RARE DAYS IN JAPAN

“Yes! ’tis a very pleasant land,

Filled with joys on either hand,

Sweeter than aught beneath the sky,

Dear island of the dragon-fly!”

[From an old poem composed by the Mikado Gomei, who died A. D. 641.]

“[COUNTRY SCENES AND COUNTRY CUSTOMS]”

RARE DAYS IN
JAPAN

BY
GEORGE TRUMBULL LADD, LL. D.

Author of “In Korea with Marquis Ito,”
“Knowledge, Life, and Reality,”
“Philosophy of Conduct,”
etc., etc.

ILLUSTRATED

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1910

Copyright, 1910, By
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

Published, September, 1910

PREFACE

By many friends, both in this country and in the Far East, the question has often been asked me: “Why do you not write a book about Japan?” Whatever answer to this question à propos of each particular occasion, may have been given, there have been two reasons which have made me decline the temptation hitherto. Of the innumerable books, having for their main subject, “The Land of the Rising Sun,” which have appeared during the last forty years, a small but sufficient number have described with a fair accuracy and reasonable sympathy, certain aspects of the country, its people, their past history, and recent development. To correct even, much more to counteract, the influence of the far greater number which, if the wish of the world of readers is to know the truth, might well never have been written, is a thankless and a hopeless task for any one author to essay.

A yet more intimate and personal consideration, however, has prevented me up to the present time from complying with these friendly requests. Many of the experiences, of special interest to myself, and perhaps most likely to be specially interesting and instructive to the public, have been so intimate and personal, that to disclose them frankly would have seemed like a breach of courtesy, if not of confidence. The highly favoured guest feels a sort of honourable reserve about speaking of the personality and household of his host. He does not go away after weeks spent at another’s table, to describe the dishes, the silver and other furnishings, and the food.

What I have told in this book of some of the many rare and notably happy, and, I hope, useful days, which have fallen to my good fortune at some time during my three visits to Japan, has not, I trust, transgressed the limits of friendly truth on the one hand, or of a friendly reserve on the other. And if the narrative should give to any of my countrymen a better comprehension of the best side of this ambitious, and on the whole admirable and lovable people, and a small share in the pleasure which the experiences narrated have given to the author, he will be much more than amply rewarded.

George Trumbull Ladd.
New Haven, June, 1910.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I
VISITING THE IMPERIAL DIET

The utter strangeness of feeling which came over me when, in May of 1892, I first landed in Japan, will never be repeated by any experience of travel in the future amidst other scenes, no matter how wholly new they may chance to be. Between Vancouver, so like one of our own Western towns, and the Land of the Rising Sun, nature provided nothing to prepare the mind for a distinctly different type of landscape and of civilisation. There was only the monotonous watery waste of the Northern Pacific, and the equally monotonous roll of the Empress of China, as she mounted one side and slid down the other, of its long-sweeping billows. There was indeed good company on board the ship. For besides the amusement afforded by the “correspondent of a Press Syndicate,” who boasted openly of the high price at which he was valued, but who prepared his first letter on “What I saw in China,” from the ship’s library, and then mailed it immediately on arrival at the post-office in Yokohama, there were several honest folk who had lived for years in the Far East. Each of these had one or more intelligent opinions to impart to an inquirer really desirous of learning the truth. Even the lesson from the ignorance and duplicity of this moulder of public opinion through the American press was not wholly without its value as a warning and a guide in future observations of Japan and the Japanese. The social atmosphere of the ship was, however, not at all Oriental. For dress, meals, hours, conversation, and games, were all in Western style. Even with Doctor Sato, the most distinguished of the Japanese passengers, who was returning from seven years of study with the celebrated German bacteriologist, Professor Koch, I could converse only in a European language.

The night of Friday, May 27, 1892, was pitchy dark, and the rain fell in such torrents as the Captain said he had seldom or never seen outside the tropics. This officer did not think it safe to leave the bridge during the entire night, and was several times on the point of stopping the ship. But the downpour of the night left everything absolutely clear; and when the day dawned, Fujiyama, the “incomparable mountain,” could be seen from the bridge at the distance of more than one-hundred and thirty miles. In the many views which I have since had of Fuji, from many different points of view, I have never seen the head and entire bulk of the sacred mountain stand out as it did for us on that first vision, now nearly twenty years ago.

The other first sights of Japan were then essentially the same as those which greet the traveller of to-day. The naked bodies of the fishermen, shining like polished copper in the sunlight; the wonderful colours of the sea; the hills terraced higher up for various kinds of grain and lower down for rice; the brown thatched huts in the villages along the shores of the Bay; and, finally, the busy and brilliant harbour of Yokohama,—all these sights have scarcely changed at all. But the rush of rival launches, the scramble of the sampans, the frantic clawing with boat-hooks, which sometimes reached sides that were made of flesh instead of wood, and the hauling of the Chinese steerage passengers to places where they did not wish to go, have since been much better brought under the control of law. The experience of landing as a novice in Japan is at present, therefore, less picturesque and exciting; but it is much more comfortable and safe.

The arrival of the Empress of China some hours earlier than her advertised time had deceived the friends who were to meet me; and so I had to make my way alone to a hotel in Tokyo. But notes despatched by messengers to two of them—one a native and since a distinguished member of the Diet, and the other an American and a classmate at Andover, within two hours quite relieved my feelings of strangeness and friendlessness; and never since those hours have such feelings returned while sojourning among a people whom I have learned to admire so much and love so well.

It had been my expectation to start by next morning’s train for the ancient capital of Kyoto, where I was to give a course of lectures in the missionary College of Doshisha. But in the evening it was proposed that I should delay my starting for a single day longer, and visit the Imperial Diet, which had only a few days before, amidst no little political excitement, begun its sittings. I gladly consented; since it was likely to prove a rare and rarely instructive experience to observe for myself, in the company of friends who could interpret both customs and language, this early attempt at constitutional government on the part of a people who had been for so many centuries previously under a strictly monarchical system, and excluded until very recently from all the world’s progress in the practice of the more popular forms of self-government. The second session of the First Diet, which began to sit on November 29, 1890, had been brought to a sudden termination on the twenty-fifth of December, 1891, by an Imperial order. This order implied that the First Diet had made something of a “mess” of their attempts at constitutional government. The “extraordinary general election” which had been carried out on the fifteenth of February, 1892, had been everywhere rather stormy and in some places even bloody. But the new Diet had come together again and were once more to be permitted to try their hand at law-making under the terms of the Constitution which his Imperial Majesty had been most “graciously pleased to grant” to His people. The memory of the impressions made by the observations of this visit is rendered much more vivid and even a matter for astonishment, when these impressions are compared with the recent history of the sad failures and exceedingly small successes of the Russian Duma. So sharply marked and even enormous a contrast seems, in my judgment, about equally due to differences in the two peoples and differences in the two Emperors. Another fact also must be taken into the account of any attempt at comparison. The aristocracy of Russia, who form the entourage and councillors of the Tsar are quite too frequently corrupt and without any genuine patriotism or regard for the good of the people; while the statesmen of Japan, whom the Emperor has freely made his most trusted advisers, for numbers, patriotism, courage, sagacity, and unselfishness, have probably not had their equals anywhere else in the history of the modern world.

The Japanese friends who undertook to provide tickets of admission to the House of Peers were unsuccessful in their application. It was easier for the foreign friend to obtain written permission for the Lower House. It was necessary, then, to set forth with the promise of having only half of our coveted opportunity, but with the secret hope that some stroke of good luck might make possible the fulfilment of the other half. And this, so far as I was concerned, happily came true.

As our party were entering the door of the House of Representatives, I was startled by the cry of “soshi” and the rush toward us of two or three of the Parliamentary police officers, who proceeded to divest the meekest and most peaceable of its members, the Reverend Mr. H——, of the very harmless small walking-stick which he was carrying in his hand. It should be explained that, according to Professor Chamberlain, since 1888 there had sprung up a class of rowdy youths, called soshi in Japanese—“juvenile agitators who have taken all politics to be their province, who obtrude their views and their presence on ministers of state, and waylaid—bludgeon and knife in hand—those whose opinions on matters of public interest happen to differ from their own. They are, in a strangely modernised disguise, the representatives of the wandering swashbucklers or rōnin of the old régime.”

After his cane had been put in guard, and a salutary rebuke administered to my clerical friend for his seeming disregard of the regulations providing for the freedom from this kind of “influence” which was guaranteed to the law-makers of the New Japan, we were allowed to go upon our way. Curiously enough, however, the very first thing, after the opening, which came before the House, explained more clearly why what seemed such an extraordinary fuss had been made over so insignificant a trifle. For one of the representatives rose to complain that only the day before a member of the Liberal party had been set upon and badly cut with knives by soshi supposed to belong to the Government party. The complaint was intended to be made more effective and bitter by the added remark that the Speaker of the House had been known to be very polite, in this and in all cases where a similar ill-turn had been done to one of his own party, to send around to the residence of the sufferer messages of condolence and of inquiry after the state of his health. In the numerous reverse cases, however, the politeness of this officer of the whole House had not appeared equally adequate to the occasions afforded by the “roughs” of the anti-Government party. To this sarcastic sally the Speaker, with perfect good temper, made a quiet reply; and at once the entire body broke out into laughter, and the matter was forthwith dropped from attention. On my asking for an interpretation of this mirth-provoking remark, it was given to me as follows: “The members of the Speaker’s party had always taken pains to inform him of their injuries, and so he had known just where to distribute such favours; but if the members of the opposite party would let him know when they were suffering in the same manner, he would be at least equally happy to extend the same courtesies to them.”

It will assist to a better appreciation of what I saw on this occasion, of the personnel and procedure of the Japanese House of Representatives, if some account is given of its present constitution; this differs from that of 1892 only in the fact that it is somewhat more popular now than it was then. The House is composed of members returned by male Japanese subjects of not less than twenty-five years of age and paying a direct tax of not less than ten yen. There are two kinds of members; those returned by incorporated cities containing not less than 30,000 inhabitants, and those by people residing in other districts. The incorporated cities form independent electoral districts; and larger cities containing more than 100,000 inhabitants are allowed to return one member for every 130,000 people. The other districts send one member at the rate of approximately every 130,000 people; each prefecture being regarded as one electoral district. Election is carried on by open ballot, one vote for each man; and a general election is to take place every four years, supposing the House sits through these four years without suffering a dissolution in the interval. The qualifications for a seat in the House are simple for all classes of candidates. Every Japanese subject who has attained the age of not less than thirty years is eligible;—only those who are mentally defective or have been deprived of civil rights being disqualified. The property qualification which was at first enforced for candidates was abolished in 1900 by an Amendment to the Law of Election.

I am sure that no unprejudiced observer of the body of men who composed the Japanese House of Representatives in the Spring of 1892, could have failed to be greatly impressed with a certain air of somewhat undisciplined vigour and as yet unskilled but promising business-like quality. The first odd detail to be noticed was a polished black tablet standing on the desk of each member and inscribed with the Japanese character for his number. Thus they undertook to avoid that dislike to having one’s own name ill used, in which all men share but which is particularly offensive among Oriental peoples. For instead of referring to one another as “the gentleman from Arkansas,” etc., they made reference to one another as “number so or so.” How could anything be more strictly impersonal than sarcasm, or criticism, or even abuse, directed against a number that happens only temporarily to be connected with one’s Self!

It was my good fortune to light upon a time when the business of the day was most interesting and suggestive of the temper and intentions of these new experimenters in popular legislation; and, as well, of the hold they already supposed themselves to possess on the purse-strings of the General Government. What was my surprise to find that this power was, to all appearances, far more effective and frankly exercised by the Japanese Diet than has for a long time been the case with our own House of Congress. For here there was little chance for secret and illicit influences brought to bear upon Committees on Appropriations; or for secure jobbery or log-rolling or lobbying with particular legislators.

The business of the day was the passing upon requests for supplementary grants from the different Departments of the General Government. It was conducted in the following perfectly open and intelligible way: The Vice-Minister of each Department was allowed so many minutes in which he was expected to explain the exact purpose for which the money was wanted; and to tell precisely in yen how much would be required for that purpose and for that purpose only. The request having been read, the Vice-Minister then retired, and fifteen minutes, not more, were allowed for a speech from some member of the opposition. The Speaker, or—to use the more appropriate Japanese title—President of the House, was at that time Mr. T. Hoshi, who had qualified as a barrister in London, and who in personal appearance bore a somewhat striking resemblance to the late President Harper of Chicago University. He seemed to preside with commendable tact and dignity.

As I look backward upon that session of the Imperial Japanese Diet, there is one item of business which it transacted that fills me with astonishment. The request of the Department of Education for money to rebuild the school-houses which had been destroyed by the terrible earthquake of the preceding winter was immediately granted. Similar requests from the Department of Justice, which wished to rebuild the wrecked court-houses, and from the Department of Communications, for funds to restore the post-offices, also met with a favourable reception. But when the Government asked an appropriation for the Department of the Navy, with which to found iron-works, so that they might be prepared to repair their own war-ships, the request was almost as promptly denied! To be sure, the alleged ground of the denial was that the plans of the Government were not yet sufficiently matured.

At this juncture Mr. Kojiro Matsukata, the third son of Japan’s great financier, Marquis Matsukata, came into the gallery where we were sitting and offered to take me into the House of Peers. But before I follow him there let me recall another courtesy from this same Japanese friend, which came fifteen years later; and which, by suggesting contrasts with the action of the Diet in 1892, will emphasise in a picturesque way the great and rapid changes which have since then taken place in Japan. On the morning of February 19, 1907, Mr. Matsukata, who is now president of the ship-building company at Kawasaki, near Kobe, showed me over the yards. This plant is situated for the most part on made ground; and it required four years and a half to find firm bottom at an expense of more than yen 1,000,000. The capital of the company is now more than yen 10,000,000. All over the works the din of 9,000 workmen made conversation nearly impossible. But when we had returned to his office, a quiet chat with the host over the inevitable but always grateful cups of tea, elicited these among other interesting incidents. Above the master’s desk hung the photograph of a group which included Admiral Togo; and still higher up, above the photograph, a motto in the Admiral’s own hand-writing, executed on one of his visits to the works—he having been summoned by the Emperor for consultation during the Russo-Japanese war. On my asking for a translation of the motto, I was told that it read simply: “Keep the Peace.” Just two days before the battle of the Sea of Japan, Mr. Matsukata had a telegraphic message from Togo, which came “out of the blue,” so to say, and which read in this significant way: “After a thousand different thoughts, now one fixed purpose.” In the centre of another group-photograph of smaller size, sat the celebrated Russian General, Kuropatkin. This picture was taken on the occasion of his visit to the ship-yards some years before. Mr. Matsukata became at that time well acquainted with Kuropatkin, and described him to me as a kindly and simple-minded gentleman of the type of an English squire. He was very fond of fishing; but like my friend, the Russian General Y——, he appeared to have an almost passionate abhorrence of war. He once said to my host: “Why do you build war ships; why not build only merchant ships; that is much better?” To this it was replied: “Why do you carry your sword? Throw away the sword and I will stop building war ships.” And, indeed, in most modern wars, it is not the men who must do the fighting or the people who must pay the bills, that are chiefly responsible for their initiation; it is the selfish promoters of schemes for the plunder of other nations, the cowardly politicians, and perhaps above all, the unscrupulous press, which are chiefly responsible for the horrors of war. Through all modern history, since men ceased to be frankly barbarian in their treatment of other peoples and races, it has been commercial greed, and its subsidised agents among the makers of laws and of public feeling, which have chiefly been guilty for the waste of treasure and life among civilised peoples.

But let us leave the noise of the Kawasaki Dock Yards, where in 1907 Russian ships were repairing, Chinese gun-boats and torpedo and other boats for Siam were building, and merchant and war ships for the home country were in various stages of new construction or repair; and let us return to the quiet of the House of Peers when I visited it in May of 1892. After a short time spent in one of the retiring rooms, which are assigned according to the rank of the members—Marquis Matsukata being then Premier—we were admitted to the gallery of the Foreign Ambassadors, from which there is a particularly good view of the entire Upper House.

The Japanese House of Peers is composed of four classes of members. These are (1) Princes of the Blood; (2) Peers, such as the Princes and Marquises, who sit by virtue of their right, when they reach the age of twenty-five, and Counts, Viscounts, and Barons, who are elected to represent their own respective classes; (3) men of erudition who are nominated by the Emperor for their distinguished services to the state; and (4) representatives of the highest tax-payers, who are elected from among themselves, and only one from each prefecture. Each of the three inferior orders can return not more than one-fifth of the total number of peers; and the total of the non-titled members must not be greater than that of the titled members. It is thus made obvious that the Japanese House of Peers is essentially an aristocratic body; and yet that it represents all the most important interests of the country in some good degree—whatever may be thought of the proportion of representation assigned to each interest. The care that science and scholarship shall have at least some worthy representation in the national counsels and legislation is well worthy of imitation by the United States. And when to this provision we add the facts, that a Minister of Education takes rank with the other Ministers, that the Professors in the Imperial Universities have court rank by virtue of their services, and that the permanent President of the Imperial Teacher’s Association is a Baron and a member of the House of Peers, we may well begin to doubt whether the recognition accorded to the value of education in relation to the national life, and to the dignity and worth of the teacher’s office, is in this country so superior to that of other nations, after all.

“[THE PICTURESQUE MOAT AND ANCIENT WALL]”

The appearance of the Chamber occupied by the Peers was somewhat more luxurious than that of the Lower House; although it was then, and still is, quite unimposing as compared with buildings used for legislative purposes in this country and in Europe. Indeed, everywhere in Tokyo, the ugly German architecture of the Government buildings contrasts strikingly with [the picturesque moat and ancient walls] of the Imperial grounds. More elaborate decoration, and the platform above which an ascent by a few steps led to the throne from which His Majesty opens Parliament, were the only claims of the Upper Chamber to distinction. The personnel of the members seemed to me on the whole less vigorous than that of the Lower House. This was in part due to the sprinkling of youthful marquises, who, as has already been explained, take their seats by hereditary right at the age of twenty-five. In marked contrast with them was the grim old General T——, a member of the Commission which visited the United States in 1871, who asserted himself by asking a question and then going on to make a speech, in spite of the taunts of two or three of the younger members. The manner of voting in the Upper House was particularly interesting; as the roll was called, each member mounted the platform and deposited either a white or a blue card in a black lacquer box which stood in front of the President of the Chamber.

Here the business of the day was important on account of the precedent which it was likely to establish. A Viscount member had been promoted to a Count, and the question had arisen whether his seat should be declared vacant. The report of the committee which disqualified him from sitting as a Count was voted upon and adopted. Then came up the case of two Counts who were claimants for the same seat. The vote for these rival candidates had stood 30 to 31; but one voter among the majority had been declared disqualified; because, having held a Viscount’s seat, on being promoted to a Count, he had attempted to vote as a Count. All this, while of importance as precedents determining the future constitution of the House of Peers, had not at all the same wide-reaching significance as the signs in the Lower House of the beginnings in Japan of that struggle which is still going on all over the world between the demands of the Central Government for money and the legislative body which votes the appropriations to meet these demands.

It was under very different circumstances that I witnessed a quite dissimilar scene, when in December of 1906 my next visit was paid to the Imperial Diet of Japan. This occasion was the opening of the Diet by the Emperor in person. Now, while my court rank gave me the right to request an official invitation to the ceremony, the nature of the ceremony itself required that all who attended should come in full dress and wearing their decorations, if they were the possessors of decorations at all. It was also required that all visitors should be in their respective waiting-rooms for a full hour before the ceremony began. None might enter the House later than ten o’clock, although His Majesty did not leave the palace until half-past this hour. This waiting, however, gave a not undesirable opportunity to make some new acquaintance, or to have a chat with two or three old friends. But besides the members of the various diplomatic corps and a French Count, who appeared to be a visitor at his nation’s Embassy, there were no other foreigners in the waiting-room to which I was directed on arrival.

During the hour spent in waiting, however, I had a most interesting conversation with Baron R——, an attaché of the German Embassy, who seemed a very clever and sensible young gentleman. The excitement over the recent action of the San Francisco School Board was then at its extreme height; and on discussing with him an “open letter” which I had just published, explaining in behalf of my Japanese friends the relation in which this action, with some of the questions which it raised, stood to our national constitution, I found him thoroughly acquainted with the historical and the political bearings of the whole difficult subject. I could not avoid a regretful sigh over the doubt whether one-half of our own representatives, or even of our foreign service, were so well informed on the nature of our constitution and its history as was this German diplomat. However this may be, certain it is that a higher grade of culture is eminently desirable in both the legislative and diplomatic classes of our public service. In the same connection the Baron gave it as his opinion that Japan had produced in this generation a nobler and more knightly type of individual manhood than can be found in any country in Europe. Such a verdict can, of course, never acquire any higher trustworthiness than an individual’s opinion. But if we ask ourselves, “Where in the world is another city of 45,000 inhabitants to be found, which has produced in this generation six generals who are the equals of Field Marshall Oyama, Admiral Togo, and Generals Oku, Count Nodzu, and the two Saigos?” I imagine the answer would be exceedingly hard to find. Perhaps the truth is, as one of my best informed Japanese friends once quaintly said: “In America you have a few big, bad men, and a good many small good men; but in Japan we have a few big, good men and a good many small bad men.” At any rate, the six “big men,” whose names have just been mentioned, were about fifty years ago living and playing as boys together in an area so small that the houses and yards of their parents, and all the space intervening, might have been covered by a ten-acre lot.

As soon as His Majesty had arrived, all those who had been waiting were conducted to their proper chambers in the gallery of the Peer’s House, where I found myself seated with Japanese only, and between those of a higher rank on the right and of a lower rank on the left. The members of both Houses of the Diet were standing on the floor below;—those from the Lower House on the left and facing the throne, and those from the House of Peers on the right. The former were dressed, with some exceptions, in evening-dress, and the latter in court uniform with gold epaulets on their shoulders. All the spectators in the galleries were in court dress. On the right of the platform, from which steps led up to the throne, stood a group of some fifteen or twenty court officials. At about five minutes past eleven an equal number of such personages came into the Chamber by the opposite door of the platform and arranged themselves so as to form a passage through the midst of them for the Emperor. Not more than five minutes later His Majesty entered, and ascending to the throne, sat down for a moment; but almost immediately rose and received from the hand of Marquis Saionji, the Prime Minister, the address from the throne inscribed on a parchment scroll. This he then read, or rather intoned, in a remarkably clear but soft and musical voice. The entire address occupied not more than three minutes in the reading. After it was finished, Prince Tokugawa, President of the Peers, went up from the floor of the House to the platform, and then to a place before the throne; here he received the scroll from the Emperor’s hand. After which he backed down to the floor again, went directly in front of His Majesty and made a final bow. The Emperor himself immediately descended from the throne and made his exit from the platform by the door at which he had entered, followed by all the courtiers.

All were enjoined to remain in their places until the Emperor had left the House; the audience then dispersed without further regard to order or to precedence. So simple and brief was this impressive ceremony!

Nearly all over the civilised world, at the present time, there seems to be a growing distrust of government by legislative bodies as at present constituted and an increasing doubt as to the final fate of this form of government. The distrust and doubt are chiefly due to the fact that the legislators seem so largely under the control of the struggle which is everywhere going on between the now privileged classes, in their efforts to retain their inherited or acquired advantages, and the socially lower or less prosperous classes, in their efforts to wrest away these advantages and to secure what they—whether rightly or wrongly—regard as equal rights and equal opportunities with their more favoured and prosperous fellows. It is not strange, in view of this so nearly universal fact, that any inquiry as to the past and present success of legislation under constitutional government in Japan, should receive such various and conflicting answers both from intelligent natives and from observant foreigners. There can be no doubt among those who know the inside of Japanese politics that the success of this sort which has hitherto been attained in Japan has been in large measure due to the wise and firm but gracious conduct of the Emperor himself; and to that small group of “elder statesmen” and other councillors whom he has trusted and supported so faithfully. But no few men, however wise and great, could have achieved by themselves what has actually been accomplished in the last half-century of the Empire’s history. Great credit must then be given to hundreds and thousands of lesser heroes; and indeed the events of this history cannot be accounted for without admitting that the genius of the race, accentuated by their long period of seclusion, is the dominant factor. The one fault, which most threatens the cause of parliamentary and constitutional government of Japan, is a certain inability, hitherto inherent, to avoid the evils of an extreme partisanship and to learn that art of practical compromises which has made the Anglo-Saxon race so successful hitherto in constitutional and popular government.

CHAPTER II
DOWN THE KATSURA-GAWA

At four o’clock in the morning of the second day after my visit to the Imperial Diet in the Spring of 1892, I arrived at the station of Kyoto,—for more than a thousand years the capital of Japan. Here the unbroken line of heavenly descended Mikados lived and held their court; but most of the time in only nominal rule, while a succession of Daimyos, military captains, and Shoguns, seized and held the real power of government. Here also are the finest temples and factories for the various kinds of native art-work; and here is where the relics of the magnificence, combined with simplicity, of the court life during Japan’s feudal ages may best be seen and studied by privileged inquirers. It was fortunate, then, that my first introduction to interior views of Japanese life and Japanese character was had in the ancient rather than in the much more thoroughly modernised Capital City of Tokyo.

At that time, the journey between the two capitals required some five or six hours longer than is now necessary. The fact that there were then no sleeping-cars, together with my interest in watching my fellow travellers, had prevented my getting any sleep the night before. When, therefore, I had been escorted to the home of my host and forthwith informed that within two hours a delegation of students would visit me, for the double purpose of extending a welcome and of giving instructions as to the topics on which they wished to be lectured to, I made bold to go to bed and leave word that I should be glad to see them if they would return about noon. At the appointed hour this first meeting with Japanese students face to face, in their native land, came off. It was conducted with an appropriately polite solemnity by both parties. An elaborate interchange of greetings and compliments began the interview; and then the future speaker listened attentively and patiently, while the delegation from a portion of his future audience recited the subjects about which they deemed it best for him to speak. The reply was to the effect that the subjects for the course of lectures had already been selected and carefully prepared: the program, therefore, could not be altered; but some of the topics coincided closely with the program suggested by the Committee; and a series of conversations would accompany the lectures, at which the topics not provided for in the course of lectures could be brought up for discussion in the form of question and answer.

This experience and others somewhat similar, which followed with sufficient rapidity, early taught me a valuable lesson for all subsequent intercourse with the Japanese—young and old, and irrespective of distinctions of classes. With full right, and on a basis of history and racial characteristics, they do not gratefully tolerate being looked down upon, or even condescended to, by foreigners. But they respect, as we Anglo-Saxons do, the person who deals with them in manly frankness, and on terms of manly equality. And they admire and practice more than we do, the proper mixture of quietness and politeness in manner with courage and firmness at the heart (suaviter in modo, fortiter in re). In his admirable volumes on the Russo-Japanese war, General Ian Hamilton tells the story of how he asked some of the Japanese military authorities, What they considered the most essential quality for a great field-marshal or general in conducting a battle; and how the reply was these simple words: “Du calme.” The private soldier—although not in accordance with his best service of the cause—may indulge in the wild excitement which Lieutenant Sakurai’s “Human Bullets” depicts in such horribly graphic manner; but not so the officer in command of the field. He must keep the cool head and the unperturbed heart, with its steady pulse-beat, if he is going to fight successfully an up-hill battle.

