) JAPAN AT FIRST HAND JOSEPH-I-C' CLARKE VsIa^oH OtotttcU IniuctattH ffithrarg Stljata, SJem ^ork BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 DS 810.C59""' ""'""""' """"' ''^^ mum Jl',^\ 'ian4|her islands, the r 3 1924 021 480 904 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021480904 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND THE LORD RIDES FORTH AncleDt Kttkemono, Seoul Museum. Chapter XXIII JAPAN AT FIRST HAND HER ISLANDS, THEIR PEOPLE, THE PICTURESQUE, THE REAL WITH LATEST FACTS AND FIGURES ON THEIR WAR-TIME TRADE EXPANSION AND COMMERCIAL OUTREACH BY JOSEPH I. C. CLARKE 125 ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1918 <£^ COPTRISHT, 1918 By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INO. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE Introduction xvii No "Asiatic Mystery" Here 1 General glance at the population^ — ^Men, women and chil- dren — The bar of language — Historical conditions that have formed character — Passion for education — The little farms — Mr. and Mrs. Japan and their boys and girls. chapter ii Farmers and Fishers op Japan 13 Th6y feed 56,000,000— Hard work and cheerful toil— In the rice-fields — A farmhouse — The draft of fishes — ^A fish- ing village — Professor Nitobe on the food of the people. CHAPTER III Silk and Tea Culture 25 Tender care of the silkwgj-ms — Mulberry in Japanese style — A " small " industry with great results — ^Among the tea-pickers — The magic of the plucked leaf — ^A love song in the fields. CHAPTER IV Home Life in Japan 35 Spotlessness and severe plainness the note — Houses with- out chairs or bedsteads, the fusuma, the tokonoma and kakemono— ^A wife's long round of duties — ^Marriage and mothers-in-law — No courtship — Easy divorce — What makes against social intimacy with foreigners. chapter v Japan's Educational Furore 47 A national passion for learning — 8,000,000 pupils in 37,000 schools — 7,000 technical schools — ^The universities and higher schools — Woman's grpat share in the advance. vi CONTENTS CHAPTER VI PAGE Japanese Manly Spoets 59 Baseball's growing popularity — Growing skill in and spread of tennis — Sumo and the great Japanese wrestlers — Judo, or jiu-jitsu, the famous wrestling game and its athletic votaries — An inspiring sport — The Japanese smile — Wild bouts of fencing with two-handed swords. CHAPTER VII The Gardens op Japan 70 Marking the year by flowers — The cherry festival — Flower arrangement — The whole country a garden — Landscape effects sought — Magical transplanting — Tree and flower poetry — All sorts of gardens — ^The Mitsui and Okuma gardens — Hundreds of years of tree-dwarfing — Okura's bosky retreat — ^The plaint of a lady from London. CHAPTER VIII Temples and Religions op Japan .... 86 Shinto and Buddhist — Ancestor worship — The pilgrims — In the Honden — Charms and amulets — The rope of 30,000 women's hair — Temple architecture — Kyoto and Nara — A secret of the shrines — Why you should sit — The glories of Nikko's terraced temple shrines — lyeyasu's temples and tomb — Wonders of carving — The ablutionary — The Chinese gate — The dancing priestess of Nara. CHAPTER IX The "Sending Away" op an Empress . . . 106 Tokyo's two millions and the funeral pageant of the Empress Dowager — Elaborate ceremonial and popular grief — " The foreign visitors " — ^The silent multitude — Old and new Japan in the great procession — L'envoi of the Emperor. ' CHAPTER X The Making op Gods in Japan 118 Ancestor worship at the root of Japanese religion — ^The Emperor Meiji— Why he will be a great god— The type of a glorious era in peace and war — The case of General Count Nogi — ^His glorious, tragic life and dramatic suicide — Desire of lonely immortality — How thwarted^ — The forty-seven Ronins and their undying popularity — Count Nogi's house a shrine — Tachibana and Hirose. CONTENTS vii CHAPTER XI PAGE The Theatre in Japan 137 The No and its likeness to the old Greek drama — ^A charm- ing compliment—" Hachi-no-ki " — Singing and instru- mental accompaniment — Stage dancing — Modern pieces — Fine stage settings — Dramas that play seven hours — ^The Imperial Theatre — Popular old melodrama — "The Flight of the Prince " — Suicide a great theme — " The Step Mother"— "One Sided Love" — "Forty-seven Eonins"- Ghosts — Males in woman parts — The marionettes — " The Soul of Nippon." CHAPTER XII The Fine Arts in Japan 161 An artist people — The Oriental tone — Lafcadio Beam's perception — The ancient Buddhist hronzes — ^Architectural schools — ^Historic schools of painting — The Ukiyoye — Boston's greed and luck — Art education today — The ancient style of Sansui most popular among professors — A " Western " school— A great master painter the crying want — Photographic sculpture — Wonders in porcelain and cloisonne — Embroidery in excelsis — ^A hint to our art- gallery providers. chapter xiii On Wheels in Japan 181 Delights and drawbacks of the jinrickisha or kuruma — The runners — ^A three-century old jinrickisha — ^My first ride — A procession of bobbing lanterns — ^The tic-toe of clogs — The kago or litter — The travelling chairs — The trolley cars — Crowding — Bicycles for business purposes — Automobiles rare but increasing — ^Room for a small two- seat car — The narrow-gauge on the state railways — Three classes — Humours and manners of train travel — The ready " red cap " — Natives who take up much room — The vocal appeal at the stations — Multiplicity of officials. CHAPTER XIV The Real Geisha 198 The sublimated waitress of Japan — Her dancing and sing- ing — The geisha processions — How she serves and waits — The Harvest Dance, Fisherman's Dance, Spider Dance, Lion Dance samples of her skill — A night with actors — Her training begins at twelve years old — Hard work — In public festivals — Protecting the girls — Costly acquaint- ances — Sometimes marry into society — ^Not to be confused with tea-house girls. viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XV FAOE High Lights op the Road 214 The glory of Fujiyama — Kamakura's charm — Miyanoshita — In Cha Kago to Hakone — A Hot Springs siesta — Nara, the beautiful — Kyoto the many-dowered of art and nature — ^A boat ride in the dark. CHAPTER XVI NiKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SeAS .... 228 Beauties of the Nikko country — Lake Chuzenji's rainbow waters— Osaka and its fortress — ^Kobe's Illuminated water- fall — A rest and bite at Rokotan — Miyajima and its torii in the sea — ^Fascinations of the Inland Sea — Stark majesty of the rock-sown Korean Archipelago — Curious trip to Matsushima — Extraordinary conduct of the islets. chapter xvii Japanese Newspapers 247 The Far Eastern newspaper man — ^Many college men — An elastic censorship — The first modern daily in 1871 — 3,000 newspapers now — ^Mere mushroom rise and fall of many publications — The five leading vernacular dailies — The one-cent daily everywhere — Growth of democratization — The English language press — In a native establishment — The home feeling of the American newspaper man — The editors and reporters at work — The composing room — A compositor must know and find 10,000 ideographic characters — ^A lively scene. CHAPTER XVIII Some Leadees op Men in Japan 262 Glimpses of Cabinet heads and diplomats — Parliamentary leaders and orators — Okuma, Terauchi, Yamagata, Kato, Makino, Chinda, Uchida, Ozaki — Bankers, captains of Industry — ^Men of big business and sudden uprise— Shibuaawa,, Okura, Hayakawa — Contrasting types. CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XIX PAOE Parlument and Politics in Japan .... 281 A history not thirty years old— The limit of ministerial responsibility — The Imperial Rescript — Three illustrative episodes— Yamamoto's fall — Rise and fall of Okuma— The rise of Terauchi — No so-called conservatives — Differing shades of liberals and progressives — A scene in Parlia- ment — The elections — Growth of a Conservative party, the Seiyukai. CHAPTER XX Japan and Big Business 299 Her new entry in the world's trade and toil — The nation alive with new industries — ^The government steel works — The Kawasaki dockyards — A samurai manager — Dread- naughts and merchant vessels on the stocks — The steam- ship lines — Great profits from war orders for Russia and the La FoUette shipping law — From debtor to creditor nation — Cotton spinning and cotton cloths — The great profits and the workers in the factories — Great pottery works — How American capital may find investments in Japan — The resident foreigner and the native business man. CHAPTER XXI Japan's Finance and Banking 318 Only fifty years of real banking — ^In the Bank of Japan — The nation's finances — Remarkable specialization — Cash- ier for the government — Revenues and expenditure and national debt — The banking system — ^An early American model rejected after a time-^Great work of the Yokohama Specie Bank — ^The Hypothec Agricultural and Industrial Banks — Colonial banks, Ordinary banks. Savings institu- tions — ^Thirteen million postal savings depositors — Insur- ance — The currency — Gold basis — War profits. CHAPTER XXII Korea, a Model op Colonial Uplift .... 339 Over the path of the great sea fight — Fusan — Korean peculiarities — Wonderful uplift work of Japan in seven years since annexation — Seoul, the city of the fallen dynasty and the new advance — A visit to Governor-Gen- eral Terauchi — Increasing rice crop — Afforesting the mountains — The schools and helps to all — At a technical school — 16,000,000 Koreans being led upward by a hand- ful of Japanese. X CONTENTS CHAPTER XXni PAGE Korean Palaces and Antiques 356 A visit to the palaces of tlie deposed emperors — How the fallen emperors live — A glimpse at Korea's history — The palace of Prince Li — Wonderful Mr. Suyimatsu — At the museum of antique art — Celadon pottery from the graves of centuries ago — Finding the pieces — A story of archaeo- logical detection — ^The murder of the Empress and the great abandoned palace — A melancholy sight. CHAPTER XXIV Over the Manchurian Battlefield .... 366 On 203 Meter Hill— In a droshky — Over the field of Liaoyang — Where Tachibana won deathless renown — Kuropatkin's prudence — Mukden's great struggle — Nogi's bulldog attack — The three farm houses — The final retreat — Beans, barley and kaolin blotting out the battle lines. CHAPTER XXV Port Arthur and Kiao-chow 384 Two sieges won by the Japanese — A fascinating pil- grimage over fortified hills and mighty forts that fell before valour and eleven-inch guns — The war-lessons of the fray — Russian bravery as well — The lady's slippers. CHAPTER XXVI A Glimpse of Northern China 402 Mukden and Manchuria — ^The upstanding Manchus — ^The land of soya beans — The imperial tombs — The railroad to Peking — The Great Wall — Some of the sights of Peking, the city of the dead empire and living people — The busy streets and the silent ones — ^The spirit walls — The Altar of Heaven, the temple of Confucius — ^The Lamasery — The Summer Palace — ^The Forbidden City. chapter xxvii Peking in the Heydey op Yuan 425 Why the President kept to his palace — A virtually impris- oned Vice President and an immured boy-emperor — Dr. Goodnow and the autocratic Constitution — ^The " swarm " — ^Hotel a nest of international intrigue — ^Minister Reinsch — Some Chinese portraits, the cheerful Admiral Tsai Ting Kan and the sad Finance Minister — Yuan shih Kai at close range. CONTENTS xi CHAPTER XXVIII PAGE Some anti-Japanese Polemics 441 Factors that have wrought a change — Yuan ehih Kai's death and the Chinese Republic— America's entrance into the war — -The aborted anti-Japanese attacks — An answer to an assailant — Failure of the pro-Chinese Cabal — The Lansing-Ishii agreement that closes the chapter. CHAPTER XXIX Japan at a Glance 460 Emperor — Administration — Parliament — Privy Council — The Judiciary — Religion — Education — ^Army and Navy — Topography — Climate — Population — Natural products — Manufactures — Railways — Tramways — Steamships — Ship- building — Posts, telegraph and telephones--Japane8e possessions. Index 471 ILLUSTRATIONS The Lord Eides Forth (Chapter XXIII) Frontispiece A Village Road ... Home Life The Eoofs of the One and Two-Storied Houses, Tokyo Little Shops in Kyoto .... Making Straw Mats Carpenters at Work . . . . Planting the Young Eice Cleaning and Pounding Eice . Fishing Village Snapshots . "The Ploughman Homeward Plods His Weary Way" Taking Out the Sleeping Silk-Worms Tea Picking at Uji .... Kneading the Tea Leaves ... Mr. Hayokawai's House from the Garden . The Daughters of the House .... A Model Japanese Eoom at Baron Mitsui's . Semi-European Eoom in a Eich Man's House Collegians at Study Blacksmith Shop, Engineering College . How Girls Eead and Study Professor Jigoro Kano .... Judo Class at Practice Before Dawn in Winter Time The Muscles of Champion Tachiyama . Two Younger Wrestlers at Close Quarters Japanese Fencing A Corner of the Palace Gardens, Tokyo Large Private Garden and Artificial Lake, Tokyo Lawn of Baron Mitsui's Home, Tokyo . A Small Private Garden, Tokyo The " Otenmon " Gate, Shinto Temple, Kyoto Shinto Main Temple, Kyoto .... Imperial Messenger Gate, Higashi Hongwanjl, Kyoto The Great Bronze Buddha of Kamakura, 49 Feet High xiii FACINO PAOK 4 5 10 10 11 11 16 16 17 20 28 29 29 36 37 42 42 52 52 53 60 60 61 61 66 72 73 80 80 90 90 91 91 xiv ILLUSTEATIONS PICIHO WiOZ First Terrace, lyeyaau Temple, Nikko . . 102 Yomei Mon Gate on the Third Terrace of the lyeyasu Temple, Nikko . ... .102 General Nogi . . • • • ... 126 Mrs. Nogi ... . . 126 General Nogi's Two Sons both Killed at Port Arthur 126 The Graves of General and Mrs. Nogi .126 Sword and Harakiri Knife . . 126 Gate of the Sengakuji-Temple, Tokyo . 127 Tombs of the Forty-seven Ronins 127 Scene at No Drama " Hachi No Ki " . . . . 148 Audience at No Drama ... . . 148 Mr. Baiko, as the Wife, in the " Adventurous Millionaire " 149 Mr. Koshiro, a Famous Actor, in a Favourite Part 149 Mr. Uzdaemon, as Benkei, in "The Prince's Flight" . 149 Mr. A. Kizuki (man) and Mr. Kitamura (woman) in a Modern Piece ... . . . 149 God of Wind, lyemitsu Temple, Nikko . . 164 God of Thunder, Nikko . . , . . . 164 Wood-Carving, The Three Monkeys of Toshogu, Nikko 164 Girl Before Mirror . . ... 165 Wood-Carvings, Yomeimon, Nikko .... 176 The Kuruma, or Rickisha, Japan's Great Carrier . 184 Kago, or Palanquin, Oldest Style of Carriage in Japan 184 Kago Cha, Wicker Mountain Chair, with Four Porters . 185 Humours of Travel in Tokyo ... ... 192 " The First Class Car "... . ... 193 Trials of Travel — the Snorer 193 Procession of Geishas in the Mikado's Coronation Festivities . 206 Geisha Girls Enjoying a Meal of Their Ovm Serving . 207 A Geisha Dance with the Geisha Orchestra . . . . 207 Fujiyama Reflected in Lake Hakone .... 220 Festival Car at Kyoto 221 Avenue of Cryptomerias, Nikko 230 A Temple Servant, Nikko 230 Lake Chuzeuji and Nantai San in the Distance .... 231 The Great Stone Torii at Chuzenji, Summer Cottages on the Lake Shore .... ... 231 Kegan Falls near Lake Chuzenji, 200 Feet High . . 236 Miyajima Pagoda and " The Hall of a Thousand Mats " . 242 ILLUSTRATIONS XV FlOE Miyajima Torii 242 Kowta Island, Onomichi, on the Inland Sea . . . . 243 Matsushima (Pine Island), View from Furozan . . . 243 The AsaM (Morning Sun), Tokyo, Composing Room . . 260 A Galley of Proof and a Page of " Copy " from an Editorial in the Mamiohi of Osaka 261 Marquis Terauchi, Prime Minister, 1917 268 Marquis Okuma, Former Prime Minister ... 276 Mr. Yukio Ozaki, Leader of the Chusekai . . . 276 Viscount Kato, Leader of the Kensekai .... . 276 Mr. T. Taketorni, a Leader of the Kensekai . . 276 Mr. K. Hara, Leader of the Seiyukai .... 276 Dr. Juichi Soyeda ... 277 Admiral S. Uriu 277 Mr. Buyei Nakano, President Chamber of Commerce, Tokyo . 277 Viscount Kentaro Kaneko . . . .... 277 The House of Representatives, Tokyo . . . 290 J. Inonye, ,• Yokohama Specie Bank . . . . . 310 Mr. S. Hayakawa, of the Mitsui Bank 310 Baron H. Mitsui, Head of the Great Banking House . . 310 Baron K. Okura, Philanthropist, Capitalist, and Man of Progress . .... 310 Mr. S. Asano, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha .... 310 Baron E. Shibusawa, a Great Japanese Capitalist . . 310 The Bank of Japan 326 Interior Yokohama Specie Bank, Tokyo 327 A Suburb of Seoul, City Gate in Distance 348 Korean Court Dancing Girl and Servant 348 Typical Old Korean Swell 348 Nandaimon (or Soreimon), the Southern Gate of Seoul . 349 Todaimon Dori (Street), Seoul. Running to the Eastern Gate 349 The Deposed Emperor of Korea, now Known as Prince Li, and Living in His Palace at Seoul 358 Court of General Audience in Deserted Palace, Seoul . . . 359 Palace Where Deposed Korean Monarch Lives .... 359 Ancient Bronze Buddhas from the Seoul Museum . . . 382 Ancient Korean Golden Ornaments and Pottery in the Seoul Museum 363 The Lama Tower, Liaoyang, 1,000 Years Old, which Dominates the Battle Plain for Miles 374 xvi ILLUSTEATIONS rACIMO no* Natural Cave Temple near Peng Chi-Poo, not far from Liaoyang 374 Japanese War Memorial, Mukden 375 Barracks of North Fort, Kikwanshan 392 Dead on 203 Meter Hill, December 5, 1904 392 On the Summit of 203 Meter Hill, Port Arthur .... 393 Russian Reserves under 203 Meter Hill, Port Arthur . . . 393 The Great Wall of China 412 A Street in Mukden 412 Gate to Courtyard, North Mausoleum of the Manchu Em- perors, Mukden 413 The Chinese Cart that You Meet on Manchurian Roads . .413 The Temple of Heaven, Peking 434 Hoang Lu Gate, Temple of Confucius, Peking .... 434 Among the Deserted Palaces in the Forbidden City, Peking . 435 INTRODUCTION One cannot tell when there will be books enough endeavouring to present Japan and the Japanese to the Western mind and Western appreciation. An immense change is in progress in Japan, has been progressing some fifty years, but, in a happy French phrase of paradox : — the more Japan changes the more it remains the same. Here at any rate is a book of first-hand impressions of the Bast charged with the thought that men and things are pretty well what they seem to be to the discerning, modern eye. I did not carry with me to the Far Bast the mystic sentimentalism that makes the books of Lafcadio Hearn a literary delight but renders them delusive as interpretation. In the marvellous moonlight of his style the people walk as dreaming gods in a country of wonders, the air filled with semi-visible spirits, a land of high ideals, subtle colour and endless courtesies, love filial and sexual binding all together in ideal happy relations. It is simply not so. If one takes Mr. Chamberlain's fund of secular information of "Things Japanese" where do we get? We read much to learn — scraps, not merely snips of fact, but scraps thrown at one with an amused condescension that leaves one venturing to doubt the value of the comment thrown in. And the more you learn of the Japanese the more you doubt Mr. Chamberlain. The simple narrators of travel, the writing tourists, give one scenes and passing impressions of more or less value, and many specialists in home life, the art life, the industrial life and so on have shown decided merit and keen observation. There is, how- ever, always room for another kind, and this book presents, I hope, a useful and piquant variant. It approaches its xviii INTRODUCTION subject without illusions, prepossessions or prejudices. As I had never ranged myself with the proclaimed enemies of the "Heathen Chinee" or any other Oriental, so I did not share the belief that the astuteness of the Japanese was so great that one should be careful not to treat with him on his own ground or trust him out of your sight. I had read a good deal about Japan and the Japanese : I had digested Dr. Nitobe's exchange lectures which are perhaps the clearest extant expression of Japan's claim upon the toler- ance and sympathy of modern civilized peoples, and had wondered if the nation lived up to his ascriptions. I have essayed to judge for myself. Many and great were the advantages I enjoyed. A long friendship with Dr. Jokichi Takamine, the distinguished master and dis- coverer in the region of organic chemistry, beginning years before my trip to Japan, had convinced me that there was certainly one Japanese gentleman and savant in the world. Summer neighbours we had been for many seasons in the green loveliness of Merriewold Park amid the woods and hiUs, the lakes and streams of Sullivan Co., New York, fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea and that much closer to Paradise than any known sylvan spot what- ever. His letters of introduction when I decided on the Par Eastern trip opened doors to me everywhere in Japan. Thus I met the best of their public and prominent men on a pleasant footing, and obtained a hundred facilities in looking around me. To some of my critics, notably some who might be termed professional eurasians, whether of Yokohama, Kobe or Shanghai, these advantages were held to be positive disadvantages. I was, they said deprecat- ingly "personally conducted"; I was not, they hinted, permitted to see what the Japanese disliked me to see. Well, that is grotesquely untrue. I went where I pleased and saw what and whom I pleased, including a number of the interesting European or American specimens just INTRODUCTION xix alluded to. In the course of the ensuing chapters will be found some appreciations of these gentry, who are responsible for so much mischief-making between the people of the land where they make their living and the peoples they spring from. They are of two kinds— agents of "western" mercantile firms who find their business slipping out of their unprogressive hands as they lounge and swap stories at "the club" or else writers for foreign language publications — ^many of them mere journalistic beach-combers. How it comes about that these men of fair intelligence if no particular brain-power, should grow, the longer they live in the Far East, to be more and more inimical to their surroundings is an interesting study in its place. Their comment anyway becomes transparent. For one thing, and this has its truly comic side unlike other of their outgivings, they deeply resent any warm expressions regarding cherry-blossoms or wistaria, the gardens, the temples, or other externals of Japan. I have not raved over these admirable things, but a later, self- elected antagonist, by name Patrick Gallagher, writing things about somebody else, turned to me once, fairly choking with rage that threatened to explode his corporal being, and just could burble : ' ' Oh, the cherry-blossoms and wistaria!" Could anything be more crushing? I found the Japanese people as I describe them, very normal human beings with likes, dislikes and leanings much like other people. Their mystical quality which so many try to discover is simply a persistent belief in a spirit world and an underlying love of Japan. These are the growth of ages, enforced and inculcated by nearly three centuries of isolation before the present half -century or so of taking on the Western civilization. I found the people as a whole models of industry and good conduct, markedly united in their family bonds, bearing and forbearing with their neighbours, very democratic in spirit. What one could not XX INTRODUCTION see at a glance, and what indeed it needed special informa- tion to discover was that the opening of Japan to foreign trade and modern ideas was as valuable to her on the side of personal conduct and social relations as in scientific knowledge imparted and adapted. The Japanese writers tell us how perfectly Japan was and had been functioning in government, education and social life from the palace to the hovel, from the capital to the smallest rice-village when Commodore Perry thundered at the gates of Nippon. It is all quite true, but is not all the truth. Thorough as the Japanese habit of mind is, the feudal system of the Tokugawa stamp was perhaps as perfect a social machine for its purpose as the world has seen. But what was its real purpose? To keep the Tokugawa shoguns in power and to keep the people down. Not to speak of the ages before shogun lyeyasu, the Japanese peasant, tradesman, soldier from that time on had not only his dress, food, housing and range of marrying prescribed for him, but he had been born a spy upon every- body around him. In taking meticulous precautions against evasion of taxation or in throwing dust in the eyes of the tax-gatherer, the finest deceptions were perpetually practised. Society was perfectly organized, but no one trusted another. The theory of authority was that this mutual distrust helped to forbid conspiracy. In other words, the people were trained in a sinister way to act to their own enslavement. The downfall of feudalism changed all this. At least it left the ground open for a thorough change upon the uprise of the Empire under the Meiji emperor. And change did come. Personal, neigh- bourly intercourse became more free : spying and carrying tales fell into disrepute : deception was harder to kill. In nothing has the Western regime brought progress more truly to Japan than in the growth of open, fair dealing and mutual neighbourly trust. As perhaps everybody knows INTRODUCTION xxi now, the business man in the eyes of the samurai stood lowest of human beings short of the outcast eta. The fighter, the farmer, the craftsman stood ahead of the trader. The children of the nobles, of the gentry of the sword were taught to scorn money. It was supposed to reach them in sufficing quantity from the taxes in the shape of salaries and allowances: it was criminal, certainly disgraceful to add to their share by barter. What a change was wrought by the new regime ! Business men lifted their heads : the samurai entered office and mart ; the learned professions as they grew became a new aristocracy of brains; the poli- tician was born ; there as elsewhere, a necessary but mostly lamentable intermediary between the voter and the law- maker. Bankers, lords of finance, arose with new wealth and new responsibilities. Captains of Industry, the super- men of business and manufacture, took on new eminence. Factories rose up employing hundreds and thousands; schools and colleges innumerable sprung into being teach- ing the new learning to the nation. The resultant Japan and Japanese were what met my observation, and a brave picture it made and a brave pic- ture of a re-created nation it remains and shall remain. I did not have the clue at first to some of the shadows of the picture. As I gained the needed knowledge my admiration rather deepened than otherwise at the social and moral uplift that had already taken place, comparing it with the wholesale darkness that preceded it. That in such large movements we often take on the undesirable with the desirable is unfortunately true. If politics conceived in scientific terms and laid down in guarded rules devel- oped corruption, Japan has small disadvantage as compared with other nations of greater numbers, wealth and cyclical possession of representative institutions. By way of com- pensation for these new evils she is developing a passion for reform and public honesty that should make her the xxii INTRODUCTION stronger for the humiliations endured and for the offenders morally strangled and actually driven from public life, while a fairer, broader Japan rises all round to the level of its great opportunities. The wave of anger that swept over Japan upon the discovery that a German firm had been able to carry the customary bribery with which it carried on its enterprises into the heart of the Japanese Navy was really inspiring to see. Victors of two wars in which naval hero- ism, efificiency and devotion had been lamps of effulgence, it was heartrending to the nation to learn that the filth of the German briber had befouled the great service led by the immortal Togo. No wonder a ministry toppled when the thunder of national anger, as from the heights of a moral Fujiyama, rolled down over the land. Quite as interesting to the student was the perception of these incidents of national uprise as any observation of the externals of scenery and life-movement. They inter- ested me enormously. Japan out of her isolation was not only seeking and welcoming new knowledge and new arts and machinery of life, but, because of her success in apply- ing these Western novelties, found herself facing the heavier problems of the older world that she was copying. A people ruled sternly from above through a selfish, feudal aristocracy found the democratic doctrine going ahead of any "concessions" that the restored Imperial power felt itself impelled to make. Those thus set free wanted to be freer still, and if European socialism made small progress, it was because it could so far show no shining national success to inscribe on its banners. In all other respects, however, a democratic radicalism was making itself felt. The call for an extension of the suffrage was one. I met a group of young scholars without votes who talked bitterly of the deprivation. The hunger for public office — for living off the public funds — was not acute but growing. The commercial and industrial opportunities were too many INTRODUCTION xxiii and too good to make the slim governmental salaries at- tractive : yet even these seemed riches alongside the meagre wages of teachers and professors. All this, like the question of the low wages of the factories, will cure itself in time, for all my observation shows, and history generally sustains it, that there will be no backward step in the democratic advance in Japan. It may bring down the thirty per cent annual profit of the cotton factories to one-third of that, but it will come all the same. The Imperial prerogative must be held in view in con- sidering Japan's right to political progress. It grows, however, plainer every day that the deep respect and strong personal affection for the Imperial ruler is sharply sepa- rated in the public mind from actual politics. No con- ceivable revolution for at least a century to come could threaten for a moment the safety of the throne. I can imagine any of a score of Japanese gentlemen of my acquaintance rising indignantly to say that not in a century of centuries could the throne of Nippon be put in danger. It was merely my way of stating the humanly if remotely possible thing in a world where nothing so far has con- tinued without change or the threat of change. The truth is that the relation of throne and people in matters political must be further worked out in Japan before the ' ' angle of repose" is reached. The Terauchi premiership of 1916 and its sequel in the Parliament indicate the intensity and possibly the duration of the struggle. It took over two centuries and a half in England to fairly settle the point between Crown and ruling class on the one side and the people on the other. Although the first shock resulted in bringing the king to the headsman's block in 1649 A.D., reaction and retrogression long intervened. The elim- ination of the Crown, save as a symbol, from the Parlia- mentary struggle was practically accomplished over a century ago, but it is not a decade since the barrier of the xxiv INTRODUCTION House of Lords was broken down when Lloyd George imposed the veto of the House of Commons upon the lords spiritual and temporal for all time to come. The components of the "ruling class" were somewhat alike in England and Japan — the Crown, the nobles from whose families the captains of army, navy and church were largely drawn; the soldiers who (of whatever origin) had risen to high command, the great industrial captains given titles, the law lords likewise of either noble or plebian origin. In Japan it is called the Bureaucracy : in England it was simply "the upper classes" implying those risen to command from the lower ranks as well as the hereditary eaters of the people's bread. The Japanese peculiarity lies in the fact that four great clans — the Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa and Hizen — mainly the first two, were imposed upon the modem official class when the feudal system was broken down. It is somewhat as if, following the wars of the Eoses in England, the sprigs of the houses of York and Lancaster divided all the valuable offices in a government promoted, say, by, a "Wat Tyler of the fifteenth century. That under this survival in office of the clans — Satsuma in the Navy; Choshu in the Army, and both in high cabinet places — the nation made its astounding half-century of advances, including the victorious conduct of two great wars, goes far to justify it. But the ambitions born of democracy will suffer no prescription o:E class or clan to thwart them. "The blood of the clansman is no better than another's: if he could rule and win, why not 11" may be taken as the summary of the later popular creed. It is a most interesting struggle. In one aspect an ultimate victory for those who oppose government by the Bureaucracy would have a startling parallel in Japanese history, namely the relegation of the Imperial power to something resembling its status in the days of the shoguns. It sounds like an insensate reversal INTRODUCTION xxv of all that has taken place since 1853: but is it? The Imperial family, the Imperial legend lived on as the thing imperishable through epochal wars and changes of eighteen centuries. It could live on with a Premier substituted for a shogun, and far more surely in safety to the state, in honour and dignity and racial appeal, because the Premier must continually have the popular backing or fail and be succeeded by the statesmen with a better claim. The shogun, on the other hand, concerned himself about the people not at all, but much about gathering riches and honours and power to himself and transmitting them to his family. Academic may well be these speculations, and certainly premature for many a day. Bureaucracies always die hard : they have more lives than a cat, and more shapes than Proteus, and they do of necessity include men of brains and resource, and, what is important in all struggles, — the habit of command. Note the case of Germany where the autocratic military Bureaucracy after leading the people into the quagmire of slaughter fights as hard to hold its own. Elsewhere will be found some observations and brief appreciations of the striking personalities whom I en- countered among the leaders of Japanese thought and action. It will strike the reader that they include a great many barons, viscounts, counts and marquises, but one must remember that these titles, not at all indiscriminately issued, are simply the tag of distinction which the Imperial government affixes to the life-work of the efficient con- tributors to the progress of Japan. To any people with an aristocratic past and present such additions to the titled are commonplace, and often have no other foundation than a generous, if calculated, loosening of the purse-strings in behalf of party or at best of national needs or philan- thropies. The English peerage simply reeks with these "lords," While they have in Japan as in England, xxvi INTRODUCTION Germany, Italy, Spain or Russia an implication that they make for a permanent alignment of the ennobled with the conservative and royal or imperial social and political forces, they cannot insure it to the second generation in this modern, open-eyed world of ours. The standing of author, poet, artist, scholar, professor or scientist is some- thing that is not conveyed from above. I did not set foot in a royal palace or meet a single member of the Imperial family — much less catch even a glimpse of Their Imperial Majesties — during my stay in Japan. The widely-lamented death of the Empress Dowager had imposed a year of court-mourning and abso- lute seclusion — a custom applied in Japan with an ancient rigidity hard to imagine as of the present. I did indeed see a figure in uniform pass in the night at the impressive funeral of the great lady, and was told it was a royal Prince. No doubt it was. For other reasons, mainly for want of a common ground of useful conversation, I met but few of the higher clergy whether Shinto or Buddhist, though witnessing high religious functions of both creeds. What part they are taking in the new Japan and its making was not made wholly clear to me. One got widely the impression that the "modern" Japanese did not highly consider the work- ing of religious forces in a modern state. But there are shrines and temples everywhere, and priests and bonzes abound, and in every home in the land is a votive altar to its dead who live in loving memory. Christianity, despite the enthusiasm and costly upkeep of the various missions, makes little progress. A people without fear of the world to come, looking back to its dead generations for spiritual aid, and having a fairly good moral code of its own is hard to interest deeply and emotionally in the Christian story. The missionaries who back Christianity with medical practice, with the teaching of English and other accom- INTRODUCTION xxvii plishments make the best progress. In the view of the humble native a religion that carries these blessings in its train must be of great value on its own account. So the story of the intervention of the Crucified between man and his demons becomes more credible to him: he is, besides, long familiar with the idea of sacrifice unto death for others. It is the high point of his traditional belief. The Salvation Army system of proselytizing has its attractions in Tokyo as well as in Liverpool or Gotham, but the agency that wins most sympathy for Christian effort is the Young Men's Christian Association — faith and works are so conjoined. They attract a good attendance of natives for the privileges are many and the helpfulness many- sided. What percentage of real converts they make it is hard to say. I remember dropping in on a Y. M. C A. house at Dairen, the flourishing port on the Port Arthur peninsula. I was asking about attendance and so on of the bright-eyed young lady teacher I found there. "Oh, we have a good many." "And converts?" "Well, we have one man here. He fought through the Port Arthur siege and was in many battles. I think, Oh (fervently) I think I am getting him to see the light. ' ' I saw the fellow doing some easy job inside the house. He looked at me sullenly with an evil eye. I would not appraise him high as a Christian. Still, the success of the Y. M. C. A. such as it is, has stirred to imitation the Buddhists whose church is disestablished in Japan and lives now upon the direct support of their co-religionists. They have instituted the Y. M B. A. and are pushing it with some vigour in the large cities. Indeed another sign of life in Buddhism is its outburst of missionary zeal. Although Buddhism came to Japan from China, the Buddhist clerics and scholars of Japan consider that it has lost its vigour, its purity in China. They accordingly pla,nned to plant missions in China, and induced the Okuma ministry to make their pro- xxviii INTRODUCTION tection a clause in the treaty with China. The result was amusing. No clause of the treaty was more bitterly fought. The entire phalanx of Christian Missionaries in Peking, bishops and all, arose and tore the air with male- dictions upon such a proposition. "The Japanese Bud- dhists would be Japanese spies, their temples Japanese forts, and besides they were idolaters. Yah!" It must have gladdened the heart of Beelzebub to hear these hot- gospellers delivering resounding thwacks upon the shaven skulls of the suppositious Buddhist invaders. Rather sur- prised at its heated reception the Japanese dropped the clause. The episode should live long among the curiosities of missionary ethics. Those who are good enough to follow me through the chapters of my story will note that to me the pulse of the whole people is more interesting than the pulse-beat of this man or that. To see a people at work and at rest, at play and at prayer, tilling the soil or tending the sUkworm holds interest of an undying kind, for these things all must do who earn the right to live, and how they are done among a strange people of another civilization older than our own has a sweet instruction. My quest took me into many odd places of which record will be found, and to others about which I will not write. "Have you seen the Reserved District?" is an eager ques- tion asked by scores with that sort of mind. I saw it, but it belongs to the pathologist, not to me. We can throw no stone from that sad quarry at Japan. Give me the picture of the home, the school, the farm, the college, the factory and I will tell you what the people are. The great war in Europe with its millions of fighting men clashing with a vehemence and skill and prodigality of weapons, engines and munitions of war on the earth, in the air and under the sea; in its astounding spread to vast territories involving campaigns over Asia and Africa, INTRODUCTION xxix involving America, and drawing its battling forces from the five continents, at once brought in Japan. As the ally of Great Britain and the friend of China, Japan at once attacked the German stronghold of Tsingtao in Kiaochow and reduced it by an easy application of the lesson it had learned at such cost before Port Arthur. For the rest its Navy rendered account of German warships in Eastern waters and seized the German islands of the Southern seas. Its destroyers patrol the Mediterranean to effective pur- pose. Its allies did not lack for soldiers in the opening yeslrsf of their European campaigns or could not conven- iently transport them to the field. Perhaps they hesitated to bring into the Western theatre the paladins of an Oriental race. At any rate much may have been proposed but nothing was done. But a new need arose. Europe taken aback by the German long-prepared onslaught found herself imperilled by a shortage of weapons and munitions. So a loud call was made for these. England and France turned to the United States with colossal orders for horses, guns, shells, textiles and foodstuffs. Russia turned to Japan. Secure in her isolation Japan, although a party to the struggle, could devote almost her entire manufacturing capacities and energies to answering Russia's call. The port of Vladivostock and the Siberian railway gave her an ample route to the Crimea, Moscow and Petrograd. As with the United States in the case of France and England, so with japan in the case of Russia, a tidal wave of gold came to her. Upon Japan's finances the effect was prodigious. Long a debtor nation struggling bravely to pay her way and laying upon the future a percentage of the cost of her wars and her progress, she emerged from a couple of years of her new, war-won prosperity fairly in the creditor class. Outwardly it has meant a number of industries working double tides, more banks, more incorporations, higher XXX INTRODUCTION wages and more millionaires. Differing from the case of Germany, England and France, it has brought no change in the way of life, the commercial current, the aspect as a whole of Japan. And she awaits the end of the great war-story with equanimity. The war changes none of the Japanese pictures drawn in this book. Tokyo is as con- sciously busy and gay and Osaka as variously occupied and care-free as ever. More money is coming in, and the people are "feeling their oats" and spending more freely. Exteriorly that is all. On my return home the desire to interpret the Japanese and their civilization to America took an unexpected bent. Our Captain Hobson had long been crying out at what he called the hostility of Japan to the United States, making it the foundation for his appeal to build an enormous navy. This hostility was, I knew, wholly fictitious and the Hobson reasons for it wholly unreasonable, but it had not been without effect. Hobson had been snuffed out by con- stituents who were tired of his noisy ineffectiveness, but his evil work had not been eliminated from American minds. And then came another "irritant" — a campaign launched from the China of Yuan Shih Kai at the cost of Germany it is charged, and using a group of writers from the English-tongue press of China and employes of the China ministries. To Yuan it was a roundabout method of countering on Japan for the wound his pride had sustained in the Tsingtao-Shantung negotiations. In some incom- prehensible way it was hoped to pave the way for a great American loan to China. Its first idea was to paint Japan as all trueulence in its relations with China, but it failed utterly to attract attention and was barren of results as it was of good faith. On the heels of this failure, another attack from the same source was soon started, but this time it was a direct attempt to embroil Japan with the United States using any and every disreputable dodge and trick INTRODUCTION xxxi known to disputation, hesitating at no garbling or false implication that would make a seeming point. It met with plentiful rebuttal from a score of Americans and Japanese qualified to deal with it. Something of a summary of my share in the controversy will be found toward the back of this book. A third attack, supplementary to the second, was made by a writer for a widely circulated American weekly, a supposedly- impartial man who fell under the spell of the Peking-Shanghai group during a month or two of residence in Peking. It was just Captain Hobson and Mr. Rea over again with nothing new to say in the region of fact, but, if possible, more in attack on Japan's motives and purposes in Asia and of incitation to America to go to war with Japan. The whole miserable abortive anti-Japanese job is now well down the wind. Its protagonists have gone about other business. The new face of revolution and counter- revolution in China has introduced a bewildering element to these gentry, and meanwhile there is emerging a better state of mind for the understanding of Japanese policy and practice in China's regard. The magnificent outburst of feeling in America which greeted the coming of the Imperial Japanese mission, headed by Viscount Ishii, is a sure proof that the era of the falsifiers is practically closed and that a new, kindly liking and honest understanding have taken its place. I have actually no guide to Japan's policy toward China that is outside the reach of any trained observer, but it seems plain on its face. As I see it, and as Viscount Ishii explained it at length, Japan wants to live on the best of terms with China for many reasons. Leaving aside the sentimental reasons of neighbourliness and common race put forth, now by the Japanese Premier, now by a Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs, it is plain that Japan seeks xxxii INTRODUCTION as large a share of the inland trade of China as she can secure. To obtain that two important things are neces- sary: — first, China must be friendly; second, Japan must be in accord with the other great Powers in their attitude toward Chinese territorial integrity and the bases of ' ' open door" and "equal opportunity." In the latter the task of Japan is not really a difficult one. It is mainly to stand simply and honestly by the present trade conditions of which no complaint is made. As to the relations with China herself, Japan has already established her position in the Manchurian peninsula, Manchuria proper and Inner Mongolia, and in none of them be it recollected is Chinese suzerainty denied, though the leaseholds are long, China meanwhile profiting enormously in taxes and customs dues from Japanese enterprise in these territories. The disposi- tion of Tsingtao will be settled when the European war is over. Particularly since China broke with Germany, it is a fair guess that Tsingtao will revert to China at the cost of an indemnity to Japan for the cost of the conquest. What then remains to be reached? An era of good feeling or something approaching it with China's government and people. To this Japan must bring the highest consideration and tact. Heretofore, governmental China using under- hand intrigue — ^the weapon of the weak — has continually nettled Japanese pride, and called forth harsh rejoinders. If there should arise a moderate, self-respecting Chinese government not given to the methods of Machiavelli, Metternich and Talleyrand, saying openly what it wants, it should and I believe will meet a Japan anxious to placate and co-operate. This is all inside the sentimentalism of common race and destiny and the virtual sovereignty of Asia. Cousins can be pretty bitter enemies as the "Gott strafe" episode between England and Germany goes to prove. China may not have well-organized armies, but she has the boycott. INTRODUCTION xxxiii On all these factors the entrance of the United States into the world-war with all her power and all her resources exercises a profound influence. It inevitably presents a nation armed to the teeth, her whole population thrilled to a long dormant emotion. Tactically it aligns the United States with Japan. Her quarrel with Germany is as much our quarrel as is the rage for battle with which our men are going to France. We shall presently have two million trained young soldiers in the field and perhaps twice as many under arms on American soil. We are building a really great Navy. We are straining every iron nerve in our body corporate to launch a great mercantile marine. Our great stretches of coast are to bristle with great guns. We are to grasp at mastery of the air. We are pouring our treasure into the gigantic hopper of war, lending huge sums as well to our belligerent allies. A besotted mili- tarist, autocratic government in Germany has done all this for us, to its own ultimate destruction. In doing it Germany has solved our Far Bast problem for us. The conversion of our long inertia into sudden dynamics is a marvellous thing. We are on the war-map for keeps. The no me impune lacessit of old Scotland is hereafter an obvious motto for the prickly cactus of America as it is of the thistle of Scotia. But we have no passion for con- quests. We are simply achieving what Japan has achieved, namely an inviolability of our homeland, and setting a mighty guard over our belongings. How it applies to our Far Eastern problems it is easy to forecast. It will change nothing in our trade purposes, but will bring us greater facilities in that trade. We shall overcome the destroying effect of the La FoUette Seamen's Act without stretching a hand with that end in view. Our post-bellum mercantile fleets will be large and afloat on every ocean. Japan has a powerful army and an efiicient fleet. Should either or both be the American bogey? No man xxxiv INTRODUCTION of common sense who views the present giant struggle will deny the possibilities of unexpected hostility between any two or three or four powers, but he must think twice or thrice before he finds a valid reason for Japan crossing five thousand miles of water to knock with iron knuckles at our door. No need to discuss the physical difficulties of armed transport: no need to drag in the Philippines or Hawaii or the little island dot of Guam. In war the tail goes with hide. It is the will to war that is necessary. I do not believe that it exists in Japan even in the irrespon- sible quarters. It is absent from the government. I am willing to rest on that statement. In war-times war-talk. Somewhere in the chapters that, follow I speak of a band of Tokyo university students who in the Nietsche spirit go swaggering down the hilly street. They are simply feeling happy and proud in the American college fashion of saying to all and sundry within sight — "we are the stuff!" They, feel the lift and urge of the time. It may mean baseball with Waseda or defiance to the habitable world. Down in Hibya Park — ^which for our purpose may be likened to Hyde Park in London or Tompkins Square in New York — ^they have a place where crowds of the commonalty suddenly meet, and condemn somebody or something. There are two or three yellow journals that live on exciting stuff. From none of these agencies for letting off popular steam has come any mani- festation that I know of wishing Japan to begin bleeding itself on American lethal weapons with the view of con- quering or injuring America. There are American theorists who insist that Japan could at any time block the Panama Canal. There were possibly Japanese who flirted with Huerta. The Japanese in the United States — save one unfortunate orator who does not know the difference between a figure of speech and a threat — are too much in love with their habitat and the consideration they INTRODUCTION xxxv enjoy, to wish the dogs of war set loose between the country of their birth and the United States. There is the great bond of trade in which Japan profits heavily and besides a hundred bonds of good feeling between the traditional and the present epoch of goodwill. They count for something still in this battling world. But the great, the alluring thing is the hearty union of these two strong nations to make the Pacific Ocean a great pathway of peace. In the upshot of the world-war, that is something that every friend of America and friend of Japan must keep in mind. It is much easier to foresee a future thereon founded than on any outgrowth of the bitter fruit of war. War has never been within miles of a reason- able possibility between us for all the mouthings of the petty malignants and interested provokers of conflict. The memorandum of agreement between Viscount Ishii and Secretary of State Robert Lansing disposes of all possibilities of quarrel between the United States and Japan over the question of trade in China. It will be found in full in the chapter "Some Anti-Japanese Polemics." Destined to live among our notable state papers alongside the famous Root-Takahira Gentlemen's Agreement as to coolie emigration, it will be indispensable to all students of international problems in the Far East. What may more graciously be quoted here is the message sent by President Wilson to His Majesty, Emperor Yoshi- hito on the first day of December, 1917, putting the high seal of courtesy upon the formal utterance of diplomacy : — "Your Majesty's cordial message is most gratifying to me and the people of the United States. I wish to express to Your Majesty the heartfelt pleasure we have had in welcoming your distinguished representative. Viscount Ishii. The result of his visit will be as happy and as xxxvi INTRODUCTION permanent as the enduring friendship of the peoples of the United States of America and Japan. "Permit me to hope that Viscount Ishii in returning to his native land will bear with him memories of his visit as delightful as those he left with us." With me the reader is to see something far removed from these debates of policies and nourishing of dislikes — the picture of an ancient people grown young as they may be seen at work, at play, at prayer and at home. It is some- thing engaging and gracious, worth while, and full of promise. JAPAN AT FIRST HAND CHAPTER I NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE General glance at the population — Men, -women and children — The bar of language — ^Historical conditions that have formed character — Passion for education — The little farms — ^Mr. and Mrs. Japan and their boys and girls. Where is the "Asiatic Mystery"? I had been warned that I would never be able to understand the Japanese; behind all appearances was the mystery of the East im- penetrable to Western eyes and understanding. My observation leads me to the reverse conclusion. The Japanese people are first of all intensely human as we understand the word, with virtues and frailties like our own, with our motives of action and directions of interest. They laugh heartily ; you can hear it all around you. They weep too, but it is a point of honour or custom or etiquette to do it secretly when they can. Sometimes, alas, they must out with it. I was at a marionette show at Osaka. The marionettes are one-third size and very lifelike, but they are ma- nipulated by men standing behind them in full sight of the audience. It was a mediaeval play of Masaoka, a mother of Spartan quality who, out of loyalty to her prince, felt obliged to stand by dumb and stoical while her babe was murdered before her eyes. Soon the murderers departed, leaving her alone. The mother rose warily, looked about stealthily, then sprang suddenly upon the body of her child and hugged it to her breast. The crowded audience, men and women, 1 2 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND burst into tears. Sobs were heard on all sides, and the group of geishas, twenty or more, seated near the stage and looking like a great bed of chrysanthemums, sobbed the loudest of all. Never was there more weeping at "Madame X." Yes, they weep. They love and toil, toil unremittingly. They honour their parents; the family is a living unit, with quite a domestic government arranging things in an orderly way. They are intensely patriotic. They are markedly polite and hospitable. They are scrupulously clean; every Japanese takes a hot bath daily ; they dress decently. They are thrifty ; they are keen traders. They are imbued with the spirit of progress. They learn quickly and study with avidity. In every walk and department of life and activity they are a nation ardently attending school. There are nearly 56,000,000 of them in Japan proper. There are nearly 10,000,000 households. Japan has often been called "the paradise of children" — everywhere chubby smiling infants on the backs of mothers, sisters or brothers; everywhere free-limbed merry boys of school age in peaked caps, long blue-white speckled blouses, and schoolgirls in light-toned kimono with gay-coloured obi, like gambolling flowers along the streets and the poorer streets too. As in America the great school possibilities are open to every child. There they are, then, as I have seen them, optimism possessing them, their faces smiling as they face the future — very like what we would like any civilized nation to be. And where the "mystery"? It is not a mystery, which, according to Lord Dundreary, is "the sort of thing no fellow can find out." To my thinking it resides in our own ignorance. You do not understand a line of minor action ; why, for instance, a Japanese merchant is slow, apparently dilatory, NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE 3 in completing a deal that is perfectly clear to you and (you think) should be perfectly clear to him. You growl at the "mystery" of the Asiatic mind. Now, the Japanese under- stands all the business points, — be quite sure of that, — ^but he has people to consult of whom you do not dream ; people who have to say about the ways and means. He is careful, cautious, with a long-inherited suspicion in trade. He has to close up one door before he opens another. It is his custom, born before banks, railroads, telegraphs, telephones. He will manage it in time, in fact he is learning fast. All this may be exasperating, but it is no mystery. The old complaint of the Western traders that the Japanese was the most difficult of men to trade with and not to be compared with the bigger of the Chinese traders, is heard no more. With the coming of "big business" the Japanese traders have broadened out and speeded up. Their ships are on every sea, their enterprises in every land. At the present rate of expansion, particularly since vast profits have come to her from the great war, Japan's commercial man is more likely to overdo than underdo in seeking his share in the marts of the world. Then his language is extremely difficult; it is a formi- dable barrier to complete interchange of thought with the foreigner. The Japanese thinks and talks his own lan- guage rapidly. Few indeed of them ever learn to talk rapidly in any foreign language. The students of English in Japan are numbered by tens of thousands. Many talk it with fluency. One not so fluent said of his friend, who was also studying English, ' ' Iwamura is in advanced stage of composition." Naturally the majority are in the early steps of conversa- tion, though their reading is apt to be curiously advanced. I recall one Tokyo business man begging me for a little light on "the English" of one of the late Mr. Synge's Irish 4 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND dialect plays. Well, this language barrier, believe me, accounts for nine-tenths of the "Asiatic Mystery," and a certain Western superciliousness or at least incuriosity, not to say scorn as to racial lines of thought and belief, accounts for the balance. Eeligious beliefs, or what stands for them, individualities as shaped by immemorial custom or as rounded and hardened by more or less oppressive governments in the past, are the real factors in the difference in surface char- acter between the men and women of races and nations. In the broad, deep, essential things there is little or no dif- ference between white and yellow. That is not much of a discovery, but it is well to keep it in mind. For a poet and romancist like Kipling, whose rhymes become the watchwords of half-baked amateur sociologists, the "Asiatic Mystery" is a splendid bit of machinery. It gives a tingle to his stories and an edge to his rhymes. It is at the same time the piffling apology for Britain's gross ignorance of the inner hearts of the hundreds of millions she has ruled in India for a century and a half. What Shakespeare said of the Jew of three hundred years ago is quite as true of the other Orientals of today in their native plains and highlands. True, it is only a degenerate Tommy Atkins who in the brick wilderness of Bethnal Green or the grogshops of Ratcliffe Highway longs to be "somewhere east of Suez," where "there ain't no Ten Commandments, and a man can raise a thirst." But his precise longing, be it noted, is not to be among the millions on millions of abstemious, toiling, saving, simple peoples native to the East, but among the hell-holes of the arid coasts where the white men of the lowest order spread drunkenness, vice and disease in pursuit of "a good time" at a nominal cost. Neither with Kipling nor the French mystic lyrists nor the German wanderlust mystics let us train when we think A VILLAGK ROAD o I H W M H H r w d o w NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE 5 of the East, least of all when we write or think of Japan. Here is a virile nation, organized and still organizing and evolving at a rate at once incredible and without precedent. Differing from us in a hundred superficial ways, they are fundamentally of the same human kith and kin and flesh and blood. They have had scores of observers from many foreign nations, who have noted, some of them acutely, some stupidly and perversely, some entertainingly if inexactly, the facts in the case of Japanese progress in the last fifty years. I have read many of them, but it is easier for me, and perhaps better, to give my own impressions for what they are worth, based on what I have seen and heard. I do not expect to treat the Japanese, if you please, as anything but men, women and children of the world, with- out mystery or undermeaning, even the mild old priests or bonzes at their mountain temple doors or village shrines, much less the manufacturer of pottery at Kyoto or cotton cloths at Osaka. Japan has a clear history of twelve hundred years of organized government and industry and art. Like other nations of island habitation it has history of a kind going back to a misty time long before that. Not all its govern- mental experience was happy. An imperial or kingly power gradually reduced to nonentity by vigorous satraps calling themselves regents or shoguns or whatever, ruling directly through powerful local princes called daimios, was the prevailing aspect for a thousand years. Bloody inter- necine feudal wars were frequent, with great devastation of property. The imperial house ruled first in Nara, but after a couple of centuries removed to and remained practically cloistered in Kyoto, but the ruling satrap families had their capital at Kamakura, and later at Yedo, where the Tokugawa family held sway. Under the stern rule of these Tokugawa 6 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND shoguns the feudal wars were ended and the feudal system perfected. It began in 1573, had consolidated itself after the bloodiest battles in Japanese history by the early years of the seventeenth century, and lasted until 1868, giving Japan 250 years of peace and isolation. Art, literature, architecture had from the earliest times percolated steadily into Japan from China, mostly through Korea, its nearest neighbour, and Japanese ingenuity and taste in some cases improved on, and in all cases modified, the originals. It received Buddhism in this way, giving to its religious life moral precepts and colour. Its own Shinto cult, reaUy a liturgical expression of its primitive ancestor worship, survived, in some eases mingling with Buddhism. I am taking this glance at Japan's earlier history that one may envisage the nation as it moved toward our own time through the minutely organized social conditions under the Tokugawa shogunate. Outside of the always bright aptitude of the race, it was the stern social Toku- gawa life-rules which prepared the way for the marvellous advance made since Commodore Perry's ships went thither in 1853 with an insistent message of good wiU to Japan from the advancing Western world. The provincial daimios, ruling under and by leave of the shogun and held in subjection to him by an iron grip in a velvet glove of high courtesy, held similar iron rule in their own dominions. Each feudal lord had an army of knights or samurai, armed and highly trained to war of the ancient t3rpe, each entitled to wear two swords, and bound to strict honour and manly virtue by the celebrated code of Bushido— the Was^s of the Fighting Man. They were troubadours of a kind. They read the Chinese classics. They did no work. They had been wisely taught by their lords to scorn money and despise trade. They were the gentlemen of the country. Modern Japanese NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE 7 translates them as "retainers"; they were, for comparison, more truly knights and squires, and are the fine ideals of the romances that attract the young moderns of Nippon. The other and not so attractive or picturesque side of it was the pressure of these high lords and doughty warriors on the masses of the people, divided in descending grades of scorn into farmers, artisans, traders. For every village, every family, every trade rigid rules prescribed what one should wear, eat and do ; what size of house even one should build or own. Taxes of all kinds were paid to a decimal. The common people not only were made to live within the lordly rules, but they themselves made more rigid the rule of the family council. They formed a huge, constantly grinding machine threshing out wealth for the lords and salaries for the samurai. They became spies upon each other. Neighbour distrusted neighbour. For them there was no Bushido. No samurai could be successfully called to account for assault upon them. If this moral bondage has still left its trace upon char- acter, and, with the non-observant, has aided in creating the bogy of "Asiatic mystery," it is well that it should be understood. But a great change is going on in national character as well as in national work. On the fall of the shogunate and the restoration to power of the Mikado, a new national consciousness was born and a white-hot patriotism, an unparalleled devotion took violent possession of young and old. Thus, a nation-wide tide has for over half a ■ century been sweeping over the people, and the resulting imperial commonwealth is today as inspiring a sight as the world offers. The mass is not all leavened, but it is still leavening fast. Under ancient imperial form, administered practically by a democratic Parliament, it has set a most complete educa- tional machinel'y in motion, from universities to primary schools, that functions with precision and turns out most 8 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND creditable classes of all grades and of every technique who will further transform Japan. It has fought, as we all know, two great foreign wars to astounding victory. It supports a colossal army and a great navy, and until the commerce and tremendous industrialism brought to it by the world-war poured gold by the hundred millions into its lap, staggered a bit under the load of war debt and the huge cost of military and naval upkeep ; but then as now its optimism, its faith in itself and the future are thrilling things. Trade — stimulating trade at home and finding roads for trade abroad — is the heart of its greatest problem today. Stimulating agriculture by scientific aid; for instance, in- creasing the rice yield in some districts thirty per cent.; bettering tea culture, improving silkworm culture, study- ing soils, trees, grains and clays for the potter, frank recognition of difficulties and limitations, clear admission that Japan, for aU the wealth potential that it holds, is comparatively a poor country, are encouraging factors for well-wishing onlookers. In its natural outreach to control its own trade at home, and under its great necessity to make new trade abroad, it is not likely to lessen the number of its critics, but it pushes on serenely. The vigour of the movement is warranted by trade conditions and Japanese knowledge of trade currents, but it presses daily for solution, and with results. Of the natural beauties of Japan this is not the moment to write, and, besides, much in good English has there anent been written, until even the sovereign beauty of Fujiyama with its silver crown has come to be a little dreaded. But town and country as they show the trace of man are a never-ending surprise and often a delight. The crowded streets of the towns and their ever cheerful, ever busy comers and goers and doers are to me of unfailing interest. It is all so quaint, so intimate, so open to the NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE 9 world. There are big important buildings here and there of Western type, but the long lines of the business streets of low, two-story houses or even in the poorer districts of one story that stretch on each side of the roadway with their many-coloured perpendicular banneret signs in ideo- graphs are the real Japan. About two dozen kinds of shops and Stores repeat them- selves endlessly. Glass fronts are rare ; most are open, the wares on a floor or a platform little raised above the street level, the owner — shopman or shopwoman — squatted smil- ingly and watchful over the display, which may be number- less varieties of the baker's art, artistic groupings of fresh fish or vegetables or crockery or wooden clogs, a florist, a bookstore, a firewood store, a little tea house, an occasional saki (wine) shop. Then the carpenter sits on the floor sawing and planing, the blacksmith squats while his helper stands and swings the sledge, the carver works demurely squatted in a corner, the watchmaker squats on a neat carpet. Babies abound, the mothers carrying them about on their backs; sometimes crowing, sometimes asleep. After school hours boys and girls dart hither and thither. Men come and go looking sometimes like Roman Senators, sometimes like monks, but all naively Japanese. Rickishas (kurumas they call them here) trundle past at a jog trot, the little patient runners bent forward, warning people with a soft "Hi! Hi!" You have missed something? Horses. You are in a land of man-power. There are bicycles. In all Tokyo of 2,000,000 inhabitants there were in 1914 only 700 automo- biles. Men drawing two-wheel carts with impossible loads toil past. I saw thirteen men drawing a large roller along a wide newly paved avenue ; a boy filling a small watering cart with a bucket fastened to a pole and then sprinkling it over the roadway. I saw a man dragging a heavily laden 10 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND cart over a bridge, his wife with a baby on her back pushing behind, and their son of about ten years also pushing — the whole family at it. They carry great loads, too, on long poles resting on their shoulders with a great basket at either end. In city or country it is the same. There are draught horses and horses for the plough, but very few. In town or country the driver leads but never rides. "Why not?" I asked. "Because all his neighbours would say, what an unkind man," was the simple apparently sufficing answer. It was at the Tokyo exposition that I first saw great crowds of the holiday-seeking Japanese. Such a gathering of jolly, wondering humanity — the whole family, from grandfather to infant in arms, all brought along, thousands and thousands, eating, drinking tea, smoking ridiculous little pipes. And the exposition itself, like other exposi- tions, the marvel being that everything was made in Japan, from pottery to pearls, even to fine mathematical instru- ments and dentists' chairs! At night there is little glare, except where the "movies" have taken up their stand by the theatres, where great arc lights flare. All the rest is dim and picturesque, with hanging lamp or lantern ; and they go to bed early. You think afterward of the lines of busy streets, and you are aware that the roofs stand out as the most pictorial thing after the varied shop fronts. In Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, all the larger cities, the little houses have heavy rooftrees, curved roofs and wide, over- hanging eaves, all in tiles of a leaden bronze; nearly all detached, they break the skyline finely. In the country villages nearly all the roofs are of thatch of barley or rice straw, and the heavy rooftree is often represented by a heavy box of wood filled with earth and overflowing with flowers — a pretty custom surely. We will not talk of the 1. THE ROOFS- OF THE ONE AXD TWO-STORIED HOUSES STRETCHING MILES IN THE BUSINESS STREETS OF TOKYO 2. LITTLE SHOPS IN KYOTO MAKING STRAW MATS CARPENTERS AT WORK THE MOTIONS OF SAW, PLANE AND ADZE ARE TOWARD THE BODY NO "ASIATIC MYSTERY" HERE 11 homes of luxury now, the palaces of sovereign or nobles or the palatial homes of the rich, but hie us for a glimpse of the ordinary landscape of agricultural Japan. Here is a marvel of farming, or is it gardening? There are 5,500,000 farming households, and it will astound the American farmer to learn that the average small farmer has one cho of land, or about two and one-half acres ; that many have only half a cho, and manage to live on that. The arable land, only fifteen per cent, on the main island of Hondo, for the most part lies in narrow valleys between fantastic, volcanic hills. Every available inch of the bottom land is divided into tiny squares, like a great scrap bag counterpane of living green and yeUow and silver, for rice that is grown in watered spaces and barley or wheat that is grown on strips raised a foot or two above the rice fields. And every farmer has his little patches of this or that, sometimes five little crops including tea. And on the hillsides the land is terraced at infinite pains often to the very summit, and all alive with green and gold. And who is the Japanese who does all this in city and field, in shop and factory, and studies in university and laboratory, in fishery and in mine, in battle on sea and on land, in bank and counting house? Why, he is a sturdy, slightly gold-tinted man, of oval head, black hair and black or dark-brown eyes. His average height is five feet two to three inches. He is sometimes as tall as six feet, some- times as short as four feet nine inches. By and large he is a man all through, stout of leg, full of chest, fairly strong- armed, often with small hands and taper fingers. He is lithe and capable of prolonged effort. He is generally a good-looking, open-faced chap. There is a clear, long-headed aristocratic type, very distinguished ; there is a strong, square face with high cheek bones who may be business man or may be politician of a new and not always pleasant type. There is a coarse-faced, thick- 12 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND lipped type. There is a distinct, more delicately formed but not at all weak scholar type in rapid formation. Finally his wife and his daughter are something shorter in inches than he is ; but they have definite charm that is not his. And thus, side by side, let me leave them for the present, Mr. and Mrs. Japan with their hopeful boy in peaked cap and white-speckled blue blouse and charming little flower of a daughter — the types of the coming Japan. They are not without their faults, but they have shining virtues. CHAPTER II PARMBES AND FISHERS OP JAPAN They feed 56,000,000 — Hard work and cheerful toil— In the riee fields — A farmhouse — The draft of fishes — A fishing village — Professor Nitobe on the food of the people. Yamato is an ancient poetical descriptive name for Japan — ^the Mountain Land. The series of islands that compose Japan proper lie in a curve off the eastern coast of Asia. There are 518 of them, great and small, but the three main islands cover 127,744 square miles, and these are the real Japan, or Nippon, as the Japanese prefer to say. They contain the great cities and ports and the bulk of the 56,000,000 population. All that Japan has achieved of greatness has come out of these three islands; indeed, nearly four-fifths of it out of Hondo, the largest island, and it is with that we have to deal. Of its population three-fourths are on the land and the balance in the towns. Upon the able shoulders of this peasantry has rested from the beginning the feeding of the nation as well as, at the last analysis, the providing of the hard coin and the men with which battles are fought. When you go up and down the land with wide-open eyes your wonder grows that this can have been accomplished. Of the entire country only fifteen per cent, is arable land — about 20,000 square miles. The islands are volcanic; a glance almost anywhere will tell you that. Pantastic peaks rise on all sides, in groups, in ranges, or isolated, like Fuji, the greatest of them all. Valleys are almost 13 14 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND always narrow. There are a few plains, mostly coastal, where the wash down from the hills has raised the land precariously above the sea. It is a land of earthquakes. It has active volcanoes ; one devastated an island in Kyushu and covered the town of Kagoshima with ashes in 1913. Professor Omori, the great seismologist of the Tokyo University, assured me that Japan as a whole was reasonably sure to remain above water, although the great quake line of fissure extends along its Pacific side, as it does along the Pacific coast line of the American continents from the Aleutian Islands to Chile. Yet to the unaccustomed eye the sharp unrounded points, the precipitous cliffs, the clear trace of lava flows, the masses of broken stone found under the top soil of many hills, looking like wholesale rock eruptions of yes- terday, seem to portend similar intestinal disturbances of Old Earth for tomorrow. Still, one takes some comfort in the thought that this doubtful appearance of stability has been preserved for some two thousand years of history and tradition, and hence one plucks up courage to order one's breakfast for the morrow without too much mistrust. The peasant has no such misgivings ; for him they are the eternal hills and he uses them and the fertile valleys for his purposes with a delightful rustic faith. His skies are oftener clouded than clear. One day in three of the year it rains, so he has generally water enough for all purposes. With his ready adaptability he is everywhere harnessing the falling water to make electric power, and hence it is no longer a marvel to see whole towns and villages using electric light. In spring and early summer the hills fairly gush with water. The summer sun is hot and so the con- ditions for rice growing are widespread and excellent. Rice is the foundation of the food supply of the Japanese. This he supplements with barley and beans. Poorer he perforce eats much, millet, a less acceptable grain. FARMERS AND FISHERS OF JAPAN 15 Wheat he grows in small but increasing quantity. With these and a respectable array of vegetables he eats fish. Meat is rare indeed. A chicken perhaps for a feast day, but these when he raises them he prefers to sell. He drinks tea. To pass through the country as I did in springtime, particularly where the valleys widen, as in the lands near Nagoya, is to see the country^ blooming like a garden of the Lord. The little parallelograms, rhomboids and hexagons of cultivation on the slope of every hill and on terraces often to the tops of the hills made delightful patterns of colour. They do not cultivate where the hill slope is more than fifteen per cent. In the lower lands the peasants were working in silvery water to their knees in the paddy fields getting ready for the rice transplanting, while hard by a little square of the tender sprouts in vivid emerald-green was watched by a boy or girl to keep off the birds. It was not as though any one considerable stretch of soil was given to one crop. These little farms, it must be remembered, scarcely ever exceed two and a half acres; they are often only one acre and they are not always in one parcel. The lot of land may be made up of three or four separate patches. In many a sunlit patch I have seen little rice fields and little barley fields side by side — the barley rows raised a foot or more above the rice field and picked clean of weeds, which they religiously save and bury as fertilizers. Running down the length of the patch were double rows of mulberries and on a little sun-fronting knoll was the rounded dark green of a score or so of tea plants and women with straw hats and baskets picking the leaves. Here and there on the hillsides were masses and tufts of brick-red and scarlet wild azaleas, while on the steeper hills and dotting the valleys small groves and groups of dark young firs and pines and the soft brpwnish-|reen of the 16 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND feathery bamboos — the fine lady of grasses — helped to fill the picture. Amid the little oblongs of