the Abbot awoke 
 with the seal in his hand as testimony. Immediately he 
 and his followers visited the Places, erected shrines, and 
 the downpour of souls into hell diminished. 
 
 [211] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 
 
 ON THE EARTHQUAKE PLAN 
 
 WE were up to dine near the Imperial Uni- 
 versity in Tokio one evening, in the beauti- 
 ful puzzle-pathed grounds known as Kaga 
 Yashiki, where once the Prince of Kaga had his palace. 
 The house in which we met was long and low, all but 
 the central part, which had been the Government Ob- 
 servatory in the early days of the University. The tele- 
 scopes had gone, however, and instead of being a place 
 for the study of the movements of other worlds, the 
 building had become one for the investigation of move- 
 ments nearer home — an earthquake laboratory, as it were, 
 where these uncanny disturbances made records on the 
 various contrivances a famous specialist had devised for 
 measuring all sorts of jolts and jars and palpitations. 
 Their capacity for notation included all disturbances, 
 from the upheaval of a mountain range to the alighting 
 of the most careful fly. 
 
 Naturally the conversation took the earthquake turn, 
 and the Professor, our host, whose home was in the build- 
 ing, had many interesting things to tell us on the subject 
 of seismology. He explained what a " quake " did to an 
 earth particle during a seismic disturbance, how it moved 
 east and west, north, south, and up and down. He 
 showed a " track " a colleague of his, Professor Sekiya, 
 
 [ 212 ] 
 
ON THE EARTHQUAKE PLAN 
 had made to illustrate the movement. The track was of 
 wire, bent and wound and turned about, in and out, till 
 it looked like a skein of yarn a kitten had been playing 
 with. To follow it from end to end would have taken a 
 patient man a week. But it was accurate undoubtedly, 
 for the Professor and his assistants had worked it out 
 from thousands of seismograph records which they had 
 collected from many parts of the world. The seismo- 
 graph told the truth, the Professor declared, for he had 
 tested it on stands he had built especially for artificial 
 oscillation. The record of the seismographs and the 
 known oscillation of the stands corresponded exactly. 
 
 It was wonderful, especially to those of us who were 
 " griffins.'' 
 
 "O for an earthquake!" said the griffins. 
 
 " Well, you may not have long to wait," said the Pro- 
 fessor, who has a reputation as an earthquake prophet, 
 " We have about five hundred a year in Japan, you 
 know. One may be along before the evening's over." 
 
 And he spoke truly, for the servants had no more than 
 brought on the fish when the floor began to wriggle, the 
 lamps and pictures to sway, the windows to rattle, and 
 the dishes on the mahogany to clatter about like a lot of 
 frightened turtles. 
 
 The Professor had just made a remark about earth- 
 quakes' construction when the swirling began. He 
 looked round at us as though to observe individual 
 effects, and said: 
 
 " Here you are, boys. How singularly a propos. I'll 
 have some goods records to show you in the morning. 
 
 [213] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Meanwhile, as this building is a bit old, I suggest we get 
 under the table. It is built on the earthquake plan, and 
 should the roof fall we are safe there." 
 
 By the time he had said " there " all of us were there, 
 riding on the sealess billows of the floor, which creaked 
 and undulated and bumped our heads against the table's 
 under surface, and rolled us against its stalwart legs, 
 and against each other, as though we were great dough 
 billiard-balls trying to make caroms and cushion shots. 
 These were the sensations, as I can testify after compar- 
 ing notes with my companions, but as none of us had on 
 seismographs I cannot say that I am dynamically 
 correct. 
 
 When we came out from under the table the fish was 
 cold, but we had had such a warm time we did not mind. 
 We told the Professor that he was the cleverest arranger 
 we had ever known. We had never met before with such 
 a happy combination of theory and practice, and we all 
 said: 
 
 " Here's looking at you." 
 
 It was excellent sherry, an additional reason for not 
 caring that the fish was cold. 
 
 The Professor lighted a cigarette, and as the entree 
 came on smiled and said: 
 
 " Thank you kindly, but really it's only this — any- 
 one must see that a good strong table like ours may be a 
 protection if one is on the right side of it — the under 
 side, for instance ; and as to the earthquake coming along 
 just as we were talking — that is not so extraordinary. 
 Quite often my friends mention earthquakes when they 
 
 [214] 
 
ON THE EARTHQUAKE PLAN 
 
 are up here, and in a country where there are fifty-one 
 volcanoes it would be strange if a quake did not come 
 opportunely at times. Upheavals and subsidences are 
 going on all the time. Half Japan is an upheaval ; and 
 off the coast a bit, say from fifty to two hundred miles 
 east of Sendai, a town north of here, there is one of the 
 greatest depressions in the world's crust we know of : the 
 Tuscarora Deep we call it, after the United States Gov- 
 ernment vessel that discovered it. It would be safe to 
 dive from the top of Fuji into Tuscarora Deep — at 
 least there would be plenty of water and no danger of 
 striking bottom. The depth is over 24,000 feet — Fuji, 
 the highest point of Japan's upheaval, is 12,400 feet, so 
 we have 36,000 feet between top and bottom; a safe 
 seven miles, I fancy." 
 
 " Do you think. Professor," asked one of the party, 
 " that old Tuscarora dropped a mile or so just now, or 
 did Fuji shoot up farther into the sky? " 
 
 " Oh, no. Neither. This was just a bit of a rumble 
 down Yokohama way, nearly twenty miles off, where the 
 center of disturbance is for this particular region. I 
 dare say we'll have a recurrence, and to-morrow we'll 
 read in the papers, when they come up from Yokohama, 
 that some chimneys are over. It was lively enough to do 
 that." 
 
 Again the Professor spoke truly. The recurrence 
 came, and with its coming we went below as before, and 
 listened to the ballet of the dishes overhead. We did 
 not stay as long this time, however, and when a third 
 shock came we were down for just a moment, and then 
 
 [215] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 only from force of habit. We believed in the Pro- 
 fessor's scheme, however, and each of us decided to have 
 a heavj^ table round somewhere so long as we had resi- 
 dence in the country. 
 
 " Another point for you chaps that live in foreign 
 style/' said the Professor, " and one to remember, is that 
 a heavy bedstead is a good thing. If a quake comes 
 after you have retired, roll out and under, and there you 
 are safe though the heavens fall. If any of you build 
 here, see to the door-posts, and especially to the lintels 
 across the tops of the posts. Have the lintels over the 
 windows strong, too, or else do not have the windows 
 directly one above the other. A row of windows 
 running up a wall in a straight line is like the holes in 
 a sheet of postage-stamps. When the quake comes, 
 there's where the wall will tear, right up and down along 
 that row of windows." 
 
 We all agreed to follow the Professor's advice faith- 
 fully. Personally I can say that I have never put up 
 walls since that in the least suggested postage-stamp 
 construction. The Professor gave us some further tips, 
 too, which some of us found of great value later on. 
 One man, a Japanese professor, Kashikoi by name, built 
 a house in Yokohama strictly in accordance with the 
 Professor's instructions. He also dug a trench round 
 the border of his grounds about six feet deep, similar to 
 the one round the Engineering College at Kaga Yashiki. 
 The Professor had explained to him how this ditch cut 
 off surface vibrations. These vibrations, it seems, skim 
 along like ripples on the surface of a pond into which a 
 
 [216] 
 
ON THE EARTHQUAKE PLAN 
 boy has thrown a stone thinking he could hit a frog. A 
 few feet down, the effect of this kind of vibration is prac- 
 tically nil. The frame of Kashikoi's house was like a 
 broad inverted V. A neighbor asked him one day if his 
 house was to be all roof. 
 
 " No," Kashikoi replied ; " but yours will be one of 
 these days, Aho, old chap, if you don't do as I do." And 
 indeed Aho's roof did settle down upon him one night, 
 so close to the ground that it took an hour for his appre- 
 hensive friends to dig him out. It was only the shape of 
 the roof, an inverted V, that saved him. Kashikoi, tak- 
 ing advantage of the Professor's experience, shunned a 
 cubic frame like Aho's, which could twist to pieces easily, 
 and he did not have a house all roof either. Only the 
 upper half of the frame was roof. Along the lower half 
 on each side he ran a porch. The frame of the porch 
 looked like wings on the V. The house was between two 
 porches, and as thoroughly protected by the roof- 
 hke frame as Aho had been, only much more com- 
 fortably. 
 
 Kashikoi became expert in chimneys, too, after his 
 first failure. He had an interest in the Yokohama elec- 
 tric-light plant, and had let a young Japanese engineer 
 put up the chimney. With the first quake it fell in a 
 heap and smashed things. Examination showed that 
 each brick had fallen separately, what little cement there 
 was between them being of no use at all. Kashikoi had 
 the young engineer up before a committee of investiga- 
 tion. Question followed question, until the young 
 native, seeing no escape, said he had built the thing with 
 
 [217] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 non-cohesive cement purposely. Had he used the Al 
 article the chimney, instead of sinking into a heap in a 
 comparatively small area, would have fallen in a rigid 
 mass extending far from its base and resulting possibly 
 in the death of unsuspecting passers-by. 
 
 Chimney number two went up under Kashikoi's per- 
 sonal supervision, large at the base, knitted together with 
 steel bands within the brickwork, and Al cement 
 throughout. 
 
 But to go on with our dinner. Over the coffee and 
 cigarettes our host told of his volcanic experiences, of 
 climbing miles into the air and looking down into boiling 
 craters, and other weird tales. His journeyings are the 
 most comprehensive ever made in Japan. Down near 
 Nagasaki, the chief seaport on the island of Kiushiu, he 
 found the largest active volcano in the world, Aso San ; 
 yet, in spite of its activity and the terrible eruptions it 
 has had, there are some seventy villages inside the crater, 
 with a total population of perhaps 20,000. During one 
 eruption Aso San destroyed 50,000 lives — literally ob- 
 literated them. 
 
 All conditions of men, from the Mikado down to the 
 most lowly, have made offerings and prayers to pro- 
 pitiate the wrath of this vast volcanic mountain. Once, 
 says the Professor, the people heard rumblings and 
 went to the priest with money, but in vain — ^the rum- 
 blings continued and the priest said that God probably 
 wanted more money. Then the people gave again, but 
 still God did not grant their prayer. " He thinks you 
 have given insufficiently," explained the priest; so the 
 
 [218] 
 
IIBRAW 
 
 UmVERSITY of ILUHOIS 
 
ON THE EARTHQUAKE PLAN 
 people gave a third time. Then the holy man beat his 
 sacred drum and clanged the sacred gong, repeated seven 
 prayers, and informed his parishioners that God advised 
 them twice. First, in case of flood run to the hills. 
 Second, in case of earthquakes to run to the bamboo 
 forest, where the matted roots form a network that would 
 hold them up even though the ground should open. But 
 the people went away dissatisfied, for they had known 
 these things all along. 
 
 Then the Professor told us of the most extraordinary 
 earthquake phenomenon he had ever observed. It had to 
 do with the very table we had been sitting about. It was 
 temporarily in the house of another man then, while the 
 Professor's present house was being put in order for his 
 moving in from another part of the city. There had 
 been a dinner, much like the one to-night, said our host, 
 and after the dinner a little game with a kitty. It was 
 a quiet little game, of the sort that relieves the mind of 
 all sorts of worry, and is restful. Relief indeed comes 
 to anyone sooner or later if he will stick to it. It is one 
 of the game's strong points. 
 
 " Well," continued our host, " we had relieved each 
 other quite a bit when one of these quakes came, rather a 
 lively one, and the party disappeared through doors and 
 windows, and under the table, or through the floor, for 
 all I know. When the rumbling ceased, we returned, one 
 by one, from various retreats, until five of the six were 
 back at the table. We waited for number six, but he 
 did not come; then we searched for half an hour, I 
 should say, until we found him in a wardrobe of the most 
 [ 219 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 distant room in the building. He was so upset it took 
 more than was in the soda syphon to restore him. We 
 got him round, however, and resumed our seats at the 
 relief table, but the kitty had disappeared. We never 
 found a trace of it.'' 
 
 [230] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN 
 
 MISSIONARIES AND MISSIONARIES 
 
 WHENEVER our roaming along the byways 
 of Japan brought us to the door of a mission- 
 ary home we went in and found a welcome. 
 There was always room for two more at the missionary's 
 table, and if we could stay for the night there were 
 always futon enough for a couple of extra beds. This 
 hospitaUty was due partly, perhaps, to the fact that 
 both he and we were far from home, partly to the genial 
 influence of Japan, where the very atmosphere breathes 
 welcome, but chiefly because the missionary himself was 
 a good fellow — a man living pleasantly and setting a 
 wholesome example. 
 
 The example is not exciting, but it is as an example 
 he is most eff*ective. The missionary is taken seriously, 
 as a rule, except when the Mail, the Herald, or the 
 Gazette, being short of copy, gives him opportunity to 
 point out in print the weak spots in the creeds, the cus- 
 toms, the rites, or beliefs of his brother missionaries of 
 other sects. 
 
 The Japanese smile at him then, and the Buddhists 
 say : " August divergence of august opinion apparently 
 existing is among the teachers of religion from the 
 West." Then they rub their polls and become abstracted 
 in contemplation of the Absolute. The Imperial Gov- 
 
 [221 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 ernment likes the missionary, and the Mikado decorated 
 one some years ago. Later he and his family were 
 granted all the rights of citizenship. The Minister of 
 State, in transmitting the papers, declared that the 
 Empire was to be congratulated on having so worthy a 
 man within its borders. When this reverend gentleman 
 was presented to the Court of the Heaven-Descended, 
 he gave his Imperial Majesty a Bible, the only one that 
 ever found its way within the palace gates. 
 
 Like other folks who accomplish things, the missionary 
 comes in for criticism. He expects this. Sometimes he 
 even welcomes it. As he leaves home to live among the 
 " heathen " — a word, by the way, that he carefully 
 eschews so long as he resides among them — the older 
 women of his church tell him that his noble self-sacrifice 
 awakens pity in their hearts. Pity there is certainly, 
 and admiration, too. These are comforting to him, for 
 to the missionary, as to most folks, it is grievous to give 
 up home. 
 
 But after he has lived a year in Japan it would be 
 more grievous were he ordered to return. He has eaten 
 of the lotus. When his seventh year arrives, and he is 
 to come back for a twelvemonth, he does so with some 
 little eagerness to see what home will look like after an 
 absence of six years, and with a joyous expectation of 
 seeing relatives and old friends again ; but, after he has 
 seen, his face turns towards the Far East with yearning, 
 and he is not quite himself again until the land beyond 
 the setting sun — or, as the ancient name describes it, the 
 Land of the Rising Sun — is beneath his feet once more. 
 
 [222] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 The Empire he has sought to convert has converted him. 
 He does not say so, perhaps he does not know, but it is 
 a fact. 
 
 The missionary is an influential person in the East. 
 He has established schools far and wide, several of them 
 of exceptional excellence. He is the intellectual father of 
 thousands of the young men and women of New Japan. 
 These young folks do not all profess the creed of their 
 teacher, but it is safe to say that not one of them has 
 failed altogether to profit by contact with the foreigner. 
 The young man may still be apt to speak what is not so, 
 probably he is, but at least he has learned there is such 
 a thing as truth-telling — strange and wonderful though 
 it is to him and of doubtful utility — yet worthy of inves- 
 tigation. To accomplish even this is no small gain. 
 
 Mission schools teach everything, from chemistry to 
 knitting socks. They represent nearly every denomina- 
 tion of importance in the world, and they dispense knowl- 
 edge almost without cost. They are a boon to the coun- 
 try, but sometimes the earnest student takes advantage 
 of them, and, if slang may be allowed, he " pulls the 
 missionary's leg." 
 
 Such a student soon discovers that he receives more 
 attention from the missionary and from the wife if 
 he shows signs of conversion. Consequently, at what- 
 ever school he enters his name, he begins to be converted 
 right away. As he changes from school to school — 
 change being a delight to the Japanese — he is converted 
 frequently. By the time his education is complete he 
 is one of the most converted persons in the world. 
 [ 223 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 Indeed, it is not impossible to find a member of the Greek 
 Church who is also a Congregationalist, a French 
 Catholic, a Baptist, a Unitarian, a Methodist, a com- 
 municant of the Church of England, and belonging, 
 possibly, to half a dozen minor mission organizations. 
 
 The general run of mission students are as religious 
 as the average American youth. Apparently they enjoy 
 their lessons in piety thoroughly, the girls in particular ; 
 but they have such gentle natures that it is hard to be- 
 lieve they need instruction in humility and meekness. 
 They are themselves living lessons in these virtues. 
 