After only two days of lecturing at Doshisha, the institution founded by Neesima, the unveiling of whose portrait has lately been celebrated at Amherst College where he graduated some thirty years ago, the weekly holiday arrived; and with it the time for an excursion down the rapids of the Katsura-gawa, which was to give me the first views of [country scenes and country customs] in Japan. The day was as bright and beautiful as a day in early June can possibly be. Nowhere else in the world, where I have been, are one’s pleasant impressions and happiness in country excursions more completely dependent upon the weather than in the Land of the “Rising Sun.” Although this sun is of the kind which “smites you by day” in the Summer months, you can easily guard against its smiting by use of pith hat and umbrella; but you cannot so readily defend your spirits against the depressing effect of day after day of cloud and down-pour or drizzle of rain.

The starting at half-past seven o’clock made necessary an early rising and an early breakfast; but this is custom and no hardship in the Summer time of Japan. Indeed it has often seemed to me that the Japanese in the cities at this time of the year do not go to bed at all. The insufficiency of sleep is probably one chief reason for the prevalence of nervous disorders among this class of the population. It is somewhat compensated for, however, by the wonderful ability of the coolies, which they possess in common with Orientals generally, of falling asleep and waking up, like the opening and shutting of a jack-knife.

It is not quite possible for the most gifted master of the descriptive style to depict the charm of the first jinrikisha ride out into the country surrounding Kyoto. At least, the charm experienced by me on the occasion of this excursion will never be forgotten. The excellent road; the durable and handsome stone bridges; the continuous gardens and frequent villages; the perpetual stir along the highway, with the multitude of jinrikishas and two-wheeled carts,—some drawn by men and boys, and some by bulls, mostly black,—or of foot-passengers, coming into the city on business or going into the country bent on pleasure;—all these made the entire journey exceedingly lively and interesting. Further out, in the more solitary places, were the terraces covered with verdure and flowers, the hills carpeted with what looked like large and luxurious ferns, but which really was “mountain grass,” and the water-falls; but perhaps most beautiful of all, the bamboo groves, whose slender trunks and delicate foliage threw a matchless chiaroscuro upon the brilliantly coloured ground below. Here was indeed a genuine chiaroscuro; for the parts in shadow had “the clearness and warmth of those in light, and those in light the depth and softness of those in shadow.”

What might have been a ridiculous or even a dangerous adventure met us at the mouth of the long tunnel which the work of the government has substituted for the ancient mountain pass. For, as we reached the spot and were about to enter its mouth, strange noises issuing from within made us pause to investigate their cause. On peering into the darkness, we were able to make out that a full-grown male of the domestic bovine species had broken the straw rope by which two coolies were leading him, and was charging toward our end of the tunnel with all the bellowing and antic fury which is wont to characterise this animal under similar circumstances. It did not seem that the issue of an encounter between us in jinrikishas and the bull, in so narrow a passage with high and roofed-over stone walls on either side, would be to our advantage. We therefore laid aside our dignity, got down from our jinrikishas, and squeezed both ourselves and them as closely as possible against the side of the cut at the end of the tunnel. Fortunately we had not long to wait in this position of rather uncertain security. For either the sight of us, barring his passage, or some trick of his own brain, induced the infuriated animal to turn about and make his exit at the other end of the tunnel; and after waiting long enough to place a sufficient distance between the two parties, we continued our journey without further adventure.

On reaching Hozu, the village where the boat was to be taken for the rapids, we found that President Kozaki and one of his teachers were waiting for us. Some one-hundred and twenty boys of the Preparatory School, who had risen in the night and walked out to Hozu, had started down the rapids several hours before. The boat in waiting for our party was of the style considered safest and most manageable by the experienced boatmen, who during the previous fifteen years had piloted thousands of persons down the Katsura-gawa, at all stages of its waters, with a loss of only five lives. The boat was very broad for its length, low, and light; with its bottom only slightly curved, fore and aft, and toward both sides. So thin were the boards between the passengers and the swift, boiling waters, that one could feel them bend like paper as we shot over the waves. We sat upon blankets laid on the bottom of the boat. There were four boatmen;—one steersman with a long oar, in the stern, two oarsmen on the same side, toward the bank of the river, in the middle of the boat, and one man with a pole, in the bow. Once only during thirteen miles of rapids between Hozu and Arashi-yama did the boat strike a rock, from which it bounded off lightly;—the sole result being a somewhat sharp interchange of opinion as to who was to blame, between the steersman and the other boatmen.

“[THE CHARM OF THE SCENERY ALONG THE BANKS]”

The excitement of the ride did not in any respect interfere with a constant and increasing admiration of [the charm of the scenery along the banks of the river]. The canyon of the stream and the surrounding hills were equally beautiful. The nearer banks were adorned with bamboo groves, the attractiveness of whose delicately contrasted or blended light and shadows has already been referred to; and at this season, great clumps of azaleas—scarlet, pink, and crimson—made spots of brilliant colouring upon the sober background of moss and fern and soil and rock.

The average trip down the rapids of the Katsura-gawa occupies two hours. But the favourable stage of the water, helped out by the skilful management of the craft on this occasion, brought us to the landing place at Arashi-yama in scarcely more than an hour and a half. Our entire course may be described in the guide-book style as follows: “Of the numerous small rapids and races, the following are a few of the most exciting:—Koya no taki, or ‘Hut Rapids,’ a long race terminating in a pretty rapid, the passage being narrow between artificially constructed embankments of rock; Takase, or ‘High Rapids’; Shishi no Kuchi, or ‘The Lion’s Mouth’; and Tonase-daki ‘the last on the descent, where the river rushes between numerous rocks and islets.’”

Arashi-yama, made picturesque by its hills everywhere covered with pine trees, its plantations of cherry trees which are said to have been brought from Yoshino in the thirteenth century by the Emperor Kameyama, and its justly celebrated maple groves, was an appropriately beautiful spot for the termination of our excursion. After taking luncheon in one of its tea-houses,—my first meal, squatted on the mats, in Japanese style,—my host and I left the rest of the party and went back to his home in the city by jinrikishas. On the way we stopped at one of those oldest, smallest, and most obscure of ancient temples, which so often in Japan are overlooked by the tourist, but which not infrequently are of all others best worth the visiting. Here the mild-mannered, sincere old priest opened everything freely to our inspection, lighted the tapers and replenished the incense sticks; and even allowed us the very unusual privilege of handling the sacred things about the idols. Finally, putting a paper-covering over his mouth, and after much prayer, he approached on his knees the “holy of holies,” drew aside the gilt screens and showed us the inner shrine; and he then took out the shoes belonging to the god and let us handle and admire them.

From his point of view, the pious custodian of the sacred relics was indulging in an altogether justifiable pride. For the temple of Uzumasa is one of the oldest in Japan. It was founded in A. D. 604, by Shōtoku Taishi, the Japanese Constantine, who consecrated it to Buddhist gods whose images had been brought from Korea. Although the original buildings were burned some centuries ago, the relics and specimens of the most ancient art were fortunately saved. Nowhere else in the whole country, except at Nara or Hōryūji—and there only to those who are favoured with special privileges by the Government—can such a multitude of these things be seen and studied. The antiquarian interest in them is just now enhanced by the fact that many of them, although called Japanese, were really made either in Korea or else under the instruction of Korean teachers. It is one of the shiftings of human history which has now placed upon the Japanese the responsibility of instructing in every kind of modern art their former teachers.

The accessories and incidents of my second excursion to the rapids of the Katsura-gawa were of a totally different order. The day was in early March of 1907, bright and beautiful, but somewhat cool for such a venture. At the Nijo station—for one could now reach the upper rapids by rail—my wife and I met President Harada and one of the lady teachers of Doshisha, and two of the Professors of the Imperial University. Passes and a present of envelopes containing a number of pretty picture cards, from the Manager of the Kyoto Railway Company, were waiting for the party. The ride to the village of Kameoka was pleasant, although even the earliest of the plum blossoms had not yet appeared to beautify the landscape.

I had been anticipating a day of complete freedom for recreation; but the Christian pastor of the village, who had kindly arranged for our boat, had with equal kindness of intention toward his parish, betrayed our coming; and the inevitable under such circumstances happened. The usual committee of Mayor, representatives of the schools and others, were at the station to welcome us. “Could I not visit the Primary School and say a few words—just show myself, indeed—to the children who were all waiting eager with expectation?” Of course, Yes: for how could so reasonable a request, so politely proffered, be reasonably and politely denied? Besides, the children were encouraged to plant and care for trees about the school-buildings; and it was greatly desired that I should plant one to commemorate our visit. Of course, again, Yes. Soon, then, a long row of jinrikishas, holding both hosts and guests, was being hurried over the mile or more separating the station from the nearest school-building. On drawing near we found some 500 or 600 children—first the boys and then the girls—ranged along on either side of the roadway; and between them, all bowing as they are carefully trained to do in Japanese style and waving flags of both countries, we passed, until we were discharged at the door of the large school-house hall.

“[TO TEND THESE TREES BECAME A PRIVILEGE]”

After luncheon was finished, I assisted at the planting of two small fir-trees just in front of the building, by dropping into the hole the first two or three mattocks full of earth. We were then conducted to the play-ground near by, where the whole school was drawn up in the form of a hollow square. Here, from one end of the square, I spoke to the children for not more than ten minutes, and President Harada interpreted; after which the head-master made a characteristically poetical response by way of thanks,—saying that the memory of the visit and the impression of the words spoken would be evergreen, like the tree which had been planted, and expressing the wish that the future long lives of both their guests might be symbolised by the life of the tree. [To tend these trees became a privilege] for which the pupils of the school have since kept up a friendly rivalry.

The excursionists were quite naturally desirous of getting off promptly upon the postponed pleasure trip; but this was not even yet easily to be done. For now followed the request to visit two schools of the higher grade and make a short talk to the pupils in them. I compromised on the condition that the two should be gathered into the same assembly; and this was cheerfully, and for the Japanese, promptly done. The combined audience made about three-hundred of each sex—older boys and girls—standing close together, one on one side and the other on the other side of the room, in soldier-like ranks, facing the speaker with curious and eager eyes, but with most exemplary behaviour. Again I spoke for ten minutes; after which followed the interpretation and the address of thanks and of promise to remember and put into practice the speaker’s injunctions.

At the termination of this ceremony, I said—I fear a little abruptly—“Arigato” (“Thank you”) and “Sayonara” (“Good-bye”) and started to go. But I was brought to a halt by the suggestive, “Dozo, chotto” (“In a moment, please”) and then asked to give the boys of the school a chance to precede us to the river bank on foot, from which they wished to see us off and to bid us a Japanese good-bye. And who that knows what a Japanese “good-bye,” when genuine and hearty, really is, would not give more than a single little moment, at almost any juncture, to be the recipient of one? The boys, thereupon, filed out in good military fashion; and after giving them a fair start, we took our jinrikishas again and were carried to the river’s bank. It was still some little time before the boat was ready; and then the party, seated on the blankets and secured against the cold by a covering of rugs, accompanied by the pastor and one of the teachers as an escort, started down the river. Several hundred yards below our starting point, the three-hundred school boys stood in single file along the bank, and continued to “banzai” in their best style until a turn in the river hid them from our sight.

I have dwelt at such length on this seemingly trivial incident, because I should be glad to give an adequate impression of the influence of the lower grades of the public schools of Japan in inculcating lessons of order and politeness upon the children of the nation; and in this way preparing them for fitting in well with the existing social order and for obedience to the sovereign authority of the Emperor, of their parents, and in general of their elders. The common impression that Japanese babies are born so little nervous or so good-natured that they never cry, is indeed far enough from the truth. They do cry, as all healthy babies should, when hurt or when grieved; or, with particular vehemence, when mad. They are almost without exception injudiciously indulged by their parents, their nurses, and in truth by everybody else. But from the time the boy or girl begins to attend school, an astonishing change takes place. How far this change is due to the influence of the teacher’s instruction and example, and how far to the spirit and practice of the older pupils, it is perhaps not easy to say. But, in school, both sexes are immediately placed under a close-fitting system of physical and intellectual drill. Thus the pride and ambition of all are called out by the effort to succeed and to excel. The Imperial rescripts, the wise sayings and noble achievements of ancient sages and heroes, the arousement of that spirit which is called “Bushidō” or “Yamato-Damashii,” the appeal to the pride and love of country, and instruction in ethics—as the Japanese understand ethics—prolonged from the kindergarten to the University;—all these means are employed in the public system of education with the intention of producing citizens serviceable to the State. They are all needed in the effort of the Government to control the ferment of new ideas and the pressure of the new forces which are shaping the future commercial, political, and social life of the nation, perhaps too rapidly for its own good.

For the interested and sympathetic teacher of children there are no more delightful experiences than may be had by visiting and observing the primary grades of the public schools of Japan. I have had the pleasure of speaking to several thousands of their pupils. At the summons, the boys would come filing in on one side, and the girls on the other side, of the large assembly room with which every well-appointed school-house is now being provided; and as quietly as drilled and veteran soldiers they would form themselves into a compacted phalanx of the large style of ancient Macedonia. Six hundred pairs of bright black eyes are then gazing steadily and unflinchingly, but with a quiet and engaging respectfulness, into the eyes of the speaker. And if his experience is like my own, he will never see the slightest sign of inattention, impatience, or disorder, on the part of a single one of his childish auditors. Further, as to the effect of this upon the older boys when out of school: Although I have been in a considerable number of places, both in the cities and in the country places of Japan, I have never seen two Japanese boys quarrelling or even behaving rudely toward each other so far as their language was concerned. The second item of “advice” in the “Imperial Rescript to the Army and Navy,” which precedes even the exhortation—“It is incumbent on soldiers to be brave and courageous”—reads as follows: “Soldiers must be polite in their behaviour and ways. In the army and navy, there are hierarchical ranks from the Marshal to the private or bluejacket which bind together the whole for purposes of command, and there are the gradations of seniority within the same rank. The junior must obey the senior; the inferior must take orders from the superior, who transmits them to Our direct command; and inferior and junior officers and men must pay respect to their superiors and seniors, even though they be not their direct superiors and seniors. Superiors must never be haughty and proud toward those of lower rank, and severity of discipline must be reserved for exceptional cases. In all other cases superiors must treat those beneath them with kindness and especial clemency, so that all men may unite as one man in the service of the country. If you do not observe courtesy of behaviour, if inferiors treat their superiors with disrespect, or superiors their inferiors with harshness, if, in a word, the harmonious relations between superiors and inferiors be lost, you will be not only playing havoc with the army, but committing serious crimes against the country.”

The success in blending courage with courtesy, bravery with politeness, which this way of disciplining the youth of the country may attain, and actually has attained in Japan, is a complete refutation of the silly notion—so common, alas! in Anglo-Saxon and Christian lands, that haughtiness in “superiors” and insolence in “inferiors,” together with the readiness to fight one’s fellows with fists, swords, or pistols, is a necessary part of a soldier’s preparation for the most successful resistance to the enemies of one’s country. It is difficult to conceive of more impressive lessons regarding the effects produced by different systems of education upon different racial characteristics than that afforded by the following two incidents. For some weeks in the Autumn of 1899 I occupied a house in Tokyo, from the rooms of which nearly everything going on in one of the large public schools of the city could be either overheard or overlooked. But not once did a harsh word or a loud cry reach our ears, or a rude and impolite action our eyes. But during a residence of a fortnight in similar proximity to one of the best Christian colleges of India, there was scarcely an hour of the school day when some seemingly serious uproar was not in evidence in the room beneath our window. And it was not an uncommon thing to observe both pupil and teacher standing on their feet and vociferously “sassing” each other,—with one or more of the other pupils occasionally chiming in. More suggestive of vital differences, however, is another experience of mine. Toward the close of the Russo-Japanese war a Japanese pupil, a Buddhist priest, who had fought in the Chino-Japanese war and had been decorated for his bravery, had been called out into the “reserves.” A letter received from him while his regiment was still waiting to be ordered to the front, after telling how he had left the school for “temple-boys,” which he had founded on his return from his studies in this country, and of which he was the Dean, added these pregnant words: “Pray for us, that we may have success and victory.” Now it so happened that almost the same mail which brought this letter, carried to another member of my family a letter from a Christian Hindū, who had come to this country for theological study. In this letter, too, there was an appeal to our pious sympathy; but it took the following form: “Pray for me, that I may be able to bear the cold.” Surely, Great Britain need not fear an uprising of the “intellectuals” in India, so long as its babus are educated in such manner as to foster so unenduring character, however gifted in philosophical speculation and eloquence of speech.

The system of education now established in Japan, both in its Universities and in its public schools, has still many weaknesses and deficiencies, and some glaring faults. Nor are Japanese boys, especially when they have grown older and become more wise in their own eyes, always agreeable to their teachers, or easy to manage and to instruct. But of all this we may perhaps conclude to speak at another time. This at any rate is certain: There are few memories in the life-time of at least one American teacher, which he more gladly recalls, and more delights to cherish, than those which signalise his many meetings with the school children of Japan: and among them all, not the least pleasant is that of the three hundred boys of Kameoka, standing in a row upon the banks of the Katsura-gawa and shouting their “banzais” to the departing boat.

And, indeed, having already described with sufficient fulness how one runs the rapids, admires the banks, perhaps visits a shrine or a tea-house on the way, and arrives in safety to find refreshment and rest at Arashi-yama, there is nothing more worth saying to be said on the subject.

CHAPTER III
CLIMBING ASAMA-YAMA

Between a series of addresses which I had been giving in his church, in early July of 1892, in Tokyo, and the opening of work at the summer-school at Hakoné, Mr. T. Yokoi and I planned an excursion of a few days to the mountainous region in the interior northward of the Capital City. The addresses had been on topics in philosophy—chiefly the Philosophy of Religion. The weather proved as uncomfortable and debilitating as Japanese summer weather can easily be. In spite of this, however, about two hundred and fifty men, with few exceptions from the student classes, had been constant in attendance and interest to the very end; and I was asking myself where else in the world under similar discouraging circumstances, such an audience for such a subject could readily be secured.

The evening before we were to set out upon our trip, I was given a dinner in the apartments of one of the temples in the suburbs of Tokyo. The whole entertainment was characteristic of old-fashioned Japanese ideals of the most refined hospitality; a brief description of what took place may therefore help to correct any impression that the posturing of geisha girls and the drinking of quantities of hot saké is the only way in which the cultivated gentlemen of Japan know how to amuse themselves. As the principal feature of entertainment on this occasion, an artist of local reputation, who worked with water-colours, had been called to the assistance of the hosts; and we all spent a most pleasant and instructive hour or two, seated on the mats around him and watching the skill of his art in rapid designing and executing. The kakemonos thus produced were then presented to the principal guest as souvenirs of the occasion. The artistic skill of this old gentleman was not indeed equal to his enthusiasm. But on later visits to Japan I have enjoyed the benefits of both observation and possession, in instances where the art exhibited has been of a much higher order. For example, at a dinner given by my Japanese publishers to Mrs. Ladd and me, we witnessed what has since seemed to both of us a most astonishing feat of cultivated æsthetical dexterity. The son of one of the more celebrated artists of Japan at that time (1899), himself a workman of much more than local reputation, had after some hesitation been secured to give an exhibition of his skill at free-hand drawing in water-colours. When two or three designs of his own suggestion had been executed, in not more than ten minutes each, the artist asked to have the subjects for the other designs suggested for him. Among these suggestions, he was requested to paint a lotus; and this was his answer to the request. Selecting a brush somewhat more than two inches in width, he wet three sections of its edge with as many different colours, and then with one sweep of hand and wrist, and without removing the brush from the paper, he drew the complete cup of a large lotus—its curved outlines clearly defined and beautifully shaped, and the shading of the inside of the cup made faithful to nature by the unequal pressure of the brush as it glided over the surface of the paper.

After the dinner, which followed upon the display of the painter’s skill, and which was served by the temple servants, the entire party divided into groups or pairs and strolled in the moonlight through the gardens which lay behind the temple buildings. The topic of talk introduced by the Japanese friend with whom I was paired off carried our thought back to the quiet and peaceful life lived in this same garden by the monks in ancient days; and not by the monks only, but also by the daimyos and generals who were glad, after the fretful time of youth was over, to spend their later and latest days in leisurely contemplation. In general, in the “Old Japan,” the father of the family was tempted to exercise his right of retiring from active life before the age of fifty, and of laying off upon the eldest son the duty of supporting the family and even of paying the debts which the father might have contracted. But it was, and still is, a partial compensation for this custom of seeking early relief from service, that the Japanese, and the Oriental world generally, recognise and honour better than we are apt to do, the need of every human soul to a certain amount of rest, recreation, and time for meditation.

The entertainment over, and the uneaten portion of each guest’s food neatly boxed and placed under the seat of his jinrikisha for distribution among his servants on the home-coming, I was taken back to my lodgings through streets as brilliantly lighted as lanterns and coal-oil lamps can well do, and crowded with a populace of both sexes and all ages who were spending the greater part of the night in the celebration of a local religious festival. The necessity of sitting up still later in order to write letters for the mail which left by the steamer next day, and of rising at four o’clock in the morning, to take an early train from a distant station, did not afford the best physical preparation for the hardships which were to be endured during the two or three days following.

It was on applying for a ticket to Yokogawa, which was as far toward the foot of Asama-yama from Tokyo as the railway could take one in those days, that I experienced the only bit of annoying interference with my movements which I have ever met with, when travelling in Japan. But this was in the days of passports and strict governmental regulations for the conduct of foreigners and of natives in their treatment of foreigners. These regulations required that all tourists who wished to visit places beyond ten ri, or about twenty-four and a half miles, distant from some treaty-port, must obtain passports from the Japanese Government by application through the diplomatic representative of the country to which they belonged. The purpose of the proposed tour must be expressly stated; and it must be one of these two purposes,—either “for scientific information” or “for the benefit of the health.” The exact route over which it was proposed to travel must also be stated, and the length of time for which the permission was desired. Applications for more than three months were likely to be refused. It was, further, the duty of every keeper of an inn or tea-house where a foreign traveller wished to pass the night, to take up the passport and hand it over to the local police for inspection and for safe keeping until the departure of his guest. The strictness of the compliance with these regulations, however, differed in different places; and nowhere did they serve to destroy or greatly to restrict the kindness and hospitable feelings of the common people. For example, I recall the pathetic story of a missionary, who had lost his way, and having become so exhausted that he felt he could not take another step, applied for shelter during the night in the hut of a peasant family. The man did not dare to break the law which forbade him to harbour the foreign stranger; but he offered, and actually undertook to carry on his back the tired missionary, to the nearest place where he could obtain legal entertainment!

Some weeks before, after a visit in company with a missionary friend and his family to the Shintō temples at Ise, we had all turned aside for a night of rest at the charming sea-side resort of Futami. The other members of the family felt quite at their ease, for they were armed with their passports for the summer vacation; not so, however, the gentleman who was the family’s head and guardian and my interpreter. For he was without the necessary legal permission to pass the night away from home; while the day’s journey of thirty miles in a basha without springs made the prospect of a return journey that same night anything but desirable to contemplate. But the issue was happy; for the large number of passports furnished by the entire party and duly made over to the police by our host seemed to prove a sufficient covering for us all. And we had come off victorious in another battle with legal restrictions,—a battle royal between the maids, who at the risk of suffocation to human beings, insisted on obeying the law by shutting tight the amado, or wooden sliding doors which formed the outside of our sleeping apartments, and the human beings, who rather than be suffocated, were willing to break the law; since, at best, a modicum of uneasy sleep was to be obtained only in this way. But such petty annoyances are now forgotten; and nowhere else in the world is travel freer and more of kindly pains taken by all classes to make it comfortable and interesting, than in the Japan of the present day.

The policeman at the station being in time satisfied with the legitimacy of the foreigner’s purpose to get where he could ascend Asama-yama, both for purposes of scientific information and for his health, my friend and I took the train for Yokogawa. The railway journey was without incident or special interest. At that date there was a break of about seven miles in the Nakasendō, or “Central Mountain Road,”—the grading and tunnelling being far from complete between Yokohawa and Karuizawa, from which point we intended to make the ascent of the mountain. Although the Nakasendō seems to have been originally constructed early in the eighth century, since it traverses mountainous and sparsely cultivated districts, remote from populous centres, good accommodations for travellers were at that time (1892) not to be had. At present, Karuizawa is one of the principal summer resorts of all this part of Japan; and several thousands of visitors congregate there annually. Travel by jinrikisha up this mountain pass was then difficult and expensive, and we wished to save both strength and time for our walk of the following day. We had, therefore, only the tram as a remaining choice. In the nearly twelve miles of tram-way there were scarcely twenty rods of straight track; and the ascent to be made amounted to some 2,000 feet in all. Yet the miserable horses which drew the small car were whipped into a run almost the entire way. The car itself resembled a diminutive den for wild beasts, such as menageries use in their street parades, although far less commodious or elegant. It was designed to hold twelve passengers; but this complement could possibly be got in, only if the passengers were uniformly of small size and submitted to the tightest kind of packing. By sitting up as straight as I could, and sandwiching my legs in between the legs of the Japanese fellow-traveller on the opposite side, it was barely possible to bring my thigh bones within the limits of the width allowed by the car. Plainly this vehicle was not planned to accommodate the man of foreign dimensions. As we swayed around the perpetually recurring curves of the narrow track, it was rather difficult to avoid slight feelings of nervousness; and these were not completely allayed by being assured that accidents did not happen so very often; nor, more especially, by the sight of a horse and cart which had plunged off the roadway to the valley forty or more feet below, where the animal lay dying and surrounded by a little crowd of those calm and inactive spectators who, in Japan, are so accustomed to regard all similar events as shikata-ga-nai (or things which cannot be helped). We arrived, however, at Shin (or New) Karuizawa, somewhat jumbled and bruised, but in safety; and here we at once took jinrikishas for the older place of the same name.

“[THE VILLAGES HAVE NEVER BEEN REBUILT]”

Asama-yama is the largest now continuously active volcano in Japan. Its last great and very destructive eruption was in the summer of 1783, when a vast stream of lava destroyed a considerable extent of primeval forest and buried several villages, especially on the north side of the mountain. Over most of this area the [villages have never been rebuilt]. Even the plain across which we rode between the two Karuizawas, and which lies to the southeast, is composed of volcanic ash and scoriæ; and since 1892, stones of considerable size have often been thrown into the yards of the villas inhabited by the summer visitors in this region. Yet more recently, there have been exhibitions of the tremendous destructive forces which are only biding their time within the concealed depths of this most strenuous of Japan’s volcanos. On the south side of the mountain rise two steep rocky walls, some distance apart, the outer one being lower and partly covered with vegetation. It is thought by geologists that these are the remains of two successive concentric craters; and therefore that the present cone is the third of Asama-yama’s vent-holes for its ever-active inner forces.

It had been our intention to follow what the guide-book described as the “best plan” for making the ascent of the volcano; and this was to take horses from the old village of Karuizawa, where it was said foreign saddles might be procured, ride to Ko-Asama, and then walk up by a path of cinders, described as steep but good and solid, and plainly marked at intervals by small cairns. First inquiry, however, did not succeed in getting any trace of suitable horses, not to mention the highly desirable equipment of “foreign saddles.” After taking a late and scanty luncheon in a tea-house which for Japan, even in the most remote country places, seemed unusually dirty and disreputable, we went out in further search of the equipment for the climb of the next day. On emerging from the tea-house, right opposite its door, we came upon a gentleman in a jinrikisha, who was a traveller from America—a much rarer sight in those parts twenty years ago than at the present time. Salutations and inquiries as to “Where from” and “What about,” were quickly interchanged as a matter of course. It turned out that we were making the acquaintance of the father of one of the Canadian missionaries, who was visiting his son and who was at that very instant on his way to the station to take train to Komoro, a village some fourteen miles over the pass, from which that night a party of ten or twelve were planning to ascend Asama-yama by moonlight. Permission was asked and cordially given for us to become members of this party; and the gentleman in the jinrikisha then went on his way as rapidly as the rather decrepit vehicle and its runner could convey him.