rice and barley some were sown with a cloverlike plant full of blossoms of a bluish pink, very gay to the eye under the grey and white of the sky that here and there gave a glimpse of blue, complementing the yellowing barley, the dark green of the tea shrubs and the rich brown of the mountain rising clear. The farmhouses cluster in villages, few living isolated as our farmers love to do. These sad grey hamlets, roofed in grey thatch, stand of tenest against the skyline of a low hill. They live thus together for company and convenience, and in older days for protection. For 300 miles up and down Hondo you can see this minute cultivation in action and may never encounter even a ten-acre field. I have seen such farming subdivision along the gentle rolling hills of Normandy, but in bottom and upland there great meadows spread out green, with well-kept cattle browsing. Not here. No cattle are in sight ; an ox at the plough perhaps in every three miles. Very few horses, but on every road and every path the peasants, men and women and sturdy boys, all carrying burdens to or from the fields, else drawing the universal two-wheel cart drawn or pushed by two or three. I wanted to get closer to this life of toil, and many a ride and walk and rest our little party took along the roads and through the villages, chatting with the peasants, men and women, and finding them all at first rather shy of foreigners. But the dullest creature can recognize a friendly face, and in the end we won welcome everywhere. Here is a village where little one-story houses are strung along the road, maybe twenty of them, and a few standing further back. Here where the good wife welcomes us let us enter, first telling you that the habit of squatting on the floor removes PLANTING THE YOUNG RICE CLEANING AND POUNDING RICE inSHING VILLAGE SNAl'SllOTS FAEMERS AND FISHERS OF JAPAN 17 tLe necessity for chairs and tables, and a purely Japanese house in any grade of poverty or luxury rather takes you aback with its absence of furniture. Instead, except in the extremely rare cases of great squalor, the floors, raised about a foot above the ground level, are covered with soft, smooth straw mats, on which with various changes of appurtenance you sit, read, write, work, eat, drink and sleep. A very rich man showed me his bedroom; it was empty save for a small screen that stood folded against the wall. In the walls are closets behind the sliding doors, and servants transform it to a sleeping place in a twinkling. Hence as we entered this humble village three-roomed hut with a small barn at the back we did not look for furni- ture. Here was a family of seven at its evening meal, father, mother, son, daughter-in-law and three children, and a cheerful, courteous, pleasant lot they were. They were seated variously on the edge of the mats along the passage that ran through the house, their feet on the ground, or squatted comfortably in the room, their bowls of rice and small cups of tea beside them. The mother was helping them to hot miso (bean) soup and they were eating as if they enjoyed it. In the centre of the nearest living room was the fireplace, a two-foot square opening in the matted floor, half filled apparently with ashes, but with a red charcoal glow show- ing in spots, over it standing a steaming kettle, for they were just going to brew the tea. But the solid cooking was not done there. There was a rice pot over a fire in the passage. They had a plate of small brown bean cakes in little lumps and the children were munching them. Would I try one? Of course I would. It was a little tough and tasteless but seemed to be good rich food. That pleased them all immensely. They talked of the crops and the weather as farmers do everywhere, with- that constant 18 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND desire to have rain, sun and wind more accommodating than they usually are. "And how much do you get from your farm?" I asked. The mother replied with a proud toss of the head of conscious prosperity, "Twenty-five bales of rice and forty bales of barley." Yet that was not so much for a family of seven working their own ground. It would mean at that time about $190 in American gold. Of course they grew a good deal of their food, but they had to buy a deal, a cheaper rice, for instance, than they were growing, all the fish and clothes ; perhaps some fertilizer and the hundred little things an active household needs, and then some taxes. This was a prosperous farmer in Japan. There are perhaps 5,000,000 such. Anything better than the confident, courageous spirit of these people it would be hard to meet. They talk with enthusiasm of their hopes and their accomplishments. They had no horse, no cow, some chickens. They had enough. They worked from sunrise to sunset, using every- thing, wasting nothing, with meticulous care of every scrap. When not at work in the fields they make things for field work at home. The women when not at work on the farm cooked, mended, made garments, cleaned, swept, using home-made brooms. The round of work for the year is set like a ritual — the succession of crops, the sowing, the hoeing, the weeding, the building up of soil in very wet lands for wheat or barley. Men and women work; children too when not at school in the village. Women mostly reap the crops with a hand sickle, the boys beat the ears off in the fields, the men all take turns in cleaning, all hands help at the hauling. It is not toil but victory. Let us look a little closer at this hard-won wooden home of toil which still shelters content, though it may not FARMERS AND FISHERS OF JAPAN 19 harbour there forever. On the left of the passage already mentioned are a little storeroom, a large pot and a small stove and places for kitchen work. On the wall near the storeroom is the little sacred family shrine, a small bottle with a flower in it, some tablets to the dead of the family, some offerings of food and drink for the departed. Touching, surely, these simple peasants, loving, honouring and, alas, fearing the spirits of their family dead, as if they were the dead of an imperial line. On the right of the passage were the living rooms, the mats yellow with age and use, but unbroken. The further room contained a chest of drawers to hold the best clothes of the family, the tokonoma or recess in which hangs a scroU picture called the kakemono. It was a best room, as one would say, where the women of the house would receive their women friends. The real family life went on in the two rooms that formed an L about the best room. In the second room along the passage there were a low dresser for the family crockery, a little foot-high table about eighteen inches square in a corner and perhaps half a dozen faded floor cushions. It is in those two rooms, their feet toward the fire, that the family spread their comfortables at night and sleep the sleep of the weary but hopeful. So you see the furniture required is not enough to keep the Grand Rapids, Mich., factories going. Hung all about the storeroom and the barn were the implements and devices for agriculture, the heavy single- bladed hoe for digging, the three-prong hoe for breaking the soil, many sizes and kinds of sickles, knives, pruning hooks, all with straight handles and curved blades set at right angles. In the barn were the huge wooden mallet and the great mortar for pounding rice, a yoke, mostly used by women for carrying burdens on the back, straw sacks with cups for rice, fibre raincoats, flails pf mpst ?incient make. 20 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND It would seem that they made by hand every rope and wooden tool they used in their work. In the yard at the back was a well. Against the wall of the house was the large tall tub in which the whole family would presently take their hot water plunge ; the fire already alight beneath it. Let us hope they enjoyed it; it appears to be one of the great solaces of Japanese life. In many inland villages this was repeated with some variations, but as grain is one side of Japanese alimentation and fish the other, and the fishing industry along all the coasts of Japan employs nearly a million men exclusively engaged in it and a million and a half partly engaged, it is worth attention. The yearly catch reaches $40,000,000 and marine products $20,000,000 more. No one who has sailed along the coasts of Japan can dissociate them with the swarms of fishing boats large and small in groups of twenty or more — ^there are over 400,000 of. them — ^lug sails, sloop sails or junk sails set, or men toiling at the oars up to fifteen miles out, and, with some of the larger boats, further still. I recall my surprise at passing one craft with seven stalwart men, naked except for loin cloths, standing on a platform, three to a side and one at the stern, and handling large flat sweeps, the oars finding leverage on a sort of outrigger platform above the rail. It was a splendid primitive picture of superb, bronzed bodies in powerful muscular action as the heavy, clumsy boat responded sluggishly to their efforts. It might have been drawn off this same coast a thousand years ago. There seemed to be no trace of a sail. What a canvas it would make for a lord of the brush as it swung through the heavy seas that slapped and foamed about its blunt, strong bow ! Of late years the catch off Japan has been falling some- what, but off Korea since the annexation the gain has been very great. There ^re hundred? of varieties of edible fish < >< o o o w z < M o t3 o CM w a H PAEMBES AND FISHERS OF JAPAN 21 taken in these waters. Of these the tai — associated with our bream — ^is king. Its meat is as fine as sea bass. It runs up to three or four pounds. It is used not only cooked in all ways, but also for the sliced raw fish served at the tables of the well-to-do, where it is eaten with shoyu gauce quickened with horseradish, making for many a refinement on the oyster. I enjoyed it that way, indeed in all ways. The sea takes heavy yearly toll of the fishermen. Storms come up suddenly, and small boats are swamped and larger boats are engulfed with aU hands. In drowned and missing, that fearful word for the farer of the sea, over a thousand perish every year. It is one of the hazards of the game. So fishermen's widows abound in fishing vil- lages, and orphans too. But with the latter the case is not so bad. As a hardy young fellow said to me in a little fish- ing village called Kotsubo, or Red Bluff, near Kamakura: "We have as large families as we can, because the boats must be manned, and when a man is lost at sea everybody wants to adopt his children." "Entirely for the future profit in it?" I inquired. "No, not all; we are a small village here and we have pity on the misfortunes of our brothers." So be it — pity first and profit later. The village in question is a good type. It nestles in a little bay between two promontories. The little beach is not more than a quarter of a mile long and bows inward in a graceful curve, the frontage of sand rising piled up landward till it makes some twelve or fifteen feet above the water. The houses number over 250, most of them little more than unpainted wooden huts whose sides and roofs had weathered to silver-grey. They are perched in a long street on rising ground with six or seven persons to a house, so the inhabitants number about 1,500 and send 70O men to sea in 250 boats. They have also some hal^- 22 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND dozen good-sized schooners that go as much as 300 miles after large fish, "as far as the Benin Islands." With the exception of the crew of a schooner lying beached, whose sides they were washing, the male adults of the village were in the fleet of boats that lay from a mile to five miles off shore. The women, busy one way or another with the fishing business, were everywhere visible, cheery and active, gossipping over their shoulders as they carried baskets or babies on their backs. The little chil- dren took great joy observing the "big foreigner." The scene seaward was full of beauty, the spread of ocean in every shade of green deepening to the blue and purple beyond. Over the headland in the distance high in air shone Mount Fuji, still wearing her silver crown of snow against the soft blue sky, with Enoshima Islands below and to the left. I got a few small photographs and I wanted another greatly. As I turned toward the houses I saw approaching a handsome-faced woman of the village, unusually tall, a fine form showing through her close-clinging, breeze-blown drapery of some soft texture that wrinkled as she moved in wonderful little rippling folds. Her step was long and bold and her ankles bare. She bore a basket on her back and in her hand a taU staff. Some soft white cloth was around her hair. She made a surprisingly beautiful pic- ture as she came royally over the sands — ^something of the dignity and much of the figure of the Venus de Milo. I reached for the camera, but a number of elderly women sitting in a group — envious old persons — shouted something to her. She turned startled eyes on me ; ran over to them and slipped down to the sand. AlaS! Off the beach were a score of great baskets six feet across in which they keep live fish. Sardines are netted close in ; octopus are taken in earthen jars into which they crawl and from which they are loath to come out and be ^aten. T?ii FARMEES AND FISHERS OF JAPAN 23 is found fifteen miles out, and suzuki, also a good fish, not so far. About Sixty fish dealers take the catch to town, showing how every industry is subdivided in Japan. Professor Inazo Nitobe, who lectured in America so suc- cessfully two years ago, is living here in Tokyo now. As part of his general high scholarship he is a great authority on alimentation, and I cannot do better than close this chapter with the result of a talk with him on the foodstuffs of Japan. "It has been said that the Japanese nation, and in par- ticular the workingman, lives on rice and that this is the national staff of life. While it is true that in quantity rice forms the principal part of their meals, still the Japanese worker could not do without 'miso,' a ferment of beans and barley usually served in the form of soup with some pickled white radish called 'daikon.' "The workingmen say that no matter how many bowls of rice they may consume at breakfast, without miso they would not be strong enough to do a hard day's work. This, it has recently been discovered, is based on scientific grounds, for without miso their breakfast would consist entirely of hydrocarbons, starchy heat-producing elements, and the miso being composed of fermented beans and barley supplies the nitrogenous elements that give strength and energy to the human frame. "Fish both cooked and raw is also an important food element that the Japanese requires for his lunch and supper. This, like miso, is a food that supplies the nitroge- nous elements, and so in the Japanese dietary there is preserved a proper balance between the starchy and the nitrogenous foods. "Living on these foods develops a great liking for daikon, the pickled white radish, something that foreigners find unpleasant to eat. It has been found to contain a good deal of diastase, which is a great aid in the digestion of 24 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND starchy foods, as it assists in the conversion of starch into sugar, which is very necessary when rice forms so large a part of their meals. Green tea, without milk or sugar, is consumed at every meal, and this is undoubtedly the purest and least harmful form of tea. "From the foregoing it can be seen that the Japanese have unconsciously been living on a very well balanced diet that supplies the food elements in proper proportion. The average diet of the Japanese workingman would, therefore, be something as follows : "Breakfast — Rice, miso, daikon, tea. "Lunch — Rice, daikon, fish, tea. "Supper (the principal meal) — Rice, daikon, vegetables, fish, tea. ' ' Cups of green tea are consumed during the day. "Much of the Japanese food is flavoured with 'catsu- bushi, ' a piece of bonito fish that is steamed and dried until it is as hard as wood. Small shavings are made of this by drawing it over a machine that looks something like a plane that is used for smoothing lumber, with this difference, that the machine is turned upside down and remains stationary while the piece of 'eatsubushi' about four or five inches in length and about an inch thick is drawn over the knife. The flavour that the shavings give to Japanese dishes is much liked by the people, but it seems a little monotonous to the foreigner. "This, with 'shoyu,' a sauce made from salted and fermented barley, in taste something like a mild Worces- tershire, forms practically the only flavouring used in Japanese cooking. So the Japanese have in all probability adopted the simplest and least modified form of preparing and serving food." Wherever they get it or however they compound it, their food furnishes them lots of steam, with enough surplus to cover their bones nicely. CHAPTER III SILK AND TEA CULTURE Tender care of the silkworms — Mulberry in Japanese style — A "small" industry with great results — Among the tea-piekers The magic of the plucked leaf — A love song in the fields. My lady clad in shimmering silk and serving tea makes a gratifying picture of our civilization at its daintiest. Admiration flutters around her ; my lord Love sits smiling at her feet ; and every one of the nine muses has something to say about her. Her native grace, her charm of manner, her gentle tones, all count for something, nay, for much; but romance rides round her to the whispering rustle of her gown, and a spiritual essence floats from the tea urn to the drinker whom it subtly intoxicates. Silk! and we are off to Samarcand, to Damascus, to Ispahan, to China, to Japan — ^the light of the harem, the dark of the moon, the long caravan, the trudging camel, the streaming banners, the imperial halls and dark liquid eyes gleaming — the glistening delight of the luxurious. Tea! And we are equally off on wings of fancy to China, to Japan, to India, to Ceylon with a vaporous charm that seems instinct with the home joys of the world. And here we are in Japan, of which silk is the great staple for export, and which raises it in the homes of 175,000 families to the value of $76,000,000—316,000 bales — in a year, and the product still increasing. Silk raising is such a dainty business ! Long experience proclaims that it is most successful when conducted on a small scale. However well modern machinery and organi- 35 26 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND zation may deal with the cocoons, reeling the silk, twisting the yarns, weaving the fabric, the production of the cocoons must remain the task of widely scattered households. In effect, silk culture is generally the important by-work of the farmers engaged in it. In former times they spun the silk themselves ; now they generally sell the cocoons and leave the after-process to larger, concentrated concerns. So the farmer, his little wistful wife, his dainty daughters and his sons become the admiring slaves of his royal high- ness the silkworm. First must the farmer see to it that his mulberry trees are in rich leaf. The tree, as we know it in America, with lateral branches and true arboreal features, is not at all in the shape in which the Japanese farmer uses it. The trees are planted in rows about a foot apart, and the growth cut off to within a foot of the ground. From the stumps new sprouts, several from one stem, come straight up five feet high in a season. These, at maturity of the leaves, are cut off. The rods are stripped, the stalks taken out, the leaves shredded in a chopping machine and then sifted carefully for small segments of stalk, for his high dainti- ness, the worm, must get nothing but the rich, the ripe and succulent. It is on this attention to fine detail in the food of the little silk makers, calling for unremitting work, that much of the success depends. Only a patient people — patient in matters of daily toil — can succeed in it. I don't know that I need tell you all I learned by actual observation among the silkworm cultivators, the village workers of Japan. You will find most of it in the text- books and doubtless the encyclopaedias. For one thing, I think that the culture brings out a nicer sense of the kindly and the delicate in those who pursue it than any other emplojonent, even flower gardening. Anyway, when a pretty young girl in a grey kimono makes the explanations and exhibits in an almost loving way the various stages of SILK AND TEA CULTURE 27 worm life you feel you have a mission in life to let the world know how ignorant you were of silk culture before you saw her. First the shoji or sliding door of a wooden shed was pushed open, revealing a dusky interior, and a boy came carefully forward bearing a tray out of many scores seen dimly on racks within. The tray was about two feet by four, covered with the shredded mulberry leaves and showing the silver-white bodies of hundreds of silk- worms writhing lazily among the bright-green shreds of leaf. All seemed one wriggling mass at first, but the dainty fingers of Suza San pointed to differences. These par- ticular worms, two inches long, she said, were nearing their fourth sleep. You must not approach too close to them; they are sensitive to human breath. They sicken with a blast of cold air. They die of bad odours. "They take cold," she said. "Do they sneeze?" I asked. "No; they do not sneeze," and then a sidelong glance, as if asking whether I meant it. I noticed that the worms had faint but pretty markings of a yellowish brown. Ever more of them seemed working up to the surface through the mulberry leaves, and surely they did eat voraciously, their little jaws closing on the juicy scraps like little pincers. Listening closely one heard a faint, low munching sound like a whisper of mastication. "They eat like that all the time for five days. They must be fed with fresh leaves five or six times a day and a couple of times in the night. Look, here is one gone asleep." The worm in question had raised his head until he looked like a miniature contour of the raven ships of the Norsemen with their raised figureheads, and so he remained. "There is one that will be asleep in a few minutes." 28 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND He was not eating but swaying, lifting and dropping his head. "And then what?" "Then he will be transferred to make his cocoon." It takes thirty-three days for a worm, from the time it ceases to be an egg, to reach the making of its cocoon. With every batch of worms a certain few of the finest are selected for breeding. These are laid aside, and the butter- fly is allowed to eat its way out of the completed cocoon, which it does after twenty-one days. It is a handsome butterfly, but it never flies. Without any feeding they are placed in little round boxes one and one-half inches in diameter, which are laid in rows on a sheet of thick paper. There they lay their hundreds of eggs — ^little dots — ^in concentric circles. "Then they die," said Suza San with some real pity in her tone. Then the eggs hatch, and the resulting little thread-like worms are brushed ofE with a fine hair brush, placed on the tenderest buds of the mulberry, and at once begin to feed for four or five days until their first sleep. They sleep two days, and then repeat the sequence a second, third and fourth time. They grow rapidly, and after the fourth sleep they are fed for a week and are ready to spin. Then they are placed on mats to which bent straws are fastened. They climb the straws to the highest point, and there they begin giving forth the silk in a fine golden stream that as it hardens to a thread they wind about them. He — or is it she ? — ^has had a grand time for a month, but that is the end of him — or her. About the time he feels ready to come out the cruel farmer will place him in a lethal chamber, where he will be heated and overheated till he gives up his ghost, but then the glory of his Silkiness begins, for Suza San or some other fine-fingered, clear- eyed daughter of Japan will tear ofiE the outer skin of the. o 'Ji o l-H W M I TEA PICKING AT UJI ^. KNEADING THE TEA LEAVES SILK AND TEA CULTURE 29 cocoon and, finding an end of the miraculous glistening thread, will place it in a little filature machine invented in Italy and unwind it all upon a reel ; and who knows what queen will wear it on her breast or on her shapely limbs? In great golden hanks the yarn is made up for export. The cases go in state and under guard to the greyhounds of the seas. They are locked in separate rooms like bullion. They seem almost worth their weight in gold. Japan makes twenty-eight per cent, of the silk of the world, and almost sixty per cent, of America's supply. For 1915 she sent us $63,000,000 worth of raw silk and in 1916 on account of higher prices and shortage in the European supply, the golden floss to the value of $112,000,000. If not exported the yarns are woven in Kyoto or else- where, and the wonderful men embroiderers get to work and make patterns and pictures fine beyond belief. Women rave over them and men — ^buy them. Meanwhile the farmer has doubled the output of his farm ; the infinite increasing care of his whole household is rewarded and poetry has somehow entered thousands of lives, for the girls sing pretty songs as they work and no woman is insensible to the silken lure. I saw the process in part at the Government's experi- mental station at Tokyo, where they seek to better breeds and increase output of hatched eggs; where ways of filature are studied and the most suitable mulberry trees are selected for varying soUs, all for the general good, and I marvelled at the thoroughness of all they undertake; but I preferred roaming through the sunny villages where the work went on, resting under the broad eaves of little houses and chatting, albeit at second-hand, with genial people of the countryside. There was the sturdy, prosperous Mr. Ishigawa of Tachigawa village and his wife Kaneko, a woman about fifty, with the most benevolent of faces. She sat barefoot 30 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND on the mats as she talked and pressed food upon us. She was the mother of six children, with eleven grandchildren at present, and her youngest son only a month or two married. The young couple were about the place, bashful when their recent marriage was alluded to. It turned out that Mrs. Ishigawa had volunteered as an army nurse during the war with Russia and had endured all sorts of discomforts tending the sick of the fleet that lay off Vladivostok. She brought us her photograph in her nurse's uniform. "My mother's heart went out to the suffering boys" was the burden of her explanations of why she volunteered. "She went out for Dai Nippon," said the husband, smiling, manlike preferring the patriotic to the pitiful. He admired her much and showed it, and was properly proud to be a patriarch. He had been raising silkworms for a quarter of a century and had prospered. He was evidently the rich man of the village, for he had at least seven acres in one field and his mulberry trees only filled a part of it. The rest of it was garden stuff which he raised for the city market. He bought cocoons from the farmers round about and sold them to a large concern that spun the silk on a large scale in a factory near Tokyo. The business had changed much in that respect. When he began they made the silk yarn themselves. We looked all over his silkworm house, his machine for shredding leaves, his oven for killing the poor worms, and finally he insisted on our taking a paper box full of cocoons, which is a perplexing part of my baggage to this day. I don't know any one who wants a cocoon. Tea, the other great export staple of Japan, has been idealized as highly as it has been commercialized. There is a whole Japanese literature devoted to the glorification of tea, and China has reams of poetical and philosophical SILK AND TEA CULTURE 31 consideration of tea. Okakura-Kakuzo has written with delicate humour and in a precieuse vein "The Book of Tea." He quotes from the Chinese poet, Luwu, who wrote, "The Holy Scripture of Tea," a description of the desirable in tea leaves, which will pretty well show how far Chinese fancy can go. The best quality of leaves must have "creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a bullock, unfold like mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr and be wet and soft like fine earth newly swept by rain." It might be all this and yet be pretty poor tea. To me it is something very close to the Universal Mother. Consider the millions of pounds of tea, each pound with its uncounted thousands of leaves. Think, then, that every leaf of all the tea that is daily consumed by a thousand million people in the four quarters of the world — that every leaf has been separately plucked from the stem between the fingers and thumb of a woman. The gesture becomes sacrificial. The first time I entered a field of tea it was not where the very best green tea is grown or made ; but for animation it was the same thing, even more so, for here the rounded shrubs were in the open air, in rows with plenty of space around them. Be sure the Japanese farmer never loses an inch of ground. If the distance between plants seems excessive he has had it proved to him that it is not. The women, young and old, were picking, each with her basket, their heads bobbing as they bent to pluck; some wore the conical straw hat, but most a loose bandeau of white or blue cloth. All were jolly about it. The plucking season is short, no more than twenty-five days at a time, and all the women of the countryside who can spare the time join the pickers. They are paid by the basket and the quick-fingered may earn fifty to seventy sen a day — pin money, or chit money, as they say out here. 32 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND It is only the new green leaves that must be taken, as the older, dark ones have no market value. For one season, a bush may be picked two or three times for new sprouting leaves, but a period is reached, and then the shrubs are trimmed to roundness again, and all is over for the crop. They were singing, now singly, now a dozen joining as in chorus. It sounded mournful until you caught a twinkle of the eye and a laugh over the words. White teeth gleamed in smiles as we passed by them. It reminded me of the girls picking hops in the English shires — ^the heart of youth exuberant in the sun and the free air. It was at Uji, near Kyoto, where the very finest tea in all Japan is grown and cured, that I witnessed the drying process as it has been carried on for hundreds of years with, however, modern aids creeping into service. It was in the little factory of Mr. Rihel Tsugi, who owns and farms about six acres of the finest tea land, the plants growing like tender ladies under a roof of straw matting upheld by poles. Mr. Tsugi makes all grades of fine teas, even the emerald- green powdered "ceremonial tea," of which a mere pinch would make a cup of tea too strong for anybody, and which sells at a forbidding price. Here I may say parenthetically that the United States and Canada take nearly all of Japan's export of green tea, to the value of over $16,000,000. Ceylon and India teas have been fighting hard for the American market, and Japan to meet the competition has been paying more attention to the growing of black tea of the class furnished by her rivals. The superior theine content of fine Japanese tea, as well as its lasting flavour, is what helps it to hold its own. Black tea is now being freely grown by the Japanese in Formosa. It was a beautiful sunny day when I went into the little factory, where we soon discovered it was warmer than out- SILK AND TEA CULTURE 33 side, for here were some dozen men in loin cloths at work over large trays about four and one-half feet by two and one-half, kneading the leaves that had already been steamed to soften them, and picked over by a group of squatting, laughing women for poor leaves and stalks. Under each tray a small charcoal furnace stands about a foot below. The toughened paper forming the bottom of the trays is so hot you can hardly touch it, yet these men, once the east of leaves is placed before them, must knead and turn it endlessly, bruising the dark green mass till it glistens and is soft and pliable. It takes two hours. Perspiration pours from them; their muscles stand out like cords. It is a strenuous scene. They allowed me to photograph them — a time exposure for which they paused four seconds. Even at that one man could not wait so long, and blurred his part of the picture. After the kneading the tea is spread out on pans to dry under steam heat, is whirled in a wide centrifugal machine, and is picked over again for stalks, which they call "bones." Once the tea is dried, and it takes a different length of time according to the quality, it is passed through a triturating machine, consisting of two frames of wire- netting that break the leaves short between them. They are then passed over a succession of dancing sieves worked by machinery for grades. There is no dearth of water power round Kyoto, so no coal or wood is necessary. For ceremonial tea the process is much quicker. Only the finest leaf is used, and it is treated in a separate room where the temperature is kept at 150 degrees Fahrenheit. When dried it is ground to an impalpable powder. The best grade was sold at seventy-five cents American per pound. It is packed in soldered tin eases. Mr. Tsugi, over a cup of his best tea, introduced us to his father and his wife. He employs about 120 hands in the season. His output of picked leaves is about 25,000 34 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND pounds. In the curing process they lose eighty per cent, of their weight, so that he is satisfied to get thirteen per cent, of marketable tea. We left the cheerful household — all fine optimists — and went out a couple of miles to the tea fields. They stretched iall over the country under a sea of yellow straw mats that made a golden twilight beneath. "We entered the Tsugi field — a mystic realm it seemed — and noted that there were a dozen women picking. With a quick jerk they took off the proper leaves between finger and thumb, slipping them into the palm until the hand was fuU, when they dropped them in the basket. They were singing when we entered, but stopped as soon as they saw us. It required much coaxing to induce them to take up their song. At last one braver than the others said "We'U have a new one" and began. It was a wild, sweet air, not unlike "My Lagan Love" that John McCormack sings so quaintly. One of our party said it sounded like a Buddhist hymn. I was curious to know, and a Japanese who knows English well smiled. "It is not a hymn; it is a love song." By this time all the women were singing it, not pausing in their work, and the wise man said, "I have got the first stanza. ' ' And this is what it proved to be : The sparrows perch on the bamboo tree And fly away; But once love perches upon my heart, 'Tis there for aye. Fancy that! Out under the straw mats among the tea plants of Uji peasant women singing the song that Solomon sang ; the song that shook the towers of Ilium to their fall ; the song the world in spite of the cynics is singing today. CHAPTER IV HOME LIFE IN JAPAN Spotlessness and severe plainness the note — Houses without chairs or bedsteads, the fusuma, the tokonoma and kakemono — ^A wife's long round of duties — Marriage and mothers-in- law — No courtship — Easy divorce — ^What makes against social intimacy with foreigners. One often wonders on meeting foreigners long resident in Japan how little familiar intercourse they have had with the Japanese. They may have a quite wide business acquaintance with native business men, but Japanese home life is almost a sealed book to them. There is, for one important item, the linguistic barrier. The foreigner, daunted by the difficulties of Japanese to the outsider, early decides not to study the language seriously, but picks up just enough of the idiom to "get along" with servants, porters, rickisha men, hotel landlords and railroad folk — and "lets it go at that," withdrawing so far as he can into some foreign group that speaks his own language. With foreign ladies it is much the same, although in their case communion with Japanese homes and home bodies is likely to be limited to native ladies who from residence abroad or attendance at some of the high schools in Tokyo — ^Miss Tsuda's fine school, for instance — can converse somewhat in English or French. Even then intercourse is restricted, for Japanese women, except among the very rich, have little time for the paying of visits or receiving them. But outside of this there are obstacles in the nature of things. The two civilizations have run so far apart in 35 36 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND home architecture, home fitting and furnishing, in house custom and etiquette, in meals and meal service that, with the best will in the world on both sides, there must be considerable gene. The house is so different to ours. Nothing can surpass, I would almost say approach, the spotlessness of a Japanese home of the better class, but you must think of a summer pavilion to get an idea of how a private house in Tokyo differs from an American or European house. It does not stand on the street, but back from it behind a wall with a simple gate or gate and portico in the centre. Then there is a house portico and an open door under it. Nowadays there is an electric bell to summon the servant, who appears on her knees with bowed head to take your message and your card. There are usually some flowers or greenery in front, but the garden is at the back. The house is built of wood on a brick or stone foundation, and its rooms through the use of gliding doors or "fusumas" may be opened one into, or cut off from, the other in a way we never attempt, except such exclusion as we get with folding doors or the use of portieres. The stairs — most of the better houses are two-storied and no more — are apt to be very steep, slippery and narrow and without hand rail or balustrade. The steepness of the stairs comes from the immemorial habit in Japan of making the rise and tread of each step of equal height and width — generally six or seven inches.. Originally, no doubt, they were just squared six-inch logs. I always dreaded them, and it in nowise cheered me to see my short-legged friends — men, women and children — skip up and down with ease and even pleasure. There is seldom a room that is exclu- sively sitting room, dining room or even bedroom, except where there are grown daughters. A man possibly eats as well as sleeps in the sitting room. Then the house is entirely bare of furniture, as we understand the word— no s ~ t- o i; 3 as ■^ o ^ ^s M :d &!) 72 "t^ Q D w M o > d o H W la o K W K O d HOME LIFE IN JAPAN 37 chairs, stools, tables, sideboards, bedsteads, desks, hat- stands; no gilt-framed pictures on the walls. The latter are bare, and inside the framework of pale-yellowish fine- graiaed hinoki wood the large panels are covered with heavy paper in monochrome — ^like our cartridge wall paper — generally of grey tint — oftenest light, occasionally dark. Sometimes, as in the case of the house of a multimillionaire I visited, the walls of a couple of parlours are covered on two or even three sides with great pictures by an old master in black and white and grey — landscapes, mountain, valley or river or sea — ^with finely wrought effects of cloud and rolling mist. The gentleman in question told me that he had designed the house to enshrine the pictures fitly. Of course, in his large house there are more separate bed- rooms, but they stood bare of furniture for inspection. In the priacipal rooms there is an alcove or recess called the tokonoma, with its floor slightly raised above that of the room. It is divided into two parts by a piUar of fine dark wood and the recess on the right generally holds a Japanese cabinet of finely fashioned wood, inlaid perhaps with mother of pearl and supporting a single art object; it may be a bronze statuette or a marvellously carved box in the famous red lacquer. In the recess to the left hangs on the wall the kakemono, or scroll, which generally depicts a mountain scene or sea picture, and at its foot stands a vase with oftenest a single flower, sometimes with two or three sprays, but always in artistic balance. To vary fre- quently the scroll, the art object, the vase and the flower is the pride of the lady of the house. In the daughter's room there may be a swinging mirror, whose lower edge is six inches above the floor, and in one or two other rooms a little stand or two for books and writing material, and in another room there may be a chest of drawers for fine kimonos, but that is aU. The rest of the house furnishings and utensils for eating, drinking, 38 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND reading, sitting, sleeping are kept out of sight in capacious closets about three feet deep that are concealed by the fusumas. The things are only brought out as wanted for immediate use and are religiously dusted, folded and put away. In every Japanese house, from the highest to the lowest, there is a family shrine. With the very rich it is at times in a separate little temple building standing in the garden, but with the fairly well off it is in a closet in the wall, and often of the costliest kind of carved and gilt metal work and held sacred from passing eyes. It contains the tablets of the honoured and beloved dead of the family, and every morning the first duty is to place there an offering of rice and sake or water as a spiritual refreshment to the souls still hovering nigh. Halls, passages and stairs in the houses of the better class are of dark-brown natural wood — ^no paint or varnish, indeed, tolerated anywhere — shining like glass, spotless, dustless from continuous polishing. All the rest of the floor space except the kitchen is covered with springy, soft, finely woven grass matting of pale-gold tint about two inches thick and generally edged with black. It is laid down in "mats" and "half -mats," the mat measuring about six feet by three. A room is spoken of as three mats, four mats, six mats, up ordinarily to ten or even twenty mats. There is a room in a Kyoto abbot's palace of a thousand mats. Now, it is the mat that makes all the difference between the "Western house and the Japanese — ^the mat and the square flat cushion covered with silk or cotton in scarlet or purple or some rich colour. No heavy Western boot or shoe or high-heeled bottine or even heeled slipper may touch that mat. Apart from the soilure of mud or dust it might bring from the street, the polished floor would be marked and the fine mat cut by the heavy Western heel. HOME LIFE IN JAPAN 39 When you enter the house you must take off your shoes. A Japanese lady wears clogs in the street and her feet are encased in white kid gloves or white cloth stockings with a divided great toe, of plainer covering, so she drops her clogs at the door, slips her feet into flat slippers and walks straight in. Some hosts provide heelless cloth slippers for foreigners which slip on over the shoes, but they leave you with a guilty barbarian feeling as you tread the mats within. Better far have double or thick stockings and take off your shoes like a brave man. My toes not being pre- hensile, I wear the house slippers precariously, generally leaving one or both midway if I attempt to go upstairs or down — to the embarrassing amusement of servants and fellow guests. Mine host is too polite to be other than sympathetic — ^which is just as bad. This is the beginning only of the trouble. Nothing seems easier than to sit on a nice cushion on the floor, but to our "Western" knees and anatomical flexures generally a period of helplessness, of extraordinary and particular fatigue in unaccustomed spots — ^backs, ankles, and what not — soon arrives. Cushions upon cushions and then more cushions barely mitigate it. You can cross your legs Turk- like for about ten minutes; but to kneel and sit back on your heels, the choice Japanese position which they grace- fully assume for hours, why, pains, cramps and a fierce desire to lie flat on your back at whatever cost to the etiquette of the situation follow in short order. I can, of course, only speak for myself. Ladies may get along better. While on this point I may digress far enough to say that a good way to experience all the effects — sitting, eating, sleeping in the same room without furniture — is to pass twenty-four hours in a first-class Japanese inn. As for me, after a stretch of backache I piled up cushions in the tokonoma and then sat some ten inches above the floor and placed my dinner tray on top of an upturned leathern 40 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND hatbox. When the maid returned with sake or something she went down on her knees at the door and bent to the mat. Raising her head slowly she looked for me in the place where she had left me dejected in the middle of the room. Upon seeing me joyous in my new position her eyes grew large and looked startled, then she burst into a roar of laughter and ran out crying "Dai Bustu!" — which is the style and title of a great statue of Buddha at Kamakura forty-nine feet high. Withia five minutes there were four merry maidens on their knees ministering unto me to their interminable joy. It is notable, however, that the richer Japanese more and more incline to have at least one "Western" room in their houses — that is, a room, generally a large one, with chairs, tables, console, couch and carpet, furnished in fact like a drawing room in which to entertain foreigners. At the home of the Marquis Mayeda not only furniture but modern oil paintings of the French school attracted the wealthy world-farer. Count Okuma, Viscount Makino, Baron Mitsui, Mr. Soyeda, Mr. Asano, Mr. Hayagawa are all eases in point where such examples are set; the lesser rich may be expected to follow. In addition to these custom and habit drawbacks to interracial comradeship there is the sober fact that the Japanese wife has little time for outside social amenities. Simple as her house is in appearance, it wiU readily be clear that it is really complex and that managing it through its daily transformations is no easy matter. It calls for three or four servants, willing creatures, who work cheer- fully and all the time when not eating or abed. The family garments are in the wife's charge, and as most of them have to be taken apart to be washed and have to be made up anew there is much starching and sewing to be superintended or done. Her work and her care are endless, particularly if she has daughters. As she has little leisure HOME LIFE IN JAPAN 41 and her husband and son are much employed outside at business or at school or college she reads little and hears little, and so misses much of that surface knowledge of things which makes five-sixths of our tea table and dinner conversation. I am indicating that the distaff side of~the family has little opportunity for paying visits or receiving them. She is particular too to be properly clad to greet her guests ; hence one soon learns that a proposed call should be announced well in advance. Equally it is vain to expect her to return calls promptly. So language, attire, inability to squat gracefully and domestic preoccupation are nat- ural deterrents to social intermingling. Among Japanese women themselves visiting is not overfrequent. Curious as these differences appear to us, they do not interfere with the real charm of Japanese private life. If the husband gives a party to his male friends the wife seldom appears even when there are no foreigners, and does not expect to. If it is a formal affair a number of geishas are hired to wait at table and dance and sing when the meal is over. It is all a harmless proceeding; the dances symbolize some phase of daily life — ^the harvest dance or the gold washers dance, for instance — graceful, rhythmic movements to the jingling of a couple of samisen — ^nothing suggestive or remotely lascivious. At one private dinner I attended — ^the first — I thought that the seven attendant geishas were house servants with easy and pleasing manners. They did not dance because, if you please, of the recent death of the Empress Dowager of Japan, so I was told afterward. Since then I have attended many private dinners. Let me recall one. Mrs. S was present, but not speaking English was quite silent during dinner, her house servants functioning perfectly without a word or even a sign of direction. After dinner we went to a large sitting room 42 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND upstairs,. and the men had cigars, I sitting, by the lady's special favour, on three scarlet cushions and with my back to a pillar — quite comfortable. The Misses S , her daughters, were introduced — two charming girls — the eldest of rounded oval type with refined features in a blue robe — a real picture of flowering maiden beauty and modest mien. The second, a glad-faced lively girl of twelve, wore brighter colours — orange and crimson. Mrs. S , gracefully attended by her younger daughter, now performed the tea ceremony with great distinction. It has quite a ritual, every movement being prescribed. Tea is made successively with so many ges- tures for every guest, a delieiously aromatic and very strong powdered green tea being used. It is served in small bowls and is to be taken in three sips and a half. Then, at her father's request, the youngest daughter danced, using a fan, while one of the maids played on the samisen and sang a "utai" descriptive of the beauties of Kyoto. It was touchingly graceful and gentle. Not to be outdone one of our company sang "Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes." Mr. S , thus challenged, as it were, sent for a ease of books of the No Dance and selecting one sang a little tale of old Japan in a rich, round barjrtone. Mrs. S now ordered the doors to the room beyond opened and going in played with her elder daughter several melodious pieces on two "koto" — ^long, low Japanese harps with horizontal strings and played in the Japanese seated position. It was altogether a delightful evening and showed to a nicety the graciousness and sweetness of Japanese home life at its best. Woman is taught from girlhood to be modest, retiring and obedient as daughter and wife, and as a rule she is. She is almost certain to avoid spinsterhood, so well oiled is the marriage machinery in Japan. Courtship is un- known as we know it. The bringing about of marriage is 1. A MODEL JAPANESE ROOM AT BARON MITSUI'S 2. SEMI-EUROPEAN ROOM IN A RICH MAN'S HOUSE HOME LIFE IN JAPAN 43 regularly the work of a private go-between, who brings the young people together after the parents on both sides, with additional precautionary inquisitorial go-betweens, have agreed to a proposed match. Thus girls often select their husbands unknown to the bridegroom himself, for the selection is usually supposed to be and usually is the result of the go-between's astute observation, the initiative coming from one or other of the parents, who says in effect, "Pray you, good friend, find a spouse for my daughter — or son, ' ' as the case may be. In this way even when a young man or young woman has a small purse or a bodily defect some one equally short in cash or corporal perfection is found and the thing is done. The young people meet at a theatre or feast ; they chat gingerly with each other and final consent is given. No courtship and absolutely no kissing ! It is said that the young wife enters her husband's family with her eyes open, just as the young husband may enter his wife's family, in which case he is at the same time "adopted" and takes her name. Lafcadio Hearn — a piteously plain-looking man — entered his wife's family in this way. It is "let the buyer beware" in either case. The young wife's life is usually no path of cherry blossoms, for the family — ^the great Japanese unit — rules in the house, and not herself or her husband while the father lives. Few young couples set up for themselves as with us ; they live in the family. The bridegroom's father and mother are the heads, and no step may be taken with- out their consent. If there is a disagreement the family council is called and their decision must be obeyed. The mother-in-law is exacting and oppressive; the husband's sisters are critical. The wife is given more than her share of family work or responsibility, and often leads a very dispiriting life at first. Her great hope is maternity. 44 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND Therein her work is not lessened, but her joy begins. She has made mother-in-law a grandmother, and that helps in Japan, where keeping up the line of descent is a great pride and a great duty. So her lot improves spiritually. The little human flowers blossoming around the house make for everybody's happiness. Among poor and rich children are given full fling. They pervade every room ; they swarm romping in the gardens, the girls dressed in gayest colours. Toys are showered on them. Girls have a toy festival in March; boys in May. No one denies them anything. Then at a certain age an iron rule for boys supervenes, and a rigid standard is set for girls. The boy hardens into the youth and keeps hard until, a man at last, he may soften into the blandness that he sees about him. He finds it happily hard to escape marriage. With any eligibility he is sought so persist- ently by go-betweens for somebody's daughter that he usually surrenders before he is twenty-five, though the marrying age for men and women is advancing all the time. Woman's status is advancing slowly. The great and increasing number of young women drawn from their homes into the ranks of business and into factory life is not without its effect on her position in the home. Her education, too, which is reaching further and further out, is emancipating her from many of the narrownesses that are associated with the Japanese idea of domestic virtue. Mother-in-law may mourn or even scold in vain; the forward step is making and woman is rising. Complaint is made that the servants in Japan are not what they were. I fancy that wail has gone up from every generation in every land since handmaids were invented. Here as in the old Western lands the leaven of discontent with lifelong servitude is working, but there are still as good, gentle, devoted servants in Japan as in HOME LIFE IN JAPAN 45 any country under the sun, and I have seen them and experienced their minute attention. "It lies largely with the mistress," one lady said to me. I think I remember hearing at least one dear com- placent housewife at home say that as she gazed on her pretty maids hanging cmt the clothes and singing the while. The family council system works for forbearance and average justice. Family quarrels of the lighter sort are arranged by the go-between, who does not wish to see his joiner work marred. If, however, complete disillusion has followed marriage divorce is not difScult. The family council exhausts argument to keep couples from hasty conclusions. If all these fail the wife returns to her parents, requests the register to change her domicile on his books, and that is divorce. If the husband sends away his wife it' is the same thing. In grievous cases he, but not she, may invoke the law, and on conviction wife and lover are sent to penal servitude. This seldom happens. Dis- solutions of marriage are about one in twelve, but in scarcely more than one in a hundred is the difference any- thing but incompatibility. The Japanese girl is an innocent little thing. She has learned metrical romance at her mother's knee, read a little of the Chinese classics, dipped into Western domestic science ; but she knows little of life and her great step has been practically decided for her. In the case of a husband adopted into a family, he loses his adoption if he divorces his wife and resumes his own name. Wives are chaste and households pure, and a fine ideal pervades the home, the young men pushing their idealism to great lengths. Religion has its force in mandates to a clean and godly life, but beyond the daily momentary act of worship at the family shrine little praying is done. Marriage is wholly civil, albeit an ancient and particularized ritual is performed. Brides have no honeymoon. Dots are not in 46 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND question. A bride should have a handsome trousseau, but the ability of the husband to support a wife and family is the great consideration. Funerals are elaborate. The family larder is simply supplied for high and low. Only for marked occasions — ^family feasts or for the husband's friends — are elaborate meals prepared. There are three meals a day, and every one is served on an individual tray. As far, then, as close household intercourse with for- eigners goes, it will be seen that the material difficulties are many and unless the Japanese woman learns a foreign language, and in soine degree — even to one room — Western- izes her house, progress in acquaintance is hard. In many households I have visited this has been the ease, and the results have been delightful. It would not be too much to expect the practice to widen materially. To what end the elaborate education of the young women of the better class is tending it would be hard to say, but as with their fathers and brothers in the art and service of the world we may depend on it that it will be forward and well ordered. CHAPTER V JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FUROEB A national passion for learning— 8,000,000 pupils in 37,000 schools, 7,000 technical schools — The universities and higher schools — ^Woman's great share in the advance. No such national furore for education has ever been seen as that which has gripped the mind of Japan. Her progress in the material arts and sciences is known; her success in adopting "Western" methods is proverbial; but it has not been clearly understood that the whole nation is taking part in the transforming process with an earnestness that seems irresistible. Japan, in her cities and fields, does her work on a small scale that makes in the end a great mass, but here is an influence destined to turn national and individual effort into broader channels with improved means and methods. Her schools and colleges are turning out graduates every year who have had at least a mental glimpse of the greater world. Nothing could be more conservative than the minds of her peasants whom we have seen tilling their little holdings with infinite and loving patience and persistence ; but it is only true now of the older generation. Every two years half a million young Japanese men return from the army and navy to the fields of their fathers. They have seen something of the ambitious stir of the world outside their province ; their minds have been running in channels of new facts, and the question is, "Will they want to fall into step with their parents, or will they want to get into larger ways of working and 47 48 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND living?" The drift to the cities, as with us, partly answers the question, but it seems inevitable, in agrioulture for instance, that co-operation, the use of modern machinery and inclusion of areas hitherto deemed impracticable, will necessarily follow. A widening of general business methods is in the same way inevitable; indeed, in taking charge of the war-stream of inflowing gold it has largely come. As we shall see later on with the education of the Japanese abroad and at home in the arts and crafts and technical industries, they are already laying hold of "big business," with the fullest assurance of their own success. In other words the mental grasp and resolute character which so astonishingly proved Japanese skill and powers in war are now toiling on at aU the problems whose solutions make for the conquest of peace. The nation is educating itself with great vigour. In the higher walks of education, as long ago in the lower, there exists a belief that universities, colleges, technical schools may henceforth depend upon native teachers and dispense with the foreigner. It is largely an economic question. Foreign professors and instructors must be paid on the "Western" scale, while native teachers are perforce content with half the pay. But of course national pride enters into consideration. If they have men fit for the work why go outside them ? They certainly have men in all the learned specialties who have stood high abroad. No better clue to the Japanese educational deter- mination can be given. It is not a rich country, but it may equal the efforts of the richest by keeping up to their excellence and doing it at half the cost. So salaries and emoluments are fixed 'way down, and students' fees and payments are equally kept within reach of talent without regard to wealth. Ho\y far thej^ are justified in relying on their own JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FURORE 49 scholarship, and technical learning a very little time will tell. Some aver that it is too soon to make anything like a clean sweep of foreign teachers. All the same they are entitled to try. Side by side with that is the conclusion that the system of the last generation of sending Japanese youths abroad to colleges all over America and England, which gave so many men of brilliant education to Japan, is to be aban- doned. Here again cost is considered. A young man of parts can be educated in any branch, they say, at home just as efficiently as abroad and at very much reduced cost. Hence the number of men so educated can be doubled. Not disputing this, it is a pity that the plan should be abandoned wholly. The only men, I was told (this was before the European war, of course) , who would thereafter be sent abroad by Japan were a group of her most promising army college graduates who would go to Germany to study the art of war as the Kaiserland developed it. This, we may suppose, will be reversed in view of the little affair at Tsing-tao; they may be sent to France. Also a very limited number of physical science specialists, also graduates of home institutions, were to be sent to the same country. Germany has vast assurance as to its advance in the physical sciences, but it is far from being in all, and Austria, France, England, as well as America, are not behind in the best fields. If there is a school of surgery in the world greater than that of the Brothers Mayo or of bacteriological investigation than the Rockefeller Institute it would be profitable to point it out. It is not, however, with possible flaws in Japanese future plans that we are to concern ourselves, but with the great fact that out of its 56,000,000 population it has a school population of nearly 8,000,000 pupils in 37,000 schools, that they employ nearly 200,000 teachers of all grades and kinds and that they graduate not far from 1,250,000 50 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND pupils a year. Of course, most of these are from elemen- tary schools ; those who reach the middle schools are 123,000 and 56,000 reach the girls' higher schools, while of the imperial universities the total membership is 7,500, grad- uating about 2,000 a year. The latter figures are what might fairly be expected from a country so young in modern knowledge, but the most significant figures are 27,000 students in the special and 334,000 in the technical schools. Opinions are divided as to the excellence of the work in the elementary and middle schools. The high schools, which were founded with a twofold object — that of furnishing just enough of upper-class knowledge to start certain grades of men on their careers and also to prepare men for college and university — ^have, it seems, become wholly devoted to the latter. The bulk of the men bent on knowledge short of the university level have flocked to the technical schools, of which there are nearly 7,000 in this little country. Every industry is pretty closely covered, all of what may be called the open air industries as well as those that are carried on in mill and factory; agriculture in all branches, forestry, fishery, sericulture, are largely specialized. This is one of the great things Japan has done, and it is resulting in a class of workmen and directors of workmen who know the latest that science has to say about every branch of manufacture, about electricity and machinery and mechanical and mining engineering. The sending of promising young workmen abroad for three-year mechanical courses by the great industrial concerns is another item in advanced education. The great Kawasaki Dockyard Company, with a huge ship- building plant at Kobe, keeps 100 students abroad. Then there are the commercial and commercial high schools. Most of these are private foundations — ^like Mr. Okura's, which he wholly supports. He is one of the JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FURORE 51 richest of Japan's business men and his chief hobby out- side the school has been making the collections which form his private museum, which in its examples of religious art, chiefly Buddhistic, is perhaps the richest and most extensive in the world. Most important of all, however, is the Commercial High School of Tokyo, conducted with great elan by Baron Kanda. It is a three years' course, and I can assure you that its graduates go forth most formidably equipped as the business men who are to be the new crusaders of Japan. They achieve great success there in teaching English. I have met several former students all over Japan and can testify to this. Business ethics is a branch largely taught. It came my way to be asked to address them, and the event took place in the large assembly hall. What I do not know about business would stock many stores, whole- sale and retail; but in a lifetime one picks up certain principles and collects examples which may sound attrac- tive in a foreign language. It was in this artful way that I managed to get through a half-hour address, speaking with great slowness, airing my pet definition of business as "exchange with profit," using Sancho Panza's dictum for illustration — "a business is not worth two horse beans that does not provide a man with a living," also my second observation that business progress lies in "perception of opportunity." They liked all that and relished my de- scription of great American business men, what they had achieved and above all how so many of them had entered commercial life through that greatest of early commercial colleges in America — the country store, wherein the first duty assigned was sweeping it out, and so on. You will excuse me the platitudes with which the brief discourse was larded, but I emphasized two points, one general, that honest dealing was the great essential, and the other local, that the future of business in Japan lay 52 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND with the corporation if it was to keep up with the pro- cession. I had ample opportunity to look into these young men's resolute faces and observe how quickly and intelli- gently they seized the points as they were made. They will, in ten years from now, be among the leading exponents of Japanese banking and business methods to the world, and anything that can bind them to the true as well as to the expedient is worth while. The four imperial universities stand naturally at the head of Japan's educational movement, namely, those of Tokyo, Kyoto, Sendai and Pukuoka. The two latter are recent creations adapted in their beginnings to their locale, Sendai providing mostly for science pertaining to agri- culture and fishing, and Fukuoka in Kyushu to medicine and engineering. Kyoto University was founded in 1897. It is the second in importance. Tokyo University was founded ten years earlier and has not far from 6,000 students and pupils. The latter was the only imperial university to which I paid a visit — at the invitation of the president, Mr. Kenjiro Yamagawa, the gentlest type con- ceivable of the scholar of distinction. If one reaches back in memory far enough to recall the face of Dr. McCosh of Princeton when its rigid lines were softened into a smile, as they were once in a long while, you will have something of Mr. Yamagawa 's face when it is not smiling; that is, it is benevolence personified with the rigidity of the just ruler somehow perceptible underneath. The university stands within a spacious compound on an ancient holding once belonging to a daimio, the Marquis Mayeda, whose property and palace it adjoins, and this bit of land history accounts for the many superb large trees which dignify the grounds among the colleges and ancillary buildings which make an imposing architectural picture. In addition to the University Hall there are colleges of law, medicine, engineering, literature, science 1. COLLEGIANS AT STUDY 2. BLACKSMITH SHOP, ENGINEERING COLLEGE ^ I 0^m mm k|«; HOW GIRLS READ AND STUDY JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FURORE 53 and agriculture, as well housed, but all finding a need of greater elbow room, which is the complaint common, I believe, to all colleges. Several monuments dot the ground. One interested me greatly, namely, the bust of Professor Divers, an Irishman described by the president as the Father of Analytical Chemistry in Japan. In Japan men reach the universities much later than in the United States — ^the earlier steps in Oriental education being much harder than with us on account of the necessity of first learning the Chinese ideographs and reading the Chinese classics as well as the Japanese, and second of practically having a second education as it were in foreign languages and sciences. The average age of entrance is twebty-f our years and three months, so that a man gets his degree in his twenty-eighth year. The students, of whom I saw hundreds on the grounds and some in classes, were mostly serious young men. They wear a modified "mortar board," the square top not so large as the original type, with something like a military cap beneath. Some wore the dark-blue uniform jacket and trousers, but I liked better the look of those in simple kimonos of a boyish type with the "hakama," a combination of vest and apron, big, free-stepping, studious boys in fact. Very few wore glasses. Outside the university they carried themselves with a good deal of swagger — "pride in their port, defiance in their eye" — facing the present and the future with an eager nonchalance. Young Japan is certainly "feeling its oats." The president had prepared two treats for me. In a large room next his spacious ofSce he had laid out on a long table a collection of the most ancient manuscripts of the Empire, with a professor of ancient literature to explain them. The oldest went back 1,300 years. They were mostly state papers, imperial seals, deeds and so on of the highest historical value, Ou? of theiji , that J recall 54 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND exhibited the signature of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, one of Japan's greatest generals, coeval with Queen Elizabeth of England, and whose equestriah statue in mediseval armour stands near the imperial palace. He persecuted the Japanese Christians as Queen Bess persecuted the English Catholics. There was also a special display of historical art treasures. One scroll, . perhaps fifty yards long, showed the procession of an early Mikado through the country. Every official, priest, officer, soldier, archer, musician, porter, was shown in long succession. I kept watching it as it was unrolled. "Ah," I said, "here comes the Mikado now" as the onlookers were shown kneeling with their heads on the ground. "Yes, he is coming," said the professor with a twinkle, and after a few yards more he did come — in a palanquin, covered from mortal gaze for ever. Of decidedly more interest to us were the first pictures of foreigners drawn contemporaneously by native court artists — the seventeenth-century Dutch in their baggy breeches and big hats on Dutch ships; also of Portuguese and Spanish ships, the cabins of one showing priests and an altar boy and a picture of Jesus on the wall. Scroll pictures of Commodore Perry's first and second visits, very creditably drawn with processions of man-o'-war boats flying the Stars and Stripes and the fleet firing a salute, were shown. One curious feature in all the drawings of foreigners was the great snouts given the men. Dutch, Portuguese, American, all fared alike. It had a comedy effect but gives an idea how queer we must have appeared to Japanese eyes at first sight. The Japanese nose is ordinarily small and hooked, and their artists simply added an inch or two for good measure to the nasal organs of the Europeans they pictured. Impressions make funny misproportions. There was also some archaic pottery antedating any JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FURORE 55 history we have and) a collection of stone celts, hammers and flint arrowheads exactly similar to those found in Europe, England and Ireland as well as in America. It is a curious old world, isn't it, with hidden communications of old that we know nothing of? The second treat was a visit to the seismological department presided over by Professor Omori, an earthquake authority of worldwide celebrity. He explained much, not pertinent here, yerjr luminously. Other institutions of the higher learning in Tokyo are Keio University, 2,300 students; Waseda University, founded thirty-two years ago by Count Okuma, the recent Prime Minister of Japan, with nearly 6,000 on its roll, and the Meiji Semmon Gakko — entirely the gift of a Mr. Yasukawa — has 250 students. These are flourishing, and at the time of my visit were about to be brought within the governmental line of standardized degrees with state recognition. The mission schools and colleges are not with- out importance, but I am here concerning myself with the purely Japanese efforts only. The loafing, dodging, sporting element among the students is almost entirely lacking. There are a few like Keio and Waseda that make a capital show at baseball, but the overwhelming majority are hard students and play only as part of their exercise. The work goes on under pressure. It is not only in the great cities that one finds the glowing enthusiasm. Never have I seen a school better outfitted with costly appliances and modern tools for every branch of mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, mining and metallurgy than the Port Arthur Technical Institute, which is under Goverimient aegis there, and is said to be generously helped by the South Manchuria Railroad. I doubt that there is a finer, more powerful plant in the Empire; few better anywhere in the world. 56 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND It was a great surprise at the scene of the great siege. It was founded in 1910. Students go to it from all parts of Japan, and certainly in the beautiful climate and cleanly arrangement they live in the healthiest of surroundings. In Korea the many industrial schools for Koreans are excellent for men and women, the curriculum at Seoul covering carpentry, cabinet making, weaving, paper making, iron work, soap making, pottery — the imitations of the olden inlaid celadon pieces found in ancient Korean graves being particularly fine. It may be said that Dr. Toyonaga, the director, reports the Korean youth as quick to learn. Here as elsewhere the impression was of work at full blast and there are a dozen such in Korea. Woman's education is also looked after with the greatest liberality. Outside the high schools all over Japan, which I have noted earlier, there are many institutions that perform great service. The high school curriculum is excellent, the special studies being housekeeping, sewing, music and gymnastics. In almost all cooking holds a high place. There were three institutions in Tokyo that I visited which interested me greatly. The Japan "Women's University of Tokyo not only serves the higher class of students but takes little girls from the kindergarten age and carries them up through primary school and high school to the university course itself. It harbours 1,100 girls and young women of all grades, with 489 high school pupils. The compound is not far from the University of Tokyo. I saw several of the higher classes at work, healthy- looking young women, sober enough at recitations, but who could go romping from one building to another in jolly "Western" schoolgirl style when unsuspicious of foreign eyes. The standard of studies is not so high as in the male institutions, and while recognizing individuality holds that JAPAN'S EDUCATIONAL FURORE 57 woman's business is matrimony, home making, home build- ing, care and upbringing of children, with all of the elegance, courtesy and morality that the model wife and mother implies. Presently it must be broadened, for woman in civilized lands now wants her share of the higher learning. The classes in English are pointed to with pride. It graduates over one hundred students every year in the university course. The second school I have specially in mind is the Women's Industrial School, where 1,300 girls are taught in a three years' course embroidery, flower making, tailoring, dressmaking, cookery, knitting and so on. Admission is by examination,'' a certain standard of general education being necessary. It was an exhilarating sight to see these girls and young women in classrooms holding from a dozen to fifty and sixty, some working seated on benches, others on the floor, and in one case 200 girls in the assembly room listening to a lecture on morals by Mme. Hatoyama, head of the institute and widow of a vice-minister of foreign affairs. It really looked young Japan in its busiest, most hopeful mood. Some of the embroidery was of a high order and the artificial flower making was beautifully delicate. The third school was Miss Tsuda's school for young women. Her specialty is the teaching of English, which she speaks perfectly, combined with a general polite edu- cation. Many of the pupils are boarders — ^those from other cities as well as some from Tokyo. Her pupils from the capital include girls of the best and oldest families and a glance at the faces of the graduating class shows a high intelligence and Japanese refinement. The arrangements were all so thorough and the sense of academic precision combined with the amenities of home life that one felt inclined to look on it as a model. Miss Tsuda founded the school years ago and believes in the individuality of women 58 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND and the studying of the student's bent. She is an earnest, ingratiating little body and serves excellent tea. Tt would be wrong not to mention the Women's Higher Normal School, where I was so kindly treated and its purposes were explained. A kindergarten, an elementary school and a high school are included. They have 600 pupils and the course includes a literature course, a serviee course and an art course. Post-graduate elective courses, and a special course, include mathematics, physics, chemistry, household management, Japanese language and gymnastics. There ! It was all apparently well managed. I happened into the kindergarten when the four-year-old tots were at lunch seated around a table about a foot above the floor. To see these mites open their tin lunch-boxes and manipulate a pair of chopsticks, fetching out a mouth- ful of boiled rice or a single pea with equal certainty, made me feel abashed. It was "awfully cute." CHAPTER VI JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS Baseball's growing popularity — Growing skill in and spread of tennis — Sumo and the great Japanese wrestlers — Judo, or jiu-jitsu, the famous wrestling game and its athletic votaries — An inspiring sport — The Japanese smile — ^Wild bouts of fencing with two-handed swords. One used to wonder years ago when bands of Japanese acrobats toured the world if their skill was exceptional and whether all the people of that distant, little-known land were equally able to walk up poles and balance themselves with flowery umbrellas on perilous places high in the air. We know better now, but there is something in the thought. The Japanese is born to physical exercise if not to athletics. He is in the nature of things sturdy on his relatively short legs and strong as a cat because shanks' mare over a country of hills and hollows has been almost the only carrier not only of himself but his belongings. Naturally, too, when speed was necessary he must make it himself. The pride of swift, strong carriage and the pride of burden- bearing went together, and all the men and the peasant portion of the women shared it. Thus all were potential athletes. That is true of the whole people, but of a special class, the samurai or fighting men, the care of the body from the point of cultivating strength, suppleness and skill in exercise was its habit, most rigidly enforced. The vigour and cheer with which women work in the fields rob the fact of their doing such work at all of what Americans would 59 60 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND call inhumanity. The work must be done ; they are there to do it, and why not fall to with a will? Eoaniing one day along the shores of Lake Biwa I stopped a moment to watch a band of busy peasants at work bringing rich black mud from the lakeside to enrich their little patches of land. They were using every means of carrying the stuff — wheelbarrows, carts, sacks, baskets. Never shall I forget the flash of glad pride in the eye of a stout-built little woman of forty in a minimum of dark-blue garments and in bare feet as she fairly skipped by with a swinging stride carrying two enormous baskets of wet earth balanced on a yoke. It would have been overmuch for many a man. I took off my hat to her. The sports of such a people are likely to do with feats of strength, and hence the professional wrestler and the high amateur sport of judo, or jiu-jitsu, hold the lofty places in popular estimation. Fencing of the two-handed sword type has its votaries. All sorts of minor sports, running, imitation of cock fighting, archery, battledore — ^the latter among women — have a place in native sports. The great sport from abroad likely in the end to be the most popular of all is baseball. The Japanese is especially built for it in his speed and alertness. The Keio University team and the Waseda University team have set the pattern for the colleges and high schools, and soon every village will have its exemplars of the twirling sphere. Every afternoon teams of schoolboys may be seen playing in Hibya Park, Tokyo, with all the accompaniments of "Kill the umpire!" and "Slide, Hideyoshi, slide!" Lawn tennis is finding favour, but more slowly. There are many courts and a growing number of adepts. The visit of Mr, Kumagai and his companion to the United States, the prompt recognition of his skill and the wide welcome given him everywhere, will no doubt react largely in favour of the game in Japan. 