 The missionary-in-the-cannibal-stew idea is upset by 
 a visit to the houses of the evangelists in Tsukiji, Tokio. 
 One sees there that, even from a worldly point of view, 
 it is not a sad thing to be called." So long as he is 
 faithful to his creed, he need not worry over worldly 
 matters. His salary will be paid regularly until he 
 resigns or passes on to the land he has sought to prepare 
 so many others for. He will have a home to live in, the 
 mission doctor and pharmacist will attend to him and 
 to his family without charge. He goes to the mountains 
 when the heat of summer comes, usually to Nikko, con- 
 cerning which place the Japanese legend says : " Nikko 
 wo minai uchi wa kekko to iuna " (" Until you have seen 
 Nikko do not use the word beautiful"). His children 
 may be educated at the mission's expense, and he receives 
 his traveling money for his septennial vacation home. 
 
 The salary for bachelor missionaries is about $750 
 a year, and for married men $1500. When one re- 
 members that lodging and medical attendance are found, 
 
 [ 224 ] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 and that servants' wages are low — cooks, $5 to $7.50 a 
 month, nurses and maids, $4; and that a jin-riki-sha, 
 with a man to pull it, who finds himself, costs $5 a month 
 — it is not a wonder that the missionary is fairly well 
 content. 
 
 Learning the language is the work the missionary 
 takes hold of first. He must master the colloquial, in 
 order to preach to the natives. Usually five years are 
 allowed for this. He may take up the written language, 
 too, if it seems advisable, but no one ever learned that 
 well in five years. It is a large undertaking, for he 
 must learn all over again how to think; the mode of 
 thought and the world of ideas into which he is entering 
 are wholly different from those he was born into. 
 
 His teacher shows him that Japanese nouns have 
 neither number nor gender; adjectives, though not com- 
 pared, have tense and mood inflections. There are no 
 pronouns ; verbs do not have person but have a negative 
 voice, and, as Professor Chamberlain says, forms to indi- 
 cate causation and potentiality. The written language 
 is so different from the spoken that were the daily paper 
 read aloud, a master of the colloquial might not under- 
 stand even the general import of the article. To read 
 the newspapers comfortably, one should know at least 
 four thousand Chinese characters. Some minds have 
 given way in the attempt to learn them. 
 
 Still, to the missionary with a turn for original investi- 
 gation, there is an infinite field in Japan, and this has 
 saved men who loved intellectual life, and found little 
 congenial companionship among the natives — history, 
 [225 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Buddhism, land tenure, philology, and the intricacies of 
 the native family relationship, are only a few of the 
 subjects that, as yet, foreigners need light upon. But 
 the missionary is investigating patiently. Already he 
 has enough material for an Encyclopaedia Japonica. 
 The thing he has to fight against is the influence of his 
 surroundings, which tend to allay keen desire for 
 achievement which scholars in the West maintain. In 
 counteracting this, the septennial home-coming is a 
 wholesome tonic. 
 
 On the west coast the nearest missionary to us was 
 at Kanazawa. When we went there we fell by the way- 
 side, as it were, returned to our former habits of life, 
 sat on an American rocking-chair and slept on a spring 
 bed. It was a sad fall from the floor up into a rocking- 
 chair and on to a spring bed, but the missionary's hospi- 
 tality was as difficult to resist as that of our native 
 friends at Tatsumi. 
 
 One of our Hongwanji friends was with us on one of 
 our journeys through Kanazawa. His home was in 
 Kiyoto, where he had studied with interest the work of 
 the teachers in Doshisha, the Christian college which 
 American missionaries had established there over twenty 
 years ago. He had been to America and to Europe; 
 at Oxford had attracted some little attention by his in- 
 dustry in history and in philosophy. I believe he had 
 been a student under Max Miiller. He had a fine ad- 
 miration for Christianity, and only asked for fair judg- 
 ment. 
 
 " We are on good terms with the Doshisha folk," he 
 [226] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 
 said, as we went along on foot towards some famous hot 
 springs a few ri south, " and we have learned much from 
 them. Our priests have gone abroad to study religious 
 institutions in the lands where this wonderful religion 
 came from. Jesus seems to us much like what we call a 
 Buddha. We notice, too, that Christianity is divided 
 into sects much as Buddhism is. I think for the most 
 part, though, that our sects get along together with 
 less friction than do the Christian sects. At least we 
 do not criticise each other in the newspapers. Perhaps 
 at home you do not. I was only a student when I was 
 abroad, and my text-books took so much of my time that 
 I am sorry to say I did not read much else. I have seen 
 rather unpleasant letters in the Yokohama and Kobe 
 papers. I do not think the Doshisha folk contributed 
 any of these letters. 
 
 " It seems unfair to me that we should be condemned 
 without being studied. We do not wish to keep Chris- 
 tian missionaries out of Japan. We welcome them, for 
 there is work enough to keep us all busy, but we should 
 like to have those who come over to teach us the truth 
 study our doctrines, to see if we have not already some 
 of this truth ourselves. Here and there a missionary 
 studies Buddhism, but the instances are not sufficient to 
 make a large percentage of the men and women who 
 come to live among us. How can they expect to teach 
 the Japanese people if they do not understand the Jap- 
 anese people? and how can they expect to understand 
 the people unless they understand the people's religion.? 
 Why, our Foreign Office officials study Christianity 
 [227] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 before going abroad. That is part of their diplomatic 
 training. How much more, then, should missionaries 
 of religion study the faiths of the lands they go to? 
 
 " The good work that Christian missionaries are doing 
 in Japan would progress more rapidly if the missionaries 
 would learn the Buddhist doctrines and study the influ- 
 ence these doctrines have had on the minds of Japanese. 
 Whatever there is of truth in the religion of Europe 
 and America and in the religion of Japan must har- 
 monize. I do not see why Buddhists and Christians 
 should be at war. I do not believe they are at heart. 
 We both should like to save the world, and we shall. To 
 save the world, however, it is not necessary that one 
 party should annihilate the other. It will be more in 
 accordance with wisdom for each man to do whatever 
 directly helpful work there is before him. There is so 
 much to do, we cannot afford to expend even the min- 
 utest quantity of energy needlessly. 
 
 " Look at China, for instance, where we have som.e 
 missionary interest. We may have some hard work 
 there before long. We are foreigners there, you know, 
 and the anti-foreign feeling is increasing. This is 
 partly the fault of greedy European Powers and partly 
 the fault of methods in missionary work. It is unfortu- 
 nate that religion and statecraft should be mixed to- 
 gether, but to many Chinese to-day the foreign mission- 
 ary is a sort of advance-agent of the gunboat. Mis- 
 sionaries come and provinces go. The Chinese look upon 
 this as cause and effect. Sequence in time is logical con- 
 nection in their minds. You see they are a very old 
 [228] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 people, and are still living in the past. They know little 
 of anything that is less than two thousand years old. 
 
 " leyasu, Mayor of the Palace, early in the seven- 
 teenth century thought the same of Spanish and Portu- 
 guese missionaries once, and ordered them to leave. 
 Their refusal to do so led to a massacre. He was able 
 to forestall foreign invasion because in his day Japan 
 was far from the West, and the military abilities of the 
 East and the West were more nearly on a footing. 
 China is powerless to-day. She cannot defend herself. 
 
 " A convert is likely to get into trouble when he be- 
 comes a Christian, unless he is able to keep up a double 
 set of subscriptions. To keep the peace he should pay 
 sums regularly to his guilds and societies and to the 
 mission he has joined. He is often too poor to do both, 
 and if he gives his money to the mission his former 
 friends and his relatives may annoy him. Suppose he 
 is forced into a fight and is taken to jail, naturally he 
 looks to the missionary. The missionary sees the Ger- 
 man or French or English Consul, whichever it may be, 
 who, in his turn, writes to the Minister Plenipotentiary 
 at Peking, and the Minister goes to the ' Tsung li 
 Yamen,' or Chinese Foreign Office. An official of the 
 Tsung li Yamen then comes to the governor of the prov- 
 ince in which the convert and the missionary live, and 
 talks to His Excellency about the annoyance of foreign 
 complications. The governor proceeds against the 
 mayor or the chief of the town in which the convert is 
 confined, and the mayor has it out with the convert's 
 accusers. It reads like the story of ' The House that 
 [ 229 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Jack Built,' but it usually ends badly. The ma3^or is 
 between the governor and the populace. He will have 
 a hard time of it either way. The governor is afraid 
 of the Tsung li Yamen, and will make trouble for him if 
 he does not let the convert go. If he does liberate him 
 the people will conspire against him for favoring an 
 apostate. Not that the apostacy enrages them. They 
 would forgive that would the convert continue his sub- 
 scriptions. They need his money and are wroth with 
 the missionary for depriving them of it. 
 
 " The missionary is also laying up trouble for himself 
 by his lack of understanding of Chinese social institu- 
 tions. For one thing, he should let the Chinese pay 
 respect to their ancestors as much as they like. A 
 Chinaman reverences his father and his mother, his 
 grandfather, his grandmother, and all his ancestors. 
 Living or dead his forefathers receive the same venera- 
 tion. The Chinaman obeys your Fifth Commandment 
 better than the Christian obeys it. He continues to pay 
 his respects after death has taken his parents from him. 
 He believes their spirits know of his fidelity, and that he 
 is pleasing them by his acts of filial piety. He does not 
 ask the spirits to assist him, or to protect him, or to do 
 anything for him in any way. He does not pray to 
 them nor does he worship them. He honors them. 
 
 " The missionary, not understanding what he saw, 
 mistook the Chinese obeisance for an act of worship. 
 This mistake has led him to protest against the most 
 sacred of Chinese customs, and to irritate the people in 
 their most sensitive spot. In fact, from the Chinese 
 [ 230 ] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 standpoint, the remarks of some of the Protestant mis- 
 sionaries as to the worthiness and the fate of ' heathen ' 
 ancestors, have been revolting. What would you say to 
 the man who applied to your mother epithets that would 
 shame a fallen woman? Kill him? Yes, that is your 
 attitude, and it is the attitude of many Chinese towards 
 the missionaries. You will see the result some day. 
 
 "We do not have this antagonism in Japan because 
 the Japanese are tolerant and are eager to learn. We 
 Buddhists are glad to work with all who will help man- 
 kind. Japanese reverence their ancestors, but they are 
 not as keen about it as the Chinese are; and, altogether. 
 Christian missionaries may be said to have a rather easy 
 time of it here. If they will master our language and 
 understand our doctrines they will have a yet easier time. 
 
 " And I should like to say, too, that some of those 
 missionaries who are rather hot against Buddhism would 
 see, if they would consider, that we are Buddhists for 
 pretty much the same reason that accounts for their 
 being Christians. Their parents were Christians, their 
 relatives were, their friends were. They heard their 
 learned men preach Christianity, their teachers told them 
 it was true, and thus growing up in it they believe it. 
 That is natural. If they did not, it would be remark- 
 able. Buddhism came to us in the same way. We both 
 did not know of other religions at first, and as each has 
 the same practical end in view perhaps we can work 
 better side by side than against each other. As there 
 are many things about which a Christian missionary 
 would find fault if he studied Buddhist sects, so there are 
 
 [231] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 points in some missionaries' teachings that we do not 
 see clearly or do not think of great value to the world. 
 
 " We believe that good done for the sake of reward 
 has no merit and will not benefit the individual who acts 
 with such a motive. The Christian's heaven, as some 
 preach it, seems to us a bribe. We do not claim to be 
 the only folks that possess the truth. I have heard that 
 this religion (Christianity) was the only true one, that 
 others were all wrong — as filthy rags, I think the mis- 
 sionary said. Then he added that, of the forty or fifty 
 kinds of Christianity, his kind was the only right kind. 
 (I believe he was a member of what he called the Chris- 
 tian Church, and his followers were Christian Christians, 
 instead of Baptist, or Methodist, or Presbyterian, or 
 Episcopalian, or Unitarian Christians.) He said that 
 if there could be such a thing as grades of joy in heaven, 
 the Christian Christians would have the best grade. 
 
 " The Christian Bible, in which we find much that is 
 noble and beautiful and sacred, seems to us to be two 
 Bibles, one Jewish and one Gentile. The New Testa- 
 ment contains the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Old, 
 some say, but the Jews, the ' chosen people of God,' do 
 not agree to this statement. As the Old Testament 
 belongs to them, their opinion as to its meaning should 
 have weight. Why do Christian priests preach from 
 the Old Testament if the doctrine of immortality is not 
 to be found there ? What would Christianity be without 
 immortality ? 
 
 " We do not understand why it is that what J esus 
 taught and what Christians do are so different. Jesus 
 
 [232] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 said ' Love your enemies,' yet Christians are at war in 
 some place or other almost all the time. How many 
 Christians have Christians killed? And why? We do 
 not find the answer in the teachings of Jesus. 
 
 " The Jews, too, seem to have been at war a great 
 deal. A * heathen ' might suppose that there was some- 
 thing in Bible study which made a man desire to fight. 
 Some of our Buddhists are very careful to live up to the 
 idea ' thou shalt not kill.' They have their wooden 
 clogs made with one support underneath instead of two 
 so that they will step on fewer insects when walking. 
 Though there have been many fighting priests who 
 served their emperor loyally or defended their homes 
 against assault, there have been no Buddhist wars at 
 all. 
 
 " We do not understand how the doctrines of ' Eternal 
 Punishment ' and ' Remission of Sins ' agree. We have 
 heard so often of incarnations — ^they are ubiquitous and 
 perennial — that the Christian story does not have much 
 force. We believe in liberation rather than in sacrifice, 
 and the story of Jehovah offering His Son seems to us 
 to be a myth founded on ideas of human sacrifice similar 
 to those the Druids held. New Japan is scientific and 
 critical. She is learning to compare foreign ideas and 
 to discriminate between them. At first she accepted them 
 in toto, as there was no help for it. Her experience gave 
 her nothing to gauge by. Such religious theories or 
 schemes or plans, as the Fall of Man and his Redemption, 
 will hardly meet with general acceptance, but I should 
 think that Christianity could proceed without them." 
 
 [233] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 A Japanese friend of ours who had been among the 
 first to receive a graduation certificate from a mission 
 school told us that his relations with the missionaries had 
 been pleasant and cordial always. Though he was not 
 a professing Christian when we saw him, he continued 
 his friendship with his former teachers and visited them 
 in Tsukiji with some frequency. He was in the Foreign 
 Office^ and had seen something of the world at the capi- 
 tals of Christian nations, besides having spent up- 
 wards of a year in India. He had several missionary 
 friends there as well as in China. 
 
 He rather admired the work of the missions in various 
 parts of the world, but not without reservations. " They 
 do not get near enough to the heart of the people," he 
 said to us one morning as we sat round a free box at 
 the riding school in Tokio. " Sometimes it is the lan- 
 guage that is between them and the natives, sometimes it 
 is native customs which the missionaries without under- 
 standing do not hesitate to disapprove, and again it is 
 missionary habits which arouse suspicion in the native 
 mind. 
 
 " In India, for instance, the missionaries go with the 
 officials in the civil service, whom the natives look upon as 
 set to watch over them and towards whom there is no 
 feeling of brotherhood or equality or trust. Indeed, 
 natives in India often regard officials with suspicion and 
 even with dislike. If the missionary were capable of 
 the great self-sacrifice of giving up his own people and 
 finding his companionships among the natives, showing 
 himself to be their friend rather than the friend of the 
 
 [234] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 
 not over-popular officials, he would learn the native mind 
 and win the native heart. 
 
 " In China the missionary should show the natives the 
 fifth commandment and explain to them that on that 
 point the Chinese world and the Christian world were 
 at one. We should have heard little of Boxers if the 
 missionaries had seen that the reverence the Chinese pay 
 to the memory of their ancestors was, to all intents and 
 purposes, a Christian ceremony. The tact of the Jesuits 
 succeeded here, and China might be Christian now had 
 not the Government suspected the Jesuits of political 
 aspirations. 
 
 " In Japan the missionaries herd together too much. 
 They should be scattered broadcast amongst our people, 
 not in a colony down in Tsukiji, where the majority 
 have lived pretty much as they live at home — the differ- 
 ence being that in Japan they have more servants than 
 they would at home, and perhaps in some cases more 
 comfort. There were four servants in the missionary's 
 house in which I stayed for several months, and we had 
 considerable luxury in our life — more than I have seen 
 in the average clergyman's home in America. We had 
 tea and toast before getting out of bed, brought by one 
 of the maids; we had a breakfast, better certainly than 
 one usually has in England and especially in France; 
 we had a hot tiffin at 12.30; we had tea, jam, and sand- 
 wiches at four o'clock; we had a dinner at seven o'clock 
 that usually had pheasant or chicken or duck or some- 
 thing like that in it, and we had a supper at ten o'clock 
 of cold chicken or meat and bread and butter and beer. 
 