As for us, all our energies were now bent on catching that train; for it was the last one of the day and it was certain that our plans could not easily be carried out from the point of starting where we then were. Our belongings were hastily thrust into the bags and a hurry call issued for jinrikishas to take us to the station. But our new acquaintance had gone off in the only jinrikisha available in the whole village of Karuizawa. What was to be done? A sturdy old woman volunteered her assistance; and some of the luggage having been mounted on a frame on her back, we grabbed the remainder and started upon a sort of dog-trot across the ashy plain which separated the tea-house by more than a mile and a half from the railway station. As we came in sight of the train, the variety of signals deemed necessary to announce by orderly stages the approach of so important an event gave notice to both eyes and ears that it was proposing soon to start down the mountain pass; and if it once got fairly started, the nature of the grade would make it more difficult either to stop or to overtake it. My friend, therefore, ran forward gesticulating and calling out; while I assisted the old woman with the burdens and gave her wages and tips without greatly slackening our pace. The railway trains of that earlier period, especially in country places, were more accommodating than is possible with the largely increased traffic of to-day; and the addition of two to the complement of passengers was more important than it would be at present. And so we arrived, breathless but well pleased, and were introduced to several ladies in the compartment, who belonged to the party which proposed to make the ascension together.

The route from Karuizawa to Komoro is a part of what is considered by the guide-book of that period, “on the whole the most picturesque railway route in Japan.” The first half is, indeed, comparatively uninteresting; but when the road begins to wind around the southern slope of Asama-yama, the character of the scenery changes rapidly. Here is the water-shed where all the drainage of the great mountain pours down through deep gullies into rivers which flow either northward into the Sea of Japan or southward into the Pacific. From the height of the road-bed, the traveller looks down upon paddy-fields lying far below. The mountain itself changes its apparent shape and its colouring. The flat top of the cone lengthens out; it now becomes evident that Asama is not isolated, but is the last and highest of a range of mountains. The pinkish brown colouring of the sides assumes a blackish hue; and chasms rough with indurated lava break up into segments which follow the regularity of the slopes on which they lie.

Komoro, the village at which we arrived just as the daylight was giving out, was formerly the seat of a daimyo; but it has now turned the picturesque castle-grounds which overhang the river into a public garden. It boasted of considerable industries in the form of the manufacture of saddlery, vehicles, and tools and agricultural implements. But its citizens I found at that time more rude, inhospitable, and uncivilised than those I have ever since encountered anywhere else in Japan. Our first application for entertainment at an inn was gruffly refused; but we were taken in by another host, whom we afterwards found to have all the silly dishonest tricks by which the worst class of inn-keepers used formerly to impose upon foreigners.

The plan agreed upon for the ascent was to start at ten in the evening, make the journey by moonlight, and so arrive at the mountain’s top in time to see the volcanic fires before dawn but after the moon had gone down; and then, still later, the wide-spreading landscape at sunrise. Six horses were ordered for those of the party who preferred to ride the distance of nearly thirteen miles which lay between the inn and the foot of the cone; while the other five—four of the younger men and one young woman—deemed themselves hardy enough to walk the entire way. As the event proved, a walk of twenty-five miles, half of it steeply up hill, followed by a climb of two thousand feet of ash cone, while not a great “stunt” for trained mountaineers, is no easy thing for the ordinary pedestrian.

The horses had been ordered to be in front of the inn not later than ten o’clock. And at that hour we all began to put on our shoes and otherwise make preparations for a start at the appointed time. But who in those days, or even now, unless it be by railway train, in Japan would reasonably expect to start anywhere at precisely the appointed time? At ten, at eleven, and at midnight, still the horses had not come. At the later hour, the pedestrians of the party made a start, bidding the others a pleasant and somewhat exasperating good-bye, and exhorting them to bring along the luncheon baskets in time for to-morrow morning’s breakfast. An angry messenger despatched to the head-quarters of the “master of the horse,” brought back the soothing message that men had some time before been sent into the fields to gather in the animals, which had been at work all day; and that they certainly would be forthcoming—tadaiama. Now the word “tadaiama” for the inexperienced is supposed to mean immediately (although jiki ni or “in a jiffy” is really the more encouraging phrase); but the initiated know full well that no definitely limited period is intended by either word. At one o’clock in the morning, still the horses had not arrived. At this hour, therefore, a more sharp reprimand and imperative order was sent to the stables; and the same promising answer was returned. At two o’clock the same performance was repeated, with this difference that now the story ran: A second detachment of men had been sent out by the master of the horse; and they would surely return with both men and horses—“tadaiama.”

During these four hours I had been lying on the outer platform of the tea-house, fighting mosquitoes, and trying to get snatches of sleep; since my quota of this sort of preparation for a stiff day’s work had been only three hours during the last forty-eight. A crowd of villagers, of all sorts and sizes, had gathered in front of the platform, which, of course, was open to the street, and were fixedly gazing at the foreigner with that silent and unappeased curiosity which need seriously offend no one who understands its motive and the purpose it is intended to serve. One of the village wags and loafers was continuously and monotonously discoursing to the crowd in a manner so amusing as to call forth repeated outbursts of laughter; and it was evident that the subject of the discourse was the strange and ridiculous ways of foreigners in general; if not the strange and ridiculous appearance of the particular foreigner just now illustrating the characteristics universal with the race. Obviously such conditions were not favourable to restful sleep.

Since, soon after three o’clock the horses had not come, my native friend paid a visit to the stables in person; and fifteen or twenty minutes later the six animals required were standing, with their Bettos, before the inn, under the fading moonlight. When I inquired how he succeeded in accomplishing so quickly what others had failed to accomplish by hours of angry effort, his reply was that he told the keeper of the stable there was a distinguished foreigner waiting at the inn, who was very angry at being treated with such indignity; and that he would himself report the matter to the authorities at Tokyo and have his license taken away, if he did not furnish the horses immediately. “Did you tell him,” I said jestingly “that such behaviour might lead to serious international complications?” “No,” said my friend, “but I did tell him that it would affect treaty revision very unfavourably.” Such a statement was, at the time it was made, not so extravagant and purely jocose as it might seem. For the nation was justly dissatisfied and restless under the claims of foreign nations to the continuance of ex-territorial rights for themselves; and even to the right to regulate the import and export duties of Japan. It is to the credit of the memory of the late American Minister, Colonel Buck, that he was one of the first to express and to exercise confidence in the Japanese to manage both their internal and their foreign affairs on terms of a strict equality with all the first-class nations. At that time, however, not a few foreigners, both within and outside of diplomatic circles, were objecting to a fair arrangement of international obligations, on the ground of complaints as trivial as mine would have been, if it had been made anent the delay of the horses.

Those who have never tried a ride of twenty-five miles on a Japanese farm horse, with a wooden saddle but without either stirrups or bridle, do not know what physical tortures may be involved in it. I was assigned the youngest and friskiest beast of burden among them all; and if I had been able to have any control over him, the choice would have been somewhat to my advantage. But I had absolutely no control; for each animal had its own special betto, whose duty was to lead it by a long straw-rope; and as I have already said there was no bridle for any of the horses. My betto was a loutish, impudent fellow, who had the unpleasant habit of throwing down his rope—sometimes at the most ticklish places—and sauntering back to smoke with his fellows, leaving me, of course, quite helpless before any fate chosen for me by the caprices of my mount. And the mount was uncommonly high, for a large supply of blankets had been placed beneath the steep wooden saddle, for the protection of the horse’s back. Since I knew no Japanese words of threatening or other vigorous protest, I was compelled for the most part to submit in an alarmed quiet; but occasionally, as for example when we were going along the side of the mountain, which was as steep as gravity would let the scoriæ and ashes lie, and where the path was scarcely more than a foot in width, I could invoke the aid of my friend, who was generally within hailing distance. His effective intervention, in a language understood by both persons, would then usually bring my betto sauntering back to resume again his neglected duties.

The dawn, when we reached the uplands outside the village of Komoro, was as beautiful as dawn in summer in Japan can ever be. Below us lay the village with its surroundings; in front and at our side, the mountain; and overhead the larks were singing, the stars were waning, and the soft light and brilliant colouring of the early morning were creeping up the sky.

As we rose higher and higher above the village, the view behind us widened, and the way became steeper and more difficult for the horses; perhaps in places also slightly dangerous. About half the distance of the mountain’s height upward, all vegetation ceases, and the path, joining that from Oiwake, a hamlet lying several miles nearer Karuizawa than does Komoro, proceeds over a steep ascent of loose ash to the edge of the outer ridge. This ridge appears from the villages below to be the summit of the volcano, but is in reality considerably below it. It was near this point that we learned the discouraging experiences of the party of pedestrians who had started out at about midnight of the night before. The native guide whom they employed had lost and then deserted them; the young woman had fainted quite away with exhaustion; the men detailed to procure assistance and have her conveyed to the nearest farmhouse, several miles away, had of course abandoned the excursion; while the others had been able only to have a glimpse from the mountain’s top, and were now hastening down in the hope of meeting us, who were ascending with the baskets containing a much-needed breakfast. It was some satisfaction to know that the man whom we had earlier seen wandering around in a clearing on the side of a lower mountain which arose across a wooded ravine was no other than the faithless guide. He had lost himself, after abandoning his charge!

When we came within a mile of the foot of the true cone the bettos struck and demanded more backshish, under the pretence that this was as far as they had been hired to go. Negotiations followed, accompanied by threats, and resulting in our moving onward after another annoying delay to the proper place from which to attack the mountain.

After a mid-day breakfast we began the last stage of our climbing of Asama-yama; and indeed this can scarcely be called a climb in any strict meaning of the word. It is rather a stiff walk—ankle deep or more in scoriæ and ashes—up a cone some two thousand feet in perpendicular height. It was obvious that we could no longer hope to have the interesting experiences covered by the original plan. There was no chance of seeing the volcanic fires made more impressive by the darkness of night; and sunrise had already passed by many hours. What was still worse, just while we were eating luncheon, a thick cloud came down upon the mountain and completely shrouded objects even a few rods away. There remained, however, the crater and its unceasing display of the forces raging within. Plodding steadily along, with muscles stiff and aching from the six-and-a-half hours of such a horse-back ride, brought us to the top; and here, of course, the cloud had somewhat of the same effect as that which we had expected to be furnished by the darkness of night.

The side of the cone of Asama-yama is strewn with large, rough fragments of loose lava, and unfathomable rifts extend for the greater part of the distance down to its very base. The crater is almost circular in shape, and nearly a mile in circumference. Its sides and crest are horribly jagged; and its depths, as far down them as one can see, give a lively picture of the popular conception of a veritable hell. The coolies warned us on no account to throw any stones, however small, into the crater; otherwise the god of the mountain might be angered by the insult, and avenge it by overwhelming us with fire and smoke. To escape any touch of such a fate, it seemed to us unbelievers more necessary to keep as much as possible to the windward side of the crater. And, indeed, even with this caution, it was not possible to escape all discomfort. On approaching as near as was at all safe, one saw, as far as sight could reach, great masses of sulphur on the rocks, clouds of steam bursting from the sides and clouds of smoke rising from lower down; while once in about every two minutes sheets of flame sprang out and rose occasionally far above the crater’s mouth.

Coming down the cone, we were constantly losing the path, so thick had the cloud surrounding the mountain become. The prospect of descending at any other than the right spot was not at all attractive; for this would mean wandering about indefinitely in those many square miles of the region which had been desolated and rendered uninhabitable by the eruption of more than a century before. This mishap we undertook to avoid by the simple expedient of always keeping within easy hailing distance of each other; and then when any one of the party picked up the lost path, it was easy to reassemble the entire party.

The ride back to the inn at Komoro was even more tedious than the ride upward had been. In places it was, as a matter of course, somewhat more dangerous, considering the character of the bettos and their horses. Mindful of this and willing at times to escape the torture of the pack-saddles, my Japanese friend and I walked a considerable proportion of the distance; the missionary ladies trusted the Lord and never once dismounted from their horses. In these different ways we all arrived safely at the inn from which we had set out about fourteen hours before.

And now we were to have another specimen of the wisdom and morality of the old-fashioned innkeeper in his dealings with foreigners in Japan. For our host, through whom the contract for the horses had been made, insisted that he must have double the contract price, on the ground that the animals had doubled the distance for which they were hired, by bringing us back again. Here, for the third and last time, the shaming and threatening process was gone through with, and justice in dealing reluctantly forced instead of submission to fraud. By the time this unwelcome item of business was accomplished, however, it was necessary for my friend and me to bid good-bye to the rest of the party and to make all possible haste in jinrikishas to the station in order to catch the last train for Shin-Karuizawa, where we intended to spend the night. For we knew that here, in close proximity to the station, a new tea-house had just been opened by a host who was desirous of catering to foreigners and who had some faint notions at least of what was necessary in order to realise his desire.

On arrival, our first inquiry was for that old-fashioned Japanese bath, which, when followed by the native form of massage, excels, as a remedy for exhausted nerves and sore and tired muscles, anything to be found elsewhere in the world. The reply of the host was that, of course, the bath had been prepared, but only one other guest had as yet made use of it; if then the foreign gentleman had no objection on this account, he could be served at once. It would take an hour, however, to prepare a fresh bath. Under the circumstances, promptness seemed much preferable to extreme squeamishness; and only an extreme of this trait so inconvenient for the traveller in those days in Japan would raise a mountain of objections, when one knew that every decent Japanese does his washing of the entire body most thoroughly, before he enters the bath.

After a bath and a supper of rice, eggs and tea, came amma san, the professional blind masseuse of the neighbourhood, who, for the munificent sum of twenty cents—fee and tip of generous proportions included—greatly relieved the tired pedestrians. The trip next morning down the tram was much less uncomfortable than the upward trip had been. In the evening of the same day I spoke in the theatre at Maebashi, the principal centre of the silk trade of this region; and then the following day we went on to Ikao. The fifteen miles between these two places were travelled in jinrikishas or on foot,—a style of journeying which was pleasant and more merciful, since the steep rise of the latter part of the way made their work too hard even with two men to each jinrikisha. And indeed, I have never been able to be amused rather than angered at the sight, common enough even now, of a fat English or American woman jabbing a little Japanese man with her parasol in order to make him run faster. How can we modify so as to cover a case like this, the motto: “A merciful man is merciful to his beast!” And here I should like to say a good word for the Japanese jinrikisha runner. In the old-time treaty ports, chiefly through the influence of foreigners, he has indeed been sadly corrupted. But in the old feudal towns and country places he is in general an honest, well-meaning fellow, who strives hard to give satisfaction to his employer by doing his hard work faithfully. And of the several whom I have had with me for weeks and months together, there has not been one to whom I have not become attached.

“[FOR CENTURIES LOVERS HAVE MET ABOUT THE OLD WELL]”

There is no need to describe the attractions of Ikao, with its main street consisting of a nearly continuous steep flight of steps, and its houses on the side streets hanging over each other as they sit on the terraced slope of Mount Haruna, or border on the deep ravine of Yusawa, through which rushes a foaming torrent. [For centuries lovers have met about the old well] in the centre of its lower end. All this will be remembered by those who have been there; or it can be read about in the guidebooks. But other engagements prevented a long stay in this delightful spot; nor could time be spared for a visit to Mushi-yu, further up the mountain, where numbers of peasants were coming to avail themselves of the sulphurous gases which were supposed to be good for rheumatic troubles. The acuteness of our self-denial of the last-mentioned privilege was enhanced by an advertisement which was posted just where the path up the mountain diverges from the main way, and where the Christian patriot Neesima spent some of his last hours. This advertisement read: “Hot steam baths! uncommon to the World. Cures rhumatiz, stummach-ake and various other all diseases by Cold caught.”

The return to Tokyo was wholly commonplace. In spite of numerous petty annoyances and disappointments, such as are to be expected anywhere in the world by the traveller in as yet unfrequented parts, and even when recalling with a grimace the physical discomforts of the pack-horses with their wooden saddles and their faithless bettos, my friend and I are still fond of recurring in memory to the fun we had when, in July of 1892, together we climbed Asama-yama.

CHAPTER IV
THE SUMMER SCHOOL AT HAKONÉ

On my return from the excursion to Asama-yama, after a single night spent in Tokyo, I went up into the Hakoné Mountains to attend the Summer School of missionaries and Christian students, which was to be held that year in the village of the same name. Here there would be audiences eager to hear addresses on themes connected with the discussion of ethical and religious problems—matters about which the younger portion of the nation were then not nearly so solicitous as they are at the present time. The attention of the men who were working to bring in the New Japan was more exclusively directed to defensive and offensive armament, and to what is popularly called “science”; and the opinion prevalent among these men seemed to be that all the nation needed for truest prosperity and advancement to the front ranks of civilisation, was a sufficiently large army and navy, and a thorough training for its youth in the sciences and arts which deal with material things. It is a great encouragement and comfort to the real friends of Japan to know that so many of its leaders and of its more promising young men no longer hold these shallow opinions. And if the next generation of Japanese can escape the corrupting and debasing influence of the American and European spirit of commercialism, and can conserve and enlarge and elevate that ancient spirit of their own best men, which they call “Bushidō,” there is even prospect that they will equal or excel the Western nations in those spiritual qualities which make nations truly great.

The Committee of the Summer School at Hakoné had sent a young man to escort me to the place of meeting; and in his company I took the early morning train for Kozu. This village, with its charming view of the Bay of Odawara, the volcano of Oshima, and the islet of Enoshima, in front, and on turning around, when the weather is favourable, of Fuji behind, was as far toward our destination as the train could carry us. From there, through the celebrated castle-town of Odawara, we took the tram to Yumoto. In feudal times many bloody conflicts were fought in and around Odawara. For here dwelt in succession some of the most celebrated of the families of Daimyos in the days of the “Old Japan.” One of these, the Hōjō, was overthrown in 1590 by the cruel Hideyoshi. And the fact that this was accomplished by a sudden attack while the generals within the castle were discussing, and could come to no agreement, as to the best plan of defence, has led to the proverbial saying, Odawara hyogi, or “the Odawara conference”; which means: “Endless talk defeats prompt and efficient action.”

The guide-book of the period remarks that the large inn at Yumoto “would seem to be conducted with a view to the almost exclusive reception of Japanese guests;” but, perhaps owing to the nativity and energy of my escort, I was most royally entertained there. Both luncheon and bath were in the best Japanese style.

“[DARK AND SOLEMN AND STATELY CRYPTOMERIAS]”

Early in the afternoon a sedan-chair, which had been securely tied on either side to a long bamboo pole so as to fit it for carrying by four coolies, was standing in front of the inn. Into this I was mounted, my luggage having been strapped on underneath; the whole was then raised aloft on the shoulders of the men, and started off in impressive style with orders from my escort to go slowly, as he would remain behind to settle the bills and would then overtake us shortly. We were to go up the mountains by the old Tōkaidō, and via Hata. But the sturdy bearers made such light weight of their burden that the young man did not catch them except by hard running; and then only when they had nearly finished the ten miles or more over the mountain pass, which lay between Yumoto and the village of Hakoné. The interest and joy of that memorable ride over the Hakoné mountains will never be forgotten. Indeed, it is as fresh to-day as it was eighteen years ago. The weather was superb; the sky an Italian blue, and the temperature a summer heat softened by the woods and the elevation of the mountains. For miles the way lay along the heights on one side; and on the other the mountains fell away below into valleys whose depths were not visible, but beyond which other mountains could be seen through that soft haze which is responsible for so many of the most beautiful atmospheric effects in the Land of the Rising or—as the Japanese like to say—now Risen Sun. Both above and below was verdure everywhere,—of [dark and solemn and stately cryptomerias], of light and feathery bamboo, and of various other trees, and of hanging vines. Clear mountain streams broke in water-falls from the cliffs over our heads; crossed the highway as brooks or rivulets; and turning again to water-falls, took another leap into the valley below. The road had formerly been paved with stone blocks and lined with cryptomerias at regular intervals on either side. But since the Tōkaidō railway was finished in 1889, it has ceased to be the great thoroughfare between the capital cities; the paving has been buried in mud or washed away by the floods which have found here their most convenient passage down the pass; and the young trees and shrubs have largely encroached upon its Imperial domain. All this, however, together with huge red lilies and other flowers which had pre-empted the deserted royal highway, made it more attractive for the occupant of the sedan-chair on that July afternoon. To be carried up was indeed an ignoble way to make such a journey; but the demands of etiquette, which are somewhat more inexorable in Japan than with us, seemed to make submission unavoidable.

But reminiscences derived from the history of the remoter and more recent past, added much to the sentiments belonging with propriety to this manner of journeying along the Tōkaidō. I was travelling along an important part of the highway over which, from the seventeenth century onwards, the Daimyos and their gorgeous retinues went to pay their respects and to acknowledge their allegiance to the Shōgun at Yedo. One could easily revive something of the picture which is described as follows by Black in his “Young Japan”: “But what a scene it used to present! How crowded with pedestrians; with norimons (the palanquins of the upper crust), and attendants; with hagos (the modest bamboo conveyance of the humble classes); with pack-horses conveying merchandise of all kinds to and from the capital or the busy towns and villages along the route; with the trains of daimyos or lesser gentry entitled to travel with a retinue; and with the commonalty, men, women and children on foot, all with their dresses turned up for facility of movement, and for the most part taking the journey pretty easily; frequently stopping at the numerous tea-houses or resting sheds by the way, and refreshing themselves with a simple little cup of weak green tea, and a cheery chat with whomsoever might stop like themselves to rest. It used to seem that distance was no consideration with them. They could go on all day, and day after day, if only they were allowed (which they generally were) to take their own time and pace. The value of time never entered into their thoughts.”

But, as the author just quoted adds, “the numerous trains of armed men passing in both directions were the most striking feature of the scene.” These were the samurai, or two-sworded gentlemen, the knightly retainers of the feudal lords, without whom as body-guard and signs of his power and magnificence, no one of these lords could fitly perform his act of homage. The etiquette of the road was strictly defined; and breaches of it were perilous and the not infrequent causes of bloody encounters. The principal villages along the route were the stopping-places for the night of these populous and sometimes troublesome processions; but they were greatly in favour with the keepers of the inns and tea-houses—in general, persons of the lowest class and vilest morals—who vied with one another in furnishing all kinds of the entertainment and conveniences demanded by this sort of travellers the world over, and in all times of its history.

My coolies trotted on, marking time with a monotonous “ichi,” “ichi,” “ichi,” (“one,” “one,” “one”) and an occasional shifting of the poles to the other shoulder, without break until we reached, near the top of the pass, the decayed and almost deserted village of Hata. Then, at a signal from the traveller, they set down the chair in front of a dilapidated and disreputable-looking tea-house, and went inside to take tea and cakes at his invitation. A crowd of naked or scantily dressed children, numbering thirty-one by actual count and of various sizes, from tiny babies on the backs of nurses almost as tiny, to half-grown boys and girls, gathered to see the then unaccustomed and truly wonderful sight. They surrounded my chair and stood gazing at me with a silent, mild-mannered, but unabashed curiosity. In order to have a little fun with them, I pulled my hat far down over my face; with perfect soberness and no seeming appreciation of a joke, they fairly lay down on their backs on the ground in order to get a sight of my face under the hat. Nowhere else are children shown so much favour as in Japan; probably nowhere else are children happier; but nowhere else that I have ever been are the children so sober and amusingly solemn, even in play. The scattering of a few sen among them on parting, however, brought the excitement of the day to its culmination, and, doubtless, went far toward making the occasion for a long time memorable. What a contrast this to the magnificence of travel which was the accustomed sight of the village in the good old times of feudalism under the Shōgunate of the Tokugawas!

After the coolies had loitered over their tea-drinking and smoking as the time to be allowed for the remainder of the journey would permit, and although the escort had not succeeded in overtaking us, we started again on our way. From Hata to Hakoné the beauty of the scenery was not so alluring; but there were certain features of equal historical interest. Chief among them, perhaps, was the remnants of the old barrier and guard-house (Hakoné no seki), where all travellers were formerly challenged and required to show their passports. The barrier itself was removed in 1871; but part of the stonework still remained at the time of my visit. In this neighbourhood is a large red torii (one of those archways, so universal in Japan, formed of two upright and two horizontal beams, which were originally says Mr. Satow in the Second Volume of the Asiatic Transactions, “perches for the fowls offered up to the gods, not as food, but to give warning of daybreak”). By its side stood a wooden shed containing two iron rice-boilers, said to have been used by Yorotomo on his hunting expeditions. On the right stands one of the Emperor’s summer palaces, a very unpretentious structure of wood in foreign style. A short run along the shores of the lake brought us to the inn, Hafu-ya, where the coolies were ordered to deposit their burden by my escort who, shortly before we entered the village, had succeeded in overtaking them.

“[ASHI-NO-UMI, WHICH IS, BEING INTERPRETED, ‘THE SEA OF REEDS’]”

The Lake of Hakoné, or to call it by its original name,—now used only in poetry,—[Ashi-no-Umi, which is, being interpreted, “the Sea of Reeds,”] is somewhat more than three and a half miles long and eleven miles around. In spite of its name, “the reedy,” its deepest part measures down no less than thirty-seven fathoms. Away from the shores, its waters are cold and dangerous for swimmers. My room was on the side of the inn toward the lake, and looked across a small garden upon its fickle waters and pretty shores. But, what was a yet more important advantage to its point of view, across the lake a fine view of Fuji terminated the northwestern horizon. Always, when the weather conditions permitted, the “incomparable mountain” was before the uplifted eyes. On one occasion, it was my good fortune to have a view that is comparatively infrequent and that has been celebrated by a goodly number of those short, sentimental poems, which it is a part of the old-fashioned culture to be able to produce at a moment’s notice and in unlimited number. At a certain period of the year, and only at an early hour of the morning, when the conditions of light and atmosphere are just right, the head of Fuji, more than twenty miles distant as the birds fly, can be seen mirrored in the Lake of Hakoné. But I had sight of a still rarer act of grace on nature’s part, which undoubtedly would have evoked a flood of poems from my Japanese friends,—only, alas! that I was the sole person in all the world to see it. And I, alas again! I am no poet. But, perhaps, it is not correct, either from the scientific or the literary point of view, to speak of Japanese poems as constituting a “flood”; since they are for the most part in length of thirty-one syllables. But the sight was this. A small cloud of the purest white formed itself into a wreath of most perfect shape, and then floated down through the blue sky to lay itself upon the side of the mountain near its summit. There it lay until the mountain’s embrace slowly dissolved it away. I suppose I may be pardoned for giving my attention to this rather than to the sermon which was being preached at the time; since the sermon was in a language of which at the time scarcely a word was intelligible to me.