1, PROFESSOR JIGORO KANO 2. JUDO CLASS AT TRACTICE BEFORE DAWN TN WINTER TIME 1. THE MUSCLES OF CHAMPION TACHIYAMA 2. TWO YOUNGER WRESTLERS AT CLOSE QUARTERS JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS 61 Its quickening in the colleges and high schools will un- doubtedly follow. The holding of the Olympic games of the Far East at Tokyo in 1917 has given a great impetus to all ath- letics in Japan. The running and jiunping surprised many. Professional wrestling, "sumo," is among the olden sports of Japan. In former times the wrestlers were the pets of the rich provincial daimios — the feudal lords — and twice a year they assembled from all Japan at Yedo and gave great exhibitions. Nowadays they form a class by themselves, into which entrance can only be gained by aspirants who, first setting out as pupils of the great wrestlers, are given a chance to gain entrance into the lowest class and so to work up to the front rank in the course of six or seven years, if they are ever to "make it." As the geishas are chosen from among the prettiest girls of the poorer classes, and work for years under close tutelage to learn the arts and graces of their calling, so the wrestlers are taken from the tallest and most robust of the working people, and have for years to undergo an apprenticeship with only one object, viz., the ability to exert tremendous muscular power for a few minutes at a time. The wrestlers run anywhere from five feet seven to six feet and over, Champion Tachiyama being two inches and a half above six feet. As long endurance is not called for they are careless of the accumulation of bodily fat, indeed, most desirous of it, as the added weight makes it harder to budge them, and the vast expanse of flesh is the harder to grab. They are enormous feeders and large meat eaters and sake consumers. There are five grades, none of them drawing large salaries, but they generally manage to live decently by gifts from rich admirers. The men are classed in two divisions, the East and the West, once doubtless a matter of the 62 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND geographical origin of the athletes, but now wholly arbi- trary. When a festival is declared the men are called to face each other from these two divisions. When one of the wrestlers in either camp has defeated all the ten brought against him in a tournament at Tokyo, including members of the highest class, called ozeki, he is in the championship class and may be elected by the high com- mittee of wrestlers, Hinoshita Kaisan — supreme champion — and entitled to wear the yokozuna or hempen belt — a relic of the very old days of the sport. They wear their hair long and carry it braided in a fancy knot on the tops of their heads, giving them a red Indian look, very gay and debonair. In the ring their feet are bare and they wear only a loin cloth. Although among the higher men you will meet many monstrosities of adipose tissue the large majority are tall, long-limbed and beautifully made and muscled. It was in the large amphitheatral hall at Nagoya that I first saw them wrestle, and although they were not of the highest class it was in a way more interesting than the wrestling at the great wrestling festival at Tokyo, where I saw the enormous men of the champion class at hand- grips. For instance, the bouts between the contestants, all fine, sinewy young men, were best two out of three, which exhibited all the wrestler's best points, as falls were never decided in succession along the same line of grips or throws. The ring is set in the centre of the hall on a raised platform about three feet high, in a circle of soft earth about fifteen feet in diameter, with a line drawn clear around its edge. If the wrestler can push, pull or lift his opponent so that any part of his body crosses the line it is his bout. Equally if he throws him or bears so upon him that even one finger touches the ground he wins. It is hot work while it lasts, but it is only a few seconds. JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS 63 and the higher the grade of wrestler the shorter the time of actual struggle. The preliminaries take time, however. While at Nagoya we saw twenty couples wrestle their three falls in ninety minutes, or less than five minutes each. At Tokyo, with the great ones, only one fall is given each man, and the general proportion was six minutes of preliminaries to six seconds or less of action. The hall at Nagoya was a new iron structure, modelled on that at Tokyo, only smaller, so one description will answer for both. It is, as I have said, amphitheatral, and there are no chairs. The audience squats in squared-off spaces on cushions. Our party, however, was politely given chairs. The ring in the centre has four corner poles and a roof, the latter evidently a relic of the time the contests were in the open air and sun and rain were to be guarded against. The ritual is curious. The next two or three contestants following those actually engaged sit on benches east and west of the ring. There is an umpire in a long ornate priestly gown who carries a closed fan with a long tassel, and an announcer, who calls the names of the pair, as: "Golden Hills from the East and Eed Mountain from the West" (the wrestlers all use stage names expressive of strength) . Clad only in black or purple loin cloth they rose as their names were called and mounted the platform, kneeling opposite each other and making a ceremonious bow, with their knuckles on the floor. Then they arose and went through a limbering up process. With an outward circular swing of the right leg they brought the foot down with a stamp and followed suit with the left. Then, with both legs well apart, they lowered their bodies until the calves touched the thighs, the heels off the ground. Then they rose with a spring, walked to a corner post, took a pinch of salt from a bag and scattered it — for luck. In an 64 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND instant they were crouched facing each other and at liberty to begin. They watch each other intently, the umpire bending over between them. One generally makes a spring toward his opponent, often touching him, but the other says: "Mate!" i.e., wait. He is not ready. Then they rise, walk about, stretch, take a drink of water and come back, and once more "set," this time about six feet apart. From the moment the "set" looks like business the umpire sets up a sort of chirruping. Finally, both wrestlers arise together, giving a single shout, and fly at each other. It should be understood that you may grip your opponent's loin cloth and may push, pull, lift or trip or use any of the wrestler's forty-eight tricks, but you must use an open hand, and may not strike, butt or kick. Their attacks were as various as their physique. Some flew at their opponents and got to handgrips immediately. Others beat the air, much as a struggling cat would, shift- ing their ground and circliag the ring. A first attempt to push out the other seldom succeeded. To avoid that seemed the A B C of the game. In all bouts they were soon inter- locked, their hands clasping the foeman's slippery body or clutching for the loin cloth at the side or back of it. They keep their legs wide apart to give a stronger base, and strain with the arms and upper part of the body, seeking to throw the other off his balance, or by a sudden shift to throw him over the hips. There is no question about the strenuousness and the skill. Sometimes a man, apparently about to be thrown, by reaching down the other's back during a hot struggle grips the loin cloth, and holds solid. Sometimes both fall apparently together, but some one detects a difference. There is an appeal. It is a long business, but generally a "draw" is declared, after con- sultations in which each side votes solid for its own man. There was one amusing bout. A powerful fat man, fat JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS 65 all over, but obviously very strong, towered above his foe and stamped and spread and swaggered in great shape: "Lofty Summit of the West." His meagre, bright-eyed opponent was "Little Whirlpool of the East." After the usual preliminaries the fat man advanced confidently on the little one, reaching over to take him by the shoulders. Quick as a flash Little Whirlpool ducked, clasped the mountainous fellow about the hips, lifted him bodily from the ground and planted him on his feet outside the ring. The audience roared. The giant seemed to enjoy it, too, it was so surprising. In the next two rounds the little man went to the earth in double-quick order, and as Little Whirlpool turned to go down. Lofty Summit, smiling, tapped him on the shoulder as saying: "How dare you, you little shrimp !" then walked contentedly to his side of the ring, squatted on his heels and saluted the house, while the umpire pointed his fan at him, and cried ' ' Lofty Summit of the West. ' ' The little man had, as is customary, shot down a diagonal passage out of the theatre, while the victor waited to serve the next man on his side with water, if he needed a drink. At Tokyo the hall is very large and holds an audience of 13,000 people. For the better places you must hire your seats well in advance. So much hangs upon the single bout which an athlete is allowed in a day that the preliminary stretching, spreading, stamping, salt sprinkling, water drinking and walking round seems endless. The muscular displays were, however, magnificent. Each contestant had followers who hailed him. I saw some sixty couples engage, all powerful men. "Mount Shaka," a superb five-feet-ten man, disposed of "Great Cascade," of six feet two inches, after a lightning grapple of four seconds. ' ' Silken River ' ' of the Bast faced "Sandstone" of the West — ^two splen- didly matched specimens of big men. "Sandstone" won with a mighty effort in six seconds. 66 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND The appearance of Champion Tachiyama, or "Sword Mountain," was reserved for the last bout of the day. To retain his championship he must defeat every man brought against him for the ten days of the tournament. He had already thrown six on successive days and was greeted with a long storm of cheers when he appeared and began to stamp, stretch and spread. He was good enough to pose before the camera for me after the championship was secured to him, and I must say he seemed easily the finest man of all I saw. He stands very erect. His measurements are: Height, 6 feet 2.56 inches; round the chest, 51.30 inches; weight, 296 pounds. He was born in 1877, making him then thirty-seven years old. His opponent that afternoon was a smaller man, but muscular, wiry and wary. I thought of the bout I have described at Nagoya, and wondered what would happen. The preliminaries were prolonged, with this excuse that the audience could not see too much of Tachiyama 's fine poses. At last they were "set" with the aspect of an immediate clash coming. Sure enough! But it was over in two seconds. The shorter man crouched as if ready to sidestep when Tachiyama came for him, but there was no time. "With one terrific spring he had the wiry fellow in his grasp and flung him outside the ring, following him him- self, coming down upon him like a falling cliff over the bank and sliding down head foremost to the floor of the house. It looked as if the champion must have hurt him- self, and that the breath, at least, had been crushed out of the under man, but both arose unharmed, and the audience rose and roared "Tachiyama" as the wrestler knelt and saluted. Judo is altogether different, not only in action and pur- pose but in its votaries. We have beard much of it in the JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS 67 United States for the last dozen years, but you must see it at Professor Kano's academy at Tokyo to witness it in its glory. The professor has been teaching it for thirty years. It was he who at that early day took the three styles of judo and made one comprehensive system of them all. Let it be said, first of all, that it is a system of defence or offence in wrestling by which skill takes advantage of an opponent's strength in attack to defeat him. It rests primarily, according to Professor Kano, who was most courteous and painstaking in his explanations to me, on the simple proposition that when equilibrium is de- stroyed a man falls or may be thrown easily. This was the samurai system, used by those tough and polished soldiers of the old regime. One of their feats was to throw a man in armour in such a way as to break his neck. Then there was the judo of the criminal classes that aimed at choking or breaking the limbs, even taking the life of a victim. Lastly there was the police judo aimed equally at subduing an opponent by choking or otherwise for the purpose of making arrests, yet stopping short of homicide. Professor Kano's system must be seen in action to be appreciated. Visiting his academy one afternoon we saw fifty to sixty couples of young men, from seventeen to twenty-five, engaged in practice. They wore short white drawers and thick linen jackets, buttonless in front and showing the bare breasts. It was an inspiring sight. Bach couple fought, according to the rules, with a vigour and dash that left nothing to be desired. Not a word was said. The floor was thickly matted. The men were barefoot. Each grasped his op- ponent's coat lapel. They pulled, tripped, recovered, strained, and presently down went one with a crash. Up again and at it again. Crash, crash, down they were going all over the place. It was a continual slap, bang, fall and rise, Sometimes one on the floor struggled with another 68 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND on top of him with a strangle hold. They writhed, puffed, sweated, but it went on until one was so overcome that he tapped the floor with hand or foot, or else both were utterly fatigued and blown. When the struggles reached their limit the men simply rose, bowed to each other, smiled and stood aside for a few minutes' rest. Loss of temper, even the slightest exhibition of it, is against all the rules, and this discipline of the temper is one of the most bene- ficial results of the game. To the foreign observer it largely explains what he has been taught to marvel at under the title of "the Japanese smile" — ^the smile that persists under the most adveijfee circumstances. It is the iron rule of politeness, never of course so needed as when the temper is strained. Lafcadio Hearn's anecdote of the rich American who hired an impoverished samurai, who always smiled in politeness when the American abused him in strong language, is typical. The American took the smile for disdain and defiance, and abused the man the more. One morning in despair the samurai — a man of sixty — ^killed himself with his short sword. It was the only reproach he felt he could make to one who employed him and insulted him. Fortunately it seldom comes to that. There are nine grades in the curriculum of judo, and it takes about three years' hard work to reach the third grade. Few get much higher and there are some who never attain even the first grade. In the winter time the academy is opened long before dawn, and the men come in crowds to practise and harden themselves working in the cold. Later on I attended an exhibition contest in the same hall and witnessed 200 couples take falls from each other in rapid succession. The bouts lasted four minutes at the most. At the end of three minutes a bell was rung in warning, so that they finished up or made a draw. There were naturally some fine exhibitions, and the fortunes of the two sides fluctuated all the afternoon under the critical JAPANESE MANLY SPORTS 69 eyes of an audience of judo enthusiasts. For me, however, the afternoon of practice was more attractive. The con- testants were nearly all university men, high commercial school men, artists, government officials, fine open-faced clean-limbed young fellows to a man. Professor Kano, a most agreeable, gentlemanly man with a black moustache, sat at a table and explained much of the system to me and its effect in making for true manliness of character. In the hall I met Professor Yamashita, who taught judo to Theodore Eoosevelt at the White House three times a week for three years. Theodore, he said, was his best pupil ; that, however, he was very heavy and very impetuous, and it had cost the poor professor many bruis- ings, much worry and infinite pains during Theodore's rushes to avoid laming the President of the United States. He had also taught the Eoosevelt boys, Mrs. Robinson, the President's sister, and GifCord Pinchot. He liked Wash- ington and America. Another day I went to a fencing class, and I think it is the noisiest sport I ever witnessed. There were about twenty couples in action, wielding two-handed swords made of a number of bamboo rods bound together. The men wore a sort of mediseval armour. There is doubtless much skill in it, but it looked like the greatest Donnybrook you can imagine. They leaped at each other with a roar, swinging the sword with two hands, throwing their weight on the blows, slashing in all directions, pushing the other chap with the hilt and guard, and yelling to admiration. They made more noise than a boiler factory, and they only rested when they were breathless. Young Japan is surely full of vim, and his sports are vehicles of mental struggle and nervous skill as well as brute force. CHAPTER VII THE GARDENS OP JAPAN Marking the year by flowers — The cherry festival — ^Flower arrangement — The whole country a garden — ^Landscape effects sought — ^Magical transplanting — Tree and flower poetry — ^All sorts of gardens — The Mitsui and Okmna gardens — Hundreds of years of tree-dwarfing — Okura's bosky retreat — The plaint of a lady from Loudon. It was as lovers of flowers that the Japanese first laid hold of the Western art imagination. Stories of their flower festivals, fantastic tales of their worship of the cherry blossom, of the lily, the plum, the azalea, the iris, the lotus and chrysanthemum florafied the popular picture of Japan — the women, the children, garbed in bright colours walking about under many-ribbed umbrellas. I recall a cherished Japanese room in the house of an American of great wealth — say thirty years ago — a mass of crimson lacquer, bamboo furniture, yellow brocade on the walls, with floreated hang- ings and vases of flowers. Nothing like it under the sun, in Japan at least. Dearly the Japanese love flowers, but in their own way. When the plum trees blossom after the frost they flock on certain days to view them and enjoy the sight and the scent of them. Later, when April brings the exquisite cherry blossoms, it also brings the greatest of the national flower festivals, and in still greater number do they sally forth — man, woman and child — and revel in the joy of white and delicate pink petals that cover whole parks and alleys of trees till it seems as if the last word of nature's ecstasy 70 THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 71 has been said. They spread their rugs and sit beneath the trees and eat their rice and cakes and drink a little sake and sing for the very joy of living. No festival in all the round of life in Japan calls forth a more universal response. It is the only festival at whose celebration the sharp eye of authority winks should a celebrant's ecstasy for cherry blossoms lead to an excess of sake with a conse- quent uncertainty of gait and an inclination to sing aloud in public. Many of the small shopkeepers or tradesmen, the pink of sobriety all the year round, may be seen among the jolly crowds returning to Tokyo afoot, supported on either side by a compassionate friend — hilariously "full," in fact. So long as he can be navigated nobody minds. In the mass, however, the celebration is sober enough. It is well to note that the festal cherry of Japan is of a kind cultivated entirely for its magnificence of blossoms, the fruit that comes later being small and inferior. The mountain cherry, the true Japanese type, is a finer tree. Its vigour and splendour are well expressed in the short poem that every Japanese knows : If one should ask — no matter whom— What type of soul Japan has won. Tell him:— A mountain cherry tree in bloom, Splendid before the rising sun. Here, according to Japanese poetic fashion of impli- cation, you have the brave picture of beauty and strength of character and a glimpse of the national flag, the red ball of the rising sun on a white ground. Then when the azaleas follow in a score of gorgeous tints, when the great peonies bloom, when the virginal iris comes and the lotus covers the ponds with huge waxen blossoms, red and white, amid the greater green fronds, above all when the chrysanthemums in a score of hues and a hundred 72 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND shapes come forth, the scenes of popular outpouring and quiet family feasting are repeated in varying volume. The festivals are things apart, preciously regarded, pre- pared for by age-won skill and the infinite patience of the florist and the gardener. It is an affair of annual celebration. No more soberly clad men and women ever went about the business of enjoying themselves; their young girls and the little chil- dren alone face the festivities in colours gay to the eye. That is something of the charm of it — the outward contrast, equally lit with merriment as the faces of all may be. Happy should be the people who count time by the coming of the flowers. It is well to think of that when you take up the tale of the Japanese love of nature — the blossoms are on the trees, the flowers are on their stems as they grow on land or in water — as God made them. An art not more than 500 years old has plucked a few branches and set up some 149 rules for displaying them — one, two or three at a time in a single vase for sole floral adornment of a single room. It is "the art of flower arrangement," quite artificial in its results, but multiple in its fine symbolism of the pure and the true and the eternal, all taught in the fleeting life of a flower standing in a vase in the tokonoma. Young maidens adore the art and dream of new combinations of curve and bloom. Busy men take on a dreamy look when you men- tion it. The flower born of soil and sun and breeze and the mystery of transmitted life is something delicately sacred in their eyes. They will smile and look at you as one who could not be €xpected to understand. I visited the great cotton mill of Kanagafuchi at Hyogo with thousands of women and girl operatives, whose flrm carries welfare work and care-taking beneficence to sur- prising extremes. Among the enterprises was a school of flower arrangement with hundreds and hundreds of bright- ■A U o o THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 73 faced adepts, a wonderful variety in their three-stemmed bouquets. At the Taisho exposition at Tokyo I saw another such exhibition selected from the offerings of thousands of Tokyo homes. Having thus taken thought of the outdoor festal way of the Japanese with flowers in the mass and by the season, as well as the restrained way in which they give them place in their homes, let us put ourselves in the way of looking at the face of the country as a whole. It is simply an enormous garden set in a frame of mountains which keep constantly in your thoughts the idea that they were thrust upward from the ocean bed just long enough ago to have trees, shrubs and grass grow on them. Bold, rugged, craggy, precipitous, they rise in groups and ranges with outlying spurs and naked rocks and long descending mounds. The valleys between are sometimes fairly broad, oftenest narrow. Take this picture of green fantastic hills and narrow valleys; cover the valleys with a rich, varied, broadly patterned crazy quilt of cultivation. Terrace the hills with horizontal strips of cultivation until the slope is too great for human handiwork to conquer. Send down streams by leaps and jumps from the hills ; make babbling rivulets and murmuring rivers through the vales; seam it with narrow roads ; put down villages along the sides of the hills, and you have rural Japan — arable and non-arable — a miracle garden with background of serrated and stately hills. Just now its most vibrant note is green with a score of modu- lations. Mostly it lies under a sky of tender grey with glimpses of blue and all known shapes and masses of cumulus and cirrus clouds with fanciful foldings of mist along the higher slopes. It is a garden. We have looked at it from the material side of the farmer ; we have noted its human song of constant, cheerful labour ; we have perceived its implication of tender worship 74 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of the soil for the good things it brings forth. The peasant woman bending over in the flooded rice fields and finding and plucking the young weeds beneath the water has seemed a priestess of the god of growing plants, whose home is on Mount Fuji; but now we are looking at it from the viewpoint of a great artistry. Infinite patience in furrow and field ; infinite care of the goodly growing things have conjoined with sun and water, breeze and cloud, with stately tree, wild grass and ancient moss and rock-ribbed mountain to make an infinitely beautiful picture. That is the great garden of Japan. And the gardens of Nippon, as we think of gardens, are consciously or unconsciously made on that magnificent model from the gardens of the Emperor down to the little gardens no larger than the tray on which the waiter will bring you cooling waters — or the like more spirituously fortified — in the hour before dinner. So a garden in Japan is not as with us primarily a place of flowers. It is a condensed landscape. It is a bit of the shore of Lake Biwa ; it is a fragment of Myajima ; it is Nikko in miniscule; it is Nara or Kioto or Myanoshita in little. That is to say it has hillside, woodside, waterside as its basis. Gardening is a fine art. The gardener is a man with as much authority in his garden as the head surgeon in a hospital, or a chef in the kitchen of the mighty — a man to be approached with great consideration and never to be interfered with. He belongs to one of two schools that seldom make any fusion. One school puts the majesty of big trees at the back; the other puts them in the front. Bach school has its own object as to form; they approach each other in the worship of beauty in nature. Every tree should have its natural form, though the eccentricity of trees may be emphasized. The Japanese pine tree, for instance, unlike ours, does not grow straight THE GARDENS OP JAPAN 75 up, but has a way of bending abruptly this way and that. The Japanese gardener says: "All right, old conifer, the more queer elbows you have the better I'll like you," and he gives the young pine an extra twist or two, and by and by he will have, in the course of twenty years or so, a perfectly ravishing monstrosity that people will come miles to see where he has set it among a growth of perfectly straight maples or handsome hinoki or keyaki. The gardener is in fact a landscape maker, and his nursery is a curious thing. Once roaming through a village we came upon a strange looking field of a couple of acres enclosed by a wall. "Yes," said an old farmer, "it is curious; it belongs to my son. You see, honourable sir, he is a master gardener and does work for great people who pay him well — indeed, very well." What had most excited our curiosity was that all over the place were rocks, some large, some small, heaps of white, round, water-washed pebbles, the like in blue with little mountains of different coloured sands. There were some trees, but rocks and stones were the feature. "He comes here, does my son, at sunset and contemplates his rocks for a long time, and again at dawn he will be here looking at them. They are brought to him often a hundred miles, and he will carry them it may be another hundred miles to some garden he is making." Now we have the general scenic mould for Japanese gardens, the motive so to speak. But there is one very potent influence yet to mention, namely, the temples. These fanes of worship, be they Buddhist or Shinto, and particu- larly if they are Buddhist, cling to the hillsides and are embowered in trees. Even among the smallest and poorest you will find a stone lantern or two in the foreground. You will find an outdoor belfry and a bell. Reminiscences of the temples, therefore — a miniature shrine, a stone 76 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND lantern or two — will be apt to creep into the garden scheme and give it in Japanese eyes the finishing touch. The Buddhist priests were largely the poets of earlier Japan. The poor people worked, tilled, bought and sold. The samurai, the knightly men of arms, practised the arts of attack and defence and formulated rules of conduct — for themselves and their class — ^which we know as Bushido; the daimios or great lords and the little daimios or lordlings led princely lives, and poetry and the literary art were left to the priests and monks. The point of this explanation is that they formalized in words the whole people's love of nature, as only poets can, and monklike refined and euphemized and crystallized the expression until a line of verse became so fraught with allusion and symbolism that it took scholarship to follow and realize, while a simple straight meaning lay on the surface for the common mind to see and understand. In the No dramas (of which we shall hear later) refer- ences to nature abound, and these little tragedies, tragic episodes and spiritual manifestations have become a great part of the classics of the cultivated Japanese, who quote them to each other in their gardens in the hour of rest and growing dark or rising moon. The moon shines clear between the cherry trees, And petals dancing downward on the breeze, Like fluttering flakes of snow, make our hearts dance Tor joy with them. Simple, but gladdening is it not, where a Western poet would find or seek a saddening note? The sweet wild cherry blooms that grow In Miyoshino and in Shuga too, The maple leaves of Tatsuta, and those Of Hatsuse, they should be in the ken Of those who lived beside the poet's home. THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 77 And here in the first line is an Oriental simile : The blossoms open like brocade: The brimming pools are deep and blue. There is a whole literature of the pine tree, all the conifers indeed. What more touching than this : Blest are the very firs In that they meet To grow old together. Every one in Japan who can at all manage it has a garden. It may be not more than the size of a tablecloth, or it may cover a costly acre of city ground. The shop- keeper has a hard time of it, among the huddled little houses, finding footing for even a single plant or shoot of a tree, but if he has one it is the household pet, often killed with kindness. In private dwellings the garden is at the rear or side of the house and will have many of the features of the greater gardens reduced in scale. Sometimes there is a single tree with a banking about it of a few clumps of evergreens or a small tuft of a blossom- ing plant, little dainty touches about it all and a sense of completeness, the theory being that the garden should give rest and the promise of peace and should not violently excite the senses, as our gardens, with their bright masses of flowers multi-coloured, are apt to do. The first garden of a private house that I saw in Tokyo was more ambitious. It belonged to a well-off business man whose home stood in one of the hilly quarters of the city. The house was on the street level, and when the host had made me comfortable in slippers he asked me to his garden while dinner was preparing for the honourable com- pany. I expected to walk out on a level tract, but found myself after a few paces over large, irregular flat stones 78 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND set upon a carpet of green moss, descending a curving stair whose steps were made of cross-sections of three-inch trees set together and driven down, with greenery all about us, while overhead great trees were waving lazily in the evening breeze. We reached an open space covered with rounded river pebbles with little bowers about, a favourite playground for the host's children. At one turn a little shrine ap- peared. A long path ran along the side of the eminence on which the house stood just outside amid the green. The long path had an ascending stair of its own. The view upward was verdant, gracious, restful, and the sense of seclusion actual. One's gaze passed from the trunks to the branches and then to the crests of maple, oak and other trees, among them a decaying giant of former days. The ground, you see, fell away from the house and had been treated in such a masterly way that you had, in the midst of the city, the sense of a house on a hilltop rising from a green valley with a half-dozen different vistas. One view of it in which a mother's love had set her fairest flowers I was lucky enough to secure. Tokyo is famous for its great gardens. First of all there are the imperial gardens within the palace, and around the princely houses of the Mikado's family without, and then the gardens of the nobles. Many of these are over two hundred years old, but loving care has preserved their charm. Water in artificial lakes, ponds and falls is made much use of, and views of the rarest charm are obtainable in them from many sides. Under the Tokugawa Shogunate it may be recalled that the daimios were obliged to live in Yedo — the city's older name — every alternate year with an army of retainers. Hence every great lord in Japan was obliged to keep a costly house in town, with rooms in outlying apartments for his followers. They were encouraged to spend money lest they grow THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 79 too rich, and the result was hundreds of superb gardens with trees now of great girth and majesty. You would suspect the existence of none of them, for the seclusive system that makes high walls the rule in Europe and Asia, and which is happily wanting in America, prevails here, where in the old days a garden was really part of a fortress. Some sense of their beauties may be gathered from the illustrations. The remarkable feature of all is the sense of size and distance in a relatively small area. It was my good fortune to have the company of Baron Mitsui in visiting the garden, or rather series of gardens, that are grouped about his palace. The Baron's family have been bankers for two centuries and their name is in every notable enterprise in the country, and latterly out of it. First of all he has a beautiful lawn around the house, and back of it on every side stretch the gardens. The treatment of a single pine tree standing boldly out was ol one type with rockeries rising behind it and masses of flowering pink azaleas at the side. Then on either side beyond the lawn were woodland views with real streams purling over beds of white stone under marble bridges amid tangles of bushes beneath overhanging trees; then woodland paths leading to bosky dells in a green twilight — where little houses for rustic rest invited. There were half a dozen such gardens, each sounding a different scenic note as we walked. The more one sees of them the more one wonders. There is a national character deducible from them all. They proceed by the mass, and where we bank flowers they modulate trees. Pine, maple, cryptomerias and a kind of oak that grows to an enormous size are the favourite trees. Shrubs are treated by the mass also, a broken harmonious skyline of branches at the top of an acclivity with rough rocks appearing at their bases. Plants, flowers, shrubs 80 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND are low notes in the composition. A dark-red maple that does not grow very high is a favourite in foregrounds of trees. Water is led singing over rocks in small cascades. Where water is not, a rivulet is simulated by drooping bushes along the border and pebbles along the bed. In one of the Baron's gardens stood a small temple; in another a small house for the tea ceremony; the family shrine was in another small house; in still another a beautiful old wooden house brought thither intact from Kyoto, where it was built more than three hundred years ago. It did not appear that domestic architecture had changed much in the interval. There was the same entrance, there were the same round windows at the back that one sees everywhere, the same recesses. And so round to the great house again. The garden of the Prime Minister, Count Okuma's house, much larger, has the same differentiation of parts, but there was one very long vista of blooms, very rich in colour when I saw it, with whole hedges and mounds and masses of red, yellow and white azaleas and magnificent peonies, great white, cuplike blooms with yellow at the heart, cascades of blossoms on every side. There were hothouses with many varieties of orchids under glass, and then there was a park- like portion more European than Japanese. Indeed, although Count Okuma speaks no language but his native tongue and is a profound nationalist, his great garden spaces are not so wholly national. In one thing, however, namely his collection of dwarf trees, he is very Japanese. He has hundreds of them. One tiny old baby pine with starlike needles on the branches was very beautiful. I should have liked to carry it off with me and watch it every day for a year. The Count is eighty, but sturdy despite his loss of a leg long ago when a miiscreapt threw ^ l^OQ^j) at him, coiidemning LAWN OF BARON MITSUI'S HOME, TOKYO A SMALL PRIVATE GARDEN, TOKYO THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 81 him since to a wooden leg. It is his custom to rise at five in the morning and spend an hour walking in his garden every day— and his days are full of state affairs— a man of courage, a man of parts and of honourable history. Those dwarf trees of Japan are an unfailing wonder. The art by which they are produced is quite closely guarded by the super-arboriculturists who produce them. Its main feature, however, is an annual cutting of a portion of the roots, leaving just enough to sustain the life of the tree without leaving enough to promote its growth. For this purpose they are grown in pots giving ready access to the roots. It takes some twenty years to secure success. Needless to say that during all that time they demand the closest attention, something only possible when it is an immutable part of the day's routine, and only profitable when many hundreds of the little trees are kept under treatment and observation. The best results are with pine, plum, cherry and maple, the red variety. In the chapter devoted to the theatre may be found reference to these Japanese dwarf trees in the account of the No dance called "Hachi-no-ki," or Trees Grown in Pots, showing that the art of dwarfing the trees of the forest and keeping them for house ornamentation is quite ancient. The No in question was written some three hundred years ago, and the story refers to a shogunate many centuries more remote. A metrical rendering of the legend — ^not at all a translation — ^made years before my visit to Japan, will also be found in this volume under the title of "The Soul of Nippon." Perhaps the most surprising garden that I saw in Tokyo was that of Mr. Hayokawa, a very rich banker. He decided five years before my visit to have a new town residence and bought the ground in a busy quarter; but 82 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND here now are house and grounds finished, and the garden, to all appearances, from fifty to a hundred years old. The air of an old perfection may be seen in the picture — a level space crossed by the usual flat stones in paths lying on a velvety carpet of green moss led toward curiously con- torted old pine trees in the foreground, then blooming azaleas in red and white masses here and there, then a succession of trees of every tint of green, with here and there a dark-red maple rising in stately picture beyond. Stone lanterns lighted for the evening stood at the base of the hill and in the recesses of the wooded height. A waterfall tinkled high to the left and the water chanting a low sunset song was led along a shrub-embowered bed. Among the trees, following a little path, we mounted in the growing dusk to a little tea house, and so on through beauty after beauty until we reached the house again. One would almost have preferred to stay and dream in the wonderful garden than to have gone in to dinner that was awaiting us. I said, almost; well, for the sake of the poetical let it stand at that. The substantial, however, has its claims, and those affluent Japanese do secure the most marvellous cooks of French birth or French training. For viands the world of meat and drink seems within easy reach of their capable hands. It is not quite a garden story, but it is nearly. We had visited the private art museum of Mr., now Baron, Kikaehiro Okura, and the old gentleman, who is eighty, had made a point of accompanying us all over his house of art marvels and then led the way across a woodland path through great trees to a little bungalow in a fold of the slope of two hills — in all, say, a hundred yards from the home of his vast array of priceless art treasures. Just a plain, little bit of a Japanese house. There he sat us down and gave us wonderful green tea and cake and such. THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 83 It was just the thing after the fatigue of the museum. Mr. Okura was enjoying it too, and when we were smoking royally he said: "I had this little house built a year ago. I wanted to be able to get away from Tokyo at will. Here I am far away; look." He rose and slid back a shoji, revealing a large oval window on the front of the house. The outlook seemed to be a ravine half a mile long, in which the trees gradually shut off all views beyond. It was very simple, but all true. He has ships on every sea ; enterprises in a score of parts ; has great riches, great interests with a wonderful history of uprise from poverty. He has given largely to charity and the helping of men and women to help themselves — shrewd, sharp, quick, close, generous at the last test — ^you know the type, and his highest pleasure is a bit of Japanese rusticity, away from Tokyo, but with Tokyo at hand. There is something of the Japanese garden type in the joy he takes in it. He has lately deeded his great museum to the nation, and endowed its upkeep. I wonder if he has held on to the little bungalow. I have visited public, semi-public and private gardens in many parts of Japan, but those cited must serve. There are wonderful historic gardens at Kyoto and Nikko; in fact, where are they not? Take the garden of Kinkakuji, or Golden Pavilion, at Kyoto. It stands at the foot of a range of hills encircled by great trees and encloses a little lake on whose edge stands the Golden Pavilion. This fairy palace was designed for Yoshimitsu, a shogun of the Ashikaga, 520 years ago! Its upper story was once covered with beaten gold; it was decorated by great sculptors in wood, and great painters furnished its kake- monos. When he retired voluntarily from power it was there he went to live. It is full of quiet beauty and repose. Its outlook over a lakelet set in tall trees with flowering bushes at their feet is soothing, and you approve Yoshi- 84 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND mitsu's taste, and if you are frivolous you feed the golden carp in the lake and there are small enterprising merchants at hand with bags of cake for the purpose. A few coppers will secure enough to gratify your whim to see the big carp get the lion's share, and the little fellows win their mouth- ful by trick and device — as in the world of men. At Nikko there is the Abbot's Garden that will well repay you. In fact, ancient and modern gardens abound, and in all of them if you have time you can find rest for eye and gentle persuasion for the mind. But you must have time, and if you have fatigue and little time don't go. At Kyoto there is a gem of a garden laid out by some great landscape artist three or four centuries ago. It has the look of age and a deep serenity. There is a little lake with bends and turns and bosky places and rocks and venerable trees — and there are thirteen "views." I had duly gone the round and had counted thirteen. On the site of the last view I sat me down for contemplation, and this is what swam into my consciousness — a very stout English lady, red of face and ragged of temper, in the last stage of tourist fatigue, sitting on a stump, and a very lean, small skimpy husband expostulating: He — Oh, come along, dear; it's only twenty minutes for the whole blooming views. Get it over and 'ave done with it, I say. She — ^Not one minute; not one view. I'm sick o' looking at them views — the more that I cawn't see them when I do look. It's been the same wy all the whole dy — ^temples an' habbots an' false gods. And what do you know about them when all's said and done? Tell me that; tell me that! He— Hsh! Hsh! She — ^No, I won't hsh. I'm just wore out. Three temples and two habbots and hUls to climb in one day and a goddess with the ridic'lous name of Cannon. I'd cannon THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 85 'em. I'm that footsore and heartsick that if you don't wheel me home, well, I'll scream. He — Rickisha! Hi, rickisha! Thereafter peace and the sun setting, and a sense that if a trumpet called it might call in vain, for surely the god of the gardens was with me, and a spiritual balm was in the air. CHAPTER VIII TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN Shinto and Buddhist — Ancestor worship — The pilgrims — ^In the Honden — Charms and amulets — The rope of 30,000 women's hair — Temple architecture — Kyoto and Nara — A secret of the shrines — Why you should sit — The glories of Nikko's terraced temple shrines — ^lyeyasu's temples and tomb — Wonders of carving — The ablutionary — The Chinese gate — The dancing priestess of Nara. I KNOW nothing jollier than a crowd of Japanese pilgrims on their way to one of the great shrines or temples. There may be from fifty to two hundred of them of all adult ages and both sexes. They are generally villagers from one village or a group of contiguous villages. They are dressed in their poor best ; they are all scrupu- lously clean, and are having the time of their lives. They travel third class on the railroads, led by one elderly bellwether of the flock, one who has made the pilgrimage before. In all else but the railroad trip they go afoot for miles and miles, taking the level valley paths or climb- ing the plentiful hills indifferently, and do it all cheerfully. They put up over night at the poorest inns and live on the plainest food, and whatever coin they carry it includes a goodly supply of the very smallest coins — those of one- tenth of half an American cent. These are for the temple offerings, recalling Dr. Johnson's sarcastic — and probably unjust definition of the half-farthing — one-eighth of a penny — "a coin designed to enable Scotchmen to subscribe to cha,ritable institutions. ' ' 86 TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 87 In front of all shrines and temples, Shinto or Buddhist, is a large contribution box with wooden gratings on the top. If it is a Shinto shrine the pilgrim tosses in his or her coin, takes hold of the gong rope and rings, then of the small jingler bell rope and sounds it, claps hands to attract divine attention, joins palms and bows head, uttering the proper pious invocation or wish, and it is all over. When I visited the Kinkagu hillside shrine at Kyoto the local priest was explaining its virtues to a crowd of about a hundred pilgrims. The coins were dropping and the gong was ringing continuously, when at the rear a local guide, who might irreverently be called the "barker" of the holy place, suddenly called out : "If you want to see the Lover's Leap, where the two honourable lovers plunged hand in hand to death, come over this side." In a twinkling the whole crowd had deserted the shrine, and were gazing in rapture over the railing of the wide platform down the cliff, thinking and saying how smashed up the honourable lovers must have been whom the cruel parents would keep apart. Their religion is, nevertheless, ingrained, whatever it may be, and it oftenest combines Shinto with one of the sects of Buddhism. It involves little ritual on the part of the people. The priests attend to all that, and the Buddhist priests have an unending series of offices to perform. Shinto^the Way of the Gods — ^is the national cult of Japan. It is founded on ancestor worship. It derives from the sun goddess, whose direct descendant has filled the Mikado throne since the most ancient times and who also is the mother of the entire Japanese people as the legend runs. In Shinto therefore the past members of the race are all gods (Kami) and in a particular way one's own forebears, one's deceased parents and grandparents, for instance, are 88 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND godlike spirits devoted to a constant care for their de- scendants and must be worshipped and honoured with offerings every day for the good they are doing for you, and to fend off the harm they may mete out to you if offended. They can be terrible when they please, these family gods, so forget not to pay due homage daily. Shinto has a great array of subsidiary gods — the elemen- tary gods — ^fire, wind, thunder, water, with many home- keeping kindly deities who are invoked and honoured with a thought, the seven gods of felicity, the god of good women, the god of the oven, the god of the fields, the rice god and wheit not. Shinto involves no moral code. It presupposes morality in the worshippers. Morality is a civil affair. Its temples and shrines are simple of construction. Without, at a little distance, is the torii, a typical two-pillared gate with two crosspieces at the top, one just the width between the pillars, and the other wider and curving slightly upward. The torii is mostly of wood, but at Nikko and Tokyo I have seen them of bronze. They stand at various distances from 100 feet to 1,000 feet from the temples. Within the temple is a single bronze mirror in the inner chamber that only the priest sees, emblematic of truth and purity. In the outer hall, a drum, a gong, a rack on which are paper strips telling which gods are particularly honoured there. Very simple of ritual, too. j^ It has nearly 200,000 shrines, great and small, in the I Empire. In every village there is one, its little court a ', playground for the children. Often in the country one I notes a clump of trees in the fields with a small torii at \ the edge and the eaves of a little temple showing. Thither \ the people go in the summer evening to meet and amuse \ themselves for an hour before the early bedtime. Buddhism came to Japan some 1,500 years ago. It took over Shintoism in a way ; has manifold ritual, and is rich TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 89 in moral precepts, has a gospel of mercy and life-sparing, and a high philosophy of life with temples full of statues, emblems and adornment. It enriched Japan with art from India, China and Korea, gave a warmth to life, even in its own degeneration, and its taking on many gods and god- desses like Kwannon the merciful goddess and the terri- fying Deva kings, who are affrighting to evil spirits only, and the two guardian dogs of Fo with curly tails, one with the mouth symbolically open and the other the mouth shut. I have learned not to laugh at any sincere religion, but sometimes one discreetly smiles — a la Japonaise. Since the Mikado came to his own in 1868 Buddhism has been disestablished as a state religion. It must live upon the offerings of the faithful or the proceeds of its own property by sale or rental. Some of its temples remain wealthy, but the majority of its over 90,000 edifices are much reduced in means and consequently in monks, nuns, priests and attendants. At Nikko a nice old priest asked , me if I would not like to hire a little temple for the \ summer — "very cool and roomy with running water on the premises and not very dear." They have actually j rented many such to foreigners, since the average Japanese ' house does not offer the same accommodations, particularly ,' the large tiled room free of mats whereon chairs and tables may be placed. Buddhism, besides being absorbent of too much material riches, was not the religion for a militant people. It was not intensely and stimulatingly national like Shinto, so it had to suffer privations in line with its original severity of sacerdotal abnegation. It grumbles, but it has taken of late to proselytizing with some vigour in places on the lines, curiously enough, of the Y. M. C. A, So, between the two religions, often intermingled, Japan looks after its soul. I have seen two votive shelves, one Shinto, one Buddhist, in the same humble house, both 90 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND carefully tended. For Shinto, one of the great expounders, Hirata, wrote: "Learn to stand in awe of the Unseen, and that will prevent you from doing wrong. Cultivate the conscience implanted in you; then you will never wander from the Way." And that, at least in theory and largely in act, is the base of thei Japanese man's attitude to his religious beliefs; the women are more given to precision in tenets and to copiousness and frequency in prayers and invocations. Of the higher Buddhism not many of the - mass of Buddhists of Japan are aware. As Lafcadio Hearn in effect puts it: "There is but one Reality. The conscious- ness is not the real self. Matter is the mass of things that we see and feel created by force of acts and thoughts. All existence is made by Karma: — ^the present the creation of the past, and present and past together make the future. ' ' And then there is the succession of lives and the hope of the attainment of Nirvana, which is not a heaven but an eternal passionless calm. No, they have little of this in popular Japan. For them it is a richer coloured belief in the light of the Eternal Buddha, which is a godship to which they themselves may attain by force of good deeds. When we remember, as one should constantly in thinking of the Japanese people, how they were for centuries dragooned into law and order and habit and custom under repressive sumptuary edicts, all created for making safe and easy the iron rule of the daimios, we may see how they would take refuge in a religion that gave them the keys of the next world. With this crushing pressure re- moved and law and order placed on self-supporting bases a change might be expected. It is found in a growing agnosticism prevalent among the pupils of the colleges and higher schools. All but the ancestor worship is weakening in young Japan. That clings because of its appeal to 1. THE "OTENMON" GATE, SHINTO TEMPLE, KYOTO 2. SHIXTO MAIN TEMPLE, KYOTO ,. IMPERIAL MESSENGER GATE, HIGASHI HONGWANJI, KYOTO i. THE GREAT BRONZE BUDDHA OF KAMAKURA, 49 FEET HIGH TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OP JAPAN 91 national hope and desire, and is indeed a mode of subtle self -worship. But there is plenty of outward display of religion. I have instanced the pilgrims. To Ise, the master shrine of Shintoism, where the Emperor goes on occasion to worship his ancestors — the gods — go also perhaps a million pilgrims in a year. There is a whole town that lives on entertaining them and selling them mementos. The pilgrimage may largely be a sightseeing institution, but it is a faith feeder as well. So sacred is it held that it is but a few years since a young zealot observing a visitor who was no less than a great Cabinet Minister touching some sacred objects with his cane by way of indicating them to his companions, brooded over the desecration, and at last hunted down the unintending desecrator and shot him dead. While the Minister was universally mourned, the act of the mad youth was far from universally condemned. There is much of this divided attitude toward lethal occurrences in Japan — very dreadful thing, but then one should let holy things be. One summer night at Uyeno Park in Tokyo, where the exposition was then holding, the whole landscape — grounds and buildings — one blaze of electric lighting, I came upon the shrine of the goddess Benton — the Japanese Venus — on a little island. Merry crowds were flocking by chatter- ing, wondering at the vast illumination, and I stood by the little temple to watch them, something I love to do, so much honest, simple enjoyment I find on their faces and so much that is touching in their family groups. I heard the rattle of a coin, the sound of the gong, the jingle of the bells, and there before the shrine with hands clasped and head bowed stood a woman of middle age. In an instant she was gone, had fled across the crowd to her own little group that seemed hardly to have missed her. What woman's wish had she laid befofe the goddess? 92 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND At Port Arthur I stood by the supremely touching Shinto shrine to 22,000 of the Japanese dead who fell before the fortress in the great siege. Their ashes lie under the stones you tread upon. It was a morning of balmy air and floating mist that wraf)ped the hill around and made a circle of airy wraiths that seemed crowding to shut it in from sight of the valleys below. It made, I know not what of a sense of sacrificial uplift, the hilltop shrine, the rolling mist and the morning silence. The tramp, tramp of heavy boots fell suddenly on my ear, and a whole company of stalwart young soldiers, led by a single officer, were marching to the shrine. They paused, then passed slowly over the platform, where they fell into a double line before the shrine itself. The officer spoke in an undertone. All caps came off ; all heads were bowed, and they were told how happy were the dead who lay beneath their feet; how happy they standing there should be if called on to follow them. So they stood for perhaps ten seconds profoundly stirred. They then moved slowly to the edge of the platform and looked down the slope while the officer explained some thrilling step in the mighty conflict of ten years before. Here was Young Japan making its vows of patriotism afresh. One morning in May I was at the Kudan shrine of Tokyo, sacred to all the dead of all the wars of the Meiji — a comprehensive shrine indeed. It is a mighty, impressive fane, with the greatest of all torii in bronze before it. You look through the first temple across a quadrangle to a great structure beyond. Only those related to some one who has laid down his life for his country can enter either. An old Japanese couple, both bent with age, were coming down the great alley of trees from the torii. They went direct to the shrine. The woman dropped a coin into the huge box. I could hear it rattle and fall. Then the old TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 93 man uncovered and both clasped their hands and bent their heads in prayer. What son did they mourn? Was he the eldest, the youngest, the pet of the family? God knows. I turned away, for tears were in my eyes too. At Nikko I had another and differing experience of popular piety. It was on a second visit to the lyeyasu Honden. We'll talk of that shrine hereafter. Our party noted signs of preparation for a service. Priests were going and coming, bamboo screens were rolling up. We chatted with a priest whom we met on our first visit. It is an inner portion of the temple to which a smart admis- sion price is charged — ^priests must live. A party of sixty pilgrims, well-to-do merchants from Osaka who had made a handsome lump offering, were expected every minute. They were to have been on hand half an hour earlier, and all had been made ready for their reception — the priests vested, the sacred symbols taken from their receptacles, and still the pilgrims had not come. We went on with our chat and a group of young priests gathered near us and indulged in light chaffing among themselves about the merchants who were thus failing to keep their appointment with heaven. It was all very human and interesting — just what you might expect among the ushers at a fashionable American wedding when the bridal party was behind time. I suppose the higher priests, perspiring in their hot silken vestments in the inner chambers, simply sat and glared as the Bishop might who was waiting to tie the nuptial knot in, say, Chicago. At length the merchants came, three-quarters of an hour behind the hour set, and once in the Honden and on their knees and sitting comfortably back on their heels the service — a kind of mass — ^began, a priest warning them that at certain times they were all to bow until their foreheads 94 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND touched the floor. As "foreigners" we were told that we might look in from the outer vestibule if we did it circum- spectly, but should not enter. It appeared to be the first time that most of the sixty had attended such a service, as many were inclined to bob at the wrong time. The use of charms and amulets is almost universal among the less instructed people, and these are obtained mainly at the Shinto temple, but the Buddhist priests are not averse to a little addition to their funds from this source. Little strips of paper inscribed with incantations hang from the eaves of all houses through the country parts and flutter in the wind warning off evil spirits who are, it seems, a simple-minded kind of beings after all, and easily de- ceived, much like their evil brethren in China. Evidently, however, there are many more millions of devils in China than in Japan because, I suppose, there are so many more besotted Chinamen. Then there are other impressionable spirits who will blow hot or cold at your behest, or at least take it under con- sideration, if you wear a certain kind of string around your neck and a little tablet tied to it. Superstitions naturally abound under such conditions, and the roster of the queer things the peasants will or will not do unless every evil influence is out of sight would remind us at once of the similar things that our own people regard as lucky or unlucky. It all harks back to an earlier day, when these left-handed beliefs went the round of the world in the wake of the worship of sun, moon and stars. It is, of course, certain that Japan worshipped the sun and the moon, but they seem only to have differentiated the milky way from the rest of the stellar bodies. Religion, however, in its true serviceable sense, is alive in Japan. Those from the West who miss the regular gatherings for Sunday services may think otherwise, but they are mistaken, as a little observation will show. TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 95 A mighty witness to the live religiosity of rural Japan exists at Kyoto. The Higashi Hongwanji temple has been rebuilt within twenty years. It was known that ropes of the very greatest strength were needed to lift and hoist the great columns and rooftree timbers into place, and some zealot proposed that it be of human hair, which makes the strongest rope of all. The response was enthusiastic, and 30,000 women of a single province sacrificed their beautiful long dark tresses to the needs of the great Bud- dhist shrine. The rope that performed its task without a break is shown on the temple grounds today. It is closely woven, two hundred and twenty-one feet long, thirteen inches in circumference and over four inches in diameter! One touched its lustrous coils with reverence ; it meant so much sacrifice; so many wishes from the deeps of the human heart went with it. You can see the woman kneeling before the family Buddhist shrine, the shining length of her dark locks lifted in both hands and on her lips the prayer, "O, Eternal Buddha, in thine enlightenment wilt thou not see for me, and find for me the way of my heart's desire!" And 30,000 such women, so praying in one province; think of it ! But the temples themselves, which stand ever open and invite the wayfarer, how do justice to them in half a chapter? You could not do it in a dozen chapters, but one may lay down a few general, brief observations, then tell something of a few that one has seen, and they ranged from" little village shrines to enormous temples. Generally the temple stands within a compound with a more or less ornate gate structure of two or more roofs with the Oriental roof-curve and the wide overhanging eaves that flare upwards to raised points at the corners and which extend on the four sides. The roof structure is supported by solid pillars generally, sometimes in simpler forms by 96 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND squared posts. In these are often found the powerfully sculptured figures of the forbidding Deva kings who with hideous grimace and compelling gesture let the various visiting demons know that here is no comfortable place for them. Crossing the courtyard one faces the temple proper of one clear story anywhere from twenty to sixty feet high, the frontal pillars of wood and squared posts, the curved roof, heavy ridge pole with upraised terminals running parallel to the front and wide overhanging eaves making the distinctive note. The main structure may be two or three hundred feet long but much less in depth. Inside heavy pillars support the roof, the Buddha if it is a temple of his faith being placed on a man-high pedestal. There is a separate house for the bell rung by a heavy beam. There are endless varieties, but these by far the most common. As to construction, it may be said that the buildings in Japan are all of wood, with gable roofs slightly curved and with far projecting eaves, the other marked feature being the weight and size of the ridge pole, which is often a heavy squared timber with projecting ends carved and decorated and often with an upward turn. The roof in the larger temples is supported by great columns, the rounded boles of great keyaki trees, giving dignity and sometimes mas- siveness to the front, which is the longest side of the building. It is always approached by a flight of stone steps, which, lifting the structure, add to its impressiveness. Within the lofty columns give a fine effect. In the greater Shinto temples when the wood is not plain it is painted or lac- quered a vivid scarlet. Set among the green of sur- rounding trees the vivid colour is modified bearably. In the smaller Shinto shrines the roof is usually of straw. In the larger temple compounds you find one great TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 97 structure beyond the other, the last the most sacred, but containing only the mirror spoken of already or in addition an ancient sword, both wrapped in silken veils only removed for the highest authorities, as at Ise for the Emperor himself. In the Buddhist temples there is on the contrary a wealth of carving and colouring. The under sides of the eaves are painted daintily in many colours, a light green prevailing, but the carving and decorating without and within have no limit. The great bells, indeed the temple bells of all grades, are things that have their part in the religions of Japan. Many are very large; most of them are very old. There are no chimes; they do not ring as we think of ringing. They boom. One loud, long stroke that sings and thrills on the air and dies down to a murmur as of bees; then silence, and then, and only then, another boom. At the sound all within its reach will pause and listen, for it speaks to them in a language they understand ; tells them of time and tide or circumstance. It must mostly soothe, for most men and women smile a little when they hear it. Only when it sounds an alarm are the strokes close to- gether; then the whole town arouses. Of the modern Shinto temples the Henijin gu at Kyoto was built twenty years ago to celebrate 1,100 years of the city's history and in honour of the Emperor , Kwammu, who made Kyoto his capital. It is very vast and bare. The pillars are red. It has a fine gate called Otimmon, and the temple itself is called Daikyokuden. It is set on the plain and depends on its dimensions for its majesty. But the great beauty of the temple shrines of Japan derives in large part from their hillside location. No such lofty structures as the Gothic cathedrals of Europe are to be expected. The religious architects of Japan wrought in other materials. The Chonin temple of gratitude ip the game city shows something of this. 98 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND The temple stands on a hill. There is a splendid gatfe of entrance to the grounds and long lines of stone lanterns of many designs lichened with age line the broad upward path. There are two paths of ascent, one up a sheer ver- tiginous flight of steps, another winding upward at an easy gradient — ^the lady's steps, which no determined pilgrim would take, but I did. Both stairs are embowered in fine old trees. Finally we reached the temple, majestic of interior,' with a praying bonze seated before an open book from which he was singing prayers and ever and anon striking a gong at his side — ^for the delectation of a couple of citizens, man and wife, who for some reason of their own had doubtless entreated him so to do. The great Buddha was dimly visible at the back. There we were shown the "nightingale boards," a wooden path connecting two buildings which when trodden on made a despairing noise like a banknote in agony. And there were marvelling pilgrims looking for the architect's umbrella which he had forgotten at the top of the ladder when he paid his last visit some hundreds of years ago and whose handle, projecting a few inches from the eaves, can be seen till this day ! You have at any rate been learning that there is the temple and the temple setting, and that when they conjoin, as they may and do at many of Kyoto's fanes, at lovely Nara and Nikko the superlative, you have the fine flower of a thrilling triumph of Japanese artistry. I came by accident upon one secret of Japanese temple forms, namely, that their dimensions were calculated for a people who in worshipping sit on the ground. Often had I been inwardly disappointed at what seemed want of height in temple interiors. Looking up at a remarkable coffered ceiling or along a line of involved decoration or even gazing upward at the great keyaki columns, the sense of want of loftiness had come upon me, TEMPLES AND EELIGIONS OP JAPAN 99 "When, however, it became necessary that I should sit on the floor during a brief ceremony or else leave the temple, a wonderful change occurred. It seemed that I was looking at the temple for the first time in its true proportions. The ceiling rose much higher; the decora- tions stood out clearer. The great pillars seemed really tall, and harmony grew magically out of the mingling of detail. By all means sit on the floor in Japanese temples'! Let us to Nikko, and first let me sing the praise of the cryptomeria. It is a tree, a dark-leaved conifer, a kind of cedar that grows straight up to the clouds as do the sugar pines in the Pacific coast sierras. Give it three to five hundred years of growth and it has pierced the clouds and attained a girth of fifteen to twenty-five feet at the base. Place them in stately rows up a mountain road, and lo ! at once you are in the home of the gods. Blessed be he who called it cryptomeria, for "sugi," the Japanese name, does not become it at all. You feel like thanking heaven for it, as the pious old English lady did for that "blessed and comforting word Mesopotamia. ' ' We have entered the long central street of Nikko on our rickishas. It is lined with small stores all open to the street and most of them as seen from your slight eminence display souvenirs in photos, prints, carvings in wood and ivory, jewels in gold and precious stones. You are con- scious of a curious artistic thrill. Nikko has cast a long shadow before. "See Nikko before you die" you have heard on every hand since you landed in Japan. Then you have read about it. What really signalized it was that it was chosen as the site of the great Shogun lyeyasu's grave centuries ago. Now a tomb of that high stamp in Japan must have a votive temple, and the temple must have its majesty reside in many structures, and on a steep hill- side they must stand terraced one above another, and all 100 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND around must stand gigantic forest trees in time. Different indeed in the latter respect must the lyeyasu temple have looked when the gates and stairs and fanes were raised, for the newly planted trees were small that since have reached the skies. It was the great lyeyasu 's son, lyemitsu, who raised the first temple. It was again the latter 's son who erected the second or lyemitsu temple, that almost dupli- cates the first. Upon them was lavished all the artistry of a highly efflorescent epoch in Japanese art. Boldness, violence almost of colour and form make their astonishing effect. As we roll to our hotel we note the hills rising sheer above the river whose voice we hear from below its banks as we turn from the central street to the steep road that leads up to the hostelry. There we rest as night closes down, hearing the chatter of those who have spent the day in the temple heights. "How wonderful it all was," and then the pessimist, "Well, for my part, etc." Still further piqued our party sleeps. Morning comes brightly and we are off afoot down the steep road to the river. We turn for a moment and face the long wood-clad heights that parallel the stream, then cross the Poor Man's Bridge over the torrential Daiya- gawa, chanting its crystal paean over the blue rocks some thirty feet below, and with the Sacred Bridge in its curve of crimson lacquer, which only Emperors and such can tread, a few rods away, but striking a loud colour note upon the green that crowds everywhere under the soft grey sky. We enter on the sacred way up a flight of stone steps, turn to the left on a gently ascending path between the cryptomerias. Our thoughts are lifting with them. In a little while, say the distance of a quarter of a mile, you turn again, taking your last glance down to the river bed we have been skirting as we rose. The view is fine, and the sense of depth to the stream and distance over the TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 101 green valley to the dim mountains beyond enhances the thought of height. We are mounting higher still and the cryptomerias rise higher and bulk larger as we go. We pass an imperial palace on a small plateau to the left. At last we face a long straight rise, a magnificent broad avenue up the mountain, the kings of the cryptomerias on either side, and the people coming and going, now a band of pilgrims, now a group of laughing temple working women with baskets yoked to their backs, now a group of priests, looking priestly here beneath the giant trees. Afar we see a grey torii rise to close the view and be the stately portal to the lyeyasu shrine, for all this pomp of path and lofty trees and temples beyond is set before the grave on the mountain top of that first and greatest of the Tokugawa shoguns — a mighty, a human, and at times a merciless man. At last we pass beneath the torii and find ourselves on a plateau, to the left a high pagoda with its five stories in red and gold edging and black roofs, the undersides in a pale verdigris green. Opposite is a grove of towering cryptomerias. Facing upward, a line of granite balus- traded battlements pierced at the centre by a broad flight of stoni3 steps and crowned by mighty trees. We pass up the steps and lo, the wonder of the Niomon gate — the gate of the two kings, dazzling in red and gold on a riot of carving, with four dark crimson pillars to hold the glance. Here are two Deva kings, affrighting things to ward off evil. It would be folly to try to describe this whole composition of daring colours. We go on, and the eye is carried up by tremendous trees rising from the embankment above the Niomon and giving a heaven point- ing sublimity no lofty dome or spire or column built by human hands could convey. The Gothic interiors of the finest cathedrals have this note, but here it vibrates in the ether itself. The lowering '102 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND clouds of the dark day seem only to bring heaven nearer. Around are a host of grey and lichen-arabesqued stone lanterns like witnesses of light rather than light itself. To the left above the Niomon rise the dark grey roofs of the temple with a blazonry of gold on roof edges and roof tree. Here is the treasury of the shrine and other offices with noted carvings, all rich in colour. Such wood-carving! Here we may see the celebrated three monkeys guarding against abuse of speech, sight and hearing, and of which you can buy postal cards everywhere. Such birds too— peacocks, partridges, pheasants — a riot of form and colour. Elsewhere they show you the "sleeping cat" highly cele- brated, but not so clever as the monkeys. We cannot stay to look at them now for our eyes have rested on a small structure, the ablutionary which remains in memory as the gem of all. The baldachin above the great granite basin where pilgrims wash lips and hands is supported by twelve white monolithic columns encased in sockets of hammered metal with beautifully refined pat- terns. White and black in every shade mingle in the superstructure with tinted carvings of dragons under a roof perhaps the most graceful in the world, for it shows that curve of portico front and complementary under dec- oration which I hold to be the most striking contribution to the beautiful in architecture in Japan; the curve of gable and the heavy decorated rooftree being the other. It is wrong to linger here on this our first visit, for may we not return to it ? So we pass the library of the Sacred Books and ascend to the second plateau up twenty-two steps. Here are the House of the Bell and the House of the Drum before cryptomerias measuring twenty-five feet at the base. Here is the Yahushi-do, a marvel of arabesque carvings and mighty gilded columns with the richest colour- ings and treasure shrines, and the curiosity of the crying dragon — a pictured one on the ceiling which emits a strange 1. FIRST TERRACE, lYEYASU TEMPLE, NIKKO 2. YOMEI MON GATE ON THE THIRD TERRACE OF THE lYEYASU TEMPLE, NIKKO TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OP JAPAN 103 crackling sound when you clap your hands as you stand under the head. We mount to the third terrace and find ourselves before the exquisite Yomei-mon. Who can describe the fineness, the complication, the colouring of the carving in this gate? It is called the "Morning till Night gate," and you might study it all day and still find beauties in it. Here is the Kazuraden, a lovely structure where a priestess dances at times, also the incense hall with a fine porch and fagade and the Palanquin house where festival accessories are stored. But still the cryptomerias rise and we pass to the fourth terrace and come upon the Karamon or Chinese gate, the daintiest and most finely carved of all the surprising portals. Its beauties haunt one long after. And now on the plateau we have reached the highest point of the temple, for here is the golden Hondon or oratory whose interior is ablaze with refined colour among the gilding and glory of the patterns and designs. The priests receive us. We take off our shoes. From the outer golden hall we are led to an inner shrine of gold, the Holy of Holies, it is called. A priest flings a vestment of green brocade upon my shoulders and others on the shoulders of those with me. The voices of chanting chor- isters are heard intoning prayers. Priests in gorgeous vestments of white and pale Asagi blue cross a raised plat- form at the back, and one comes past us handing to each a small earthen cup of sacred wine. It was all like a dream of heaven-ascending colour and glow, and left one at a loss to separate and sift the charm and delight and something of the awe of it. If one had only an atom of belief in it one might well be swayed to any end by its appeal. As it was with me, the impression remained of a great art new to me, wonderful in its results and its defiances and the traces of a faith wholly national 104 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND allied to a ritual of its own. Take my word for it, Nikko is superb and its mountain mausoleum temples have a deep, deep art rhythm and something of a soul. I went up afterward to the shogun's grave two hundred steps still higher. It was plain for all the piled up splen- dours down below; some bird figures in bronze, but