 [235] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 " I thought that very good indeed compared to Jap- 
 anese living, and it is perhaps as good as any mission- 
 aries have. Though I noticed that, excepting the Roman 
 Catholics, the missionaries thought a lot about food and 
 even ordered things to eat from San Francisco. It is 
 comfortable to have nice food inside of one, but we 
 natives do not think so much about that. We like good 
 food, but good eaters do not appeal to us with much 
 power for uplifting. We do not look to them with any 
 special expectancy for information on spiritual matters. 
 As you know, we do not show much interest in spiritual 
 affairs as a rule. We are rather materialistic. It takes 
 much influence to draw us to matters not thoroughly 
 practical. 
 
 " I think, therefore, it would be good for the mis- 
 sionary not to eat so much. It would be good, too, if he 
 would come among us and live more as we live. He 
 should learn our written as well as our spoken language. 
 He should not have to ask his jin-riki-sha man the mean- 
 ing of the street signs. He should not have to ask his 
 cook to translate the butcher's bill or the grocer's bill for 
 him. These things lower the missionary in the eye of 
 the native. The coolie says, ' He has come to teach us ! 
 Why, he can't even read ! ' 
 
 " Then, too, in some habits of taste the missionary is 
 not quite with us here in Japan. We think him, and 
 especially her, prudish in some ways. We do not blush 
 over necessary things or try to conceal them as though 
 they were wrong. On the other hand, we are not given 
 to caressing. We dislike personal contact, and to see, 
 
 [236] 
 
MISSIONARIES 
 as sometimes one sees, a missionary man and his wife 
 ^ spooning,' I think you call it, shocks us. Our people 
 do not understand, or rather they misunderstand most 
 seriously. After witnessing such a spectacle as even 
 mild spooning is to them they have little faith in the 
 moral or the spiritual elevation of the spooners. 
 
 " In the matter of our bathing, too, the missionary 
 misunderstands. There is absolutely no thought of im- 
 morality connected with baths in the minds of Japanese, 
 but missionary ladies raise their hands in horror. If 
 they understood they would be thankful that there is on 
 this earth a people clean mentally as well as physically, 
 who can bathe as we bathe — in perfect innocence." 
 
 [237] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT 
 
 GILDED WITH OLD GOLD 
 
 WE found the pace of the gilded youth in 
 Japan quite as rapid as it is in other coun- 
 tries. In fact it was so fast that, as Walter 
 Besant once said of a man who was runnings away from 
 a bear, " it was manifest to the most casual observer that 
 the primary effort was speed." 
 
 The Prince of Sendai set such a pace in the days of 
 the Shogunate that the Mayor of the Palace remon- 
 strated, and told him if he had money to get rid of he 
 had better rid himself of it in a way that would be of 
 some advantage to the state. Thereupon he ordered the 
 Prince to dig a moat through Surugadai, the highest 
 hill in Yedo. This moat completed a sort of spiral 
 canal around the Shogun's palace. It took three thou- 
 sand men two years to dig this ditch, which is known 
 as " Sendai's Sorrow." 
 
 Sendai's chief exploit, one that brought him national 
 notoriety, was hiring the entire Yoshiwara and closing 
 the gates while he entertained his friends. The Yoshi- 
 wara is a community by itself on the outskirts of the 
 city, and contains some two thousand persons whose lives, 
 so long as they remain there, are dedicated to joy and 
 sin. To hire the Waldorf-Astoria in order to eat a 
 
 [ 238 ] 
 
GILDED WITH OLD GOLD 
 sandwich would be on a par, financially, with this act of 
 Sendai's. 
 
 Sendai liked the " No " dance, which is indeed perfect 
 in its dainty grace, but, like classic music, one cannot 
 learn to appreciate it in an afternoon. A long course 
 of training is necessary. This training is expensive 
 when one persists in it on the scale that Sendai followed. 
 He delighted to look over his sake cup while five hundred 
 beautifully robed geisha postured before him in rhyth- 
 mic motion, like a field of flowers in the wind. He gave 
 great dances on all the festal days, sometimes on a flotilla 
 in the river, and sometimes beneath the cherry blossoms 
 along the banks of Sumida Gawa. He would hire a 
 theater, with a company of actors, and give a continuous 
 performance for a week, with the little square pens in 
 the pit filled with singing girls, all banqueting. 
 
 The tea-houses that he patronized grew rich, for his 
 custom was to order " the best there is and all there is 
 of it." He would have broken the Satsuma dishes off 
 which he fed if he had not been too thoroughly an artist. 
 
 He ate kami-boku, a kind of fish paste made of the 
 little kernel of flesh taken from the head of " tai," a 
 variety of bream much esteemed by Japanese epicures. 
 Court nobles would have relished the bodies, but Sendai 
 threw these away. He ate mountain-sparrow soup, that 
 even the Shogun saw only once a year when he off^ered 
 food to the spirits of his ancestors. 
 
 With all this he seems to have kept his health, owing, 
 perhaps, to his practice of fencing with the long, two- 
 handed bamboo swords that are popular to this day. 
 
 [239] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 The exercise is rougher than either broadsword or rapier, 
 for which reason the fencers need well-padded armor. 
 No European has a chance at sword-play against a Jap- 
 anese expert, and with his two-handed weapon it was said 
 that the Prince of Sendai could draw his sword and take 
 off an enemy's head in a single sweep. 
 
 Of course, being a great swell, he had blades that 
 were worth many times their weight in gold. One could 
 not be a swell in those days without owning good swords, 
 for " the sword was the soul of the samurai." Sendai, 
 like others in his class, went in for archery, too, and 
 could shoot while standing in his stirrups or from under 
 his horse's neck. Archery is still a gentleman's pastime 
 in Japan ; likewise polo, with scoop nets instead of mal- 
 lets. It is rough work, but not as fierce as the game they 
 play in India and in England. 
 
 Tea-drinking hardly would seem to come under the 
 head of a sport, or to appeal to a man who led a fast, 
 fierce life. But Sendai spent enough at it to make a 
 dozen experts in its ceremonies independent for life. Of 
 this pastime Professor Chamberlain says : " The art of 
 drinking tea has gone through three stages — medico- 
 religious, luxurious, and aesthetic." It was the third 
 stage that appealed to Sendai. 
 
 The ceremony originated in a worthy cause. A priest 
 named Eisai, who wished to reform a youthful Shogun 
 who drank too much sake and sham-shiu, got him inter- 
 ested in tea by elaborating a set of rules for drinking it. 
 When the ceremony was well established in the august 
 favor the old priest gave the Shogun tracts on the bene- 
 [240] 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 Of THE 
 UNWERSITV of ILLINOIS 
 
GILDED WITH OLD GOLD 
 
 ficial effects of tea, how it regulated the whole system 
 and drove out devils — might, indeed, be preferred to the 
 gold cure. 
 
 Eisai worked in a good deal of religion along with 
 his tea, but the ceremony of drinking grew more and 
 more worldly, until it was all luxury and no religion. 
 The swells drank tea daily in gorgeous apartments hung 
 with brocade and damask, where they burned precious 
 perfumes, and served rare fishes and strange birds with 
 sweetmeats and wine. In time they lost their fortunes 
 and themselves in this extravagance of etiquette, for the 
 rules ordained that all the things rich and rare that were 
 exhibited were to be given to the singing and dancing 
 girls who entertained the guests. Troops of them were 
 always present, and this explains why Sendai was so fond 
 of tea. 
 
 Even in such extravagant observance, however, tea- 
 drinking was not altogether an evil. While it lasted it 
 gave great stimulus to art. Some of the finest specimens 
 of native work date from the " tea period." So Sendai 
 may be said to have done good in a negative way, not 
 meaning to, perhaps, but those of us who care for Japan- 
 ese art may say " Thank you " to him and his class, and 
 drink his health from one of the famous bowls of the tea 
 period. 
 
 [241 ] 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE 
 
 AND SO HE BECAME A SAINT 
 
 NACHI has waterfalls, temples, and big trees. 
 The big trees are glorious in the autumn, the 
 temples have many famous relics, and the 
 waterfalls, among them the highest in Japan, will wash 
 away all sin. When Gardner and I were down there we 
 tried one, with gratifying results. We may return to 
 it some day, should it seem advisable. It does one good 
 to take a fall now and again. 
 
 The pool we chose for our ablutions was below " Ichi- 
 no-taki," or No. 1 Fall, the largest of the three, which 
 tumbles down a good three hundred feet. It was the 
 very place that Saint Mongaku Shonin had soaked in 
 continuously for three weeks some centuries before. A 
 peasant woman showed us where he sat, and then sold 
 us several pictures taken on the spot — ages after the 
 event. 
 
 Mongaku portraits are common in Nachi. They are 
 accurate representations of what was in the mind of 
 whoever made them. No one should blame the saint that 
 they are not beautiful. He has quite enough else to 
 answer for, and were it not for the virtues of Ichi-no- 
 taki, and his long atonement in the pool below, one 
 dreads to think where he would be now. Mongaku was 
 the name he was known by after death ; his living name 
 
 [242] 
 
AND SO HE BECAME A SAINT 
 was Rambo. Rambo's experience was one to have made 
 of him a saint or else a raging deviL Fate ordained 
 him saint, with a purgatory on earth. 
 
 When young he had been full of fiery ambitions. His 
 father was dead, and being the only son what could his 
 mother do ? Her parents had " augustly departed," and 
 her husband too; was not hers the third obedience? 
 Rambo was not much about the house, however, nor keen 
 for the books that his uncle, the chief priest at Fuda- 
 rakuji, the first of the Kwannon temples, gave him to 
 read. He was for the mountains. He knew the Kumano 
 Three Peaks better than the oldest hunters, at least so 
 said the village folk. He was a wonderful swimmer too, 
 and could dive into pools and catch fishes with his hands. 
 Occasionally he would be away for weeks at Oshima, 
 watching with the whalers and going out with them to 
 place the nets. He was the first to jump on the dying 
 mammal to cut the slits in the creature's back and make 
 the hawser fast for towing the body ashore. Both on 
 land and on the water, and in the water too, he was as 
 skillful at eighteen as others were at eight-and-thirty. 
 Furthermore, he was a handsome youth, according to 
 traditions, not the pictures, and had small traces about 
 him of the saint that was to be. 
 
 One day of a season that had been poor for whales, 
 Rambo had been with the topmost look-outs watching 
 vainly for a chance to give the signal to the men below, 
 when a messenger from his mother came to him with 
 tidings that Shinrui San of Kanazawa, his kinsman by 
 adoption, would be in Nachi soon. His mother wished 
 
 [243 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 to have everything in readiness for the guest from such 
 a distance, and begged Rambo so to order it. Rambo 
 had never seen this kinsman, but he had heard of him as 
 a man of prowess, one after his own heart, so he returned 
 quickly with the messenger and prepared to receive 
 Shinrui. 
 
 The guests were two days late in reaching Nachi, ow- 
 ing to the fall of an embankment, which came down upon 
 the road, making it impassable for half a ri. Shinrui 
 could have come round by a footpath probably, but 
 Gozen his wife was with him, and to climb the mountain 
 with her would be more troublesome than to wait for 
 men to clear the road. Rambo chafed at the delay, and 
 threatened to go back to Oshima, but his mother per- 
 suaded him to stay, saying that now that her brother- 
 in-law, Gozen's father, was dead, and the mother also, 
 and the young couple were coming to them, everything 
 possible should be ready to give them a welcome to 
 Nachi, as if it were their own home, as indeed, with her 
 son's permission, she hoped it might be. 
 
 " It is of no matter to me,'' said Rambo. " I wish to 
 see Shinrui, for he is a brave samurai and famous as a 
 hunter. I can exercise with him. If he will stay I shall 
 be glad. I can show him the whales, too, if ever they 
 come to this coast again. He has no such sport off 
 Kanazawa. If my cousin stays too, it will do perhaps. 
 I can tell when I see her. But she must be a daughter 
 to you and company, if you need such things." 
 
 These words pleased the mother greatly, for the days 
 had been long and lonely since she became a widow, 
 
 [244] 
 
AND SO HE BECAME A SAINT 
 
 " Your selfish, stupid mother thanlcs you with much 
 gratefulness," she said, bowing to her son, who was busy 
 making a net for ducks and did not notice. 
 
 On the following day after this talk, Shinrui came 
 and O Gozen San with him. Rambo's mother greeted 
 them with many welcomes. 
 
 " It is indeed good to see you," she said. " Come in ! 
 come in ! My son has gone to the river for some trout 
 and will be back directly. What a pity there should 
 have been an accident to the embankment ! We heard of 
 it only yesterday, but it explained your delay. Indeed 
 we hardly thought you could arrive before night, or 
 possibly to-morrow morning. Here ! I will put your lug- 
 gage in this cupboard where you can open it at your 
 leisure. This corner of our unworthy house is to be 
 yours always. Excuse the dirty and miserable condition 
 of everything. Do you like the view across the river to 
 the hillside temple? The bath will be hot in a few min- 
 utes. Here are the futon. Lie down and rest, and I will 
 call you presently. Here is some hot sake. Pardon the 
 rude way in which I serve it. Now I will leave you and 
 send a messenger for Rambo." 
 
 So in a short time the new arrivals had bathed and 
 rested and refreshed themselves with cakes and sake, and 
 by the time for the midday meal Rambo was back with a 
 basket of fish such as gives joy to the hearts of the chil- 
 dren of Japan. Shinrui and O Gozen San bowed low 
 and apologized for their slow coming, and for the 
 trouble they were giving, and for having the " disgust- 
 ing effrontery to be in existence," as well as for other 
 [ 245 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 things beyond the ken of those uninitiated to the mys- 
 teries of Japanese etiquette. Rambo bowed with due 
 formahty, and then, not noticing O Gozen San, who, 
 after the manner of Japanese women, kept herself on the 
 verge of obHteration, he proceeded to ask about the 
 sports of the west coast — the fencing, the wresthng, the 
 boar hunting, the bear and the deer, the ducks and 
 the pheasants, about the dangers of the mountains, the 
 storms on the North Sea, and what not. 
 
 In the afternoon he took Shinrui to show him the falls 
 and the pools where the fishing was best. The next day 
 the pair went into the mountains, and later they trav- 
 eled down to see if the whales had come in sight. One did 
 come in towards shore, and the Oshima men got him. 
 Shinrui was astonished at what he saw. Soon after they 
 were home again Shinrui had to go to Kiyoto on busi- 
 ness connected with the estate of the man who had 
 adopted him. It was then that Rambo really saw O 
 Gozen San. The shyness which her new surroundings 
 caused at first had disappeared, and her new mother, as 
 she called her hostess, had treated her so kindly that the 
 cheerfulness she had not known since her father's death 
 returned. 
 
 Rambo watched her often, though he did not realize 
 why. He had not thought seriously of any woman be- 
 fore, nor cared much whether or no there were such 
 beings; but now, his mother noticed, he was round the 
 house much more, sometimes the whole day long; he 
 was more careful of his dress^ and of his appearance gen- 
 erally; when he was away it was only to procure some 
 
 [ 246 ] 
 
AND SO HE BECAME A SAINT 
 dainty, which, though he did not present it directly to 
 
 0 Gozen San, he encouraged her to eat with much 
 solicitude. 
 
 The old lady did not suspect the meaning of the 
 change, until she said one morning: 
 
 " Shinrui San will return soon, now. You will then 
 have a companion for your hunting. I see how you have 
 missed him. It is too bad you should have had a stupid 
 time so long about the house where only women are." 
 
 " I do not wish Shinrui to return," said Rambo. 
 " There will be no peace for me when he comes back. 
 
 1 wish the gods would take him to the Bonin islands." 
 
 " Oya ! oya ! " cried the old lady ; " what can cause 
 you to talk so of a friend, and our relation.'^ " 
 
 " That is just the matter. He is a relation. If he 
 were not, all would be easy. But I must have my way 
 in spite of that. You must arrange it for me." 
 
 "Arrange what, my son?" 
 
 " I must have O Gozen San. She must go with me 
 and be my wife." 
 
 " Are you mad ? Why do you make such horrid 
 jests? Surely you do not mean these words. You would 
 not harm the honor of our house ? " 
 
 But Rambo convinced his mother, whose face was hid- 
 den in her sleeves, that he was in earnest, and was de- 
 termined to have his way despite all obstacles. She had 
 always done his bidding, she must do so now. 
 