The following week was most pleasantly spent at Hakoné, in the manner best approved by the successful summer schools. The hours not occupied by its sessions and by conversations with its members, were for the most part given to excursions. There are many of interest in the neighbourhood; as any traveller of to-day will be informed on consulting his guide-book. Indeed, Hakoné attempts to vie with Miyanoshita as respects its attractions for tourists in the summer season. But the two are scarcely comparable on terms of equality. Those who prefer hot baths, easier access, drier air, and the comforts of an excellent foreign hotel, with its correspondingly higher prices, will choose Miyanoshita. But those who like privacy, a charming lake for bathing, fishing, and water picnics, who can put up with the discomforts of living in rude Japanese country style, will save money and learn more about country folk in Japan, by choosing Hakoné. The trouble with such Japanese inns as the Hafu-ya, at the time of my visit, was this; instead of furnishing really good Japanese food, supplemented and modified somewhat by foreign elements, they thought to please foreigners by abominable attempts at imitation of the worst style of French cooking. And there was then a supply of young fellows as ambitious, ignorant and conceited about their ability to do French cooking as about their ability to teach English after they had committed to memory all the words in a small dictionary,—as far, for example, as the letter K. But for the time of my stay, the joy of opportunity, the interest of learning, the pleasures of forming life-long friendships, and the delights of nature, made any physical discomforts seem of no account.

Of the various excursions taken by the summer-school, that to Ōjigoku, or “Big Hell” (also called by the less startling title of Owaki-dani, or “the Valley of the greater boiling”), was the most important. The party took boats across the lake and, before starting for the climb, had luncheon at a pleasant tea-house on its shores. We then walked up to the top of the gorge and part way down on the other side. As it has been facetiously said, neither name for the place is a misnomer; and, indeed, one does well to guide one’s steps as religiously when going through this gorge as though walking on the very brink of perdition. For the whole gorge is weird and desolate and reeking with the sulphurous fumes that perpetually rise from the ground. At short distances boiling water breaks through the thin crust from below,—sometimes so near the path that to deviate in the least from the footsteps of your guide is dangerous. Not a few lives have been sacrificed by a false step on this treacherous crust. But all of us, being accustomed to walk carefully and follow authorised leadership, went up and returned in safety.

All the lectures and addresses of the summer school at Hakoné were listened to with that fine mingling of concentrated and sympathetic attention and the spirit of independent inquiry which characterises the best minds among the Japanese, as it does the same class in other civilised races. With such minds, clearness, knowledge of his subject, and moral earnestness on the part of the speaker, are the most highly prized qualities. With them also, appreciation and enthusiasm follow upon conviction of the truthfulness of what is said; and the true-hearted teacher considers it a far higher reward to win such recognition from them than to gain a temporary applause or even the permanent reputation for popularity. Without doubt to-day, the ambition, especially, of so many of the younger instructors of college students, to have large classes and to get into the class-books of the Seniors as a “favourite” or “most popular” teacher, is one of the several baleful results of the excessive lengths to which the elective system has been carried in this country. It is leading not a few of the most thoughtful educationists to doubt whether the remark recently made by one of their number be not true; that a considerable portion of the teaching of the present-day college faculties is coming to be of little or no really educative value. In the colleges and universities of Japan at the present time, the dangerous tendencies are of another order; since they have been modelled rather after a European than an American pattern. With them the tendency of the professors and other instructors is to become too exclusively interested in their own reputation for science—not always by any means solidly founded; and to care too little for the mental and moral culture of the great body of their pupils. Besides this, there is the still more acute danger from those students who have failed in their examinations, whether for entrance or for a degree, of whom there are many thousands in the city of Tokyo alone. It is a sad fact that a considerable percentage of these students are recognised as belonging to the criminal classes. Indeed, all over the world, and especially in Russia and China, the chief hopes and the chief risks, to the Government and to society, are lodged with the student classes.

At the close of the engagement at Hakoné I was for the first, but by no means the last, time the recipient of a genuine old-fashioned Japanese “Sayonara.” There are many ways of speeding the parting guest which prevail in the different parts of the civilised and uncivilised world. But nowhere else, so far as I am aware, is there anything quite like the way characteristic of the “Old Japan.” Even among the Japanese it is being rapidly modified—necessarily so—by the multiplication of railway trains and by the other influences operating to produce a more hurried and self-centred mode of life. But the leave-taking of departing friends has there not yet contracted itself to a mere formal call days beforehand at the house, or to a “Good-bye,” an “Au revoir,” or the more familiar “So long,” or “Take care of yourself, Old Fellow,” from the platform of the railway station. The pleasure of having from fifty to a hundred persons—lords and ladies, professors, officials, together with your kurumaya and domestic servants—gathering at a distant station to see you off by train at six-o’clock in the morning is somewhat embarrassing. But one cannot steal away in silence and without notice from Japanese friends; and an old-fashioned “Sayonara,” in a country place and on an occasion like that of the breaking-up of the summer-school at Hakoné in 1892, is an experience which, while it makes one ashamed of one’s self for being the cause of so great unmerited trouble on the part of others, leaves behind unfading memories of the most encouraging and happiest character.

On a Sunday afternoon a so-called “farewell meeting” was held. At this meeting there was an address of thanks from the Rev. Mr. Honda, the President of the school, speaking in behalf of the central Committee; a complimentary address by one of the younger men; the presentation of written resolutions; an essay in English by a recent graduate of Doshisha Theological School; and a concluding response by the recipient of all these unaccustomed favours. All this together with the singing of several songs, both in Japanese and in English, made up what was called by all “a tender and touching service.”

But what was for me at that time the marvel of the whole affair came the following morning. A severe typhoon had been raging along the coast for several days. Although the wind had not been so terrific in the mountains back from the sea, it had been sufficiently strong to rock violently the inn where I was staying, and to keep the waters on which my room looked out furiously agitated. The rain had been constant and some of the time torrential. By this Monday morning, however, the wind had chiefly subsided; the rain was no longer a down-pour, but it had by no means wholly ceased; nor was there any sure means of knowing when it would be entirely over. The highways were deep in mud, and the smaller mountain paths were rivulets of swiftly flowing water. The bare rocks of the mountains were as treacherously slippery as weather could make them without coating them with ice. Certainly it was not a very proper, convenient, or safe time for an escorting procession to cross the mountains! And since we were returning by Ashinoyu and Miyanoshita, the first part of the route would be at its best rougher and more difficult for the bearers of a sedan-chair than the route over the Tōkaidō had been. But the demands of Japanese courtesy are inexorable. For me to deprecate the taking of so much trouble was wholly unavailing; to have declined to receive it would have resulted in a grievous disappointment to many others, and might even have occasioned a breach of friendship. I have since learned to let the Japanese have their own way in all such matters; and when one has thoroughly learned this lesson, there is no other people with whom the relations of host and guest are so full of heightened enjoyment to both parties. But I must confess that on that morning there was no little sympathetic suffering mingled with a large measure of happiness.

At about eight o’clock a conveyance similar to that which had been employed from Yumoto—a sedan-chair and four coolies—was ready in the front yard of the inn, Hafu-ya. About one hundred members of the school, headed by President Honda and the Rev. Mr. Harada (the former now Bishop of the native Methodist Church of Japan, and the latter the recently elected president of Doshisha) were on hand, ready to walk in train and convoy the parting guest on his way. Eight or ten of the ladies who had been in attendance on the meetings of the school, insisted on accompanying us for about half a mile down the village street. Then I was permitted to get down from the chair and part from the ladies with much ceremony of bowings and interchange of well-wishing for the future. The remainder of the escort tramped steadily on, through mud and water, often more than ankle-deep. The last mile and a half of the way over the mountains, the path was simply horrible. It led down over slippery stones, through shallow mountain brooks; and in one place by such a steep descent that it was necessary to cling to the chair with all one’s strength lest one might be pitched headlong from one’s seat. But the coolies proved sure-footed and the escort kept cheerfully on their way. In the courtyard of the inn at Ashinoyu, on the other side of the mountains, they gathered around the chair, and without allowing it to be lowered so that I could dismount, they gave in the heartiest manner the national cheer: “Banzai; banzai; ban-banzai,” (“ten thousand; ten thousand; ten times ten thousand years”). To raise my hat and bow, with—I am not ashamed to say—a sad heart and moist eyes, was all the way of expressing gratitude which was left to me.

From Ashinoyu the greater number of the friends turned back; but about a half-dozen of the younger enthusiasts kept on undaunted all the way to Yumoto, a distance of fully nine miles. The route from Ashinoyu to Miyanoshita discloses many points of interest. By turning aside from it and climbing some of the heights above, several distant and rarely beautiful views may be had; but neither the weather nor my method of conveyance at that time permitted of such an interruption. The picturesquely situated but insignificant village of Dogashima was just visible through the mist, in the always darksome valley several hundred yards below the path; and with the glimpse of it we were obliged to be contented. After an excellent luncheon at Miyanoshita, a jinrikisha carried me swiftly down hill all the way,—past the pleasant hotel, hot springs, white Russian chapel, and shop-windows full of mosaic wood-work, which are the attractions of Tonosawa—to Yumoto, the point of starting for my trip of some ten days before over the Tōkaidō. From here by tram to Kozu, and from Kozu by train to Tokyo, was a journey tame enough as compared with that of the morning.

The remaining four weeks of my stay in Japan in 1892 were spent in Nikko. Since every tourist goes to Nikko, and makes the same round of sight-seeing, to be followed by similar exclamations and reflections, there is no excuse for writing about all that. I have, however, two or three memories connected with visits to this celebrated resort which are somewhat notable. While there on this first visit I received a letter and then a call from a young man who had come all the way from Sapporo in Hokkaidō to attend the summer-school at Hakoné; and who was now covering the several hundred miles back to his home on foot. To give his own explanation of the motive for so extensive an expedition, he had wished to determine for himself whether there were a God, or not. He begged the privilege of stopping two or three days at Nikko, in order to continue the conversations which we had begun at Hakoné. I heard that my young friend subsequently joined a Christian church; but after returning to this country I lost sight of him altogether. It was not until seven years later, when I was in New York for a few days, just about to start for a second visit, that he called upon me. He had been spending several years in Germany in the study of engineering, as a Government scholar. He was to remain in this country some months before returning for service in Japan; so that again my young friend passed quite out of my field of vision. Seven years still later, when on the way to Japan for the third time, on inquiry from a young engineer, a friend of my friend, I heard that the latter was in a responsible Government position and still a deeply religious man. I speak of this as an example of the serious and business-like manner in which many a Japanese youth of the last two generations has taken his religious opinions as well as his professional education.

One other incident which connects itself with memories of Nikko is worth mentioning. Through the favour of an introduction from the Head of the House, Prince Tokugawa, to the priest first in rank, and the kindly intervention of a friend whose father had been the teacher of the priest of the second rank, my wife and I were able to witness a ceremony, and to see temple treasures, that have been only extremely rarely or never accessible to foreigners. We were told by letter from the Shrine of Iyeyasu, that everything should be open to us, if we came at any time later than half-past one o’clock, when a representative of the Imperial Family, who were leaving Nikko to-morrow, would have finished paying homage to the memory of the divine ancestor there enshrined. We arrived at the Oratory not earlier than two p. m., and were treated with every show of respect. Although the ceremony was not over, and although the person rendering the act of religious homage was the representative of the mother of the Emperor, we were allowed to enter the shrine and witness its closing scenes. The ceremony was most simple, reverent, and impressive, as is all the worship of Shintō. Kneeling in prayer, bowing in reverence, and drinking the memorial cup of saké, were its principal features. After these acts of homage were finished, and the worshipper had departed, the priests, without taking off their white silk robes or black mitres, attended us with lighted lanterns and showed every detail of the shrines and all of the relics which it is permissible for any other than royal eyes to see. They lifted up the silk curtains before the beautiful gilt and lacquer work, and passed the lights over the entire surface so that no minutest feature of their beauty might escape us. They brought out the glass cases containing two of Iyeyasu’s swords, with scabbards of black lacquer, and his armour, including the helmet which he wore at the battle of Seki-gawara; or—according to my friend’s version of the tradition—the helmet which he put on at the end of this battle, with the celebrated saying: “After victory, one should tighten one’s helmet.” Then followed the exhibition of the more private relics of Iyeyasu, such as his futons, night-clothing, tea-service, etc.; and the original of his motto concerning the wise and safe conduct of life. In short, it was our privilege at that visit to see all that is, according to the guide-book, in the “rooms not accessible to visitors,” except the innermost shrine, where is the statue of the hero, and which no one enters but the princes of the Imperial household, and they only on orders from the Department of the Household.

Bringing these two exhibitions of the same human religious nature into close contrast—the devotions and discourses of the Christian summer school at Hakoné, and the simple but stately and solemn and most powerfully influential ancestor-worship of the Old Japan—may well suggest trains of most serious reflection for friends of the nation, both native and foreign. Perhaps nowhere else has the development of this more primitive form of religion been on the whole so strong on the side of its more salutary influences, and more free from the most objectionable and degrading of the features which have generally characterised it. To-day it is probably the most powerful of all bonds to unite the nation’s present with its own past, and to bind together for defence and for progress the different classes and elements of the national life. But in its present form it cannot resist the forces that make for change in religious beliefs and practices; especially as these beliefs and practices are represented by the highest ideals of Christianity. On the other hand, the Christianity which converts Japan is not likely to be the precise dogmas, ceremonies, or institutions, which go under this name in the too often misnamed “Christian nations” of the Occident. And it will be well for Japan not to lose the spirit of regard for the unseen, of reverence for the elders, and of obedience to authority, that consciousness of living and acting constantly in the sight of a “great crowd of heavenly witnesses,” and the desire to emulate the character and the examples of the heroes of old time, the worthies who have gone on before, which have characterised its earlier form of religion, if it is to preserve and enhance its ancient virtues, while rising superior to its characteristic traits of weakness, failure, and sin.

CHAPTER V
JAPANESE AUDIENCES

Audiences in Japan differ, as they do everywhere, in dependence on the social classes which compose them, their culture, varying points of view; and their more immediate or remoter interests. They all have, however, certain characteristics in common; and the more prominent of these seem to be of racial origin and significance. Perhaps the most obvious thing to the experienced and observing foreigner is a certain “secretiveness,” or demeanour due to trained habit of repressing the emotions, at least until they break forth into more emphatic or even extravagant form because of long-continued repression. This habit was acquired by the Samurai in his control of the passion of anger. He was taught as a boy to receive injury and insult from others with an appearance of calm; and not to draw his sword until he had determined that either he, or his insulter, or both, must pay the penalty with death. I have already told how “du calme” was given to General Jan Hamilton as the most important qualification for a field marshal or general in command of a grand army in time of battle. But this habit of repression is not confined to the more explosive of the emotions. It is the testimony of those who witnessed the behaviour of the two combatants during the Russo-Japanese war,—in battle, and when wounded or dying,—that the Japanese were generally quiet and the Russians more noisy and demonstrative. The same thing is true of expressions of appreciation and gratitude.

In this connection I recall with pleasure two or three incidents in my own experience. At the close of an engagement in one of the larger cities, the President of the Government institution in whose behalf most of the lectures had been given, said to me in a voice choked with emotion: “You know, of course, that we Japanese are trained to repress our feelings. I do not know whether it is a good thing or not; but it is so. And I cannot tell you what we all feel.” On parting from one of my favourite pupils, who had spent several years in study in this country, he said: “I do not know how to say at all what I feel; but Confucius taught that the gratitude and affection of the pupil toward his teacher stand next to those of the son toward his father.” In reality the teacher who succeeds with his Japanese pupils receives a reward of these much coveted friendly bonds, which it is difficult or impossible to hope for even, anywhere else in the world. The foreigner, therefore, who enters into scholastic relations with Japanese students, if he is competent, devoted and tactful, need not concern himself greatly about this part of the returns from his labours; it will surely follow in due time. And there is still enough left in Japan of the Confucian style of arranging social classes in the scale of their values, which has—theoretically at least—prevailed for centuries in China; and which places the scholar at the head of the list and relegates the money-maker to the bottom of the scale. Indeed, it is only very recently that Japanese “men of honour” would have anything to do with business; or that the sons and daughters of the higher classes would intermarry with the business classes. This is undoubtedly one reason for the partially justifiable, but on the whole exaggerated, low estimate of the business morals of the Japanese. It remains to be seen, however, whether the good or the evil results of the change of attitude toward the money-getter, which is now taking place with such rapidity, will prevail; and whether the net results will elevate or degrade the prevalent standards of morality. Certainly, neither Europe nor America has much to boast of, as respects these standards, on a fair comparison with Japan.

This attitude of secretiveness, born of the habit of repressing all appearance of emotional excitement, is further emphasised by the desire, sometimes only to appear and sometimes really to be, independent and critical. The tendency to revolt from authority and to appeal to the rational judgment of the individual has been the inevitable accompaniment of the transition from the “Old” to the “New” Japan. Naturally and properly, too, this tendency has been greatest and most conspicuous among the student classes. As a result affecting the relations of teacher and pupils in the higher institutions of learning, and even among more popular audiences, a certain coolness of demeanour is deemed appropriate. In certain audiences—notably those of such institutions as the Young Men’s Christian Association, or of the missionary schools, or of other native schools that imitate foreign ways, approval is expressed by clapping of hands or by other similar means. But this is not characteristically Japanese. The truly native manner of listening is an unflinchingly patient, polite, and respectful, but silent attention. The disadvantage, therefore, under which the occasional speaker or more constant lecturer before Japanese audiences suffers, is this: he may be utterly unaware, or completely deceived, as to the way in which his audience is taking him. It is entirely possible, and indeed has happened to more than one missionary or other teacher, to remain for years self-deceived concerning the estimate his pupils were holding, both of his person and of his instruction.

Another marked characteristic of Japanese audiences is their extraordinary patience in listening. Whatever the subject, and whoever the speaker, and whether his treatment is interesting or dull or even totally unintelligible, the listeners seem to feel the obligation to maintain the same attitude of attention to the very end of the discourse. This endurance on the part of his hearers makes the call for endurance on the part of the speaker who is determined to interest and instruct them, all the more imperative and even exhausting. While lecturing in India, I came regularly to expect that a considerable percentage of the audience would melt away—not always by any means as silently as the snow goes in a Spring day of genial sunshine—before the talk was half or two-thirds over. In Korea, it needed only one or two experiences to learn that, perhaps, the larger portion of the audience came to look, and see (indeed, to “look-see” is the current native phrase). But in Japan, under circumstances most trying to the patience of both speaker and hearers, I have never known more than a handful or two of individuals to steal quietly away, until the proper and exactly ceremonial time for leaving the room had fully arrived. And in such cases it was usually thought necessary for some one to explain the engagement which had made necessary such a breach of etiquette.

So far as native habits and influences still remain in control, this characteristic of patience in listening seems to belong to all kinds of audiences, in both town and country, and both cultured and relatively uninstructed. In the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto, and in the Government Colleges of Trade and Commerce, my lectures were given in English and were not interpreted. This was not allowed, however, to shorten greatly the entire period covered by the exercises; for a double lecture—fifty minutes’ talk, then ten minutes for a cup of tea, and then fifty minutes more of talk—was the order of the half-day. In the case of the lectures before the teachers, under the auspices of the Imperial Educational Association, or the similar Associations under the presidency of the Governors of the various Ken, the necessity of having the English done into Japanese operated to stretch out each engagement to even greater length. Of this more than two hours of speaking and listening, somewhat less than one-half was usually occupied by the lecture in English; while the Japanese paraphrase, in order to make all clear, required the remainder of the allotted time. The tax upon the patience of the audience must have been increased by the fact that, ordinarily, for a large part of the whole period they were listening to a language which they either understood very imperfectly or did not understand at all. For the customary method was to divide the entire address into five or six parts of about ten minutes each; and then lecturer and interpreter alternated in regular order. In some cases, however, as, for example, the course of lectures given at Doshisha in 1892, Mr. Kazutami Ukita, now Professor of Sociology in Waseda University,—the most skilful interpreter I have ever known,—at the close of the English lecture, rendered it entire into fluent and elegant Japanese, preserving as far as the great differences in the structure and genius of the two languages make possible, the exact turns of speech and the illustrations of the original.

What is true of these more scholastic audiences is equally true of those which are more popular. Indeed, it is probably the fact that the non-scholastic audiences in the smaller cities and in the country places are hitherto much less infected with the Western spirit of impatience, which masquerades under the claim to be a sacred regard for the value of time, but which is often anything but that, than are the student classes in the crowded centres of education. At Osaka, in 1892, nearly one thousand officials and business men gathered on a distressingly hot summer’s afternoon and sat without any show of desire to escape, listening for more than two hours to an address on a topic in ethics. In Kyoto, in 1907, on invitation of the Governor of the Ken, and of the mayor of the city, fifteen hundred of the so-called “leading citizens” packed the Assembly Hall of the District Legislature, galleries included, and sitting Japanese fashion on the floor listened for three mortal hours, to a speech of introduction, to a biographical address, to a talk on “Japan from the Point of View of a Foreign Friend,” and its interpretation, to an address of thanks and to a response by the person who had been thanked.

“[CLASS AND TEACHER ALWAYS HAD TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED]”

Nor is this characteristic great patience exhausted by a single occasion. In Tokyo a class of more than four hundred teachers continued, substantially undiminished, through a course of thirty lectures on the “Teacher’s Practical Philosophy”; the class in Kyoto which entered for a course of twenty hours on the same subject numbered rather more than eight hundred, and of these nearly seven hundred and fifty received certificates for constancy in attendance. At Nagasaki, Sendai, and other places, similar classes obtained and kept an average attendance of from four hundred to six hundred. At the close of each of these engagements, [the class, together with their foreign teacher, always had to be photographed].

It is well known to all travellers in Japan, and to all readers of books on Japan, how much the Japanese, in their intercourse with each other, insist upon a formal and elaborate politeness; and how careful the better classes, and even the body of the common people, are to practice this virtue, so esteemed by them, in all their intercourse with foreigners. But it is far from being generally or sufficiently recognised, how unfortunate and even positively shocking, the disregard—not of their particular forms, but of all attempts at the polite treatment of others, seems to them, as they are so constantly forced to notice its prevalence among foreigners. That a fair degree of genuineness attaches itself to these formal and conventional observances, no one who knows the nation at all thoroughly can for an instant entertain a doubt. Of course, on the other hand, neither non-compliance nor the most exact compliance, mean the same thing with us as with the Japanese. With them, not to treat a person—even a coolie—politely, is positively to insult him. The foreigner who should treat the native domestic servant, when the latter approached on his knees and bowing his head constantly to the floor, with an insult or a blow, might pay the penalty with his life. But the old-fashioned politeness is being put to a difficult test by the conditions of modern life, and by the changes of costume and of customs which are being introduced from abroad. It may seem strange that I speak of changes in costume as influencing the rules for polite social intercourse. But, for example, the Japanese kimono forms a fitting and convenient clothing for ladies who, on indoor festal occasions, salute each other by hitching along the floor on their knees, bowing the head as low as possible at frequent intervals. It is decidedly not so fitting and convenient, however, where courtesy while standing is demanded by politeness; or where it is desired to dance with decency and elegance. On the other hand, the modern gown, whether with or without train, is even less well adapted to the practice of the requirements of the native social ceremonial.

According to the Japanese ideas, a proper respect for the teacher requires that the pupil should receive and salute him, while standing. This rule characterises the ceremonial adopted by audiences of all sizes and as composed of different classes of hearers. In all the lectures before audiences composed principally of teachers—since they were, of course, for the time being regarded as the pupils of the lecturer—the procedure was as follows: A select few, such as the President of the Imperial or of the local Teacher’s Association, the Mayor of the city, or his representative, and one or more members of the Committee who had the affair in charge, were gathered some time before the lecture-hour for tea-drinking in the reception room, with the lecturer. At the appointed time—usually a little after, and sometimes much after—this party of the select few proceeds to the audience-room. On their entering the room, the entire audience rises to its feet and remains standing until the speaker has mounted the platform, bows have been interchanged with him, and he has sat down. At the close of the address, the audience rises, bows are again interchanged, and the “teacher,” unless some special arrangement has been made and announced for him to remain for further exercises, or to be introduced, leaves the hall first. The audience is expected to remain standing until he has disappeared through the door; it would be very impolite for them to begin sooner to disperse. Indeed, I have never seen my friend, Baron T—, so excited by anything else as he was on one occasion, when the assembly of teachers began to move from their ranks, with the appearance of breaking up, while I was only half-way between the platform and the door.

It would be a great mistake, however, to infer from such passivity and enduring patience in attention that Japanese audiences are ready to accept with complaisance whatever any one may choose to tell them for truth; or, indeed, to regard the ipse dixit of their authorised instructors as of itself, a sufficient authority. On the contrary, no small portion of the “Young Japan,” especially among the student classes, is inclined to an extreme of bumptiousness. Considering the circumstances of the present and the experiences of the recent past, this is not strange; in view of the characteristics of the race and its history in the more remote times, it is not unnatural. Moreover, science, scholarship, and inventive talents, cannot be subjected promptly in Japan to the same severe and decisive tests, which are available to some extent in this country, but to a far greater extent in most countries of Europe. But surely, in this country to-day the difference between pretence or quackery and real merit or unusual attainments, is not so well recognised, either by the people, or by the press, or even by the executive officers of our educational institutions, as to enable us to throw stones at the Japanese,—or for that matter at any other civilised nation.

Perhaps there is no larger proportion of any Japanese audience, who have perfect confidence in the superiority of their own views, or in the originality and conclusiveness of their own trains of thinking, or in their infallibility of judgment and loftiness of point of standing, than would be the case with an audience similarly gathered and constituted in America. I do not mean to say that Japanese student audiences are lacking in docility or difficult to teach. On the contrary, I think they are much more eager to hear about the last things in science, politics, philosophy, and religion, than are the college and university students in this country. And they certainly are on the whole much more in deadly earnest in the matter of getting an education. Something—probably much—of the old Samurai spirit still lingers, which forbade the boy to rest or sleep until he had finished his appointed task. I have had more than one of my own pupils tell me how he had studied on through the night, applying wet bandages to his head, or placing some sharp instrument so as to prick his forehead, if, overcome by sleepiness, he nodded in his task.

This earnestness of demeanour, joined with the full confidence in an ability to judge or even to discover for one’s self, undoubtedly makes the audiences of students in Japan the more exacting. Besides, they are prompt, severe, and even extreme,—oftentimes—in their judgments concerning the ability and moral character of their teachers. It is a by no means unusual occurrence for the students in private or even in the Government institutions, to demand the removal of some teacher, about whom they have made up their minds that he is either incompetent as a scholar or unsafe and misleading as a guide. I have repeatedly heard of “strikes” among the students to enforce such a demand; but I have yet to hear of a strike or a “call-off” in the interests of fewer hours or easier lessons. Indeed, nine-tenths of the students in the Imperial University of Tokyo are probably, in their ignorant enthusiasm to master quickly the whole realm of learning, taking a much larger quotum of lecture-hours than is for the good of sound scholarship, or than should be permitted by the University.