no attempt at a mausoleum. It was simply a place. At night, fatigued bodily and somewhat wrought ner- vously by the multi-coloured experiences of the day I had little taste for the after supper efforts of the hotel people to provide their guests with entertainment of a kind, so I retired early. To the brawling of the river below, heard weirdly through the quiet of the night, I went asleep, but my, what processions of priests and shoguns and .dancing priestesses, and warriors in armour and two-sworded men- at-arms and spearmen and blue-robed men of state, and queenly little women swept through my dreams, to the booming of great beUs and the beating of drums. One dream was of being led by priestesses to the wonderful ablutionary and invited to disrobe and take a plunge. I remember I had some reluctance. I have trod the temple spaces of Kyoto and have drunk in the sylvan beauties of the temples at Nara. I have sat in thought before the giant bronze Buddha that sits forty- nine feet high in the open air at Kamakura, but only at Nikko did what I felt to be the true rhythm of the Nippon temples come to me. And at Nara on a day of cloud and rain it was the rhythm of a dance. For some small sum at the high temples there one may see it. The more you pay the more they dance. Priests — and priestesses — ^must live. At any rate two thin and mouldering priests took their seats at the side of the little lean-to and one played on a wheezy, cracked flute and the other twanged a samisen, but they kept their dolorous melody in perfect time. Three TEMPLES AND RELIGIONS OF JAPAN 105 women of the temple in richly flowing court dresses of Shinto, white with the twelve folds of scarlet showing at the bottom, came with slow step from behind the screen and out on the little platform of bare and worn planks. The first was tall and handsome and erect, the two others short and otherwise insignificant. After I glanced them over I saw only the first — the priestess with the marble face and the large, ardent, unfathomable eyes — ^the eyes of the Far Bast fixed on some horizon where her great gods sat in the twilight calm. The dance was hieratic — short, measured steps forward, then backward and turning on the heel with slow, beauti- ful movement of the arms. First she moved without any adjunct, then with a fan she drew from her bosom, waving it in gestures of majesty. Lastly, coming forward, she knelt before a little stand and took up a short staff hung with small silver bells and from which hung long streamers of crimson and white. This she held up and rang the bells in many graceful postures. Kneeling down she replaced the staff, a low obeisance and it was over. Was it the rhythm of the sad music of the priests or her perfect, undulating grace or the clear eyes fixed afar off while her whole body swayed, I know not, but the dawns of old Asia were there and a great rhythm was thrilling under the dripping trees. CHAPTER IX "THE SENDING AWAY" OP AN EMPRESS Tokyo's two millions and the funeral pageant of the Empress Dowager — Elaborate ceremonial and popular grief — "The foreign visitors" — The silent multitude — Old and new Japan in the great procession — L'envoi of the Emperor. During my first stay in Tokyo, the great city, the whole Empire in fact, was under the cloud of a very recent death of consequence in the imperial family — ^that of the Empress Dowager, the widow of the late Meiji Emperor, a lady much beloved by the imperial family and the people at large, by none more than by the young Emperor, Yoshihito. His grief indeed was said to be pathetic to witness, for the Empress Dowager had been mother and counsellor and guide to him as to his father. Yet he was not her son, his real mother being a lady of the palace still living near Tokyo, but separated from him since infancy by immutable law and immemorial custom in the case of an heir to the throne. One of the glories of Nippon is that direct thir- teen-century-long descent of the Mikadoate in the heir male which has signalized it and the physiological observer may, without offence to the sensitive, state that it would be against all human probabilities to expect the titular Empresses of fifty generations always to provide a son for the throne. At any rate the rule is old and absolute that a son of the Mikado is a Prince of the Blood Imperial, and if he is otherwise bodily and mentally qualified may by the decision of the Emperor be named Crown Prince and so in 106 "THE SENDING AWAY" OP AN EMPRESS 107 the sad inevitable takings of time, succeed him. And thus it has been. All court and public functions were suspended: mourn- ing was prescribed, and the Shinto imperial ritual ex- hausted in ceremonial grief, renaming for the heavenly- world, and personal propitiation. The court with the Emperor goes into seclusion for a whole year, the imperial palaces are closed tight to the outside world. Hence cere- monies are in nowise hurried. There is much to be done with imperial clay. Parliament voted a large sum for the obsequies. A special shrine had to be built in Tokyo for the culminating funeral services in the metropolis. The arrangements for the funeral train had to be made with special funeral furnishings, and the ceremonies laid down in the burial ground near Kyoto where lie the remains of the Meiji Emperor. And much besides at the palace and elsewhere. The streets where the cortege would pass had to be specially sanded, and the long line of decorations prepared and put in place for the imperial "sending away." As a consequence of the social gloom of the capital, although discreet dinners and such normal functions went on, I went otherwhere for a couple of weeks on quests that had no public interest, with a promise that I should be notified in time to return for the public funeral and as comfortable arrangements as possible made for my wit- nessing it. In Japan on such occasions the rule of pre- cedence becomes absolute. For such affairs of state one must be titularly somebody official to gain entrance here, to be allowed to stay there, ^o get a carriage, a chair or an auto elsewhere. Otherwise it is take your chance with the crowd. Fortunately the sons of the press have some royal claims to recognition, and something was managed. I got in among "the visiting foreigners." And I reached the town on time. 108 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Many were the warnings given me by those who had passed through the "sending away" of the Meiji Emperor two years before. "Be sure to bring a portable stool." "Have sandwiches and something to drink concealed upon your person. You may be seven hours in line without a chance to escape." "Carry an umbrella: yes, it is possible a man may smoke in a prudent way if you choose your time right," and so on with admonitions without end. It appears, however, as in all things in Japan, the authorities were not above learning by experience, and many old generals and admirals who had suffered agonies by remain- ing in one position for untold hours were this time relieved of the strain. And here was an opportunity to witness an emotional side of a people unique in so many ways. It proved a wonderful spectacle of the old revered Japan parading in the name of a great sorrow through the very modern Japan that has been seizing so fervently the new and progressive modes of thought and action. All that day of May the two million souls of Tokyo thought with delicate concern upon the mourning pageant that the night would bring — ^whether it would rain or no, whether it would pass without mortal mishap, whether their August Lord, the Emperor, whose body was not too strong, would pass safely through the sad ordeal of bidding formal farewell to the lamented Empress Dowager Shoken. For this was the day of "sending away" and the Emperor and Empress had loved her much, and great had been the preparations. Now the night was here. There had been sunshine, and there had been cloud. The sun had gone down in a smoulder of dark crimson fire along the western horizon and up from the south had come streamers of black cloud, like feathery crepe. Then drop by drop had come sprinkles of rain through the soft, sweet evening air. "THE SENDING AWAY" OP AN EMPRESS 109 For three long miles from the Aoyama palace on a western hillside of the city through wide streets to the place of the shrine in the imperial estate of Yoyogi, the mourning decorations extended. Lines of tall funeral masts stretched on either side of the street bearing alternately long buff and grey banners and the white flags with their crimson sun that is the emblem of Japan, each mast fronted with the Shinto mirror — emblem of purity — and wound spirally with bands of white and black. And mast was joined to mast the whole way through with similar loops of black and white. Near the palace where lay in state the remains of the Empress Dowager, and at points along the street route, iron cressets built upon columns of bark-covered pine stems bound together were blazing after nightfall with a red- yellow, waving smoky flame, but the high-masted arc lights furnished most of the light along the way. When you reached at last the long wide avenue of entrance to Yoyogi, you were back in old Japan where arc lights did not shine. At the further end, with two tall torii before it, was the imposing shrine in form of a Shinto temple — plain, simple, faultless in line and finish, and built of pale gold hinoki wood. On) either side of it were great pavilions for the Emperor and 'Empress and court nobles and foreign embassies, and from the entrance gate to the pavilions on either side were the gathering places for the students of the universities and colleges of the great city to watch the passing scene. This place of the shrine was lit by blazing cressets and the pale dim light of huge paper lanterns, just enough to light vaguely the sea of thousands of faces that with flashing eyes and silent lips stood there like statues or shadows in the gentle rain. Here indeed was the fine flower of intellect of young Japan — ^young men — ^young women — who in twenty years will practically be its rulers, but outside, back the long 110 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND way to the Aoyama palace a full half -million — ^men, women and children — watched and waited too. From the forenoon all along the line the people had been taking their places behind sidewalk ropes that left ample room in the middle for the procession. Boys and youths simply squatted on the ground. Others spread cloths or small mats and sat and waited with the simple abiding cheerfulness that characterizes the whole people. Shop fronts and small garden spaces were occupied in the same way with patient spectators, the only restriction being that no one should gaze upon the pageant from any window or any point above the street level. They must not look down on an imperial progress of the living or the dead. So they chatted, ate lunches of rice or cakes, stared at passers-by, and then fell silent or talked in whispers. As the day passed to nightfall, the lines became denser and at all points the crowds greater, with visibly increasing solemnity of bearing. Up and down the long line the dark-clad policemen gave their orders with quiet force. They closed the middle of the road to traffic at 2 p.m., though the pro- cession was not to start till 8 p.m. They take their time in such functions in Japan. At six o'clock an army of labourers spread a bed of dark grey sand along the processional line, and smoothed it with long brooms. For the imperial dead a "new road" must be made, and that was how it was done. We, of the outside world, had been assigned a roped-in roadside space about half a mile from the palace. We had assembled by five o'clock — some six hundred of us, men and women from a score of countries, bringing camp-stools and lunch baskets, and waited, listening to tongues from all ends of the earth and curiously noting all that was happening around us. About seven can;e the gentle sprinkling of the rain. As the arc lights began to glow came the heavy tread of "THE SENDING AWAY" OF AN EMPRESS 111 the tough-fibred khaki-clad soldiers with red-banded caps and fixed bayonets. They formed in guard line, facing inward the whole way from the palace to the shrine, stacked rifies and stood at rest. "They are showing us what they never showed to the Russians," said a German. "But what is that?" said a Frenchman. "Their backs," replied the Teuton. "My faith," said the Frenchman, "I wish they would show them to somebody else." "Well," remarked a commission man from Yokohama, "it is pretty hard to see through the Japanese." And so it went. At half -past seven 2,000 sailors from the battleships, four in front, marched with reversed rifles down the middle of the road toward the palace. When the head of column reached there, thej^ halted and turned right about face. They were to be the advance guard of the procession, and when they moved again, the "sending away" would truly begin. It was approaching the solemn moment, and one became conscious of a subtle thrill in the air. For one thing, the silence. Within pistol shot of us were 20,000 people, and all so hushed that a whisper seemed an intrusion on a state of intense thought. It was not a pageant to be wondered at for the waiting Japanese. It was their whole history glowing vital before the eyes of the soul. It was not merely the passing of a Great Lady and Empress Dowager of the reigning house, but it was an illustration from soul heights of tha divine origin of Japan and the Japanese. To their eyes the spirit of the August Lady was in a way at one with the spirits of all their dead for seventy-five generations back to the coming of Jimmu Tenno "the Emperor of Godlike Valour" twenty-five hundred years ago. For he, be it remembered, was grandson of the great 112 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND sun-goddess from whom all their emperors, and so all their nation has sprung, and ever since then have lived in her light in this land of Yamato— the Gate of the Mountains— which today they call Nippon— the Land of the Rising Sun. So the Empress Hakuro, to be known for eternity as the Empress Dowager Shoken, if of an immeasurably higher caste, was at one with the spirits of their ancestors, down to the ghostly forbears of the poorest labourer in the markets of Tokyo. Here, then, is a rare spiritual bond — ^the families of the people with the imperial family, whose direct line has never failed, certainly for the twelve hundred years of recorded history. Up to their great historic Shinto temples standing on hillsides clad with giant cryptomerias, mighty of girth and piercing the skies, lead many steps of stone, and to the multitudes hereabout it is as though, amid the soft silence of this night in the heart of the city, they were gazing on a slight figure clad in shimmery Shinto white, floating over rather than treading on such steps of stone leading past tree-embowered shrine after shrine, up height after height until at last it mingled, at the loftiest summit imaginable, with the very glow of the Rising Sun. They could close their eyes and see her rise from the night to the day, and they and their kami, their ancestors, were at one with her. She was of their very own. The goodness, the gentleness, the public spirit, the poetic inspiration, the worldly wisdom, the helpfulness to men and women, the family love, the character which made her a prop for forty-six years of her married life to the Emperor Meiji, whose trials and triumphs she shared, are all cele- brated among the people around us, as they might be by any Western people, but it is the spirit bond which is most potent in this hour when the coffin of the August One is to pass. One must try to grasp this spiritual attitude to un^^y- "THE SENDING AWAY" OF AN EMPRESS 113 stand. The Japanese of Tokyo, great and small, gentle and simple, are as plainly worldly as Christian or Jew in mundane matters. They can work steadily, skillfully, patiently; they can bargain cleverly and chat and smile and laugh aloud like other people. They can weep too, though they take shame for weeping before others, and there is no "Asiatic mystery" about them, as romanticists and paradox mongers so glibly assert. What they have, as distinct from other people, is the spiritual sense of oneness the Empire through which makes them all as of a family united by its dead as well as its living. And it has had a mighty force in the last half-century. What the indi- vidualizing tendency of their present effort to make Western; civilization their model will do to this spiritual oneness only time can tell. Just at this moment as they strain against the roadside barriers they are under the spell of the past; they are considering deep questions of the soul, and the silence around deepens as the delicate rain is falling from the darkening, dim grey sky. A cannon shot rends the air ! A little way up the line the marine band plays the Imperial Funeral March. It is plaintive, stately. All have risen and uncovered. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, with silent footfalls the line of man-o'-warsmen, four deep begins moving toward Yoyogi — a march of soundless shadows. Not a sound except the wailing cadence of the march as the band moves farther and farther away. Still farther and fainter the harmony comes down the long line. Another cannon shot — a minute gun, and so for fifteen minutes the soundless march of the sailors, the fainter and fainter music of the band, the mellow boom of a temple bell, the minute gun again. The band is a mile away, still one can hear it. Only the breathless silence of the multitude makes that possible. It is hush and rapture in one — the deepest soul tribute I have ever known or witnessed. 114 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND At last the line of sailors — ^the guard of honour — has passed, and the funeral procession proper has begun. With the rifles and Jack tar uniforms the gold-lettered cap bands, the reversed rifles, it is modern Japan that has gone by. Here is old Japan — ancient imperial pomp expressed in really simple details passing slowly by. Ofiicials with sounding mortuary titles, dressed traditionally for the most part in black Shinto coifs and long mantles of white, lighted by torchbearers in belted tunics of grey are there. Grand Funeral Commissioners and the like slowly come into the shifting light. Men pass bearing eight great round decorated drums. Men bearing eight large ancient gongs, more torchbearers and then — surprising sight — eighteen tall thin banners twenty feet high and thirty inches wide, nine of silver white and nine of golden yellow — tower above the procession. Torchbearers again, and then sixteen men with quivers and sixteen men with tall ancient bows, sixteen bearing long shields and sixteen halberd bearers. There are two more tall white satin banners bearing the red figure of the Sun, and more stately officials and torchbearers, and two large evergreen Shinto funeral trees, and then with chests for offerings and torch- bearers come the high Shinto priests in full canonicals. They have officiated at the palace and will officiate at the shrine — a very stately, quaint impressive group. A band of seventeen musicians playing upon pipes that make a shrill pibroch sound. Masters of Ceremonies and Lord Stewards, all strangely coifed and robed, then twelve torches. A visible thrill now shakes the native onlookers, but not a word is spoken. They sway gently like people in a standing dream. A strange sound like the distant lowing of cattle comes to the ears, and four sacred oxen festooned with white ropes, attended by a cloud of antique cowherds come into sight drawing the Fun^reil Car of the Empress, "THE SENDING AWAY" OP AN EMPRESS 115 It is high and square and of deep brown red lacquer, with long golden tassels hung from circular, chain-like plates of gold, and rests on two large wheels covered with black lacquer, but its strangest quality is that the wheels creak in a prolonged unmelodious groan that to the minds of the ancient Japanese meant the woe of the Inarticulate for the Mighty Dead. A glance at the multitude pressing around us showed bowed heads, and, on the faces of those nearest to us, tears! With the passing of the funeral car the tension visibly relaxed. Here was the Lord of the Imperial Household in full white robe and sword, a white-robed official carrying the imperial sandals in a white box, then stool and step- bearers and officials in full white robe and sword; then officers of the Imperial Guards in modern uniforms heavy with gold lace, then, in a general's uniform, Prince Kan-in, of the imperial family, chief mourner representing the Emperor, — a middle-aged gentleman who marched well, — followed by a line of glittering aides de camp ; then Princes of the Blood and their sons marching two abreast. The Court Physicians followed; then masses of dignified men in gold-braided coats and cocked hats, knights, as it were, of the Grand Order of Merit, generals, admirals, digni- taries, very splendid and grave personages, some of whom raised mundane umbrellas against the gentle descending rain, then trumpeters, then another band, and then regiment after regiment of the Guard of Honour from the army. So, old and vanishing, picturesque Japan with the Empress Dowager's hearse went on into the night, the sailor men of today before, and the army boys of today closing the line. On through the miles of bowed heads the pageant slowly, slowly passed and in at the Yoyogi gate between the wider lines of onlookers, under the first torii nearer the gate and 116 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND to the second torii before the shrine. The wavering glow from the blazing cressets, the pale moons of the lanterns, and the flames of the expiring torches were here the only light. The young Emperor who with the Empress had driven from the Aoyama palace by another route, here met the funeral car. Gently the coffin was lifted out, placed in the sanctuary of the shrine, and the curtain was withdrawn, letting in a flood of light. Now came the High Priest forward and made the old- time offerings, and the Emperor, paying homage, read in a low voice the imperial address : "I, Yoshihito, reverently address the Spirit of the late Empress-Mother. Only a year and a half has elapsed since the conclusion of the national mourning for his Majesty the late Emperor, and our tears are barely dry when, alas, we again suffer a great loss. How unpitying, alas, is Heaven to Yoshihito ! "We have in person performed ceremonies while Her Late Majesty lay in state, sanctified, in a temporary shrine for several tens of days past; and we are now about to lay the August Eemains beside those of the late Imperial Father. "We have now come to say farewell, alas! At this moment our sorrow is unbearable." Then came the Empress and the Princes and Princesses of the Blood paying homage, followed in turn by all the dignitaries present. Again there was Shinto rite and prayer. The coffin was gently rolled upon a draped plat- form-car that had been run in over a freshly laid switch. So it was made part of the imperial train that at two in the morning took its way to Kyoto, 328 miles away, the burial place of the imperial family for a thousand years, and until 1868 the capital of the Empire. Never had crowds melted so quietly away. The city had "THE SENDING AWAY" OF AN EMPRESS 117 swallowed up its half-million of onlookers as if it was the dismissal of a Sunday school. The gentle rain had ceased. The night air was fresh and sweet and mild, and the sky had lifted its clouds until only light cirrus of soft grey tinge showed overhead against the inky blue. The lights shone out from the trees on the wooded heights, and were reflected in the garden pools, lakelets and wide moats lapping gently against the bases of massive old fortress walls crowned with ancient pine trees weirdly bent, whose branches lean over to see their reflection in the water below. Mr. and Mrs. Japan and the children were abed, and the belated visitors at the foreign hotels were relaxing after their long, unwonted vigil. A train with many lights was steaming slowly to the South, and the "sending away" of the gracious Empress Dowager was over. CHAPTER X THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN Ancestor worship at the root of Japanese religion — The Empercr Meiji — ^Why he will be a great god — The type of a glorious era in peace and war — The case of General Count Nogi — His glorious, tragic life and dramatic suicide — Desire of lonely immortality — How thwarted — The forty-seven ronins and their undying popularity — Count Nogi's house a shrine — Tachibana and Hirose. T. I. M. the Emperor and Empress will be pleased to proceed to the Yasukuni Shrine, Kudanzaka, on the 29th instant at 10 and 11 in the morning respectively to worship personally before the shrine where the departed soldiers, who have sacrificed their lives for the cause of the Emperor and the country, sleep, and are worshipped as guardians of the State. Before and after the day of the imperial worship, during six days, as already stated, a fete will be held at the shrine an(J the heroes of Tsing-tao will be deified. — Japan Times, April 18, 1915. Thus does modern Japan turn aside from its pressing problems of the present to honour, to glorify its heroic dead. The dead of Tsing-tao of 1914 have entered the national pantheon; henceforth they live with a godly life of their own. "Yes, they are making a god of him." We were talking in Tokyo about feats of battle in old and new Japan and its foreign wars, and some one had let drop the name of Tachibana. There was a sudden chorus of eulogy and one young college 118 THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN 119 man with something of awe in his tones suggested the curious process of creation of the divine as something well on its way. And it was quite true. It was doubtless the mystical trend in Lafcadio Hearn's extremely sensitive mind that made him practically begin his "Interpretation" of Japan to the Western hemisphere by examining the attitude of the Japanese to the next world. He found the latter filled in that people's belief with the ghosts of all the Japanese who have passed through the gates of death from the beginning of time, from the beginning of the gods. He devotes much atten- tion to ancestor worship. Nothing, Mr. Hearn believes, is more alive in Japan than the dead — if, by Celtic paradox, I may put it that way. They are with the living all the time, guiding them in the affairs of life and must be daily worshipped and at all times propitiated; for, look you, they can do you great harm if neglected. Honour your dead for the love you bore them in their lifetime. If you fail, look out. There- fore it is that the first rite in the daily round of life is to offer food and drink to them in every palace, house and hut in the land. It was possibly good psychology to take up the study of the people of Japan from that standpoint. The religious, or what answers for the religious, faith of a people gives a certain clue to many vital characteristics when you are bent on meticulous differentiation, but all peoples have underlying, because ancient, beliefs about the souls of the dead, and they affect life and conduct in about the same way, so that after all you end the inquiry about where you started. In other words, conduct between man and man and man and woman — ^the working of the social contract — is really affected by the constant facts about us in the living world rather than in any reflection from the world 120 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of the dead — much more dimly populous as the dead world may be. Still, Lafcadio Hearn's mystical outlook and inward examining bring one just to the right mood for our subject —the making of gods in Japan. We establish a link with the vast unexplorable realm whose hither shores we may only cross at the price of the life which nature has in- flexibly taught us to preserve, to nourish and to prize. Something which in exceptional cases will lead us to lay down that life gladly, cheerfully; aye, to take the very fortress of one's life by self-assault in obedience to its call, whatever that something is, must be powerful indeed, and well worth considering. Looking below the intense practical working of the modern Japanese mind, its wholly material grasp on material things, its swift assimilation of modern science in its essence as well as in its details, we do truly come on another world of thought. With their most agnostic we are told that the ancient beliefs cling to some corner of their mental fabric, that their filial devotion is unbroken, that reverence for the souls of their dead persists in men who believe they have no souls of their own, and that the ■governing powers of the gods survive in the minds of men who believe mind to be nothing more than a func- tion of matter put into that vibration which we call life. How much more thrilling to the mass of the people still believing simply in the old order of the ruling gods ! In that realm where they rule there is no place for the earth-developed instincts that make men barter sharply, chaffer endlessly and grasp resolutely in pursuit of gain, with greed and avarice at one's elbow. No, here are self- abnegation, self-sacrifice, self-immolation on their thrones, and all men must bow down before them. Whatever that realm may have been called in the past — religion or what- THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN 121 not — it is now in Japan what the rest of the world calls patriotism. It is the self-consciousness of Japan stated in the highest, most exalted personal terms, and which by its very exalta- tion tends to react on the mass of the people to its lowest ranks, making a standard for all of the clearest definition. So much for the groundwork of a process of which I wit- nessed many absorbingly interesting details amid the multi- farious evidences of the national material outreach of today. One more fact must be recalled, namely the fact unique in the world, that the supreme ruler of Japan is himself a god and the direct descendant of the gods in unbroken line. In the Shinto cult, which is the national religion of Japan, the Mikajio, the Emperor, is the descendant of the sun goddess. Through him all Japanese are the children of the great gods. He is their sacred father and high placed brother, as well as their unassailable King. As he dies to be succeeded by another of the same divine seed on earth he takes his high place in the pantheon of Nippon. And so of the humblest Japanese who lays down his garment of flesh, he also enters the godland. For generations the tablet bearing his celestial name will hang in the family shrine and the daily offering of food and drink be offered to him. And the Emperors will be votively honoured by the nation until another has taken a nearer stand to the living generation, helping and guarding Japan from their heavenly place. When we of America stand with bowed head before the tomb of George Washington at Mount Vernon a feeling of reverence, honour and gratitude for what he was in life to the young nation fills us, but we do not look to him as still originating benefit to us from the other world save through his example and majesty of character. Before Lincoln's tomb we shed tears for his fate and our love 122 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of him bui'ns bright in our hearts. Before the tomb of Grant we get a reflex of his iron will in war and the broad view of the great warrior who yet loved peace better than strife. It is our fashion to express these things concretely and secularly by putting up monumental statuary to our heroes, our teachers, our statesmen in public places with more or less — often less — evidence of taste. The East traditionally has avoided that ; but Japan in the last score of years has adopted it to some extent and with generally deplorable results. The native attempts at portrait statuary in bronze as seen on the squares of Tokyo in a score or more of efflgies clad in terrible frock coats or implacably stiffened, long- skirted uniforms are discouraging. The fine monument to Toyotomi Hideyoshi with its powerful equestrian figure of the Japanese Hannibal is a striking exception. How much finer, because in line with the genius of the people, were the votive temples to thoSe whom Japan or its rulers loved to honour in the past ! Our present business, however, is not with the modem monuments but in considering the exciting causes which in Japan today are gradually inducting certain great souls into the higher ranks of the national gods. The most pointed example, the most obvious, I may say. Of the century is the Emperor Mutsuhito, now known by his celestial name as Meiji (which means "Enlightened Gov- ernment"), the monarch of the Eestoration, whose hand was on the helm of state on its passage through all the archipelago of revolution until she anchored after two great foreign wars victorious and secure behind the great break- water of the Constitution in the wide harbour of peace and progress. It was indeed a new, a great Japan, from which he visibly departed in the year 1912. Tall of frame, mentally THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN l23 virile, kind of heart, considerate, helpful, he stood morally worthy of his human destiny, making ever a predominant figure where a figurehead might have been expected. His long reign of forty-four years endeared him more and more to his people and has formed that deep and massive rev- erence on which his name is surely being lifted among the Powers that men of his nation will pray to and invoke for centuries to come. It will be recognized that over and beyond the ceremonies which the court, the hierarchy, the government, may bestow on such a monarch and such a notable man, it is by the subtle assent of a whole people that the enduring honours of a memory must come. In this it may well be held that the Emperor Meiji rests secure. In Catholic countries a titular saintship is bestowed by the Roman church at the end of a long lapse of time after death, in which the man or woman of distinctively godly life has passed under sharp scrutiny by the Church through the respective stages of being named the venerable and the blessed before entering the high honour of the holy. In Japan, it is safe to say, all the powers of state and nation conjoin in the one thought, and the signs one meets on every hand in Japan are that this will endure. To his burial mound flock the pilgrims from the remotest villages. A great fane is even now being built there. The poets lay their choicest wreaths of song there, and the throb that comes from out the mystical soul of Japan reaches you when you hear his name on the lips of the gentle and simple. No name among the shoguns comes with the same mystic force; lyeyasu and lyemitsu, whom the temples of Nikko honour hold no such claim, nor ever did. One must indeed go back over the centuries and enter the region of Jimmu and the semi-historical emperors to find the like in esteem of the Emperor Meiji. Above all, it must be remembered that the late Emperor 124 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND stands as the protagonist and type of an era of rejuvena- tion and construction unparalleled for achievement in the annals of the world. In a lesser degree the late Empress Dowager will share this godly eminence. She will walk the world of spirit and shadows hand in hand with Meiji. The popular signs point aU that way. The lady so much beloved, so genuinely mourned, will be a splendid satellite and complementing companion to the Emperor in the abode of Shinto. From these imperial figures, at once and easily obvious to the Western mind, as well as to the Japanese, one comes to a process of god-making now surely in operation; namely, the making of gods out of national heroes — ^the battling heroes of the Meiji. It is a purely selective process. It does not follow the lines of promotion or of rank, but it seizes instinctively upon its exemplars and marks them apart for deification. We shall examine the three soldier figures of the Meiji era, who, by all signs, will enter the ranks of the legendary heroes of Japan for all time. First and greatest and most appealing of these is General Count Kiten Nogi. He was a shining warrior figure identified with victory in the Eusso-Japanese and Chino-Japanese wars, a samurai of the Choshu clan. Two great achievements are to his credit — the siege and capture of the great Russian fortress of Port Arthur and the flanking operation at Mukden which decided that tremendous field. That he will rank in history on the level of Yama- gata, now prince of the realm, who commanded the armies in the war of 1894-95, or with Marshal Oyama, the com- mander-in-chief in the great campaign — 1904-05 — ^that closed with the winning of the battle of Mukden and the defeat of Russia, is not perhaps likely. The latter 's his- toric value as a military commander will, it may be said, THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN 125 suffer from the fact that his chief aid, General Kodama, really planned the large outline of the Russo-Japanese campaign and ordered its detail in the name of his chief. Kodama did not long survive the war. That Count Nogi's skill or courage or war genius excelled that of the other four army commanders of the Russian campaign is doubtful. A brilliant soldier like Kuroki, for instance, should stand the peer of any captain of the war that held a like command. The records of Generals Nodzu and Oku are hardly inferior, and even General Kawa- mura, the last appointed leader of an army in the cam- paign, although operating ia but one battle, developed high qualities of the soldier. It is not, however, in seeking out those whose claims in Japan's scientific war history prove equal or superior to his, but in seeing where he stands apart that we shall come to some appreciation of why he has soared on the wings of Japan's imagination into the high home of her celestials. I would say first of all that it is because of a touching dramatic completeness in his life and his death. No people are more responsive to the dramatic appeal than the people of Nippon. It cries out to their artistic sense. Just as they treasure an art object for qualities of per- fection which have been proved to the smallest detail, so they are capable of, and fond of, judging a man's life by the rules of the aesthetical as well as of the ethical. If a keen examination should disclose that what some call the theatric seemed to have had some share in Nogi's illus- tration of the dramatic in his life, it is all in so high a vein that the less radiant, the more showy — in a word, the mere self-consciousness — that it exhibits belongs to the highest drama in its austerity and final sacrifice. General Nogi came out of the Russian war fully equal in popular acclaim to Fleet Admiral Count Togo, who stood 126 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND for Japan's victorious navy as Nogi did for all the great qualities of her army. Not only because he was distinguished but because he was unique was he the chosen of the people for passionate love and admiration. He was so delicate when a boy that his father, fearing that his son would never make a sturdy samurai, nicknamed him "Mujin," meaning one who would never be worthy to enter the knightly class. Constant exercises, however, under the strict discipline of old Japan overcame his weakness of constitution, so much so that he was strong enough to engage in a fist fight which he won in the rebellion of the tenth year of Meiji. His expertness in the art of fighting, his learning and his up- right character finally induced his lord to appoint him tutor to the heir apparent. And so he grew in years and wisdom. Next we behold him a grim, silent man, who had com- manded a brigade with honour in the capture of Port Arthur from the Chinese. He found himself ten years later in command of the Third Army, assigned to the same task against the immeasurably stronger fortress which the Russians had made of the former Chinese stronghold. A Spartan simplicity characterized his soldier life. Unsparing of himself, fearing no privation, he exacted the utmost of obedience and devotion from the highest to the last soldier of his command. Without flamboyant appeal an electric vibration of patriotism passed from him through his army, and the heroic quality which pervaded all ranks to the end of the campaign was proof of its potency. If ever a mystic effluence of devotion came from two dark eyes in the world it came from his. He had two sons — ^his only children — ^both bred to arms as he had been. Both went to the war, splendid types of young Japan. The younger was a lieutenant with General Oku's army and was killed in the action for storming the 1. (GENERAL NOGI 2. MKS. NDGI 3. GENERAL NOGl's TWO SONS, BOTH 4. THE GRAVES OF GENERAL AND .MRS. 5. SWORD AND I-IARXKIRI KNU-E KILLED AT PORT ARTHUR GATE OF THE SENGAKUJI-TEMTLE, TOKYO TOMBS OF THE FORTY-SEVEN RONINS THE MAKING OP GODS IN JAPAN 127 heights of Nanshan, the first land battle in the march upon Port Arthur. As a sequel to that sharp fight General Nogi's army began landing at Dalny (now Dairen) and the General shortly after visited the scene of the death of his son. He saw and listened, tearless and in silence, and rode solitary away. Then out of the depths of his nature he wrote a little poem, here translated, which went to the heart of Japan : Hills, rivers, grass and tree spread drear and sad; Wide winds sweep yestreen's carnage-smelling fields; With halting steed and silent lips I roam By Kinchou Castle in the setting sun. Its aloofness and its sense of desolation, the scrupulous elegance of its form in classic metre, have endeared it since to the nation high and low. Deadly strife around the Russian fortifications Of Port Arthur thenceforth began. Day and night, months through, sleeping little, eating little, the Spartan spirit in him wrestled with his giant task. Line after line of the aptly called "human bullets" he hurled against the de- fences with awful slaughter of the Japanese and with little real effect upon the beleaguered. It was not indeed until late in the year that he saw the futility of his costly infantry attacks unless backed by artillery of the highest power attainable. Accordingly eleven-inch guns from the navy and the land fortifications of Japan were set up back of his lines. Thenceforward the fortress crumbled fort by fort and height by height until Stoessel's surrender of January 2, 1905, crowned that part of Nogi's task. But before that another blow had to fall on Nogi's heart. Sitting alone in his little room at his headquarters one December night he saw his eldest son enter with the one 128 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND word of salutation, "Father!" Immediately the General upbraided him. Why had he left his post? That he was the General's son did not excuse him from his duties even for an hour. The son withdrew in silence. At that same hour the son lay dead at the foot of the newly taken 203 Meter Hill, whither his duty as an aid had brought him with a message for the Japanese com- mander. Not till the morning did the father know. He bowed his head but shed no tear. So the story runs in Japan. Again wrote Nogi, this time more aloof than ever, as here liberally translated: Mount of the soul! Steep, steep thou art, yet not to be denied When man scorns peril so he tops the goal. Steel bolts have torn thee erest and side : Now men gaze up to thee in grief and pride, Mount of the soul! By an ideographic coincidence the Japanese signs for 203 Meter Hill signify "Mount of the Soul" in Chinese. The General naturally implied the one in setting down the other. No other sign of grief he gave, but here his hopes of posterity ended. Shortly thereafter he was to meet Stoessel, the Russian commander, and take over as pris- oners what remained of well and sick in the Muscovite garrison and the broken fortress besides — a great, great victory. Save asi it made glory for Japan and his lord, the Emperor, it brought him no joy. There had come a term to his joy in life, but not to his toil. He marched his victorious army north to join the armies facing Kuropatkin's 300,000 Russians at Mukden, and there hung so fiercely on the Muscovite flank that the disastrous flight of their army followed, and final victory came to Japan. So at the end of the war we see him returned to Japan THE MAKING OP GODS IN JAPAN 129 an idol of the people as embodying their soldier spirit in every desired manifestation — courage, obedience, serenity, determination, resource, skill, loyalty, devotion. Honours were showered upon him. In his eyes he had held for real his ascription to the virtues of the Emperor as the true source of the victories on land and sea. In return the Emperor held him in tender regard for his greatness and his suffering. Here then lay root and trunk and branches of the goodly tree of paradise. As he settled down — his wife and himself — to the life of the home-come veteran in a modest house on a slight eminence looking down on Tokyo something sacred seemed about him, but the claim on the imagination was soon to be made supreme. It is somewhat shocking to the Western mind that the final touch of the magic wand was to come through the grisly gate of a double suicide. And yet The great Emperor lay dead in the imperial palace. A nation in tears and prayer hovered about his door. All the sumptuary grandeur of the imperial funeral rites was ready for the impressive torchlit procession. Along the route all Tokyo waited in breathless silence. AU the high digni- taries of Japan stood mute in line, and they wondered: Nogi the beloved, the honoured of the Meiji was not there, at eight o 'clock a great gun boomed its signal roll of thunder over Tokyo and at the instant the slow march was taken up. Over the quaint immemorial imperial hearse drawn by white oxen some saw, or said they saw, hover a pale blue flame. That was the soul of Count Kiten Nogi, a convoy to the soul of his master in the world of shadows. With steady deliberation and curious prevision he had made ready for the end. His aged wife and he had sat for their photographs the day before. The household had all been set in order. Husband and wife had spent the after- noon together. Toward dusk the servants had been told tq 130 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND go to the lower floor of the house; the master wanted to rest. A heavy sound as of a body falling followed the echo of the palace gun, and then another fall ; then silence. Both were found weltering in their blood, dead. The general was in his full uniform. Beside them lay the short sword with which the General had pierced and cut across his abdomen and the knife with which his wife had pierced her throat — all strictly according to the law of harakiri. He had set the seal upon his deification. A sign, too, of the old General's curious reach after earthly immortality was found in his will. He had rela- tives who, since he would leave no direct issue, might make application for the title, and, by imperial favour, might obtain it, since the existence among the living of a bearer of the title of its typical soldier would always be a live national asset. He desired to stand in history alone of his name and title, and so laid it down in his last testament as his ardent desire that the title should die with him : that none should succeed him. And so for some four years it stood. A last vanity, perhaps, but to the people something not only pardonable but sacred. The high authorities, however, thought otherwise, thought in fact it was better to have many Counts Nogi on the earth than only one in the spirit-land, and so a new Count Nogi was created, no blood relative whatever of the old hero, but, it was some- what apologetically stated, a member of the daimio family whose head in the feudal time was lord over the samurai family of the Nogis. There were some indignation meetings among the people over this upsettal of the General's will and wish; there were, indeed, some hot-headed members of Parliament who threatened to make it a ministerial question in the House, but like our complaints of the weather, nothing came of it. Should the shade of the interloping Counts meet the shade, of the r^al original, my, whj^t a calling dgwn! THE MAKING OP GODS IN JAPAN 131 What sanctity the ritual suicide carries to the Japanese mind can scarcely be guessed by one of another race. The popular heroes of Japan are the forty-seven Renins, vengeance-wreaking followers of the wronged Lord Asano, all of whom committed seppuku or harakiri, as it was variously called some two hundred and fifteen years ago; all at the same morning hour, all by gracious permission of the law as the alternative to death at the executioner's hands. Who does not know the tale ? I retell it in my story of the Theatre in Japan, and here recall it only to point out that their graves may still be seen in Tokyo. The temple burial place where the little squared head- stones of the forty-seven stand in a touching oblong is the shrine in all Japan most thronged every day in the year. Before every stone incense is burned by the visitors. Not one is neglected. For the grave of the youngest, a lad of seventeen, the incense receptacle is many times the largest. I laid my bundle of sticks upon the grave of the oldest, a man of seventy-two, who in this competition of the dead ordinarily had the fewest. Poor old chap! Theire is a museum of the Renin relics in the temple itself, and there the pious and curious linger fascinated. Vengeance and self-immolation! the records ring with examples of them. Through the Japanese drama and art and literature of a thousand years they hold the central place of honour. "The 47 Ronins" was perhaps the first story shown in the Japanese "movies." It occurs in one phase or another on every moving picture program. And so of the growing cult of Nogi. From the beginning the government has quietly favoured it. My first obser- vation was at the Military Museum near the Kudan temple in Tokyo. There amid the historic cannon, the ?incient ^nd modern 132 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND guns, the old muzzle-loading muskets and the modern rifles, the glittering displays of superb samurai swords, there are large rooms devoted to the relies of the General, most con- spicuous being the General's uniform and the robe his wife wore when they took themselves out of the world so bloodily. In the front of the glass case containing them are the blades of the knives they used — ^for him a long lean blade about four inches longer than the usual harakiri knife; for her a narrow, slightly curved blade about nine inches long. Above these grim relics hang his portrait and hers in black and white, obviously enlarged photographs — a lean, grizzled soldier face and the face, somewhat care- worn, of a mother. In the cases around are his medals from all his wars and his orders of knighthood from the Emperor and other crowned heads, with many swords and some ancient arms and armour, family heirlooms, most of them bearing in some way the insignia of the family or the Choshu elan. The rooms were thronged by visitors hushed with awe. It was of a grey forenoon of early May that I went to the late home of General Nogi on the crest of Akasaka. Mounting a steep street, till lately known as Ghost Hill, but now renamed Nogesaka, or Nogi Hill, we turned to the right and a few rods down came upon the little two-story house standing back from the outer fence only far enough to make room for a Japanese pine tree, with slightly curved trunk, and a fine umbrella-topped leafage. People, pilgrims in groups, visitors in twos and threes were entering or leaving, and it is so every day, they told me. A naive method of exhibiting the rooms has been devised, namely a platform raised about two feet from the ground running along the side of the house. It allows one to look on a level through the windows. The window shades are raised, leaving the whole interior in full view. yfe pass along with the re§t, hats in hand. First we see THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN 133 the modest reception parlour and note that the house has electric light. A large print of the bombardment of Port Arthur hangs on the wall. The dining room opens out beyond the parlour, showing a table with rounded corners about which eight people might be seated. The room furthest from the front — an eight-mat room — ^was the scene of the double suicide. It was quite clear of furniture. A notice indicating a place on one of the mats showing a faint brownish stain says: "Blood stain of the last moment." Here the plainly clad visitors were fain to halt, staring in with subdued excitement, whispering, pointing, until an official waved them to pass on. As we pass on slowly with them the thought comes of that weird evening and what the thoughts of the self- doomed couple had been. He was sixty-three, his wife a shade younger. They were very much alone in the world, their children gone, their Emperor gone, their minds weak- ened by much brooding. But in the doing there was so much method, such a timing of the event, that one is forced to think that his last thought was that it was not so hard to barter a few dull years for a leap into the dark that would open upon a high earthly immortality. Out in the garden on one side of the house a miniature shrine temple has been erected with a torii before it and a well for ablutions. There are many thin young pines and a laurel tree sent to the General by friends in Italy. On a lower level or terrace is a vegetable garden which the old General loved to tend himself. A sign under a tree advises the world that "Here the General's blood was buried." On the right of the house is the stable with four now empty stalls for the General's chargers. Apparently he had no carriage or automobile. He loved his horses. Thence we proceeded to Aoyama Cemetery, the burial place of the wealthy and notable folk of Tokyo. The 134 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND monuments are mostly simple — generally a square inscribed stone or plain rounded stones of irregular ovoid shape with receptacles for flowers or for burning incense. The graves of some daimios are more pretentious. Laughing boys selling branches of sakaki — the sacred shrine tree — greet one on the paths among, the tombs. Shreds of paper sym- bolizing purity stand out like snow spirits among the lustrous dark green leaves with serrated edges. General Nogi's grave is enclosed by a stone wall about three feet high, surmounted by two feet of iron railing. It is a little lot, maybe four by five yards square. The General's headstone is to the right, an unfashioned stone, point upward. His wife's, smaller, more rounded, is to the left. The inscriptions in a straight line run down the centre. On the side nearest you are two squared stones, one for each of his sons. Small stones for less distinguished scions of the family crowd the little enclosure. There is a box for visiting cards, a quaint bit of Japanese ceremony. Many sakaki branches were twined about the railing. Sockets filled with fresh-cut flowers were on either side of the two main graves. To the grave in reverent stream came the people, passing with bowed head, peering as we peered, but with surely a deeper thought. At the museum, at the house, at the grave, the same intensity of interest. One felt in all the natural growth of the legendary hero of a nation. What has conjoined to make that growth, we have somewhat seen. In looking at it out of alien eyes we know that we cannot gauge it all, for the outreachings of a religious belief that brings generation after generation into eerie communion with a ghostly world as part of its daily thought are utterly beyond us. That it all sits comfortably on a perfectly modern and normal life makes it the stranger still. Of course, as indicated above, they have more than one THE MAKING OF GODS IN JAPAN 135 god in the making even now in Japan. As the national idea has definitely and forever taken the place of the clan, even the lesser new gods must be national. At present, as in the case of General Nogi, the fighting forces furnish them. Out of the unquestioning devotion of thousands on thou- sands in the Russo-Japanese war who laid down their lives where the risks of ordinary fighting were exchanged for almost absolute certainty of death, two names are rising, namely Major Taehibana, a hero of the battle of Liao-yang, and Naval Lieutenant Commander Hirose of the harbour blockading at Port Arthur, the Japanese Hobson, as one might say. On the Russian battle line south of Liao-yang there is a long line of hills that run across country. The road south runs between two of them; on one side a rocky mountain rises sheer and unscalable; on the other side a steep but negotiable hill rises and is joined to quite a ranged At the foot of the latter a Russian trench extended for miles. Its summit was held by a cloud of Russian infantry. Oblique fire enfiladed the front of it and the indirect fire of bat- teries at the rear swept the Japanese lines at every advance. On a hot August morning two companies led by Major Taehibana made an incredible dash from the Japanese lines over the line of Russian trenches and up the face of the hill. They went in two divisions, each destined to a separate acclivity, the company he led choosing the most difficult spot in the front. From the side, from the summit, they were swept by a rain of bullets. It was a miracle that any could make the climb, but Taehibana did, reaching the summit, Japanese sword in hand, leaping in among the Russians and slaying rigl^t and left until the thrust of a bayonet laid him low. To his corpse the gallant Russians paid high honour, and among the Japanese he at once went into the company of 136 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the gods, to be one of them forever after. The Tachibana hill, as it now is named, stands bare and windswept and is seldom visited today, but it attracts pilgrims of the choicest all the same. A week before I stood upon the hill, looking down at the long battle line of 1904, two princes of the imperial blood. Prince Kuni, one of them, with a large staff stood there. He was good enough to send me a print of a kodak shot he had taken of his group, finding that I too honoured the mad bravery of Tachibana. Something more than his white courage must, I divined, have operated to make it so distinctive. It was found in the character out of which it arose. He was, it seems, of the gentlest mind, of the sunniest disposition, overflowing with kindness and consideration to all about him. Out of the lamb of peace had arisen the lion of war. More than that, he had been a military aid of the present Emperor when the latter was crown prince. His legend grows. Lieutenant Commander Hirose's sudden spring to fame we can match with the attention paid and civic honours showered on Hobson after his release from the Spanish prison where he had been lodged after his rescue from the Merrimac, which he so ineffectually sunk in the neck of Santiago harbour. Hirose brought to his fighting task in the navy a great reputation for his skill in jiu-jitsu. He made a journey to St. Petersburg to give an exhibition of it before the Emperor of Russia. He rode his horse all the way back across the width of Siberia. Hirose died in his second attempt to seal the harbour of Port Arthur and Japan went wild over his memory. His monument stands already in Tokyo and he has surely become one of the minor gods of Japan, CHAPTEE XI THE THEATRE IN JAPAN The No and its likeness to the old Greek drama — A charming compliment — "Haehi-no-ki" — Singing and instrumental ac- companiment — Stage dancing — Modern pieces — Fine stage settings — Dramas that play seven hours — The Imperial Theatre — Popular old melodrama — "The Might of the Prince" — Suicide a great theme — ^"The Step Mother" — "One Sided Love" — "Forty-seven Ronins" — Ghosts — ^Males in woman parts — The marionettes — "The Soul of Nippon." The Japanese love the theatre, and it is a thoroughly national institution. You will be told in select circles how up to the Eestoration in 1868 the theatre was looked down on, and actors in the view of the samurai class were beneath contempt — the offensive manifestants of a degrading kind of exhibition. There was, no doubt, much affectation in this. The popular theatre was supposed to clash with the traditions of the Japanese classic drama known as the "No," or "No Dance," and so was to be reprehended. In reality it did not clash with the No. It had grown independently, battling for the approval of a public from whom all knowledge of the No had been jealously, aristo- cratically withheld. It grew in favour largely because of this withholding. And then the No was a fixed finished product; all progress, all growth lay with the popular drama. Today there are hundreds of theatres giving popular drama. The No are only given at stated intervals four or five times a year, in a few places in the Empire, although 137 138 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND their literature and song are a vital part of a polite Japanese education, standing to Japan much as our Eliza- bethan drama does to us — the source of poetical allusion, clothed in fit and often subtle phrase, of historic story and crystallized fable. It is too of earlier date than ours, rathei- of the time of our churchly drama — the miracle play of which "Everyman" is the shining example known to our times. The No is a, collection of some two hundred and thirty- five dramatic episodes, mostly tragic, which were collected and given permanent form in the early fifteenth century, a century and a half before Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and their starry fellows built up the English drama to great human heights of thought, character, clash and expression. To attend one of the No performances unpre- pared and unenlightened would be to pass a wearisome time, particularly for a foreigner drilled to the idea of quick moving action, but once its springs of thought and wells of expression have been grasped and the dramatic limitations accepted it is capable of becoming a long and sure delight. Like so much else of Japanese art it is in its present shape born of Buddhism, although it doubtless derives from a still more remote original whose beginnings are lost in the mists of a thousand years before Japanese history began. Its perfection was the work of learned priests and monks. It is a collection of tales and fables illustrating the heroic and historical periods of old Japan in dramatic form, set down in choice language, and bearing a curious resemblance to the old Greek drama in that many of the characters use masks, that it is all chanted, and that a chorus takes up the action where the dialogue leaves off, often, I may say, speaking the thoughts of the characters. And there are often likenesses and differences suggesting that both Greek and Japanese dramatic art came from some THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 139 lost Asiatic source of a religious and ritualistic nature. They all enforce some virtue — purity, truth, altruism, heroism in suffering, sublime generosity, filial and family love, devotion unto death. There are lighter pieces used as interludes which may illustrate ingenious roguery, always in the end discovered and punished — the priestly touch. AU the serious pieces are bathed in a charming poetry — very felicitous nature poetry — and are full of quotations from ancient saws and songs. Again the language is full of allusion and suggestion beyond ordinary grasp, which makes it a heaven for scholars but the despair of those called on to go into ecstasies over a "pivot" word or a "motive" just, it appears, in the right place. Apart from the books, however, if you have caught the spirit of the plays, their spiritual implication, the revela- tion of the eternal in human character and motive and the ways and manners of remote times all lie on the surface as they are acted. Patience is all you need, for the develop- ment is very slow to our minds. I had been attending the theatre in Japan at every opportunity, but the No performances for months evaded me. From Shimonoseki to Hakodate I mourned aloud to all and sundry over this fact, and to my great joy and surprise I was at last informed by my good friend Buyei Nakano (blessed be his name), who is president of most things at Tokyo by which commerce is advanced and art promoted, that by the use of certain magic arts he had been able to induce the Tokyo Society of the No to give one more performance, really, he whispered, for my benefit, though the society was not to be overinformed about that end of the affair. Pleased? Proud? Well Really there is an endless politeness about these people. It happened, you see, that a few years ago I threw into English verse a free version of one of these No plays, and 140 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND it was published in the Atlantic and so reached the Pacific. I had never seen a translation of the original and had just constructed my verses from an oral telling of the story, a Japanese friend kindly correcting some natural solecisms in my telling of it. And that I should leave Japan without seeing a No dance was, hence, unthinkable. So, in the dog days of that year of grace, behold the actors and the chorus and the musicians donning their heavy winter garments of cloths and brocades and an audience of five hundred of the flower of Tokyo society assembling for a performance in honour of one who had simply shown that he loved what they loved. That was a very noble thing to do and all unworthy I make what kindly acknowledgment I can of the great courtesy. And the surprise of all was that the serious piece they were giving was that very story well known as the "Hachi- no-M" or "Trees in Jars," from which I had constructed my "Soul of Nippon." A shogun or regent of the Hojo dynasty of six hundred years back named Tokiyori goes forth disguised as a Buddhist priest to learn what people think of him. He begs his way and learns miich going from Kamakura as far as Shinano, but is turning back unsatis- fied when at nightfall a snowstorm overtakes him. He approaches a poor, solitary hut and is at first denied shelter by the husband because of their great poverty and the priest's majesty of mien. But the wife reproaches her husband for sending the pilgrim away and begs him to follow and bid the traveller return and "share their best." He shares their meal of millet, the poorest food of the poor, and then as the cold increases Tokiyori sees the man break up and east upon the hearth three little trees grown in jars which only rich people can afford. So Tokiyori asks why, and Sano Genzaemon tells him that though poor he is a samurai; that his neighbours took his lands by force while he was fighting in the shogun 's wars, that he still THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 141 had his sword and his old white horse and is still ready to fight for Tokiyori. The shogun returns to Kamakura and soon a call for war goes out. The army assembles and Tokiyori asks if Sano Genzaemon is there and if he is to bring him before the court. So the loyal samurai is brought, filled with amaze, to find the brilliant shogun with the face of the beggar priest. Tokiyori restores him his stolen lands and makes him ruler of the three provinces whose names recall the three trees he burned — a pine, a plum and a cherry. As unfolded on the stage it differed in some things from my version, but that is a small matter here. The No stage is simply a bare platform raised about four feet with an old fantastic pine tree painted on a gold ground on the back wall. The entrance to the stage is by a long passage on the spectators' left. It crosses the theatre at the back and gives on the stage at right angles. Over stage and passage is a plain wooden roof with a triangular prosecenium, the roof supported by plain, squared posts. It is a theatre inside a theatre. The floor of the parterre, as customary in Japanese theatres, is slightly inclined forward and divided into squares, each holding four persons, who sit on cushions on the floor. There is a raised platform at the back of the house. Here I found lodgment, my host providing me and mine with chairs. On the stage three musicians are seated at the back, two who play drums like hour glasses which they strike with the tips of their fingers, and one who plays a flute. Four singers are seated at the right of the stage. I may say that all — players, musicians, actors — are male. It begins with a cry from the drummers and some harsh notes on the flute. Then the wife is seen entering. She wears a mask. The chorus and musicians sing. She 142 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND enters slowly, slowly, passes down stage in front and crouches, kneeling on one knee. Just as slowly enters the disguised Tokiyori in a black conical hat and a mass of dark raiment. He makes his plea for shelter. The wife rises. But that her husband is away, she would ask him in. Tokiyori goes upstage and kneels with his back to the audience. He is technically out of sight. The husband enters. Tokiyori rises and again asks shelter. I need not pursue the story, but it proceeds with the greatest deliberation. Tokiyori sings in a glorious rich baritone. The music on the whole reminds one of the Gregorian chant, which is doubtless a relic of the old Pagan rites that were the common heritage of Rome and Greece as well as Asia. Thus do art outcomings strangely circle the globe. The acting is in the main dignified, significant posturing. When the husband sends the stranger away, the wife raises her hand to the level of the eyes of her mask, which is very lifelike, to signify unbidden tears. Later when the traveller is taken in, an attendant in grey places a stand of branches covered with artificial snow in front. The husband takes out a fan and flicks the "snow" away. An attendant carries it off in a basket. In the last portion, when Tokiyori sends for his poor benefactor, he is dressed in magnificent robes, heavily embroidered with gold. Two retainers represent his army. Yet it was all extremely moving. The music, so strange at first, fits into the scheme of things and the emotions aroused sink deeply in. Many in the audience followed the play book in hand. It gives, by an ingenious arrange- ment, the words and the notation in upright columns. They gave me a copy. The music, which is sometimes an accompaniment to the dialogue, but generally fills up a pause in the acting. THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 143 I found most distracting at first. It never quite lost this character for me, but after a while one noticed it less and finally it at times seemed to support the current emotion to some degree. Then, by convention, it meant to a Japanese audience the entrance of a new emotion or condition. I learned that the beating of a drum always presaged the presence of beings from another world in the ordinary play. In the No the hieratic drum tappers play without this condition in the action. One curious thing entirely strange to us is the custom of clapping together two resonant pieces of squared wood as an accompaniment to the exit of a character. It begins slowly and gradually quickens the beats untU it becomes a real tattoo when the person is off the stage. Then it stops. It signifies departing footsteps. Dancing as it is introduced in a play may be various and involve numbers — as in a play about a historic seafarer who comes back to his village to reclaim his fiancee, only to find that she has become the concubine of the local daimio under forced circumstances. In the course of a country dance he looks in vain, one by one, into the faces of the dancers to discover her. Solo dancers are generally male, and some are highly considered. It is mainly athletic, much of it depending on the ability to whirl on one leg. When women dance it is always without exposure of the lower limbs, but with sinuous movement, waving of the arms and occasional stamping with the heel. There was a No farce following the "Hachi-no-ki" called "The Six Buddhas." It was sufficiently amusing in a naive way. A countryman comes to town wanting to buy six life-size statues of Buddha, and consequently is looking for an image-maker. A rogue overhears him and says he is the man. It will take a year, he says, to make them, and the 144 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND countryman should pay some money, but the countryman wants them the next day. The rogue then calls in two confederates and they arrange to exhibit the statues as ordered, three in one temple and three in a temple next door. So they don masks and robes and take Buddhist emblems and pose very effectively. The countryman is so pleased that he worships the three knaves, and then in the next temple worships them again in three different positions. But the rustic is not quite satisfied. He wants some alterations and becomes harder and harder to please. This keeps the rascals on the jump, all sorts of comic postures resulting, untU at last the in- tended victim comes on them struggling to get into place and the tables are turned. It was done with much verve and created lots of laughter. There were no temples shown scenically, the rascals simply posed at one side of the stage and then ran to the turn of the passage for the second grouping. It was said to be a fair tjrpe. One could see why the No is loved by the cultivated, the poetical minded, the enlightened patriotic. It enshrines the shining deeds and virtues of their race. It shows the evil spirits of old times and how virtue rose superior to them. One could see also why it is not popular with the masses. They want something that moves more quickly; that needs no glossary ; but there is no sign, as some profess to fear, that the new commercial gospel will be the death of the old art. Not at all. Look at Buyei Nakano! The dramas in the popular houses playing standard Japanese pieces, while not so finely written as the No, are really of respectable literary quality and move faster, yet even that is much slower than anything we have. The pieces are spoken, not sung, but there is generally playing and singing at intervals by musicians seated in an elevated box or grille at the side, THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 145 The actors speak in a curious resonant declamatory tone and the men who play women's parts talk in a strange treble. The plays are of three kinds as to motives: the samurai plays called Jingi displaying benevolence and righteousness in a wicked world; the Koimujo treating of love and adversity, and the Shakyo, generally religious in motive, combining both moods. The theatres themselves are most interesting to the for- eigner. The scenery is often good with well built up interiors and admirably set exteriors, and the use of the circular stage for setting one scene while playing another is frequent, the stage simply turning for a change of scene. The lighting is electric, and just a little more skill in its use and a few scenic devices that David Belasco could teach them and the whole setting would be fine indeed. I saw many pieces with great pathos in them, the audience weeping copiously, and much fun that made them laugh uproariously. There is, however, little applause. Sometimes a voice in the audience is heard to shout out the name of the actor on the stage for some good bit of acting or impersonation. For the rest it is the easiest natured audience in the world. The plays in the large cities generally begin at two or three in the afternoon and last until about half-past ten, and the people go for thorough enjoyment. The parterre holds from forty to a hundred square boxes with low divisions between them and as many as six persons may squeeze in, squatting on cushions and eating, drinking, smoking or even sleeping through the play. At the excit- ing moments the sleepers are wakened up. The whole family is there. The mother brings the infant at her breast and nourishes it discreetly at intervals. There is an hour's entr'acte especially for dinner, which il most theatres i§ eaten with great jollity in the house, 146 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND servants running to and fro with trays of food ordered in advance or with pots of green tea drunk out of little cups. There is no misbehaviour on the stage or off. It is just a big family party, but looked at from above, where our group could generally be supplied with chairs, the scene below was always diverting. At the Imperial Theatre, Tokyo, a large, handsome, modern theatre, the seating is entirely European ; no eating is allowed in the auditorium, but there are six large dining rooms, in one of which a "Western" meal is served in a large cunningly divided plate with knife and fork, while in another a bento, or Japanese meal in a lacquered box with chopsticks, is the rule; others serving tea and soft drinks, even beer, I believe, to the many who bring their meals with them. It does a large business and is experi- mentally progressive. The company is of the choicest and there are several clever young women. Mr. Yamamoto, the wideawake manager, travelled to Europe every year before the war over the Siberian route, going back by way of Moscow, Berlin, Vienna, Paris and London in search of suitable, adaptable novelties. He will not go this year, as all Europe is playing the same piece — a war play. He gen- erally gives four pieces every day, changing the program every twenty-five days, which is about the length of his clientele. The experiment is watched with great concern by the purely native theatres and already a syndicate is forming to take over and unify the management and reduce running expenses in the principal native theatres of Tokyo, Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka. Some of the native actors are really excellent artists. Of native plays — dating mostly from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries — I saw many that were worth a thought. "A Woman's Revenge" was curious in THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 147 that a womati, an attendant, was the central character and that she had to fight several battles or duels, one with another woman. It stands for quite a class of plays. The most popular piece was an old one in one act, ' ' The Plight of the Prince," let us call it, for his name is unfortunate when spelled out in English. It is, in point of time, related to the most tragic period of Japanese history, but is entirely bright itself. The young Prince, with five devoted followers, after his defeat in battle is trying to reach a place of safety. His brother is anxious to get him in his hands and has given orders that he shall be arrested if he crosses the barriers through which all travellers must enter his dominions ; all travellers must account for themselves. The keeper of the barrier stops them. He is a pompous official wearing trousers about six feet long, trailing out at least a yard behind — a gentle device of the daimios of the period to prevent responsible retainers from travelling far from their posts with any comfort. In this dilemma Benkei, one of the Prince's followers, comes forward and says they are a party of travelling bonzes. The keeper doubts, but Benkei recalls enough of the Buddhist ritual to go through a "stunt" of praying and posturing. And still the keeper doubts. Benkei, at his wits' end, tells the most extraordinary stories and always acts up to them, even going to the extreme of striking the young Prince with his staff to show that he is an unimportant member of the band. The part involves great strutting, stamping and spread- ing of the kind used by the wrestlers, much fencing and lots of vim. He carries the whole piece on his shoulders. At length the keeper secretly concludes that the young man really is the Prince, but in view of the great devotion and wit of his follower allows the party to pass. Several theatres put it on while I was in Tokyo and there was 148 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND great competition, but between Koshiro at the Imperial and Unzaemon at the Kabuki honours were even. Plays in which the unfortunate protagonists are driven to suicide are numerous. It is one of the most notable diiferences observable between Japanese and Western ideas, this favouring view of suicide as a way out of trouble, but the greatest difference is in the outward manifestations of affection. The kiss, the hug, the hand touch almost between lovers would be held frightfully immodest on the stage, as in real life. I believe also that the length of the speeches and the duration of conversations owe a great deal to the fact that when people meet in a house they squat on the floor, as in real life. They do not, however, neglect or ignore the natural "business" of the home or palace or whatever it may be on that account. The serving of tea, the lighting of little three-puff pipes, the reading of books, the lighting of lan- terns, the changing of garments, the inner affairs of the household in a word, proceed interestingly and help to break the monotony of the conversation, giving great reality to the scenes. This applies more especially to the "modern" plays, which are in a great class by themselves. I saw several of these and found them very interesting as studies of character and manners. Sometimes they run all the afternoon and evening, and really keep moving all the time, travelling outside the main story into bypaths of episode and bringing forward subordinate characters with the greatest freedom. One called ' ' The Step Mother ' ' at the Engadi Theatre, a second-rate house, introduced a wife who leaves her husband and goes to America, where she marries a man who dies and leaves her a snug fortune of 30,000,000 yen. shade of Triplet! On her return to Japan dressed stodgily in rich "American" clothes she makes trouble for her little son and the secood wife of I SCENE AT NO DRAMA "HACHI NO KI" i. AUDIENCE AT NO DRAMA 1. MR. BAIKO, AS THE WIFE, IN THE ADVENTUROUS MILLIONAIRE. 