 " No, no, you may kill me, but I cannot," was the 
 hapless woman's reply. Rambo was in such a rage that 
 no one knows what he might have done, had not O Gozen 
 
 [ 247 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 San, who had been in the next room and had heard all 
 through the karakami that shut off her apartment, 
 rushed out, and clutching her new mother's sleeve, turned 
 to her cousin and said slowly and distinctly : 
 
 " Do not urge your mother now, or vex her with re- 
 proaches. There is no reason to do so. I am willing to 
 do as you wish, on one condition which I will explain to 
 you apart.'' Then stepping to the farther end of the 
 room she talked with Rambo in a low voice, lest the 
 mother hear. 
 
 " It would never do to run away together and leave 
 my husband to follow us. We might both lose our 
 lives. You must await his return, and at night when he 
 is asleep put an end to him. We can then live in peace 
 without fear of molestation." 
 
 There was fierce joy in Rambo's heart on hearing O 
 Gozen San speak these words. To kill Shinrui would 
 be a simple matter, and he readily agreed to await his 
 home-coming. Turning to his mother, he said: 
 
 " All is settled ; have no more fear." 
 
 He had not long to wait. Gozen's husband returned 
 three days later, and that night Rambo feasted him and 
 saw that his sake cup was never empty. When Shinrui 
 was beginning to show the effects of this attention, 
 Rambo, saying he would return shortly, left the room 
 to put his sword in order. O Gozen San sat by her hus- 
 band, helping in the plot, and pouring him sake until 
 he yawned and called for his futon. She got some and 
 laid them out in order. 
 
 Not noticing what they were, nor in what place she 
 [248] 
 
AND SO HE BECAME A SAINT 
 had arranged them, he rolled over to them and immedi- 
 ately was asleep. Then wistfully Gozen looked at him, 
 and drawing the yagu up to cover him, she bowed her 
 head to the floor, saying: 
 
 " Dana San, O yasumi nasai." 
 
 Closing the karakami to her apartment she changed 
 the dark kimono she was wearing for one all white. 
 Then she laid out Shinrui's own futon in the accustomed 
 place, took a rosary that once had been her mother's, 
 and kneeling with the beads between her palms, she re- 
 peated slowly several times: 
 
 " Namu Amida Butsu ! Namu Amida Butsu ! " 
 
 And now lying down she covered herself with Shinrui's 
 j-agu, and lay as though asleep quite in the position her 
 husband had been wont to occupy. Only she herself 
 knew it was the woman and not the man that lay there. 
 
 What happened afterwards who shall say.^^ But in 
 the morning a moaning mother's mind had given way 
 through grief for a son's crime; a husband had been 
 drowned in searching fiercely for a murderer; and a 
 youth of splendid promise had turned from the world 
 with the horror of remorse upon him, with a great 
 awakening in his soul, a cry demanding life-long pen- 
 ance and self-obliterating service to the glory of Amida 
 Buddha. The service he began in the sanctuary pool of 
 penitents, which to this day is beneath the great fall at 
 Nachi. 
 
 [ 249 ] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY 
 
 KADE AND THE REPEATERS 
 
 WE had a pupil in one of our classes for Eng- 
 lish conversation whom we called " Pokan no 
 Kade "—or " Kade," for short. When 
 Pokan no Kade was a youngster his particular play- 
 mate was Mutsu Hito, the present Emperor of Japan. 
 
 Mutsu and Kade had many likes in common, and 
 many dislikes too ; but they were generous lads, and had 
 never been known to quarrel. Difference in rank had not 
 come between them, and each one was devoted to the 
 other, as two chums should be. One of their common 
 likes was cakes. There was much discussion about the 
 palace whether Kade or the Son of the Immortals ate this 
 sweet of the pastry-maker with the more relish. Cer- 
 tainly it was a joyous sight to see either of them 
 a-munching, and when they munched together, as they 
 often did in the palace garden, even the fiercest of the 
 guardsmen would begin to purr. 
 
 But one day there was no cake. The Son of the Im- 
 mortals had had a pain that morning, and the thirteen 
 Court physicians, after consultation, had told the Grand 
 Marshal of the Household about this pain. The grand 
 marshal told the chamberlain, who told the keeper of the 
 royal purse, who told the imperial provider, who told the 
 high caterer, who told the dispenser of the sacred pastry, 
 
 [250] 
 
KADE AND THE REPEATERS 
 that cake was the cause of the ache. Eleven minutes 
 later there was no cake to be found in the royal palace. 
 
 When Mutsu said " cake " to the noble to whose 
 charge he had been committed for the day, that func- 
 tionary bowed low, and told the officer next in rank that 
 the Son of the Immortals wished for cake. This officer, 
 in turn, bowed to the ground and then repeated the royal 
 wish to an officer still lower, and so it went on ; but cake 
 did not appear. 
 
 " Chin no kwashi doko ka .^ " cried Mutsu — which 
 being interpreted means, "Where is my cake.'^ " The 
 noble guardian bowed low, and said to the officer below 
 him, " The Son of the Immortal Ones has deigned to 
 say, ' Where is my cake.'^ ' " These words were also re- 
 peated, and many others, petulant, wrathful, and be- 
 seeching; but that which was longed for did not come. 
 
 The palace and the grounds about echoed with the 
 voices of officers and servants of many grades, who were 
 as the links of a chain, beginning at the feet of the Son 
 of the Immortals and ending nowhere — at least, not in 
 the cake pantry. The air was full of the word " cake," 
 but the thing cake came not in sight. 
 
 While all this was going on, Pokan no Kade sat on a 
 pile of sand near the great gate of the palace, playing 
 with a half-dozen watches which his Imperial chum had 
 given to him the day before. Watches, or " toki,''' as 
 Mutsu had called them, were new things in Japan then, 
 especially repeaters, and all six of these were repeaters. 
 
 Kade had great fun with them, ringing their bells, 
 and laying them like stepping-stones about a dainty 
 [251] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 garden such as all Japanese children can lay out in 
 miniature so prettily. Once he boiilt a castle, and 
 planted the watches in two piles on the very top, just 
 as the gold dolphins are put on the Castle of Nagoya. 
 
 He was so busy with his play that for a long time 
 he did not hear the many voices saying " cake." But 
 finally, when an inadvertent kick had upset his castle, 
 and he was looking about for something else to do, he 
 heard the cries, and soon found out their meaning. 
 
 Thrusting the watches into his sleeve — which was 
 large enough to hold more playthings than the pockets 
 of a whole suit of clothes such as an English boy wears 
 — he ran to the royal kitchen ; but of course there was no 
 cake there, nor would the cooks make any, though Kade 
 begged never so hard. 
 
 " I'll get some, anyhow," he said to himself. " A 
 watch is as pretty as a cake. I know where there's an 
 old woman with a houseful of cakes. She just sits and 
 looks at them all day. I'll go to see her." 
 
 So Kade slipped out unseen and went to the cake- 
 shop, where he laid the six watches on the floor near 
 where the old woman sat, and picking up six of the 
 prettiest cakes, put them in his sleeves, and scampered 
 back to the palace. 
 
 That night the Court physicians held another con- 
 sultation. 
 
 [252] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 
 
 KADE WOULD ADVENTURE 
 
 KADE thought to run away from his home one 
 night. He had planned for the adventure as 
 he sat on the edge of the veranda of his home in 
 Tokio. Years after he told us the story. Here it is 
 in substance, if not in his exact words. 
 
 " Yes, I must have waraji, of course/' he said to him- 
 self as he sat swinging his bare legs to and fro. " The 
 road over the mountain is rough. I remember how it 
 cut my feet when I got out of the kago up there and 
 ran on ahead to see if the men had caught a bear. If 
 I had only worn sandals then I could have gone into the 
 woods and helped." 
 
 Kade was only nine years old then, and though of a 
 Kuge or Court noble family had been adopted by a per- 
 sonage who stood high in favor with the Shogun. He 
 knew the folklore of his country well, and believed it all 
 was true, and he could tell of many of the brave deeds 
 that had been done in Dai Nippon since Jimmu Tenno, 
 the founder of the Empire, had descended from the skies 
 upon the sacred mountain that all Japanese still hold in 
 reverence. His tutor had told him of these things, for he 
 was a man of war as well as learning, and he found a 
 ready listener in the lad whom the daimiyo had given 
 into his charge. 
 
 [253] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Kade wished to do great things, too. He had just 
 made up his mind to go over the mountains to a place 
 where hved the most vahant of all the clans, the great 
 clan of Satsuma. There he would learn the art of war 
 by actual fighting, and would win fame for himself and 
 honor for his house. 
 
 He was to start out that very night, and it was time 
 to make ready. All that he knew was that his goal was 
 over the mountains, that the road was rough, that he 
 needed waraji and that waraji cost money. He did not 
 know what money was, for, like other children of gentle 
 birth in Old Japan, he had never bought anything in 
 his life, or even touched a coin or a piece of script; but 
 he had heard the steward of the household talking about 
 money one day while counting bright pieces of some- 
 thing yellow, and he knew where those bright pieces were 
 kept. 
 
 " I am almost sure they were money,'' he said, as he 
 went on with his planning to run away from home to be 
 a soldier. 
 
 " I'll get some of them as soon as everyone is in bed 
 to-night, and then everything will be all right. I'll go 
 down to the shop by the stone bridge and give the money 
 to the old woman in the sandal shop, and she will give 
 me the waraji." 
 
 So when all was still throughout the house Kade 
 crawled out from the futon where he had been lying as 
 though fast asleep, and sliding back the karakami and 
 the shoji, and the little door in the gate outside, made 
 his way quickly to the hut near Ishibashi, as the old stone 
 
 [254] 
 
KADE WOULD ADVENTURE 
 bridge is called. He had with him the wooden box in 
 which he had seen the steward put the shining yellow 
 pieces. 
 
 The sandal maker was a light sleeper, and heard the 
 first low call that Kade made. She found the kind of 
 waraji that he wanted, and he thanked her for them. 
 Then he opened the wooden box and handed her a piece 
 of money. 
 
 When the sandal maker saw it she gasped for breath. 
 Kade had offered her a gold piece stamped jiu yen. A 
 jiu yen piece! Why, that was enough to buy six thou- 
 sand waraji, or sixty thousand likely. It was more 
 money than the ojd woman had seen in all her life. She 
 had heard of such enormous pieces, but that she should 
 ever touch one with her poor old hand 
 
 " Come, take it," said Kade. " It's money. I must 
 put on the waraji and be off." 
 
 The old woman was still speechless. 
 
 The lad called out to her again, but there was no 
 answer. Then the moon broke through a cloud and 
 shone upon the aged face. When Kade saw it, fear came 
 upon him, and he ran back to this uncle's house so fast 
 that he seemed to fly. He took with him the wooden box 
 and the waraji, but he left the jiu yen piece in the dead 
 woman's hand, where a guardsman found it in the early 
 morning. 
 
 [265] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO 
 
 WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 
 SHE is so frolicsome, jolly, and good-natured, and 
 above all she delights so much in pleasing, that 
 globe-trotters, the " transients " of Japan, misun- 
 derstand the " musume," while she is too innocent to un- 
 derstand their views of her. They think she cannot 
 say " no," but she can. They think, too, that com- 
 placency is the law of her life. There they are right 
 and wrong, for she accepts what her conscience tells her 
 is her duty with a resignation that has the outward 
 aspect of complacency, but she is far indeed from being 
 complacent with infringements of those proprieties that 
 are natural to the social conditions of her far-distant 
 land. 
 
 She can draw the line for the globe-trotter, and for 
 the foreigner resident, too, for that matter, as one of 
 our friends knows full well, or did know until a log 
 rolled over him in a Western lumber camp and blotted 
 out all memory of the past, so that even tapping his sub- 
 consciousness has not recalled it. 
 
 He was an American with various degrees which he 
 had picked up here and there, and a keen fondness for 
 travel. He was M. A. of Harvard, LL. B. of Colum- 
 bia, Ph. D. of Heidelberg, J. V. D. of Paris ; and some- 
 thing else in St. Petersburg that is impossible in Eng- 
 
 [256] 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 lish type. While he had been picking up degrees he had 
 done what he called " a few stunts on the side,'' running 
 a paper in one place, and lecturing on philosophy, San- 
 scrit, Greek, French literature, and the History of Law 
 in other places. In truth he had an appalling quantity 
 of education, and in spite of it much charm of manner. 
 He came to Japan as a sociologist. He wished to study 
 whatever relics of the recent feudalism might remain, 
 and to watch the progress in the national kindergarten. 
 
 With his string of degrees he had no trouble in finding 
 a university appointment that gave him the oppor- 
 tunities he needed for investigation. A Dai Gakko pro- 
 fessor ranks high in Japan. Soon he was established. 
 He rented a home on Small Stone-River Hill, near a 
 famous temple, and had arranged his life quite on the 
 Japanese order. Excepting when he was in the lecture- 
 room he wore " kimono " instead of foreign dress, and 
 " geta," or clogs, instead of shoes. He went barefoot, 
 ate with chopsticks, sat on the floor, slept on the floor, 
 learned to like raw fish and plain boiled rice. He had 
 not a stove in the house, only the charcoal braziers, called 
 hibachi, and a sort of furnace for burning wood that 
 the cook used in the kitchen. The smoke from this 
 found its way out through a hole high up in the wall 
 under one end of the ridge pole at the top of the ceiling- 
 less kitchen, or else it blew round and pervaded the 
 apartment generally. The gas from the charcoal got 
 out easily, too, for the ventilation in Japanese houses is 
 particularly thorough. 
 
 Allen, whom, by the way, the natives called Sensei 
 [257] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 (first-born), a title of respect to scholars, professional 
 men, and old gentlemen generally, went so far as to 
 master the Japanese pillow. This was a triumph; the 
 fame of it spread abroad. The newspapers got hold 
 of it, and made diagrams of the process of the achieve- 
 ment, picturing Allen in all manner of contorted shapes 
 as the result of " first attempts." In the serenity of his 
 ultimate attainment he dreamed such dreams as only a 
 Japanese artist can depict or a Japanese paper would 
 dare to print. 
 
 When he had made himself familiar with his new en- 
 vironment, a kind of thing he had especial aptitude for, 
 he fell in love. That was natural enough and proper. 
 He could not well have helped it even had it not been 
 proper, as any other man would say had he known O 
 Toku San. She was one of a class of girls that came to 
 Allen's house for an hour's English conversation exer- 
 cise each afternoon. At first he was in love with the 
 whole dozen of them, but gradually, though he did not 
 love eleven less, he loved O Toku San more. She had 
 clear brown eyes, that glowed and flashed and sparkled 
 merrily, and changed as one looked at them, showing 
 wonder at Allen's words, then comprehension, and then 
 delight at the possession of new knowledge. It is not 
 strange that the instruction wandered now and then, 
 deviating from the " system " the instructor had laid 
 down on psychologic principles for harmonious develop- 
 ment according to the laws of thought. 
 
 All the twelve learned rapidly, as is the custom of 
 girls in Dai Nippon, but O Toku got hopelessly ahead, 
 
 [258] 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 so far, indeed, that Allen's system wore itself to ravels 
 catching up — and then it never reached her. He put 
 her into French to hold her back, and later into German ; 
 and finally he gave her a series of essays on general lit- 
 erature that he had worked up for a P. G. course for 
 some college down in Melbourne. In this composition he 
 had used whatever language had come handiest. For 
 French he had used German, for German French, and 
 for English both French and German. O Toku San was 
 equally indifferent in her reading of the essays, and one 
 day, bowing very low, she handed to Allen the whole 
 series written out in Japanese, saying she thought all 
 students would like to read it if they could have it in 
 their language. Allen had the translation printed, with O 
 Toku's name and family crest on the title-page — ^the last 
 page in the book as European volumes go — and six months 
 later the Empress sent the girl a special decoration. 
 
 While all this acquisition was in progress, Allen was 
 growing very chummy round at O Toku San's home, 
 just off the corner of the famous Denzuin temple 
 grounds. This home had been a temple in itself once, 
 and all the paraphernalia of Buddhist worship was still 
 in place in the chief apartment of the building ; but with 
 the disappearance of the Shogun and the reappearance 
 of the Mikado, the Government had disestablished Bud- 
 dhism, and the priests had abandoned many temples for 
 lack of the funds needful to maintain them. O Toku 
 San's home was one of these abandoned temples. The 
 beautiful shaft of light-brown stone standing by the 
 gateway declared that eaters of flesh and drinkers of 
 
 [259 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 wme must not enter with the sacred precincts ; but the 
 fair maid's father troubled httle about this ancient 
 warning, and gave banquets almost every seventh day 
 with beef and sake much in evidence. 
 