As underlying or supporting or modifying all the other characteristic features of the task attempted by the foreigner who expects to be really successful in treating of serious themes with a Japanese audience, is the high value placed on education by the nation at large. At the period of first excitement over the action of the School Board of San Francisco, in 1906, a Japanese friend of mine, a professor in the Imperial University of Tokyo, who had spent some fifteen years of his earlier life in this country, remarked to me with extreme concern and sadness, that now his countrymen were wounded by us at their most sensitive point. “Nothing else,” he added, “do all our common people prize so much, for their children and for themselves, as education.” In spite of its comparative poverty, and of the feeling which—wisely or unwisely—it shares with America and Europe, that the lion’s part of its resources must go to the support of the army and navy, there is none of these nations which is giving so much official attention to the education of all its people as is Japan. As has already been pointed out in another connection, the minister of Education takes rank with the other members of the Ministry. The President of the Imperial Teacher’s Association is a member of the House of Peers; he is a permanent officer and his office is not a merely honorary position, is in no respect a sinecure. As I know very well, his active administration includes the care of the details, physical and intellectual, of the various meetings of the Association. The case is as though some Government official of high rank—for example like the late Senator Hoar of Massachusetts—were to be the permanent president and active manager of the general Teachers’ Association of the United States. The Professors of the Imperial Universities have court rank, in accordance with the length of the time and the distinction of their services. Distinguished men of science and of literature are appointed members of the Upper House or are decorated by the Emperor, in recognition of their services to the country and of the value of their presence, as men who may be reasonably supposed to know what they are talking about, in the councils of the nation. Diplomats, even of the lower ranks, must be educated in the languages and history of the countries in which they are to be stationed as members of the foreign service. The ability to read, speak, and write English is required of all the graduates of the Government Schools of Trade and Commerce. There is a larger proportion of the children in the public schools than in any other country, with the possible exception of Germany. The proportion of illiterates to the entire population is much less than it is in this country. And in spite of the meagreness of equipment, the incompetence of much of the teaching force, the large amount of crude experimenting, and the numerous and serious deficiencies, which still afflict the system of public education in Japan, the recognition of the absolute necessity and supreme value of education in determining the conditions of national prosperity and even of continued national existence, is intelligent, sincere, and practically operative among all classes throughout Japan.

Now this esteem of the importance of instruction has a profound, if not consciously recognised, influence on the attitude of all sorts of Japanese audiences toward the person who is addressing them. He is assumed to be telling them something which is true and which they need to know. Talks by foreigners, that are merely for entertainment or amusement are, in general, an insoluble puzzle to the average Japanese audience. Of course this failure to appreciate such efforts is in part due to the wide difference in the spirit and structure of the two languages,—that of the speaker and that of his hearers. But it is even more largely due to something which lies far deeper. The Oriental story-teller and professional joker has his place in the estimate of the educated and even of the common people. It is side by side with the juggler or performer with marionettes. To consider such a person as a teacher would be foreign to the conception,—a scandalous profanation of a sacred term. On the other hand, if one can—and this must come only after a considerable period of testing—win and hold the claim in its highest meaning, he may, as simply a teacher, wield an influence in Japan which is comparable to that to be gained in the same way in no other civilised land. For have not the greatly and permanently influential benefactors of the race always been teachers? Were not Confucius, and Sakya-Muni, and Jesus, all teachers? And in Japan itself, only a few years ago, did not a certain man who had refused offers of government positions deemed higher by most, in order that he might remain a teacher of Japanese youth, when his work was ended, have his coffin attended to its resting-place by ten thousand of his fellow citizens of all classes, walking bareheaded through the rain? Even now, when the appreciation of the importance and value of wealth, for the individual and for the nation, is rising, and the appreciation of the importance and value of intelligence and character is, I fear, relatively declining, it is still possible for the truly successful teacher to gain the esteem and influence over Japanese audiences which are implied in the very word Sensei, or its equivalent. And if the title is used with its full, old-fashioned significance, it will have much the same meaning as the word “Master” in the New Testament usage.

“[THE BEARING OF THE BOYS AND GIRLS IS SERIOUS, RESPECTFUL AND AFFECTIONATE]”

At the time of my last visit to Japan, in 1906 and 1907, the temper of the entire nation was particularly and indeed uniquely interesting. They had just been through a terrible struggle with what had, at the beginning of the struggle, been quite generally regarded as an invincible European power. They had been, indeed, uniformly victorious; but at the cost of enormous treasure and of the outpouring of the blood of the flower of their youth. The nation was heavily burdened with debt; and its credit, in spite of the fact that the financing of the war had been conducted with very unusual honesty, frankness, and skill, was low for purposes of borrowing large additional sums of money. The great body of the people, who did not know what His Majesty, the Genro, and the most intimate circle of advisers knew perfectly well, considered the nation humiliated and defrauded by the unfavourable terms on which the Portsmouth Treaty of Peace was concluded. As I can testify, there was an almost complete absence of those manifestations of elation and headiness, amounting to over-confidence and excessive self-conceit, which prevailed so widely at the end of the Chino-Japanese war. On the contrary, the great body of the people, especially outside of Tokyo and the ports of Yokohama and Kobe, were in a thoughtful, serious, and even anxious state of mind. This condition could not fail to make itself felt upon the attitude of the audiences toward those who addressed them, in correspondingly thoughtful and serious fashion, on themes of education, morals, and religion. Even in the public schools of the primary grade, [the bearing of the boys and girls toward their work is serious; and toward their teachers, respectful and even affectionate].

Indeed, in the year after the war with Russia ended, the demand everywhere in Japan was for the discussion of moral problems; and of educational, economic, and political problems, as affected by moral conditions and moral principles. The lectures to the teachers which were most eagerly welcomed and which made by far the most profound impression, spoke of the teacher’s function, equipment, ideals, and relations to society and to the state, from the ethical point of view. A course of lectures on the “Doctrine of the Virtues as applied to Modern Business” was called for by the Government Business Colleges. On my accepting an invitation to speak to the boys in the Fisheries Institute, and asking for the topic which was preferred for the address, the reply was given without hesitation: “Tell them that they must be ‘good men,’ and how they may serve their country better by becoming good men. Most of these boys come from low-class families, whose morals are very bad, and they have not been well brought up; but we wish them to become honest and virtuous men.”

Nor was this interest, amounting in many cases to anxiety, about the moral condition and future moral welfare of the nation, confined to educational circles. The Eleventh of February is a national holiday in Japan, corresponding more exactly than any other of its national holidays to our Fourth of July. This is the traditional date of the founding of the Empire. On this date, in 1889, the “Constitution was promulgated by the Emperor in person, with solemn and gorgeous ceremony, in the throne-room of the Imperial Palace,—and its proclamation was followed by national rejoicings and festivities.” In 1907 the Asahi Shimbun, a leading paper of the large commercial city of Osaka, undertook to commemorate the day by a public meeting in the Hall of the Assembly of the District, and by a banquet in the neighbouring hotel. In the afternoon I addressed an audience of more than twelve hundred on the “Conditions of National Prosperity,” dwelling chiefly on those conditions which are dominatingly moral and religious in character. The banquet in the evening was attended by about one hundred and fifty persons, and was fairly representative of all the most influential citizens of various classes. After the customary exchange of complimentary addresses, opportunity was given for others to speak. A venerable gentleman, one of the most distinguished physicians of the city, was the first to rise. With great seriousness he made, in substance, the following comments on the exercises of the afternoon,—which were, however, not interpreted for me until a full fortnight later. He had been much impressed by what the speaker had said at the afternoon meeting about the dependence of national prosperity upon the nation’s morality; but he had asked himself: “Why are such things said to us? We are not ‘rice merchants’ (a term of opprobrium); we are the leading and most respectable citizens of Osaka.” He had, however, at once reminded himself that this is precisely what their own great teacher, Confucius, taught them centuries ago. And then he had asked himself: “Why do the ancient Oriental teacher, and the modern teacher, both teach the same thing,—namely, that nations can have genuine and lasting prosperity only on condition that they continue to pattern themselves after the eternal principles of righteousness?” His answer was: “They tell us this, because it is so.” And “surely,” he added with much impressiveness, “it is time that we were all governing our actions in accordance with so important a truth.”

After the aged speaker had taken his seat again, a much younger man, the Vice-Mayor of the city, arose; and beginning by expressing his hearty agreement with the sentiments of the last speaker, he proceeded to emphasise the truth with passionate fervour, and wound up his address by saying: “There are enough of us, one hundred and fifty leading citizens of Osaka, seated around this table here to-night, to change the whole moral condition of the city, and to redeem it from its deservedly bad reputation, if only we truly and fixedly will to have it so.”

Several months later I had another similar experience, which I mention here, because it illustrates so well the extraordinary interest in moral issues which characterised the disposition of the nation at the close of the Russo-Japanese war, and which made itself felt in so powerful a way upon all the audiences which I addressed during the year of my stay. Toward the close of the course of lectures and addresses at Sendai, I was invited to visit the barracks where twenty-five or thirty thousand of the recruits for the Japanese army are regularly undergoing their preparation for service. After I had been shown about the entire establishment by an escort of under-officers, the General in command, a distinguished veteran of the Russo-Japanese war, called me into his private office. There, he first of all assured me that he had followed the accounts of the lectures and addresses as they had been published in the various papers, and then thanked me for what had been done in general for the good of his country; but, more particularly, for the assistance rendered to him personally in his work of training the young men for the Japanese army. Upon surprise being expressed as to how such a thing could be, the General began to explain his statement as follows: His great difficulty was not in teaching the manual of arms or the proper way to manœuvre upon the field of battle. His great difficulty was in giving these recruits the necessary “spiritual” training (I use his word, and explain it to mean,—The moral spirit which animates the upright and knightly soldier, the spirit which, in the Japanese language, is called “Bushidō”). At this I again expressed surprise and a wish for further light upon his kindly remark. He then went on to say that since the Government had reduced the term of required service from three years to two, the time was more than ever all too short to inculcate and enforce the right moral spirit on youths, many of whom came from homes in which this spirit by no means prevailed. But a profound moral impression had been made upon the teachers in the public schools all over the land; the teachers would take these moral teachings and impress them upon the pupils under their charge; and “these are the boys that will later come to me.” When my thoughts turned homeward—as, of course, they were bound promptly to do,—they awakened a strange mixture of feelings of amusement and of concern; of the former, when the effort was made to imagine any remotely similar conversation occurring with a General or a recruiting officer there; and of concern, at the obvious decline of the spirit of patriotism in the United States, as evinced by the almost purely mercenary way in which all branches of the public service have come to be regarded by the body of the people. That it is difficult to keep the ranks of our small standing army filled by offers of big pay, much leisure, and opportunities for foreign travel, is significant, not so much because of a growing and, perhaps, reasonable distaste for a military career, as of a prevalent conviction that the nation is bound to serve individual and class interests rather than the individual and the class to serve the interests of the nation.

The most thoughtful leaders of Japan are at present exceedingly fearful that those more serious and self-reliant traits, which I have chiefly selected to characterise, may succumb to the incoming flood of commercial avarice, and of the love of comfort and luxury. And they have grave reasons to be afraid. But I leave on record my testimony to the truth that immediately after the close of the great war with Russia, the nation of Japan was not only willing to hear, but even coveted to hear, how it might prepare itself by intelligent adherence to sound moral principles—in education, in business, in the army and navy,—for an era of genuine and lasting prosperity, at peace with the rest of the world.

CHAPTER VI
GARDENS AND GARDEN PARTIES

To understand thoroughly and appreciate justly the theory and history of the art of landscape and other gardening in Japan would require the study of a life-time. It is doubtful if any foreigner could accomplish this task even at the expense of so great devotion;—so subtle and in some respects bizarre and whimsical is the philosophy of nature implied in the tenets of some of the various schools. The native experts, too, take the same delight in minute distinctions, and in the arguments urged in support of them, in the field of æsthetics, which characterises the speculations of Japanese Buddhism in the field of religion. And, indeed, in Japan, as everywhere else in the world, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of art are both closely related to ideas and sentiments of at least a genuine quasi-religious character. I shall therefore make no attempt to discourse on so abstruse and difficult matters.

It may safely be said, however, that the art of landscape-gardening, as it has developed in Japan, has the general features which are common to all forms of Japanese art. According to Baron Kuki, official custodian of the Emperor’s art treasures, these are, chiefly, the following three: “The first is mildness and pure simplicity. Colouring is for the most part sober and plain, and very seldom gorgeous. Japanese art prefers moderation and genial ease to excessive grandeur; sobriety and chastity to profundity, intensity, and vulgarity. Even such horror-inspiring subjects as the pictures of hell are not thrilling in effect. The statue of Buddha at Nara is grand, but it is only the highwater mark of Continental influence, and does not represent the pure Japanese disposition.

“The second characteristic of Japanese art is its exquisite lightness or delicacy. This is due to the joyful frame of the people’s mind, and to the wonderful dexterity of their hands. There is no artistic product which is not marked by charming workmanship.

“The third feature is its idealism in representation. Japanese art is not realistic, it does not aim at photographic accuracy; but by the free and bold exercise of imagination, it tries to abstract the essential aspect of objects, and to give expression to the artist’s sentiments by its portrayal. It is for this reason that form is comparatively little regarded, while idea is considered all-important; that it is weak in realistic delineation and strong in decorative design. These three characteristics underlie all Japanese art, and distinguish it from the art of other Oriental nations.”

So far as I am able to recognise these characteristics as present in the gardens which I have seen, they have resulted in certain marked excellencies and in certain scarcely less marked defects. These gardens are to a degree realistic, in that they try to present a picture of all the principal features of nature,—oftentimes, and indeed generally, within a small and seemingly inadequate amount of space. Miniature mountains, rivers, lakes, water-falls, forest, and stretches of sea-coast, may be comprised within the grounds of a gentleman’s ordinary estate, or even within the few square-feet of the humbler citizen’s back-yard. And it is uniformly the back-yard in Japan, where the grounds for “plaisance” are situated. Even a platter or other dish may be made the receptacle for a garden which shall essay to hold up to view a picture of those complex artistic achievements that are accomplished by nature on a so much larger scale.

“[IT IS NATURE COMBED AND TRIMMED]”

It is not “pure nature,” or nature untamed and wild, which the Japanese art of gardening aims simply to reproduce and to represent. [It is nature excessively combed and trimmed]; or—to present the thought in more carefully chosen æsthetical language—nature as she would be if arranged and arrayed according to the most precisely developed ideals of the human artist. Every tree and shrub must, then, be cultivated and pruned with attention to the details of each stem and twig; even the decayed or superfluous leaves, or the needles and cones from the pine trees, require to be picked away. On visiting the famous garden of Count Okuma, in the late Autumn, we found two-score and more of persons, working under expert direction in this way. The same pains is taken in holding up to view the work of nature in marring her own products or in removing them utterly, in order to make room for the fresh creations of her bounteous life. Worn rocks, worm-eaten woods, bare trunks, broken stumps, and all the other results of the ceaseless forces that minister decay and death, have an important place in the Japanese art of gardening. But the worn stones must be carefully placed and kept scrupulously clean; the worm-eaten woods must be selected with due regard to the fantastic patterns which have been worked upon them; the bare trunks and broken stumps need to have their shapes defined by the back-ground of foliage or of open sky; for—to quote again from Baron Kuki—the effort is to “abstract the essential aspect of objects, and to give expression to the artist’s sentiments by their portrayal.”

Only a little reflection is necessary in order to make it evident that for the æsthetical appreciation of the Japanese garden, in its most purely native form, whether as originally imported from China or as developed on native soil, a sympathetic share in this characteristic, sentimental attitude toward nature is absolutely indispensable. In viewing the best examples, where the scale is fairly generous and the artistic theories in control have not been too individualistic or fantastic, such sympathy is not difficult for one of cultivated æsthetical taste; although the Japanese art may still make the impression of being something unusual and foreign. Where, however, such sympathy is wanting, and in the cases of multitudes of inferior examples, no amount of this feeling—or, at least, no reasonable amount—can easily prevent an unfavorable judgment, on account of the impression of artificiality, pettiness, and excessive devotion to details, without a corresponding largeness of spirit. But when one recognises the amount of innocent enjoyment, and of a valuable sort of æsthetical education and refinement—for the Japanese garden is seldom or never vulgar,—which comes to the homes of the lowly in this way, one’s criticism is either totally disarmed or greatly modified in its points of view. Indeed, there is no nation in Europe or America to whom the Japanese may not give valuable lessons in the art of the quiet, soothing, and refining enjoyment of nature and of out-of-door recreations, to the discredit and relative neglect of those coarser and more exhausting ways of enjoying themselves which these other nations prefer. Moon-viewing, cherry-blossom viewing, and mushroom-gathering parties may seem to us lacking in “strong” inducements, as modes of pleasure-seeking; but the men and women who have made an art of cultivating them—and these have been among the greatest in the history of Japan—certainly can no longer be considered as a nation of dilettanti or of weaklings.

It is a not uncommon impression, even on the part of those who have visited the country, that Japan is a “land unrivalled in the beauty and abundance of its flowers,—a belief that nature has lavished her floral gifts with special favour upon these sunny islands of the Far East.” But as Mr. Conder points out in his admirable book upon “The Floral Art of Japan,” in the sense of “profusion in wild floral plants, it must be admitted that certain Western countries possess attractions which Japanese scenery can scarcely boast.” And although, as he goes on to say, “the comparative scarcity of groups of wild flowering plants, as a colour feature to the landscape, is to some extent made up for by the blossoming trees,” the peculiar characteristics and values of the Japanese art of gardening have not been so much derived from the nature that is without as from the nature that, centuries ago, lay slumbering within the spirit of the race. It must also be remembered that, just as the Japanese floral art does not confine itself to the æsthetical treatment of “flowers,” in our narrower use of the word, but, the rather, includes all flora in the botanical meaning of the term, so the art of gardening in Japan aims to take account of all forms of material and of situations and even of remote suggestions, which fall within the limits of man’s artistic control. “The secret, then, of Japan’s floral fame and floral enchantment lies rather in the care that her people bestow upon Nature’s simpler gifts than in any transcendent wealth of production.”

“Flower-viewing excursions, together with such pastimes as Shell-gathering, Mushroom-picking, and Moon-viewing, form the favourite occupations of the holiday seeker throughout the year. By a pretty fancy, even the snow-clad landscape is regarded as Winter’s floral display, and Snow-viewing is included as one of the flower festivals of the year. The Chinese calendar, used formerly by the Japanese, fitted in admirably with the poetical succession of flowers. Haru, the Japanese Spring, opened with the New Year, which commenced about February, and was heralded by the appearance of the plum blossoms.”

Floral art in Japan, therefore, makes extensive and effective use of flowerless trees, as well as of flowers, and flowering shrubs and flowering trees. Among such flowerless trees, the most important is the pine; and this hardy evergreen is found almost everywhere in the mountain and coast scenery of the country, and in all the gardens, as well as in a large proportion of the floral arrangements designed for in-door enjoyment. In its natural growth and struggle against the violent winds, it is habitually so quaintly distorted that the miniature representations in the smallest gardens and in tiny pots, are scarcely at all exaggerated. Then follow, in order of preference, the bamboo, the willow, and other flowerless trees.

Inside-floral arrangements should have regard to the character and uses of the room in which they are placed, to the season of the year, to the nature of the festival or other ceremonial occasion which they may chance to celebrate, to the other art-objects and the furniture of the same and adjoining rooms, and to the scenery of the garden and the remoter landscape upon which the room opens. To quote again from Mr. Conder: “Some writers go so far as to say that the floral design in a chamber should have a contrast in style with that of the adjoining garden. This fancy is better appreciated if it be remembered that during a great part of the year the outer walls of the Japanese house, which consist almost entirely of paper slides, are thrown completely open. If there be a landscape garden adjoining, consisting of lakes and hills,” (and as we have already seen these objects may exist in exceedingly miniature form) “the floral arrangement in the rooms should by preference partake of a moorland character; but if the garden be level and waterless, then water plants or mountain trees should be selected for the flower decorations of the chamber interior.”

I have already said that a great deal of philosophy—originally derived from China—together with not a few traditional superstitions, underlies the art of floral arrangement and the allied art of gardening, in Japan. But, what is more important in its influence upon the life of the people, is this: The expression and cultivation of virtue, and of the religious spirit,—of self-denial, gentleness, and the forgetfulness of cares—are both theoretically and in practice realisable and actually realised through this form of art.

Without retracting my previous disclaimer of the intention to venture into the field of philosophy in its relation to the Japanese art of landscape and other forms of gardening, I will make this final quotation from Mr. Conder’s treatise on the subject of floral arrangement, in one of the few passages where he extends his observations to the wider fields of the art of gardening. He has been speaking of the applications made of the male and female principles, so often referred to in Confucian philosophy, to contrasts of forms, surfaces, and colours, in the composition of floral material. “It has ever been a favourite fancy of the Japanese to apply distinctions of sex to inanimate nature. In natural scenery, and landscape-gardening, it is customary to discriminate between male and female cascades, male and female plants and trees, male and female rocks and stones. The distinction is not one so much of individual and separate quality as of forms placed in combination or contrast, and regarded as male or female in respect of one another. Thus the main torrent of a water-fall is considered masculine, and the lower fall in proximity feminine. In like manner, rocks used in gardening have no distinguishing sex, unless they are placed in pairs or groups. In the case of two stones of different character placed side by side, the one of bolder and more vigorous shape will be called the male, and the other the female stone. Curious as such fancies may seem, they are of considerable value when applied in the arts of design, their observance helping to produce that harmony of well-balanced contrasts which should pervade all artistic composition.”

Another striking illustration of the influence of quasi-moral and religious sentiment over this form of art is to be seen in the use made of the lotus in the landscape gardening of Japan. “The lotus is closely connected with the Buddhist religion, and is, therefore, associated in the minds of the people with spirit-land. The lakes of the temple grounds, especially those dedicated to the water goddess Benten, are frequently planted with lotuses.... Wherever undisturbed pools and channels of muddy water exist, the lotus is to be found, and even the ditches beside the railway connecting Tokyo with the port of Yokohama are rendered gay in the Summer by the lotus flowers in bloom. As the peony is said to be the national flower of China, so the lotus is regarded as the national flower of India, the source and centre of Buddhism. It is therefore considered out of place as a decoration for occasions of festivity and rejoicing, but is constantly used for obsequies and other sacred ceremonies. The lotus serves as suitable theme for religious contemplation” (and according to the psychologically true thought of the Japanese, the most fit and profitable place for such mental exercises is in the open air, and under the sane and soothing and uplifting influences of nature) “and is the favourite flower of monastic and temple retreats; the best displays are to be seen in the lakes of the old temple groves of Kyoto and other cities. Growing out of the muddiest and most stagnant water, its leaves and flowers are always fresh and clean; although it is particularly sensitive and quickly withers if brought in contact with any of the fertilisers by which other plants are nourished. This purity which the lotus maintains amid surrounding filth is mentioned as one reason for associating this plant with the religious life. A well-known book of Buddhist precepts contains this text:—‘If thou be born in the poor man’s hovel, but hast wisdom, then art thou like the lotus flower growing out of the mud.’”

The most beautiful and perfect of the gardens of Japan, in the old-fashioned Chino-Japanese style, which I have ever seen, are the Kōrakuen in Tokyo, and the Katsura-no-Rikyū in Kyoto. The former was originally the garden of the Prince of Mito, the site of whose mansion is now occupied by the Koishikawa Arsenal. Thus the quiet beauty of the art of the “Old Japan” is brought into contrast with the preparations for displaying its strength of the “New Japan.” But the garden remains intact; and it is justly pronounced “the finest specimen of the Japanese landscape gardener’s art to be seen in the capital.” It is not seen, however, by most visitors to Japan, both because they do not take an interest in, or know where to look for the best things, and also because a special order is necessary to gain admittance to it. The very name is an embodiment of the finest philosophical sentiment with regard to the relations in which the leisurely enjoyment of nature stands to the sterner duties of a devoted human life. It is derived from three Chinese words:—Kō (“afterward”) Ra (“pleasure”), and Kuen (“garden”). It is, therefore, an “afterward-pleasure-garden”;—the thought being that the wise man has his anxieties earlier than others, is beforehand, so to say, in thoughtful care; but his pleasures come later.

The original plan of Kōrakuen was to reproduce many of the scenes of the country with which the literati were familiar—at least, by their names. And Prince Mito had it laid out as a place in which to enjoy a calm old age after a life of labour. One of its miniature lakes is copied from a celebrated lake in China. A temple on a wooded hill is a replica of a famous temple in Kyoto. Again, a bridge and zigzag path lead to a shrine famous in Chinese history; and then we come to an arched stone bridge and another shrine which has an octagonal shape in allusion to the Eight Diagrams of the Chinese system of divination. Everywhere there are magnificent trees, which were selected so as to have some one species at the heighth of its beauty at each season of the year; thus there are cherry-trees for the Spring, maples for the Autumn, and plum-trees for the Winter.

An attendant who was to serve as an escort was already in waiting, when we and the Japanese lady whom we accompanied arrived at the gate; and somewhat later General Nishimura, the Government officer in charge of the Arsenal, joined us. After we had taken tea and had a pleasant chat with him we were given the very unusual privilege of taking several photographs of different parts of the garden, among them one or two of a group, which included the General himself.

The Katsura-no-Rikyū, or Katsura Summer Palace, was formerly a retreat made for a Princess of the Imperial family by this name. It is now one of the four so-called “Palaces of the Mikado”—more properly speaking there are two palaces and two villas,—in the city and suburbs of the ancient capital. Permits must be obtained from the Department of the Household, in order to visit any of these palaces; and when I was first in Japan, in 1892, they were much more difficult to secure than they are now. Through Marquis, then Count, Matsukata, who was at that time Prime Minister, the necessary permission was obtained; and the same kindly service furnished me with a letter to the Governor of the District of Kyoto, who sent his private secretary to act as an escort to all the four palaces. This was particularly good fortune; for this gentleman, in his youth, had served on the side of the Mikado’s forces in their contest against the forces of the Shōgunate; he was thus able to point out many details of interest—among them, the defacements of the decorations of the Nijo Palace, that “dream of golden beauty within,” which were made by these young patriots, who thought in this way to show their contempt for the Shōgun, and for ancient art, and their devotion to the cause of the Mikado and of progress.

“[WINDING PATHS OVER RUDE MOSS-COVERED STEPPING-STONES]”

The garden of the Katsura Summer Palace represents the style of the art which was practised by Kobori Enshū and his “School.” These men were as aristocratic in their tastes as they were enthusiastic in teaching and practising their theories of the arts. According to their canons, everything was to be exceedingly plain and simple; and all the other arts were to be combined in the celebration of the cha-no-yu, or tea ceremonies. Indeed this garden, and all the buildings and other structures in it, may be said to be planned for use in the highest kind of style belonging to such æsthetic enjoyment. Its exceedingly plain summer-houses are, accordingly, so placed as to look out on modest pools and artificial streams, on plain rustic bridges and [winding paths over rude moss-covered stepping-stones], brought from the two extremities of the Empire. Everywhere there are trees of various species and trained in manifold artificial shapes; there are also moss-clad hillocks and a goodly store of antique lanterns; and in the lake there are islets deftly placed. The lake itself is full of the water-plant Kohone, which here has red flowers as well as the usual yellow ones.

It is not necessary to describe or even refer to the more celebrated of the temple gardens, such as Kinkakuji and Ginkakuji, in Kyoto; or the groves surrounding the Tombs of the Shōguns in Shiba and at Nikko; or the park at Nara, and other nearly or quite flowerless specimens of the art of gardening in Japan; for has not everyone who has spent not more than a single week in the country seen them all; and are they not all sufficiently described in the guidebooks?

The more beautiful of the modern gardens in Japan, while retaining the most admirable features of the native art, have succeeded in adding something which it formerly lacked and in avoiding more fully its suggestion of pettiness and of artificiality. This they have accomplished by allowing a larger freedom from ancient conventions and conceits in the way both of modifying the native traditions and of introducing foreign elements. And since in the best private gardens there has been a most judicious selection and combination of natural resources and æsthetical ideals, there are some examples of the art of landscape-gardening in Japan, which are not excelled, if indeed they are equalled, by anything else of the kind.