2. MR. KOSHIRO, A FAMOUS ACTOR, IN A FAVOURITE PART 3. MR. UZDAEMON, AS BENKEI, IN "THE PRINCE's FLIGHT" 4. MR. A. KIZUKI (man) AND MR. KITAMURA (wOMAn) IN A MODERN PIECE THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 149 her former husband. The latter is in jail for stealing to pay for her extravagance before she left him. With her money she carries all before her, but through the agency of a Japanese variant of the "Beloved Vaga- bond," who does good in an unconventional way and talks life philosophy by the yard, she is induced to give up her plans for revenge and goes, leaving her husband, now re- leased from jail, in peace with her successor and putting her son in her will as her sole legatee. The audience devoured the incidents and gloated over wrong under- mined and virtue coming to its own, just like our own nielodrama patrons. A much better play, strictly of today, called ' ' One Sided Love," but which might be better named "The Family Busybody," which I saw in the Nani-wa-sa, at Osaka, was in ten acts. We missed the first hour of it, and it still seemed at the beginning when we entered. It sets forth the results flowing from the well-meant but injudicious meddling and tattling of a woman — an old maid — all sup- posedly in the interest of the "honour of the family." It had been played eight times already to crowded houses and a second company was playing it at Kobe. How it did travel afield during the five hours of solid playing, ignoring the entr'actes! It was, as I have said, a family story that our stage would have treated easily in three acts, but such little incidents as the finish of a marathon race, with all the accessories, the whole activities of a flower market, excursions into the country with new sets of people and so on and so on were presented. The audience swallowed it all with gusto and seemed to like the divagations as well as the main theme. The latter lay in the circle of a Japanese gentleman's home — the gentleman a wonderfully fine character type, a scholar, a gentleman upright, just and generous, with the great quality of being able to close his eyes to shortcomings 150 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND in others and to have a mind above small suspicions. Played with great reserve and distinction by Mr. Takata, now, alas, gone to his account, it impressed me greatly. The other parts were all well played, a couple of rascally "promoters" particularly so, and furnished a gamut of Japanese life in town and country with a naturalness and realism worthy of all praise. The gentleman is made Minister of Justice toward the end of the play and has to deal with alleged malefactions in the family. He emerges with honour unimpaired, the "good people" satisfactorily brought to good ends and the bad ones brought to book, the reserved gentleman quietly lighting a cigarette as the curtain falls. The Japanese dramatist has, therefore, quite a task in writing a play and the manager in putting it on. What modifications time will bring it is hard to say, but ac- ceptance of Europe's concentrated story by the public seems far off. Shakespeare has been played here with in- different success. A Japanese version of Charles Klein's "Music Master" was tried here last year, and, strangely enough, did not do well. Ibsen's "A Doll's House" was better liked. One thing will strike everybody who looks into the "theatre" in Japan, however casually, namely, that the story of the "Forty-seven Konins" has a greater hold on Japanese imagination than any other in the whole range of their literature. It appears to me to signify that the highest human quality in Japanese eyes is self-sacrifice, and if it be made in the line of ideal devotion it may com- bine with any act, almost any crime, and still be worthy of the highest honour. It should be premised that the episode is historic and on that side has a painstaking, minute bibliography of large dimensions, while its literature in verse, prose and drama is multitudinous on the romantic or fictitious side. It THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 151 occurred some two centuries ago and, therefore, in the full of the Tokugawa shogunate whereunder feudal rule had become most formidable and minutely systematized, and loyalty and devotion to the daimio and the clan was the religion almost of the samurai or knightly fighting men, although the common people who bore the burden of it all were practically unconsidered. It occurred too, after nearly a century of that nationwide peace which lyeyasu brought, and which was to endure unbroken for two centuries more. The shoguns held their court at Yedo (now Tokyo) and a certain Bad Lord held high place therein, which he managed to his gain by heavy blackmail on the visiting daimios from other provinces. They were all obliged to live alternate years at the court for many astute reasons, among them to keep the nobles in touch with the shogun, and to make them spend their income freely and in the right quarter. A certain Lord Asano, maddened by the Bad Lord's exactions, drew his sword on the latter, wounded him, but, interfered with by a friend, failed to kill him. To draw weapon in the court precinct and on a great official meant death doubly. Asano went ofE and committed harakiri. His followers fell away, but one of them had sworn revenge and he collected forty-six of his fellow-retainers who joined him in his deadly cult. The Bad Lord was rich and powerful and they were poor. For a whole year they travelled the country, supporting themselves how they might, became ronins or wandering masterless. men. One night of cold and snow they assembled around the house of the Bad Lord, broke in and slew him and then in procession marclicd to Yedo carrying the Bad Lord's head, washed it in a well by a little temple and laid it with tears on their master's — the Lord Asano 's tomb. Seized by the authorities they were condemned to death, 152 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND but in view of their ingenuity and devotion were permitted to put an end to themselves. They were handed over in batches to lords of the court, who feasted them for a couple of days and on the appointed morning each died by his own hand. They ranged in age from sixteen to seventy- two and their burial place is the most popular shrine in Japan, incense ever smoking on their graves. There are twelve plays of some ten acts each dealing with the central episode, and pieces innumerable dealing with the adventures of the separate ronins. It permeates the "movies" and I saw one celebrating the life of one of the Bad Lord's retainers, ending in his butchery after a thrill- ing fight in which a seventh assailant did for him while he was bloodily entertaining the other six. In the older plays ghosts, apparitions, reappearances after a thousand years of entombment are common. Hamlet's royal father, Richard Ill's many ghostly victims, Macbeth' s immaterial predecessor and his witches on a "blasted heath," with Bottom the weaver's sprites and fairies, would be quite at home in Japan. Of lighter plays there are many varieties, but none of great consequence or merit. They produce laughter through the comic misfortunes of the characters as with us. Sometimes there are spectacular pieces, generally more gaudy and tawdry than impressive. The old rule that male actors should take women's parts still holds largely good. Many such are great favourites and really do characterize with great skill. They are not youths, but grown men. A peculiar effeminacy becomes their constant characteristic. I visited one of the best of them in his dressing room. He received our little party with a gentle grave urbanity that had something of the finely feminine about it. He sat by the hibachi smoking a cigarette and rose to receive us. He liked his work, he said, and had no ambition to play man, but assuredly he THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 153 would not like to be taken for a woman off the stage. His manager said he was really a manly chap. His father had been a player of distinction. Still, some of the theatres, notably the Imperial, were encouraging women to play female parts, and with some success. It is noticeable that lately the purely modem plays have not been the favourites they were at the start. Natural- ness does not appeal very strongly yet. The old strut, the old declamation still rule the roost in popularity. I have referred in the first chapter to an outburst of emotion on the part of an audience in a marionette theatre at Osaka to show that a Japanese can weep. It was surely a moving story, and the episode of the sudden spring of the mother clutching to her bosom the body of her babe which she had just allowed to be murdered without a protest before her eyes in order to protect from murder the babe of her daimio lord, would have won a tribute of convulsive grief on any stage. The success of the bit of acting with lifelike dolls about one-third life-size shows to what limits the convention of the stage can be pushed. Not only were they speechless dolls, operated on a small waist-high shelf or stage, but each doll was actuated by a separate man who towered above it standing in plain sight, behind the raised shelf, one hand holding the doll upright and the other inserted in the back of the doll to manipulate the hidden strings which moved the arms and legs and took charge of the flexures of the body. A feature of these marionette shows is that the story is intoned in recitative by a singer seated in the gallery with a group of musicians using samisen, drum and flute. The man who sang that day had a rich warm baritone, and he enunciated with great pre- cision and clearness. Sometimes it is narrative, sometimes dialogue that he intones. He is listened to with something approaching reverence. The theatre, not a very large one 154 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND it is true, was packed that day, and the performance was as smooth as the marionettes were wonderful. Most Americans who study the theatre are familiar with the conventions of the Chinese stage. A general struts around the four sides of a table chanting lustily, meaning that he has journeyed four hundred miles. A character about to cast himself over the edge of a elifP jumps about six inches from the floor and walks off leisurely. He is dead and the Chinamen know it. A general besieges a city. The chief citizen places a screen behind which is a stool and from that lofty eminence he parleys about surrender over the screen with the» general who is standing on the ground. And so on. On the Japanese stage the "in- visibles" are a curious feature. Generally dressed in black, often with a black veil or a cape over the face, one moves obsequiously over the stage through all phases of the action, placing stools on which a gorgeously clad actor may sit without appearing to do so, arranging the folds of elaborate garments, moving furniture, and removing the stool when it was necessary for the gorgeous one to walk away. At first he was to me an unmitigated nuisance whom I longed to destroy, but gradually I learned to tolerate him and at length wholly ignored him. Then in the way of theatrical entertainments are the occasional massing of the geishas for exhibition dances. Well, not now. Those interesting folk are worth a chapter to themselves. The theatre in japan 155 THE SOUL OF NIPPON * A MediGeval Legend of Japan. (Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly.) At winter dusk upon the hillside cold, While shivering trees made moan, Went Hojo Tokiyori all alone. Free of his Eegent robes and zone of gold, Free of all trappings of imperial state, Plain garbed as Buddhist priest, he bent his head Before the icy winds that beat Upon him as he upwards strode. Rough and stony was the road; Across the rim of waters Fuji's crest Rose dim and blue against the paling West. Bare lay the frosted valley at his feet. And faint and far upon the plain below. The lights of Kamakura shed their glow. He turned and gazed and grimly said, — "No royal palace is the home of truth, So now I dare what every mortal fears— The judgment of a man by his compeers — The test that men still flinch from tiU they die. For if I'd still hold rule supreme, be great Of deed and mind. Myself must learn what man 't is guards my gate; Must learn what man am I. And haply in the hollows of the wind, The mighty soul of Nippon I shall find." * Tokiyori was a Shikkin, or Eegent, of the Hojo family, real rulers of Japan under the sacred but secluded and powerless Mikados. They flourished in the thirteenth century a.d. The Eegent was Shogun, or chief general, as well, unless he delegated that power. 156 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Closer he drew his robe of ashen grey, And faced onee more the darkening, upward way. On, on he trod 'neath cloud-veiled stars till dawn, His spirit to the soul's high levels drawn. And begged for food or sleeping place From poor and rich, from good and base. And ever learned he more from friend and foe The subtle things that dynasts seek to know Of wit or warning against overthrow. Often in lordly hall or peasant's cot, In words of praise or slight, With deepened shadows or excess of light. Saw his own picture drawn, and knew it not. "Yea, words are plenty: wisdom rare," said he. "My name of common tongues the sport. The shuttlecock of good and ill report; Yet in all no sunrise-ray there be. Soul of Nippon, speak thou imto me !" From fruitless searchings by the Eastern strands, Through winter days, and toiling sore. Back by Shinano's wild volcanic lands The weary Tokiyori bore, Until in Kozeki lost one eve of storm, It seemed he could no farther go. The night had fall'n, and with it came the snow, In blinding flakes and dancing whirls of white. And numb his hands and feet began to grow. When, as through tattered shojis, came a gleam- Dim as a blurred star in a dream — And groping toward it painfully. He paused, and cried, "Pray shelter me." Back slid the shoji, and a gaunt old man Came out, and looked upon the farer's face. His smile of welcome died, and in its place Came awe and shame; then, halting, he began, — THE THEATRE IN JAPAN 157 "Most reverend — and noble — we are poor; A famine-hut that dogs would not endure. Cross yonder hill, and richer folk you'll find." And Tokiyori silent faced the wind. Now came the aged goodwife forth, Her pity rising more and more. "Sane Ganzaimon," said she, "where's the worth Of being bom a samurai, Thus to debase the honour of your door? On night like this to turn a man away When we should open to a beast?" "Before him, wife, a lordlike priest," Old Sano muttered, "we should die of shame." "Were he the Eegent," cried the dame, "You should not let him go To die amid the wind and snow. Who knows but this our life of bitter need Comes from God's finger, pointing to no deed Of godlike charity to light our path? We little have : the strange priest nothing hath. Run : bid him back, my lord, to warmth and rest. Say: 'Come, most reverend, we'll share our best!' " Within the hut around the little fire. Sat Tokiyori with the man and wife. Sharing their scanty millet dish. And, ever as the embers 'gan expire, A little tree flung on them gave them life — Three little trees with large and fair good-wish. First 'twas a dwarfish pine tree long of days. And next a tiny plum tree kings would praise, And last a damty cherry fed the blaze. 158 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Said Tokiyori, "You are poor indeed, Yet you are burning trees you've grown in jars, Which only rich ones can afford." And Sano, stooping still the flames to feed, Made answer smiling, "Truly, Reverend lord, Not with my low estate do they accord: But in these scarecrow tatters you behold One brave among the samurai of old, And one from whom, while in the Shogun's wars, His tyrant neighbours took his lands by force, And left him but this hut, his battle-horse. And these three little trees. Yet grieve not, priest, their tender beauty fled, For where can costly wood the better burn Than on the hearth where warms man's love for man? And flower and leaf return to God the best In lighting up the welcome of a guest ; Yea, since it is the gift of God to live. The greatest joy in living is to give. "The greatest joy is giving," Tokiyori said. "And love is giving all," said Sano's dame. "Love," smiled old Sano, "is life's fire and flame, And evermore my heart grows warm and light That when I bade you forth in wind and snow. My goodwife breathed the voice of Bushido, That teaches when a stranger 's at the door The face that looks thereout should aye be bright, Nor poor need be the welcome of the poor. 'Were he the Regent, take him in,' she cried." "And if I were?" asked Tokiyori low. "Ah, for the Shogun," Sano cried aloud, "I hold my life when all is lost beside. My old white horse still lives to bear me proud THE THEATRE IN JAPAN . 159 To battle at my lord the Shogun's call. My two-hand sword, tho' rusty, hangs him there, Ready when forth my horse and I shall fare For Tokiyori, greatest lord of all." And Tokiyori smiled : — "ho, now I know." From Kamakura soon came call to war, The war-drums rattling loud through all the ways. And warriors trooped from near and far — Veterans many from old fields hard-won. And youths who yet no shining deed had done. And all in clanking panoply of fight. From cot and castle, and from field and town, Came lightf oot o'er the hills before the night. And poured through all the valleys to the plain, "With cries and cheers, Till morning flared its red-gold arrows down Upon a hundred thousand swaying spears. Sat Tokiyori on his battlesteed. His great soul shining in his searching eyes. About him daimios, armed and spurred. And shomios ready or to strike or bleed, Or challenge death in any noble guise. All watchful waiting for his word. Then, as the silent waters break With sudden windstroke into weltering sound. He spake: — "Now know I Nippon hath but one great soul. That soul hath answered to its Shogun's call. And whither hence the tide of war shall roll, Before it every foe must fall. Long did I seek what now I know. It came to me mid wind and snow. And in this host the proof shall stand forth clear : — 160 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND A gaunt old man upon an old white horse, His sword two-handed, and his eyes like flame. His armour rusty and his garments coarse, — Sano Ganzaimon is his name: Find him, and bring himi here." Low, from far off, amid the silent host, Came Sano with his tottering beast. His heart scarce beating, eyes in wonder lost. The old horse trailing at his bridle-rein. "Salute the Shogun : bow!" But Sano muttered fain,- "This is no Shogun, but a reverend priest." "Nay, soul of Nippon," answered Tokiyori low, "You sheltered me from wind and snow. For me you burned your costly trees in jars, And pledged your life unto the Shogun's wars. 'Twas Tokiyori warmed him in your room, And saw the soul of Nippon in your eyes. Your stolen lands I solemnly restore, And ere we march, I give to you a prize : — Reign lord of Sakurai where cherries bloom, Of Matsuida where the pine tree grows. And fair Umeda where the plum tree blows." "Sano Meditashi!" Hark, a storm of cheers. "Hojo, banzai! live, lord, ten thousand years." And kneeling spellbound, answering through tears That still would flow. Old Sano faltering said, — "Great fighting lord, until this old grey head Is laid in earth, command my arm, my life, And never shall I swerve. I did but what is law of Bushido — To give, to love, to serve. Praised be the Shogun! — honoured) too, my wife!" And Tokiyori rode to battle with ft 5»ile. CHAPTER XII THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN An artist people — The Oriental tone — ^Lafcadio Hearn's percep- tion — The ancient Buddhist bronzes — Architectural schools — Historic schools of painting — The Ukiyoye — Boston's greed and luck — Art education today — The ancient style of Sansui most popular among professors — ^A "Western" school — ^A great master painter the crying want — ^Photographic sculpture — Wonders in porcelain and cloisonne — Embroidery in excelsis — ^A hint to our art-gallery providers. It is the sense of a new art-world that at the first glance of Japan really differentiates it from the lands of our West — from America, from Europe. Artistry runs like a silver thread through the whole life of Japan, making patterns and pictures entirely new to us. The land itself does not differ much in climate or topog- raphy or growth of plants and trees from the "Western" lands. We do find an unusual extent and variety of sharp peaks rising from narrow valleys. They are volcanic and as later than our hills and mountains show less erosion: that is all. Yet the difference of the face of the country as man has wrought his changes there is very marked. In these changes lies most of the difference, and it all expresses human art — ^man reaching for order and the beautiful. The shapes of the low wooden houses with their curving roofs, wide eaves and heavy roof trees ; the strangely colour- ful streets, the banneret signs in strange characters; at night the effect of strings of vari-coloured paper lanterns ; the outlines and tints of the people's costi;imes, tbe \m^- m 162 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND scape feature of their gardens, all strike the note of the Orient, and say this is something very different from our soberer Occident. And in every phase it is the outcome of art, art slowly evolved and pervasive and fascinating to our senses. To be sure China gives you such a thrill if you see it first. India has its rich Oriental flavour and colour. Persia has its warm tone of the East, but Japan has its own strongly developed face, form and hue with marked divergence from all the other lands of Asia. That the inhabitants of its islands derive however remotely from those of the nearby continent, should prepare one for an art likeness. Keep that in mind; credit them with the excellence of their departures from the primitive models, and you will be in the way of understanding in a high degree, and doing justice to a people, votaries of art every man, woman and child. Japan, in fine, is artistic through and through. We are concerned here in something narrower than the artist thought and method of an entire people. Indeed my theme is to look in on what we call the Fine Arts as they flourish and are manifest in Japan of today. Fine art in Japan soon bears in upon the observant traveller as something to be considered on broader lines than in Europe. It cannot, you early note, be limited to our ordinary conception of a picture or a statue, to paint- ing and sculpture, but it must include beauty of form and execution in a dozen differing media and half a hundred applications. The artisan you find often includes the artist, for creativeness is a badge of his calling. He is the artistic enemy of things in pairs. He is the uncompro- mising foe of sameness, as nature is, even in things that appear the same. The Japanese embroiderer introduces tints in shading beyond the) reach of the painter in oils. The ordinary examples of the fiJie arts that one meets i^ THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 163 the homes of Japan are the pictorial scroll or kakemono with a picture above three feet long and half the width that hangs in the place of honour — in a recess called the toko- noma, and possibly a bronze or pottery statuette standing on a low pedestal in the same recess. A fine vase of metal or porcelain chastely decorated and holding a single flower, or else a wonderfully decorated sword often takes the place of the statuette. Whatever iti may be, it is there to be judged on its merits free of all competition with others of its kind, for the good lady of the house, though she owns ever so many pictured scrolls or statuettes or vases, will only exhibit one of a kind at a time. No walls hung with scores of pictures or shelves, or an array of pedestals about the rooms, enter into the scheme of domestic decoration in Japan. In some of the wealthiest homes, particularly those of noblemen who have travelled abroad, a "Western parlour" may be found furnished sumptuously in Euro- pean style, and on whose walls hang oil paintings in gold frames bought in the course of residence in European capitals. These are exceptional. Hence it is that the first glance at Japanese art in pictures is apt to be disappoiat- ing. And so also with sculpture. The examples one sees at the Buddhist temples have naturally antiquarian interest and are most curious and instructive, but they are not of the life about one. We look at them with the same apart- ness as the American Protestant from the back country looks upon the religious pictures by the thousands in Euro- pean cathedrals and picture galleries — angels only dreamed of, saints' names scarcely heard of, a Virgin Mary never poetized in his mind. Christian as they may be, these pic- tures are scarcely less alien to his eyes than "them there Venuses an' ApoUos an' sich heathen gods," in mutilated marble or renaissance canvases that vie with the saints wherever he goes in southern Europe. In Japan, however, as I have said, a light soon breaks 164 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND on you, and a world of art new to your perceptions arises before you. On no one was this more profoundly impressed than on the late Laf cadio Hearn. He fairly bathed in the light of his discovery. From the first hour of his arrival in Japan he found its instance in the common street signs with their Oriental ideographs, their individuality of execution, each sign the expression of an artistic person- ality, each sign with its individual touch. His enthusiasm is delightful, even though one cannot wholly share it. Anyway it points to the truth. A land where every one can write and no one uses a pen is the beginning. Instead of the restriction as among us of writing from the sup- ported wrist, one literally paints from the free elbow with the fluent brush in the Orient. Hence come delicacy and force at will, and an appreciation of suggestive lines and forms utterly unknown to us of the West. It may well be that this quality makes more for the minute than for the majestic: but it is intimate and of our lives and is a wonderful opening of the inner door of art. It furnishes a guide and a key to intricacy of design. Its final influence on the larger features of art would be a most interesting study. When one of the West looks first on a Japanese garden, conditions are present which may strike one as expressing beauty in colour, form or contrast, — ^the beauty is felt, sometimes acutely. To the man, woman or child of Japan it is in addition full of sharp delights from satisfied and accentuated lines and shadings and harmonies imper- ceptible to us. These super-excellences have grown in the Japanese mind with its growth. Few Japanese perhaps could explain them, because they have become instinctive rather than consciously acquired. The Japanese joy in the colour, form and design of a small bit of decorated porce- lain, in an engraved or damascened netsuke, in a carved sword-guard, would often seem exaggerated, Ixi T^s^litjr his ^^^ I. GOD OF WIND, lYEMITSU TEMPLE, NIKKO ^. GOD OF THUNDER, NIKKO 3. WOOD-CARVING, THE^THREE MONKEYS OF TOSHOGU, NIKKO GIRL BEFORE MIRROR By Bakuspn Tsuchlda, Prize Picture, Kyoto, 1911 THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 165 joy is in proportion to his art education and the cultivated delicacy of his art perceptions. Thus it is that art takes on such scope for him. It neglects nothing. It makes easily possible the spending of a whole hour by a lady of quality in arranging a couple of flowers in a vase : there are so many art conditions she is seeking to satisfy in a single glance. It is this art scrupulosity which makes the conduct of the "tea ceremony" a deep study for her in wrist curves and finger clasps and robe folds as well as simply serving a cup of the green-gold beverage to her friends. You are in a land permeated with art perceptions that you only dimly appreciate. It is in observing what you enjoy in common with them — the effect of a glorious landscape, for instance, or the mystic suggestion of a temple interior — that you lay a mental foundation for dis- covering how far they can go beyond you in numberless directions, and how they fall utterly short in others. Their sense, for example, of the lines and contours of drapery is excessively keen, but their neglect of reality in the human form beneath the garment is just as obvious. In the older pictures one observes a law of perspective peculiarly Japanese. Instead of the lines of distance drawing to- gether to a vanishing point, they are prolonged in parallel, if they do not indeed come closer together at the front. It was long defended by Japanese artists on the ground that it made all parts of the picture clearer. Photography has, however, "knocked it out." It is desirable, therefore, to learn as much as possible of their art ideals when one seeks to appreciate their art. Let me confess that I have not gone far enough on this road to be at all a competent guide, but merely suggest direc- tions for serious and useful thought. Much pleasure may be had of it, however, without going into it very deeply. Art in Japan is indeed so wide a topic that I might as well say that I have no intention here of reviewing it at 166 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND length or with any great particularity, since what concerns us is what artistic impulses and achievements I find in the art of today. Broadly speaking, ancient Japanese art derives from China through its immediate neighbour, Korea. The first transmission came with the introduction of Buddhism in the fifth century of our era. That Oriental religion had long chosen art as its handmaid, and carried its painting and sculpture with it wherever ambitious piety set up its temples to Amida Buddha. Japan in time gave a native turn to this imported art with its many sculptured figures and emblems. As seen in its pre-Buddhist Shinto temples a great severity of line and colour and a poverty of decoration had marked the most pretentious fanes of the Way of the Gods. What Shinto temples lacked of the ornate then has remained their pride to this day: their inner shrine contains no painting or statue, only a mirror to show the truth its face. The Japanese conveniently classify temple structures from the art, architectural viewpoint as follows : 1. Shemmei — Style of the gods — oldest, pure Shinto, like the Ise temples, white wood and extreme simplicity. 2. Nagare-zukuri — ^Flowing style or Kasuga style, like the Nara temples, the mediaeval type after the period of Emperor Kwammu, 800 A.D., freer lines and more ornate. 3. Gongen — Incarnation stj'le of the lyeyasu period — 1600 A.D., extremely ornate, painted, the type of the Nikko temples. The Meiji shrine commemorating the late Emperor Mutsuhito, is to be mainly of the second style. To the Buddhist priests for the first art centuries of Japan fell the exemplification of the fine arts— religious paintings on scrolls and carving of the statues of Buddha in wood. It was not until the ninth century that the name of Kose-no-Kanaoka, a court noble, emerged showing a notable example of art secularization. The submerged THE PINE ARTS IN JAPAN 167 millions of the agricultural people had no share in it: the soldier class, always powerful in the Island Empire, scorned it : priests and nobles alone practised it. In this way it progressed. The first recognizable Japanese school — ^Yamato Ryu arose in the year 1000. The Tosa Ryu, a classical school, arose two centuries later, by classical mean- ing an attempted return to clear Chinese painting with its extraordinary landscapes — an influence that has never since been lost. The Tobase called after Toba Sojo de- scribed as "a merry priest" arose in the twelfth century. For centuries there was no great new impulse until the Ukiyoye — ^beginning in the eighteenth century, and reach- ing down to the middle of the nineteenth century — a move- ment bringing art within popular lines dealing masterfully with real life and real scenery and powerfully depicting character. It was the period of the coloured print (coloured wonderfully by hand) and the great names of Hokusai and Hiroshige head all the rest. Oddly enough this art movement which produced real masters highly thought of in America and Europe, has little honour in Japanese art circles. Undoubtedly Whistler's enthusiastic appreciation of these masterpieces and the influence that Hokusai and his fellows and followers had on his own art was the most powerful influence in making the West greedy for the Ukiyoye prints, although few who bought them at gradually soaring prices knew them by that name. I asked several Japanese men of wealth and taste about them, but they shrugged their shoulders, and said they were common things of no real value. These were men whose art collections were often notable, but almost wholly Sansui, the mountain peaks, misty valleys and cloudy wreathings of which there are millions, ancient and modern, handwork and print, in Japan. Not all, of course, are so rooted in devotion to a single 168 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND school. I met one spectacled gentleman of wealth who told me he was about to make a collection of them. "Where will you get them?" I asked. "Boston, U. S. A.," he answered simply, ' ' They have the best there. I must, of course, learn them first. For that I shall browse among our print shops and have expert agents look about for me in all sorts of places, men who can tell the real from the imitations. So I shall become expert, and then I shall go to Boston, and see what I can do." His plan, so characteristic of Japanese thoroughness, amused me, but it showed that there must be many good things of the Ukiyoye left in Japan. Even in America we have people who think the foreign place is the rare place for buying things. Today a mixed, but not unhopeful condition, exists. There is no sign that an entirely new interpretation will immediately be found, but good work is in the doing along many lines, some progressive and some decidedly reactionary. It is not improbable that the first plunge into Oriental art on Japanese soil should be taken by another foreigner as it was by me in viewing the collection of Baron Okura at his museum in Tokyo. This is a great house filled in all its rooms and stories with Asiatic antiques. Here are hundreds of remarkable bronze figures of Buddha from Tibet, Siam, China and Korea as well as from the ancient shrines of Nippon. Hindu divinities abound. Kwannon, goddess of mercy and help to man, some examples with eleven heads : others with two score of hands, each holding an emblem of toil are here in scores. The terrible threaten- ing Deva gods mostly in carved wood who guard the temples are here in dozens. Woe, you say, to the evil spirits whom ill-advised malignity send in their direction. And these, it is well to know, reveal the outward signs of THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 169 a great religion generation after generation, from many lands of the Bast, the most modem three hundred and the most ancient thirteen hundred years old. You carry away with you certain impressions — ^the calm, the awful, the gentle, adoring silence of the Buddha — above all, the calm. It emerges from a slim-waisted, highly decorated Buddha of Tibet as well as from the later and simpler Buddha of Japan. Following it is a sense of the compassion for man which extends over all his efforts and aspirations. Thirdly, the sturdy sense of angry defiance. Distorted with passion may be the faces of the Devas, the power in their posture, the strength in their muscles and decision in their gesture, all appeal stoutly to one's artistic sense no matter how chimerical the realm they rule or the ofSce they fill of sentries and police of the homes of the gods. Just as the ugliest bulldog is artistically excellent BO stand forth these Devas as compact expressions of emotional power. Silent thought, sweet compassion, un- equivocal force were the impressions carried away from these carven signs of the godly which ruled men's imagina- tions for centuries. One great group showed Amida Buddha with twenty-eight minor Buddhas each with a different musical instrument. Here first I saw great examples of the golden lacquer work in boxes and desks and netsuke whose graven work of gold upon gold is a dream of artistry, also lacquer work in larger variety of sealing-wax red. The collection is one of the glories of the nation and has been made by a man who built his own fortune, and, active today at eighty, mingles his business and his archaeology with the enthu- siasm of twenty-five. Afterward at Kamakura, standing adream before the colossal bronze Amida Buddha, forty-nine feet high, lifting its head into the blue of the sky, I was face to face with the greatest example of art in Japan — ^if not in all the 170 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND world. Larger Buddhas there are in Nippon, but, large or small, not one conveys so overpowering a sense of the untold dimensions of divine thought or the calm in which it operates. Here is a devotional exemplar for a race and nation — immense in bronze, but greater still in suggestion of mind eternally contemplating — free of wonder, free of fear, and a mighty fragment of the super-divinity that it contemplates perpetually. Thus it has stood for seven and a half centuries. It was there above two hundred years before Columbus sailed for the New World from Spain. No carven Zeus of ancient Greece compares with it. Re- membering it, the Japanese can lift his head when ancient art or old religion is discussed the world over. It is, however, at the Imperial Art Museum of Tokyo that the best insight can be had into the great variety of the ancient art of Japan — for pieces of distinction particu- larly as to paintings, sculptures in wood or metal, in bronze and lacquer work. Here again the range of the arts down the centuries impresses one with the old civilization of Japan, but in character the same limitations of the pictorial are met, and the same special excellences are revealed. The bronzes are particularly fine. Outside the many Buddhas and Kwannons — one eighth-century ornate temple gong framed in the coils of four dragons which rise from en- twining a pillar resting for pedestal on the back of the Hound of Fo, might indeed stand for the limit of fine lines and superb decoration. For centuries it sounded to priestly prayer in the temple of Kofuku. The wood-carving of Japan has for many centuries been among its most outstanding art-glories, and today numbers votaries of the highest excellence. It is perhaps in the carvings which adorn the gates and outer walls of the temples at Nikko that it is seen in its most massed effects. There are found the weird, well-known three monkeys and the equally famous sleeping cat of Hidari Jingoro, the THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 171 greatest carver of all, amid carvings of birds and scroll work beyond enumeration. The fact that loud colours and gilding cry at you overloudly above the charm of delicately chiselled wood does not destroy the thrill in it but gives it a new turn. Japanese paintings assort themselves in the native mind under three divisions : 1. Sansui — ^Mountain and water or landscapes. 2. Kwacho — ^Flowers and birds or animal and plant life. 3. Jimbutsu — Humanity or figure pieces. Butsugwa — ^Buddhist paintings, in other words, religious paintings, make another division which may combine any or all of the other three. I have said that painting in Japan of today has not set its face in any positive direction, although the number of serious students is steadily increasing. The increase is due to the period of relative peace which the country is enjoy- ing, which allows of more serious regard for the graces of life. Since these latter seldom count among the necessities they are apt to be swamped out in times of Stress such as come with great wars. If, as the Romans said, "In war- time laws are silent," it is more the case with the fine arts. In a governmental pamphlet prepared by the Department of Education, giving a brief history of Art Education in Japan it is declared that during the Tokugawa period of three hundred years, literary and artistic taste spread among the masses and many besides noblemen collected and kept in their possession works of fine art. With the Restoration of the Mikado's power in 1868, however, "the political reformation brought about a social one, and works of fine art fell for a time into such low estate as almost to be thrown away as rubbish." Photography is producing a twofold effect in Japanese art. It is increasing the tendency to literalness on one side, and by reflex action is throwing idealists back on the noble 172 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND suggestiveness of the earlier masters. For the matter of that you may see the same opposition in the older schools in the Kwacho (flowers and birds) style, where every feather, every blossom seems to be meticulously presented, and the branch on which the bird is perched, or the river beside which it stands, is sketched with a marvellously suggestive stroke or two. The Imperial Tokyo Pine Art School only dates from 1873. It now occupies two large and extensive buildings, one devoted to painting and sculpture and the other to the minor arts. In this institution there are eight courses of five years each. The divisions in the fine arts are first made between Japanese painting and European painting. The latter division was not added to the curriculum until 1896 ; in the same year a modelling class was added to the course of sculpture. The eight courses of art are Japanese painting, European painting, sculpture, designing, engrav- ing on metal, metal casting, lacquering and the normal course of drawing. In both systems are taught anatomy, perspective, designing, aesthetics, history of art and archaeology. The student, I may say, is expected at the start to choose one style or the other and follow it to the end. This custom is probably founded on experience as to results, but it does seem to me to weaken the artistic force of the institution as a whole. The course in Japanese painting is divided into copying, sketching and designing. Copying begins with pictures by professors of the school or by famous painters of other days proceeding from the simpler to the more complex. The art of composition and the use of the brush are taught pari passu. In sketching, plants, flowers and fruit are given for subjects. Next, insects, fish, birds and animals are brought to the class- room for sketching, or else the students are taken to the Zoological Gardens to sketch insects, fish, birds and animals. Then follows sketching from the life model clothed, it may THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 173 be in ancient armour or modern fashionable dress. Design- ing is required of students in the second, third and fourth years. In the fifth year each must paint his graduation picture. It may be said that both from personal taste and patriotic motives the professors throw the greater stress on the Japanese school. While the work of the European side of the institution is referred to respectfully, one can easily see ^here their hearts are. All their inner taste cries out for the old art of Nippon. If perfection is to be approached they would have it done by that path. Consequently they have the majority of the students working on that side. A walk through the large class- rooms proves its popularity. In their devotion the sansui stands first, pictures of mountains, with all manner of application of mists and clouds, with rivers close at hand or in the distance, with trees in the foreground and flowers in masses. One has seen so much of this in the old masters that the actual enthusiasm for it seems unaccountable in fresh young minds. The effects are of nature, and yet not quite natural. If you travel up and down the valleys of Japan you will at times come upon just such peaks and cliffs as you have mentally labelled "impossible" in looking at the pictures. But while they exist in nature, they are rare. In the sansui art they are everywhere. The free- brushed artists of the eighteenth century, Ukiyoye, it is true, strained nature a little to bring them in at times, but for the most part these masters drew actual, natural land- scapes, houses, bridges, streets as they existed, and this is what has given the prints sold for a few cents when they were issued values that run into the hundreds of dollars in the American and European auction rooms of today. Japan itself has been stripped bare of them, and we see the native effort of the learned and accomplished professors directing youth into a dessicated landscape art. In the 174 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND flowers and fruits and birds and fishes they do sketch and colour from nature, and really fine work is done. On the day of my visit there was an iris blossom beside every board, and all were copying the flower with such varia- tion as to arrangement as pleased their fancies. In this a wonderful variety of treatment was discovered. The students were mostly thoughtfiil-f aced and in a great many eases dreamy-eyed young men intent on their work, but, with the buoyancy of youth, dropping into humorous wordy interplay when the eye of the visitor and his pro- fessor guide were out of sight. The life-class was more properly a costume class, for the inattention to the per- sonality of the model resulted in drawing stereotyped faces particularly of women. Even in the case of male models this was unfortunately apparent. With the women's faces, as drawn, one saw the same exaggeration of the small eye, the large nose, the little rosebud mouth — that never was on sea or land. With the drapery it was far otherwise — sweeping folds and frequent creasings gave one the very touch of the stuff and the garment. Some showed Western influence in this work, but in nearly all cases the human figure suffered for the attention paid to the clothes. In the division of "European" painting, the students showed much vigour in the charcoal drawing. They drew from the round, from busts and the like. The power of out- line due as I have already noted to the early and continued use of the brush in writing, told strongly. As the students advance they take up painting in oils, and work in pencil and water-colours is added. Life sketching is naturally a later development and I saw some creditable work on the young men's easels. Outdoor sketching in pencil, water- colours and oils is finally included. Signs of genius are of course infrequent in schools all over the world, but a fair average of trained talent using modern methods of painting by the mass was revealed here. On the side of the insti- THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 175 tution devoted to the minor arts excellent work was in progress. In these artisan divisions indeed, Japanese talents are supreme. A visit to the Fine Art School at Kyoto showed a develop- ment somewhat inferior in range of studies to the Tokyo school, but I came upon one example in colour which, better than anything else I had seen, seemed to me to typify the direction of the advance along Western lines while taking to itself distinct Japanese attributes. This was a first prize picture in 1911 by a graduate of the Academy, Bakusen Tsuchida. It shows a young woman before a mirror. There was certainty in the brush work and an individuality about the person portrayed, despite the fact that the artist had evaded painting the face by the ex- pedient of putting the flexed arm in front of it from the onlooker's point of view. The treatment of the drapery, notably in rounding off the ends, is pure Japanese, but the modelling, colour and warmth of the conception and execution give it the key of cosmopolitan art. I succeeded in getting a photograph, but not a very good one. The same applies to a picture of the Goddess Kwannon, genera- trix by Hogai Kano, founder of the Tokyo Art Academy, who died in 1886. It is held in high repute and is, I imagine, the best Japanese figure picture in a generation. Talk as one may of differing schools and infiuences, the great maker of art epochs is a great master. In painting it is Japan's great want of today. And one never can forecast such a phenomenon. "When the singer cried : Say, Britain, could you ever boast Three poets in an age at most? The answer might well be, scarcely one. The age seldom gauges its great men correctly, and Time whittles down the judgment of today with fearful chippings. Still there is 176 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND a condition of change, or tentative blending in Japanese pictorial art that seems to call for some native genius who will grasp the hour and force it to some great purpose. From the opposite side the work of Whistler shows how great the art invitation is. May the Japanese master arrive soon, and may his light not remain under the bushel. In sculpture the results so far are not great. The photographic tendency in statuary is unfortunate — unil- luminated reality. In ivory carving, however, skill is very high. I secured a photograph of one remarkable piece of combined high relief carving and inlaying at the Tokyo school — a rustic Chinese philosopher, Chuang-tze, reading a book while sitting at ease on a bundle of sticks with his axe and lantern behind him. The live vigour of the figure and the loving fidelity of the details make it a wonderful panel. It is by Shoseku Iriya, graduate in sculpture in 1911. In damascene work, inlaying steel surfaces with gold, the modern success is remarkable. It is not perhaps possible in this branch of art to go beyond the work of the armour periods in Asia. It is a work of enormous patience, but can now be pursued with tools and appliances that were unheard of in the great days of ornamented breastplates, helmets, swords and spears. In ceramics, modern Japan is holding its place. A loud and probably sincere cry has gone up against the com- mercializing of the art — the degradation of forms, glaze, colouring and painting of pieces of pottery made by the thousand for the European and Asiatic markets, — ^but it should not be given the force attached to it by those who utter it. Our fashion is to speak of these mass manu- factures as popularized art. It is quite true that valueless articles from the aesthetic viewpoint are sent in bales from Japan to Europe, but it is well to remember that thes? O W o c o o THE FINE ARTS IN JAPAN 177 pieces are manufactured to meet a demand for cheap goods. Side by side with them go really admirable copies of the better pieces all done by men and even women from the art schools. At Nagoya in the great Morimura porcelain factory employing two thousand five hundred hands, half of them women, where the entire process from the puddling of the crude kaolin to the finished product may be seen, I visited one large room in the painting department with a hundred men, young women and boys putting the colours by hand on several pieces of excellent quality from designs made by special artists. These are outlined in black on paper which is applied over the plaque, vase, plate or cup, wetted and removed, leaving the design outlined on the objects. The colour application thus leaves room for modifications within certain limits by the young artists, and it was indicative of the traditional Japanese dislike of servile imitation to note how a tint or a touch here or there gave a spice of variety to a score or more of pieces at first blush alike. But the manufacture of high-grade pottery is in nowise on the decline. There are firms in all branches in the city of Kyoto where nothing but first-class work as to material, form, glaze and colour design is allowed to leave the factory. Such a firm, too, I found on a hilly outskirt of Yokohama, the father and sons who have produced the well-known Makuza ware (a porcelain) for two generations. Anything more devotedly artistic than their attitude toward their work it would be hard to discover. The smallest defect in the baking leads to instant rejection of even the costliest pieces. The best Japanese firms are doing as fine work as ever was done in Japan. I am sure that the Makuza blues, for instance, will hold their ground with the best that come out of China. It is in cloisonne that Japanese genius is making the greatest strides today. The old-time plates with their uniform sky-blue background are no longer to be found in 178 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the modern studio. Tall vases in delicate buff, in a marvellous sea-water green fairly ravish the eye. In some the wires have been thinned almost to vanishing: in the latest they have, with the utmost skill, been removed alto- gether — presenting a surface that it is difficult to distin- guish from the finest porcelain. What is astonishing in this work is the freedom of the designs, which one would imagine to be entirely in the province of brushwork. At the Tokyo Exposition the specimens were very fine — one pair of large vases nearly thirty inches high and broadly rounded were valued at five thousand yen. There were small vases of irrideseent colours, blues and greens and mixtures of most delicate shades. One piece of a warm cafe au lait base with decorations of large flower blooms was particularly fine in design and distinction. I was later privileged to inspect the factory at Nagoya, namely, Ando's, where these wonders were wrought. It is not a very large place. It happened to be a holiday, but on account of the coming of our party a large number of the workmen had been asked to work for half a day. Mr. Ando, a grave-faced courteous man, received us with many apologies that a holiday should venture to intervene when our honourable visit was due, but he had some of his best artists there, who would endeavour and so on — all of the gentlest and kindest. We first came upon a group of eight men of middle age and serious mien seated in a row at work on a set of cloisonne panels for the personal railroad car which was to trans- port His Majesty to the coronation at Kyoto in the ensu- ing November. All were dressed in khaki blouses, and squatted on cushions facing the open air. Three of them were affixing to the brass panel-backing the fine, flattened gold-tinted brass wire which would later enclose the enamel in a peacock pattern. It is very slow work. The foreman pointed to a single line than ran the length of the panel, THE PINE AETS IN JAPAN 179 and said it would take a whole day to wire it. This is done by wetting the lower edge with a fluid that sticks it to the plate. When all the wiring is done the plate is heated, and the wire is thereby soldered. Two of the men were apply- ing the coloured enamels to a panel. Two were dealing with great bowls, one wiring, and one enameling, and one man was filing small holes according to a pattern in a large copper bowl about fourteen inches wide at the rim. It was to be an electric lamp shade, and the holes were to be filled with a transparent glass, like enamel, giving a beautiful effect when the lamps are lighted, as I saw later in a smaller specimen. Each side of the latter was smooth, but when an incandescent burner was lighted inside it, the surface seemed covered with fine leaves raised from the inverted bowl. We were shown the small kilns where the heating of the enamels was done — about half an hour each time, but many, many heatings being necessary. After fixing the enamels the surface is ground fine by scrubbing with rough, hard stones at first and finer grained stones later. Dove colour, a fine grey-green which they call "light grass colour," the blue grey that they call "rat and indigo," another fine tint that they call "light purple" are among the latest of the many new hues they are calling into use. They find, I was glad to hear, their best market in the United States. Embroidery, the art that we almost wholly identify with the handiwork of women, is, in Japan, by far the best the work of men. To see a row of men embroiderers at work, the bent forms above the canvas, the silence broken only by prick of needles through the tough, stretched fabric, to see the marvels of pictorial or pattern work slowly creeping with sure strokes into form and exquisitely graded colour gives one a great and curious sensation. The rendition by these artisans of pictures done originally in oil, "Western" pictures mostly, are startling in their brilliance and fidelity. 180 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Indeed, one sees that the colour-sense of the embroiderers is keener than that of most artists. I asked one man, grave, middle-aged, in a Kyoto factory to show me a yam of Asagi blue — a tint I had admired in the robe of a priest at Nikko. He smiled and said, "We have ten shades of Asagi blue." Certainly our public art galleries should have examples of these large, important pieces, even though they happen to be transcripts of pictures by Occidental artists. Better still if orders were given for transcripts of such Japanese designs as the Kwannon generatrix of Hogai Kano before alluded to. Our rich foundations could well afford it, and it would well repay them. But all the women in Japan embroider more or less, not generally, it is true, in the higher reaches of the art, but I watched large classes of girls and young women at work in the technical schools upon canvases of real merit. While the men embroiderers worked with what seemed a fierceness, so tense was their effort, the girls were evidently weaving something wonderful, something of dream with their silken threads. They will carry the artist strain to Japan of the future in the children they will bear in the fulness of time. CHAPTER XIII ON WHEELS IN JAPAN Delights and drawbacks of the jinrickisha or kuruma — The runners — A three-century old jinrickisha — ^My first ride — A procession of bobbing lanterns — The tic-toe of clogs — The kago or litter — The travelling chairs — The trolley ears — Crowding — ^Bicycles for business purposes — ^Automobiles rare but in- creasing — Room for a small two-seat car — The narrow-gauge on the state railways — Three classes — ^Humours and manners of train travel — The ready "red cap" — Natives who take up much room — The vocal appeal at the stations — Multiplicity of ofScials. To get about in Japan one should cheerfully face the fact that humanity was born to go afoot. It still remains the best way to see what is going on around one. Thus only may the visitor from a foreign shore learn closely the ways of the Japanese in their living and moving relations. If you are ignorant of the language, as you well may be, and make use of a dragoman or interpreter and guide, why, take him along; he won't mind and your profit will be great. If you do not you will acquire the jinrickisha habit and your pleasure be cut in half and your chances of in- formation woefully curtailed. Once mounted in the cute little two-wheeled carriages you find yourself all alone, your guide in another rickisha either ahead of you or behind you. You ask a single question now and then under great and often annoying difiSeulty. You soon end by making only the absolutely necessary inquiries with a touching resignation. The kuruma, as the jinrickisha is oftenest called by the 181 182 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Japanese themselves, is nevertheless a handy little vehicle and to most people very agreeable to ride in if you discount its solitariness. The word jinrickisha means literally man- power wagon, which has been ingeniously rendered a pull man car. It has its hood for sun, wind or rain ; its apron, also for the latter; has body springs and often runs in Tokyo on rubber tires. In its present shape it does not go back of 1868. Most Japanese attribute it to a paralytic old gentleman of Kyoto who was tired of his palanquin and took to a little two- wheeled cart. The more generally received story is that an American, missionary^ with a sick wife suggested to a Japanese mechanic the idea of a two-wheel perambulator and so started the fashion. That may all be so, but in that superb book "The History of Japanese Art" you wiU find a reproduction of a picture by Kano Morinubu, best known as Tanyu, which that artist limned in 1662, and which is now in the Ikeda collection. In a corner of a balcony it shows a jinrickisha of the period "as sure as eggs is eggs" — with the kurumaya squatted waiting for his master. The little cars have, anyway, spread all over the Far East. Recently there were thirty-three thousand of them in Tokyo alone, and over thirty-one thousand kurumaya, but the number tends to decrease and the rates for using them to rise. The falling off is due to the rise of the electric trolley cars, a whole network of which serves the city in an ever-increasing trackage. As a consequence the temptation to lively young men to enter the business is less and less and the sturdy little chap who takes you at a jog trot through the city is generally a man between thirty-five and forty-five. I confess that this trotting by proxy troubled me for months. It seemed hard to me that another human being ghould spend his vitality for me so visibly, No doubt w^ ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 183 accept without a thought similar service from the butcher, the baker, the cook, the farmer, the hunter, the fishers on the stormy seas — all in fact who "earn their bread in the sweat of their brow" — ^but with the kurumaya it is different. "We accept the horse, the ass, the elephant as draught animals cheerfully, but here is a man, like oneself — a husband, a father, an intelligent being — doing one's very own duty of locomotion, just as one of the lower animals might, and on the long stretches of the road suffering visibly that you may be at ease. To look at the bent, patient back of the little runner, to hear his occasional cough, to see him half furtively mopping the streaming sweat from his face as he ran, always oppressed me with a sense of possessing an unjustifiable privilege. To them it is all in the day's work; they only object to you in the scale of your weight and your generosity. Now I am no feather, and when I was about to sally forth from the Imperial Hotel I noticed a pardonable preference among them for the lightweights of the party until I hit upon the idea of having two men serve me — one in front to pull and one at the side to push ; occasionally, and much to be preferred, two who ran tandem, the foremost towing the second with a rope. The latter is the method of the Tokyo dandies, who dress their runners in a kind of livery and bowl along the streets sitting upright as ramrods and looking very grand and proud. The doubling up gives them an additional privi- lege. It is an unwritten law in Japan that no one-man kurnma shall pass another going in the same direction. As I now shared the privilege of speed, it made me a little happier in the practice, although the panting, the face- wiping, the short cough of the man who trotted sweating profusely so close beside me were often trying. Oddly enough I never had that feeling of having an 184 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND undue advantage riding in rickishas in China. The runners there are all young men — blithe, wild creatures full of the joy of life and with the air of beings who know no other experience. They go much faster than the Japanese, are longer limbed, for one thing. They race each other along the streets, running like madmen; they have apparently no rule but to overcharge foreigners and cheat them in making change. With their fellow Chinamen a long parley of bargaining precedes the ride, and both sides stickle for the fraction of a cent. For climbing steep hillsides or descending rapid slopes the fare in Japan generally descends and walks, partly for safety — anyway in going down hill — as a runaway rickisha means a pretty unceremonious tumble. The exhilarating moment is when a party of six or eight set forth, each supreme in his rickisha, and string out along the street one after the other. If the morning be fine or if it be evening, with the gay little lanterns lighted, there is a curious exaltation goes with it. There are rare rickishas wide enough for two, but the problem of draught does not make for their popularity — ^with the men. Still two laughing Japanese girls and a sturdy kurumaya smiling (under the circumstances) make an enlivening picture. As horse-drawn vehicles are rare in any part of Japan rickishas loaded with your luggage (and the bags, valises, suitcases, cameras and packages of curios show an uninter- rupted tendency to increase as you travel) turn the move- ments to and from the railroad station or steamer wharf and your hotel into a more or less extraordinary cavalcade. The packages in jogging along show a tendency to get out and walk, as it were, and one must watch them in per- plexity all the way. I have seen many a side-splitting spill in such expeditions and suffered agonies for my upset belongings in others. ijj imirf @ Newman Traveltalks and Brown & Dawson, N. Y. KAGO CHA, WICKER MOUNTAIN CHAIR, WITH FOUR PORTERS —CROSSING THE HAKONE HILLS ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 185 Landing at Yokohama after nightfall, I had my first glimpse of the streets of Japan in the course of my first rickisha ride. What a new world; what a mystic revela- tion it all seemed. Our long string of rickishas, of which mine was the last, each with its dancing vari-coloured paper lantern and its mushroom-hatted little, bent kurumaya figure pattering in front, separating themselves from the hundreds of similar little vehicles with bobbing lights scattered over the open space near the wharf, soon to wind among the strange looking, dim-lit streets with their sauntering crowds of Orientals. So new, so strangely exciting, the open shop fronts, the silent, moving people, the flaunting signs with ideographic inscriptions, the darkness falling down over the curved roofs, the piercing sound of a single flute somewhere play- ing a plaintive melody, the only sound above the patter of the feet of the runners and an occasional staccato cry of " Hi ! Hi ! " as they encountered other rickishas at crossings. It was marvel land until we reached the semi-modernity of the railroad station for Tokyo. No, we did not go just then to the Grand Hotel. An automobile on its way thither — only one — shot past us on the street, its headlights flashing audaciously. But I made acquaintance too with another Oriental sight and sound — a Japanese crowd moving out on the platforms to take the train. The sober darkness of the raiment of men and women surprised me, relieved, it is true, by the occasional very bright colours — ^blue, white, orange, red — ^worn by children and growing girls; and, since it was a night of muddy streets, the sound of their wooden clogs on the hard pavement, tie, toe, tie, toe, tic, toe, in half a dozen xylo- phone notes by hundreds of brisk little feet, came as a complete novelty. Of other modes of man-borne conveyance there are not many surviving in the cities. I saw an ambulance in 186 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Tokyo taking a sick person to a hospital. It was carried by two men and slung from a pole. The dark-green cur- tains were closely drawn around the portable cot. Out in the country, however, where the hills are too steep (and where are they not?) the kago, or litter, sur- vives. This was, with all sorts of modifications through the centuries, the litter, or palanquin, in which the great of the land, from the Emperor or shogun or higher daimios down, travelled in olden times through the country or any- where that the walking was difficult. It is simply a short hammock hung from a bamboo pole as thick as one's wrist. I sampled one at Myanoshita and took a violent dislike to it ; it made one feel too much like the traditional "cod in a pot" for prolonged comfort. The little Japanese, ladies particularly, liked it. To me, despite its honourable history, it also seemed humiliatingly near the ground. Of a different kind are the travelling chairs. This is simply a wicker-work armchair carried on the shoulders by four men who keep step but give it a slightly undulant movement. They change shoulders every quarter mile or so, first giving a shouted signal, whereat all lift it and change together. One feels like an Assyrian king or a Boman Pope in this chair, very lofty and stately. When they carry you in a path about three feet wide along the face of a cliff with a drop of several hundred feet below you and the mountain wall above, it may comfort you to calculate what would happen if the off-bearer, front or rear, lost his footing. Whether you would go over the edge and take the plunge head foremost or backward would be an interesting speculation. Nevertheless I enjoyed it. True, as the road ascends the mountain or descends it, in long zigzags after the manner of mountain roads, it was always a bit disconcerting when the bearers suddenly turned and took a short cut to clip off the corners. It ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 187 meant a tilting up of the fore-end or a dropping down thereof which interfered with one's dignity and balance in a way most unbefitting. Every mile or so they set their burden down before a wayside tea house and drink your health in the golden green beverage out of little cups, and you are expected to do the same while dismounted to stretch your legs and "take the view" with some notable historic spot in the offing. I remember being drawn for hours on a day of rain, by a rather old kurumaya. The rain dripped from his wide-brimmed conical hat, his clothes were soaked through, he steamed literally with perspiration, his face was a picture of utter fatigue, but he mustered a smile as I paid for his dolorous journey more than he asked. I commiserated him. He replied cheerily: "I shall have my hot bath and dry clothes in ten minutes and then my supper, Ah-h!" A prolonged chuckle and he was gone. You could not beat it. I went to my snug room wondering. The electric trolley, as I have said, is extending in Japan to the great joy of the people. There is a ticket system, but the conductors are the most painstaking of officials and make elaborate explanations to all and sundry when- ever pricked with a question. It would almost seem that the officials of the companies had selected a certain type of little, quick-witted, direct-speaking young men, who waste no words, but are tireless in answering everybody. In Tokyo they are learning to crowd the ears on the most approved American principles, with often deplorable effects on the national habits of courtesy. The rude democracy of the street car, where every one who has paid his two cents feels his equality with his neighbours, is to blame for this. The pretty young Japanese girl gets preferential treat- ment there as elsewhere, but she seldom travels alone. The foreign woman who does must submit to much staring by 188 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the men and endlessly curious examination of her clothes, shoes, parcels and hairdressing by the women. Positive rudeness they rarely meet with, but it seems to have occurred. I never noted an instance, but I saw letters in the Yokohama newspapers about it, citing unpleasant incidents. Bicycles, whatever vogue they may have had, have fallen to about the same lines of use in Japan as in the United States — mostly as adjuncts to business — shopkeepers' as- sistants, messenger boys with baskets, tradesmen with tools, and, apparently, not for pleasure or touring purposes. The present of the automobile in Japan is a modest one. There were not many more than five hundred in Tokyo in 1914 with its over two million inhabitants. They were mostly owned by the very rich or the very high officials and did not enter even as the motor bus into popular traffic. They are all sizes and makes — ^American, French, English, German, Italian. They are mostly big cars in a country of the little things of life. Latterly, however, they are increasing in number. The country roads are mostly narrow, with just room for two carts, and I should think there would be a future for a light, narrow car seating two or four. For the greater part the city streets are narrow and a passage through them is a thing of continued horn-tooting and shouting to pedestrians who swarm all over the roadway, in and out through the hundreds of man-drawn little carts. I have known the car in which I was riding to be halted until a scornful, erect old man in a tall hat and a black haori brought his speculative mooning in the middle of the road to an end and at last strode haughtily out of range amid the prayers of the tooting chauffeur. Children escape by miracle. Along the broader avenues that now are piercing the capital in every direction there is a chance of more speed. ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 189 In crossing the town, however, detours are frequently im- perative on account of municipal regulations that forbid this route or that for official reasons to vehicles. Through the crowds going to the Tokyo exposition on the evening of a fete of wonderful electric illuminating I went — in the automobile of the great and good Buyei Nakano — to dine with him superbly al fresco under the elms at Uyeno Park. How we escaped turning the motor into a car of juggernaut on the way out and in a higher degree in driving home I shall never tell. It was as thrilling, I should say, as a passage on a torpedo boat through a hostile fleet over waters thickly strewn with mines — and yet, nothing happened; but the men who jumped, the women who scrambled and the babies whom heaven delivered from our slow-turning wheels com- bined with the infernal horn to keep one's sensibilities on a very ragged edge. It seems now a grave mistake that Japan's railways are all narrow gauge — three feet six inches between the rails. With roughly six thousand miles of road and a full equip- ment of rolling stock the conversion to standard gauge would be very costly. It will, however, be done in time. The promoters of a project to accomplish it have been making estimates and collecting the endless statistics in which official Japan delights. The experiment of laying down rails at the standard gauge on the seven-foot sleepers has been tried lately. On many of the roads the change might not cost much, but tunnels on others are long and frequent, and here the cost is naturally greater if they have to be widened. It is felt, moreover, that owing to the increase of freight traffic in a war-time of ever-growing manufactures, something must be done. The roads they built in Korea and the road they inherited from the Russians in Manchuria are of a wider, Russian, gauge. The roads are nearly all government owned, national!- 190 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND zation having been brought about in 1904. When one recollects that the first roads were laid down in 1872 one perceives the progress that has been made. Undoubtedly there is economy in the narrow gauge. It takes a lighter rail — sixty pounds has so far sufficed, and a seventy-two pound rail where traffic is unusually heavy. Engines were formerly imported from Great Britain, and then from the United States, but for the last few years Japan has been making her own. It would not be surprising if all the roads were electrified within a few years as water-power can be had almost anywhere in Japan, and, once installed, costs very little. Outside the towns railroad building presents many diffi- culties on account of the outrageously hilly topography. Hence embankments to keep the valley rivers off the rail- road tracks in times of flood and tunnels to pierce hills otherwise untraversable are frequent and expensive fea- tures — the railroad through the Hakone range being an instance in point. It makes, however, for lovely scenery of wood and water, mount and valley, with every variety of vegetation and variety of crops in suddenly flashing vistas. It was from a car window on the trip to Kyoto that I first saw Fujiyama, a distant vision high in the sky, beau- tifully snow-crowned. In a few minutes, at a turn of the road, it was gone. In one strip of railroad to Karuisawa, the inland mountain summer resort near Nikko so popular now with foreigners, there is a strip of road that has been funicu- larized using special engines. Tokyo now boasts one im- posing central terminal railroad building, which rises in the heart of the city facing the imperial palace (at a distance of a third of a mile) , taking the place of the old Shimbashi terminal known to Tokyese and tourists for many years. It is one thousand one hundred feet long and ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 191 architecturally recalls the old Grand Central Depot of New York, in its red brick with granite trim and general outline. It has brought into sudden vivid life a stretch of ground long given over to sand heaps and desolation, and is a real metropolitan improvement. To the ordinary traveller statistics are negligible, and I shall inflict them as sparingly as possible on my readers. The service organization is admirable, with officials multi- plied and politeness everywhere. Fares, too, are low, according to American standards, or European for the matter of that. There are three classes of ears. The rates are based on the third class, and are lower on the long runs than on the short — ^the further you travel the cheaper you go. Second- class fare is one and a half times the third-class fare, and first-class costs four times as much. First-class for the short hauls is three and one-quarter cents of our money a mile, and' less than two cents for the longest — over three hundred miles. The third-class person travels for 8.25 mills a mile for fifty miles, and if he goes to three hundred miles his rate has come down 4.50 mills a mile — cheap enough. By third class travel eight hundred and thirty-seven out of every one thousand passengers ; by second class, one hundred and forty-one, and by first class, only twenty-two. Foreign tourists, it may be said, nearly always travel first class; but, as in Europe, the resident foreigner and the bulk of the commercial and professional people go second class. There is mostly a difference in upholstery physically between the first and second-class cars, but, naturally, there is less crowding in the first class, and when one learns how much baggage one has to dispose of around one, space becomes a necessity worth paying for. It may be noted as a sign of the growth of a middle class in Japan that there is a steady growth in the secpnd-class travel, although there 192 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND is no falling off in the third class nor any sign of increase in the first class. The ordinary trains appear to be made up and run on the ratio that fills the third class to over- flowing. In the long-haul de luxe trains there are only first and second-class sleepers, but there are an observation ear and a dining car. All aboard! You have bought your ticket, a red-cap porter with the superfluous legend "boy" embroidered on his collar has possessed himself of your parcels, bags, suit- cases, camera, typewriter, overcoat and cane or umbrella if you will surrender it. It was always a wonder to me not only how much these lively young chaps can carry as to weight and bulk, but how many items they can dispose of. They use a strap on which to string your beloved itinerary items, but they seem to have at least four hands and three or four shoulders. And they run off with the burden, pack it neatly around your seat and on the shelf above you and look unutterably grateful for a ten-sen piece, which is a nickel in our money. When you arrive at your station you clap your hands. One red cap is at your elbow and another on the platform. The first lowers a window, passes all the pieces to the "boy" outside, who hurries off with them to the carriage or rickisha or auto waiting for you outside the station. They are a blessing. Your trunks, if you have them, you recover without much trouble — ^they have been checked to your destination, but I have found it advisable where a change of cars occurs to see that the transfer is effected just as one may well do in America. In the first class your fellow travellers, when Japanese, are apt to be very reserved in manner. You surrender your ticket as you leave the station. The seats are all longi- tudinal and very deep for a good reason — that the natives invariably squat on them. Not in vain must the very HUMOURS OF TRAVEL IN TOKYO The Conauctor : — "Get inside, please !" 