 Allen was much in evidence too on these occasions, and 
 most of his spare moments between times also, so that 
 his brethren at the University took it upon themselves to 
 warn him against the danger of overstudy in the electric 
 climate of Japan. They suspected the newcomer of 
 trying to break the record made by a young German 
 professor who had learned to read, write, and speak an 
 extraordinary amount of Japanese within twelve months, 
 and had never been right since. Allen thanked them, 
 and said he would knock off at the first moment he felt 
 ill. Then he hired an extra man for his jin-riki-sha and 
 pushed for Little Stone-River Hill as fast as he could 
 go. Getting into his kimono, he " ran over " to pass 
 the time until the twelve should assemble for their con- 
 versation lesson. 
 
 It was delicious lying on the porch there or on the 
 soft mats just within, listening to O Toku San as she 
 read some favorite bit of foreign literature he had 
 brought to her, and answering the questions she asked 
 of the customs of the lands on the other side of the world. 
 And what a tremendous thing a little question was some- 
 times — or its answer, rather! He had lived in many 
 countries and had studied much, but time and again 
 O Toku San had him. His inheritance and hers had 
 been so different. She would ask about some chance 
 allusion in the text — a question that would never occur 
 
 [ 260 ] 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 to a youth in Europe or America, for it referred to what 
 was of the life there, which everyone in those countries 
 knew unconsciously, and Allen would realize there was 
 more in heredity, evolution, and development than he 
 had ever dreamed of. 
 
 He had made much progress in Japanese, but that did 
 not aid him. Had he known the sum total of languages 
 in the Far East, his vocabulary would have been lacking. 
 Intellectually, she was a child of China, he of Greece and 
 Rome and the ancient Hebrews. If their family trees 
 had any roots in common, it must have been in the days 
 when their ancestors lived among the branches with 
 foliage for clothes. He would go through the history 
 of the half of the world he knew about, and she would 
 listen, but it was all so different to the other half whose 
 800,000,000 people and their history he, like others, 
 treated almost flippantly, that she could scarcely com- 
 prehend, and she said so sadly. 
 
 " You should go abroad. Then you would soon un- 
 derstand," said Allen, " for you would see with your 
 own eyes." 
 
 " I wish it very much, but I am only the little Japa- 
 nese girl," replied O Toku San. 
 
 " And why can't the little Japanese girl go? " asked 
 Allen. " The foreigners won't eat you." 
 
 " No, I know they are all kind, but next year my 
 parents make me a marriage and I have not time for 
 travels. Japanese women must be at home." 
 
 She spok^ gently, with a low, sweet voice, as do all 
 women in Japan. There was not a trace of bitterness in 
 
 [261 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 the tones, or any intimation of complaining. That 
 her longing should be considered or even noticed never 
 crossed her mind. In her day the musume never had 
 such thoughts. 
 
 Allen thought of none of these things just then, how- 
 ever. The word " marriage " had hit him hard. 
 Another realization was upon him, and O Toku San was 
 again the cause. 
 
 " No, you must not marry," he said. " You are too 
 young. You must go to Europe and to America to 
 study ; and besides, I love you, and I want you to be my 
 wife." 
 
 The man of many degrees had spoken words he would 
 have laughed to scorn an hour earlier ; and as for O Toku 
 San her heart stopped beating nearly. She looked at 
 Allen with such a look as only perfect faith can give, 
 and said slowly: 
 
 " I am very glad and have greatest astonishment you 
 care for such foolish girl as I am all the time. I love 
 you by all my heart because — because — it is very won- 
 derful and how I cannot translate why, but you are kind 
 and my most best good friend." 
 
 That was a long speech for a Japanese girl to make, 
 and probably none ever made one so long before. Allen 
 had taken her hand and was saying many things, when 
 O Toku San's mother entered, saying: 
 
 "O Sanji go fun mai degozaimasa " ("Honorable 
 Three five minutes before augustly-existing is And 
 with that Allen made off for his conversation, and O 
 Toku, whom custom forbade walking in the streets with 
 
 [262] 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 a man other than her father, clattered along two minutes 
 later. 
 
 The lesson was mostly with the eleven other girls that 
 afternoon, for Allen said hardly a word to O Toku San, 
 nor did she ask questions. To his disgust the August 
 Sensei had to show himself at an official ball at the 
 Rokumeikwan that evening, so he did not see O Toku 
 San again until the next midday, when to his chagrin her 
 mother sat out the entire visit. This annoyed him 
 seriously, but it seemed the old lady had a purpose in 
 her presence. She had been glad at first at the kind 
 attentions of the foreigner who taught her daughter with 
 so much care, but now she was worried. Falling in love 
 was a thing she knew nothing about from personal ex- 
 perience, but she had heard of such indiscretions, and 
 wished to protect O Toku from any such misfortune. 
 The girl must marry soon. She had been engaged since 
 before she was born, for her father had promised his 
 first daughter to a chum's first son long ago when he 
 was a student in " The Bureau for the Investigation of 
 Barbarian Literature," now grown into the Imperial 
 University. Neither of the young men had married 
 then, but they engaged their prospective children never- 
 theless, and the engagement held. That it could be 
 otherwise was one of those ideas that " is not in the 
 Japanese mind, for Japanese society has developed on 
 Eastern, not on Western lines, — and O Toku San's 
 mother wished to avoid entanglements that might make 
 the inevitable unpleasant. 
 
 She was always about when Allen went round to coach 
 
 [263] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 O Toku San in the foreign language lessons, and she 
 told the girl she must not talk so much in English, but 
 should use the native Japanese instead. She forgot 
 that language as an instrument for the interchange of 
 thought might be written as well as spoken, and so said 
 not a word against notes and letters. And so a small 
 miracle came about. Allen, for once in his life, became 
 a correspondent of decent regularity. Written messages 
 passed each way each day between O Toku and himself. 
 The girl longed to become Allen's wife, and was doing 
 all in her power to escape the engagement of such long 
 standing. 
 
 " I am often kiss your photograph," she declared, 
 " and wondering, ' Oh, where is my lover .'^ ' all the time 
 you are not by me." 
 
 This was sweet to Allen, but to be so near O Toku San 
 and yet have her always out of reach was tantalizing. It 
 began to tell on him. He saw he must have a change 
 of scene or break down altogether. He told his friends 
 at the University that he was going to the interior to 
 investigate the subject of land-tenure in several of the 
 provinces. He would have carried O Toku San with him 
 had she been willing to elope. She would not go, but 
 at the moment of his leave-taking, when her mother had 
 slipped into the next room for an instant to get a fresh 
 cup of tea, she said to him: 
 
 " When you are in the country, please have a house- 
 keeper to look after you, and I will look upon her as my 
 sister." 
 
 She was in bed three days with what the doctors called 
 [264] 
 
WHAT HAPPENED TO ALLEN 
 " Shinkei-byo " (nerve-sickness) after he had gone. 
 Prescriptions did no good; but the postman who called 
 when the mother happened to be at the market worked 
 a cure that anyone but a Christian Scientist would have 
 marveled at. Perhaps he was a Buddhist Scientist. 
 Regular correspondence between the lovers, however, was 
 hard to manage, owing to maternal vigilance, and in a 
 few months Allen was back again to see if progress had 
 been made in the destruction of that engagement. 
 
 He found that O Toku San had not yet seen the man 
 she was engaged to, but that, so far as she had ventured 
 to ascertain, her father's intention as to the marriage 
 had not altered, and her mother's mind of course was 
 " inside " her father's. 
 
 More land-tenure then, thought Allen, and was about 
 leaving for the interior a second time, when a cable called 
 him to America. Someone was dead, and there were 
 affairs in the Northwest that demanded his immediate 
 attention. He had just time to catch his steamer, but 
 he sent a note of love and explanation to O Toku San by 
 a friend, and wrote to her soon after his arrival in Seattle, 
 telling her of certain moneys he had come into, and 
 asking her to wait patiently a little, when he would be 
 able to return to Japan to get her — ^his own little girl 
 forever. 
 
 Six weeks later came this reply: 
 " Sir, — I am married, and is called Mrs. Sodesuka. 
 And by our Japanese morality and my natural tempera- 
 ment I decline for ever your impliteness letter, 
 
 " Sodesuka O Toku." 
 [ 265 ] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE 
 
 THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 
 WE were sitting round the charcoal fire glowing 
 in a huge hibachi at the Jobagwaisha one 
 crisp autumn morning, drinking " tea " made 
 from roasted wheat, and waiting for the betto to bring 
 our horses out. A jolly place it was in those days, but 
 the Hachioji railway station has obliterated all trace 
 of it. 
 
 As we prodded the coals and sipped the tea we dis- 
 cussed plans for the morrow. Suddenly Count Kuro, 
 our champion rider, and own cousin of Pokan no Kade, 
 went out on the " engawa," the narrow veranda that ran 
 along the edge of the lounging rooms of the Riding 
 Association, and pointed towards the east. " Ducks ! " 
 he shouted ; " now I know what we can do to-morrow." 
 
 " What may that be.^* asked a lean, bright-eyed man 
 in a suit of foreign clothes that had done duty in an 
 American university years before, and now pretty well 
 disguised the fact that he was a Vice-Minister of State. 
 He watched the couple of broad V's in the distance sail- 
 ing south towards Kobe, as Kuro waved towards them, 
 and said, " Those are ducks without doubt, but we cannot 
 get at them." 
 
 " Oh! they are quite safe as far as any one of us is 
 concerned," said Kuro ; " but there is no reason why we 
 
 [266] 
 
THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 should not have some others if you like. To-morrow will 
 be Nichiyobi, and after we have done riding in the rings 
 here why not stay on our horses until we reach my mis- 
 erable hovel in the country. It's only a little farther 
 than Oji, as you may do me the honor to remember. We 
 can make it in time for lunch, and then try the nets so 
 long as the light holds.'' 
 
 Not one of us said " no " ; so the next morning, after 
 we had done our prettiest work with the extra maneuvers 
 that Nichiyobi always brought, we took to the road 
 through Ueno and Komagome to Oji, and in less than 
 two hours reached the " miserable hovel." I wish all our 
 homes were as miserable. It is not overstating the case 
 to say that the misery we saw there and underwent per- 
 sonally we were able to endure without a murmur. It 
 was one of the places Kuro's father, the Governor of 
 Tokio, had handed over to his son on retiring from office 
 and becoming inkiyo. The house was low, and rambled 
 along three sides of a parallelogram. It stood near the 
 center of a piece of land that measured some fifty thou- 
 sands of tsubo. There were miniature lakes well stocked 
 with fish, a stream in which in springtime one found 
 trout, a house for the especial purpose of drinking tea, 
 various gardens for flowers in the different seasons, a 
 splendid collection of kiku, and away down in a corner, 
 half a mile from the " hovel," the duck-pond. 
 
 Here we gathered after lunch. There must have been 
 a couple of hundred ducks in the pond, but there was 
 quite room enough for them, and evidently they had not 
 lacked for sustenance. If they had wished to seek for 
 
 [267] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 better board and lodgings elsewhere they could not do so, 
 for the pond was in a cage. 
 
 Two of Kuro's helpers entered this cage as we arrived, 
 and stepped into small punts. Then they poled along 
 the edge of the pond and raised several gates, which 
 opened into canals leading out from the cage in various 
 directions. Kuro gave each of us a net on the end of a 
 pole, much like a fisherman's landing-net, and stationed 
 us at points on opposite sides of the canals. When we 
 were in position he called out " Yoroshiii ! " and a great 
 quacking and fluttering began. The men in the punts 
 drove the ducks as best they might up to the gates and 
 through into the canals. It was not an easy job for the 
 drivers, for many of the birds were shy of the openings, 
 but enough came through to keep us men busy with our 
 nets. 
 
 Our trick was to land them either as they swam, or 
 on the wing as they rose out of the canals. The ease 
 and the difficulty of doing this depend much on the depth 
 and the width of the canal, on the netter's skill, and on 
 the ducks. There were seven of us, and we caught be- 
 tween forty and fifty before sundown. Some we put 
 back in the cage again, and the others we in due course 
 incorporated. Kuro had given his steward a word 
 before we came down to the pond, with the result that 
 when we reached the house witli our bags the " hovel " 
 looked more like the stage setting for an old Greek drama 
 than like a gentleman's country residence. Another 
 feast confronted us. 
 
 " Condescend to drink a cupful," said Kuro to me 
 [ 268 ] 
 
THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 when the first dance was over, and he handed sake cups 
 to Gardner and to me from a basin of water before him 
 where they had been floating. We condescended and so 
 did he. Then he said : 
 
 " That was rather easy work this afternoon, just 
 enough to finish off a lunch with and make one ready for 
 a bit of supper. I wish you two would come with me 
 to my uncle's on the west coast, to see how they net ducks 
 there. It is more interesting ; and Fukui, near where he 
 lives, is a famous town. It was in that country, in 
 ancient times, that the Chinese and Korean embassies 
 used to arrive. If you come, you will learn something of 
 our history and our wild ducks too." Such a combina- 
 tion of easily-to-be-obtained knowledge was irresistible. 
 Off^ we went. 
 
 Kuro's uncle was a fine old samurai — a knight of the 
 days gone by, who had fought for the restoration. He 
 proved to us that hospitality was every whit as warm in 
 Fukui as in Tokio. The day after our arrival he gave 
 us a lesson in " Sakudori," as he called netting for ducks. 
 Kuro knew all about it, but he paid as much attention to 
 his uncle's discourse as if he had never heard of the art 
 before. Then the old gentleman took us up over the 
 hills near his home and showed us the positions that the 
 hunters take when waiting for the ducks either in the 
 evening or the early morning. Small posts, each with a 
 number, marked these positions. 
 
 " You see the ducks come up this way in the morning 
 and from the opposite direction in the evening. They 
 always go over these hills. It has been their custom ever 
 
 [269] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 since the hills were here. Our plan for their capture is 
 simply to intercept them. I will explain better to-night, 
 when several of my friends will be here from the Duck 
 Club that has leased these hills. Watching them, and 
 trying as they try, will soon teach you all there is to 
 know. You see these numbers on the posts. They corre- 
 spond with numbers on little wooden tickets which the 
 members have. A member has the same ticket for two 
 mornings and two nights, then he changes with another 
 member — and so on in rotation, so that no one member 
 may have too many chances at a good stand or too many 
 absences of chances at a poor stand." 
 
 About four o'clock that afternoon twenty of us set out, 
 all in native dress, with straw sandals, straw rain-coats, 
 straw leggings, and huge straw hats like umbrellas, that 
 fitted to our heads with a bamboo framework and tied 
 under our chins. When squatted on the ground we 
 looked like small ricks of straw that not even a duck 
 would suspect. Our weapons looked like fish-poles, but 
 they were not. They were slender masts on which we 
 hung nets, much as the square sails are rigged to the 
 mast of a ship. We set out with our poles over our 
 shoulders, like a band of spearmen in feudal times, and 
 with a half-dozen attendants with stacks of lacquered 
 boxes full of things the kitchen-folk had been preparing 
 all the day. 
 
 " When you see the ducks," said Kuro, after we had 
 taken our places, " get your pole ready to toss up, and 
 be sure you don't have the edge of the net turned towards 
 the birds. Have it spread out wide, and throw it square 
 
 [ 270 ] 
 
THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 in front of them. As soon as you can judge their speed 
 and direction you'll be all right. There they come! Be 
 ready.'' 
 
 We were all crouched low with our hands on our poles, 
 and a minute later the air was full of nets and a tremen- 
 dous clatter of quacks. Four nets had been successful, 
 and had performed the act of interception to a nicet3^ 
 One of the nets went far afield, however, it having met a 
 duck that was a drake, and a right lusty one he was, for 
 he gave the attendants a chase of over a mile. I learned 
 how not to throw sideways, and once came very near 
 landing a beauty. Gardner had actually caught a drake, 
 while Kuro had three and uncle five, the largest number 
 anyone had, but luck had favored him with a " double," 
 a very rare occurrence, — one bird following another 
 directly into the net. 
 
 The next day Kuro said, " Suppose we ga over to 
 Soko and shoot some ' yama kujira.' There's good 
 pheasant shooting too. The farmers would be grateful 
 to you for killing kujira, for they do so much damage 
 to the crops. It's a wheat country over there, you see, 
 and the fields have fences all about to keep the kujira 
 out. You'll seldom see a fence on farms anywhere else 
 in Japan. We can put up at Hongwanji temples. I 
 know some of the priests. In fact some of them are 
 relations of mine, and you, being a foreigner, will be 
 doubly welcome. Most of the folk in Soko have never 
 seen a foreigner." 
 
 All the time he was talking, Gardner and I had been 
 wondering what " yama kujira " could mean. " Kujira " 
 
 [271] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 meant whale, and " yama " meant mountain. What 
 could whales be doing in wheat-fields or on mountains? 
 Impossible, of course. So I said: 
 
 " Kuro, my honorable friend, you have deigned to 
 make the august joke." 
 