I do not expect ever to see again a landscape, prepared and cultivated by human skill, quite so perfectly beautiful as was the Imperial garden at Aoyama, on the afternoon of November 16, 1906, when the annual “chrysanthemum party” was given there to His Majesty’s guests. The rainy weather of the days preceding had prevented the Imperial party from attending the festivities in person. But it had added something to the customary charm of the landscape; for the showers had freshened all the colours of ground and foliage and sky, and the moist haze was now producing that exquisite softness and blending of them all which is so characteristic of the “atmosphere” of Japanese natural scenery and of Japanese pictorial art. The size of the garden and the manner of its artistic treatment render it, in some of its features, more like an English deer-park than are any of the gardens of the more purely Chino-Japanese style. There were large pines and maples and autumn camelias of wonderful growth. There was great variety to the surface, both natural and helped out by art; and on such a generous scale as nowhere to suggest artificiality or pettiness. The hills were real hills, and worthy of the name; they made the assembling guests climb their sides and gave them new and extended views as a reward when they had reached their tops. There were also many ponds and winding streams, with picturesque curved bridges crossing the streams. But most conclusive of all the proofs of the highest æsthetical skill was the arrangement of all the larger and the minuter features, from whatever point of view one held them in regard. The most brilliantly coloured maples, of the cut-leaf variety, were planted singly rather than in groups; and every detail of their delicate shapes was carefully brought out against a background of the dark green of pines or the golden yellow of the jinkō tree. As one strolled up any of the several winding paths that led to the high plateau on which the show of chrysanthemums was placed, one could stop at almost every step and admire the change of far-reaching vistas or nearer views; and over every square yard of the whole, not only each tree and shrub, but each twig and leaf, seemed to have been made an object of loving care.

To speak of the show of flowers, the entertainment, and the friends we met on this occasion would savour more of gossip about garden parties than of description of the art of landscape-gardening. But a word about the flowers. I am of the impression that while we raise in this country as fine, or finer, individual chrysanthemums, the Japanese excel us in the culture and development of the whole plant. For example, some of the specimens shown at this Imperial garden party had as many as 985 flowers on a single stock, making a plant fourteen feet in circumference; and others had no fewer than fifty-five varieties growing from one stock. The more properly artistic character of the show, however, was maintained by the elegant and simple arrangement of the single flowers as to colour and other kindred effects.

Among the private gardens in Japan which have combined the excellences of the native art with certain modifications introduced from abroad, may be mentioned those of Count Okuma and Marquis Nabeshima. The former seems to me to have been more influenced by English examples; it has a remarkable collection of Japanese maples,—more than one hundred varieties in all. The Count is also quite justly proud of his chrysanthemums, which are as fine as any in Japan. On the other hand the Marquis’ garden has the appearance of having been under the influence of Italian examples,—not, indeed, of the older and more artificial style, but of the sort surrounding the more beautiful of the modern villas.

I have already referred to the fondness of the Japanese for exceedingly minute representations of large natural objects, or even of extensive natural scenes. Hence those single specimens or collections of Bonsai, on which certain wealthy æsthetes have spent thousands of yen, and which may render their possessors as much the objects of friendly or envious rivalry as were the rival cultivators of rare species of tulips, in Holland some decades of years ago. Some of these aforesaid Bonsai are tiny pines or other trees, only a few inches in heighth, but of years mounting up to a half century or more. Such specimens require more tender and intelligent cultural care than the majority of human beings are wont to receive. One of the most delightful and benevolent and widely useful of Japanese ladies never travels from home even for a single night without taking along her choice collection of bonsai, which she cares for daily with her own hands. This same lady presented to my wife one of the products of this art, which consisted of scores of tiny pines growing out of the sand and so arranged that the eye could look through the grove as though upon the distant sea,—a fairly complete picture in miniature of a celebrated view in Kiushiu, along the seashore near Fukuoka.

In Japan every national festival and, indeed, almost every form of social gathering or species of entertainment partakes more or less of the character of a garden party. At the remotest and meanest tea-house in the mountains or by the sea, if the weather permits, you take your cup of tea where you can look upon a scene which nature or man has made into a work of art. If you call upon a native friend, you must enjoy the refreshment which is always offered, either in the garden or in a room or on a verandah, which looks out upon a garden. At every dinner party, when the season is favourable, either before the meal, or afterward in the moonlight, the guests are expected to wander over the grounds of the host or of the tea-house where the entertainment is given, enjoying its natural beauties. Of the various forms of excursioning, the pleasure of which implies an appreciation of nature,—such as mushroom-gathering, snow-viewing, etc., I have already spoken.

Garden parties are not infrequently given by the more wealthy Japanese at an expense of thousands of yen. The programme of one of the most elaborate of those given in Tokyo in the Autumn of 1906, included not only the inspection of the gardens and extensive museum of the host, music and refreshments, but the exhibition of Japanese histrionic performances and dances, in which actors and scenic apparatus were as good as could be seen in the very highest-class theatres. The most elaborate of these histrionic performances bore the title of “Urashima,” the Japanese Rip Van Winkle, and employed a dramatis personæ and orchestra of twenty-one persons. The description in the programme of the First Scene reads as follows: “In the depths of the broad expanse of the Ocean, stands Ryūgū, the seagod’s palace, bathed in serene moonlight which shines bright upon the corals and emeralds. Young fishes swimming about the palace add to the charm of the scene. The graceful movement of the sea-bream, the lively evolutions of the lobster, the brisk flouncing of the flounder, etc., are comically represented in the Joruri.” Thus ran the description of the printed programme. The ill condition of the weather,—for it had been raining steadily all day, and the out-of-door part of the entertainment had to be much curtailed,—did not prevent the several thousands of invited guests from attending, or the feast from being spread in the large refreshment tent, which was so arranged that its open side gave a view of a fountain surrounded by chrysanthemums and a beautiful bit of the garden beyond.

About the same time, another wealthy Japanese celebrated an important birthday for which the out-of-door preparations were more elaborate and unusual, if not so æsthetically refined. Mr. A—— had reached his sixty-first year, a time when Heaven should be thanked for prolonging one’s life beyond the customary span, and one’s friends should be summoned to render fitting congratulations. This time, also, the weather was most unpropitious; but the continued downpour, the soaked grass, and liquid mud, did not deter several thousands of guests from assembling. The entire wall surrounding the extensive grounds was solidly covered with ground-pine and diamond-shaped medallions of flowers set in at intervals,—the whole outlined with the national colours, red and white. Boards raised and spread with matting furnished dry paths from place to place inside the garden, where numerous booths of bamboo and ground-pine were cleverly distributed, from which the guests were served with tea and many kinds of cakes, with fruit, and with tobacco and beer. Hundreds of little maids in the gay dresses and with the painted faces of the professional waitress, were running about everywhere, ready to bring the various foods and drinks. In two large tents “continuous performances” of fencing or of a theatrical and other sort, were going on; and at the entrances of each stood scores of boys with Japanese paper umbrellas, employed in escorting the rain-bedrizzled crowd from one booth or tent to another. Several bands were stationed here and there, some playing foreign music and others performing on native instruments.

But the most astonishing attempt at the extraordinary by way of entertainment took the shape of a miniature Fuji, which was more than seventy-five feet in heighth, and which could be climbed by a spiral path from the inside. In a clear day, a fine view of Tokyo and its immediate and remoter surroundings, including the real Fuji, could have been seen from the platform at the top. All the rooms of the house on the garden side had been thrown into one, in which, on tables and rows of steps were arranged the store of presents from the guests. The greater number consisted of “katsebushi,” or fancy wooden boxes filled with dried fish. But besides, there were many rolls of white and red silk, for underwear, or for wadding kimonos in the cold weather; numerous screens decorated with the appropriate emblems of pine, bamboo and plum branches, or with cranes to signify wishes for long life, and made of a variety of materials from candy cake to bronze; a pair of rather more than ordinarily well-modelled bronze camels, designed to decorate the grounds and presented by four different banks in which the host was a director.

In each of the large tents a camp fire of charcoal was kept burning, which softened somewhat the damp air; and if one was especially honoured with a hibachi full of live coals at the back, one could sit to see through a play with a fair amount of comfort. Of these histrionic performances, the most interesting to me was one especially designed to typify congratulations and wishes for long life, and regularly performed at the period of the New Year’s festivities. In it a priest figured as the guardian of a mystical bridge which led up to Paradise; and over the crossing of which a hermit from the mountains contended with two devils, one with hoary locks and one with long and tangled hair of brilliant red, who gnashed their tusks and danced and stamped the ground with fury.

A very different garden party was that given, on a similar occasion, by the Marquis and Marchioness Nabeshima. Although the date was so much later, the fifth of December, the weather was all that could be desired. The engraved and embossed card of invitation, literally interpreted, asked us to do the host the honour of attending a “sixty-first birthday wine-drinking party.” The Marquis was born under that one of the twelve signs of the Japanese zodiac which is called “the sign of the Horse!” It should be explained that the coincidence of the Japanese reckoning of the periods of life by twelves with the Chinese system of reckoning by periods of ten, affords a reason for the pleasant fiction that, at sixty-one, a man begins life over again by becoming a child as it were. It is therefore proper to give him presents adapted to the improvement and pleasure and employment of children. The guests who gathered on this occasion were the élite of Tokyo; and the Emperor and Empress had signalised the occasion by sending congratulatory presents. Some of the presents, sent by the various friends, were simple offerings in wooden boxes, of food, or of crape; but others were beautiful and expensive dishes of silver, or bags of money resting underneath effigies of the “god of luck.” From an edge of the garden, which overhangs a valley, Fujiyama was to be seen in the distance. Returning to the house, we found that the stage in the ball-room was being used for an exhibition by two famous dancers of the old-fashioned kind (the older man said to be the most famous in Japan), who were dancing to the music made by six or seven samisen players and singers, seated above a chorus of four or five others who were drumming and “yowling” after the fashion of performers in the “Nō.” At a delightful collation which followed, the speech of congratulation to the host was made in English by Prince Ito, who had just returned to his own country, for a brief stay, from his work as Resident-General in Korea. This garden party became the more memorable, because it was while walking in the grounds that I was summoned to meet the Prince, and receive the first intimation of an intention, which culminated in the invitation to visit Korea as his guest and “unofficial adviser,” the following Spring. And now, alas! this great statesman has—to quote the words of a native paper—“died for the Koreans at the hands of a Korean.”

It has been for several years the custom of Count Okuma to throw open his beautiful grounds to garden parties, not only in the interest of entertaining his many personal and political friends, but also in the favour of an endless variety of good causes. Here rare roses, and wonderful chrysanthemums, and various native exhibitions of athletic, or musical, or histrionic skill, may be seen; here, also, problems of state and plans of beneficence may be discussed.

“[THE WORSHIP OF NATURE IN THE OPEN AIR]”

It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the enjoyment of the Japanese garden in a social way is confined to the wealthy and the nobles with their large estates. All over the country the multitude of the people love nature and have it abundantly at their command to enjoy in quiet ways. In Tokyo thousands of artisans and common labourers and coolies, with wives and children, will trudge for miles to view the plum or cherry blossoms, or to see the morning-glories open at four o’clock of a Summer morning. The temple groves on all the many holidays are thronged with crowds, who combine their unintelligent and not even half-hearted worship with a much more intelligent and heartfelt appreciation of the beauties of nature. Indeed, with these multitudes, the worship of the departed ancestor in the family shrine in-doors, and the [worship of nature in the open air] constitutes their only religion.

How profoundly influenced is all the art and all the national life of the Japanese by this love and æsthetical appreciation of all forms of natural beauty, it is not necessary to say in detail. Gardens and garden parties are not trifling incidents or accessories of man’s existence, happiness, and progress, in Japan; for there, indeed, they are taken very seriously, and as necessaries of living well and happily at all.

CHAPTER VII
AT THE THEATRE

In Japan, as in most other highly civilised nations, the origin and earliest developments of the art of dramatic representation are involved in much obscurity. But, according to Baron Suyematsu, theatrical performances began to assume their present style about three hundred years ago. Centuries before this time, however, there were dances accompanied by singing and instrumental music, which were for the most part performed in the Shintō shrines. The differences between the two principal kinds which characterised the Nara period (709-784 A. D.) were only slight; one of them being somewhat more inclined toward the comic and the humorous than the other. It was the elaboration of the poetic compositions, which were adapted for accompaniments with the Biwa, and the introduction of historical narratives, which chiefly determined the style of the later theatrical performances. In the Ashikaga era these dramatic performances became very popular with the upper classes, and were patronised by the Shōgun himself. There then not only arose a class of professional actors, but the gentry themselves began to learn to sing and even to take pride in displaying their dramatic talents as amateurs, in the presence of their friends. By the more knightly of the samurai and daimyos, however, this was justly regarded as a mark of degeneracy. But as compared with similar epochs in other forms of the evolution of this art, there are three things which are greatly to the credit of the Japanese. In the first place, among the several hundred extant specimens of these ancient plays, there is scarcely to be found, either in words or in the action, the slightest taint of immoral suggestion; secondly, women were not tolerated on the stage, in combined action with men. And whatever we may think about the position of the professional actor, whether from the moral or the social point of view, and as viewed under conditions existing at the present time, it cannot be denied that it was to the ethical advantage of the Feudal Era in Japan to have professional actors excluded from so-called “good society.”

As to the literary character of the so-called Yokyoku, or written narrative to be chanted or sung in these dramatic performances, of which about three hundred are extant belonging to the Ashikaga period, I am quoting the authority of Baron Suyematsu; although the numerous examples which I have myself witnessed fully bear out his high estimate of their literary merit. “They are not so long as are the Greek or Roman dramas; although their construction has some similarity, for the words uttered by the actors are not limited to dialogues but contain descriptive parts as well. Thus when the actor representing a certain character appears on the stage, he generally announces who he is, why he has come there, where he is going to, and such like things. The method of playing has a certain similarity to the modern European opera, for the words uttered by the characters are sung and not spoken all through. The general features of the play show that these works were greatly influenced by Buddhism. This is due, in the first place, to the fact that this religion exercised much influence over the mind of the people at large; and in the second place to the fact that the playwrights were mostly priests. From the scholastic point of view, the sentences in these plays are not free from defects, but they are strong in the poetical element; and some parts of these works cannot be too highly praised. The Yokyoku and Nō” (or the acting, which was in every minutest detail adapted to the words and strictly, even inexorably prescribed) “may be called the classical drama of Japan. They enjoy the favour of the upper classes even to this day, in the same manner as the opera flourishes side by side with the ordinary theatre.”

As respects the motif and the moral and religious significance and influence of both the acting and the words, the dramas called by the name “Nō” much more resembled the miracle plays of Mediæval Europe than the operas of the present day. The literary merit and artistic skill in acting of the Japanese form of the art is, however, far superior. The Nō performances of the present day are, therefore, well deserving of the separate consideration which they will receive in another chapter.

From the dramas composed by the Buddhist priests in times when the philosophical and religious conceptions of Buddhism were profound, powerful, and effective, to the Shibai or Kabuki theatres of the common people of Japan, the descent is in every respect considerable. The origin of these theatres was of a distinctly lower order. The Kabuki is said to have originated in the dancing and singing of a woman named Kuni, performed among other shows on a rude stage on the river side at Kyoto. While, then, the actors in Nō often commanded a high personal regard and were admitted into the houses of the nobility, the actors in the popular theatres were held in very low esteem and were ostracised on both moral and social grounds. In the earlier period of its development, the actors in the Kabuki were chiefly women, who played the male as well as the female characters. Afterwards boys and even grown-up men were introduced; but the social evil resulting was, as is almost sure to be the case among all peoples and at all times, so extreme, that the Government intervened and the practice was forbidden by law. From that period onward the profession of acting became confined almost exclusively to men; although, as time went on, women began to act again, but only in companies formed of their own sex.

The so-called Shibai was a marionette performance, a kind of dramatic art in which the Japanese attained a high degree of skill. It is, indeed, well worth the time of the modern tourist, if he can secure the sight of some of the best-class of these puppet-shows. Even the inferior ones may afford the intelligent foreign observer no little insight into certain characteristics of the Japanese populace. “In the beginning,” says Baron Suyematsu, “there were no professional playwrights. Plays were chiefly written by actors or some one who took an interest in the matter; and further, plays were even devised by the actors impromptu and not written at all. Later on, the stage began to have professional playwrights attached to each theatre. Unlike the drama in Europe, these plays were never printed for public circulation, but used only for acting at the time, and were often written more to suit the performers than for literary excellence. And again when an old play was acted, it was often subjected to alteration for similar purposes; in other words, the dramatis personæ are often reduced or increased in number, to suit the number or ability of the actors. And, therefore, the texts of the Kabuki have not much literary merit. Though it may look somewhat strange, it is in the plays of the marionette theatres that we must seek the equivalent of the European drama. The marionette performance originated about the same time as the Kabuki. Previously, there had been a particular kind of chanted narrative, the Jōruri, which name is said to have come into use in a long chanting song consisting of twelve sections, and telling of a love story between Yoshitsune and a maiden named Jorurihime. This was written by a lady and was entitled ‘Jorurihime.’ Subsequently, many works of similar nature were written. And the introduction of the Samisen (a three-stringed musical instrument) gave much impulse to their development. To the chanting of these songs the marionette performances were added. Various styles of chanting were also gradually introduced.” In a word, the dramatic performances of Japan have come to be divided largely according to the distinction of classes. Or, to quote the distinguished authority of Professor Tsubuchi: “The characteristics of these forms of entertainment may be summed up by saying that, while the Nō is refined, but monotonous and unexciting, the Joruri and Kabuki are coarse and vulgar, but rich in incident and passion.”

The didactic and moral elements, which were, together with the historical narratives and incidents that embodied and illustrated them, the principal factors in the development of the Japanese drama, are derived from the native form taken by the ethical and political doctrines of Confucianism. The central and dominant principle of these doctrines is the virtue of fidelity, or loyalty. So overpowering has been the influence of this principle upon the popular drama in Japan, and through the drama upon the opinions and practices of the people at large, that it is difficult for the foreigner to understand or to appreciate the Japanese without some acquaintance with this form of their artistic development. In the actual working out of this principle, there have been, as might reasonably be expected, some good as well as some evil results. There can be little doubt of the truthfulness of the opinion of my missionary friend, Doctor De F——, that the popular theatre exercised a very powerful influence on the preparation of the nation for the Russo-Japanese war, by way of inspiring the lower orders of the people with that spirit of unstinted and unquestioning loyalty, which was one of the chief elements contributing to their success. It should also be said that, although the Japanese stage treats the relations of the sexes, both legitimate and illicit, with a frankness which would scarcely be tolerated in the most “corrupt” of our modern cities among the Western nations, from the native point of view this treatment is quite free from any obscene reference or salacious tendency. Indeed, the old-fashioned Confucian ethics did not make the relations of the sexes a matter of much moral concernment, except where these relations came under the dominant principle of loyalty. I have already said that the dramatic art of Nō is absolutely pure in this regard. It seems to me, therefore, that, on the whole, the popular theatre in Japan, in spite of much vulgarity and even obscenity, has been appreciably superior to the theatre in Europe and America, with respect to its influence upon the lowering of the standard of sexual purity, both in theory and in practice. The same praise cannot, however, be given to it in certain other important respects. For the moral principle of loyalty itself has been so narrowly conceived, and so intensely and passionately put into unreasoning practice, as to obscure in thought and confuse or destroy in conduct, other equally important and sacred virtues and duties of our mixed human life.

The development of the popular drama, under the influences just cited, has been going on for several centuries. And now, even the Japanese Kabuki theatres are usually well provided with stage scenery and properties of all the various kinds in use in our theatres. One arrangement in which they excel our theatres is the revolving centre to the stage,—a contrivance which allows the stage management to carry away an entire scene at once—actors, scenery, and all—and to replace it with something entirely new, without a moment’s waiting. Various modifications derived from the form of the dramas and the theatres of Western nations have also been introduced into some of the dramatic art and dramatic performances of the New Japan. At my last visit, there was even a proposal maturing to build a large theatre in Tokyo of thoroughly foreign construction, and presumably for acting plays composed by Japanese authors largely in the foreign style. But I choose to abide with the hope expressed by Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, “that the Japanese stage may remain what it now is,—a mirror, the only mirror, of Old Japan.” And it is because I have myself looked into that mirror, through eyes that were friendly and intelligent by reason of long and intimate acquaintance with the mental and moral characteristics and inner life of the people, and have had the advantage of intelligent and sympathetic, but unprejudiced interpretation by native friends, on the spot, that I venture with considerable confidence to add some narrative of personal experiences to illustrate and enforce what has been already said in a more general way. At some time in my several visits, I have, I believe, had the opportunity to study every one of the principal existing styles of Japanese dramatic art.

The first opportunity afforded me to see a specimen of Japanese dramatic representation was at the close of my lectures at Doshisha, in the summer of 1892. The entertainment was the accompaniment and the sequel to a dinner given to me by the President, Trustees, and Professors of the Institution, in recognition of the service which had been rendered to it. Everything was arranged and conducted in purely native style. By taking down the paper partitions, the entire second story of one of the largest native hotels had been thrown into one apartment. The ladies and gentlemen greeted each other by repeated bowing as they hitched themselves along the matted floor, nearer and nearer to each other. The placing of the guests was carefully ordered, with the principal guest in the centre of one end of the hall and the others, in accordance with their varied claims to distinction, on either side of him along the end and part way down the sides of the apartment. Thus all were seated on the floor, in the form of three sides of a hollow square. At the other end were two or three screens, behind which the actors could retire for the necessary changes of apparel or for resting between the several short plays which they performed during the evening. There was no scenery, except such as the descriptions of the actors led the audience to create in imagination. The orchestra consisted of two players upon the Koto (a sort of lyre or weak horizontal harp, which was evolved from Chinese models and perfected in the first half of the seventeenth century, and which is the most highly esteemed of the Japanese musical instruments); and three Samisens, or banjos,—an instrument now much favoured by the singing girls and by the lower classes generally. The players, with one exception, were girls; and all but one of them were blind. Acting, costumes, language, music, and all, were in the most old-fashioned style; and, indeed, the most learned of my friends among the professional staff had no small difficulty in understanding for themselves, not to speak of interpreting for another, what the actors said. In a word the entire entertainment was as nearly a faithful reproduction of a similar function in the castle of a Daimyō of three hundred years ago as the surroundings of a modern native tea-house made it possible to procure.

A word as to the characteristics of the native music, such as I first heard on this occasion but have frequently heard since, will assist to a better understanding of the Japanese dramatic art, in connection with which it is used either as interlude or accompaniment;—or perhaps, more often, as an essential factor. In its origin, it is plainly, to a very large extent, imitative of natural sounds. And since the native scale is pentatonic, and handled with the greatest freedom by the performer, who feels under no sort of obligation to keep strictly to it, the whole effect is wonderfully well adapted for awakening those vague and unclassifiable sentiments which correspond to some of the more obvious of natural phenomena. For this reason the more celebrated of the older musical compositions bear names descriptive of processes or events in nature which are adapted to appeal to the more common, if the weaker and less sublimely worthy, of the emotions of man that are sympathetic with external nature. One of the compositions played at this time was descriptive of the four seasons, beginning with Winter. Subsequently, while being entertained at luncheon by Count Matsudaira, we heard played in the best native style, a piece entitled “The Flight of the Cranes,” and a sort of musical lament or dirge over “A Pine Tree, Uprooted and Fallen in a Storm.” Still other instances will be referred to in another connection. At this first visit, and even after I had attended the annual Exhibition of The Imperial School of Music, I was in despair over the ability of the Japanese to learn the art of music as it has developed so wonderfully in modern Europe; until I attended the services of the Greek Cathedral in Tokyo, and listened to the superb chanting of the Japanese men as they had been trained by the Russian priests. And at my last visit I found how great progress the nation has been making in the art of music as a development all the more glorious and uplifting to the spirit of man, when set free from its ancient partnership with the dramatic art.

The pieces acted on this occasion were selections from the Kyogen, or comediettas, which were interspersed between the serious pieces of the Nō, as a foil to their severity. The fun of these plays is entirely free from any vulgarity or taint of lasciviousness; but it is so broad and simple as often to seem childish to the mind of the modern foreigner. To appreciate them it is necessary to remember that they were composed for the common apprehension, as mild jokes or satires upon the foibles of the different classes represented on the stage in the earlier period of its development. The language in which they are delivered is old-fashioned colloquial.

To give a few examples: In an interview between a Daimyō and his confidential helper, or steward, the former is complaining that he can get nothing properly done; and that, therefore, it is absolutely necessary for him to be provided with a larger number of servants. He suggests about one thousand as the requisite number; but the steward succeeds in getting his master to reduce the number to fifty. The first applicant for service is a so-called “musquito-devil,” who is thrown into violent convulsions by the offer to employ him to water the garden! On being questioned as to what he can do, he responds that he can wrestle. When the steward declines to wrestle with the new servant, and the master is not satisfied to employ him to “wrestle alone,” the master himself undertakes a match with the musquito-devil; and he is easily worsted. He then consults apart with his steward, who tells him that musquitoes cannot bear the wind, and that he himself will stand ready to assist his master with a fan. At the next bout, accordingly, the musquito-devil is sent whirling off the stage, behind the screens, by the blasts of the steward’s fan.

Another of these comediettas represented an old woman and her nephew in angry conversation. She is scolding him for his idle, spendthrift ways; and he is accusing her of a mean penuriousness in not allowing him enough spending money. As a result of the quarrel, he goes off, leaving her with a warning that an ugly devil has been seen in the neighbourhood and that she may receive a visit from him. After the departure of the nephew, the old woman locks the house carefully and retires. There soon comes a rap on the door,—and “Who is there?” The voice of the nephew replies, asking to be let into the house; but when the door is opened, a devil enters with his features concealed behind a horrible mask. The old woman pleads piteously for mercy, but is finally induced to surrender the key of the store-room where the saké is kept. She then draws aside to bury her face in her hands and to pray,—being assured that if she once looks up, she will be struck dead with the look. Whereupon the scamp of a nephew proceeds to get drunk; and being discovered and recognised in this helpless condition, he receives from his outraged aunt the beating which he so richly deserves.

Still another of these childish comedies represented two rival quacks, who were boasting the merits of their sticking-plaster. One of these plasters would draw iron, and the other would draw horses. Then followed various contests between the two rivals, with “straight pull,” “sideways pull,” “screw pull,” etc.

My next experience with the Japanese theatre was of a quite different order, but equally interesting and equally instructive. It was gained by attending an all-day performance in one of the Kabuki theatres in Tokyo, where a play designed to celebrate the old-fashioned Samurai virtue of fidelity was having a great run, in spite of the extreme heat of a hot July. The audiences were composed of the middle and lower artisan, and other socially similar classes. It was not to be expected, therefore, that the version of Bushidō which appealed to them, and which won their enthusiastic applause, would correspond throughout to the admirable description of this “spirit of the knight” as given in the book of Professor Nitobé on this subject. And, in fact, the play gave a representation of this most highly prized of the Japanese virtues corresponding, in its substantial delineation and literary style, to that which would be given of the most distinctive virtues of our so-called Christian civilisation, on the stage of any one of the theatres of the “Bowery” in New York City.

The theatre was a large barn-like structure; and it was filled with an audience who sat in its boxes, or small, square divisions marked off by narrow boards, where they arranged themselves for the most part as they were assorted by domestic or friendly ties. Although they obviously kept fully aware of what was going on upon the stage, and at times seemed to look and to listen intently, or to break forth into irrepressible applause, the most exciting scenes did not appear greatly to interrupt their incessant smoking and indulgence in various kinds of cheap drinks and eatables. Incessant tea-drinking went on as a matter of course.