1. "THE FIRST CLASS CAR" This Clever Sketch is One of a Number Illustrative of Modern Japanese Life, made for the Tokyo Times by Miss Elizabeth Keith 2. TRIALS OF TRAVEL— THE SNORER By Miss Elizabeth Keith for the Tokyo Times ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 193 precise army colonel or general pay four times the third- class fare. On entering he spreads a robe or rug upon the seat, taking up enough sitting room for three, and woe to the inconsiderate fellow traveller who trespasses an inch thereon. He literally holds the fort against all comers with a severe, touch-me-not air. The prosperous, roly-poly merchant or banker spreads his rug and takes genial possession of as great a width, but in the spirit of "come share my joy with me, but keep off my rug. ' ' Off come his shoes or clogs, displaying his white kidlike stockings with the separated big toe. He is at ease in a minute. The Japanese ladies sometimes sit European fashion, but are and look more at ease curled up native fashion on the seats. The children — ^little balls of live colour — ^romp about as they do| everywhere. The tourists need not be described; they are the same the world over; they read omnivorously and hunt over their guidebooks. Food, daintily prepared in lacquered boxes, is a part of every outfit, and there must be something appetizing to the Japanese in railroad travel, for they are apt to be eating or smoking most of the time in transit. The fact of a dining car interferes little or nothing with the festal feeding. For a yen you may breakfast well or sup and for a yen and a quarter you can dine fairly and neatly on the longer trips, and you can eat or drink tea or beer all day a la carte. Second-class travel is much like first, a little more com- pressed as to space taken. They lounge, sleep, eat, smoke more enthusiastically and look more picturesque and more at home. As to the third class, generally jammed with all generations, they huddle, squat, eat, sleep and enjoy a journey with gusto. In the third class too they travel in jolly crowds. Groups of gay pilgrims from particular 194 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND villages abound — as many as fifty in a bunch — men and women. They are having the time of their lives on the bare wooden seats. One of the distinctive things about the larger, more im- portant stations is the chorus of song that goes up as the train draws in. A couple of dozen young vendors of eat- ables and drinkables, books, newspapers, trinkets, souvenirs, post cards and so on, each with his particular cry gives voice to it in song. It has a weird sound to Occidental ears, but I am sure one would miss it much if by a spasm of progress it was suppressed. Heads pop out of the third-class windows. Numbers descend from the train and besiege the vendors, while others rush to the great ablutionary tank to be found in all large stations and wash hands and face, drying them on handkerchiefs or pocket towels and rush back again. A cheap tea, baneha, is sold with a clay pot and clay cup, all ready to be taken aboard and con- sumed, for ten sen; neat boxes, ben to, of boiled rice and beans, large oranges, not very sweet or juicy, fried fish, sandwiches, rice cakes, bean sweets are among the offerings. The car cleaners have been at work sweeping, washing and wiping the windows and platforms, refilling the water tanks. And so the passengers are recalled, cigarettes are lighted or the little six-puff pipes get their pinch of tobacco and give off their curls of smoke, and the train is off. "Women of the poorer classes are much addicted to these little pipes, and they will fill and puff them out a dozen times in an afternoon. One thing is notable at all stations, namely the number of bi-lingual notices. Every spot in Japan has either a place in history or is very near one, and thus it is that under the heading of "Places of Interest" you will find a pla^ar^ tellipg you in English and Japa^ese hgyf far it i§ ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 195 to this or that gorge, waterfall, castle, temple, mountain, lake or picturesque valley. On every train there ia supposed to be an interpreter who can more or less illume the way for the traveller. He generally knows a little English, enough to help on the ordinary railroad questions, and it is side-splitting at times to behold some confiding tourist addressing him at length on the insufficiency of Japanese provision for the wants of foreigners like himself, to all of which the little official listens with a benevolent smile, a nod of the head and a funny little grunt at the apparent end of the sentences, but not of the discourse. The nod is to say "Go on, good honourable friend," and the grunt expresses a grave wonder as to what it is all about. "Very intelligent, indeed," was the sage remark after an address of ten minutes to a suffering interpreter of which the latter confessed later an entire ignorance, saying: "That man speak very well: much: good enough for Japanese man who get four time my salary," An ingenious idea surely. In the observation car things go better than elsewhere for the tourist. They mingle, and people who have passed each other in hotel corridors and dining rooms for a week without a sign of recognition become human once more when indulging a collective glance at the passing landscape. Then wonderful pieces of guide-book lore break loose, and personal views are hazarded that would provoke a smile on the face of the great Daibutsu, which has kept a straight face for nearly eight hundred years. Mrs. Malaprop comes to life: "I was taken in to the tea ceremony; it was cer- tainly umbilicus, although on the whole tiresome." No one presumed to differ, "Near Nara I saw a priest dancing like a prawn" was another effort. Still it is in the observation car that the ends of the earth QoiQ^ together. In one w§ were Ai!ieri?aii, Australian, 196 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Russian, German, French, South American — and Japanese, and managed to find in one way or another what the object of the journey was. They do not send men around to shout last call for dinner. Instead they hand around little leaflets on thin paper stating that dinner is served, but "the meal will not be started until all are there" — a rule, however good in itself, not strictly observed. The narrow gauge with its consequent narrowing of the cars creates difficulties about the different accommodations that Japanese ingenuity overcomes very cleverly with much mechanical folding and unfolding and turning up and turning down. In the sleeping cars the upper berths are wider than the lower ones. In the latter the bed is made up on the regular seat. We had to travel once from Kobe to Tokyo second class. The train was crowded and it was a trying experience in every way, yet a most dignified old missionary with quite an episcopal air sailed through it all in an upper berth with a tranquillity and seemliness that were enviable. It repaid one somewhat to see a bishop in his shirt sleeves washing his face. Such is the weakness of human nature in the effort to console oneself for loss of dignity in dressing scramblingly amid drummers and such after a night of fitful trouble. If you want to see a well-managed, commodious road com- mend me to the South Manchuria Railroad. Fine trains, every modern appliance and resource, excellent service, good fare and good speed make a journey truly enjoyable between Port Arthur and Mukden. The same is mainly true of the main line in Korea from Fusan to Antung, but the South Manchurian seems to me to have the best of it. As to how they pay I may say that they are all govern- ment lines. Their financing shows a profit of over eight per cent, over all charges. They charge to the full what ON WHEELS IN JAPAN 197 the traffic will honestly bear ; the vendors who sell eatables and so on at the stations contribute, for instance, over $30,000 a year in what are called "levies." It makes very small charge for each, but, as we see, it totals handsomely. CHAPTER XIV THE EEAL GEISHA The sublimated waitress of Japan — Her dancing and singjng — The geisha processions — ^How she serves and waits — The Harvest Dance, Fisherman's Dance, Spider Dance, Lion Dance samples of her skill — ^A night with actors — Her train- ing begins at twelve years old — Hard work — In public festi- vals — Protecting the girls — Costly acquaintances — Sometimes marry into society — ^Not to be confused with tea-house girls. The geisha or singing girl to the "Western" mind fills out the romantic ideal of modern Japan. To the native she is simply a sublimated waitress with dancing and singing trimmings, but she is also a chosen vehicle of Japanese romance. Visions of her dressed in showy silken robes waving a large fan, her black hair marvellously coifed, a fixed smile on her face and moving in rhythmic steps with a special flowing elegance of gesture, rise before those who have seen her at her high functions. Ever to the accom- paniment of the tinkling strings of the samisen and the dull beat of the tsuzumi that picture comes back to the foreigner as the flower of his reminiscence of Japan. The figure appeals to the artistic sense wholly. One dissociates her from the girl who has been kneeling before you on the opposite side of your lacquered tray with its pretty bowls of strange and dainty food, waiting on your slightest movement as you never have been waited on, with laughing eyes, smiling mouth and arching of her neck as well as with quick, efficient fingers. iShe is, as you are probably aware, an old institution, originated seven cen- THE REAL GEISHA 199 turies ago by the terrible Fujiwara Michinori in his gentler moments as the Shirabyoshi or white treaders of measures (in Loehinvar phrase) to grace banquets and festivals. Later combining attendance on guests with the stately saltation of the East. When you think of it, the artistic sense of the nation must have been acute, when it conceived the notion of calling in woman's beauty, the gift of song, the poetry of the dance, the gleam of wit and the glow of colour to drape withal the prosaic duty of serving food. You can judge the difference, if you set forth to imagine a dozen of our stiff male restaurant waiters in their ghastly garments, suspending the service of the courses to entertain one with a song and dance. I recall nothing of the pageantry of Japan with a more immediate appeal to joyous admiration than the formal entry of a score of geishas in ranks of four to wait upon a score of guests in that delectable restaurant, the Tokiowa — the Delmonico's of the Japanese capital. Toward the upper end of the large oblong room we were seated on the mats and resting on soft cushions of satin brocade in the customary three-sided line, — that is, with the fourth side of the square open to the lower endj of the room. Con- versation was running airily along among the guests, when suddenly there was silence, and then murmurs of admira- tion as the splendid company of geishas wheeling in lines of four from the side entrances at the further end moved slowly forward down the centre with a marvellous rhythmic stride, each bearing a tray of scarlet lacquer. Such a com- pany of bright, smiling, youthful faces of pure Oriental oval, surmounted by coronets of glossy black hair, puffed, interwoven and adorned with many pins, their flowing kimonos of brilliant brocade, their still brighter obis and their white-shod feet! Bloom of beauty and youth in gorgeous array were ushering in the feast. LucuUus nor 200 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND any luxurious Roman of his time could have produced any finer prelude to a high repast. With almost military precision our geishas, as they advanced, vrheeled so that in an instant their line was facing ours, smiling down on us. In another instant all were on their knees facing each a guest, and depositing before him their precious trays laden with good things. My geisha was a little beauty of scant eighteen, and touch- ing her forehead to the floor she sat up and, leaning back- ward on her heels, helped me from the tray. Closer seen she is observed to be powdered and rouged, her lips painted scarlet, and otherwise facially a work of art with fine touches and shadings beyond mere man to describe, from the convolutions of her lustrous hair to her slender, mani- cured finger-tips. Beyond this grace and efScieney of service, the geisha at the feast does not progress much farther with the foreigner, unless he can speak Japanese. The girls seldom learn any outland tongue. I remember one at Osaka sent for by my host because it was said she spoke English. Alas ! a score or two of words, some a little rowdy, was her whole bi- lingual store, reflecting, like the sailor's parrot, more upon his teacher than on the vicar's sister, who owned the bird. "You lak Japan damfine, eh?" was her somewhat discon- certing ingratiating salutation. For the rest it was "gol' watch," "good morneen," "old top," "git tout," "solong, gooby ! " without any relevance that I could discover. The bewitching, knowing smile that went with each of these was, however, worth something to witness. To the native guest at a wholly native banquet she is but little different. Great discretion and perfect routine of service mark her at the beginning of the feast. Her bright eyes divine every wish. She pours the sake with a pretty gesture into the little saucer. If it is oflfered to her, she touches it modestly with her lips, rarely drinking it. She THE REAL GEISHA 201 empties it deftly, however, and rinses it in a silver bowl of clear water, returns it to the guest and refills it. Sake tastes like weak sherry but alcoholieally is, I think, some- thing stronger. It would take many of the little cupf uls I should say to produce an intoxicating effect, but short of that a loosening of the tongue follows its repetition, and your dignified banker or merchant or high official is before long including his attendant geisha in his chatter with his neighbours at the feast. Then the geisha, like the Eoman slaves in the Lupinaria, allows herself a pretty pertness, and often with a phrase of repartee sets a whole row roaring with laughter at somebody's expense. For this quality the geisha are celebrated. The humour is almost wholly harmless, and its tang of personality is derived gen- erally from something in the guest's personal appearance — corpulency, thinness, baldness and so on. Even great men treat this freedom indulgently. It is not unknown that the native guest should pat a geisha under the chin at a late hour of the evening, but they resent freedom of touch with prompt indignation. Their aloofness in this respect is indeed part of their stock in trade. Remember that they are hired to wait at private houses five times as often as at public banquets and "a girl must take care of her character, or she is done for." The routine of the feast varies little. Course follows course at the dinner for an hour or more, each course being served with great formality. At length the geishas dis- appear, and after a short interval three or four or five women something older than the serving geishas and more soberly garbed enter bearing musical instruments, samisens — three-stringed banjos — or small drums — tsuzumi — to be struck sharply with the fingers. They play and sing. The music is stringy, tinkling stuff, and the voices thrill with a tang of pathos, rarely resonant. Presently the bevy of geishas, often newly and more splendidly robed than ever. 202 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND enter in slow, measured dancing steps with waving of arms and fans and perform one of the many score of narrative dances in thein repertoire. The dance tells a story sym- bolically, and is of great interest to the native onlooker. As every actor of the olden days aspired to play Hamlet, and every elocution teacher of stage people in England and America teaches all his girl pupils how to play Juliet, so every geisha knows the Harvest Dance, the Fisherman's Dance, the Spider Dance and the Lion Dance, as the mere beginning of all she knows. With each dance goes a song which she must either sing herself or dance to it on the lips of one of the singing maiko as the retired geishas are called, and as every step and gesture of the classic story is tradi- tional and known, she measures up against the past and the present with every turn and motion. In the Harvest Dance all the motions of reaping and stacking the ripe grain, of threshing and winnowing, of sacking and weigh- ing the rice is shown in a poetic way. So with the Fisher- man 's Dance, all the swing of the sailor and art of the fisher are ingeniously idealized. The Spider Dance is very elaborate and requires numbers and particular skill. A young Prince is sick and ailing and nothing will do him any good, for he has fallen in love with a beautiful spider who is sapping his life away with her baleful arts. A brave young samurai believes he can rescue the Prince and resolves to do so. Then ensues a combat of craft against daring. At a certain point the beautiful spider throws a golden mesh, a veritable shower of airy gold that the young champion barely avoids. The combat is renewed with great vigour until the spider is wounded and at last killed, when the young Prince is cured and freed of all his woes. This is a delightfully elaborate dance, and as I saw it performed at the Maple Club in Tokyo before a highly critical audience of theatre managers with Yamomoto of the Imperial Theatre at their head, it THE REAL GEISHA 203 was specially fetching and won great applause. The Lion Dance is perhaps the most popular of all. A young wife is left alone all day and every day by her husband who is absorbed in his business and devoted to his own pleasures. A young man of handsome bearing discovers this neglected lady and attempts to pay court to her. She is so good, however, that she will not listen to him. She not only dis- courages his advances but threatens him with her absent husband. The handsome young man is neither frightened nor, sad to say, abashed. He disappears for a moment, and the good young wife shows unmistakably her great sense of relief. In a short time it appears that her joy was pre- mature, for the persistent lover has returned disguised as a lion. Oh, a very terrible and at the same time attractive lion! So far from showing his teeth or springing at her with paw and jaw, he disports himself most amiably, long streamers of golden tissue covering all his body and sparkling along the ground as he moves nearer and nearer to her in a narrowing circle. She becomes gradually be- wildered by the brave showing of leonine strength and beauty. All this lustrous and bewitching attention for one so neglected! At last the lion reveals himself as the lover, and — the audience really seems not to blame her severely — she allows him to throw his lion mantle around her and lead her away — a warning to all selfish husbands who neglect devoted and good-looking young wives. It is all very delicately and artistically done. When the dances and singing are over the banquet is resumed, and the geishas returning to their posts as waitresses are made much of by the company according to their artistic deserts. At the Maple Club banquet, which was an exceptional affair in the artistic quality, of the guests, my geisha was the lady who took the lively part of the spider and her name was Bells in Japanese. She was a whole chime of gaiety and grace. The final dish of 204 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND rice and tea was served amid much good humour. Some of the younger managers who had been actors in their time, at the urging of their companions, shed their kimonos, tied napkins around their heads, otherwise hastily making up into something like Neapolitan fishermen, and then danced comic dances with the geishas to the uncontrollable mirth and delight of the girls. At about eleven o'clock some signal was given, and all the geishas were gone. At another dinner, one given at Kyoto, a young Ameri- can of the company, under the encouragement of the Japanese gentlemen present, essayed to teach the one-step to the geishas. The result was extremely comical. The geisha wears no heels on her white shoes and never dances on her toes. Her dancing is just flat-foot stepping in perfect rhythm, and her grace and harmony reside in movements of hip, body and arms of the chastest character, there not being a trace of the suggestion that we know as of Egypt or any other part of Africa or southern Europe. A geisha trying to rise on her toes and hop in the one-step was so disturbed that her elaborate coiffure was shaken to its under-pinning, and the rest of the girls laughed almost to hysteria. The young American thought he might suc- ceed in teaching the American dance if given time, but the girls thought the motion too ridiculous for words. Inasmuch as the wives of Japan are great home bodies, and the grown daughters of private families are very much sheltered from outside influence, not to say adventure, the geisha takes the place in Japanese literature of the adven- turous, hence the romantic female. She is the heroine of a thousand stories in which woman's wit achieves triumph over astounding difficulties, in which woman's love endures trial and suffering, even death. The geisha too fills an artistic niche in the modern world little known : she poses for all the modern photographic reproductions of the female form divine. The woman in private life would feel THE REAL GEISHA 205 herself curiously degraded if her face were put up for sale in shop or store, which is perhaps a sufScing reason for her leaving the task to the geisha. To the photographer, how- ever, it is a saving grace. He secures charm and beauty. Hence when you buy some wohderf ul Japanese photograph of family life, a tender mothen and her baby, a lady of quality in a garden or in a rickisha, a group of refined maidens frolicking under the cherry blooms, it is the geisha who supplies the model, modifying her hairdressing, her garb and her expression to suit the occasion. Sooth to say the varying of expression for art purposes in women's faces in Japan is exceedingly limited in range. However the great artists of the colour-print school of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries depicted character and calling in the faces of men, even they did little in differentiating the faces of women from the traditional expressionless face of the classical period. And the artists of today do little more. The laughing face of a girl so full of innocent mirth and the joy of living that has sold by tens of thousands in Japan is the snapshot of a geisha. Some American travellers have told their public how they mistook ordinary tea-house waitresses and even licensed girls of ill-fame for geishas. Unless you dower the tourist with great stupidity such confusion is un- pardonable. At any rate, the tourists' prurience is mostly to blame, and not the geisha. Not even the glib and picturesque hanger-on of a Yokohama hotel with all his desire to make a little dirty money debauching the "Western" traveller, will describe any of the women noted above as geishas. Nor will the poorest kurumaya "with varicose veins in his tired brown legs" as one traveller delicately describes his Yokohama rickisha man, try to palm off on a foreigner any ordinary servant girl or woman as a geisha. The geisha as we see her at her best is the product of 206 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND many years of training and culture. She preserves and perpetuates the classic type of female beauty in Japan, which is more to the purpose than that they wait wonder- fully at table and sing and dance picturesquely. And they spring almost entirely from the poorer classes. Wherever through the islands of Nippon a poor mother bears a daughter an early thought about her is apt to be, is she beautiful enough to be a geisha when she grows up? If she really is a beautiful child, the neighbours have their say and urge the mother not to deny her daughter her chance in life, for at rare times they have wonderful chances and improve upon them, Oftener naturally the geisha draws a blank in the lottery of life. That she has lived a blameless, joyous life of a few years must be the consolation of the geisha most of the time as she closes her geisha career in a humble marriage. The beauty of a girl when grown up cannot be definitely predicted in Japan before she is twelve years old. Even then the signs often prove deceptive. High cheek bones come out : the oval of the face proves imperfect : the form is disappointing. Generally speaking, however, the promise of twelve to the experienced eye of the keeper of a geisha house holds good. If the mother wishes her daughter to be a geisha she must sign a hard and fast contract of apprenticeship that surrenders her own rights in her daughter, and obligates the keeper of the geisha house to feed her, lodge her and clothe her, and teach her the art and practice of the profession. The terms of these con- tracts are carefully drawn and meticulously observed. By all accounts the life of the musume or apprentice geisha or chicken geisha as she is variously called is for two or three years a hard one. In the coldest winter weather they must be up at daybreak and practice on the samisen for hours often with numb fingers. No amount of whimpering relieves them of their task. Then the dancing (g) Newman Traveltalks and Brown &. Dawson, N. Y. I GEISHA GIRLS ENJOYING A MEAL OF THEIR OWN SERVING 2. A GEISHA DANCE WITH THE GEISHA ORCHESTRA THE REAL GEISHA 207 has to be practised for hours. This, of course, is posturing, advancing, retiring, wheeling, rising, kneeling, gesticu- lating in prescribed, traditional motions. Hundreds of geisha songs have to be learned by heart and sung as solos or in chorus. Then the waitress business must be studied and practised with a detail unimaginable to Occidental ideas of the art. Progress is extremely slow, and the criticism consistently severe. Then they must wait on the elder geishas and run their errands. As they grow a little older and learn to carry the beautiful raiment of the geisha, wonderfully embroidered satins and brocades, with some- thing of grace and authority they are occasionally allowed to attend the banquets for an hour or two, giving their touch of exquisite grace and childish innocence to the entertainment as they flit about under strict orders to permit no liberties. At this age they are all very beautiful. Later on, as I have indicated, they differentiate, and seldom carry to maturity a third of the charm they conveyed as children. A geisha house is not generally a large establishment — six or seven to a dozen geishas and half as many musumes make it up. The mother or keeper is generally an old geisha, often a once celebrated dancer and entertainer, as one may guess from the many middle-aged or aging men who will sit down beside her and swap stories with her about merry old times of other days. The geisha houses, rather humble, certainly unpretentious abodes, group them- selves in certain quarters, and the hiring of the girls is done methodically through a central office at a very strict tariff. The hiring should be accomplished by the restau- rant keeper or by the housewife as early in the afternoon as possible, but not after six in the evening unless ab- solutely unavoidable. For the preparation of the geisha is an elaborate affair from the wonderful coiling and adorning of her h^ir to the fit and sit of her white, heelless 208 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND shoes. They are taken in rickishas to the house of enter- tainment and carried home in the same way when all is over. The elan spirit is strongly developed in them, but it is strictly local: that is the geishas of a! certain fu or pre- fecture will hold themselves superior on one point or another of geisha accomplishment to the geishas of another neighbourhood. It furnishes them with conversation for hours, the mother geisha encouraging it by all means, often going to great expense in the way of gorgeous costumes, gold embroidered and what not, to "down" a rival pre- fecture. The municipalities and even the central govern- ment use the geishas from time to time for public display. Nothing is more popular than a procession of geishas through decorated streets on festival days. The geishas of the rival parishes vie in splendour and stateliness and are received along the route with applause. In Tokyo and above all in Kyoto geisha exhibitions are held in large public halls, and these district rivalries as to number, splendour and complexity of the dance figures are the great popular feature. Of late they have been used in public fetes that had long been closed to them. At bridge openings they are in demand. They are always building bridges in Tokyo, and every new bridge calls for a local celebration. The first over the bridge must be the oldest married couple in the district, and then come the mayor and other officials and a score of geishas, wonder of wonders, wearing tights instead of the superb flowing robes of their usual garb of ceremony. If a mere man may have an opinion in such delicate matters I would say that the young men of Japan have better shaped legs than the young women. This I attribute wholly to the exercising of the young men, and the flattening of the limbs from the prolonged squatting of the young women of leisure. As may be supposed the mor^lg of the geisha are a great THE REAL GEISHA 209 trouble to foreigners. One thing is very certain, those who control the geisha take the greatest care to preserve them from the temptations that may come their way. The random meeting with well-to-do men a little flown with sake when the geisha serves at banquets cannot be without its dangers, but the geisha has a long-taught fund of cynicism to fall back upon regarding the sheep's eyes thrown at them across the dinner tray, and their simple creed that all compliments are theirs by sheer right of cultivated grace and beauty save them from all — ^well, nearly all — the dangers of flattery. It would be difficult to praise a geisha beyond her own concept of her attrac- tions. Their whole schooling, in fact, is a preparation against the delighted appreciation on the other side of the dinner tray. Never did a mother hen gather her chickens under her wing with more insistent cluck than the clerk in charge or the mother geisha herself, as one or other collects the girls at the feast's end and shoos them home in good order. It is the condition of the business that the girls live good lives. As to the young apprentices they are really watched over with maternal care for their own gentle sakes no less than for the good of the house, and the profit from the full-blown geisha in years to come. It is in fact a hard worldly wisdom they are taught, without illusions, if largely dissociated from what is narrowly called virtue. They are taught that decent conduct makes for self-respect and health. They are not allowed to dissipate as that lowers their geisha value. That the system, like most of the social systems that date back to feudal Japan, answers and has answered its purpose, speaks volumes. The aim has been to keep intact a large company of young women of beauty and cultivation bringing them nightly in more or less perilous contact with slightly inebriated men of more or less means and yet keep the ranks whole and the girls safe. It i? a system of bringing the pitchers to the 210 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND well with a minimum of breakages. I recall a ease on the other side of the world of many years ago showing how want of some such system betrayed a steward of handsome young women. It struck a great London restaurateur that when the Exposition Universelle opened the following year in Paris he would astonish the world visitors with a great London bar a hundred feet long and attended by fifty of the biggest, finest and blondest barmaids in the United Kingdom. He was as good as his word. Never was there such a display of big, plump, beautiful, rosy- cheeked, muscular, blonde-haired women presented in a line before — ^nor since. It was before the days of peroxide, and a blonde was a blonde. As they towered in their mountainous filmy muslin waists above the counters, and with great round arms bare to the shoulder drew golden floods of bitter beer from the ivory beer-pump handles, Paris held its breath, and then made a rush for glass after glass of the foaming flood. The steward was in ecstasies. Tout Paris took up the story. Well, you know what Paris is, or you have heard what it was. The prodigal sons and uncles and nephews and possibly the prodigal grandfathers of the world were in town. No mother geisha was there to round up o 'nights the blond ladies from London. So at the end of a week, while the steward stood wringing his hands beside his deserted beer pumps or telegraphing to London literally for help, the Bois de Boulogne was reeking with broughams and barouches and victorias filled with great English blondes escorted by little dandy Frenchmen or fierce Russian lords or South American senors of ferocious aspect, all gloating over the new sensation. The great London restaurateur thereafter tried a plainer and more elderly type of attendant at his shrine of bitter beer. The geisha does not always escape such dangers, but she is taught a very worldly lesson thereanent: it is that she is an extremely costly article to the outsider, and it is THE REAL GEISHA 211 suspected that when the call for her good graces is insistent, the advice of older heads than her own must be taken. The first advice of these older heads is that she must henceforth be doubly careful in her life and play absolutely for honourable marriage if the man is single. Many marriages with that beginning have taken place, and geishas so have risen to marked social heights. There is, however, another side, as, for instance, a case that found its way into the papers, and is a fair sample of the costly geisha. The indications are of a Shimbashi geisha, named Saito Yoshi, a queen of her class "enjoying the protection of a high dignitary" and contracting with a Mr. G. M. C. da Silva of Yokohama for the purchase of a diamond necklace worth $42,500! The story came to light because Mr. da Silva, exacting advance money to the amount of $7,500, placed an order for the necklace with a German firm which went bankrupt and never supplied the jewels. Saito Yoshi . San sued for the return of the $7,500 and despite the jeweller's plea that his contract was with Prince Iwakura, won her case in flying colours, and more, Mr. da Silva 's counter- charge of defamation of character was dismissed. Finally, from one point of view the geisha is most inter- esting. She long stood in Japan for the only class of women earning money in a purely honest calling, and, as far as she really pleased, mistress of herself and her emotions and affections. If she obeyed the rules of her house she was quite free. It gave her a certain inde- pendence long ahead of her sisters. Today woman earners exist by the hundred thousand in Japan, but still she holds a certain eminence as the Lady of Komance. Among the sisterhood when they meet in the afternoons for tea their theme is romance. Admired and petted by the rich and the highly placed they have learned to turn a deaf ear to compliments coming in the way of business, but when they walk abroad on their little clattering geta or gather on a 212 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND night off duty to see a favourite actor in a favourite play they look around with selective eyes. They fall in love and fall out again as woman it appears may. Many is the story told of a geisha in love with a poor student helping him through his classes from her earnings. It may be a young artist to whom she joins her dreams and her cash. I once was pointed out a florist who had been the protege and was then the husband of a former geisha. Indeed, as I said heretofore, her fancy leads her to marriage generally with a good-looking struggling man, but as a rule she is the one who selects and woos. Then is she blessed in her gen- eration. Her fate, on the contrary, if she remains single and passes on to the maikon stage is not enviable. To sit thrumming a samisen in the background for a small wage with no better prospect is not alluring if "sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things. " It is quite char- acteristic of the geisha that as far as the theatre is con- cerned she has turned her back on modern plays. The problem play with its harsh-clashings of individuality with convention, of the working out of unusual social combina- tions, does not appeal. The call upon her limited brain is too much. Her education has sharpened but not broad- ened her. On the other hand the racial tragedy of sacri- fice, of utter devotion, of unceasing struggle to right a great wrong or avenge a foul crime appeal to her through every quickened fibre of her being. She weeps copiously at the play. As young "Western" men adore the actress with a wonderful calf-love, so the geisha adores the best actors, whether they play men's parts or women's. I have heard of a couple of clever actors, not at all the great ones of the stage but great favourites of the geisha, who were so beset with invitations to dine with these sentimental young ladies that they actually set a tariff on their compliance. It cost the geisha twenty yen in addition to the price of the dinner (whose quality was laid down) for the booji of ^h? THE REAL GEISHA 213 actor 's company at the repast. That was a pretty high tide of romance for the little flowers that make the festal life of Japan beautiful with their grace and colour and motion. But do not mistake the attendant girls at tea houses for geisha. Above all do not wrong the fair geisha by con- fusing her with the class of women who sell themselves. The latter are quite willing to be mistaken for geisha, will indeed .on small provocation claim the distinction in presence of the ignorant, but not to native Japanese. In America what types of brazen dissipatedness "admit" in police courts that they are "actresses." Hear a geisha declaim on similar "admissions" by their unfortunate sisters ! CHAPTER XV HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD The glory of Fujiyama — Kamakura's charm — Miyanoshita — In Cha Kago to Hakone — ^A Hot Springs siesta — Nara, the beautiful — Kyoto the many-dowered of art and nature — ^A boat ride in the dark. When we look into the face of Nature we find mirrors of ourselves, which means that we gather from a view just what we can assimilate. To jot those impressions down before they flit we keep a diary. So did I in my roamings through the East and whereas much that one finds in it afterwards is merely an aide-memoire to dry facts and in- consequential goings and comings, one here and there comes across passages that are their own excuse. Where I have summarized so much and endeavoured to synthesize or analyse facts as well as impressions a few things may seem worth while retelling for their own sake. I suppose every one goes to Japan with the thought of Fujiyama as the greatest single ohject among the things there visible. This conical mountain capped with snow, rising twelve thousand feet from a plain, has stared you out of countenance for years. In colour, in black and white, in gold lacquer and bronze ornament it has been witnessing to the art popularity of the triangle with its aspiring point uppermost. That it stands so firm on its base is not half so important as that one-third of it occupies the sky, for it is thus it becomes dominant. From its njul- m HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD 215 tiple reproductions one thinks of it as ever garnishing the uplift of millions of Japanese eyes. And if from perpetual reiteration of its beauties you should reach the violent extreme of hoping that you might never see it, there would steal in the thought when shall mine eyes rest upon it actually ? In Japan you soon learn something else, namely that it is not at all certain when you may see it. Its coy- ness becomes as assertive as its revelation is imperious. You are told that Fujiyama may be seen anywhere within sixty miles of its foot. Quite true. It may be. But the Japan atmosphere is mostly so charged with vapour that its capacity for swallowing Fujiyama cannot be overstated. A month in Tokyo never gave me a glimpse of it. Many times men told me they had seen it that morning, and I withheld my expression of doubt through politeness. Once the aged servitor of Baron Okura came smiling to say he had just seen Fuji, whereupon we travelled up four pairs of stairs to the roof, and no Fuji. Old servitor very apolo- getic. I rickishaed twice to a tavern called the Fuji- viewing House and ate two good lunches, but no Fuji. It was weeks afterwards on the beach of a fishing village, Kotsube, near Kamakura, that the royal mountain flashed unawares on my gaze, from where it had not been a minute before. Our idea of a mountain is that it rises from a firm part of the landscape : that its massiveness calls for anchor- age. But, having swept the horizon with the glance several times, identifying the loom of Enoshima Island as the last visible acclivity in the field of vision, to see Fujiyama suddenly appear in all its silver-crowned glory far up in the sky was a wonderful surprise. And that was how one quality of its majesty came to me. My kodak was in my hand, and with the crude audacity of the world-roamer I took a shot at the beautiful mountain. "When the film was developed the mountain was not there, giving some sort of clue to the whimsies of its appearance and disappearance 216 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND and reappearance in the course of a sunny morning. The lens of my eye was better than the lens of my camera. Nearer, of course, it becomes like other mountains and keeps where you saw it last, but the nearer you approach it, the more you learn of its feminine quality of draping its beauty in waving, clinging, shifting, shimmering veils. Its clouds become living things of white and grey and black, trailing away one by one or floating off in masses leaving it momentarily bare. The speed, however, with which it can wrap itself completely round is amazing. I loved to catch a fugitive glimpse of it away on high. Once when its snow cap had all but fled before the summer sun leaving only faint snow streaks near the crest, I looked up from the darkish green of the fields at its foot along the dark brown surface of the mighty cone clear to the summit, and its brute force, its iron weight shocked me. It was from the railroad station at Fuji, and I lost all desire to tread the mountain itself. The ascent by the way is now an easy matter. To see it while its snow cap lingers catch the gold and red of the sunset, to see it behind green hiUs or over living water is a supreme joy. No wonder there are legends of goddesses embroidering its story. Kamakura, not more than two hours from Tokyo, is the site of a vanished capital that once sheltered above a million souls. Flimsy structures they must have lived in, for almost the only trace of its former glory is the great bronze Daibutsu, the seated Buddha, forty-nine feet high with no canopy but the sky, tall trees for its background. And before the calm of it you can dream and dream. Here are cosy villas, a good hotel on the beach, and pleasure in landward or seaward outlook. Oceanward I find some like- ness to Dublin Bay — a headland to the right like Bray Head, and Enoshima to the left like the hill of Howth. You note the number of tall pine trees, their trunks bent inland with the force of the wind from the sea. From the HIGH LIGHTS OF THE EOAD 217 hotel we see a fine green stretch of lawn, beyond that a tangle of young dwarf pines that fill a seaward hollow, the land rising further out to a low line of bluff, its grassy surface seeming to meet the blue of the ocean lip to lip. The beach is hard sand and delightful for a walk beside the waves, and the broad fields of grain where the million people dwelt once upon a time, carry your eye back to the rolling hills of the background of green. The restfulness of Kamakura seems unique in Japan. Miyanoshita farther afield from Tokyo is a mountain land, full of woodland beauty and hot springs. Here people come to summer too, but they must be of more excitable clay, for sun and shower, and wind and calm alternate with insistence. But as the gateway to Lake Hakone over the mountains it is at least a delightful halting place for the tourist. You choose your mode of mountain transit — ^motor, rickisha, kago (a travelling hammock) or cha kago (a bamboo armchair resting on two bamboo poles and requiring four carriers) , and you are off in the crisp morning air. After crossing the crest of the route between high hills, some reforested in part like those we had seen before reaching Miyanoshita; in a little while we caught a glimpse of Lake Hakone lying in a hollow of the hills. The road goes through the old Hakone village — as populous looking as all the other villages. We were about two and one-half hours coming — ^walking whenever it was level to relieve the wretched carriers. It was about noon, so we alighted, turned aside to see a temple approached through a long avenue of trees that make a delightful shade along the border of the lake. The morning had been very cloudy, and at the hotel it was said that the chances of seeing Fuji were remote. The gently inclined ascent to the temple ended with a turn to the right where a stone stairs of about two hundred steps confronted us. I sent my son up to see if it was worth the effort for me. He did not think 218 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND it was. A fine old stone torii stands where the road to the temple enters the village. We remounted our kago chairs and proceeded to the hotel, and there at last above the nearer green mountains at the opposite side of the lake rose Fuji in her splendour, a few soft white veils of cloud just touching her half-way up. The snow cap extended a long way down, streaking out in long pointed arrows, the ribs of dark volcanic rock making the dark streaks between. It was a truly glorious sight — the lake in front, the dark- green rounded hills beyond, and then the sharp cone of Fuji flashing up into the sky. We went to the Hakone Hotel and dined, feasting our eyes upon the mountains more than our lips upon the viands, though the latter included fine mountain trout caught in the lake at our feet. So an hour of delight passed. There are steaming springs and geysers in the vicinity, but I cared nothing for them. Fuji, the gracious Fuji, now drawing the laces of her clouds around her head, and veiling her bosom with a heavier wrap of darker clouds, was enough. We had seen her beauty bare and virginal. Why toil to see Big Hell or Little Hell? The journey home was dotted with light rain. We passed the old monument to the Minamoto shogun, Mitsunaka (912-97), a lichened carved stone pile standing lonesome near a small reedy lake, and further on the road, the monument to two brothers, Soga Sakenari and Soga Tokimune, military heroes of the twelfth century, twin piles standing on one base — and another standing de- tached. The latter is said by Mr. Honda to commemorate a woman who loved one of the heroes. The story it seems is a favourite one in Japanese romance. Never-ending surprises in the peaks, domes, saddle-forms of the moun- tains rising two thousand feet above us, and innumerable the folds, creases, wrinkles even of their sharply sloping sides running down to the valley bottoms where rapid HIGH LIGHTS OF THE EOAD 219 streams dashed foaming amid the rocks, with torrents gushing from them and falling on every side. The sound of leaping water now near, now far off, the sense of a fountain land, the songs of birds on every side, the Ho-Tio-ho-kido, like a distant silver gong of the Japanese nightingale, the chi-chu, cM-chu of another bird, the mellow notes of a thrush-like bird, all gave a lifting to the heart. On some of the mountains it seemed as if gods or Titans had gone to sleep, and great blankets of green mossy velvet had been thrown over them in their dreams, their knees still lifted as they reclined, and the covering sagging in a great sweep between and on either side. After we passed the crest returning by the automobile road we were sud- denly vouchsafed an astounding view of the shore of the sea and Tokyo bay three thousand feet below and twenty miles away. Coming from among the huddled mountains with their sharp-rising crests on every hand, this outspread view so far away, so far below was a revelation. Enoshima Island, the coast line, the pale green of the nearer water, the dim purple beyond, the sharp shore line, the white dots of villages, the larger groups of towns, surpassed anything of the kind I had seen. It is rarely visible the carriers said. No doubt the same view could be had from many of the crests about, but with this setting of the hills on either side it was exquisite. We rested on the way at a tea house, and reached Miyanoshita by 5 p.m. It was a wonderful day of joy. And then it rained all night. It has been a day worth while, and you have just enough fatigue to sleep regardless of rain or wind. A hot spring bath helps you also to comfort and picturesque experiences. Apropos of this I recall one other strenuous day on the Liaotung Peninsula which left me tired and hot. It was the day I visited the battlefield of Liao Yang and the hour of our return to the town which gave the battle its name 220 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND happily coincided with the impending approach of a train to the South. At the wise suggestion of the thoughtful Mr. Uyeda, secretary of the South Manchurian railroad, we hastily bought tickets for Tang Kang Tzu, a station thirty miles away. "There," said he, "we will find a Hot Springs Hotel, and can rest cool." "I suppose," I ventured, "it is hot in Liao Yang." "Yes," he answered, "hot and, oh, so many fries." I pondered this. Many fries, I thought, portend many fires, and much heat : but hot springs. How about that? The train was still ten minutes off, so we walked about a little, and noting that unusually large blue pebbles were underfoot on the walks of a small garden, I asked casually, "Where do they come from?" My learned friend who had written a contro- versial book in remarkably good English, replied, clearly with evident surprise at so simple a question: "From the liver." I pondered this reply also, pitying the hepatic condition of a people carrying so many blue stones in their anatomy. On board the train I pursued the matter, and I soon had my bearings in learning how hard it is for a Japanese or Chinese to decide between the pronunciation of the letters I and r. A drive of quarter of a mile brought us from the station to the Seirin Kwan Hotel. Situate in the plain with withered fields around it, and a line of bold hills to the north, this haven of rest lifted its low front invitingly and spread out over much territory. Within all was homelike and well-ordered, many servant maids tripping hither and thither carrying comforts for the inner-man on lacquered trays. Passing from the outer halls and offices we were convoyed with our light baggage to snug rooms, giving glimpses of many chambers occupied by Japanese travellers squatting luxuriously on the mats while they chop-sticked savoury morsels the way good morsels go, or lazily puffed thin cigarettes. My son and I were taken to a suite whereof one room was bare Japanese 1 1 B 1 I 4 1 H m "•J' H ^^^1 '"' i ' H ^^H £aA 1 r ' «| ^m- 4 Wk I H 1 1 1 ^1 1 i i FESTIVAL CAR AT KYOTO HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD 221 while the other enjoyed chairs, a table and a sofa. I also was handed a clean bathrobe. To don this and follow the little maid along corridors and down stone steps to the hot spring region was the work of a few minutes. A few minutes more devoted to assuring the young lady that I felt quite capable of bathing alone, and I was enjoying the hot water as it came from the inwards of Mother Earth. It was a great introduction to the semi-Japanese meal served neatly and f eatly on my table. A cigar and a light wrap, and the sleep of the blessed came on velvet wings. And not a single fry to buzz about me. Nature has been lavish in Japan's volcanic underpinning in providing many such hot springs. They are worth enjoying at every chance. One little episode on leaving the Seirin Kwan next afternoon always amuses me. I had tipped a very efScient little maid, and was not surprised to see her ranged up among the others bowing us out with smUeg and good wishes, "Sai yo na ra." Suddenly, as one who had forgotten something important, little Miss Plum Blossom rushed over to me, thrust a paper into my hand, and backed off bowing and smiling. I fear I blushed as I put the paper in my pocket. Later, on the train, I asked the learned Uyeda to English its ideographs for me. He read it solemnly and translated: "Received tip, one dollar." Wisely guided you will go to Nara, a capital more ancient still than Kamakura, of which only its religious monuments remain among its mighty trees. On its hills are great temples with the temple life actual and loving about them. Great bells and shrines are on every side, and beautiful tame deer are roaming through its parklike spaces. The people seem gentler too for the religious atmosphere in which they live. At Nara you see the most enticing children in this land of happy childhood. You do not need a belief in Buddha to share their simple joy. 222 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND You may see the priestesses dance clad in Shinto white and crimson. There are hundreds of paths to roam and a thousand places to rest. Up at the Nara Hotel, the most attractive I entered in Japan, there is a wonderful view fronting you from its gentle eminence. I do not recall a single exciting moment at Nara. Peace and sweet breath- ing were there at home. Go there and rest and do not grudge the time. Under the enormous keyaki and crypto- meria trees you feel large thoughts floating up to you. By some of the little streams you will see your cares gliding away in little singing water-bubbles. Giant oaks and lovely maples with widespread branches call you to their shade. Eows of stone lanterns like silent sentinels line long avenues, every lantern a votive offering of some one in far centuries who loved Nara. It is not rich like Kyoto or gorgeous like Nikko, but venerable and appealing. You may crane your neck to see the negroid face of the local Daibutsu, but you need not. You may swing the heavy boom of Nara's greatest bell for one sen a stroke, but you may find more comfort in letting some one else do it. You may feed cakes to the deer. Thus, seeing and sauntering and dreaming, you may win to the gentle heart of its mystery. The trains that take you away to Kyoto or Osaka run all too frequently. Kyoto is a city unique. Beautifully situated, it is at once imperial, religious and mundane. I entered it at dusk from the train, and was taken in an auto across the town as it glimmered with the lighting of the night and then up a steep sweep of ascent to the Miyako Hotel. From this noble height the town lights trembled out as in a broad river to a great distance between banks of shadow. In the glow of the next morning — in mid-May — the shadow banks of the night before revealed themselves as lines of tree-clad hills. The city was at our feet with a swift-running river curving through it over rocks and HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD 223 stones. A busy canal and a railroad branch brought the crudity of modern commerce before us. On our right the Eastern mountains rose grandly, and the whole ring of hills that enclose the length of the city visible, clad in rich greens. At the foot of these steeps or up these heights the great temples of Kyoto are screened from the eye by the trees. Far off on the plain to the left one catches the outlines of the palace walls with the palace buildings within. Here dwelt for a thousand years the mikados, from the time of the Emperor Jimmu down to 1868 when the Meiji Emperor, Mutsuhito, then a tall, bright youth, took his way to Tokyo. But though he took the seat of empire with him he could not detract from the beauty of Kyoto. Whether it be the Temple of the East — ^Higashi Honganji — the Temple of the West — ^Nishi Honganji — or the beautiful Temple of Gratitude — Chionin — all that is old is exquisite. The pilgrims come and go in gaping, laughing crowds. The bonzes pray and chant and beat their gongs. The waters fall in silver streams or filmy veils from wooded heights to carven basins: the lap of singing water is everywhere. There are gardens to explore that have been marvelled over for centuries. Here a shogun built the Kingkaku-ji or Golden Pavilion hun- dreds of years ago above a, little lake filled with golden and grey carp that will come in shoals to be fed if you clap your hands. You note the apparent modern villa look of the old, old wooden structure from which time and wind and rain and sun have long stolen the gold. The shogun built it as a home of rest from the storms of state : it is a lounging spot for the pilgrim or the tourist of today. One wanders with a young priest wearing spectacles through a square mile of rooms in the Higashi Honganji each with its rule as to who may use it on days of cere- mony, until you reach one immense chamber called the Foom of a tbOTJsand mats. You may see a closed gate of 224 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the utmost beauty through which only an Emperor may pass. You may see the enormous rope of human hair from the heads of thirty thousand women, two hundred and twenty-one feet long and over four inches thick, used to hoist the great timbers of a rebuilt temple. You may meet a wayside fortune-teller within a temple compound near an avenue of stone lanterns who will tell your future by the help of a bunch of little sticks, a dozen black dominoes and a Chinese book of cabalistics. His grace of gesture and his air of rapture are worth more than his story or its cost in small silver. He gave me a very superior fortune for twenty cents. I have not realized on it yet. When I had troubles I was to keep my temper and all would be well. I was also not to let little people break up my calm. Good advice. You may see the pilgrims look reverently as well as curiously up a high temple wall in furtherance of a temple legend to the effect that the famous architect upon his last visit there some centuries back came down the ladder leaving his umbrella behind him. And sure enough, the crook of the handle is visible above to this day ! From a high platform on a temple hill you may see a "lover's leap" that makes you dizzy, and in its popularity you may guess how deep are the roots of romanticism in material Japan. Spiritual past and prayerful present meet you in all directions. Temple bells boom unseen from wooded heights and linger in a spell of sound like humming bees upon the ear. You look for quaint superstitions. Well, on a wide walk up by a great temple, you have been told that the cow is sacred to this temple, and there is the cow in bronze. A stout, middle-aged lady is beside it. She rubs her side and then rubs the side of the cow. She rubs her head and then the head of the cow, finally achieving a rubbing that need not be particularized, but it was funny. Nobody minded. So, whether it was the ancient Buddhist fanes of the hillside or HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD 225 the hill foot temples with their calm-faced Amida Buddhas or the great staring Shinto shrine of yesterday on the plain — the Heionjin gu, whose gate is called Otimmon and the vast temple, Dai Kyokuden with its violent red pillars and white walls and great vacant spaces — ^you can have your fill of Oriental religions with much that is appealing or diverting as you take it into your being. And you are within a stone's throw of the practical artistry of Japan. Not so many smoking chimneys as Osaka, but enough to guide you to where they fashion pottery on flying wheels or paint it with delicate brush; where men embroider in silk of innumerable shades of colour; where jewellers work with the minute skill of generations in damascene ; where gold and red sealing-wax lacquer is applied; where men carve fantastic figurines in ivory. You can find snug restaurants and elaborate shops for all the local wares. By way of entertainment there are theatres. There may be a beauty contest of the geishas in gorgeous gar- ments staged of an evening ; or perhaps one of the famous Kyoto street processions with towering cars and floats and hundreds in bright garments grouped upon them passing slowly and merrily through the streets by day. Oh, it is a picturesque place in its; toil, in its play, at its prayer and in itself. You may go up the river by rail and come down with a rush over the rapids, or you may go by trolley out to Lake Biwa, the largest body of fresh water in Japan, thirty-six miles by twenty, and three hundred and twenty- eight feet above sea level. It is just back of the mountains around Kyoto, to which city its waters are brought through seven miles of tunnels furnishing water transportation and waterpower for the city, thus making electric lighting so cheap that the poorest use it. We went by trolley to a little town and rickishas took us to the abode of a pine 226 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND tree twelve hundred years old that still lives decrepitly in a propped-up dotage, its twisted branches spread out in every direction. We lunched at the old pine tree, took an hour's walk by the lakeside, noting the meticulous culti- vation of the land near by and the toil, toil, toil of the farmers and their wives. There were no horses visible on the roads. All was drawn, pushed or carried by man- power. A small steamboat came to a landing. Distant spiky mountains closed the view across the lake. Keturn- ing to the lakehead we took tunnel boat tickets for Kyoto. There is no hurry in Japan, so we waited long for a proper complement of passengers before the brown athletic skipper gave the signal to start. The boats have something of the gondola about them. They curve up at the bow with a long overhang, are some twenty-five feet long and five feet wide and have a covered top from about six feet back of the prow to about three feet from the stern. The boatman stands on the latter and sculls with a long oar. Lighting a sputtering train-oil torch, like a little teapot, the flame at the spout, the boatman finally cast off. We were seated in the bow. Almost immediately the boat entered the first tunnel and we were soon in perfect dark- ness except for the flare of our little torch. The current runs down to the city at the rate of six to eight miles an hour, so no power is used going down. The tunnel is truncated, oviform — ^that is, it is highly arched overhead and flat beneath. It is brick-lined all the way and was built in 1895. It is some fourteen feet wide and about sixteen feet high at the crown. There is ample space for two boats to pass. It was a curious effect drifting swiftly on through the darkness, the red-yellow flare lighting up the roof dimly. In front it was all black. Presently a dim reddish spot of light was seen in the distance ap- parently straight ahead, but as we neared it we saw it ^jis 01^ the oth^r side, ovff light and theirs revealing f oy HIGH LIGHTS OF THE ROAD 227 an instant the naked bodies of men pulling their boat up- stream by hauling on a hand rail that ran along their side of the tunnel. Thus we passed several boats. On some a man held on to the rail, and pushed the boat upward with his feet. This first tunnel was over two miles long and the light was welcome when we came out of it. We found ourselves between wooded hills and drifted on amid beau- tiful scenery. There were two other shorter tunnels, and leaving the last of these we found ourselves almost under the height whereon stands the Myako Hotel. One evening at the hotel I found a pair of curious wandering musicians playing in the reading room for an ecstatic English tourist. They had long, inverted baskets over their heads and one played a sort of clarinet. They had told the tourist that they wore the baskets because of a vow; that they slept in them lest any one should see their faces, and lived on alms. For half a yen they made quaint music to the tourist's delight, but the hardened hotel people ran them out, almost throwing them down- stairs. I recall the astonished look on the tourist's face. He believed their story, and the ejectment seemed cruel and mistaken. CHAPTER XVI NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS Beauties of the Nikko country — Lake Chuzenji's rainbow waters — Osaka and its fortress — Kobe's illuminated waterfall — ^A rest and bite at Rokotan — Miyajima and its torii in the sea — Fascinations of the Inland Sea — Stark majesty of the rock- sown Korean Archipelago — Curious trip to Matsushima — Extraordinary conduct of the islets. Nikko, the splendid ! Here you have something that rivals Fujiyama in popular regard. One who has read the chapter on the Religions of Japan will have noted much in praise o:^ Nikko and its gorgeous temples in the terraces of its cryptomeria-clad hills. Nikko lies to the northwest of Tokyo and you reach it by rail after a few hours' journey through an agricultural country, rain-washed as I saw it, forcing me for consolation to study the misty grey effects on distant mountains that loomed pale and vague as ghosts. Through a pelting rain we were propelled up- hill for a mile from Nikko station by I don't know how many kuruma men, then through the long street of the village, and then up a very steep ascent to the Kanaya Hotel, an excellent hostelry with a superb outlook over the valley through which the noisy foamy river Daiya comes rushing down — a splendid vantage point to view the sunset. When you have rested there after a day among the temples, and more so after two such days, the longing for something less exciting is likely to catch the visitor, and he or she or he and she hear the call of Lake Chuzenji over the mountains. So of a beautiful sunny morning, 228 NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 229 after a trolley ride of three miles, along rising ground, our three kurumas with seven men met us at the terminal. They had come in advance, glad to subtract three miles of haulage out of the total eleven to the lake. The road is a good one all the way. It has first to ascend as best it may for three thousand feet to a mountain summit and then descend about five hundred feet to the lake which is the crater of an extinct volcano. For the first three miles the road rises very gradually, skirting mostly the Daiya river or its branches and disclosing gorges and ravines and canons. One becomes a bit dithyrambic. The sound of rushing, leaping, trickling water is always in your ears, and down deep chasms you see foaming streams among the bluish, rounded rocks that form the beds of the torrents. Great rocks that have been swept down the streams in the raging floods or have tumbled from the butting crags one thousand or two thousand feet above lie large as houses by the path. But the mountains themselves dominate all. So swift their rise from the wedge-shaped valleys, so varied their shape — the violence of their volcanic origin still stamped on them for all the gamut of green that covers them — they seem to thrill even yet with the primal urge that uplifted them. They speak in a thousand tongues, now of the whispering leaves, now of the streams that spring from their sides, and hiss or roar, now of the winds that assail them, now of the rain that patters on them, now of the hundreds of birds that warble. We pass over bridges and see fine waterfalls come leaping down in gigantic ribbons of white foam. At length we are facing the mountainous climb. They have done the best possible in making the upward zigzag of this road. It is ten to twelve feet wide and banked with stone walls where needed. There are tea houses at intervals all the way, and twice we stopped to rest and refresh. The grades were mostly easy (for mountain roads) but it made the rising slow, an 230 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND eighth to a quarter-mile often for fifty feet of rise. We met many walking down and passed many walking up. But the widening, broadening, reaching prospect was entrancing. Never have I seen such swift changes of view. Sublimity unrolled like a hymn before and beneath us. Here an enormous gash that seemed to split a mountain open from the top told of a giant landslide, the bare brown earth and tumbled rocks and fallen tree trunks standing naked amid the green of the hills around. Ravine, gorge, gulf, canon, under peak, spire, or rounded and dome- like or serrated crests came at every turn into the picture as we rose along the winding mountain stair. Steeps above us and precipices below us, the hills now tree-covered to the summits, now denuded, and streaked and striated with reforesting. Oh, those painstaking Japanese. And the woods were themselves a marvel. Great keyaki with smooth rounded boles, or giant maki with rough bark and serrated leaves. Pines, firs and cryptomerias mingled their dark shade with the lighter greens. Great clusters of wild azaleas, scarlet and some white, made flames around us or covered the path with their burning petals or their floral flakes of snow. And the singing of the birds, and the booming of the rapid rivers far below made an unfor- gettable harmony. Near the crest there was one view that made one gasp at its wide majesty and awful beauty, with the depths sheer below us, a wide valley beyond, closed in by mountain ranges and over them, still farther away, a seeming plain veined by rushing streams. Over the summit we came a little way down to the Kegan Pall of the stream that drains Lake Chuzenji. It comes out of a ten-foot opening cut in the rock, and has a sheer fall of two hundred and fifty feet, sending up a volume of spray and vapour at the foot. The rock is curiously laminated light brown and seems to splinter in points, gUgwing a sharp crystallization. In its hollows the s^vaUow^ AVENUE OF CRYPTOMERIAS, NIKKO A TEMPLE SERVANT, NIKKO LAKE CHUZENJI AXD NANTAI SAN IN THE DISTANCE THE GREAT STONE TORII AT CHUZENJI Summer Cottages on the lake shore NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 231 build, and they hover in front of the fall. Lichens and small plants thrive and soften the tone with dark greens. It can easily be reached at the top or at the foot, and can be viewed in front from either. Since a neurotic young Japanese jumped to death from the top, because he had failed to solve the riddle of the universe, it has been a favourite place for love-lorn suicides. Five had occurred within the past week. A woman and her lover, and the latter 's wife were three of them. They have that sort of three-fold tragedy in Japan. On arriving at the Lakeside Hotel we lunched and lounged a while on the bank of the lake, when we took a motor boat and made a circuit of the lake. It is a place of quiet enchantment. The mountain Nantai San (8,400 feet) rises on one side four thousand feet sheer from the lake. It is a sharp cone, and wooded to the summit. Over its shoulder to the left rise smaller moun- tains, dominated by the still snow-streaked peak of Chiro stern and bare, its brown volcanic rocks showing in strong ribs against the snow in the hollows. On all sides moun- tains clad in green. The sun was shining. Cumulus white clouds were floating, some of them throwing feathery fingers over Nantai San. The lake is a dead crater and at its deepest is five hundred and sixty feet. Hence its crystalline waters are a little way from shore of a deep indigo. The sunlight refracted the mountain green upon the surface, and we sped through the water throwing white spray that broke in crystals, while the waters around, stirred to wavelets by a gentle wind, shone in shifting patines of indigo, blue-green, purple, nile green and gold. We carried some Japanese passengers to a point across the lake, and then turned to the wider reach toward Chiro San giving another view of towering Nantai San. We landed at a temple just beyond the foreign summer settlement, and talked with a young Buddhist priest, gathered blossoms 232 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND from a still-blossoming cherry tree, the rarest thing of beauty in Japan — cherry blossoms in June. There is a shrine at the top of Nantai San, and thither come the pilgrims in thousands in the summer. Starting at 2.30 A.M. and carrying lanterns they climb the stiff four thousand feet to the summit to be there at sunrise when they worship. The view is said to be very wide and far- reaching. Lake Chuzenji is the summer home of the for- eign legations and their villas are on the shores in choice positions. They come to escape the summer heat, and make quite a large colony. Arrived at the hotel we had tea and started for Nikko at four-thirty. The way was of course easier for the coolies, but in descending a fresh set of muscles is called into play. I got out and walked a good deal. It was overcast and darker as we returned, and somehow the descent and the sombreness were depressing. I noticed that no one — rider or coolie — said a word for the first half -hour over the summit. We took the great views in the reverse, and they took on a new ominous quality. The red azaleas even seemed like funeral flames and the white like fluttering ghosts, while the tone of the rushing waters below rose with a menacing roar. By the time we reached the trolley station the heavens were a dark grey and the rain came in a downpour, wetting the thin-clad coolies to the skin as they trotted with their forward-inclined forms swaying a little at the shoulders. We were back in ample time to dress for dinner. Naturally Nikko is rich in photographic studios and the woodenware peculiar to Japan, and here the visitor enjoys himself at moderate cost. There is an excursion to Urami Falls not far off which will consume a leisurely afternoon, and gives you some hill-walking. It is not Niagara when you reach Urami, but it has an interesting sideshow in the shape of a drip fall near the main cascade, the water NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 233 coming down the face of the one hundred and fifty-foot cliff like a wide lace veil. At the Kanaya they evidently feel under obligation to entertain their visitors of an evening after dinner, and nearly always there was "something doing." One evening they had moving pictures of the regular dramatic type winding up with a chapter from the apparently inex- haustible legend of the Forty-seven Eonins. Another evening it was a concert of a kind. But came an evening when the management was out of entertaining propositions and a family band of wanderers appeared with that in- gratiating smile on the faces of the elders which one some- how has long associated with performers of the Italian school from prima donna soprano down to the hairy artist at the crank of a hand organ. The father, a strenuous party, played a (relatively small) koto or harp, his wife played the samisen or banjo, the father's brother murdered a drum and their four children danced while the elders thrummed, twanged, banged and sang an accompaniment. The orchestra, so to speak, stood or squatted outside the door, and the children — a big boy of thirteen, a slim little girl of ten, a little witch of six and a poor little boy of four — were the main performers. The two girls were dressed in brilliant kimonos like geishas with equally startling obi. It was really charming, the grace and witchery of the little girl of six who had all the arts of the geisha. Her pantomine and posing were the very essence of plastic coquetry, and pleased the whole company of guests. The elder girl was more finely trained and precise in her rhythm : she did best in a sword dance with the big boy, imitating the stage samurai with skill — ^but the little one was the born dancer. The big boy did a capital Pine Tree Dance, that I saw somewhere else. He stood on one foot on a stool. Taking an open fan in each hand, and one between his big toe and the next one of the free foot, 234 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND having one fan fastened on his forehead, while holding another in his teeth, he gave imitations of various famous old pine trees of Japan — ^which are not at aU like our pine trees, in that they do not grow straight up, and send their branches out at all manner of queer angles. They made a good silver collection, and gave an interesting performance. The charming little chap of four, dressed in a "Western" brown linen suit made much of the fun, striving with intense seriousness to imitate the little charmer of six in a pas de deux, in which each is supposed to keep time and gesture with the other. She was evidently distressed about him, and would frequently stop, put his arms in the right position, and then resume — all with the motherly air of a little woman. Of course one drives out along the road of cryptomerias, a marvel in its way, but after the gigantic boles of the lyeyasu and lyemitsu temple grounds the roadside lines of the trees suffer by the comparison. You have not seen Milan, or Notre Dame de Paris, or Rome or Rheims (before the Hun) but you have revelled in miracles of carven wood and violent colour set among dark huge trees, and you leave Nikko with profound impressions. Osaka in one guidebook is slighted as a place you had better run over from Kobe to see for a few hours and then run back again, but that is not true. The same is to this day said by certain hotel people of Yokohama with regard to the attractions of Tokyo. And possibly reasons not wholly unconnected with some hotel relations may account for the Kobe "knock" at Osaka which has stirring an- tiquities and nearly a million and a half of people working at every business under the sun. I enjoyed three busy days there. It is on Osaka Bay, which opens out to the Pacific Ocean, and stands in a plain. It is intersected not only by the Kadogawa River which comes down from Kyoto under another name but by scores of canals crossed by eight NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 235 hundred bridges — the Japanese Venice, if you please. No city in Japan has a greater density of population, and since all are workers or school children the streets swarm at all hours of the day. At night the streets where the theatres are, — one street being given up entirely to five theatres, among them the celebrated Nanniwa-sa and tea houses — the myriad electric lights, the multitude of fluttering flags, the glaring signs, the festive air of everybody give one the Oriental equivalent of our Great White "Way. Apropos of this, it is funny to recall the blunder of a traveller and book writer who described the audience at a classic tragedy in a theatre there as going out to weep between pieces at "the nearby tear-houses." He did not go himself or he would have heard merry laughter, noted much drinking of tea and in the restaurants of every grade much solid eating going on. It was here I saw the famous marionettes that made even the geishas weep, and some of the modern Japanese dramas that last seven hours, beginning at three in the afternoon and not out before ten at night. For an hour thereafter Theatre Street is a lively sight but by midnight all is silent and dark. Japan, you see, gets up early. Osaka Castle that stands by the water front is only the stump of the castle that was. Here were tremendous battles waged what time the Tokugawa family of nobles were fighting their way to the shogunate, which once won, they held for two hundred and fifty years, making the feudalized, compacted, organized, isolated Japan that faced our Commodore Perry in 1853. It was truly a great fortress for its day, and like other great fortresses had evil fortunes. The bigger the fortress the bigger the force that goes up against it. The outer walls and the massive lofty inner keep of 1583 have disappeared, the latter by fire and the former by the march of improvements. What remains is still astonishing. Cyclopean walls with wide 236 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND deep moats still remain, showing granite blocks of great size. One I measured was thirty-five feet by eighteen feet. Their transportation must have been a problem, and it does not surprise one to learn that 60,000 unfortunates worked day and night on rearing the pile for three years. As it rose — a challenge to the gods of war — ^it was not long in having its granite gauntlet taken up. In 1614, lyeyasu Tokugawa with 180,000 men besieged Hideyori and his 90,000 ronins. In 1615 with 270,000 troops lyeyasu swept over the fortress with awful slaughter and Hideyori com- mitted suicide. The remains of this great battleground are still impressive. It is a military station today, and its upraised granite platform commands a grand view of the city and its surroundings. On the landward side moun- tains miles away cut the high horizon line and the city stretches below you on all sides — ^mostly low, tile-roofed houses with factory buildings and scores of factory chim- neys wherever you look. You will visit the Buddhist temple, the Tenno-ji with its thousand year old Buddha; you will possibly feed the turtles of which there are 634,308 in the turtle court : you will drop in on the well where the pious pray for their dead, and by way of big things you will see ' ' the biggest hanging bell in the world. ' ' It stands twenty-six feet high, is sixteen feet across its mouth and eighteen inches thick at the lip. It takes the trunk of a great tree to make it boom. I visited all sorts of factories and looked in at the Bice Exchange. It was a fair imita- tion of the Chicago wheat pit in its bedlam of sellers and bidders, and somehow recalled Munkaczy's Christ Before Pilate with the bidders' bare brown arms thrown up or going like windmills. Its strident industrial life and grind and hurry are a novelty in Japan. It is not, then, on the whole a lovely town, but very human. Kobe another great industrial and shipping city of half a million is not far from Osaka. It is Osaka on a lesser KEGAN FALLS, NEAR LAKE CHUZENJI, 200 FEET HIGH NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 237 scale. There are many foreign merchants there making quite a colony, and in the Chronicle they have quite the best English newspaper in the Empire, technically at any rate. The Tor Hotel to which foreigners mostly go is finely situated. I had much to do visiting the great Kawasaki dockyard, the Kanegafuchi cotton mills and so on. I ha:ve written about them elsewhere. What I wish to note here is a little trip we made one evening after dinner by kuruma from the Mikado Hotel through the lighted picturesque streets of the city to the Nomibiki waterfall on the hilly outskirts. The water comes down from the hills up which one ascends gradually to a point where the poor kurumaya cannot further go. Thence it is a winding fairy-like walk up a smart incline to the foot of the falls. Of these there are two distinct streams, one called the male, the highest, and the other and lower, the female. It is around the latter that the interest centres. The walk was thronged with thousands of the Kobe people, young and old, going up or coming down in a dense stream, the girls and children in bright-coloured raiment and all decorously merry. The entire way was brightly and cun- ningly illuminated with thousands of electric bulbs of many colours, with naive effects of fireflies in the trees, an illum- inated fountain in a wide basin, and a powerful reflected light of changing hues playing on the waterfall itself which is a cascade pouring down with a roar some forty feet in a solid, sparkling stream about three feet wide. We sat in a little restaurant and drank "citron," a feeble lemonade, enjoying it all as did our neighbours. The run home, mostly downhill, through the dim, quieted city was delightful. Turning away from the cities and their fatiguing days let us glimpse a toothsome day of rest and quiet joy that came to me in a bypath of travel in Japanese South Manchuria. 