 " What! you don't know mountain whale? he asked. 
 " That is very famous wherever there is Buddhism in 
 Japan. It is an old name, fifteen hundred years per- 
 haps. The first Buddhist priests here tired of the same 
 kind of fish and vegetables every day without any meat, 
 and one of them discovered a way to escape from so much 
 monotony. ' It is wrong to eat flesh,' he said, ' but to 
 eat whale is lawful. We will call deer mountain whale 
 and then we may eat venison as much as we like.' So he 
 began, and many others followed his example." 
 
 Soko proved to be as interesting as Kuro had sug- 
 gested. " Whales " were plentiful, and pheasants also, 
 while the Hongwanji priests offered us more hospitality 
 that it was possible to accept. Every temple we came 
 to had a " matsuri " on the day of our arrival. We had 
 never seen so many festivals consecutively. It was 
 Kuro's doing, I fancy, though he would not own up to it. 
 From Soko we went up into the mountains and tried for 
 bear and wild boar. We had some luck with them and 
 plenty of excitement. Some of the native hunters are 
 extremely skillful with their spears. We met one who 
 had run as high as sixty for his winter's work. 
 
 New Year saw us in Tokio, but we came back to the 
 west coast again for fishing and for monkeys. We knew 
 the salmon fishing already. It is quite the same in Japan 
 
 [ 272 ] 
 
THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 as it is in England, and the trout fishing, too, though 
 Kuro had a way of using small fish as decoys that was 
 interesting. 
 
 " I'll coax them," he said one day when we had made 
 several casts and got nothing. He took a hand-net and 
 went to a bit of a stream that flowed into the one we were 
 whipping. Presentl3^ he cried, " Now we're ready. See 
 what these will do," and he showed me wiggly things 
 the size of whitebait. " I'll just put a bit of black 
 thread to each of them," he continued, " let them down 
 the brook, and draw them up a few times and we shall 
 have something large enough to eat." He was a prophet, 
 for two hours later we had a mess that sufficed not only 
 for ourselves, but for the entire household of the temple 
 in which we were staying. 
 
 The fishing we enjoyed most, however, was down Gifu 
 way. " I'll show you an old Japanese custom for night- 
 fishing which perhaps you cannot see in England," re- 
 marked Kuro as we journe^^ed south. " We have not 
 packs of hounds for hunting like the English, because 
 we cannot ride in paddy-fields, but we have packs of 
 birds for fishing: cormorants you call them. It is an 
 old custom, for our most ancient poetry speaks of it. 
 The birds know the business well, as you will see. They 
 have good training." 
 
 Indeed they had. We were out in a boat on the river 
 the next night with a bonfire at one end of the craft and 
 a screamy, squawking lot of cormorants in the water 
 about us, which two men kept hold of by means of reins 
 of spruce fiber, guided them, yelling and splashing at 
 [273] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 them with sticks, disentangling them when they got too 
 badly mixed up, and unloading them when their pouches 
 were quite filled. Each bird had a ring round its neck 
 which prevented it swallowing all but the smaller fishes, 
 and a band round its body with a handle at the top with 
 which to lift it in and out of the water. The men with 
 the reins had their hands full, for they had sixteen hun- 
 gry, excited birds to manage which dived and flopped in 
 sixteen directions at once. The fire at the bow was the 
 bait that brought the fish to the surface of the water in 
 reach of the fatal beaks which gobbled them in at an 
 astounding rate — the birds averaging over a hundred 
 fishes an hour for the three hours we were out. Kuro was 
 in great glee, for the weird appeals to him. " If we could 
 only photograph by torchlight ! " he cried. But there 
 was not much of the definiteness required in a picture. 
 The water was dark, and the birds were dark all but 
 their necks. The men handling the birds were merely 
 silhouetted against the beacon. What light there was 
 was fitful, and cast the blackest of shadows, that lost 
 themselves in the near distance. We ourselves could not 
 see the fish till the cormorants brought them up. We 
 had a fine mess by the time we had gone the course, and 
 were thoroughly gratified with our experience, but per- 
 sonally I should rather keep hounds than cormorants, 
 having a prejudice against some odors. 
 
 The monkeys were the easiest game imaginable. The 
 weapon used has laid many a good man low, but it is not 
 a gun — ^it is sake. Monkeys like sake quite as well as 
 men like it, and, like some men, they do not know when 
 
 [ 274 ] 
 
THE SPORTSMAN IN JAPAN 
 they have had enough. Kuro, Gardner, and I went into 
 the hills with a guide who had a three-gallon cask of sake 
 on his back and a dozen cups made from gourds. When 
 we came to monkey town the guide set the bowls about 
 under various trees and poured into each an inch or so 
 of sake. Then we retired. I wished to stay by to watch, 
 but the guide said if I did so the monkeys would know 
 it, and I might wait until my beard grew to the ground 
 — I should never see one. Probably he was right. At 
 any rate when we returned we found four monkeys fast 
 asleep and the twelve cups empty. 
 
 [275] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR 
 
 THE FATHER OF THE VILLAGE > 
 
 IT is hard to give up the fine things one is going to 
 do^ — to leave the " big road " and hide one's self 
 among the bypaths, but it is harder to give up what 
 one has already accomplished — the thing that is done, 
 which is a real possession ; to give up the fruits of a long 
 life; to lay aside a just reward when age has come upon 
 one and it is too late to begin again. 
 
 But in Japan men can do this. Here is an instance. 
 Gardner, Okashi, and I heard it one night from an aged 
 fisherman whose grandfather was among the saved. It 
 is the story of an old man who gave up what he had to 
 save others, and afterwards the people worshiped him. 
 The fisherman said the birth of this old hero was at a 
 time of good omen. 
 
 " Shiawase no hito (one of those who are fortunate) ; 
 all the women said so, and they knew everything there 
 was to know about babies. Therefore was it true that 
 the small, wrinkled, reddish thing given to the house of 
 
 1 The actual occurrence this story describes tells something of the 
 native character. Lafcadio Hearn, whose wonderful sympathy 
 with the Far East has given him so clear an insight to the soul of 
 Japan, as well as a knowledge of the mind and of the spiritual 
 aspirations of the people altogether unique, has used the incident 
 in another guise in a delightful chapter. 
 
 [276] 
 
THE FATHER OF THE VILLAGE 
 
 Hamaguchi early one morning, ere the great round har- 
 vest moon had set, was lucky. To be born by the light 
 of the harvest moon is to be favored of the gods. " li 
 ambai," said the old women ; " the way that is well " — 
 which was the whole truth. After that each household 
 in the hamlet understood the newcomer was " shiawase 
 no hito." 
 
 Hamaguchi no Bochan was a rare baby. Not because 
 he seldom cried — all Japanese babies are too happy to 
 cry; or because he was gentle, for in this he was like 
 all other merry, almond-eyed youngsters in the land 
 where the sun rises ; or was it because he never had the 
 colic, or fussed about his teeth, or kept a maid busy 
 putting things right and cleaning up round the house 
 and grounds wherever he had been. He was just like the 
 other Japanese babies in these things too. But he had 
 a baby dignity and wisdom that marked him. 
 
 He had as much fun as the j oiliest of his playmates, 
 who numbered probably a hundred. He was in all the 
 games, and in all the mischief too; but somehow he was 
 there as master, one whom the rest acknowledged. He 
 did not squabble. Not even when he came to be a big 
 boy, large enough to stand up with an oar in the sharp- 
 pointed fishing-boats, did he order others about; but, 
 nevertheless, the others did as he wished, and they liked 
 to do so. It is not strange, then, that when he had grown 
 to be a man and was the head of the Hamaguchi house- 
 hold, the people of the village made him their chief or 
 mayor. 
 
 As a husbandman he prospered. He raised rice for 
 [ 277 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 the villagers, whose chief business was on the sea, and 
 they paid him in kind, for money was scarce in those 
 days. What there was, was mostly in the strong box 
 of the daimiyo of the province. This daimiyo owned all 
 the villages within the boundaries of his dominion. The 
 rice the farmers raised, and all the fish that men caught 
 in their nets, were his. Whatever portion he was pleased 
 to allow them they took, and the rest he held as taxes 
 to maintain himself, his castles, and his fighting-men. 
 
 The head of the house of Hamaguchi grew rice on 
 thousands of tsubo of the daimiyo's land, and paid him 
 many koku of his produce at harvest time in tithes and 
 rents and tributes, but the koku that remained to the 
 choja were more than the portion of any other person in 
 the village. A koku of rice in those days was well-nigh 
 the year's income of some folk, though it seems hard a 
 man should have to live twelve months on what he can 
 sell five bushels of grain for in the market. 
 
 But the chief of the village was generous with his 
 abundance, and gave freely to those who had not; so 
 freely, indeed, that at each year's end when the day of 
 accounting came he found he had used all the yielding 
 of his fields — the greater part had gone to the daimiyo 
 and the rest to his household and to the other villagers. 
 
 This was so, no matter how large the harvest might 
 be, but it did not matter, the chief did not think of it. 
 He was a favored one. Always, both in spring and 
 autumn, his crops were good; always he had enough to 
 satisfy even the steward of the great lord who ruled the 
 province, enough for his home, and for all who called 
 
 [278] 
 
THE FATHER OF THE VILLAGE 
 him chief. So as " shiawase no hito " the folk spoke 
 of him who was now the father of fair daughters and 
 brave sons — a man of dignity and gentleness and wis- 
 dom, who ruled the village well and served his daimiyo 
 loyally. 
 
 What more could he be? He certainly had no thought 
 of anything. His people's happiness was all he cared 
 for. Nor could those who knew him believe he had not 
 all that a dweller in a humble fishing village could ac- 
 quire. But greater honor came upon him, nevertheless. 
 He became a god, and his people worshiped him. 
 
 It was when he was well along in years, a gray -haired 
 man, in the evening of his days. On an evening of this 
 evening he did the great deed of his life. Although for 
 a long time he had been " inkiyo," or retired, and his 
 son had succeeded to the active head of the household, 
 he was too much alive to give himself up to poetry and 
 meditation, and had continued to be the head of village 
 affairs and to oversee the rice fields rented from the dai- 
 miyo. 
 
 It was again the time of the harvest moon, near four- 
 score years since the old women had stood by and greeted 
 him with prophecies of the favors that should be his 
 through life. The crops were in, and the yellow stacks 
 stood high about the home of the village chief near the 
 temple on the hill. There was a festival in the village 
 in honor of the Goddess of Good Luck — she of the round, 
 merry, dimpled face, and of the Gods of Wealth and 
 Plenty — corpulent deities with fat ears, koku of rice 
 stacked high, and piles of gold pieces. 
 
 [279] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 The fishermen and the few who were farmers, with 
 their wives and famihes, and the singing and dancing 
 girls, or geisha, were making merry within and round 
 about their sacred tera, high *above the beach, when 
 someone cried, " Look for a moment, the tide is gone far 
 out ! " And so it was, and seemed going farther still. 
 Everyone arose, and, after wondering for a moment, ran 
 down to the beach below and far out towards the reced- 
 ing waters. 
 
 That is, everyone went down but the chief of the 
 village. He was old, and besides he knew something of 
 low tides and that they boded ill for the coast where they 
 appeared. " This ebb was so very low, what would the 
 return of the waters be ^ " he thought to himself. 
 
 Though the moon was up, that glorious golden moon 
 in the deep, full blue sky of Japan, the sun hardly had 
 set, and the last rays still flitted lingeringly across the 
 bosom of the sea. The old man looked down and saw 
 his people away out beyond the natural limits of the 
 beach. He could hear their shouts and laughter — deaf- 
 ness is rare even with the aged in Japan — and his heart 
 was heavy with fear. He looked towards the spot where 
 the sun had set, and away almost to the horizon, it 
 seemed, was a fine strip of light that glistened and 
 moved towards him. 
 
 " The wa-ve ! " he said ; " the wave ! " And so it was, a 
 great wave coming to the shore, a wave so great it had 
 sucked the sea away from the land and piled it up in 
 a wall like a mountain range. It was a tidal-wave, such 
 as an earthquake beneath the waters of the ocean makes 
 [280] 
 
THE FATHER OF THE VILLAGE 
 
 sometimes and sends against the coast to smite it as the 
 very wrath of God. 
 
 This is wliat the chief saw, and he saw, too, that be- 
 fore he could chmb down with his aged hmbs and reach 
 his people to give them warning, that awful wall of water 
 would be upon them and they would be lost. There was 
 no time to think — only to act. 
 
 He was standing by the house in which he had lived 
 since he was born. Almost touching the walls, on the 
 windward side, were the stacks of rice his sons and their 
 helpers had finished harvesting the day before. There 
 were the portions for the lord of the province and for 
 his own use and for the needy ones. All of this he must 
 have, to settle the accounts of the business of the year. 
 To have this grain threshed and safely in the village 
 warehouse meant prosperity and comfort; but in a mo- 
 ment it was crackling fiercely, blazing high over the hill- 
 top, and sending a glare down upon the startled vil- 
 lagers below, who turned together as one person and 
 rushed landward, looking up and crying that their choja 
 was burning in his house and must be saved. 
 
 Great was their amazement when they reached the hill- 
 top to see the old man standing by watching the fire 
 calmly as it consumed his home and the produce of his 
 fields — leaving him without a roof to shelter him and 
 making him a debtor to his lord for the remainder of his 
 years. A charred bamboo pole was in his hands, which 
 he had used to feed the flames. The people thought him 
 mad. 
 
 He had not looked up at their coming, so busy he had 
 [281] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 been, but now he turned toward them and pointed to the 
 sea. They were dumb, but had they all cried at once, 
 and to their utmost, their voices would not have sounded 
 even in their own ears. The waters had returned, and the 
 crested wave, reaching up thirty feet above the beach, 
 had broken, washing away the fishers' huts along the 
 shore as houses built of cards would go. It receded and 
 returned, and again drew back to flood a third time. 
 When it had finished this last assault, night was upon the 
 place and the village had disappeared. The harvest 
 moon looked down on a place where one had been, and 
 upon a crowd of frightened fisherf oik huddled round the 
 ruins of the home of an old man for whom, later, when 
 they had recovered from their wonder and had mort- 
 gaged their belongings, they built a temple and wor- 
 shiped as Hamaguchi Daimiyojin. So was he, even at 
 the last, " shiawase no hito." 
 
 [282] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE 
 
 THE THEFT OF THE GOLDEN SCALE 
 
 OKASHI KINTARO was gazing into his sake 
 cup reflectively. It was a cup with pictures on 
 it — ^two views of the same subject; the front 
 presentation on the inside of the cup, and the other on 
 the bottom — a cup such as you have sometimes when 
 cooHng on the dry bed of Kamogawa in Kiyoto if you 
 happen to be on good terms with those who serve you, 
 but which you never leave with your other curios for 
 Custom House inspection on reaching home. 
 
 " That inside picture seems to interest you," said 
 Gardner. "Do you recognize the face?" The reply 
 and the story following Okashi told in language all his 
 own, to this eff'ect: 
 
 " The countenance resembles that of Daredesuka's 
 sweetheart, but I never saw it on a sake cup before." 
 " Daredesuka?" 
 
 " Yes, the man who tried to steal gold from the shachi 
 hoko on the tenshu in Nagoya." 
 " The which on the what? " 
 
 " The great gold dolphins on the ends of the ridge of 
 Nagoya Castle. General Kato Kiyomasa put them up 
 there nearly three hundred years ago, quite out of harm's 
 y^>u would think." 
 " Yes, I remember you pointed out the fishes a little 
 [283 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 before we reached Nagoya Station on our way through; 
 but tell us about Daredesuka and his sweetheart. What 
 did they do? " 
 
 " Daredesuka was a samurai who had been with the 
 daimiyo of Kaga once, and had won fame as a great 
 swordsman. But when the daimiyo died Daredesuka 
 became ' ronin ' ; that is, a samurai without a master. 
 He went about teaching fencing, and sometimes winning 
 prizes in contests before distinguished folk, but never 
 getting established anywhere. He was tqo fond of 
 roaming. He used to practice with his sword on all the 
 forked limbs of trees that he could reach, and also on the 
 wild dogs that are as dangerous as wolves on the west 
 coast roads. It is said that once when robbers tried to 
 take him he cut through two bodies with a single stroke, 
 and that the other robbers, seeing this, ran away, crying 
 that he was an ' Oni ' (demon), not a man. 
 