The principal play on this occasion celebrated the daring and unflinching loyalty of a confidential servant to his Samurai master. The purposes of the master were by no means wholly honourable as judged by our Western standards of morals; and the means contrived by the servant for carrying out these purposes were distinctly less so. Especially was this true of the heartless and base way in which the servant, in furtherance of his master’s interests, treated the daughter of his master’s enemy, who had trusted him with her love and her honour. I am sure that for this sort of behaviour the rascal would have been hissed off the stage of even the lowest of the Bowery theatres. But when he was detected and caught by the father of the girl, the servant who was so despicably base toward others, remained still so splendidly loyal to his master, that the climax of the entire drama was reached and successfully passed in a way to astonish and disgust the average audience in Western and Christian lands. For he cheerfully bares his neck and, kneeling, stretches it out to catch fully the blow of the father’s sword,—protesting that he esteems it an honour and a joy to die in this honourable manner for his lord and master. So impressed, however, is the would-be executioner with the rascal’s splendid exhibition of the noblest of all the virtues, that he raises the betrayer of his daughter from his knees, pardons him, praises him unstintedly for his honourable excellence, makes peace with the servant’s master, and gladly bestows upon the servant his own beloved daughter in honourable marriage.

As I have already said, it was undoubtedly the influence of such dramas which helped to keep alive the extreme and distorted views of the supreme excellence of loyalty as a virtue, in the narrower significance of the terms, that went far toward securing the remarkable character for self-sacrificing courage and endurance of the Japanese private soldier during the late war with Russia. It would not be fair, however, to infer from this, or other similar experiences, the inferiority of the Japanese as a race in either ethical maxims or moral practice. For, has not an extravagant and perverted conception of the Christian virtue of “love” served in Occidental lands to obscure and overshadow the even more fundamental virtues of courage, endurance, and a certain necessary and divine sternness of justice? And, with all its restrictions and deficiencies, the Japanese Bushidō has hitherto resisted the temptations to avarice and a selfish indulgence in luxury, on the whole, rather better than anything which these Western nations have been able to make effective in its stead. But when Japan gets as far away from the Knightly spirit of Feudalism as we have for a long time been, its moral doctrines and practices of the older period are likely to undergo changes equally notable with those which have taken place in Europe since feudal times prevailed there.

It was not until my second visit, in 1899, that I enjoyed the opportunity of seeing Japan’s then most celebrated actor, Ichikawa Danjuro. “Danjuro” is the name of a family that has been eminent in the line of histrionic ability for nine or ten generations. Ichikawa, of that name, was especially remarkable for combining the several kinds of excellence demanded of the actor by Japanese dramatic art. He had very uncommon histrionic power; even down to his old age he was able almost equally well to take all kinds of parts, including those of women and boys; and he had “marvellous agility as a dancer.” As respects his ideals and characteristic style—making due allowance for the wide differences in language and in the traditions and requirements of the stage in the two countries—Danjuro has been called “The Irving of Japan,” not altogether unaptly.

On this occasion I had not my usual good fortune of being in the company of an intelligent and ready interpreter, who could follow faithfully and sympathetically, but critically, every detail of the scenery and the wording of the plays, as well as of the performance of the actors. But the two of the three plays in which Danjuro took part, between the rising of the curtain at eleven o’clock and our departure from the theatre at about four in the afternoon, were quite sufficient to impress me with the high quality of his acting. I need scarcely say that he gave me that impression of reserve power and of naturalness which only the greatest of artists can make. But, indeed, reserve, and the suggestiveness which goes with it and is so greatly intensified by it, is a chief characteristic of all the best works of every kind of Oriental art.

It was a still different exhibition of Japanese histrionic skill which I witnessed on the afternoon and evening of October 15, 1906. In the most fashionable theatre of Tokyo a Japanese paraphrase of Sardou’s “La Patrie” was being given by native actors. It was in every way a most ambitious and even daring attempt to adopt outright rather than to adapt, foreign dramatic models, in all their elaborate details. How far would it be—indeed, how far could it be—successful? I could see and judge for myself; since I was to have the best of interpreters. The advertised time for the rising of the curtain was five o’clock; but the actual time was a full half-hour later. The entire performance lasted for somewhat more than five hours. The scenery and stage settings were excellent. The scene of the meeting of the Prince of Orange and the Count of Flanders in the woods by moonlight was as artistically charming and beautiful a picture as could be set upon the stage anywhere in the world. Much of the acting, considering the difficulty of translating the motifs and the language, was fairly creditable; but the Japanese have yet a great deal to learn before they can acquire the best Western and modern style of the dramatic art. Indeed, why should they try? The stilted stage-manners of their own actors in the past, and the extravagance of posturing and gesturing for the expression of strong emotions, still hamper them greatly in this effort. Why then should they spend time and money on the attempt at this reproduction of foreign models, rather than in the reproduction and development of the best of their own dramatic art? Certainly, artistic success in such an endeavour, even if it could easily be attained, could not have the same influence upon the conservation of the national virtues which have distinguished their past that might reasonably be hoped for by a more strictly conservative course. As a piece of acting the attempt to reproduce the French play was a failure. The performance of the drama was followed by a very clever farce called “The Modern Othello,” which was written by a business man of Tokyo, a friend of our host on this occasion.

For witnessing the latest developments of the highest-class dramatic art of Japan, it was a rare opportunity which was afforded by a series of performances lasting through an entire fortnight in November of 1906. The occasion was a “Memorial,” or “Actor’s Benefit,” commemorative of the life-work of Kan-ya Morita, who, in a manner similar to the late John Augustin Daly, had devoted himself to the improvement and elevation of the theatre. All the best actors in Tokyo, including the two sons of Morita, took part in these performances, which consisted of selected portions of the very best style of the dramas of Old Japan. I cannot, therefore, give a more graphic picture of what this art actually is, and what it effects by way of influence upon the audience, than to recite with some detail our experiences as members of a theatre party for one of these all-day performances.

A former pupil of mine and his wife were the hosts, and the other guests, besides my wife and myself, were Minister and Madam U——, and Professor and Mrs. U——. Since we were the only foreigners among the members of the party, our hostess came to conduct us to the tea-house, through which, according to the established custom, all the arrangements for tickets, reserved seats, cushions, hibachis, refreshments, and attendance, had been made. There we met the husband, who had come from his place of business; and after having tea together, we left our wraps and shoes at the tea-house, and, being provided with sandals, we shuffled in them across the street into the theatre. Four of the best boxes in the gallery, from which a better view of the stage can be obtained than from the floor, had been thrown into one by removing the partitions of boards; and every possible provision had been made for the comfort of the foreigners, who find it much more difficult than do those to the manner born to sit all day upon the floor with their legs curled up beneath them. The native audience—and only a very few foreigners were present—was obviously of the highest class, and was in general thoroughly acquainted with the myths, traditions, and histories, which were to be given dramatic representation. As the event abundantly showed, they were prepared to respond freely with the appropriate expressions of sentiment. It is an interesting fact that Japanese gentlemen and ladies, whom no amount of personal grief or loss could move to tears or other expressions of suffering in public, are not ashamed to be seen at the theatre weeping copiously over the misfortunes and sorrows of the mythical divinities, or the heroes of their own nation’s past history.

The curtain rose at about eleven o’clock; and the first play was a scene from an old Chinese novel, and bore the name “zakwan-ji.” It represented three strong men who, meeting in the night, begin to fight with one another. Snow falls, while the battle grows more fierce. Two of the men are defeated; and the victor, in his arrogance, then attacks the door of a shrine near by. But the spirit of the enshrined hero appears and engages the victor of the other men in combat. Of course, the mere mortal is easily overcome by his supernatural foe; but when he yields, all parties speedily become friends. The acting was very spirited and impressionistic; but no words were spoken by the actors. The story was, however, sung by a “chorus” consisting of a single very fat man, who sat in a box above the stage; but the language was so archaic that even our learned friend, the professor, could not understand much of it.

The second play was a version of the celebrated story of the Giant Benkei and the warrior Yoshitsune. It differed materially from the version given by Captain Brinkley in his admirable work on Japan. In this scene, when Yoshitsune and Benkei have arrived at the “barrier,” disguised as travelling priests, and are discussing the best means of procedure, three country children appear with baskets and rakes to gather pine leaves. On seeing the priests, the children warn them that yesterday and the day before two parties of priests have been killed by the soldiers at the barrier, on suspicion of their being Yoshitsune and his followers in disguise. Benkei then comes forward and asks of the boys the road the travellers ought to take. In very graceful dances and songs the children give a poetical description of this road. Benkei then takes an affectionate leave of his master, and goes up to the gate to ask for passports of its guardian. It is agreed that the signal for danger shall be one sound of Benkei’s horn; but that if the horn is sounded three times, it shall mean “good news.” Soon the horn is sounded once, and Yoshitsune rushes to the rescue of his faithful attendant. At this point the stage revolves, and the next scene presents the guardian of the gate seated in his house, while in the foreground Benkei is being tortured to make him confess. Yoshitsune attempts to rescue Benkei, but the latter prevents his master from disclosing his identity. The guardian, however, suspects the truth; but since he is secretly in favour of Yoshitsune, he releases Benkei, and after some hesitation grants the coveted passports and sends the whole party on their way.

The third play, like the first, was also Chinese; it was, however, much more elaborate. A Tartar General, while in Japan, has married a beautiful Japanese girl, and has taken her back with him to live in China. After a great battle the General returns to his home, and an old woman among the captives is introduced upon the stage to plead for the release of her son, a Captain in the Japanese army, who had also been taken captive. The old woman proves to be the step-mother of the young wife and the Japanese Captain is her brother. When the wife recognises her mother, she is much overcome, and joins in pleading for the life of both the captives. The husband becomes very angry and threatens to kill both mother and daughter; but the mother, although her arms are bound, throws herself before him and saves her daughter. The daughter then goes to her room, and according to a prearranged signal with her brother, opens a vein and pours the blood into a small stream that runs below. The brother, who is in waiting on a bridge over the stream, sees the signal and hurries to the rescue of his sister. He reaches the palace and compels the men on guard to carry his sword within; it requires eight men to accomplish this stupendous task, so exceedingly strong is the swordsman! He overcomes the Tartar General and gets himself crowned Emperor; but he comes out of the palace in time to see his sister die of her self-inflicted wound. The aged mother, thinking it would be dishonourable to allow her step-daughter to make the only great sacrifice, stabs herself and dies to the sound of doleful music long drawn-out.

During the intermission which followed this impressive but crudely conceived and childish tragedy, we enjoyed an excellent Japanese luncheon in the tea-house near by.

When the curtain rose for the next performance, it disclosed a row of ten or twelve actors clothed in sombre Japanese dress, all on their knees, who proceeded to deliver short speeches eulogistic of the deceased actor in whose memory this series of plays was being performed. The next play represented Tametomo, one of the twenty-three sons of a famous Minamoto warrior, who with his concubine, three sons, his confidential servant, and some other followers, had been banished to an island off the coast of Japan. The astrologers had prophesied that he and his oldest son would die; but that his second son would become the head of a large and powerful family. Not wishing his future heir to grow up on the barren island, he manages to get a letter to a powerful friend on the mainland, who promises that if the boy is sent to him, he will treat him as his own son and educate him for the important position which he is destined to fill in the world. But the father does not wish to disclose his plan to the rest of the family. He therefore bids the two older boys make a very large and strong kite; and when it is finished and brought with great pride to show to the father, he praises the workmanship of both, but calls the younger of the two into the house and presents him with a flute. The child is much pleased with the gift and at once runs away to show it to his brother, but stumbles and falls at the foot of the steps and breaks the flute. This is considered a very ill omen, and Tametomo pretends to be very angry and threatens to kill his son. The mother, the old servant, and the other children plead for the life of the boy; and at last the father says that he will spare his son, but since he can no longer remain with the rest of the family, he will bind him to the kite and send him to the mainland. A handkerchief is then tied over the boy’s mouth and he is bound to the huge kite and carried by several men to the seashore. Then follows a highly emotional scene, in which the mother and brothers bewail the fate of the boy and rebuke the hard-hearted father. The wind is strong, and all watch the kite eagerly; while the father reveals his true motive for sending away his son, and the youngest of the brothers, a babe of four years old, engages in prayer to the gods for the saving of his brother. The servant announces that the kite has reached the shore; and soon the signal fire is seen to tell that the boy is safe. Tametomo then assures his wife that the lives of the family are in danger from the enemy, whose boats are seen approaching the island. At this the wife bids farewell to her husband and takes the two children away to kill them, with herself, before they fall into the hands of the enemy. Tametomo shoots an arrow at one of the boats, which kills its man; but the others press forward, and just as they are about to disembark on the island the curtain falls.

On this lengthy and diversified programme there follows next a selection of some of the most celebrated of dramatic dances. The first of these was “The Red and White Lion Dance.” Two dancers with lion masks and huge red and white manes trailing behind them on the floor, went through a wild dance to represent the fury of these beasts. The platforms on which they rested were decorated with red and white tree-peonies; for lions and peonies are always associated ideas in the minds of the Japanese. Another graceful dance followed, in which the dancers, instead of wearing large masks, carried small lion heads with trailing hair, over the right hand. The masks of these dancers had small bells, which, as they danced, tinkled and blended their sound with the music of the chorus. Then came a comic dance, in which two priests of rival sects exhibited their skill,—one of them beating a small drum, while his rival emphasised his chant by striking a metal gong.

The seventh number on the programme was very tragic, and drew tears and sobbing from the larger part of the audience, so intensely inspired was it with the “Bushidō,” and so pathetically did it set forth this spirit. Tokishime, a daughter of the Hōjō Shōgun, is betrothed to Miura-no-Suké. The young woman goes to stay with the aged mother of her lover, while he is away in battle. The mother is very ill, and the son, after being wounded, returns home to see his mother once more before she dies. The mother from her room hears her son’s return and denounces his disloyal act in leaving the field of battle even to bid her farewell; she also sternly forbids him to enter her room to speak to her. The young man, much overcome, turns to leave, when his fiancée discovers that his helmet is filled with precious incense, in preparation for death. She implores him to return to his home for the night only, pleading that so short a time can make no difference. When they reach the house, a messenger from her father in Kamakura presents her with a short sword and with her father’s orders to use it in killing her lover’s mother, who is the suspected cause of the son’s treachery. Then ensues one of those struggles which, among all morally developed peoples, and in all eras of the world’s history, furnish the essentials of the highest forms of human tragedy. Such was the moral conflict which Sophocles set forth in so moving form in his immortal tragedy of “Antigone.” The poor girl suffers all the tortures of a fierce contention between loyalty and the duty of obedience to her father and her love for her betrothed husband; who, when he learns of the message, demands in turn that the girl go and kill her own father. The daughter, knowing her father to be a tyrant and the enemy of his country, at last decides in favour of her lover, and resolves to go to Kamakura and commit the awful crime of fratricide. After which she will expiate it by suicide.

The closing performance of the entire day was a spectacle rather than a play. It represented the ancient myth of the Sun-goddess, who became angry and shut herself up in a cave, leaving the whole world in darkness and in sorrow. All the lesser gods and their priests assembled before the closed mouth of the cave and sang enticing songs and danced, in the hope of inducing the enraged goddess to come forth. But all their efforts were in vain. At last, by means of the magic mirror and a most extraordinarily beautiful dance, as the cock crows, the cave is opened by the power of the strong god, Tajikara-o-no-miko-to; and the goddess once more sheds her light upon the world.

At the close of this entire day of rarely instructive entertainment it remained only to pick at a delicious supper of fried eels and rice before retiring,—well spent indeed, but the better informed as to the national spirit which framed the dramatic art of the Old Japan. It is in the hope that the reader’s impressions may in some respect resemble my own that I have described with so much detail this experience at a Japanese theatre of the highest class.

CHAPTER VIII
THE NO, OR JAPANESE MIRACLE-PLAY

The comparison of the Japanese dramatic performance which bears the name of “Nō” to the miracle-plays of Mediæval Europe is by no means appropriate throughout. Both, indeed, dealt in the manner of a childish faith, and with complete freedom, in affairs belonging to the realm of the invisible, the supernatural, the miraculous; and both availed themselves of dramatic devices for impressing religious truths and religious superstitions upon the minds of the audience. Both also undertook to relieve a protracted seriousness, which might easily become oppressive, by introducing into these performances a saving element of the comic. But in some of its prominent external features, the Japanese drama resembled that of ancient Greece more closely than the plays of Mediæval Europe; while its literary merit, and the histrionic skill displayed upon its stage, were on the whole greatly superior to the Occidental product. In the “Nō,” too, the comic element was kept separate from the religious, and thus was never allowed to disturb or degrade the ethical impressions and teachings of the main dramatic performances.

In the just previous chapter the account of the probable origin of this form of dramatic art in Japan has been briefly given: and a few words as to its later developments will serve to make the following description of some of the performances which I have had the good fortune to witness, in the company of the best of interpreters, more interesting and more intelligible. It has already been pointed out that the Nō was at first performed by Shintō priests in the shrines, and so the acting, or “dancing,” and the music are of a religious or ceremonial origin and style. But the texts of the drama called by this name came from the hands of the Buddhist priests, who were the sources of nearly all the literature of the earlier periods.

The popularity which these ceremonial entertainments attained at the court of the Tokugawa Shōguns received a heavy blow at the time of the Restoration. With all their many faults, the Tokugawas were active and influential patrons of art and of the Buddhist religion. After their overthrow, important material and military interests were so absorbing, and the zeal for making all things new was so excessive, that there was no small danger of every distinctive form of native art suffering a quick and final extinction instead of an intelligent and sympathetic development. Besides, the philosophical and religious ideas of Buddhism, as well as of every form of belief in the reality and value of the invisible and spiritual, were at the time in a deplorable condition of neglect or open contempt. About the fifteenth year of the Era of Meiji, however, an attempt was made to revive these religious dramatic performances. And since this movement has been more and more patronised by the nobility, including even some of the Imperial family, and by the intellectual classes, the equipment, the acting, and the intelligent appreciation of the audiences, have so improved, that it is doubtful whether the “Nō,” during its entire historical development, has ever been so well performed as it is at the present time. According to a pamphlet prepared by a native expert, it is the supreme regard given by the suggestion of spiritual ideals to a trained and sympathetic imagination, which furnishes its controlling artistic principles to this form of the Japanese drama.

“The Nō performance,” says the authority whom I am quoting, “is a very simple kind of dance, whose chief feature is its exclusive connection with ideal beauty, wholly regardless of any decorations on the stage. The old pine-tree we see painted on the back wall of the stage is only meant to suggest to us the time when performances were given on a grass plot under a pine-tree. Sometimes such rudely made things are placed on the stage, but they may be said to represent almost anything, as a mound, a mountain, a house, etc.; their chief aim is accomplished if they can be of any service in calling up even faintly the original to the imagination of the audience. The movements of the performer, in most cases, are likewise simple and entirely dependent upon the flourishes of a folding fan in his hand, for the expression of their natural beauty. Any emotion of the part played is not studiously expressed by external motions and appearances, but carelessly left to the susceptibility of the audience. In short, the Nō performance has to do, first of all, with the interest of a scene, and then with human passion.”

The last sentences in this quoted description are liable to serious misunderstanding; for what the author really means is unfortunately expressed through lack of an accurate knowledge of the value of English words. That anything about this style of dramatic performance is “carelessly left” to the audience, is distinctly contrary to the impression made upon the foreign critical observer of the Japanese Nō. The truth which the writer probably intended to express is the truth of fact; both the ideas and the emotions which are designed for dramatic representation are suggested rather than declaimed or proclaimed by natural gestures; and this is, for the most part, so subtly done and so carefully adapted to conventional rules, that only the most highly instructed of the audience can know surely and perfectly what ideas and emotions it is intended to express.

“[IN ONE CORNER OF THE STAGE SITS THE CHORUS]”

The regular complement of performers in the Japanese Nō is three in number: these are a principal (Shité), and his assistant (Waki); and a third, who may be attached to, and act under, either of the other two (a so-called Tsuré). [In one corner of the stage sits the chorus] (Jiutai), whose duties and privileges are singularly like those of the chorus in the ancient Greek drama. They sing, or chant, a considerable portion of the drama, sometimes taking their theme from the scene and sometimes from the action of the play. Sometimes, also, they give voice to the unuttered thoughts or fears, or premonitions of the performer on the stage; and sometimes they even interpret more fully the ideas and intentions of the writer of the drama. They may give advice or warning, may express sympathy and bewail the woes or follies of some one of the actors; or they may point a moral motif or impress a religious truth. At the rear-centre of the stage sits the orchestra, which is regularly composed of four instruments,—a sort of snare-drum at one end and a flute at the other; while in between, seated on low stools, are two players on drums of different sizes, but both shaped like an hour-glass. As to the function of this rather slender, and for the most part lugubrious orchestra, let me quote again from the same expert native authority. “Though closely related to one another and so all learned by every one of the players, the four instruments are specially played by four respective specialists, each of whom strictly adheres to his own assigned duty, and is not allowed in the least to interfere with the others. Now this music is intended to give assistance to the Shité in his performance, by keeping time with the harmonious flow of his song, which is usually made up of double notes, one passage being divided into eight parts. The rule, however, may undergo a little modification according to circumstances. In short, the essential feature of the music is to give an immense interest to the audience, by nicely keeping time with the flow of the Shité’s words, and thus giving life and harmony to them.” More briefly said: The instrumental part of the Japanese performance of Nō punctuates the tempo, emphasises the rhythm of the actor’s chant or recitative, and helps to define and increase the emotional values of the entire performance.

One or two attendants, dressed in ordinary costume and supposed to be invisible, whose office is to attend upon the principal actor, place a seat for him, arrange his costume, and handle the simple stage properties, complete the personnel of the Nō as performed at the present time.

It was customary in the period of the Tokugawa Shōgunate, and still continues to be, that a complete Nō performance should last through an entire long day, and should consist of not fewer than five numbers, each of a different kind. As has already been said, these serious pieces were separated by Kyogen, or comediettas of a burlesque character. The shorter performances, to which tickets may be obtained for a moderate fee, have doubtless been visited by some of my readers. But I doubt whether any of them has ever spent an entire day in attending the regular monthly performances of the rival schools, as they are given for the entertainment and instruction of their patrons among the nobility and literati. It is, perhaps, more doubtful whether they have had the patience to hold out to the end of the day; and altogether unlikely that they have had the benefit of any such an interpretation as that afforded us by the companionship of my friend, Professor U——. For this reason, as well as for the intrinsic interest of the subject, I shall venture to describe with some detail the dramas which I saw performed during two all-day sessions of the actors and patrons of the Nō, in November, 1906.

The first of these performances was at the house of an actor of note who, although ill-health had compelled him to retire from the stage, had built in his own yard a theatre of the most approved conventional pattern, and who conducted there a school for this kind of the dramatic art. The enterprise was supported by a society, who paid the expenses by making yearly subscriptions for their boxes. Two of the boxes had been kindly surrendered to us for the day by one of these patrons.

Although we reached the theatre, after early rising, a hasty breakfast, and a long jinrikisha ride, before nine o’clock, the performance had been going on for a full hour before our arrival. The first play for the day which we witnessed bore the title of “Taira-no-Michimori”; it is one of the most justly celebrated of all the extant Nō dramas, both for its lofty ethical and religious teaching and also for its excellent artistic qualities. The scene is supposed to be near Kobé, on the seashore. A very sketchy representation of a fisherman’s boat was placed at the left of the stage. The chorus of ten men came solemnly in, knelt in two rows on the right of the stage, and laid their closed fans on the floor in front of them. The four musicians and two assistants then placed themselves at the rear-centre of the stage. In addition to the use of their instruments, as already described, they emphasised the performance by the frequent, monotonous emission of a cry which sounds like—“Yo-hé, yo-hé, yo-hé.”

This play opens with the appearance of two characters, who announce themselves as wandering priests, and who proclaim the wonderful results which their intercessory prayers have already achieved. They then relate the fact of the battle on this very spot, in which the hero of the play, Taira-no-Michimori, was slain. So great was the grief of his wife that, when she heard of the death of her husband, she threw herself over the sides of the boat in which she was seated at the time, and was drowned. Since then, the ghosts of the unhappy pair have been condemned to wander to and fro, in the guise of simple fisher-folk. When the priests have finished, they seat themselves at the right-hand corner of the stage; and the chorus take up the story of the battle and its sequent events. First, they describe in poetic language the beauty of the moonlight upon the sea and its shore. But as they enter upon the tale of so great and hopeless a disaster, the chorus and the orchestra become more excited, until—to quote the statement of my learned interpreter—they cease to utter intelligible words, and “the Hayaskikata simply howl.”

But now the ghosts themselves appear at the end of the long raised way on the left, by which they must reach the stage; and with that strange, slow and stately, gliding motion which is characteristic of so much of the acting in this kind of drama, they make their way to the skeleton boat, step softly into it, and stand there perfectly motionless. (It is explained to us that, in Nō “ladies are much respected” and so the wife stands in the boat, in front of her husband,—a thing which she would by no means have done in the real life of the period.)

Standing motionless and speechless in the boat, with their white death-masks fixed upon the audience, the wretched ghosts hear the church-bells ringing the summons to evening prayer, and catch the evening song which is being chanted by the priests within the temple walls. As though to enhance their wretchedness by contrasting with it the delights of earth, the chorus begins again to praise the beauty of the Autumn moonlight scene. The persuasive sounds of the intoning of the Buddhist scriptures, and the prayers of the priests imploring mercy upon the faithful dead, are next heard; and at this, the chorus take up their fans from the floor and begin to extol the saving power of both scriptures and priestly intercession. And now the ghostly forms fall upon their knees, and the woman, as though to propitiate Heaven, magnifies the courage and fidelity of the hero and recites his death-song in the recent battle. At this the chorus break out into loud lamentations that the entire family of so famous a hero has perished and that no soul is left alive to pray for the souls departed. After a period of kneeling, with their hands covering their faces in an attitude of hopeless mourning, the ghosts rise and slowly move off the stage; and the first act of the drama comes to an end.

Between the acts, a man appears and recites in the popular language what has already been told by the chorus and the actors in the more archaic language of the drama itself. The priests ask for a detailed narrative of the character and life of the two noble dead; and in response to this request, the reciter seats himself at the centre of the stage and narrates at length the story of the love of Itichi-no-Tami (the hero’s personal name) for his wife Koshaisho; of his knightly character; and of her great devotion to her husband. When the priests confess themselves puzzled by the sudden disappearance of the fisherman and his wife, the reciter explains that their prayers have prevailed, and that the ghosts of Itichi-no-Tami and Koshaisho will now be permitted to resume their proper shape.

During this popular explanation, the audience, who, being for the most part composed of learned persons, might be supposed not to stand in need of it, engaged freely in conversation, and availed themselves of the opportunity to take their luncheons; while through the window at the end of the “bridge” the ghosts might be seen changing their costumes and their wigs, with the assistance of several “green-room” dressers.

In the second act of the drama, the ghost of the hero appears in his proper form, gorgeously dressed as a prince, and is joined by his wife upon the stage. He performs a very elaborate dance, and recalls his parting from his wife, the different events of the battle, his wounding and defeat, and the wretched conditions that followed. These recollections work him into a state of fury; the passion for revenge lays hold of, and so powerfully masters him, that all which has already been done for his salvation is in danger of being lost. And now begins a terrible spiritual conflict between the forces for good and the forces for evil, over a human soul. The priests pray ever more fervently, and rub their beads ever more vigorously, in their efforts to exorcise the evil spirits. The beating of the drums and the “yo-hés” become more frequent and louder. But at last the prayers of the priests prevail; the soul of the doughty warrior is reduced to a state of penitence and submission; and Itichi-no-Tami and Koshaisho enter Paradise together.