238 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Rokotan is a name that awakens pleasant memories. I had just reached Dairen from Tientsin on my way from Peking to Japan, and the summer stifle of the great Chinese capital still enervated me. I was contemplating a day's work of writing without any enthusiasm when the amiable Dr. Uyeda called. Said he, "You still look hot: ah, you should not work today: come and be cool." So we went. An automobile was at the door and we were soon free of the town and its hum of business and were running for three or four miles along the coast line. Turning suddenly seaward we ran over a low hill and then down to the margin of a rock-circled little harbour — ^Rokotan. The open sea lay beyond. Lovely the scene was that exquisite morning. A blue sky was over all and the sea beyond the grassy headlands right and left was of miraculous blue as well, while the harbour water splashing in white foam against the rocks shaded seaward from palest aquamarine through every deepening shade of green to the super- amethyst of the outer waters. Now a junk with quaint brown sails, now a steamer with trailing smoke plumes, or little fisher boats moved across in the offing. Truly what met the eye soothed and invited. But Dr. Uyeda would show me something else. Leading the way over the rocks below us, he halted before a water-space over which between huge boulders was stretched a roof of canvas matting. "Pish-pool," he said and smiled. Down in the clear though shaded water one saw after a few seconds some two hundred sizable fish led by a patriarch of at least thirty inches circling in solemn procession around the roomy enclosure. "Tai," said he, and made a smacking sound with his lips, eloquent of joy near at hand. To a dainty tea house perched above us with a grassy lawn in front of it, we sauntered botanizing. The doctor NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 239 clapped his hands, and forth came a beautiful lady with a madonna face — a Spanish madonna face — which I had noted as peculiar to the beauties of Osaka. Those bows and courtesies followed which mark Japan's high-water mark of breeding and the doctor, undoubtedly an old customer, held brief converse with the lady who soon de- parted smiling and bowing. We lolled and reclined on the lawn enjoying the charm of it all and I asked the doctor if the lady was from Osaka. "She is. How do you know?" I told him. He thought it wonderful. I said it was not; that if he had seen the Spanish madonnas of Murillo he, too, would notice the likeness. The doctor smiled, and asked might it be a Portuguese face. Yes, it might be. ' ' There were many Portuguese sailors and some traders in Osaka and Nagasaki in the sixteenth century before the isolation of Japan by the orders of the Tokugawa shoguns, and who knows what romances they may have had. You have perhaps rediscovered their descendants who have forgotten their ancestors." We had seen a stripling with a pole net go down to the mat-shaded fish-pool as we talked of madonna faces, and presently the lady led from the tea house a little idyllic procession of three maidens each bearing a lacquered tray the masterpiece on which was a whole tai cooked to a golden hue with greenery and rice and condiments in corners. Never was such delicious white fish-meat as that under the brittle gold of the outer skin as our chopsticks laid it bare and conveyed it where it should go. The madonna lady squatted on the grass beside us, and the doctor told her of our historical discovery, gilding it, I fear, with the statement that her Portuguese ancestor was nothing less than an admiral. At any rate the lady was highly pleased, and when we had offered cigar smoke by way of incense to the local gods, leaving only the bones of the tai and our admiration behind us, she arose prettily and walked with 240 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND us to the gate of her delectable domain. I would have liked to repeat that visit to Rokotan. I journeyed to Miyajima by rail from the port of Shimono- geki, whose water approach is so much more impressive than the same passage outward bound. Miyajima (Temple Island) is celebrated in Japanese eyes because it is a holy place and to the foreigner because it is ^ the place of a huge crimson torii set out in the sea-water before the shrine, of which photographs are as many as Fujiyama, and nearly as popular. Partly also because it is a good place to start from on a trip through the Inland Sea. I wrote at the time : ' ' The island lies across a half-mile strait from the main- land, and a trim little hotel launch took us over in good shape. We had glimpses of the Inland Sea of Japan at intervals along the railroad. Of course we instantly recog- jiized the great red torii that stands out in the water at high tide. We were, however, landed about one-quarter mile away and proceeded on foot up and over a winding path along the cliff face, and so gradually descending to the hotel which stands in a grove of fine trees some quite old. A big camphor tree is near it. The sleeping rooms — the best of them at any rate — are in a separate, more modern building, and our party was given three rooms, on the second floor looking out on a wooded ravine alive with the chirp of cicada and the trickle and purling of water below. There were baths, and we had tea and a rest. Toward the cool of the afternoon we sallied forth for a stroll to the temple (Shinto) and walked along streets filled with cheap curio stores, and up to 'The Hall of a Thousand Mats' — a large hall, anyway, built by some shogun or other. Some soldiers going to the Japan-Chinese war, hung up their rice spoons there as pledges of their loyalty and devotion. Others f oUgwecJ and so ther^ nwst b? fifty NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 241 thousand paddles of every size variously inscribed covering the whole interior. Then we ascended a little hill over- looking the water and the town, and descending, saw a golden sunset through the red pillars of the torii. It was all and more than the photographs foretold, something of the majesty of the infinite in this framing of the orb of day above the majesty of the sea at a golden moment for both, something stalwart in the great crimson lines of the sjTnbolic frame, something mystically awe-inspiring in it all. "The tide was low and we crossed on the sand reaching the hotel for dinner. The place has a historic religious past much exploited. It is a great resort for pilgrims. At times they come in thousands, though, we were the only pilgrims that evening. We went to bed early after sitting on the balcony back of our rooms listening to the cool tinkle of the water. We had to get up at four-thirty. It was daylight, and breakfast ordered the night before was ready at 5 a.m. Now for the Inland Sea. "The steamboat which we took blew her whistle about six o'clock, and we went on board in the launch as the vessel lay out in the stream. Our path was through the Inland Sea, a fascinating sea of islands, with wide channels and many reaches and beautiful views. Small sailing craft fairly swarmed, fishers and carriers. It was all delightful. The boat, Tewriu Maru, was not overclean forward, but fairly so aft where we took our places on the upper deck, and life went by for the morning hour between observation, drowse and dream. About noon we ate the lunches which the hotel provided. It would be extremely difficult to convey more than a general impression of this enthralling waterway. It is mostly a wide passage with the islands, always green-clad and mountainous, on either hand with exquisite little gulfs and bays and harbours and channels giving every variety of water view. Cultivation was visible 242 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND on all sides wherever nature gave a chance for man to grow anything. The hills are all green with some timber grow- ing. Little and large towns appeared as we passed mostly grey of aspect, the homes at others peeping through trees. Water craft of every kind that goes by sail or steam were on the waterways. Oriental junks lumbering by, black steamers rushing past, yachts, sampans, tugboats, men-of- war of many patterns went hither and thither. Even an old-style barkentine with every white sail from main to royals set and drawing, swept by. "We passed a great naval depot. Photgraphy is for- bidden, the hills, it is said, being all fortified. We saw no sign of it. When we were an hour or two past the naval station where a few smaller warships were at anchor, I was told we were out of the war zone. Thereupon I took a couple of pictures of the Inland Sea, and was about to take one of a group on deck when an officer of the boat stopped me. Forbidden ! "We went ashore perilously at Onomiehi at half -past two in a sampan crowded with passengers and luggage." Beautiful and full of life and movepient and typical in all things of Nippon as I found the Inland Sea, there was one archipelagic experience that beggared it. A discovery it was, unannounced in any guidebook, uncelebrated in any book of travel I ever saw. Indeed when I afterward told something of its vastness and its wonders in Tokyo, quite learned and travelled and well-read native gentlemen confessed they had never even heard of it. Yet to thou- sands of the seafarers it is surely known. It is an open book to the Japanese Navy, but the naval folk of Japan are not by any means open-mouthed, and one hears little from them. It is known every foot of it to the National Geodetic Survey and the water police have marked it for their very own. It is the Korean Archipelago. It was on the trip 1. MIYAJIMA PAGODA AND "THE HALL OF A THOUSAND MATS" 2. MIYAJIMA TOEII .. KOWTA ISLAND, ONOMICHI, ON THE INLAND SEA ■^. MATSUSHIMA (PINE ISLANDS), VIEW FROM FUROZAN NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 243 from Dairen on the Liaotung Peninsula to Japan that I made its acquaintance entirely without warning. Look on the ordinary map of the south coast of Korea, and generally the land line seems a rounded sweep bare of islands. On larger maps I have seen a few dotted islands but no sug- gestion of the reality. We had passengers aboard who had made the trip in both directions and were as much sur- prised as I was. They had steamed out of Dairen, viewed sea and receding land, ate contentedly, slept comfortably and so through another day and night and would have entered in a diary if they kept one "trip without inci- dent," as they lifted the shores of Japan, mountainous and island-fronted in the gold of the morning. It was such a traveller who fairly yelled as the company sat at lunch on the noon after our first night out. "What is that rock?" We rushed to the open ports and beheld high, stony islands and jagged, spear-topped rocks around us. "I never saw that before. Where are we?" So all hands scurried up on deck. What a picture ! We were sailing on an even keel over blue still water amid a maze of mountainous islands, islets and great rocks. Not a sign of human life in sight. A feeling of danger was inseparable from the first sensation, nor did it wholly disappear as mile after mile was ravelled off in this for- midable grandeur and silence. Yes, this was the Korean Archipelago on the southern tip of Korea, maybe sixty miles across and it might be ten to twenty miles wide. The smiling captain knew it well or he would not be there, be sure of that. How could he tell about it in advance when he never knew until he reached its outer sentinels when it would be safe to take the Taichu Maru through or go on many leagues to the South before rounding the peninsula. Perhaps not once in ten times could he take it, Fog, mist, wind or heavy sea were the 244 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND things to be counted with. It was surely not his business to hold a geography class at the start of each voyage, and say expect this and that, and if it was all right he would take his ship thus and so. Besides he thought everybody knew. Certainly Admiral Togo knew when he stowed away the great Japanese fleet in these rock-guarded waters what time he was waiting for the big Russian flotillas under Rostjevensky as they came up to their doom off Tsushima islands some water leagues away. The captain did not say these things till afterward, for as wq stared and wondered he was standing by the wheel, his watchful eyes skipping from hilltop to hilltop, and the steamer, answering to his orders, went smoothly ahead over the wide water floor or turned in a white curve to starboard or to port, again to straighten out. Volcanic rocks of all kinds rose out of the smooth sea- floor, some lifting to great heights a mile or two square, others starting up in weird forms like fantastic spear- points, or lighthouses without lights, like pulpits for the albatross, like church organs of some rock cathedral, like the ribbed skeletons of mammoths of the pliocene. The channels through which the Taichu Maru glided were generally a mile, even two miles wide at times, and some- times four or five miles long. Looking for guide posts we discovered tall tripods on the hilltops. The captain knew what they stood for, not we. In every direction the view is closed by rocks and islands apparently by thousands. Our path turned and twisted amazingly. Sometimes we seemed steering against a sheer wall of rock, but nearing the cliff we turned and found a new grand vista of rock and water stretching beyond. The sense of a vast, austere, primeval, island-dotted solitude, an enclosed loneliness was complete. It seemed a home of fable rather than a mun- dane reality — a region of the graves of a dead world or one begun on a grandiose scale and left unfinished. Several NIKKO AND THE ISLE-SPANGLED SEAS 245 times a dark rock miles away looked like the hull of a stranded ship with foam spouting over it. The blue water so smooth in mid-channel achieved a lashing force in the crevices of the rocks. In one cove that we passed there was a small Korean fishing boat at anchor. In another a fishing boat drawn up on a little patch of beach a couple of miles away. Our glasses showed no life aboard. A small steamer making a long, black plume of soft-coal smoke crept by at a half-mile distance — ^the only living, moving thing discernible in all the four hours that it took to reach the open sea again. All in all it was the most imposing awe-inspiring water-realm that ever met my eyes. It made all others seen before or since pale and small. Matsushima remained yet to see. It is counted as one of the great sights of Japan. Coming back to Tokyo from Nikko I was tempted to go there, but something prevented then and with regret and a hope of another chance I passed the railroad junction by. Its cloud of pine-clad islets de- scribed to me as like the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence, haunted me a little. I read of them later in Brieux's book of travel, how he discounted their beauty in advance in his somewhat blase boulevardier way, and then how approaching them unseen, he was drawn up the shoulder of a hill, and suddenly they burst into view as they lay outspread in the bay beneath and beyond. He admitted it was worth while. I resolved to go. They lie on the Pacific sidei of the great central island of Hondo, well to the north of Tokyo, so it was necessary to plan the visit as best I could on my route. At last I saw my oppor- tunity. I questioned the hotel manager after dinner one evening at Miyanoshita, and he was not over enthusiastic, as became one who rather wished to retain his guest than to see him depart even for Paradise. His attitude did not deceive me for a minute. There was, however, in a certain cosy, curtained parlour, he said, a book of photographic 246 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND views. I could see for myself. I sat down there and was enchanted. I recalled my first glimpse of the islands of Lake George — on my honeymoon long, long ago. So I went to Matsushima. It was in the bright morning light that I went up that rounded hill, my two rickisha men bending and panting before me. I alighted and went up over the brow of the hill and saw the wonderful sight. Below was a little harbour with golden sunlight on the waters, and beyond the pine islands in every imaginable grouping lying mostly to the right. Why was that left side so bare? In my mind I began saying: "I would put an island over there, no, three islands, and then a couple midway." The rickisha men had come out beside me. One of them pointed, and there beneath me were a string of little pine islands floating easily, slowly out of the harbour. Four little Japanese men in short drawers and bare legs on each island were poling them out. When the leading islet, its two pine trees rocking gently, reached the point where I had hoped to see one, the little chaps on board, taking huge wooden mallets as big as themselves, began driving stakes through the soil on the islands to anchor them. I laughed, but some one at my elbow was saying : "We close up hotel, honourable sir: may be good go bed." CHAPTER XVII JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS The Far Eastern newspaper man — Many college men — An elastic censorship — The first modern daily in 1871 — 3,000 newspapers now — Mere mushroom rise and fall of many publications — The five leading vernacular dailies — The one-cent daily every- where — Growth of democratization — The English language press — ^In a native establishment — The home feeling of the American newspaper man — The editors and reporters at work — The composing room — A compositor must know and find 10,000 ideographic characters — A lively scene. The visit of half a score representatives of the leading Japanese newspapers to America was an unusual event. They crossed the Pacific first of all to see the Panama Exposition at San Francisco and then to look into the merits of the Japanese- American question, particularly as it bears upon the treatment of their feUow countrymen already settled in this country. They visited the larger Japanese settlements in California at Los Angeles and near Sacramento. That they found things to be different from their expec- tations is not unnatural, for gloomy views on the subject prevailed in the Japanese press. Now we find a Pacific coast newspaper like the Sacramento Union quoting one of the visiting editors as saying: "I find conditions among my countrymen much better than I imagined they would be while in Japan." Instead of a persecuted race these editors found the Japanese "as a whole prosperous, many of them wealthy," and "on good terms with their Ameri- 247 248 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND can neighbours" and so on, as was quite true and — natural. The Japanese newspaper man at home is most often a university or at least a college man, but as in America there is no rule about it. There is the same distribution of grave, wise writers, the same alert observers, the same grey-faced, stoop-shouldered plodders, the same irrespon- sible exaggerators who stop at nothing to make a sensation, such as bless our own newspaper world. The press is fairly free in Japan ; that is, it has a very wide range of untrammelled discussion, but on occasion it may and often does hear from the authorities when discus- sion passes limits or broad national policies are traversed or disclosures made in directions that the government desires to be kept dark. There are certain conventions regarding mention of the Emperor, but as these apply to ordinary conversation they come natural in a way to the editors. In range of matters treated as news the Japanese papers resemble our own, indeed pattern after us in many ways save that respect for the person and for private affairs is more emphasized. Financial, commercial, indus- trial matters are freely treated, but domestic and foreign politics take the lion's share of editorial comment and news attention. Under the present newspaper regulation dating from 1909 the old system of ordering suspension of publication when the authorities found a paper transgressing has been largely replaced by sale prohibitions. Under this rule all papers are obliged to send a copy of every issue to the metropolitan police board. If the censor finds an article "offensive to the peace and order of the community" he may at once prohibit the distribution of the paper. This he usually does by telephoning to the newspaper stands, railroad stations and so forth, or by other appropriate means. In times of national stress, however, the Foreign Office, JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 249 War or Navy Department may issue orders not to report or discuss certain subjects without permission, in which case the newspapers are put under strict censorship and have to exhibit a copy to the authorities before they are allowed to circulate the issue. In operation I am assured that the regulation works easily. There is certainly latitude of criticism even of matters governmental, but the time of absolute rule is still not so far back in the history of Japanese journalism as to en- courage the writers of today in reckless defiance of good taste, good morals and the unwritten law of fair comment. Besides, there is an inner loyalty of the Japanese which inclines them to work with the authorities for whatever the latter deem the good of Japan. Following the Euro- pean practice all the dailies used to hire dummy editors to go to jail on occasion for infractions of the old press laws, and although the new law takes the real editor as well as the dummy some papers still keep up the bad old practice. In old Japan it was three hundred years ago that the issue of printed sheets for public service began under the Tokugawa shogunate. Yomiuri they were called — ^that is, "hawked in the streets," referring to their itinerant mode of sale. They were given over to court happenings and local scandals and were printed from wooden blocks. In the modern sense journalism in Japan is scarce a half-century old. There was a difficulty, inasmuch as there is no Japanese alphabet and it was necessary to use ideo- graphs. The first daily newspaper appeared at Yokohama in 1871 — the Yokohama Maimchi. • It still exists, but is published in Tokyo. Others followed — NicM-Nichi in 1872, HocJii in 1873 and Yomiuri in 1874. Thenceforward the pace was rapid. The call to knowledge meant the need of newspapers, and in 1914 there were 861 newspapers and 1,858 periodi- cals, a total of 2,719, and now fully 3,000, some of the 250 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND dailies enjoying, as will be seen later, very large circu- lations. The dailies are mostly morning editions, but the number of those that really count is comparatively small. It is not a very costly matter, the mere starting of a new paper in Japan, since facilities exist for printing and publishing in the larger cities which obviate the necessity of an expensive plant, the initial expense being only on the editing and circulating side. In ease the newspaper wishes to treat current topics it must deposit with the government from $10 to $87.50 as security for good behaviour. Hence there are many starts and naturally many failures to catch the public ear. There are men who cannot deny themselves the luxury of a personal organ, but the pain of a small and dimin- ishing response to the trumpet blast and the discovery that much expenditure must precede great results operate generally in the direction of a quiet demise. These failures are the skins nailed to the doors of the great dailies pour encourager les autres. As in London, Paris and New York the successful papers tend to greater and greater circulations ,and the new ambitious ventures grow fewer every day. Increases in number come from the general spread of education and the growing variety of special topics inviting exploitation. In point of circulation there are five papers that lead all the rest, and among these is an evident tendency to have separate editions in Tokyo and Osaka, which are the two largest cities in Japan, lying about 350 miles apart, the former the capital and seat of the government, with more than 2,000,000 population, and the latter a vast trade mart and factory town of about 1,500,000 souls. The five establishments, show- ing largest circidation with their average daily issues are: JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 251 Asahi (Morning Sun), Osaka, main edition 350,000 Tokyo branch 200,000 Uainichi (Every Day), Osaka, main edition 300,000 Nichi-Nichi (Day to Day), Tokyo branch of Mainichi. . 160,000 HocM (Information), Tokyo 300,000 Kokumin (Nation), Tokyo. . , 200,000 Torodm (Everything), Tokyo 200,000 Following them in circulation are : Jiji (Current Events), Tokyo, main edition 50,000 Osaka branch edition 20,000 Miyako (Metropolis), Tokyo 80,000 Chuo (Centre), Tokyo 40,000 Sekai (World), Tokyo 20,000 Tomiuri (The Street Hawker), Tokyo 30,000 Chu-gai (At Home and Abroad), commercial, Tokyo.. 20,000 Maiyu (Every Evening), commercial, Tokyo 20,000 Shimpo (News), Osaka 40,000 Nippo (Daily News), Osaka 50,000 Here, then, are the seventeen leading daily publications, with a combined circulation of 2,080,000 copies, supplying a population of some 4,000,000, for the circulation rule holds good in Japan, as it does here, namely, that once outside the city or town of origin circulation quickly drops to negligible fractions. In the United States the town that cannot be reached well before noon with a morning paper at its city cost offers a small field for circulation. It is the rule by which the little locals live. In the other towns and cities a few papers may be found with 30,000 circulation, as in Kyoto and Kobe, but the average of the best runs at about 10,000 copies, the rest tailing downward in increasing number to 1,000 copies and under. Dailies in Japan generally sell on the stands for two sen — ^the equivalent of one cent in our money, but the equiva- 252 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND lent of two cents in terms of Japanese living. Some, like the Hochi and the Yorodzu, sell for one sen. All papers, however, make large reductions for a monthly or quarterly subscription. So important are these reductions that (like Mark Twain's discounts in the book trade) it would seem as though the publishers would have to give you money if you subscribed for five years in advance. The influence of the press becomes greater and greater in Japan as democratization grows. It might indeed be put the other way, namely, that the rising democratic tide is fed from the press. Naturally, then, the owners and directors of important papers take a more prominent place in the domain of personal influence and popular esteem. The Asahi, the most influential paper, is completely inde- pendent and is owned by the partnership of Ryuhei Mura- yama and Biichi TJyeno. They handle the business end only, becoming president in turn year and year about. The MainicTii, also independent and highly influential, is owned by a stock company, of which H. Motoyama is presi- dent. The stockholders are all business men. S. Fuku- zawa, second son of the late Mr. Pukuzawa, founder of Keio University, is the sole owner of the Jiji. His paper is in- dfependent, but sometimes inclined to be semi-official, not because of the policy of the paper, but because of its having many friends in official circles as a natural result of the fact that the Keio University has produced more prominent men in the past thaii any of the other private universities. I. Tokutolin, a well-known, brilliant writer, is the sole owner and at the same time editor-in-chief of the Kokumin. S. Kuroyuwa, a dashing, clever writer whose fame rests on able translations of Western fiction, is the sole owner and editor-in-chief of the Yorodzu. The Hochi is owned by a small group of men. Count (now Marquis) Okuma among them, and Zenppaku Miki is president and chief investor. It is regarded as an organ of the Okuma party. JAt>ANESE NEWSPAPERS 253 The CTiuo is aoi organ of the Seiyukai or largest parlia- mentary group, as also practically is the Mm-yu, of which T. Tokonami, once president of the Imperial Railways and a leader of the Seiyukai, is the president. The CJiu-gai is owned by and devoted to the Mitsui interests. It prints commercial as well as general news. The Yomiuri, owned by Mr. Motono, brother of the Am- bassador to Russia, is rather literary in tone and gives up a whole page daily to woman. The Miydko, owned by Baron Kusumoto, noted for its strong editorials, has many good writers, inclusive of religionists, notwithstanding it is circulated chiefly among restaurants, geisha houses and so forth. The Jiji, Asahi and Mainichi are all fair and unbiased papers, standing for sane and safe public opinion. On the other hand, the Yorodzu and Sekai, cheap and sensational, are considered radical and what we call "yellow." The Yorodzu owes much to translations of foreign novels of the advanced or very modem kind. The editors and writers are presentable men, a sprinkling of haughty scholars — the samurai of the quill, as it were — and the rest a bright lot of men of the world, wide-awake, seeing the humorous side of life clearly and working hard at journalism as a business. I had the good fortune to meet about sixty of the leading writers and workers of the Tokyo and Yokohama press — ^vernacular and English — about three-fourths of those present being Japanese. The occasion was a luncheon, given to Count Okuma and his Cabinet Ministers by the Japanese and International (foreign) Press Associations at the Imperial Hotel. It was surely a sign of the times to see the Prime Minister and the Foreign, War, Navy, Justice, Education and Finance Ministers of the Empire sitting down of an afternoon on equal terms with these cheerful drivers of the fountain pen journalistic. The repast was admirable and 254 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the air full of good-natured banter among the writers, many of whom had for years driven verbal sword points into each other. Mr. Kuroiwa, who presided, spoke in Japanese and was followed by an ancient and reverend Mr. McAuley in English on behalf of the foreign writers. Both welcomed the statesmen with warm words. Then Count Okuma arose and in his brilliant, cursive way of easy eloquence told the press men how much he thought of them and what a fine chance they had to do things and avoid things not right. Then, to my amazement and amusement, he addressed about fifteen minutes of his speech to me, gazing directly at me across the table with all sorts of emotions (mostly those of the friendly humourist who is having the time of his life at your expense) leaping in little fiashes from his small black eyes. It was vastly entertaining to the company, who roared at the Premier's sallies, and proved to be a warm praise of America, combined with advice and suggestion as to how, hand in hand with Japan, we could do so much to better the world. I had had the honour of listening to an address by his Excellency at his splendid home the week before for over an hour (by way of an interview), and he was now telling the company what good things he had said then. Except when I caught the word "America" I was in blank ignorance of what he was saying, save as the dark little eyes emitted their dot and dash flashes and the joy of the newspaper men around rolled into good-natured laughter or sympathetic monosyllables. I enjoyed it too when I was over my first surprise, for you can tell the ring of friendly laughter from the bitter kind as easily as you can distinguish between the call of a robin and the hiss of a serpent or a goose. After the lunch there was a reception, where we smoked cigars, and I found that many of the gentlemen in hakama spoke excellent English, and all were enjoying themselves. JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 255 Of the newspapers and magazines in English published in Japan it is not necessary to speak here at length. The dailies number nine or ten and their circulations are not large, but their influence is considerable. The Japan Times of Tokyo, first published in 1897, is now under Japanese owners and is written mainly by broad-minded Japanese scholars. It generally gives the earliest reliable home news and has a fine foreign service. Prom the same of&ce issues the Daily Mail, established in 1865, an afternoon paper. The Japan Advertiser of Tokyo, established in 1905, is a brightly written, wide-awake paper. The Yokohama Gazette, started in 1867, is an evening paper, fairly and forcibly written and has a special field in marine, travel and commercial news befitting the foreign, mouthpiece of the old trading port. The Japan Chronicle of Kobe, which dates back to 1868, is the best written English daily in the Orient and is a fine news medium. Its editorial tone has something of the skillful ironic which characterized New York's Evening Post in the old Godkin days and of which we still see traditional flashes. The Chronicle's attitude on public questions has been described as '-whatever is Japanese is wrong; whatever is American is suspicious; whatever is English is right." The Anglo-Japanese alliance gave it a hard lump in its throat, and it was decidedly amusing during the Tsing-tao operations in China to observe the visible pain with which it applauded the success of the siege. Still it is all without malice — just a matter of the temperamental outfit of its accomplished owner and editor, Mr. Young, whose son, by the way, a volunteer officer in the English service, has been sending home articles descriptive of the training and serv- ice of the newer English armies at the front in Europe. The attitude is moreover a solitary survival in Japan of the older time when the literary foreigner had some excuse for putting o» superior gr condescending airs tg the 256 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND natives struggling with the great problems of civilization which they have since so successfully mastered in their own way. I may add that the supercilious glance at things Eastern still pervades the English papers printed in China. The Kobe Press, the Nagasaki Press and the Seoul Press, the latter an aspiring Japanese undertaking in Korea, about fill out the list. Most of the papers printed in English publish copious translations of the leading articles of note in the vernacular newspapers. It was in Osaka, however, that I had the privilege and opportunity to go through the works of a big Japanese daily. I had been pleasantly received in the Tokyo oflSce of the Asahi, where I found in young Mr. Sugimura a help- ful, courteous personality. He was foreign editor and when I wanted to get good prints of some drawings in his paper illustrating the funeral of the Empress Dowager for the use of the New York Sun he took pains to see that it was done and done promptly, which is the essence of daily newspaper work. He had learned his fluent English in Tokyo. What, I would like to ask, is inherent in the newspaper business the world over that makes for office dinginess? Where does dust accumulate more quickly and thickly than in an editor's room? Whose desk is so untidy? One is conscious that a newspaper office gets a new coat of paint at long intervals, but where else does fresh paint take on the depressing tints of age with more certainty and celerity? Sometimes a proprietor or "the company" indulges rashly in hard woods for trimmings, new desks, new branch lights. The editors immediately get haircuts, the as- sistants change their collars more frequently, the office boy has a clean shirt, the doorman washes his face. A month seems enough to wear off the effusively welcomed newness of the surroundings ; ^ fortnight is quite enough to see all JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 257 that is human in the business throw off the hated air of spruceness and allow the old grime to take possession with an easy smile. It is just the same in Japan. Journalism is opposed to the smug. An American newspaperman gets the home feeling at once on visiting a big daily in Tokyo or Osaka. The somewhat austere editors inhabit the same little dusty dens; the reporters go and come and work at ease without the fine regard for appearances that distinguishes the bank clerk, for instance, in all countries, and they regard all men outside their craft from court nobles and Cabinet Ministers down to hatters with the same amused consideration, the same air of good humoured superiority that just falls short of being obtrusive. Journalism breeds democracy. It treats of all things and all men and it comes ultimately to deal with the sacrosanct among mankind or their habitat with the same level air that a guardian of the temple exhibits when he brushes the nose of the carven god with a feather duster. The journalist is the man behind the scenes and enjoys it. It is all in the way of business and implies neither the spirit purely ironic nor the coarse article of disrespect. I found the spirit in Tokyo very like the spirit in New York or London or Paris. The offices of the Mainichi in Osaka were no exception to the journalistic rule. The big presses lumbering and grinding away in the grimy basement, the stereotypers stripped to the waist and steaming over the caldrons of molten type metal, the pattering of the mould makers. They did not then have the latest stereotype machinery. The circulation department was piled with papers coming wet from the presses and going abroad in heaps and bundles and sheets. The city department was a familiar sight, save that no typewriting machine has yet got, and maybe none ever will 258 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND get, the hang of the baffling ideographs of Japanese. In- stead the reporters, their hakamas off, their kimonos bunched up and their arms bare, were painting at railroad speed their characters in perpendicular lines on long strips of paper and beginning at the right hand of the roll. They ran their left-hand fingers through their generally short hair just like Peoria reporters pausing for a word, while they dipped their brush in the India ink just rubbed down in water on their right. Some of them, however, used pencils and a few fountain pens. The makeup editor was just as gruff and peremptory about his work as any Ameri- can tyrant of the galleys, "stone" and turtles. The courteous editor with the stately gestures who took our little party over the premises explained the writing hierarchy. The editor-in-chief does most of the editorial writing. The political editor combines attention to politi- cal matters and meetings at night with doing the "make- up " in the afternoons. The foreign editor looks after cable and foreign news and sometimes writes editorials. The domestic editor attends to Japanese telegraphic news. The economic editor does financial and commercial news. The social editor is really our city editor and handles city news — police reports, meetings. The science and art editor prepares the Sunday supplement. Including its branches at Kobe and Kyoto the Mainichi has a staff of one hundred editors and reporters. It issues ten to fourteen pages daily, the news-stand price being two sen — one cent of our money. They use French Marinoni presses, of which they complain. The daily staff make their appearance about noon and the bulk of the copy must be handed in by 3.30 p.m. The first edition (of next day's paper) must be ready by 5.30 p.m. for transmission to distant parts. It was familiar ground everywhere until you reached the composing room, Pere 70U hadi a sengatioii, and thQ JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 259 enormous difficulty of dealing with a language expressed visually in ideographs instead of in letters of an alphabet flashed upon you. The training required to differentiate in a second ten thousand different ideographs makes one take off one's hat to Oriental mentality and to Oriental patient persistence, for although the training begins in childhood the sum of knowledge of combinations of linear signs necessary to an ordinary compositor on a Japanese newspaper seems enough to earn a university degree of learned literate and doctor of the high signs. Our printers deal with an alphabet of twenty-six letters — so for capital letters, small capitals and plain letters the compositor has in all seventy-eight letter boxes in a "case" of type. Think, however, of the fact that the body type of this paper (No. 5) calls for 9,500 separate characters, of which 4,000 are in common use, the remainder being of rarer use. One can under- stand, then, how difficult the task is of "setting up" copy in the vernacular. Nearly 10,000 different types would seem to make the typesetting machine inapplicable. No row after row of linotype machines is therefore pos- sible, and for comparison with an American composing room one must go back to the rows and alleys of cases mounted on frames with a man in front of each case which met the eye in the composing rooms of the American dailies of twenty to twenty-five years ago. But there is a sharp difference in the size, the extent of the Japanese cases. If you glance at the illustration showing the Asahi com- posing room you will note the man standing in the left alley. His case of No. 5 type extends to the air space between it and the next — as large as eight cases for alpha- betical type, and this does not contain half the characters of the font. In all they employ on the Mainichi and AsaM little short of a hundred compositors and boy assistants. The eases, about twenty feet long and five feet high, are set 260 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND up at a sloping angle with a four-foot passageway between the lines. The characters rest in little compartments face outward. It is a busy scene. In his left hand the compositor holds his wooden "stick" and chants in a peculiar drone with the absorbed air of a mystic what he is putting into type. When he comes to a character that is stored elsewhere he grunts to a small boy the name of the ideograph and the boy bounds off for it, to come skipping back an instant later. To hear forty men chanting in this drone as they march up and down at a lively gait before the cases picking up the type with boys darting in and out like little demons playing tag is to meet a new experience in typesetting. The man nearest me was chanting in Japanese : "He was putting his foot down" — ^hum, hum, hum — ^"putting his foot down" — ^hum, hum, hum — "foot down" — ^hum, hum, hum. And so on, all the news of the day set to music. It would have driven Ben Franklin crazy. But it gives one a glimpse of the Oriental patience to think of adapting type to such enormous diversity of signs. They use five fonts of type for the paper. No. 1 — ^For "extra" and large type advertising; it has 2,400 characters. No. 2 — ^A large type for headings, which are really sid- ings, has 3,000 characters. No. 3 — A large type a little less in face than No. 2 and the same number of characters. No. 4 — A good-sized type for book work has 12,000 characters. No. 5 — Body type, in which the bulk of the newspaper is set, 9,500 characters, 4,000 in common use. No. 6 — Smallest type, 9,020 characters. As the letter "e" is the oftenest called for in English, so the ideograph for "of" holds the highest record in Japanese. It is pronounced "no," *i*t "^ *: J, -C * » » »(. * ? y 6 to «;a;!> sS'*_.» assSiX; a.j' t 1 i, a' t w- * essp * i; c »r , »•; ■ J««'»«lf Sj o o>^«-r»'j'^ ^•"'5'*5' ^- a'»'4' • )«-«"tt«s'] ^ ^ Ih (LI 4J tn r- ' O , >*^ n o. £ Cn ij ^ t-, i! m 3 "■ Q.-n'"' t^ O (U *? S.2-C a< 3 <.S t; §••" « o _r_ M 3 «= .. « « s s 0, bOrt ftp _o C u g-S ja c m £ '^ X -t; !i E 9 A GALLEY OF PROOF AND A PAGE OF "COPY" FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE "MAINICHI" OF OSAKA, ONE OF THE LEAD- ING PAPERS OF JAPAN JAPANESE NEWSPAPERS 261 In a cubby-hole of their own sat the eight proof-readers, who mark their corrections on the proofs in red ink laid on with a brush. They were like other proof-readers, reading with the same impersonal calm and haughty impartiality of murders, advertisements, sophomorical speeches, grave editorials, the funny man's jokes, the market price-lists, far-off campaigns and near-by hygienic crusades. It was the makeup editor, now that his exacting duties around the pages of sizzling type were over for the nonce and his mind had settled down from the minatory and peremptory heights of the closing hour to the scented calm of the valleys of courtliness, even geniality, who guided our little party around the ofSce. He it was who in pursuance of my desire to present to the Western world a specimen of Japanese editorial "copy" and a Japanese corrected "first proof" procured them, and it meant a lot of work for young "devils" in collecting the sacred pages no longer held sacred, after the way of printing offices everywhere, once the written character is turned into type metal. And so with many bows to many busy people we return through humming rooms and throbbing passages — ^for the presses are grinding away on that first edition — ^to our waiting rickishas, and the picture of it all that persists most is the little concentrated compositor tripping up and down, "stick" in hand and chanting "putting his foot down" — hum, hum, hum — "his foot down" — ^hum, hum, hum — "foot down," — ^hum, hum, hum — an operetta in ideographs. CHAPTER XVIII SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN Glimpses of Cabinet heads and diplomats — Parliamentary leaders and orators — Okuma, Terauchi, Yamagata, Kato, Makino, Chinda, Uchida, Ozaki — ^Bankers, captains of industry — ^Men of big business and sudden uprise — Shibusawa, Okura, Haya- kawa — Contrasting types. Nowhere will the foolish "Western belief that all Japanese and Chinese are alike meet a greater shock than among their leading men. There is to be sure in the Bast as in the West a selective type tendency in certain callings. Many a stupid man has read for the bar, but lawyers are a brainy lot, angle-minded and pragmatical, it is true: but everywhere the legal temperament is recognizably cool with a mental tendency to the exact. Inside of such reasonable limitations there is, however, room for large variety, and it applies to the Far East just as much as to our individ- ualizing West. The men of note whom I met in Japan impressed me much and variously as should the sifted leaders of so remark- able a people. It would be futile to attempt a comparison between them and the leaders of men in other nations. Such diplomats as Viscount Kato, Viseount Makino, Baron Uchida, Viscount Chinda and Mr. Aimaro Sato have all the fine personality of the most cultivated ehancellries, the suave address, the long patience, the polite insistence and all the mental training for a most difficult game. Diplo- macy is a calling apt to be best filled by a bureaucracy, and the Japanese system of promotion and rotation serves m SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 263 its purpose admirably. Unlike the European and American systems, service in a consulate is no bar to the higher service; but in some inevitable way the progress of the unfit is arrested, suggesting a most searching psychologic study of each individual by his superiors. Of course there are sharp differences between the men. Hence the choice of a man suitable to a certain position is always within possibilities. It is the boast of the Japanese that in their great depart- ments of state, policies and practices properly decided on at the start are carried unaltered through successive ad- ministrations. This of necessity is only partially true, since, as in the discharge of the Okuma ministry, much of the imperial reason for the change lay in dissatisfaction with its conduct of the foreign policy, notably as regards the attitude to China. Some time must doubtless elapse before the true history of the episode can be laid bare. It was widely and unwarrantably feared that the incoming of Marquis Terauchi with his militaristic history behind him would be marked by a more rigid, strong-armed, masterful policy in Chinese relations. The opposite was soon seen to be the case. It resolved itself into a policy placatory to Chinese susceptibilities, advancing no new claims, but making clear the beneficial effects to both countries of the features of the treaty made with Yuan shih Kai, features so utterly misinterpreted to the world by the journalistic agents of Yuan. None but the blind could have failed to see that Yuan aimed from the beginning of his presidency to make himself Emperor of China in succession to the deposed Manchus. He desired a strong China, of course, but the cloven foot of selfish ambition, first seen in his compromise with reaction in the matter of modern educa- tion, next in his suppression of the Parliament, in his ridiculously absolutist provisional constitution buttressed upon the lamentable essay of Dr. Goodenow claiming that 264 JAPAN AT FIRST SAND China was not fit for self-government. His journalistic agents could blink at all these things, but were ready at all times to state that Yuan's view of any policy was the view of China, and right and just beside. Yuan's over- throw and death made a new situation. A Chinese Eepublic was not only possible but inevitable. Here, then, was something with which Japan could deal in reasonable terms and with some assurance of permanency. The great prize of Chinese trade might be sought with vigour if only the irritants were removed, and something like an era of good feeling inaugurated. That and not a militarist policy was what the Terauchi ministry was designed to accomplish. At any rate the personalities of Marquis Terauchi and Marquis Okuma were the most interesting to me of all I met in Japan. If I could add Prince Yamagata to the roster it would show forth the three most vital Japanese of our day. But the Prince Field Marshal is in his eightieth year and feeble, seldom stirs abroad, rarely receives visitors except of his own choosing, a solemn man, the type of the Meiji statesman, almost the last of the Meiji Genro. I saw him once in New York many years ago, and then the lank military figure, the austere rather than haughty expression impressed me. My interest in him was his then recent victories over China. He looked every inch the soldier. He stands now on the borders of the past. Not so would it seem with Shigenobu Okuma who was born in the same year as Yamagata and who defies the advance of years with brave demeanour. He will live until one hundred and twenty-five he says, and there is as much of the immortal about him as is usually given to man. I saw him many times in "Western" cos- tume, but he received me at his luxurious home in Tokyo in kimono. One knew that one of the stateman's legs had been blown off by a would-be assassin twenty years before. SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 265 The mechanical substitute for the severed limb gave a certain stiiifness to his gait (his leg evidently did not bend at the knee) but holding his body upright with the chest well raised and the head erect there was something of the stateliness in his walk that we associate with the idea of a senator of ancient Rome, to which the bared forearms added materially. Our talk or rather the address he delivered with an easy flow of punctuated speech was a shining thing, directed to the consciousness of an American. What I saw in the pauses for interpretation was a fluent, well-read, bald-headed man with an inexhaustible fund of knowledge, more or less inexact in its details, watching the effect upon me out of the small intensely black eyes that gleamed from the tight-drawn parchment of his face. This as the courteous interpreter tried vainly to tell in a short breathing space what the Prime Minister had rattled off in five or ten minutes. It sounded utterly frank and was certainly brilliantly put, yet the impression, simple and informal as it all was — seated at ease in his comfortable salon — seemed a bit theatric. One felt the egoism of the professor as well as the insight of the liberal statesman and the voice of long authority. With the then Count Terauchi, a month later at Seoul, it was entirely different. The Governor-General of Korea wore his major-general's uniform, sat at his ease, and chatted affably in the palace ante-room, secretaries and army officers about him. The sense of power definable in the firm set of his head upon a thick neck, in the habitual clenching of the lips, and the appraising glance of his full eyes did not oppress one as haply it might if an official shortcoming had been in question. At first our talk was interpreted by one of his aides, and as he listened to the Japanese version of what I had said in English, his heavy eyelids closed over his prominent eyes with a peculiar dreaming expression qualified somewhat by an occasional 266 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND smile faintly lifting the corners of his mouth. His answers came easily and directly. Later on, when I discovered that he spoke French fluently our conversation was frank and animated. You had heard he was a martinet. You felt a clear sincerity and a disposition to answer questions freely within the limits of good taste. Indubitably a strong man had taken a heavy uphill task with confidence begotten of intense application, balanced judgment, the long experience of finding the proper man for every job in hand and the magisterial habit of seeing that he did it. Much had been accomplished in his few years of upbuilding the Korean peninsula materially and making the land livable for the Koreans themselves, apart altogether from his work in binding the new possessions to Japan. He had been a good soldier and a great War Minister but never a fighter for the sake of fighting, yet it was on his long and remote army service rather than on his recent constructive, pacificatory work in Korea that he was misjudged even in Japan when selected for the Premiership by the genro. In the realm of government and diplomacy these figures notable to me are worth examining. The first, Baron Takaaki Kato, Foreign Minister then as well as leader of the rising Doshikai party which on the dissolution of the Parliament that followed, emerged from the elections with a majority in the Lower House, wresting that position from the Seiyukai which had suffered from the discredit of the naval scandals because of which the Yamomoto ministry had been hurled from power. The retirement of Count Okuma had become inevitable. His age for one thing pointed in that direction, but there was another cause which he had ignored — ^the scandal of the bribery of members of the Lower House to secure the passage of the famous two-division addition to the army, avowedly for the purpose of guarding Korea, a measure fatal to ministries from the date of its introduction some six years SOME LEADERS OF MEN IN JAPAN 267 ago. In this bribery a member of the Cabinet had been involved, and when found guilty upon trial had been "let down" without serving a prison term on a ground often used in such cases in Japan, namely, that his degradation from a lofty position was punishment sufficient. In view of the approaching coronation of Emperor Yoshihito, wherein, as the court ritual demands, the Premier plays such a "star" part. Count Okuma somewhat humanly shrank from barkening to the caUs (outside his own sup- porters) for his resignation. The privileges held by all members of Parliament in the same great functions at Kyoto operated too in the same direction, and there was a tacit truce for the time. But Baron Kato was not idle; using all his arts as a leader, he brought about a consoli- dation of the pro-Okuma parties and groups into a new party called the Kensekai, of which he was elected leader. It was then agreed that at a convenient moment. Count, now Marquis, Okuma should retire, handing over the Cabinet to Baron, now Viscount, Kato, As we have seen, however, Kato's conduct of the relations with China had displeased the imperial authorities and the genro, and Okuma 's direct suggestion to the Emperor — a most unusual proceeding, it appears, in Japan — ^was denied with em- phasis, and Terauchi chosen instead. Without examining further into these relations, the events disclose Viscount Kato as a sttong man obviously to be reckoned with. One catches something of this in his face. The nose large for a Japanese, the strong chin, the fixed, thoughtful gaze behind his glasses, the high forehead, the large ears, the deliberate, pondered speech and the occasional gesture with strong- knuckled hands do give a sense of power, and an ability to concentrate long and fruitfully on what he has on hand. He has an analytic turn of mind too. His English, due to his years in diplomatic posts abroad particularly as Min- ister to England, is cultivated without being pedantic. He 268 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND showed a nice regard for American susceptibilities while in the Foreign Office. His attack on the Terauchi ministry was formidable : in view of his humiliation by the genro it was pardonable. He will be loudly heard from. A very different personality is that of Mr. Yukio Ozaki, Minister of Justice in the Okuma Cabinet — ^long mayor of Tokyo, a lawyer, a journalist, perhaps the most fiery and forcible orator and debater in the House of Representa- tives, the leader of a small but select parliamentary party — ^the Chusekai (the Golden Mean) — ^but above aU an idealist in politics. In pursuit of this, he is something of a Spartan in the simplicity of his home life, and in private a sympathetic and charming man, expressing the joy of living in a bland view of the world which he would fain see a better place for everybody, albeit in the fury of his oratory no sojourn could be too hot for those he denounces so roundly. Dreading this, it is related that when at the first sitting of the House under the Terauchi ministry Viscount Kato had introduced his motion equivalent to the English "want of confidence," the Premier tempestuously hurried down the rescript of a dissolution of the Parlia- ment lest Ozaki should take the floor and flay alive every- body who upheld the break with "constitutionalism." It was the kind of tribute which an orator in love with his own comminatory verbal powers would not like, however long he might chuckle over it in private. He is of middle height with a good broad forehead, a pair of large and luminous eyes, a sedate carriage but a fine bojdsh smile. Lunching with him in his little seaside cottage after a delightful walk along the ocean beach at Kamakura, shared with his altogether charming Eurasian wife, whose fairy tales and hero tales of Japan have given her an enviable literary standing in the East, one saw the gentle side of this stormy petrel of Japanese politics. There were then no clouds on the political horizon and all was soothing, and MARQUIS TERAUCHI, PRIME MINISTER, 1917 SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 269 the talk was of books and pictures and things not at all concerned about the storms so soon to break upon the world — a little moment of ease and joy very pleasant to recall. And apropos of mayors of Tokyo, one should kindly recall Baron Yoshiro Sakatani who flitted recently across the United States on his way home from the Entente Allies economic conference. I had met him variously away from his mayoral chair but a chat with him in his office revealed a man with a capacity for statistics little short of amazing. I knew a wicked man once who had invented a method of scaring off the children of friends and neighbours. He would raise a severe forefinger and say sharply: "Seven times nine!" It was most effective. I asked the Mayor a question about the waterworks of Tokyo, and at once all the founts of Japan seemed to be spraying me, flooding me with figures. As soon as he paused to take breath, I rose and fled precipitately. Away from his life-passion for figures he is an amiable man. He has been everything official possible in connection with economics up to full Minister. He married a daughter of Baron Shibusawa, holds stately residence on the outskirts of Tokyo, where he dotes upon his gardens and indulges his passion for enum- eration in the royal game of Go. Like Mr. Ozaki, he is not done yet. Typical of the great business men and bankers were five whom I met on various occasions. The first was Mr. Soichiro Asano and naturally so, for he is president as well as principal owner of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha on whose fine steamer, Chiyo Mam, I had travelled from San Francisco. Independently of any introductions I would probably as a passenger on his line have received "first aid" from him, since it is his amiable and astounding habit to give a grand reception at his great palace of a house in the Shiba ward of Tokyo to all arriving salon passengers. Fancy the Cunards at that sort of game of courtesy ! And there he 270 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND is in the guise of Japanese gentleman to greet them, see them upstairs and downstairs and through spacious rooms and enormous salons all decorated with bronze Buddhas of many ages, affrighting devas, great tapestries, ancient wall pictures, lacquerrwork, porcelains, cloisonne, ivory carvings and Chinese carved teak furniture. And then he teas them and cakes them, and gives them T.Y.K. fans, smiling all over with the pleasure it gives him. It may be advertising, as some stuffed ingrates will assert, but it is as graceful in act as it is a thing of gladness for him. He is more European of face than Nipponese, long, straight grey hair, large eyes and strong black eyebrows in delicate upward curves — a handsome face, and he made all his fortune with his own two hands and his quick brain, for he came up from Toyama a poor boy, the typical Oriental Dick Whittington. And during the European war, what with the American seamen's law turning the Pacific into a Japanese lake and the rise in freight he has managed to triple his millions. He likes Americans; his eldest son speaks English like — a Californian. Another of the self-made men of the land of Nippon, where wealth fifty years ago was almost wholly restricted to nobles born to riches and splendour, is Baron Kihachiro Okura. Of his early years of poverty and struggle the most fantastic stories are told, but a genius for trade, which means a quick perception of opportunities and a promptness in grasping them, brought him forward in for- tune with swift strides, extending his business to London as long ago as 1872 and to America in 1880, adopting the latest methods in whatever he touched. Then he founded and endowed a commercial school in Tokyo, following it with similar schools in Osaka and Seoul and lately donating a round million yen to the poor. It was, however, in a wholly different relation I met him, first at a sumptuous repast and next day in his veritable museum in the SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 271 Akasaka ward on the summit of the highest hill in Tokyo, overlooking the city on all sides and with a fine outlook pver the sea from some! points. I have told of this else- where. He is now in his eightieth year and was then in his seventy-eighth, a little, shrivelled and bent old man of small, round face with an anxious smile. Baron Shibusawa, whom they call the Rockefeller of Japan, is another of their great bankers and traders now Hearing his four score years. He came of more promising beginnings than Okura : went to Europe as a companion of the Tokugawa princes as long ago as 1868 and held a high office in the treasury for four years under the new imperial government. He left the service in a huff with a Vice Minister, Inouye, and has forsworn the public service since. The roster of his banking and business con- nections would be like the divine Homer's Greek shipping list, but they cover every large kind of enterprise in Japan. He has twice retired, but each time the call proved too great for any love of ease he might develop. I met him very often and always found him the soul of frank- ness, fairness and exact information. He speaks a little, reminiscent French, and the trouble he takes for anybody who seeks his advice is proverbial. He is not a mere money-grubber. He is devoted to the Chinese classics, is a profound appreciator of Confucius, the man as well as the teacher, and writes charming little poems, a few of which to American friends of Japan I had the opportunity to put into English. He is also what is highly esteemed in Japan, a great calligraphist, and his autographs, each conveying a moral thought, are treasured by thousands — an amiable weakness. Like Okura he is a little man, with a round face but looks fifteen years younger. Once I did him an inadvertent favour. At a Tokyo dinner of some twenty covers in Japanese style, I was somehow a guest of honour. It was a roastingly hot evening. Through a 272 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND couple of courses I persisted in wearing my "smoking" or Tuxedo buttoned over a dress shirt. All the Japanese wore heavy hakamas over their kimonos. Everybody perspired in streams and all mopped their foreheads with great bandanas. I could stand it no longer. They will pardon a foreigner, I thought, and rising from my cushions, I made three bows. The company looked as if they thought I was going to address them. They said hush in Japanese to each other. The geishas sat back on their heels and stared. Then I took off my coat. A howl of joy and gratitude greeted the gesture. In an instant every hakama was off: arms were bared to the shoulder, and Baron Shibusawa smiling all over asked a friend to tell me that I had saved his life. One thing is certain the men of the Shibusawa stamp, the best of the Japanese, are to a man the friends of America through and through. Viscount Yataro Mishima, of the House of Peers and President of the Bank of Japan is one of a younger gener- ation of financial leaders of the Empire distinctly worth the pleasure of knowing. He is about fifty. Educated in America, broad of view and informed up to datei of the financial movements of the world, his whole personality, stout-bodied and full-faced, bland and at the same time authoritative, gives a sense of high responsibilities resting on broad shoulders. No glance over the financial props of the Japanese social structure would be at all sufficing that did not include the Mitsui family. At the head of vast private banking in- terests, they pervade all the great undertakings of the Empire in shipping, steel, mining, commerce and a multi- plicity of manufactures. Their collective wealth must be very great. Their unique distinction is that they have been bankers for a century and a half, enjoying the favour — and the custom — of the shoguns. They are Japan's Pothschilds. Barop Hachiroepion Mitsui, the head of th§ SOME LEADERS OF MEN IN JAPAN 273 family, given his title twenty years ago and now a man of sixty though looking scarcely fifty, was an interesting man to meet. It was in his wonderful garden-surrounded mansion of a pleasant afternoon that he gave me the opportunity to study him. A mild-faced, dreamy-eyed man he was with a slim black moustache and regular features, the nose faintly Jewish in type, possessing a quiet refinement of manner and a gentle address and wearing a morning coat of black. He speaks little English but imder- stands a good deal. One becomes aware of an astuteness always gloved and groomed underlying his slight aloofness. A slow, comprehending glance of the full brown eyes and a shade of the irony of the man much flattered and whom so many would exploit are also signs of him — the man rich by long heritage exercising suavely the steady pressure of the family rules for growing riches amid a world that would like a share in the golden outcome. There was nothing of the business man that we meet in shop or mart, but do not dream that he is not in business. He was tire- less in entertaining us, furnishing as much to consider carefully in himself as the marvels of his home of many rooms and many gardens. His philanthropies are princely. His elder brother. Baron Hachirojiro Mitsui, taller, grey- haired, grey-moustached, pallid with ruby-tinted nose, and a nervous manner, also a factor in the Mitsui interests and met elsewhere, bore yet some likeness to his brother as if to emphasize the difference. Allied to the Mitsui family in the banking relation was one very potent figure I met — ^Mr. S. Hayakawa, manager of the banking department of the Mitsui Company. He was one of the earlier of the nouveaux riches, now so numer- ous that they have found a nickname for them correspond- ing to that of our bonanza kings of the seventies and eighties. This forcible, self-made, fore-handed man of aff9,irs, betokened level-headed energy, taking firm hold of 274 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the conservative Mitsui millions and making them drive new engines for propagating industry and enterprise and so breeding new millions where they had only been the culture ground of meagre thousands — a phenomenon of our civilization well known to the United States, but interesting as a fresh fruit of Japan's old soil. He was the earliest promoter of the idea that American and Japanese enter- prise might be yoked in China. Stout-bodied, a man of strong appetites, with a broad, full face and a heavy tread, he brushed ahead with something of a rumble like a great machine. His sources of personal gain were many: his salary was said to be one hundred thousand yen, the largest in Japan. And he had reached out for all the pomp and circumstance that go with wealth. His Tokyo home is a fairy tale. Buying a large slice of land (about the size of a city block) in the heart of Tokyo cumbered with old houses, stables, what not, he developed with the aid of architects, art-gardeners, builders and electricians a plan for a great residence surrounded by a great garden. "Did I have a central idea?" he said. "Yes, I did. I had bought the great wall pictures of the artist, Togan, who flourished two hundred years ago, and I built the house to hold them." The fairy story lay in the fact that his votive idea had been formed but five years before. And as I entered it at nightfall, the illuminated house and gardens twinkling with stars of light from the stone lanterns amid the greenery and backed by a hillock crowned with lofty forest trees, might have been far out in the country and had all the look of an estate a century old. What it cost? The miracle, the fairy tale, lay in its being done at all. And the Togan pictures did cover wall after wall with that peak and slope and valley and waterfall scenery which we take to be a bad dream, an artistic nightmare of volcanic lands until one has seen the real thing looking out of a car window as your express train darts through the moun- SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 275 tain lands of Japan. In the pictures they are "arranged" : that is all. It was all not to be classed as the mania for grandeur, but a middle-age dream come true. The banker had called the notabilities of Tokyo to his board which for viands and service might have been that of the Cafe Riche or Delmonico's. It was not merely that he had improvised a palace and an outdoor paradise, with the guests of an Emperor to entertain a foreigner, but that he had im- provised himself. There were four other individualities whom I encoun- tered at various turns of my pilgrimage who deserve mention as salient types. The most outstanding was Viscount Kentaro Kaneko, a brilliant, nay scintillating little man with piercing black eyes, of perfect English and a born mental adroitness. To this a Harvard education and a residence abroad had added much. He had held high office and though of an old samurai family bore him- self with democratic cordiality and a sense of humour be- yond most Japanese. With much of his quality but of entirely different type was Dr. Soyeda, a man of bril- liant parts and refined literary tastes. He had not been successful as a banker, but made a vigorous head of the government railways. Any one would welcome his cour- tesy and any American would rejoice to find in him as in Viscount Kaneko so thoroughgoing a friend of America. Then there was Buyei Nakano, the president of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, friend ambulant of foreign visitors, and holding the keys of a score of means for pro- moting the public good. As is sometimes the case with the Japanese who are generally almost white of skin, though we call them brown, Buyei is dark-skinned, full-eyed, full- faced and on the whole not a beauty. But for kindliness of nature, sweetness of smile, readiness to serve, breadth and depth of information, his better is not to be found any- where. I came within reach of his good offices simply 276 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND because he opened his eyes and saw me. Ye who would know aught of the capital of the Empire, the whole Empire for what I can tell, call upon Buyei Nakano, and he will respond. He has rescued from the roundabout and put upon the straight road of affairs — ^big and little — scores and scores of foreigners wanting to do business in Japan, many of whom had been laboriously set upon the wrong road by the inexpert and the class pretentious of knowledge without possessing it — a large class in this world of ours. Now Dr. Inazo Nitobe is not at all of that type. He holds himself aloof. He is distinguished in bearing, gentle of manner, the scholar and gentleman. As exchange pro- fessor many Americans know him, his clear, learned Eng- lish, his masterly expositions of his country's history and ideals, but to meet him in native dress under his own plum trees in his Japanese-American home in Tokyo, one gets closer to a nature rich in kindliness and steeped in a vast and varied knowledge, but plainly undesirous of the scramble for place and honours a little too common in Japan. He has an American wife whose care of her hus- band, her home and her garden blossoms is as Japanese as can be — a little idolatrous, maybe, doubtless very com- forting, however. The handsomest Japanese man that I met was one of the most learned, to wit. Dr. Kenjiro Yamagawa, president of the Imperial University of Tokyo. At a festive gathering of distinguished men his face attracted me for its fine lines and delicate modelling. His hair was silvering, more's the pity, but it added to the distinction of his face. The gentle expressed itself in his whole carriage and demeanour, and informed his conduct as the inevitable expression of his consciousness, and yet it was he, I learned later, who at a critical time came fierily forward in defence of a professor who had transgressed government orders, because he be- lieve4 the professor to be right and the government wrong. 