 " In time he came to Kiyoto, which was a larger city 
 then, and was the home of the Tenshi, our Emperor. 
 The Shogun lived in Yedo — this was a long time before 
 the name was changed to Tokio. Soon after Darede- 
 suka arrived, the Shogun came down to Kiyoto to see 
 the Tenshi. He had to come once a year, according to 
 ancient custom. Of course this meant a great deal of 
 preparation. The ceremonies were elaborate, and the 
 court nobles, who usually were poor, made money by 
 teaching the proper etiquette to the Shogun's officers. 
 Geisha were busy in all the tea-houses, and gathered gold 
 pieces enough to last them a whole month, which is a long 
 time when speaking of geisha. There were all sorts of 
 [ 284 ] 
 
THEFT OF THE GOLDEN SCALE 
 sport too^ — polo, archery on horseback, fencing, and 
 ' jiujutsu,' which is a kind of wrestKng. 
 
 " Daredesuka was the right kind of man for such a 
 time. He went into many contests and won so often that 
 the people talked about him in the streets. Because he 
 was a winner he became the guest at many banquets, and 
 did not have to buy any food himself for several weeks. 
 At the banquets he saw many geisha, who came to dance 
 and to sing and to play, just as they are doing over 
 yonder now," pointing to a tea-house all open on one side 
 along the river bank. 
 
 " Being a military man, Daredesuka did not care much 
 for geisha. He had the name of a strict and severe man. 
 One night, however, at a chaya just at the end of this 
 bridge, the most famous tea-house of all in Kiyoto, Dare- 
 desuka changed his idea. 
 
 " Eikibo San was the cause of the change. She was 
 a geisha who did the fan dancing most famously, and 
 was never engaged except in the best houses and by the 
 richest guests. When Daredesuka saw her dancing he 
 could not look from her. She swayed this way and that 
 way gently as a lily when the autumn wind is blowing, 
 and her fan went round her like a butterfly that she had 
 tamed. Her face was white except the color of cherry 
 blossoms on the cheeks, and her eyebrows high as in the 
 pictures on these fans. Her hands were long and fine, 
 and waved like birds' wings when she turned about, play- 
 ing and tossing with the fan. So long and so hard was 
 Daredesuka looking that the soups and fishes the other 
 geisha were serving to him became quite cold, and some 
 [ 285 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 of the guests near by were wondering. Then one of 
 these said : 
 
 " ' You have never seen Eikibo San before ? She is 
 our best dancer. Even the Shogun, they say, has seen 
 her. Many men have tried to take her home, but she 
 does not Hsten. She has no lover. She lives with an old 
 aunt, as she calls her, in the geisha quarter, and never 
 leaves the old woman alone for a single night, nor does 
 she ever respond to any callers who go there to give her 
 presents. These gift-bearers talk with the old aunt at 
 the gate, but no one of them has ever had his foot 
 inside.' 
 
 " This, if it could be, made Daredesuka even keener, 
 so that, when the fan-dancing was over and Eikibo came 
 round to do her turn at pouring sake, beginning before 
 him as the chief guest, he said she must first drink from 
 his cup, and might afterwards serve him. She took the 
 dainty bit of porcelain from him and, bowing low, 
 touched it to her forehead. Then Daredesuka poured 
 sake from the china bottle in front of him, but could 
 give her only a few drops, as she pushed the mouth of 
 the bottle up with the edge of the cup, saying, ' More 
 would be a great deal.' She made as though she drank 
 it, but one could not tell, for the geisha is skillful to 
 pretend. Then, before she could rinse the cup, Dare- 
 desuka took it from her and said, ' Ippai dozo gomen 
 nasai ' {' Full please and excuse me '). 
 
 " Eikibo laughed because he did not let her rinse the 
 cup. Then she passed on to the next guest, reaching 
 out the sake bottle with her arm at full length and her 
 [ 286 ] 
 
THEFT OF THE GOLDEN SCALE 
 sleeve caught up between her teeth out of the way of the 
 soup bowls and other dishes on the mat before her. 
 
 " After this everything was different for Daredesuka. 
 He wished to see Eikibo San every day and all day long. 
 That could not be, but if he kept his fame he might see 
 her at the tea-house festivals while the Shogun remained 
 in Kiyoto, and after that, if he could get money, he could 
 call for her by himself, he hoped. 
 
 " He kept his fame in the remaining contests. Per- 
 haps he made it even greater, for he had an offer to go 
 with a great daimiyo to the south, who promised him 
 a post as instructor of his retainers and many koku of 
 rice with a home and servants. Before the fan-dancing 
 he would have gone, I am sure, had such a good chance 
 come, but now he could not travel far and leave Eikibo 
 San behind. 
 
 " As he could not take her on the daimiyo's train he 
 made humble apologies, and said that so great honor 
 could not be his, for he had made an agreement already 
 with another to travel farther north. There was more 
 truth than he thought in this, for he did go from Kiyoto 
 later and along the road that takes one north. He did 
 not mean to when he declined this offer though. 
 
 " Five or six times after this Daredesuka saw Eikibo 
 before the Shogun left, always in the same tea-house 
 and with the same few words, for he could not detain her 
 beyond the drinking of a single cup of sake. She would 
 apologize and say that there were many guests and too 
 few to wait on them, therefore she must not stay long. 
 After the Shogun had set out on his return to Yedo, 
 [287] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Daredesuka called the geisha several times from a quiet 
 tea-house down the river, but only once she came, for her 
 engagements almost never failed. Her name was on 
 some lists for months ahead. 
 
 " As soon as the maids had brought refreshments and 
 retired he made an offer to her which almost always a 
 geisha will accept. She should be his wife. He would 
 take service with some quiet daimiyo within the next six 
 months, and she would then be in the highest of the 
 four classes of society and ranking almost as one of the 
 nobility. He told her of offers he had received and had 
 refused because he could not bear to leave her, and said 
 he would accept whichever one she chose if she would 
 come with him. 
 
 " Eikibo laughed at all this, being, she said, familiar 
 with fine promises. ' They are all of a kind,' she told 
 him ; ' interesting to hear, if you did not know they were 
 like little flies that live a day and then no one knows what 
 has become of them.' Daredesuka persisted, but only to 
 find that words did not avail. At last he cried : 
 
 " ' Give me some test, for I must have you know that 
 I speak truth. Shall I bring you pearls from the deep 
 sea or golden scales from the dolphins on Nagoya Castle.'^ 
 Only say the thing and I shall do it. You shall believe 
 me.' 
 
 " Eikibo looked merrily at him, and said : 
 " ' Yes, I must believe you if you bring me a dolphin's 
 golden scale from the ridge of the fifth story of the 
 tower, as I know well, for I am in Nagoya every year. 
 Only the birds go up there. Yes, I should know you 
 [ S88 ] 
 
THEFT OF THE GOLDEN SCALE 
 spoke the truth if you brought the scale ; ' and she 
 laughed again, for to the geisha the parents of the truth- 
 ful man are not yet born. Then she added : ' My call 
 time for the Full Moon tea-house over the river has 
 arrived. I beg your honorable pardon. I must go. 
 At the great matsuri ' (religious festival) ' in Nagoya 
 next month I am to dance. Bring me the scale then, 
 and I shall know your heart.' 
 
 " Daredesuka sat still for an hour thinking, and then, 
 as the samurai often did on the night before the battle, 
 he clapped his hands, ordered more sake and more food, 
 sent to an inn near by for a friend who was lodging 
 there, and made merry until the watch announced the 
 hour for closing. Two nights later he was in Nagoya. 
 
 " As you know, those goldfishes are high up, and per- 
 haps you could see that each is now in a heavy cage. 
 That cage was not there in Daredesuka's time. You 
 know, too, that we Japanese enjoy our play with kites. 
 We can send them very high and can guide them nicely. 
 Well, Daredesuka was a wonderful man with kites. He 
 had made large ones when he was with his late lord, and 
 had once dropped a line far out over a junk that was 
 blowing off to sea, and so saved many lives. He now 
 said he would use a kite to get the scale that Eikibo had 
 declared would tell if he spoke true. Secretly he went to 
 work, and made one so large he was sure it would carry 
 the weight of his body on the wind. He found another 
 ronin whom some gold and the promise of future aid 
 persuaded to give him help in his strange plan. Then, 
 on a stormy night, with wind and clouds and rain, he 
 
 [289 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 went up and secured a golden scale. But the tool he 
 had used in prying was very wet and slippery and fell 
 from hi^ hands. The guards went out and discovered 
 the kite, which a rift in the sky let the moon shine down 
 upon for a fatal moment, and when he reached the earth 
 they caught him and put him in prison. The golden 
 scale convicted him and his companion. Being samurai 
 they received sentence to commit hari-kiri, and they 
 performed the act serenely before the state officials. 
 
 " Eikibo did not do the fan dance at the matsuri, for 
 on the morning of the day she was to appear an old 
 priest found her body on Daredesuka's grave." 
 
 [ 290 ] 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX 
 
 THE KANJI 
 
 I WAS living in a charming missionary family in 
 Tsukiji, wishing I could be a missionary too. (This 
 was before Gardner had come to the Land of the 
 Rising Sun.) It was one of those mornings one sees 
 only in Japan. There was such glorious satisfaction 
 in the air that one was quite too happy to think of work. 
 
 As I contemplated the peacefulness of everything, the 
 joy of being absolutely idle and equally as happy, I 
 heard a clatter at the door below. Then Seikichi, the 
 hall-boy, came up to the music room where I had ar- 
 ranged a temporary studio and announced : 
 
 " Honorable guest augustly waits in honorable recep- 
 tion room." 
 
 " Ah ! honorable he does, does he? " queried I. " Who 
 the deuce augustly is he? I did not like the racket he 
 had made. It had disturbed my contemplation. Why 
 had not he pressed the button at the door instead of 
 hammering? 
 
 " Honorable guest, honorable name card has not," 
 replied Seikichi with a low bow, and I thought the sus- 
 picion of a grin. Then he explained that the caller came 
 from a school up on Surugadai, near the Greek cathedral. 
 He was " kanji," or business manager, of this school. 
 
 " Perhaps the school is looking for a teacher," I said 
 [ 291 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 to myself. " I should like to see it." I knew Surugadai. 
 It was about the highest point in Tokio. From the scaf- 
 folding over the dome of the Greek cathedral building 
 there I had seen the entire capital by merely looking 
 straight before me and turning on my heel. Never was 
 such another view in all the world. Even the province 
 of Suruga, ninety miles away, was visible. Hence the 
 name Suruga-" dai," or terrace. I hoped the kanji really 
 was eager to engage me. 
 
 As I went down I heard more clatter, but I soon ascer- 
 tained it was only the honorable guest calling for 
 tobacco, which the reverend owner of the house, in 
 violence to the custom of the country, had neglected to 
 put on his free list. 
 
 Looking through the door of the reception room I 
 spied the kanji sitting on his shins amongst the chairs, 
 which seemingly he disdained, looking about for the 
 tobacco jar that was not there, and pounding a footstool 
 the while to attract the attention of someone who might 
 minister to his wants. 
 
 " May I have the honor to be of service to you ? " I 
 ventured. 
 
 " I wish smoking," he replied; and then jumping up 
 he put out his hand, saying : 
 
 " How do you do I am very well I thank you yes sir I 
 think so myself." Which was rather good for one 
 breath. Then he replenished himself with air by an in- 
 drawn hiss that must have appropriated a good two 
 gallons of the Tsukiji atmosphere. Handing him a 
 cigar I waited for him to continue the conversation which 
 [ 292] 
 
THE KANJI 
 he had begun so cleverly himself, but he needed a match 
 first, and then a clip to bite the tip off with, and a tip 
 as to which end to bite, before he could go on. He was 
 not quite into New Japan yet, though he had made some 
 progress in getting out of the Old. 
 
 " Sir," he said at last, " our name are Ojigoku Kit- 
 sune. Our business are the Kanji of Atama no Naka- 
 kara school on Surugadai's top and our desire is you 
 come every days for the teaching by the English lan- 
 guages and the improvement to the mind, for the many 
 scholars and female ladies and boy." Then he sucked in 
 air again. 
 
 By the way his words came out I was sure he had writ- 
 ten them down and committed them to memory. I was 
 right, for here he hesitated and began feeling in his 
 pockets for his " crib." It took him some time to find 
 it, and as he searched I inventoried his appearance. His 
 face was stubby and suggestive of a fox, his eyes rounder 
 and a trifle lighter than is usual with Japanese, and his 
 hair was of the same length all over, and stuck out 
 straight from his head like fretful quills. This^was due 
 to much early shaving of the poll. 
 
 His coat was of the full frock, or " Prince Albert " 
 cut, the material was alpaca. When he unbuttoned it 
 he discovered a waistcoat that once had been suitable 
 for evening dress, and also the upper half of a shirt- 
 front to which the ingenious constructor thereof had 
 affixed a collar and a bright green tie. The tie had 
 worked round under the coat collar, or I might have 
 noticed it before. What was between him and that shirt- 
 [ 293 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 front I could only guess. It might have been a liver 
 pad with sleeve attachments. His trousers were linen, 
 but whether the right leg or the left leg preserved the 
 original shade I could not say. There was a marked 
 difference between the two. As he had taken off his 
 shoes on entering the house I noticed that he wore mit- 
 tens on his feet. 
 
 When he had found his crib he puckered up his mouth 
 again and said : 
 
 " How do you do — er O ah — no, I am mistake." He 
 had started at the beginning again, like the interrupted 
 cathedral guide of Europe. Farther down he found the 
 place, and read: 
 
 " The hour shall be paid the dollar and the transpor- 
 tation to the school and to the house." A dollar an 
 hour and a jin-riki-sha from home to school and back 
 again is what he meant. I did not agree to quite those 
 terms, but eventually I said I would visit Surugadai to 
 promote the knowledge among all the students, including 
 " and boy." 
 
 When I said I would go, he replied : 
 
 " Yes, I think so myself." Then putting on his hat, 
 a fore-and-aft arrangement like an inverted baby-car- 
 riage, he pushed his mittens into his shoes, pocketed his 
 cigar, and disappeared. 
 
 While at tiffin, two days later, Seikichi announced : 
 
 " Jin-riki-sha from Surugadai." 
 
 He smiled as he spoke, and I understood why when 
 I was outside. There was the man-power-cart, all but 
 the man. Instead of man there was a midget of the size 
 [294] 
 
THE KANJI 
 the native factories pay a penny a day for now. Quite 
 useless for a grade either up or down, for he weighed 
 a quarter of what I did. When I came to try him on the 
 levels, however, I found he was not half bad. 
 
 The next time he called for me, Mrs. Gazell, the mis- 
 sionary's wife, happened to be giving instructions to the 
 cook at the rear, where the midget waited until I had 
 finished tiffin. When she came in* she said : 
 
 " Your insect has arrived. He is buzzing in the 
 kitchen now. I hope he doesn't get stuck in the jam ! " 
 
 From that time on Tsukiji knew him as my " mushi " 
 (mushi is Japanese for insect). 
 
 Mushi and I got on very well together. Whenever 
 we came to an incline I jumped out and let him rattle 
 along by himself. On the way home he took me to the 
 shops along the Ginza, where usually I had some house- 
 hold commissions to attend to, and then I would buy 
 him an egg to suck, in the hope that he would grow. 
 One evening when I reached home I found a professor of 
 Atama no Nakakara waiting for my mushi. He had 
 walked over from the Ginza, a mile out of his way, and 
 had been waiting an hour to save threepence, the fare 
 from a Ginza jin-riki-sha stand to Surugadai. 
 
 On my next visit to the school, Ojigoku Kitsune 
 addressed me elaborately on the subject of jin-riki-sha. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " from the school to the home and the 
 jin-riki-sha not stopping is for the agreement." 
 
 " You did not mention anything about time or route 
 when you said you would furnish the jin-riki-sha," I 
 replied. 
 
 [295] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 " Yes, but the man being only the small boy by the 
 long distances are very tiresome." 
 
 " He is resting while I am in the shops," I said, " and 
 Ginza is not a very indirect route home." 
 
 "But he wishes times for eatings or he catch the 
 stomach illness." 
 
 " I give him eggs, won't they do? " I asked. 
 
 Here the kanji disappeared for a few minutes. When 
 he returned he said: 
 
 " Honorable egg are good, but it is necessity for the 
 fish and rice." 
 
 " But you did not mention fish and rice nor say I 
 should feed the infant when you engaged me." 
 
 " Yes, but he have the unhealth and are not powerful 
 to transport the long distances." 
 
 " Get a man then." 
 
 Here the kanji made another disappearance. On 
 coming out again he said: 
 
 " Sir, every days four sen (2 cents) you are giving 
 for the eating and we are adjust." 
 
 " But I understood you to say that the infant has the 
 unhealth." 
 
 " Yes," replied the kanji, " but he have become 
 strong." 
 
 I had nothing to say. 
 