No intelligent and sympathetic witness of this dramatic performance could easily fail to be impressed with the belief that its influence, in its own days, must have been powerful, and on the whole salutary. For in spite of its appeal to superstitious fears, it taught the significant moral truth that knightly courage and loyalty in battle—important virtues as they are (and nowhere, so far as I am aware, is there any teaching in the Nō performances which depreciates them)—are not the only important virtues; nor do they alone fit the human soul for a happy exit from this life or for a happy reception into the life eternal. And as to the doctrine of the efficacy of prayers for the dead: Has not this doctrine been made orthodox by the Roman-Catholic Church; and is it not taught by the Church of England prayer-book and believed by not a few in other Protestant churches?

The next of the Nō performances which we saw the same day was less interesting and less pronouncedly a matter of religious dogma. It bore the title of Hana-ga-Tami, or “The Flower Token.” This drama tells the story of a royal personage who lived one thousand years ago in the country near Nara. For his mistress he had a lovely and devoted country maiden. Although he had not expected ever to become Emperor, the reigning monarch dying suddenly, the young man is selected for the succession, and is summoned in great haste from his home to ascend the vacant throne. So great, indeed, was his haste that he could not say farewell to his lady-love, who had gone on a visit to her parents; but he leaves a letter and a flower for her as a token of his undiminished affection. Overcome by gratitude for his goodness and by loneliness in her abandoned condition, the girl at last decides to follow him to Nara,—at that time the Capital of the country. She takes with her only one maid and the precious flower-token. After many frights—for travelling at that time was very dangerous—by following the birds migrating southward, she at last reaches Nara. Being poor, and without retinue, she cannot secure entrance to the Palace; but she manages to intercept a royal procession. When one of the Imperial followers reprimands her and attempts to strike from her hand the flower-token, to which she is trying to call the Emperor’s attention, she becomes indignant and performs a dance that wins for itself the title of the “mad dance.” In the procession the part of the Emperor is taken by a young boy; since to have such a part performed by an adult man would be too realistic to be consistent with the Imperial dignity. The attention of the Emperor being attracted by this strange performance, he expresses a wish to see the “unknown” in her “mad dance.” But when she appears, dressed in bridal robes of white and red, and tells the story of her life in a long song accompanied by expressive movements, and finally sends her love to His Majesty, who “is like the moon,” so far above a poor girl like her, and like the reflection of the “moon in the water,” so unobtainable; the Emperor recognises her by the flower-token and gives orders to admit her to the Palace. She then exhibits her joy in another song and dance, which ends with the fan “full-open,” to denote happiness complete and unalloyed and admitting of “no more beyond.”

The last of this day’s Nō performances dealt again with the power of the prayer of the minister of religion to exorcise evil spirits. Two itinerant Buddhist priests find themselves at nightfall in the midst of a dense forest. They send a servant to discover a place for them, where they may spend the night. The servant returns to tell them of a near-by hut, in which an old woman lives alone. They go to the hut, boasting by the way that their prayers can even bring down a bird on the wing; but when they reach the hut and ask for shelter, its occupant at first declines to receive them, on the ground that her dwelling is too poor and small to shelter them. At last they persuade her; whereupon she comes out of the bamboo cage, which represents her hut, and opens an imaginary gate for them. The priests show much interest in her spinning-wheel. But she appears sadly disturbed in mind at their presence; and finally announces that, as the night is so cold, she will go out and gather a supply of firewood. With an air of mystery she requires from them a promise not to enter her sleeping-room while she is absent; and having obtained their promise, she takes her leave.

The aged servant of the priests, however, becomes suspicious of something wrong, and begs permission of his masters to enter the forbidden room, since he has himself taken no part in their promise; but as a point of honour they refuse his earnest request. The servant, in spite of their refusal, feigns sleep for a time, and then when his masters have fallen into a sound slumber, he steals away to the bedroom of the old woman. On the first two or three attempts, he makes so much noise as to waken the priests; but finally he succeeds in entering the room which, to his horror, he finds filled with human bones,—all carefully classified! He then rushes to his masters and wakens them with the information that their hostess is really a cannibal witch, and that they must escape for their lives. This advice he at once puts into practice by making good his own escape. But the flight of the priests is only symbolised by their standing perfectly motionless in one corner of the stage, while the chorus eloquently recites these blood-curdling experiences.

When the witch, in her demon-like form, overtakes the ministers of the Buddhist religion, the two spiritual forces represented by the actors then on the stage enter into the same kind of conflict as that which has already been described. The demon rages furiously; the priests pray fervently, and rub their rosaries with ever-increasing vigour; for the contest is over a human soul. But at the last the evil spirit is subdued, becomes penitent, and humbly begs their prayers that so she, too, may enter Paradise in peace.

“[LEADING ACTORS IN THE DRAMAS OF THAT DAY]”

It was just three weeks later than this that I received an invitation to attend the monthly all-day performance of another and rival school of Nō. The invitation came from one of the principal patrons of this school, Baron M——, the gentleman who introduced the modern postal system into Japan; it was accompanied by the offer of his box for the day, and by a messenger from the “Nō-Kwai,” who was to explain the differences of the rival schools. The interest of this occasion was enhanced by the presence of a native artist, who was making studies for a future picture, and who kindly presented us with several sketches of the [leading actors in the dramas of that day].

It seemed that this Society is more “militant” than the other; and it is consequently more patronised by men in the army. General Noghi and Admiral Togo were mentioned as conspicuous examples of this claim. The patrons wished me to understand that these and many other examples of the Samurai spirit (the so-called “Bushidō”) had been greatly influenced by the Nō. I must confess that the explanation seemed, from the foreign and novitiate point of view, to be somewhat mystical; the influence alleged, more or less mythical. But such was the claim of the school, “Nō-Kwai.” The Nō-dance,—so they held—by its deliberate and almost motionless posturing, followed by swift and decisive action, expresses the very essence of the Samurai temper and habit. Doubtless these traits of the Samurai are given dramatic representation by the Nō, where its motif and plot are connected with some story of the ancient heroes. But whether this is proof of the Samurai spirit influencing the Nō, or rather of the Nō influencing the Samurai men, I was not able to decide. Indeed, it may easily have been one of those cases of influences which work both ways at the same time. Certainly, Japan played the great tragedy of the war with Russia, as influenced largely by this temper and spirit.

The first performance of this day bore the title of “Kusanagi,”—the name of the sword worn by the Imperial Prince, Yamatotaké-no-Mikoto. This prince was one of the most famous of those who fought against the Ainus, or wild indigenous people which, at this time, were still dwelling in the neighbourhood of Tokyo. While crossing an inlet of the sea in a storm, the wife of the hero had thrown herself into the water, believing that the sea-god would not be appeased without a human sacrifice. This deed of self-sacrifice, she, therefore, did for the sake of her husband and the Imperial family. And, in fact, according to the tradition, the sea at once became miraculously calm.

The drama opens with the usual wandering Buddhist priest, who, after introducing himself to the audience, takes his seat at the right of the stage. Soon after, the spirits of the Prince and his wife appear—he with very fierce countenance and long hair; and the wife seats herself beside the priest. But the Prince, seated in the centre of the stage, relates at length in a dramatic song the story of his battles with the Ainus. The savages fought so fiercely that it was with the greatest difficulty that the princely warrior could finally subdue them. When they set fire to the underbrush and tall grasses, it was only with the help of Kusanagi, the “sword of the gods,” that he was able to cut his way out to a place of safety. After dancing a wild dance, descriptive of the battle, the fire, and his escape, the first act of this drama comes to an end.

During the interval between the acts, the priest repeats prayers for the repose of the souls of the hero and his wife; and when, finally, they return to the stage in their true forms, they are informed that his prayers have availed, their souls are saved, and that they can enter Paradise.

It is scarcely worth while to describe the example of the Kyogen, or comedietta, which followed this drama; it had for its theme that trial of wits between the scapegrace son and the doting father, which has furnished fun for so many generations of play-goers, among many nations, from the comedies of ancient Greece and Rome down to the present time.

The hero of the second drama of this all-day’s Nō performance was Yorimasa, a general of the Minamoto family, who was the first to raise arms against the Tairas; but as he struck too soon, he was defeated on the wooded bank of the river between Nara and Kyoto. After he fell in battle, Yoritomo and Yoshitsuné defeated the Taira family. When the priest who introduces the performance comes upon the stage, he first describes his journey from Nara to Kyoto. On reaching the river Uji he dwells particularly on the exceeding beauty of the scenery. But now the wailing of a lost spirit is heard, and the ghost of Yorimasa appears in the guise of an old farmer. The priest addresses him and begins to inquire into the details of the event so celebrated in history; but the ghost replies that, since he is only a poor and ignorant peasant, he cannot be expected to know anything of such matters.

Soon, however, priest and peasant join in praises of the beautiful scenery, and speak together of the temple, whose sweet-sounding bell is heard in the distance. When reference is made to a peculiar kind of grass growing near by, the priest recites the story of how Yorimasa sat upon this fan-shaped grass and committed suicide, after his defeat in battle. The temple, whose bell has just sounded, was built in his memory. The farmer then recalls the fact that this is the anniversary of Yorimasa’s death; he is also moved to tell once more the story of the battle and to illustrate it by a dance. While the priest prays for the spirit of the dead hero, the old farmer suddenly vanishes, leaving his intercessor with Heaven alone upon the stage. The musical accompaniment, which has grown unusually weird and sweet, continues for some time, but finally dies away.

The popular reciter, or so-called “farce man,” now appears and narrates the story of Yorimasa’s exploits and death, in the language of the common folk, while conversing with the priest. During this recital, the drums are laid upon the floor, and the musicians face each other rather than the audience, in attitudes of repose. At the close of the conversation, the priest speaks of his encounter with the aged farmer, of his sudden disappearance, and of his own rising suspicion that this seeming of a mere peasant might have been indeed the spirit of the departed hero.

“LEADING ACTORS IN THE DRAMAS OF THAT DAY”

And now the orchestra begin again. The drums beat time and the flute wails in company with the weird cry of “Yo-hé” from the drummers. Soon the spirit of Yorimasa appears upon the stage; but no longer in the guise of an aged peasant; he is gorgeously arrayed in garments of gold brocade, with a general’s sword and fan; and in an elaborate dance he gives his version of the story of the battle. On being questioned by the priest, the spirit reveals himself as indeed Yorimasa, and humbly begs for the religious man’s intercessory prayers. The priest assures the warrior that his soul can be saved by these prayers. Comforted by this promise, the hero then resumes the story of the battle,—how valiantly he fought on the bridge over the river Uji; how the enemy succeeded in crossing the river and overcoming him. Seating himself on the stump of a broken tree, he mourns his defeat and wasted life in a touching poem, the translation of which is something like this:

“On the grass that is fan-shaped,

My life ended like the life of this tree;

Buried beneath the earth.

Its fruitless fate, was indeed a sad one;

For it neither blossomed nor flourished.”

The drama ends when the warrior, overcome by the memory of his own sorrows and by grief for those slain with him in battle, throws down his sword and weeps,—spreading out his fan before him.

The intervening farce represented the exploits of three blind men who had stolen a Biwa, and of a friend of the owner who tried to get it back. Then followed a slightly different version of the drama called “Hana-ga-Tami,” or “The Flower Token,” which we had already seen at the other theatre. And this was followed, in turn, by a farce which made fun of the attempted frauds of three sellers of patent medicines.

The last Nō performance of the day bore the tide of “Akogi,” the name of a sea-side place near Ise. A fisherman has committed the awful crime of fishing in forbidden waters,—in fact, in waters no less sacred than those of the fish-pond of the Imperial shrines at Ise. For this unpardonable sin he has been executed. But he has not stopped at the crime of poaching on the preserves of the most inviolable of all the temples. He has killed the fish which he caught, and has thus sinned against one of the most sacred of the tenets of Buddhism. When, then, his ghost expresses the utmost contrition and begs a travelling priest to intercede for its salvation, he begs in vain. For he is told that his sin is against both Heaven and the Heaven-descended Emperor, and is therefore beyond all possible forgiveness. At this the lost spirit goes through a wild dance, which gives a pantomimic representation of his secret crime, and of the throwing of his headless body into the sea; where “the waves of water are changed for him into waves of fire.” Any severe foreign criticism of the astonishing disproportion between this poor fellow’s crime and the punishment it brought upon him, might easily be modified by reminder of the old-time game-laws in England and other European countries; as well as of the comparatively trivial causes which have led certain Christian sects to consign their fellow men to hopeless perdition.

The most painstaking observation and subsequent reflection did not enable me to decide in my own mind between these rival schools of Nō, on the ground of their relative æsthetical merits. I had valid reasons, therefore, besides, the reasonable caution of politeness, for declining to render any decision. It was not difficult to see, however, that the Ho-sho-kwai, or more “militant” of the two schools, dealt with more discretion,—not to say timorousness,—with the religious value of the Bushidō, and with the future fate of those who, without the faith of Buddhism, are governed by its moral code. With regard to influence, in general, of this form of the art of dramatic representation, upon the æsthetical and moral development of the Japanese people, on the whole, I have no doubt of its salutary character. Like the old Greek drama, but unlike anything which we have, or at present seem likely to have, in this country, the Nō has both expressed and cultivated much of what has been artistically and ethically best of the life characteristic of the national development.

CHAPTER IX
IKEGAMI AND JAPANESE BUDDHISM

It is nearly seven hundred years since the man, known to us of to-day as Nichiren or “Sun Lotus,” was born in the obscure and small village of Kominato, Japan. While his doctrine and his death have served to render celebrated the two monasteries which are head-quarters of the sect he founded, his birth and boyhood there have not rescued this village from its obscurity or greatly increased the number of its inhabitants. Kominato lies on the ocean side of the peninsula which encloses Tokyo Bay,—the body of water with the capital city at its head and Yokohama, the principal port of the country, on its western shore. The railroad now runs part way down the peninsula, but does not as yet consider it worth while to extend itself into a region which, although its coast is interesting and picturesque, is occupied almost exclusively by fishermen and petty tillers of the soil. The case is by no means the same, however, with Minobu and Ikegami, the two monasteries which divide between them the welcome task of cherishing the bones of their saintly founder. These monasteries are much visited, not only by the members of the sect, but also by other Japanese engaged in going upon religious pilgrimages and more purely secular sight-seeing excursions. At the chief annual festivals the grounds of these monasteries, and the surrounding villages, are densely thronged with both sightseers and devotees; and indeed with all sorts of visitors. A few of these visitors, occasionally, are foreigners. I think, however, that no other foreigner has visited either of the monasteries in the same way in which it was my privilege twice to visit Ikegami, during the Autumn of 1906.

But before giving an account of this visit I wish to say a few words as to Nichiren and the Buddhist communion which has borne his name during all these centuries. As is the right of all great saints and religious reformers in the days when science had not yet claimed to have made impossible any credit given to such stories, the entire career of Nichiren was enveloped in the supernatural; it was even frequently punctuated by the miraculous. His very name, “Sun-Lotus,” is derived from a dream by his mother, in which she saw the sun on a lotus-flower and in consequence of which she became pregnant. From the first her offspring was endued with supernatural power, so that he acquired the most perfect knowledge of the entire Buddhist canon while yet in his youth. And later, when his zealous and uncompromising denunciation of the existing government made it possible for his enemies to persuade the Regent Tokimuné that the doctrines of Nichiren tended to subvert the state, the executioner sent to behead him could not compel his sword to act upon the neck of so holy a man. What wonder that the relics of so invulnerable a saint should be thought to have value for purposes of both protection and cure, even after the lapse of centuries of time!

The important facts of the life of Nichiren can be briefly told. He was born, 1222 A. D. He entered upon study for the priesthood at the early age of twelve, and three or four years later became a tonsured priest. His authorised biographer of to-day, Wakita Gyoziun, himself a priest of the Nichiren sect, in deference to modern views omits all references to miraculous experiences in the life of his master. He makes Nichiren spend all his youth, until thirty-two years of age, in study and travel consisting of journeys undertaken in various directions, visiting many eminent sages and teachers of Buddhism, in quest of the “True Doctrine.” But everywhere the wanderer found errors, heresies, and corruptions, both of doctrine and of life. The consequence was that Nichiren determined to “discard the opinions of the sectaries altogether, and to search for the Truth in his own consciousness and in the sacred writings.” This resolve led to the discovery that this truth is to be found only in “The Holy Book of the Lotus of the Good Law”; and, besides, it produced a courage that became audacity in the denunciation of existing error and civil wrongs; and, as well, a zealous confidence which generated intolerance in the double attempt to impress his own convictions and to controvert the heresies of the other sects. Opposition and persecution followed as a matter of course. While these things succeeded in restricting his work, so that when Nichiren entered Nirvana he left behind only some forty recognised disciples, they did not prevent the permanency of his impression upon his country. Fifteen years ago the Nichiren sect in Japan had five thousand temples, seven thousand priests, and more than two million of adherents.

If I were capable of expounding credibly the theology, whether more popular or more philosophical, of this Buddhist sect, I fear that I could not make it understood. For it employs that manner of clothing its conceptions in figures of speech, and of couching its syllogisms in remotely related analogies and symbols, which characterises the philosophy and theology of the Orient in general. But there are two things about the Nichiren sect to which it is quite worth while to invite attention. These are rather permanent characteristics which were impressed upon it by the character of its founder. The first is the appeal which it makes to the authority of the written word. It was originally a Protestant or reforming sect; but it became almost at once a claim to give final form to the truth in a book written by men of old time; and this scripture must not be contested or even questioned as to its right to demand submission. This sect has, therefore, been more than any of the others a church militant; and, indeed, to-day it is said to have special attractions for those religiously inclined among the military classes. But more distinctive still of the Nichiren sect is the peculiar type of its patriotism. The one tenet—it has been called the “axiom”—which the founder laid down as the basis of his life-work, was the assertion that “the prosperity or decline of the state depends entirely upon the truth or perversion of its religion.” Nichiren, accordingly, boldly accused both rulers and ruled as wanderers in dangerous and fatal errors. The truth, he held, must somehow be substituted for falsehood, or the peace and prosperity of the country could not be attained. In this belief he launched defiance at the government of the time; in the same belief he had the prevision that the Mongols under Kublai Khan would invade Japan, and it was as influenced by this prophetic vision that he stirred up both rulers and people to resist them. In the opinion of the faithful it was the prayers of this saint which induced the gods to overthrow the invaders. All through its history his sect has cherished the same militant spirit—not only in its methods of extending its own adherents, but also in respect to the watch it has kept over the fidelity of its members to the sect as a matter of patriotic interest in the welfare of the country at large. Instead of “God and the Czar,” it is “Buddha and Nippon,” which may be said to have hitherto been the motto of the Nichiren-Shu.

The manifold and rapid changes which are being effected in all departments of the life of the Japanese people have seldom been more forcefully illustrated in my experience than they were by the two visits to Ikegami, to which reference has already been made. Beyond their local colouring, which is in itself enough to make them interesting, they have a wider significance as showing how the popular forms of religion which characterise the various sects of Buddhism in Japan are adapting themselves to the exigencies and expediences of the modern time.

The great annual festival in honor of Nichiren is held at Ikegami from the eleventh to the thirteenth of October. But the night of the twelfth is the culminating period of the entire celebration. On the afternoon of this date, at the close of my lecture to the teachers of the Imperial Educational Society, two of my former pupils were in waiting to conduct me to Shimbashi, the “Grand Central” railway station of Tokyo. Here two more former pupils were met, whose kindly office was to see that a dinner should be prepared, suitable to those expecting to spend the night upon their feet in a drizzle of rain rather than lying dry and warm in a comfortable bed. Of these Japanese friends, all four were teachers; but one was a priest of the Nichiren sect who, after several years of study of philosophy in this country, had returned to his native land to found a school for the training of “temple boys.” The trains, which were leaving every few minutes for Omori, the station nearest to the monastery, were all crowded to their utmost capacity—so far as the third-class cars were concerned. But there was abundant room for the comparatively few who chose the second-class. By the time we left the train at Omori, darkness had come on—a darkness made more dense and gloomy by the character of the sky overhead, and more disagreeable by the condition of the ground underfoot. The sights which followed, however, were not easily to be forgotten. The roadway for the entire two miles from Omori to Ikegami was lined with either the more permanent shops of the village through which we were passing or with booths extemporised for the occasion, all gaily lighted with lamps and coloured lanterns, and so thronged with surging crowds that independent progress was nearly or quite impossible. Indeed, when we reached the one hundred stone steps which ascend the hill on whose top the buildings of the monastery are standing, there was no other way than to allow ourselves to be slowly borne upward by the weight of the human mass. But even here, there was apparent no pushing or rudeness of other kind.

Having arrived at the top of the stone stairway, and at least partially extricated ourselves from the crowd, our attention was directed to the students of the neighbouring Nichiren College, who were posted here and there, throughout the dimly lantern-lighted grove, exhorting the people to the religious life and expounding the tenets of the sect. But the crowd on the outside, for the most part, was not on religion bent. The Hondo, or main temple, however, was solidly packed with a body of truly devout believers, all sitting on the floor and expecting to spend the entire night in silent meditation and devout prayer.

“[THE CHIEF ABBOT CAME IN TO GREET US]”

With great difficulty we forced our way to the beautiful and new priests-house which had been built in the place of a similar one among the several monastery buildings destroyed by a recent fire. There I was received with no small ceremony, ushered into a waiting-room that had been reserved for us, and offered cakes and tea. Soon [the chief abbot and the vice-abbots came in to greet us] and to express their regret that, since all the rooms of the monastery were occupied by the faithful who had come to pass the night there, they could not entertain their guest more as they would have desired. Before excusing himself, however, the chief abbot invited me to bring Mrs. Ladd and, at some time in November, when the maple trees for which Ikegami is justly celebrated should be at their best, give them the pleasure of making us both their guests. At that future time it was promised that we should see the best of the temple’s treasures, and have the principles of the sect duly expounded. For the present, one of the vice-abbots, who seemed overflowing with religious enthusiasm, explained in a somewhat deprecatory way that, although the authorities of the monastery did not by any means approve of all which was done by the crowds who attended the festival, and would not wish to have the spiritual principles of the sect judged by this standard, they did not think it best to check the manifestation of interest. In reply I was glad to say that I had seen nothing suggestive of immoral conduct. I was indeed—although I kept the thought to myself—reminded of the answer of my Bengali friend, Mr. Kali Bannerji, who, when I asked him if the Bengalese have any proverb corresponding to ours about “killing two birds with one stone,” responded: “Yes, we say, going to see the religious procession and selling our cabbages.” But it is not in India or Japan alone that religion and cabbages are mixed up in some such way.

The promise of another visit to Ikegami, when daylight and leisure should make it possible to see the place and hear the doctrine much better, accentuated our willingness at the present time to spend one-half rather than the whole of the night in seeing the festival, however interesting and instructive it was likely to prove to be. Not long after midnight, therefore, we began the severer task of forcing our way against the crowd and back to the railway station where we could take the train for our return to Tokyo.

But, first, let us spend a few minutes in taking in more thoroughly the remarkable scene afforded by the annual all-night festival in honour of its founder whose birth occurred nearly seven hundred years ago. The stately and somewhat gloomily beautiful cryptomerias, which are the favourites for temple-groves in Japan, when seen at night through the upward rays of myriads of coloured lanterns, form a rarely impressive and appropriate vault for a congregation of out-door worshippers. No cathedral pillars made by human hands can easily rival them. The wholly frank exposure of the mixture of motives which has brought the crowds together does not necessarily lessen the complex impressiveness of the scene. The aged peasant man or woman, bronzed and bowed nearly double with years of hard labor under a semi-tropical sun, and the child-nurse with the wide-eyed baby on her back; the timid and lady-like maiden with her grand-dame or servant for escort, and the stalwart youth of the other sex who has the frame of an athlete and something of the manners of a “soshi”; tonsured priests, and temple boys, venders of eatables and drinkables, of toys and charms, of religious notions and bric-a-brac;—all these, and others, for various purposes have come to the festival at Ikegami. Preaching, beating of drums, praying and clapping of hands, the clinking of small coins as they fall into the collection-boxes, blend in a strange low monotone of sound; while the sight of some faces upturned in religious ecstasy and the sight of others gaping with curiosity or giving signs of mirth, invite our sympathy in somewhat conflicting ways. Doubtless, as we have just been told, all that the crowds do at the annual all-night festival at Ikegami is not to be approved in the name of religion, and perhaps not in the name of morality; but there in the temple built by men beneath nature’s greater temple were the “good few” of the truly devout and faithful, according to their light and to the inner voice which they sincerely believe has spoken to them, as it had spoken to their patron saint, the holy Nichiren, so many centuries before.

All the way from the foot of the hundred stone steps to the station of Omori the road was still packed with those coming to join for the night in the festival at Ikegami. And now we were frequently compelled to stop entirely and stand beside the way, in order to let pass by more than two-score of those sodalities of which the sect boasts, in all one hundred or more. There had obviously been no small amount of friendly rivalry to influence the splendid manner in which they had “got themselves up” for this occasion. With lanterns, banners, and illuminations, devised to give the impression of a superiority of initiative, so to say, and with beating of drums and much shouting and repeating of sacred formulas, they came tramping on in a succession quite too frequent and resistless to favour the speed of parties going in the opposite direction. And, although there was little of obvious rudeness, it was plainly good policy to step well out of the way, stand still, and let them pass by.

But all things have an end; and so did, although it seemed almost endless, the muddy and thronged road from Ikegami to Omori in the “small hours” of the dark morning of October 13, 1906.

It was the second visit to the monastery, which occurred more than a month later, and was made on invitation to a luncheon with him by the chief abbot, that was most distinctive and informing. The invitation itself—so our host assured those who conveyed it—was entirely unique. For, although during the last fifty years foreigners who, as tourists, had visited the monastery at their own instance, had been offered refreshments, no other foreigners had ever been especially invited as the abbot’s guests. Three of the same four Japanese young men who had formerly accompanied me on my visit to Ikegami now served as escort and companions. Although it was past the middle of November in what had been an unusually cold Autumn, the day was warm and moist, but without falling rain, as a day in June. The fields were brilliant in colouring, with the ripened rice and the great store of young and green vegetables; while the sides of the hills were aglow with the red and yellow flame of the maples, made the more splendid by the dark foliage of the cryptomerias and the pines. Large crops of daikon, lettuce, onions, Brussels-sprouts, and other eatables, gave promise of plenty for the dwellers in the humble homes beside the way. It was a good day to be alive, to have no work to do, and to escape from town.

When we reached Omori, since the jinrikishas which were to be sent from the monastery had not yet arrived, we waited in the tea-house opposite the station, where we were treated to tea and a drink composed of hot water with an infusion of salted cherry blossoms. The road to Ikegami was muddy, as it was on the night when we had tramped it to attend the great annual festival in honour of Nichiren; but how different its appearance in the sober daylight from the impression made by its lining of illuminated bazaars and its throngs of thousands carrying lanterns and banners! At its end, however, we climbed the same flight of one hundred stone steps and entered the sacred grove, now scarcely less solemn than it had been at midnight, but lighted enough by such of the sun’s rays as could find a way through the over-arching cryptomerias and maples, to note its multitude of ancient and more recent tombs and memorial offerings of stone or bronze lanterns and monuments. No person, I am sure, who possesses even the beginnings of an emotional religious nature, can easily avoid having feelings of mystery, awe, and longings for inward peace, come over him on entering any one of the most typical temple-groves of Japan.