 All went well until the end of the month, when the 
 payment agreed upon was due me. The kanji came into 
 the classroom and said: 
 
 " The money is come to-morrow by the bank for clos- 
 ing is too early to-day." The bank closing, he meant. 
 
 [296] 
 
THE KANJI 
 You will come to Tsukiji? " 
 
 " Oh, I am, doubtless. I am Christian." 
 
 " Yes.'^ You had not told me so before. I shall be 
 away by nine o'clock. Will you call earlier.? 
 
 " I before nine time — sure." 
 
 " The bank will be open before nine o'clock ? " 
 
 " Yes, the bank is close perhaps but we shall do the 
 arrangement by the night." 
 
 Well, in the morning the kanji came: alpaca frock- 
 coat, green tie, inverted baby-carriage, and all — all but 
 my salary, that is. He said he had started out with the 
 full amount, but on the way down he saw some things he 
 needed, and " therefore we are spend parts. I am return 
 it pleasantly." (Meaning presently, for he had learned 
 the sound of " 1 " and, being proud of the accomplish- 
 ment, rather overworked it. ) 
 
 " Yes," I replied, " perhaps you will, but I shall be 
 at Surugadai this afternoon and shall see the Principal. 
 Perhaps he will arrange the matter." 
 
 The kanji smiled and went away. I never saw him 
 again, but Atama no Nakakara made good his deficit. 
 
 L* 297 J 
 
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN 
 
 THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 
 FOR a man to reverence his father and his mother 
 is a grand thing. The fifth commandment is the 
 law of laws in the Far East; folk obey it with a 
 fervor that Westerners can hardly understand. Their 
 zeal calls to mind one of Freeman's words anent the 
 chivalry of knights who made arbitrary choice of some 
 one virtue which they practiced with such enthusiasm that 
 it became a vice, while they neglected the ordinary laws 
 of right and wrong entirely. 
 
 In China, for example, the " great calamity " is that 
 ancestors should lack descendants to do them honor. 
 This idea led long ago to plural wives and " the devil 
 in the household." In Japan ancestors and even step- 
 ancestors came to be supreme. All other relations were 
 trifling compared to the attitude of son to father, and 
 an Abraham offering up Isaac would be a small matter 
 beside some acts of " filial piety " in the Land of the 
 Rising Sun, for a Japanese has sacrificed not only a son, 
 but his whole family and himself, and that to do the 
 bidding of one who was his father by adoption only. The 
 story will show this better than a volume of essays on 
 what Confucius taught concerning reverence. 
 
 Years ago, in the province of Owari, near the center 
 of Japan, lived Kato Tamakichi, a potter. Kato went 
 [ 298 1 
 
THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 through with a difficult enterprise successfully, and won 
 for his countrymen great fame. In this achievement 
 duty was the only stimulus, for the reward he knew he 
 should receive was not attractive. 
 
 Seto was Kato Tamakichi's native town. In his time 
 it was the center of the porcelain industry of the Empire, 
 as it is to-day. Indeed it has been the center ever since 
 his famous ancestor Kato Shirozemon returned from 
 China seven centuries ago with the store of knowledge 
 he had gleaned during his years of study among the 
 ancient kilns of the Celestials. And now " setomono " 
 (Seto-things) is a generic term in Japanese for all pot- 
 tery and porcelain, just as " china " is in English. 
 
 But though descended from a long line of masters 
 of the kiln in a country where potters had great honor, 
 and though he was the cleverest of the pupils of his 
 master, Tsugane Bunzaemon, chief of the Seto Guild of 
 Potters, Kato was not content. 
 
 A stranger looking in on him would not have suspected 
 his discontent, perhaps, for the Japanese face is wonder- 
 fully effective as a mask, but the discontent was there. 
 He was at his home one day in Tsugane's house, and 
 had seated himself on his heels by a large bronze hibachi, 
 making ready to put the kettle on for a little tea. Be- 
 fore him were several tea-bowls, delicate and beautiful in 
 design and of exquisite glaze. 
 
 This glaze was the cause of Kato's discontent. Tsu- 
 gane San had just returned from his voyage round Cape 
 Shi wo to Osaka, where he went each year to visit the 
 great bazaars, which at that time were the largest in the 
 
 [ 299 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 Empire, and to dispose of the product of the Seto kilns, 
 and he had brought back with him these tea-bowls. 
 
 They were so good they worried the young potter. 
 He would pause, fire-tongs in hand, every moment or two, 
 pick up one of the bowls, hold it between his eye and the 
 light, put a coal close to it to study the glow reflected 
 from the surface, rub it along his sleeve, touch it gin- 
 gerly with the tip of his tongue as though to taste the 
 deep, rich color under the glaze, tap it very, very gently 
 with one of the long tips, and then set it down again and 
 become absorbed in the arrangement of the fire. 
 
 Tsugane San came in shortly and seated himself upon 
 a square cushion on the opposite side of the hibachi. He 
 pulled the tea-tray towards him, and taking the tall blue 
 cup — the master's cup — poured a little hot water in it 
 and replaced it on the tray. Opening an air-tight can- 
 ister which had a lid with a rim quite half as deep as the 
 canister's entire height, he took out two pinches of tea, 
 dried leaves of a deep, dull green that had never suff^ered 
 from other heat or chemical process than the sun's rays 
 effect. The two pinches went into the " kibisho," or small 
 porcelain teapot. Next he poured boiling water from 
 the " tetsubin," the iron tea-kettle, into -a sort of gravy 
 boat, where it must cool a bit, lest it make the brew astrin- 
 gent. Replacing the tea-kettle on the brazier, he turned 
 the moderated boiling water on the leaves, let it stand 
 perhaps a minute, and pouring a tiny cup half full for 
 Kato San, his cup full for himself, drank the sherry- 
 colored liquor slowly with a sound somewhere between a 
 kiss and a sigh. 
 
 [ 300 ] 
 
THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 Kato San drank with him, and when he had done the 
 master said: 
 
 " As for those tea-bowls from Osaka, what do you 
 think?" 
 
 " Augustly beautiful," replied Kato, using the hon- 
 orific form, out of the respect a pupil should always show 
 to his master. 
 
 " Yes, beautiful they are. Too beautiful for Osaka 
 — too beautiful for Seto. They are from far south, as 
 you see by their bottoms, from Arita and Karatsu, in the 
 province of Hizen, where the Prince of Satsuma settled 
 some Koreans a hundred years ago and made them teach 
 the natives many things about enamels. There is good 
 stone there for porcelain, and the ports of Karatsu and 
 of Imari, where the Dutch send every year for wares, 
 have become as famous in Kiushiu as our Seto is in the 
 remainder of Dai Nippon. In fact, those southerners 
 call everything of clay, Karatsumono. They are push- 
 ing their wares north now. I had a hard time selling 
 in Osaka this visit, and all because those low Koreans 
 whom we conquer so easily whenever we cross the channel 
 had a secret about glaze which they were fools enough to 
 tell the potters in Hizen." 
 
 " Honorably augustly so it contemptibly deigns to 
 be," said Kato San, inclining his head and bending for- 
 ward. 
 
 " We must discover that secret," continued the master. 
 To which Kato San assented with more honorifics and 
 inclinations. 
 
 " In Osaka I saw a ' nakado ' (middleman) who has 
 [301 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 gone to Hizen to arrange for a marriage with the daugh- 
 ter of the chief of the Arita Guild. It will cost all of 
 the year's profits and something besides, but we shall 
 lose our face if we do not discover the secret of the 
 glaze." 
 
 Respectful acquiescence as before. 
 
 " From what I learned through Nakado San I am 
 confident of success. He will be here within a few days 
 and will return with you directly, for it is a long journey, 
 and I would have you be there before the next firing of 
 the kilns." 
 
 This was the first intimation of Tsugane San's scheme 
 that had reached Kato San ; it was in fact the first time 
 the subject of marriage had been mentioned to him, but 
 he bowed quite as reverently as before, and ejaculated 
 honorifics in the same deferential tone. On his coun- 
 tenance there was no sign that he had just heard he was 
 to go to a strange country, there to marry a strange 
 woman whose speech even would be unintelligible. But 
 Japanese surprise, if there is such a thing, is purely in- 
 ternal. Tsugane San had made arrangements, and that 
 was the affair in a nutshell. Why discuss matters that 
 are already settled? 
 
 In due course Nakado San appeared with a letter show- 
 ing that he had done all as Tsugane San instructed him, 
 so nothing remained for him to do except to receive the 
 money stipulated and then hasten back with Kato San 
 to Arita, where the potters were waiting eagerly to cele- 
 brate. Kato received money, too, and handsome gifts 
 for the wife he had never seen and for her parents. As 
 [302] 
 
THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 Tsugane handed these to his pupil and adopted son, he 
 said : 
 
 " When you have learned the blue and white, return." 
 And Kato, with his forehead against the mats, had 
 replied : 
 
 " Kashikomarimashita " (" August commands rev- 
 erently understanding am 
 
 Then with his guide he set out, hardly daring to 
 look about him on the sights he had known since the light 
 first shone upon him. Their luggage was partly on the 
 backs of two lusty coolies and partly in their " kagos," or 
 palanquins, for Kato had small liking to be carried along 
 the road. He preferred exercise. Nagoya, where the 
 golden dolphins are, was their first halt, about six " ri " 
 (fifteen miles) from home. Thence they went on to 
 Kokkaichi, thence over the mountains to Lake Biwa, and 
 to Kiyoto, where the Son of Heaven, Tenshi Sama, the 
 Mikado, was a sacred prisoner by order of the Shogun 
 Tauna Yoshi ; on to Osaka, where more business was and 
 is done more slowly than in any other city in Japan; 
 thence by boat through the wondrous Inland Sea which 
 angels look down upon with envy ; on through the Strait 
 of Shimonoseki, where allied Western fleets were to meet 
 years afterwards, and into the " Genkai Nada " (the 
 Watchful Sea), to Karat su, where the men of Arita met 
 them as Nakado San had arranged. 
 
 As Kato San had left his own home and was coming 
 to the bride's house to become a member of her family, 
 which is just the reverse of what usually occurs when 
 young folks marry in Japan, and as, furthermore, the 
 [ 303 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 
 homes of bride and bridegroom were far apart, as dis- 
 tances went in those days, the Nakado altered the ordi- 
 nary arrangements to suit the circumstances. He ar- 
 ranged the " mi-ai " (mutual seeing or first look) to 
 take place in rooms he had rented near Arita for the 
 purpose. It was satisfactory, of course, — it always is 
 with dutiful children in Japan, and in those days, before 
 knowledge of Western ways had reached the country, 
 there was no other sort than dutiful in the land. 
 
 It is true the young people sat at opposite sides of 
 the room with the widths of many mats between them, 
 and that neither ventured a word to the other directly, 
 but Kato's fine features, his clear, keen eye, as an artist 
 should have, and his erectness, all of which O Tsuru San 
 saw without looking at their possessor, put her into a 
 most pleasurable confusion; while as for Kato himself, he 
 looked directly at O Tsuru as she came in, and from that 
 moment forgot his homesickness entirely. 
 
 The ceremony of "San San Kudo" (Three Three 
 Nine Times) where bride and bridegroom go through 
 the form of exchanging each of three sake cups three 
 times, and drinking from them, was in the bride's house 
 two days later, where Kato took the name of Higashi- 
 dori from his father-in-law, whose son he now became, 
 and was duly registered at the office of the district by 
 the census-taker as Higashidori Tokuzayemon, chief of 
 the Arita Guild of Potters. 
 
 It seems that Rei Sampei had just discovered some 
 fine porcelain stone in Idzumi Yama, and the kilns had 
 better clay in them than they had ever known before. 
 [ 304 ] 
 
THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 Higashidori, too, had added to the knowledge the 
 Koreans had brought over through his dealings with the 
 Dutch, whom the Shogun allowed once a year to do a 
 little business at Deshima, Nagasaki. His skill with 
 red oxide of iron and with Chinese and Dutch cobalt 
 gave him the advantage that Tsugane Bunzaemon had 
 envied so keenly. Under the catalogue title " Old 
 Hizen," in the Dresden collection, one may see specimens 
 of Higashidori's skill to-day. 
 
 Kato San, skillful as he was himself, marveled at the 
 work of his new father, and set about diligently to assist 
 him. Being a potter born and bred, he was soon in love 
 with his occupation, almost half as much as he was with 
 his wife, which is saying a great deal. Higashidori smiled 
 as he watched his new-found son, and thought what a fine 
 man he would be when age came on and it was time for 
 the headship of the guild to pass on to one of a younger 
 generation. 
 
 " I shall be ' inkiyo ' (retired) then," he said to him- 
 self, " and Kintaro will have the kilns and will be chief 
 in my stead. He will be worthy of our name." 
 
 When, a year later, O Tsuru San presented her hus- 
 band with a son, the old chief's countenance was lighted 
 with a joy that shone more brightly than the finest vases 
 he had ever made. The bond between him and the son 
 from far away was now complete, and the honor of his 
 house secure. He took Kintaro into his full confidence, 
 and the young man, learning rapidly, was soon well-nigh 
 as expert as the chief himself. His work delighted him, 
 and his home, to which two more children came in the 
 [ 305 ] 
 
THE HEART OF JAPAN 
 next three years, was all that a human heart could wish 
 for. So absorbed had he become in the development of 
 the porcelains from the new-found stone, that Seto and 
 the master waiting there were as dim shadows in his mind, 
 if ever he thought of them at all. 
 
 But a stranger to Arita passed through one day, leav- 
 ing a written message with Kintaro, and affairs changed. 
 It was from Tsugane Bunzaemon, the master. Kintaro 
 turned to stone on reading it. It was a clear, fine day, 
 but he did know it. A few feet from him two of his 
 children were playing at baby games; he did not hear 
 them. On the mats just beyond the shallow grooves 
 along which the sliding doors had been pushed back, 
 making an entrance to the adjoining room, O Tsuru 
 San sat nursing the youngest of the three — a lovely pic- 
 ture of young motherhood, but Kintaro did not see. 
 
 He folded the letter and went out and over to the 
 quarry, then he walked to the kilns, and then — he never 
 knew himself where he wandered during the next few 
 hours, but his thoughts were on the serving of two 
 masters, one whom he had forgotten and the other 
 whom he had come to look upon as in very truth his 
 father. 
 
 " Yet he is not," he murmured to himself. " My real 
 father, who died when I was so young, gave me to the 
 master, for he wished me to grow up to be famous among 
 the Seto kilns, as he was himself. I kept his name, and 
 I must be true to him — as he would have it ; — ^that — is — 
 true — to — Seto, — and these four years are gone, and the 
 end of them and of me is near." 
 
 [306] 
 
THE REVERENCE OF KATO 
 " Of them " — the tragedy of the thoughts that came 
 
 with those two words ! 
 
 Kintaro thought things over many ways and slowly 
 
 as he wandered. Then, his mind being clear, he said to 
 
 Higashidori : 
 
 " You are to become inkiyo soon and retire from all 
 active pursuits, as your honorable years entitle you to 
 do, and as you have had the august condescension to 
 name so unworthy a person as I to be your heir and suc- 
 cessor, I beg you to allow me a short visit to my former 
 home that I may say farewell to the comrades of my 
 early youth whom I shall otherwise have no opportunity 
 to see again." 
 
 The journey was speedily arranged. Kintaro bowed 
 low to Higashidori, put his hand on the children's heads 
 as he asked them which could strike the shuttlecock the 
 farther, and just for a moment touched the hem of O 
 Tsuru's sleeve, as he said he must hasten lest a waiting 
 junk make sail before he reached the harbor. 
 
 He did not see them again, nor Arita neither. Ten 
 months later news came that the Seto kilns produced all 
 the glaze and colorings that had made Hizen so famous, 
 and that the new Seto had monopolized the markets in 
 Osaka. In their rage the Arita potters crucified Kin- 
 taro's wife and his children. Kintaro — or Kato Tama- 
 kichi — when the story reached him became a raving 
 maniac. In Seto his memory is sacred, for he had 
 obeyed the commands of the master to whom his father 
 had committed him. Filial piety had its reward, 
 
 THE END 
 
 [ 307 ] 
 
35^ Henr^ f|arlant( 
 
 Author of " The Cardinal's SnufT Box " 
 
 MY FRIEND PROSPERO 
 
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 A NOVEL which will fascinate by the grace 
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 Frontispiece in colors by Louis Loeb. 
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3S^ g)tanle? 3* 3^e^inan 
 
 Author of '* A Gentleman of France '* 
 
 THE LONG NIGHT 
 
 Geneva in the early days of the ] 7th century; 
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 Author of *'The Sowers," etc. 
 
 BARLASCH OF THE GUARD 
 
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 Author of ** The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes " 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OF 
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!