1. MARQUIS OKUMA, FORMER PRIME MINISTER 2. MR. yUKIO OZAKI, LEADER OF THE CHUSEKAI 3. VISCOUNT KATO, LEADER OF THE KENSEXAI 4. MR. T. TAKETORNI, A LEADER OF THE KENSEKAI 5. MR. K. KARA, LEADER OF THE SEIYUKAI 1. DR. JUICHI SOYEP* 2. ADMIRAL S. URIU 3. MR. BUYEI NAKANO, PRESIDENT CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, TOKYO 4. VISCOUNT KENTARO KANEKO SOME LEADERS OF MEN IN JAPAN 277 In Japan that means tremendous moral courage. And he carried his point. I spent a delightful mornihg with Dr. Yamagawa afterward at the university and with him met Dr. Omori, Japan's great seismologist — a wizard of the physical underworld. I met many generals and admirals expressing concretely the militant vigour of their people. If I may say so, the long applied pressure of iron discipline seemed to have made a type of almost uniform efficiency, a bit repressive of individual saliency. This, as one must know, is a surface seeming only. The story of their three modern wars proves it to be so, but as I was vastly more interested in other than war questions, I was content to let that spectacular matter go by. I did not see or even seek to see the great Admiral Togo. Deeply interested I was in the fighting personalities on the industrial side. On that side the battle for progress, for mastery, knows no halt, no truce, while the soldier appears to be merely an interesting ornament nineteen- twentieths of the time, no matter how hard he works on the drill-ground or in the war college. The most upstanding, all-round industrial leader that I met was, strangely enough, not bred to labour, although expressing in his sturdy person, clear eye, quick, cheerful perception and mental bent, the best type of the workman. This is Kojiro Matsukata, third son of the Marquis Matsu- kata, one of the few survivors of Genro or Elder States- man. Kojiro is now fifty-two and for over twenty years has had charge of the great Kawasaki shipbuilding plant at Kobe, where steel ocean-going steamers and even dread- naughts are now building. Day and night he is "on the job." He follows the detail of every order: he has built up the plant, and plans betterments all. the time — a tireless enthusiast, an optimist. He was educated among the §wells of the Peer's school: studied law an4 was admitted 278 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND to the bar. The Kawasaki concern was in financial diffi- culties, badly managed, unsuccessful in a word. He was sent down from Tokyo something in the guise of a receiver, and soon perceived that he had found himself. He in- quired and studied, wrought and plodded until the business of ironmaster and shipbuilder was his to have and to hold. An open-faced, strong-armed man, he has had many other responsibilities added to his cares. He is a member of the Parliament, runs down to Tokyo for a day to vote or debate and whisks back again. It is as inspiring to meet him as it is to meet Charles M. Schwab, the giant of Bethlehem steel, who did not begin life in any gilt-edged school of Peers at Loretto, Pa., but came to his great steel headship just the same. It is the man and not the binding of the primer that tells. And among these types of achievement why not make mention of a man especially kind to me and sympathetic about my task — ^Matasaku Shiohara. No doubt his interest in me arose entirely from the fact that he is the Japanese partner in the chemical business of my good friend Dr. Jokichi Takamine before mentioned. Nevertheless he stands fairly for the young rising giants of business in Japan. He is barely thirty-seven, but has climbed on sheer ability to be the head of a chemical concern national in its scope from decent but humble beginnings. The outbreak of the European war found him prepared to come to the rescue of the dye trade shut out from its German market. Of gentle bearing and suave manners he has none of the unrest of the eager, beady-eyed little traders whom the uninformed believe to be typical of the business men of Japan. He has moved forward and upward silently, charmingly a man of taste in his surroundings, and, be- lieve me, a remarkable host. And still two typical figures stand out that I must sketch. On the train once from Tokyo to Kamakura a tall, stem, SOME LEADERS OP MEN IN JAPAN 279 white-bearded old gentleman who occupied a seat rather grimly apart, attracted my attention. He sat bolt upright on a rug that in Japanese fashion he had spread for him- self on the seat. No one encroached on this sacred space : indeed the travellers gave him as wide a berth as possible — a sign of respect. No one addressed him, but all seemed to know him. You have seen faces giving the impression that the owner lives in a state of perpetual anger and chronic defiance and from whom an explosion of rage and cutting speech might be provoked at the slightest jar. The old gentleman's face and figure fascinated me. A samurai of the samurai, a Japanese Don Quixote, I thought, as he gazed straight ahead of him, seeing nobody, looking into the realms where thoughts are at a never-ending Walhalla battle. Arrived at Kamakura, he arose, a red-cap seized his slight belongings and he passed out receiving the dis- creet salutations from all sides with what seemed a faint smile. So, in a rickisha he was trundled off. Who was he? My companion at once became voluble. He was Tamotsu Murata whose overwhelming speech in the House of Peers had fired the bomb of indignation that blew the Yamomoto ministry to pieces a few months before. There had been rumblings everywhere in the streets, in the press, over the navy scandals, but nobody in the great parties moved to put the incriminated party out : they all hesitated. One of the appointed members of the Upper House, a soli- tary among the parties, but filled with the fire of Bushido, he rose without warning, and made a speech that shook the country. A masterpiece of invective it was, yet all declare so couched in lofty courtesy that no one could except to the form whatever they thought of the charges he made. The House fairly thrilled as he pointed his long, bony fingei; at a minister and said : ' ' They are saying everywhere that you are a thief, what answer have you to make to it?" As he sat down he announced his resignation of his seat among 280 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the Peers — thus, as explained to me, committing a sort of parliamentary hara-kiri — the sign of ultimate devotion. Grim, stern, upright, he looked the part, — a notable figure anywhere. And now Puruya. Strong, stout, of middle height, large- headed, in his mid-thirties, commend me to Furuya. There are legions like him in Tokyo, apt men of affairs, enjojdng life with gusto. He is a wholesale tea dealer and otherwise a wide-awake capitalist, and you may meet him in Kyoto or Siduoka as well as in Tokyo or haply in South Street, New York, for he travels and talks of tea in tons in English as well as in Japanese. His distinction is in his smile. On the face of man I have never seen anything so suave, so infectious, so compelling. It must pain him to look sad. Serious he tries to be and does his sums in yens and doUars with that contraction of the brows all arithmeticians use, but when he sets down the first figure of the answer, a smile dawns in a dimple, it affects the eyes, wrinkling the skin around them. At the second figure the corners of his mouth rise, at the third his cheeks fill out, and from that on it is a roar. His hearty laugh, his expansive smile, go with me, and I say how he must charm and cheer the ladies. What buyer could resist his tale of tea. The chronicle of his face during the telling of a joke would be an Iliad of merriment. Certainly I like better to think of Furuya than Murata. CHAPTER XIX PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN A history not thirty years old — The limit of ministerial responsi- bility — The Imperial Rescript — Three illustrative episodes — Yamomoto's fall — Rise and fall of Okuma — The rise of Terauchi — No so-called conservatives — Differing shades of liberals and progressives — A scene in Parliament — The elections — Growth of a Conservative party, the Seiyukai. Japan's parliamentary history covers so short a space of time — ^not a third of a century — ^that its rules and regula- tions have not hardened into granitic inviolability, and its precedents are not absolute guides to its courses of action. On the whole, however, it has done well, and built up safely, making it absolutely certain that there will be no backward step in representative government in Japan. It must be remembered that actually as well as technically the Parliament was established by Imperial Rescript: that, however compelling the motive was, and however much the Emperor was aided and guided by the wisest in Japan, the creation of a Parliament as it stands was his act. It was not at all a polite fiction that it came from above to the people. It was recognized by them as an act of grace, and not the registering of a popular right. This should be kept in view because it is important in understanding the suc- ceeding phases of Japanese parliamentary history. While, for instance, the Meiji Rescript authorizes Parliament to pass laws, the date of their promulgation is reserved to the Emperor. Should the Parliament fail to pass the ministerial budget, the budget of the year before would 281 282 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND apply — a plain proviso against a hostile Parliament. While the Parliament may defeat the ministerial proposals it cannot oust the ministry. The Prime Minister is ap- pointed by the Crown, generally with the advice of the Genro or Elder Statesmen, a group of veteran counsellors not recognized in any law, but grown by mere survival and personal choice of the Emperor to be the most powerful influence in Japan. As far as possible they are kept in the background for they function only in extreme eases. Their work has lately been in evidence in a marked degree, and illustrates accurately wherein Japan is still in the rear of pure representative government while greatly advanced for an Asiatic power. The ministry stands between two powers. If a Parliament cannot oust them it can make their life a misery and their functioning all but an im- possibility. If they please a parliamentary majority they must beware of displeasing the Genro. Hence with burn- ing questions succeeding each other the lives of ministries tend to be short between the two horns of their dilemma. Still it is the great adventure in Japanese politics, and the daring and the ambitious are a plentiful crop in Japan. There is always somebody willing to try his hand at the Premiership and pick a Cabinet that he hopes will hold water. Since 1890 there have been sixteen ministries, Prince Ito, the father of Japan's parliamentary formation, heading four of them, Prince Katsura three and Count (now Marquis) Okuma, two. Illustrative of conditions that govern in the premierships, going no farther back than 1913 one finds the ministry of Baron Yamomoto in power with a safe majority in the Lower House and excellent support from the Upper. Suddenly a scandal breaks out involving the honour of high navy officials who had accepted bribes from a German source. Yamomoto who had been a distinguished admiral suffered deeply from this wound, and amid general condemnation he resigned. Now mark. PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 283 Parliament having no voice in the appointment of a suc- cessor waited for a nomination. Prince Tokugawa was of- fered the post but declined. For quite a while no one whom the Genro approved would accept. At length some one thought of Count Okuma who had been Premier but was long out of politics — a forceful man. Nothing loath, he accepted, exacting some certainty of support in the Upper House and taking his chance with the Lower, but having no party backing of his own. He got together a pretty strong cabinet, omitting any member of the Seiyukai party which had stood back of Yamomoto. It was a hard fight for a year, scraping together at last a composite following in the Lower House. Certain bills were passed by leave of the opposition, but at length he reached an impasse. The House refused to pass the law adding two divisions to the army. This had long been a bone of contention. Parliaments which would pass anything for the navy had upset ministries rather than grant this to the army. Count Okuma dissolved Parliament, and "went to the country;" result, the election of a majority in his favour, his enemies the Seiyukai re-entering sadly shorn in numbers. Here we see the choice of the Genro (with the advantage of being the dispenser of much patronage) winning out against the hostile majority that faced him at the start. But Count Okuma 's day to fall was coming. He passed the army bUl, but a scandal arose about bribing some members to secure votes for it, and involving a member of his Cabinet. A clamour went up from the Seiyukai that he should resign. Soon the Genro began to hold the same view. They said they did not like the cut of his Chinese policy. The Count was old (only seventy-nine) and he bethought himself of using that as his plea for getting out, planning at the same time to seat his right-hand man. Viscount Kato — a statesman of great ability and Foreign Minister — in the Premiership from which he was retiring. At the last no secret was made 284 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of Count Okuma's plan. His supporters in the popular branch had come together — Doshikai, Chusekai and others and formed a new overmastering party with a sweeping majority, calling itself the Kensekai. No loquacious mon- arch enjoying apparently the admiration of his people, the support of his Parliament, could have prepared a more touching program for a retirement. He could go out and be the grand old man in verity, enjoy his life without worry, and yet be always at hand to give his successor a hint when necessary. It was a curious mixture of the wily — and the naive. In due time, suiting himself as to dates, he repaired to the palace, and at a formal court audience placed his resignation in the hands of the young Emperor, adding what no Premier had ever undertaken to add before, a strong hope and ardent recommendation that Viscount Kato be named by His Majesty as his successor. Frost ! The Emperor smiled the true diplomatic smile and accepted the resignation. The veteran statesman of half a century of service made the proper obeisance and with- drew, forcing an optimistic smile amid the zero atmosphere that he found on every side. The Genro had been busy. Prince Yamagata its most influential member remained inscrutable, but in a few days announcement came from the palace that the Emperor had called upon Marquis Terauchi, for six years Governor General of Korea, and before that a great minister of war and the type of the military bureaucracy and the Choshu elan, to take the post of Prime Minister. Uproar! What? Appoint a parliamentary outsider, a military bureaucrat to this place of places, and expect him to be supported? Well, they would see about it. Those who had the good fortune to know Marquis Terauchi and his splendid work did not share the tremor of unrest that fan through Japan. If the moment of the Okuma resignation had been skilfully chosen, it suited the incoming administration just as well. PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 285 The Kensekai had drawn the budget, and would scarcely be in a position to overthrow it. The new Premier could just present himself to Parliament, and take the adjourn- ment usual at that time of the year, practically choosing his own time for beginning his real battle for supremacy in the Parliament. Meanwhile he had gathered a strong min- istry — ^Baron Motono for Foreign Affairs and Baron Goto for the Home Office heading them. And here one may note how rich Japan is today in men of skill, experience and calibre for the high official posts. At last the Terauchi ministry faced the Parliament. Th^ buttons were off the foils in an instant, the House thrilling with excitement, Viscount Kato, so flatly rejected by the Emperor, sitting grim, spectacled and implacable with the serried ranks of the Kensekai behind him, Mr. Ozaki, the ex-Minister of Justice, full to his eloquent lips of a scathing speech he had ready and his fine eyes dilating with the prospect of the fray. Scarcely could the ministry present themselves before it was plain that a smashing vote of want of confidence was about to be put and passed out of hand. It was a time for quick action and it came. Before Ozaki could open his lips, a messenger from the Premier arrived with an order dissolving the Parliament. The coup, while not altogether unexpected, startled Japan. Now mark once more what happened. Months should elapse before the new elections. Premier Terauchi had time to make plain that his was to be no fire-eating ministry: that his upbuilding work in Korea was to be the type of his government and not a militaristic adventure. Strong man he would remain and utterly without the volatile quality of his predecessor, but when a nation is at war in the greatest war of the world, it was seen that his strength,, efficiency and balance would be desirable factors. A new and friendly face to China could be better shown by such a man than by those who had preceded him. Of course the actual government as in 286 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Okuma's case has a power of attraction, but the electorate judged the matter for itself. Suffice it to say that Terauchi w6n the election. The Seiyukai to whom he had allied himself gained strength, the Kensekai for all its skilful upbuilding and grasp on power under the lead of Viscount Kato fell apart. Terauchi 's victory was complete. The three recent episodes here hastily sketched of the fall of Yamomoto, the rise and fall of Okuma, and the rise of Terauchi, intelligently studied, give one a clear insight into the relations between the people, the Parliament and the Crown in Japan. I have naturally omitted minor con- siderations. The limitation of popular power is plain, but in the instances, however briefly described, one can surely detect also a salutary force of national wisdom at work keeping progress linked to moderation in a broad immut- able policy, and, one may hope, all for the best. It should be clearly borne in mind that the Emperor's personality does not enter at all into the dialectics of the hour in such contests as I have sketched. In Japan's abounding loyalty of today that is held sacred and apart. The conflict is between the Bureaucracy and the Parliament as expressive of the popular will, and despite the effulgency and strength of the present ministry, and the fairly merited success of its plans and policy, the development tends to the advance in concrete shape of the phases of the popular will, how- ever slowly. "Which is the Conservative and which the Liberal party?" I asked of a Japanese friend in Tokyo — a man particularly wise in things political but not at all versed in things economic in Japan or anywhere else. "They are all Liberal," he said with an enigmatic smile and an outward wave of the hand. And then he explained : Japan came out of the political darkness of the shogun era in 1868, really as the outcome of a revolt of the daimios PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 287 or feudal lords against the Tokugawa shogunate, but the people who had been tasting the wine of educational enter- prise and imbibing the spirit of Western industrialism, following on the opening of Japan to Occidental trade in 1853 by Commodore Perry, faced definitely forward. The young Emperor had been brought by the revolution that overthrew the Tokugawa shogun from Kyoto, the old capital, to Tokyo, the new capital. All Japan felt not only that it had found in the Emperor a great progressive leader, but that henceforth the whole people was to take its share in the details of the government. There were no conser- vatives in evidence. Those who held to any of the old political beliefs and feudal order of things advisedly held their peace as the advancing wave of liberalism broke over their heads. Much, however, had to be accomplished, some reactions were to follow and to be put down, before matters were in shape for the beginning of true representative govern- ment. The Emperor in 1868 had proclaimed on oath the five principles by which his government would be guided — the Magna Charta of Japan. They included 1. An assembly widely convoked to discuss impartially and decide all affairs of state. 2. Administrative matters to be conducted by co-opera- tion of governing and governed. 3. All the people — officials, soldiers and the rest — to be won from idleness and discontent and encouraged to achieve their legitimate desires. 4. Absurd old Usages to be abandoned and righteousness to rule. 5. Knowledge and learning to be sought the world over, and thus greatly strengthen the imperial polity. So in 1869 an assembly of notables met. It did not accomplish much, but discussed a great many things and was indefipitely prorogued in 1870. The eastern lords or 288 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND daimios rose in arms in opposition to the western daimios. There were small bloody battles, but the Mikado and the western daimios led by the great Satsuma and Choshu clans won decisively. Thenceforth, although a Parliament was still far off, events marched in an ever-broadening path. In 1874 the Saga rebellion broke out and was suppressed. The first assembly, inexpert and visionary, died of inanition in 1873. Meanwhile certain great reforms had been accom- plished and advances made. Among them were the aboli- tion of feudalism by buying out the landed lords, who surrendered their vast estates for government bonds — and took "Western" titles corresponding to their former rating as daimios, namely, prince, marquis, count, viscount and baron, the abolition of the samurai sword-bearing custom and the beginning of railroad building. A group of able statesmen, and an assembly of pref ectural governors formed the government under the Emperor. In 1877 the great reactionary rebellion broke out, and it took seven months of fighting to bring the insurgent samurai of Satsuma to their knees before the rifles of the young commoners of Japan. This victory for the Emperor is as the second starting point of the revolution. It left the nobles of the great western clans, grouped under the "Satsu-Cho" (Satsuma and Choshu) banner in the seats of power and command, forming the basis of the bureaucracy which endures entrenched and formidable to this day, but it also opened the way for an agitation for a true constitu- tional government. With many setbacks, investigations and delays this agitation triumphed in 1889 in the adoption by the Emperor of the present Constitution. It had been drawn up by a group of statesmen headed by the Premier, Prince Ito, a group of nobles and the Emperor himself, whose assent sealed its authority. It provided for a Par- liament somewhat on the English style — a House of Lords and a House of Representatives, to make laws, a Cabinet to PAELIAMBNT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 289 carry on the government, a Privy Council to advise the Emperor. It was not until 1890 that the first Parliament convened, so that although Japan had restored its Emperor to power in 1868, twenty-two years had to elapse before it opened a Parliament, and that was only twenty-seven years ago. Nor in measuring Japan's government should it be assumed that the Parliament is supreme or that the life of the Cabinet is wholly dependent, as in England, on com- manding a majority of the Lower House. The passage of laws is, as I have said, in the hands of the Parliament but their promulgation is at the will of the Emperor, who prob- ably acts finally on the advice of the Privy Council and Elder Statesmen. Nevertheless matters, I believe, are slowly but surely moving toward full parliamentary con- trol, although a setback now and then wiU for awhile stand in the way. The Constitution makers in designing the House of Peers put all the naturally conservative elements into it, assuming doubtless that it was necessary to place a vigorous check on the popular branch whose trend would be to encroach perpetually on the powers reserved to the monarchy. Its composition shows this. It has three hundred and seventy- nine members, as follows: twelve princes of the blood imperial, fourteen princes, thirty-four marquises all by right of birth, seventeen counts, seventy viscounts, sixty- three barons, the three latter classes elected every seven years by their respective orders, one hundred and twenty- two imperial nominees, including forty peers appointed for life by the Emperor and forty-five highest taxpayers, one in each prefecture, elected for seven years by the taxpayers themselves. Conservatism is plainly painted on every one of these groups. The nominees imperially appointed con- sist of a dozen former ministers, as many vice ministers, thirty ex-offlcials and among the remaining men of 290 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND eminence, seven scholars, eight scientists, seven lawyers, five educationalists, ten journalists, one banker and so on. These exalted commoners while they "leaven the lump" with the finer products of modern mentality, do not sug- gest a group likely to contain radicals of violent progres- sives. This is even truer of the highest taxpayers, who doubtless believe in their hearts that the rich pay taxes enough as it is. And they do pay much. Another thing to be observed is that the Japanese House of Lords unlike the English House does not stand for landed interests. The nobles, as has been noted, parted with their estates which are now broken up into farms ; the highest taxpayers are not always landowners. The candidate for the Lower House, therefore, appeals to all the interests looking for greater liberalism, greater freedom, greater enterprise, greater indulgence, faster progress, and the mere name of Conservative would damn him beyond recall. If he aspires to represent a city popu- lation he must profess trade extension, graded taxation, industrial initiative. If he hopes that a rural constituency win elect him, he must make farming his god, water-power and river conservation his constant prayer. In any con- stituency he must be a rampant patriot and wave the sun- burst flag of the Empire, its honour and its prestige. What saves him from the uttermost of prostemations before the proletariat is the limitation of the suffrage. For here is a nation obsessed with the idea of change and progress. The old order has largely given place to the new, but there is a deal of the old still clinging to the nation. Devouring knowledge with the appetite born of great hunger and still unsatisfied it fairly worships the new education. Stimu- lated by successes already attained, the urge of higher successes pushes it ceaselessly along. Not an item of foreign progress in any of the callings escapes it. If 'VV'ashin^ori, Lopdon, Pjiris pr Berlin has ?idopted a new > < h u W « P-. w M O PAELIAMBNT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 291 scheme of education or any scientific novelty, all of Japan interested in that particular matter is instantly up and crying out for it. From harbour improvement to new rice seedlings the call for government help goes up unceasing. No room for conservatism in all this: it is simply for the candidate to ask, What brand of liberalism must I advo- cate? Along that line have all the popular parties in the House of Eepresentatives ranged themselves, but the can- didate's personality tells most in Japan. The House of Eepresentatives, which I personally ob- served, and which was dissolved in 1914, was elected in 1912, and had 381 members. They were chosen by 1,503,968 electors out of a population of 53,500,000. The electoral divisions are roughly cast to include a population of 130,000: but the average of qualified voters in each district is only 3,947, or one voter to every thirty-three inhabitants. The voters are males of twenty-five years and over who pay ten yen yearly in taxes, which implies an income of 800 to 1,000 yen, quite a respectable sum in Japan. It unfortunately excludes many men of education from the suffrage. It is still, as one can see, pretty far from manhood not to talk of manhood and womanhood suffrage. For comparison with our own Lower House, it may be said that our 435 members represent each a population of nearly quarter of a million, and the voters in the presi- dential election of 1912 who numbered 15,036,542 out of a population of 98,646,491 were one in every six and a half inhabitants. In a pecuniary way membership in the Japanese Parliament is not very attractive. Election expenses average between 6,000 and 7,000 yen, but may run up to 50,000 or even 60,000 yen. The yearly pay is but 2,000 yen or $1,000 with a free pass over the government railways and travelling expense^. As the elections a.re fgr four 292 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND years, a member may come out a bit ahead of the actual cost to him if the Parliament lasts its full term, but when it lasts only two years, the members face a fresh expense for re-election and only two years' salary to the good. Obviously, then, a man must have other means of support. The lordly allowance of $7,500 to our members of Congress with liberal mileage is the envy of the legislators of the island kingdom. Dark stories are told of corruption among the voters which naturally mean increased expenses. There is a complaint of much apathy among the better off electors and some complaints, among other things, of voters taking money from both candidates, and it is said that much of the opposition to secret voting was due to the impossibility of telling when a voter "stayed bought." With all that, electioneering is vigorously practised. The confusion of the party lines and what they stand for make against a canvass by public meetings, but enforce that personal visitation which would have broken the proud heart of Coriolanus. It is one of the cases in which the women members of the candidate's family are often utilized. I recall one lady, the mother of a candidate in Tokyo, declining to make any purely social engagements until after the election. The praising of neat households, gossip with voters' wives and the petting of voters' babies would take up, she said, all the time she could spare. But candidature is attractive all the same. Few people love display and personal prominence as profoundly as the Japanese. Members of the House have many social privi- leges and all sorts of prominence. The coronation of the young Emperor, Yoshihito, at Kyoto for instance was a great occasion, and the members of the House had a gallant part and front seats, with call for the wearing of dress suits, tall hats and white gloves to their hearts' content and so an animated canvass with all this as a bait dangling iu PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 293 the distance as well as the traditional desire to "save the country" and advance the party, loomed large in the purview of the eager candidates of 1914. Purse strings held religiously tight on other occasions loosened up freely. Mections sometimes lead to rioting as in other countries, but as a rule they pass off in complete quiet. Japan in the throes of a general election does not present the scene of excitement which marks the quadrennial struggle in the United States. The canvass is a more personal and individual one than with us. A feature is the use of thousands and thousands of personally directed postal cards. The leaders hold great rally meetings. The batteries of the party organs keep up a pretty lively fusil- lade of political shrapnel. Most of the greater native papers are, however, independent, those of the largest cir- culation, such as the Tokyo AsaM or Morning Sun with a circulation of 350,000, being strongly nationalistic and avoiding strict party lines. One of the results of the social rearrangements after the Restoration in 1868, was that the landed owner was either a small capitalist or the farmer himself, and not a noble. Thus the Lower House really stands for the land owners and farming interests just as our own Lower House does for the farmers of America. With such a large proportion of the people engaged in agriculture it should not be sur- prising to find eighty farmers among the members. In appearance, manner and dress there is little to distinguish them outwardly from the lawyers, journalists, business men, traders, bankers, manufacturers and so on who con- stitute the remaining 301, but they naturally have few orators. A consequence of this large farmer representation is the excessive care taken by the government of all things agricultural. Such a number of experimental stations, of investigating bureaus, of promotive offices for the cultiva- 294 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND tion of this, that and the other! Blessed, indeed, in the estimation of the rural voters is he who discovers a reason for a new agricultural bureau. The House sits about three months of the year. It assembles every other day, committee work occupying the off days. The members work fairly conscientiously, and are solid, thoughtful-looking men with that tendency to the panache which is a weakness of the public man the world over. On opening day the members gather in full dress to receive His Majesty, the Emperor, or the august repre- sentative who takes his place. On ordinary days many of the members walk to the House — ^the nation still loves walking — ^but on a full dress day they come mostly in rickishas, with a few in carriages and one or two in automo- biles. It makes a most unusual sight to see the nearly four hundred rickishas coming in with the little jog-trot of the kuruma men in their mushroom hats, dominated by the tall silk hats of the proud members, very grand beside in black coats, open shirt fronts and white ties. Fondly have their devoted wives dwelt over the details of this gala appearance, the household coyly assembling to see the head of the house depart in such state. Very erect they sit as they are whirled along in the handy little vehicles, some of them wearing white gloves. The diplomatic corps add to the distinction of this assembling, their carriages bowling along with a shouting of the footman who runs ahead through crowded thoroughfares — a real footman — ^to swing aboard again with surprising agility when there is less of a crowd in the streets. The ministers and vice ministers as well as the legation people wear grand uniforms with gold lace and cocked-hats, so that the whole turnout is exhil- arating. On ordinary occasions the members wear Japanese or Occidental dress at will, and for my part I think the native costume far more dignified— Koman senator-like— PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 295 than the gala costume of Europe or America — for delib- erative occasions. The legislative chambers of the Houses are large and lofty, with an amphitheatric arrangement of the members' desks and seats, facing the speaker, and with galleries on three sides, those for the public at either end, the diplomatic galleries and a woman's gallery along the side in front of the tribune. On the continental plan, the orator stands on a tribune under the speaker. Four stenographers sit at green-topped tables under the orator. Still lower are desks for Ministers. On the occasion of voting the appropriation for the funeral of the Empress Dowager, for which a brief extra session was called, t had the honour of an invitation to be present in the diplomatic gallery. The ticket bore my name with the information that if I came in Japanese dresj I should wear a haori (or light over-garment) and a hakama (or combination of vest and apron) over the kimono — these three constituting Japanese ceremonial dress: if otherwise — in Occidental dress. Visitors must carry no cane or umbrella: must make no criticism. It appears that once a visitor in one of the galleries threw an egg at an orator, and ever since *he ordinary native visitor is deftly and gently but surely "frisked" for firearms or projectiles. This latter is omitted in the case of foreigners. At any rate the gatekeeper asked of me no more than a visiting card. We were conducted upstairs to the gallery where seats were politely found for our party. The public galleries were packed with men in Japanese dress sitting quite stUl. The women's gallery was also quite full, but a little hum of talk twittered from it. Tickets from members are necessary for the public galleries. At precisely one o'clock a bell-ringer went around the corridors outside the chamber ringing his bell, and the members came thronging in until the place was fiUed. As 296 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND each member took his seat, he laid hands on a little squared, black-lacquered post about ten inches high which was lying flat on his desk, and on which his name appeared in white ideographs on three sides. He placed the post on end as a signal that there he was. The speaker took his seat. Proceedings were brief. The speaker announced the imperial order for the extra session. The Finance Minister arose, decorously regretted the passing of the Empress and read the bill. Count Okuma, the Prime Minister, now took the tribune. He made a striking figure. Tall he seemed as he stepped into the tribune — tall and gaunt, close-shaven and almost bald, with clear-cut features over which the fine, ivory-white skin was drawn like parchment. He glanced around with dark fiery eyes. He was seventy-seven years old but might, from his alertness of bearing and erectness of carriage, be fifteen years younger ; he halts in his sturdy gait because of the loss of a leg some twenty years back at the hands of a would-be assassin. Japanese modern history is all too thickly sprinkled with these homicidal fanatics who apparently spring up now in all lands at the beck of the demons of prejudice and ambition. The Count's gestures were not many and his address was short but full of feeling. He speaks with the greatest freedom. The face in all is now seen to be boldly modelled, the forehead good, the nose unusually long and thin for a Japanese. His high cheek-bones make declivities around them. His mouth is mobile, and he uses his lips in talking more than most Orientals. His tribute to the Great Lady was delivered with feeling and there was some applause as he ended. The vote was then taken, nem. con. and the sitting was over; time 1.15 p.m. The scene was repeated in the House of Lords. The appropriation called for 600,000 yen, or $300,000. Interest of course turns on the standing of the parties. I have shown why it is that all the parties in the Lower PARLIAMENT AND POLITICS IN JAPAN 297 House are liberals and progressives. It remains to be said, however, that a Conservative party is really in process of formation, and wiU be found bound up with the fortunes of the Seiyukai which held the majority at the time of the dissolution, after which it sank to a poor second in the Okuma election, but rose to something of its commanding position in the election of 1917 which firmly seated Marquis Terauchi. The Seiyukai, literally "Association of Political Friends" was formed in 1900 by the late Prince Ito, altogether the greatest of Japan's political leaders under the present regime. As permanent power in Japanese politics has always lain on the side of the bureaucracy the leader formed an alliance with them. They were thus doubly protected, first by their numbers and second by an understanding with leading groups in the House of Peers. With varying fortunes they seemed to reach the apex in the election of 1912 when they returned 206 members out of a total of 381. Now the bureaucracy, as reflecting the affiliations of the Satsuma clan, were ardent supporters of big navy estimates as against those for the army, and claimed the allegiance of the highest naval officers. When, therefore, it became known that corruption and bribe- taking figured in naval circles, the popular outcry of wounded pride and nation-wide indignation included the Seiyukai in its denunciations. The Yamamoto ministry was, as I have earlier noted, forced to resign, and, in spite of its numbers, the Seiyukai trembled on the verge of a break-up. It was this moral weakness that allowed Count Okuma to rule with a minority, made up of heterogenous elements. The leadership of the Seiyukai is now in the hands of Mr. Hara, a politician of great vigour and resource. It is largely the party of landed interests and industrial elements, and the bureaucratic support, open or secret, holds it up against the popular call. It has external 298 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND support in strong local parties in some of the large cities. Thus the Tokiwakai which is called the Tokyo Tammany supports the Seiyukai. It will be seen, therefore, that the Seiyukai stands generally for things as they were, and in a nation pushing forward on all possible lines that is not likely to be permanently attractive, outside the ranks of those snug in office or outside the ranks of businesses that the olden conditions favoured. In alliance with the Seiyu- kai is the Kokuminto or Nationalist party led by Mr. Inukai — a thoughtful man and a clever politician. The party is an offshoot of the old Shimpoto organization. The Kensekai led by Viscount Kato makes the bulk of the opposition. At the present writing the parties of the Diet are divided as follows: Seijnikai, 160; Kokuminto, 35; Kensekai, 118; Independent, 57. Parties it may be noted in Japan are in most cases the following of a strong man, and a fluctuation in member- ship of groups is the commonplace of politics there. There are always independents who vote as pleases them. CHAPTER XX JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS Her new entry in the world's trade and toil — The nation alive with new industries — The government steel works — The Kawa- saki dockyards — A samurai manager — Dreadnaughts and mer- chant vessels on the stocks — The steamship lines — Great profits from war orders for Russia and the La PoUette shipping law — From debtor to creditor nation — Cotton spin- ning and cotton cloths — The great profits and the workers iu the factories — Great pottery works — How American capital may find investments in Japan — The resident foreigner and the native business man. "There is a new Japan, the Japan of industry and com- merce, pushing for success in manufacturing and marketing at first hand abroad." This sentence was that of Baron Taka-akira Kato, then Foreign Minister of Japan, in the course of a long talk in his large parlour at the Foreign Office in Tokyo. He is of imposing personality, speaks English perfectly, and is one of the most distinguished of Japanese diplomats. He was Foreign Minister as far back as 1888 and has been Minister to England, Member of Parliament and twice again Foreign Minister before taking up the Foreign Portfolio under the ministry of Count Okuma. His fall from power and place to take up the leadership of his party in Parliament when the Terauchi ministry arrived is noted elsewhere. In office or out of it, he is one of the best heads in Japan. The Baron had been discussing Japanese relations with the United States, and making those renewed assurances 300 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of good will to our country which are the basic note in all such conversations. He had regretted that there was any troublesome question between us and trusted that a way would be found — ^that America would find a way — to treat Japanese subjects in all things on the level which her treaties called for, and to which in the scale of nations and the pitch of civilization they were surely entitled. He had said that self-interest in Japan called for the olden friendship with the United States, because in its advance it needed that fine friendship more than ever. "What advance?" I had asked. "There is a new Japan, the Japan of industry and commerce, pushing for success in manufacturing and marketing at first hand abroad, ' ' he answered. In other words he said: Japan is going in for big busi- ness and needs peace and comity to work out her destiny. And it is this sense of a new economic departure that I found among the most outstanding things in Japan. She has been arming herself in schools at home and abroad with the weapons of learning; she has been studying Western business technique at the busiest of the great cities. New York, Paris, London, Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Barcelona. You will find graduates of them all today in Tokyo banks and business houses. Alongside this she has had an army of students and workers learning the minor and higher secrets of manu- facture on a large scale in iron and steel, cotton, wool, silk, pottery, tobacco, at the best seats of those industries all over the working world. She has set up mills, furnaces and factories of all kinds. She is building large steel ships, large engines and djTiamos; in fact it is hard to recount the variety of big things industrial that she is at work upon, either in full operation or vigorously attempting. Her main market, too, for these manufactured products is close at hand, namely, China, India and, since the war JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 301 began making its tremendous calls, Siberia and Russia — a continent almost in themselves. For these new and large enterprises she lacked sufficing capital at the time of the Kato interview and where else should she look for it than in the country that paid her so many millions yearly for her raw silk, her rice, her green tea? And in these latter we have seen how strenuously she is trying to enlarge her output and better her qualities. Here is ambition, clear and intelligible in its direction and intensity. One remembers how recent is all this as the lives of nations go. Ilj seems difficult to realize that up to sixty years ago she was a self-declared hermit nation. A self- contained unit, practically without dealings in the outside world. What foreign commerce she had was carried in foreign bottoms and laid down at her doors. She was served, as it were, by great international pedlars who spread out their packs at Yokohama and Kobe. Now she is for making her own goods, raising or buying her raw materials and, pack on back, entering the race for trade. She has been through the great gruelling of foreign wars. She is taking big business for her own. One may be a bit sceptical as to her complete mastery of all the moves on the business chessboard: she confesses when pushed that she does not quite know it all, but, as Horace Greeley used to say of the resumption of specie payments after the Civil War, "the way to resume is to resume," and she is striking out boldly. If her baggage is too light to furnish her with all the raiment necessary she can get what she needs en route. Since my talk with Baron Katoi the big war has come upon the world. It was not in Japan's purview nor any- body's outside possibly the German Kaiser's; but her being drawn into it was( unwelcome to her statesmen, although the extent to which it involved her was limited and the 302 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND opportunity beyond a great one. Her operations at Kiao- chow did not strain her greatly, and their result will help her in greater measure by giving her the chance to take over much of the former German trade in China to herself. Parenthetically I may say that some will smile at my statement that Japan had no foreshadowing of the big war. I find in my diary a rather long memorandum of a talk I had in May, 1914, with Count Okuma, the grand old man of Japan, at his spacious home in Tokyo. We were discussing the contrast of riches and poverty in various countries. He was fearing that Japan's happy condition would be sadly modified in the great race for industrial wealth. "Atop of that," said he, "we have to maintain a large army and navy to protect ourselves because stronger and richer nations of Europe and America are now increasing their armaments in spite of peace movements and humani- tarianism. I do not know why, but Germany has decided to increase its already enormous army, and Russia has also recently decided to make provisions for bringing 5,000,000 men to the front in time of war. What is your idea in the United States of increasing your navy when you are so rich and strong already ? If it is a burden on rich people like you it is ten times worse for a people like Japan. How- ever, I think the time is fast approaching when the civilized nations will stop this absurd competition." Well, there was an answer to the Count's conundrum fast approaching, which was anything but a peaceful one. The Count, however, had unwittingly laid his finger on the point near thq Rhine where the war initiative would lie. To proceed. In my travels I had more than a peep at what Japan was and is doing in the way of promoting big business in a land of the smallest retail imaginable. A visit to the imperial government steel works at Wakamatsu, on the coast some eight miles from Moji in Kyiushu, was JAPAN AND BIG BUSJjSTESS 303 illuminating. Here was a great plant recalling the giant steel and iron plants of the old world, built up in the space of some thirty years from nothing. It is always well to remember that positive absence of big works at go recent a date. Its advance during its existence has been gradual. Today the works cover 350 acres and employ 9,000 work- men. The town of Yawata, of 45,000 inhabitants, lives upon it. To connect its various shops, mills and docks, it has fifty-eight miles of narrow gauge railroad. The works are exteriorly imposing, and they conduct all the processes of iron and steel making from the ore to the finished product, making their own coke — 750 tons a week — ^from their own coal, saving and working over the tar, gas, naphthaline and ammonia sulphate; making be- sides their own electricity from their own dynamos. The slag from their iron ore they make into bricks and archi- tectural forms. They could build you a house or a factory of steel frame and slag bricks and forms without going outside their boundaries. The structures include blast furnaces, open hearth, Bessemer and crucible steel furnaces, rolling mills, rail mills, bar mills, plate mills, sheet mill, galvanized sheet mill, wire rod and wire drawing mills, forging plant, foundries, pattern shops, electric power, lighting and so on. They drew a charge from a blast furnace for our benefit, the molten iron running into huge buckets to be drawn away by locomotives as soon as filled. Then a steel charge was drawn elsewhere running into ingots. We tramped through rolling mills, plate mills, wire mills, all well equipped, all manned by Japanese all work- ing at speed. It is surely a busy 350 acres. The most pic- turesque thing we saw was the briekmaking. Here the machine work was limited to the pug mill and grinding and mixing of the slag. Th^ rest was hand labour done jnostly by women. 304 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND The ratio of factory female labour to male throughout Japan is sixty-five to thirty-five per cent. — two to one. Here were 300 girls at work. They stood waist-high in a brick-lined trench making the grey bricks by hand. It called for muscular power, but the girls — a good looking lot — worked with vim and without perceptible strain. They filled the wooden moulds, tamped them, smoothed top and bottom, took the wet bricks on their flat wooden knives and laid them on boards behind them, as if they were sugar-coated cakes. Bach girl makes 350 bricks daily. Youths carry away the bricks to dry. It was somehow a cheering sight as all outdoor labour by women seemed to me in Japan. The women belonged to the workmen's families. The yearly output of steel and iron product is consider- able — some 90,000 tons of pig iron — ^but the institution has only lately come to working profitably. Skilled labour has been hard to obtain, but the natives learn quickly. The novelty of it may be guessed from the fact that only government backing could have created the industry. There it is, however, efficient, growing and to grow. The war demand for steel has pushed it far beyond its peace- time capacity. On a different basis, and promising really great results, is the Hokaido Steel Works at Muroran, in which the great English firm of Armstrong & Vickers have taken half the capital of yen 15,000,000, the Mitsui family of Japan taking the other half. There big guns and arms are manufactured with a great variety of other steel products. The iron sand from which the manufacture is largely conducted and the coal are both found on the island. The general lack of iron ore in Japan is a great drawback, but it is obtainable from China, the Imperial Wakamatsu Steel Works having a lease of the famous Taiya (magnetite iron) inioes ill China. Iron sand and iron pyrites abound, and, JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 305 with a certain admixture of iron ore, the iron sand is workable. On a still firmer foundation is the Kawasaki Dock Yard Company at Kobe, which has been a private enterprise from the beginning and now after forty years of existence is building types of the largest warships and merchantmen afloat in Japanese waters, paying dividends of eight per cent, for the previous five years and six per cent, on its debentures. It is not the largest shipbuilding interest in Japan, the Mitsubishi at Nagasaki being perhaps somewhat larger, but it is the one I happened to visit, and that, I take it, is a good excuse for particularizing about it a bit. Its works cover one hundred acres. It has existed under its present organization since 1896, and is a monument to the ability of its manager, Mr. K. Matsukata, as much as to anything else, and is remarkable not only for its steel ships but for its locomotive works, bridge and girder work as well. Eeal progressiveness is the history of a few leading men in Japan as in America. Our steel industry is surely such: Carnegie, Frick, Schwab, Gary, Farrell and a few others made it, as John D. Eockefeller, his brother William and his associates, John D. Archbold, H. M. Flagler and H. H. Eogers, made the petroleum business. Mr. Matsukata is the third son of the marquis of that name, and he commanded his army of 11,800 workmen with a skill, good nature and capacity for work that none of his samurai ancestors could surpass in their narrower field of war. He looks all that he is, an intellectual, open-minded, able-bodied worker of middle age. Educated as a lawyer, he came to the dockyard twenty-two years ago on legal business, was attracted by the great opportunity to do and to achieve, and most of the time since he has been at the head of the concern, having mastered all the details and studied all the developments of the business. It was really a pleasure to have his company on our tour 306 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of the great shops with their scores of great overhead cranes of from two to 125 tons lifting capacity, their fine up-to-date tools whereby high tension or nickel plates six feet broad and two inches thick can be sheared with one stroke, steel plates thirty-eight feet long and two inches thick can be planed at a stroke, or the same plate can be bent. And so of plate punching, straightening. So in boring, turning, riveting, flanging, drilling and what not. It had five shipbuilding stocks to lay keels for vessels up to 35,000 tons, floating cranes up to 200 tons capacity, and all the accompaniments, electrical and other, of a great modern shipyard. Up to a few years ago it got no farther than gunboats and smaller merchantmen, but of late it has gone further. It has launched the Hurano, a battle cruiser of 27,000 tons, and at the time of my visit had a superdreadnaught of 30,000 tons and passenger and cargo steamers up to 12,000 tons on the stocks. We passed through some of the shops during the men's dinner hour, and it was a reminder of home to see the Japanese equivalent of the dinner can in the same lively action with work-stimulated appetite. The manager takes a lively interest in his men. The company has a free night school attended by 1,500 of the men. They raise at once the wages of young men who pass examination in the technics of the business. They keep a force of young men studying abroad — a good thing, for the works as well as the students, depend upon it. They pay a bonus prac- tically on the profit-sharing plan to their ofiice force and chief employees. Here was a specimen of Yankee energy in an Oriental skin. As the railroads of Japan are nationalized — that is, owned and run by the government — they are outside the scope of this article. The mercantile marine is, however, in private hands, receiving, in its foreign-going bottoms, substantial governijient subsidy. The shipping interest of JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 307 Japan is naturally a very large one, the tonnage for the most part being in small sailing and steam craft that run into the hundreds of thousands carrying on the fishing and short transportation on the coasts and between the hun- dreds of islands making up the Empire. In the larger trade, however, four concerns stand out: The Nippon Yusen Kaisha, of which Baron E. Kondo is the president, stands at the head with eighty large steamers and some 50,000 miles of service in coasting and foreign trade, having important runs on the European, American, Yangtse-kiang, Bombay, Australian and South American routes. It had paid ten per cent, dividends for years. The Osaka Shosen Kaisha, of which T. Nakabashi is president, has over one hundred steamers, mostly of mod- erate tonnage. It operates mostly in Asiatic home waters between Japanese ports and to Chinese, Pormosan and Korean ports, with a service to Tacoma via Shanghai and Yokohama. It is paying eight per cent, dividends. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha, of which S. Asano is president, is younger than the other two concerns named. It has run since 1896 a splendid fortnightly service between San Francisco and Yokohama via Honolulu, with calls at other Japanese and Chinese ports to Manila with steamers of 22,000 tons. I sailed to the Orient and returned on dif- ferent steamers of this line, and can testify to the comfort and courtesy I experienced. The four large steamers on this route were then the favourites for the valuable raw silk cargoes which are the apple of the eye of Japan's indus- tries. Since then, one, the CMo Maru, has been wrecked beyond recovery on the coast of China. Their chief officers are American, but one gets a pleasant foretaste of Oriental life in their Japanese crews and Chinese "boys." The company has a South American service also. A sign of the expanding tim?s in Japan is the Toyo 308 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Kisen Kaisha's undertaking of a dockyard with all its out- fittings near Yokohama. A fourth but in a way subsidiary organization is the Japan-China Steamship Company, in which the Yusen and Osaka Shosen, with two other Japanese companies, hold shares. It has a dozen steamers on the Yangtse inland route and pays six per cent, dividends. Two events, the American or La FoUette shipping law which drove our trans-Pacific shipping off the seas, and the opening of the Panama Canal gave the steamship industry of Japan a sudden uplift. The far-sighted Mr. Asano bought all available steamers of large capacity in sight for the Toyo Kisen Kaisha, while ordering what he could get from the home shipyards. Nor were the Nippon Yusen Kaisha and the Osaka line asleep to their great chance. Then came the great impetus given to Japan through all its commercial and industrial fibres by the world-war. Russia called loudly for all the guns and munitions, textiles and foodstuffs that under the highest pressure could be produced, giving almost any price for them. The people responded, and Japan in two years reaped a reward of great richness for the industrial prep- aration she had made with consummate foresight. Great profits ensued. Enterprise was given a mighty fillip, and huge fortunes rolled up. The Narikin or Get-Rich-Quick man was born to Japan and the nation passed out of the debtor clasfe. Every shipyard in Japan is working and expanding and wages rising. The submarine war of Germany has its echoes over there. Germany will face when the war is over two enormously advanced mercantile marines — America's and Japan's. Of the highest promise is the cotton spinning and weaving industry. It is only in the last twelve years that Japan has taken up the spinning of finer yarns and weav- JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 309 ing of finer fabrics. Before that time a widespread home industry and a coarse cloth factory industry supplied the home demand and exported to China, Korea and the South Seas, finer cloths being all imported. Now, however, thirty and more large cotton milla are making better and more uniform grades, operating 2,000,000 spindles and using about 1,000,000 bales of cotton. The industry is immensely profitable, earnings up to thirty per cent, being constantly reported. Cheap and abundant female labour accounts for much of this. I paid a visit to the Kobe mills of the Kanegafuehi Spinning Company. It is a spacious place with many mills for spinning cotton yarns and threads and weaving varie- ties of cotton cloth. It employs 6,500 operatives, and the company, including its Tokyo mills, has a total of 22,500 workers. The mills were all scrupulously dean and a fine sanitary and ventilating system is in force. The machinery is quite modern, and the shops are large and not crowded. System pervades everything, and the products, so far as I examined them, seemed of standard qualities. The operativesi ranged from young girls of thirteen at lighter tasks and shorter hours to young women of twenty- three or twenty-four. They have rooms in which to change their garments before entering the working part of the mills. No girl seemed to have more spindles to attend to than she could serve with ease, but the hours are long. In most mills work is practically continuous, a night force and a day force changing ranks at intervals. The company has large airy dormitories and vast spotless refectories. All the women workers are boarded and lodged by the com- pany. Indeed, there seemed no end of the welfare work, all sorts of leagues for sick benefits, schools of many kinds, lectures, nurseries, recreation halls. We went down to the beach, a quarter of a mile away, and saw a hundred or so of the younger girls splashing to 310 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND their heart's content in the green sea water, having a fine time. The girls, it seems, do not work in the factories for more than three or four years. The pressure must be pretty great and the desire for a freer life becomes irre- sistible. No matter how well guarded they may be, no matter how much care may be taken of their health and their morals, they long to be "back on the farm." The supply does not, however, seem to fall off, as the workers who survive generally go home with money saved, and a little goes a long way in rural Japan. On the whole, however, the system leaves much to be desired. It was surely corporate greed which in peace-time made all-night work take up half the women's time in a year. It doubled the capacity of the plant but it halved the vitality of the workers. No sophistry can overset that. The dormitories did double work like the machines. No chance to really air either the mills or the sleeping rooms. No wonder tubercular disease lifted its hideous white face of sunken cheeks, though these were not paraded. And the wage is so small that an American or even an English factory hand, even a French or German worker would laugh it to scorn. Buti when a corporation wants thirty per cent.! Pottery is another industry with a growing future, not the fine artistic things that collectors value, and which, despite all croakers to the contrary, will continue to be produced in Japan by a devoted few about as they were in the past. The models of Arnold Bennett's Five Towns will generally be followed. I visited small factories in Osaka, where one could well imagine the novelist's stodgy characters at work turning out their stint of product amid dusty, ill-kempt surroundings — ^things for the common market done in a common way. At Nagoya, on the other hand, I went through the large Morimura porcelain factory, where 2,500 hands are em- 1. J. INONYE, YOKOHAMA SPECIE BANK 2. MR. S. HAYAKAWA, OF THE MITSUI BANK 3. BARON H. MITSUI, HEAD OF THE GREAT BANKING HOUSE 4. BARON K. OKURA, PHILANTHROPISTj CAPITALIST AND MAN 01' PROGRESS 5. MR. S. ASANO, OF TKt TOYO KISEN KAISHA 6. BARON E. SHIBUSAWA, A GREAT JAPANESE CAPITALIST JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 311 ployed, who work from 6 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., with time for meals. Perhaps half are young women. We were shown the entire process from the puddling of the kaolin or porcelain clay through the shaping and wheelwork and the baking, glazing and painting. The shops are large and airy, and there is an American air of briskness not usually visible in the crafts work of Japan. A large part of their business is of the smaller order of things for the cheaper grades of porcelain. One order amused me, namely, 1,400 cases of cups and saucers for 700 "ten cent stores" in the United States. Each case contains 300. So that these enterprising merchants of Uncle Sam account for 420,000 cups and saucers from Nagoya every year. What a mighty flood of gossip over the ten-cent tea cups this fact prefigures! They have a large trade with England also in like ware and competed successfully vrith Germany. Modern English shaping machinery is used on a great scale. In the painting department I saw one hundred men, youths and girls painting by hand for the firm. Designs are furnished by special artists. These are outlined in black on paper for them and the patterns are applied over the plaque, plate, cup or vase, wetted and taken off leaving the design outlined on the object. The colour artist then paints on the design in colours, sometimes varying it a little. Some of the plaques were excellent. We also saw the hollow easting in dry plaster moulds. A fluid mixture of kaolin and water is poured into the dry mould, which absorbs the water and attracts the kaolin, which settles in a thin flake on the mould. The water is poured off, and mould and all put in the oven and baked. There is a large dining hall for the workers. The Satsuma ware is in another class. It becomes obvious to the observer that in all businesses where the raw material is freely obtainable and the climatic 312 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND and other conditions are favourable, Japan will more and more tend to larger units of manufacture. It is demanded alike by the energy and ambition of Japan. The great advance by Germany as wholesale manufacturer and exporter since 1870 is pointed to out there as Japan's exempla,r. It is notable that the importance of the Asiatic con- tinent as a trading ground for Japan has grown in the last few years. In 1882 Europe stood at the head, with Asia and America following. In 1899 it was found that these conditions had been reversed, and Asia came first in exports, followed by America and Europe, while in imports Asia was also first, but Europe preceded America. The Asiatic lead has been strengthened of late years in China and British India as well. Another notable thing is the cleverness and push of Japanese trading agents in these countries, where they clashed continually with the German traders, who literally swarmed all over Asia. The hold of England in these markets is very strong, and comparatively ancient, hence a rather haughty indifference to the newcomers, including a few Americans, who have been looking somewhat into the old fields once exclusively supplied by Great Britain. Too much tifRn, tennis and golf, and easy-going methods by the English have given a chance to the livelier peoples. Prance's share has not varied much ; her wares are so much her very own. Japan's push for this Asiatic trade naturally competes with American goods — cotton cloths particularly — among the rest, but American capital can take its share and welcome, as it was explained to me, by combining with the Japanese corporations. They have great advantages in the low wages of Asia — while they remain low. It is not of course to be assumed that mere lowness of wage is all: efficiency counts for a great deal. What strikes me, how- JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 313 ever, in the matter of investments is that they are safest when made by those who best know the conditions of the business looking for capital. I mean that the people to whom the cotton propositions, steel propositions, electric or machinery propositions should first commend themselves are the men of like industries in America. Many of these invitations are distinctly worth while. In a talk with Viscount Mishima, Governor of the Bank of Japan, in my interview with Count Okuma, the Premier, and in talks with Baron Shibusawa, at once perhaps the richest trader and most enterprising man in Japan, with Mr. Hayakawa, director of the Mitsui bank, I detected one note, namely, that American investments in weU-grounded Japanese enterprises would work as potent factors in the much to be desired good understanding between the two countries. They dwelt upon the idea of community of interests from many viewpoints, but always with the idea of consolidating international friendship. Not one of them pointed out any special interest to recommend to my countrymen for investment, but Mr. Hayakawa pointed to several cases in which satisfaction and mutual benefit had followed the investment of American and English brains and money into Japanese concerns. One was the entrance of Armstrong & Vickers into the Muroran steel concern already referred to. Another case was that of the Shibakura Engineering Works, near Tokyo, for supplying electric light and power, in which the American General Electric Company had taken half the capital with immense advantage to all. The Osaka Gas Works was owned largely by American capital. The Fuji Company and others were mentioned. The paper com- panies using wood pulp by doubling their capital had profited greatly, the Oji Paper Mill going from yen 6,000,000 to yen 12,000,000 and doing a splendid business. China, Manchuria, Korea stood open for exploitation. 314 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Many attempts to do business in Japan had been failures, Mr. Hayakawa said, through foreigners taking important proposals to people of no real standing in the Japanese business world. Disappointments often followed fine and liberal offers from abroad because the Japanese men who were consulted could not in the expressive commercial language "swing" the proposition. They wore out the patience of the foreigner by dilatory tactics while they sought support in all quarters to carry out their end of the bargain, finally abandoning it on an excuse — ^not the real one — to the disgust of the would-be investor. Prob- ably the foreigner departed cured of his desire to invest in Japan, when a call in the proper quarter might have resulted far otherwise. Mr. Buyei Nakano, president of the Chamber of Com- merce of Tokyo, who is in touch with all sound business in the Island Empire, is tha sort of man to give or get information on all such points. It is his business, and he carries into it a fund of courtesy and good nature that I, for one, never found to fail. Japan's chief cities spe- cialize in statistics of the openest kind, but foreigners neglect them, relying often on the report of fellow country- men who are not looking for rivals in their own fields. From all the foregoing I deduce this conclusion as very plain to me, that Japan offers a field to American capital and enterprise, those enterprises prospering best where American skill goes with American money. Japan's con- fidence in its own industrial skill is too recent to be entirely well founded; it still needs some guidance though it may not think so. It has now a volume of capital that it did not dream to possess five years ago, but co-operation is the thing desired — ^brains and money with money and brains. Why, one may ask, is not such a movement led by the foreign business men — American and European — in JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 315 Japan? The answer is that some foreign merchants and mannfaeturers of small calibre have found their profit in joining forces with native business men. But in the main the foreigner in business holds himself apart from the Japanese. An old sense of something like amour-propre I discovered among them. It reached back to the modern beginnings of foreign business with Japan. The first crop of resident foreign dealers camped at Kobe or Yokohama or Nagasaki felt themselves immeasurably above the native traders, who scarcely knew the A B C of exchange. To the unscrupulous, the freebooting, the Jeremy Diddlers among the foreign group with their wonderful deceptive "confidence" yarns the Japanese lent a ready ear. From such contact with these scabious gentry grew the stories that we hear of ordinary wine bottles sold for costly curios at outrageous prices — $10 to $50, even, it is said, $500 for fancy liqueur bottles worth at the outside ten cents. These, ensconced in pearl-inlaid and lacquered cabinets of Japanese lords, bought at another advance from the native dealers, made later an indictment against the foreign trader. Consequently, the honest traders of responsible houses found themselves met by every grade of suspicion, and a super-prudence that made business difficult and full of friction. And the native traders, believing to the depth of their immortal souls that there would be merit in "doing" the deceptive foreigner, it became a contest of sharp wits. Later, the foreigners "put over" another on the still really uninformed Japanese based on the lower parity of gold and silver in Japan. The Japanese did not waken to their need of conforming their ratio of silver to gold to that of the rest of the world until the yellow metal seemed about to take its flight altogether from the Land of the Eising Sun. In this the best of the foreigners could not forbear taking a hand. So we had here a situation not 316 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND making for a sense of business brotherhood. Business had, however, to be done, and a modus was reached at last between the best of the foreign traders and the best of the native merchants which functioned fairly well. It was and remains a self-respecting and deliberate method giving mutual credit for substantial honesty. It did not and does not unfortunately call for any marked interchange of social amenities. I have sketched in earlier chapters the factors of language and custom that tend to keep resident foreigners and natives apart, but with the growth of the foreign communities another influence entered, namely, the importation and use of the games, gatherings and insti- tutions — clubs, charities, concerts, amateur theatricals and so on of the older world. A foreign lady or a business man in Yokohama has local interests that take up time and energy outside of business of the same nature that prevails in the homeland. This seals the separateness. I was lunched and dined in that busy burg by Americans without a single Japanese being present, and when the affable mayor, Mr. Ando, entertained me at lunch the contrariwise was the fact. Meanwhile the Japanese had not been idle in learning the ways of foreign trade. In Baron Okura's business school and the high school a race of young business men was educated who took their places later in mart and counting house and that asked no odds of anybody in conducting trade. They soon perceived that the foreign middlemen were not always a necessity, and began reaching out for direct relations with foreign producers and manu- facturers. And, as a last stab at the foreign trader, they began establishing Japanese agencies and branches abroad until nowadays the great Japanese houses do much of their own work all over the world. To the foreigners in Japan this has brought many changes. Agencies took the place of general commission houses in many businesses, and the JAPAN AND BIG BUSINESS 317 foreigner in the ports resented it all in a dull, grey spirit. A significant thing is that the wiser foreign merchants in Yokohama are opening branches in Tokyo. When, there- fore, one hears the long-resident foreigner in Yokohama or Kobe inveigh among his own countrymen against Japanese men and Japanese ways, you have in great part a summary of Japanese business progress more than anything else. Still, trade is trade and if the twenty and thirty-year resi- dents are not likely to be first in reaching out for full co-operation with the Japanese they will follow when the impulse comes from their homelands. Japan desires American friendship on a footing of mutual trust and support in matters outside treaties and formal professions of amity. Her desire in this reaches the pathos of a passion for recognition of her good faith in calling us her friend. She looks to a future of growing acquaintanceship. The leading place she took at the San Francisco fair was really a demonstration of this, but most she hopes for an influx of visitors to Japan with eyes open to opportunities and seeking information at the fountain head. The future of her export trade in manufactures lies largely in China, India, Korea, just as she hopes for larger custom still for her staples in the United States. As these wishes are gratified, her leading men aver, will the clear purpose of her own conception of her mission remove the last vestige of distrust of her in the land of the common people — democratic America; for the Japanese while im- perial in government are, as I have indicated, the most democratic of peoples. CHAPTER XXI JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING Only fifty years of real banking — In the Bank of Japan — The nation's finances — ^Remarkable specialization — Cashier for the government — ^Revenues and expenditure and national debt — The banking system — ^An early American model rejected after a time — Great work of the Yokohama Specie Bank — The Hypothec Agricultural and Industrial Banks — Colonial banks, Ordinary banks, Savings institutions — Thirteen million postal savings depositors — Insurance — The currency — Gold basis^ War profits. Japan's finances after a long period of struggle have entered since a year or so after the outbreak of the great war on a golden period. Profits of enormous amount have poured in upon her, consequent on her activities in sup- plying Russia with munitions of war, foodstuffs and textiles. It has been literally golden reward, for her bankers have reached out for all the actual gold they could obtain, which is on the whole questionable policy in the long run. Her bankers, however, are able men. If their minor methods seem at bit antiquated, they only seem so from the standpoint of a banking world making rapid changes to meet the increased impetus of modern business. When Japan first came into the bank parlour about fifty years ago she entered with something of awe and carrying her little Chinese abacus or counting-frame, with buttons sliding on wires, under her arm. Now, nothing in the world is much prouder than a bank president. His respect for the bank is a serious something that he impresses on 318 JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 319 others so that his institution may live, for it is built upon confidence: it implies safety, and these things are worthy of respect where the handling of money is concerned. In a word Japan has so respected the methods she found in use as she learned the art and science of banking from these proud, fixed-looking persons of fifty years ago that she has clung to them a little too religiously ever since. Under the pressure now coming upon her she will doubtless move as the bankers of America and the rest of the world have moved to swifter methods. Japan has had one tremendous advantage over all other nations of learners in the modern world; she was bred to system. This means that organiz- ing comes as a second nature to her. If her money traders took to banking be sure they went to the roots of the science and built rapidly according to their lights. With the externals it is the same. Their important bank buildings are impressive structures entirely on European and Ameri- can models. The Bank of Japan stands on an eminence in the modern business centre of Tokyo. It is built of white stone, massive as toi its lofty lower story and pillared as to its upper stories, and it looks as if it might have been taken bodily from London, Paris or New York, and set up facing the imperial palace across the wide moat. Within as befits the central home of the nation's money, it has all the dignity and spaciousness and glory of tiled floor, marble counter, plate glass and tellers' wickets that such a counting house interior should possess. Its president's room, its directors' rooms, its shareholders' hall, its parldurs, its library are of the best and stateliest, and it can furnish forth in a special dining room a luncheon that would put the Cafe Riehe in its best old days to its trumps. Its vaults are models of system and strength. Its ways are sure if slow : its force is numerous and trained highly, but moves with a deliberation that seems hieratic beside our quick-acting bank men. Systems of checks and balances 320 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND abound, but they function effectively. To the last man all employees and directors are Japanese. And the same is true of all the other great banks, the Yokohama Specie Bank, the Hypothec Bank, the Industrial Bank and the like. What business all these banks do and the others that make up the formidable banking total of Japan will be dealt with farther on in this chapter. They all form a system variously inter-related and highly spe- cialized, and all are increasing in their turn-over. May I just for a moment put a blotting finger on a most absurd story that one meets everywhere, doubtless started years ago by some malicious pro-Chinese foreigner of the kind I have described elsewhere seeking to say something hurtful to Japanese credit and self-respect. I allude to the Chinese-cashier story, which is generally put in these terms : ' ' The Japanese may be a smart people, but how is it they ara obliged to have Chinese cashiers handle their money in every bank in Japan ? They say that they cannot trust the honesty of their own people. Is that so?" — ^the answer is that it is simply and absolutely untrue, though it persists. There are no Chinese employees in the banks of Japan. What, at any time, gave colour to the story, and stamps it as to its origin is that in the Chinese branches of Japanese banks, in Shanghai, Peking, Hankow, for in- stance, a Chinese teller was often employed to deal in their own vernacular with native Chinese customers. I came across one such in the Peking branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank — a big Manchu who spoke half a dozen Chinese dialects, and functioned with an abacus as he ladled out cash in silver mostly to small customers. Since the starting of the story it has operated to the ousting of all such Chinese that could be spared from the branches in China. Thus does malice hurt even its friends. It is about time for the story to disappear. The personality of the heads of the Bank of Japan iin- JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 321 pressed me strongly. The governor or president, Viscount Mishima, a strong man in his late forties of what I might without offence call a German type, had a fine banking history, having graduated from the presidency of the Yokohama Specie Bank. The previous president, Baron Takahashi, a man of sixty, was, however, more of the typical banker. At any rate he expressed himself with singular penetration and wideness of view on banking questions. He had left the governorship in 1911 to take the post of Finance Minister. Mr. K. Mizumachi the vice president was evidently a trained worker, 'and so it proved, having been concerned in the higher economics at home and abroad for twenty-five years. The national finances rest on the industrial productive- ness of a people singularly loyal, industrious and frugal. While the population of the Empire has been largely in- creased during the last twenty-two years by territorial additions — Chosen (Korea), Taiwan (Formosa) and Kara- futo (Saghalien) to a total of 76,000,000, the burden of taxation necessarily rests in the major degree upon the nearly 56,000,000 souls of Japan Proper, as computed of June, 1917. Taxation under the feudal rule of many centuries had been a fine art, in its searching imposition and scrupulous collection, but it was scarcely a national system in the modern sense. With the Restoration of 1868 under the Meiji Emperor an attempt was at once made to establish such a system, but the plan was extremely com- plicated and largely failed of its object. The division of the territory into prefectures in 1871, and the setting up of prefectural governments made easier the work of finan- cial unifaction, which was gradually perfected in the course of the next few years. In 1880 the Board of Audit was created, but it found many difficulties in carrying out its work before 1882 when the Law of Finance was first uniformly enforced, with the result that the sole control 322 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of financial matters was vested in the Treasury and all irregularities in the receiving and dispensing of public moneys were entirely removed. In the same year the Bank of Japan was created and practically made the cashier for the government. Since 1886 budgets and settled accounts have been made public every year. This was real progress. On the promulgation of the imperial constitution in 1889 the Law of Finance was amended, and the financial system assumed its present form. Thus the budget, compiled by the Minister of Finance must be presented to the Diet for its approval before it is carried into effect. The settled accounts must also be so presented after passing through the hands of the Board of Audit. The fiscal year runs from the first of April in one year to the end of March of the next year. The Department of Finance was established in 1869, but its organization was greatly improved under the new organi- zation in 1886. There are eight revenue superintending ofSces, controlling four hundred revenue offices scattered through the country. There are besides six custom houses with thirty-seven branches and forty-eight observation posts engaged in the revenue service in connection with foreign trade. The financial administrations of Korea and Formosa differ somewhat from those in Japan. The national finance accounts are divided for con- venience into two classes — general and special. The taxes are the most important sources of national revenue — about sixty-five per cent, of the ordinary revenue — and include land tax, liquor tax, as the most important items, as well as customs duties, income tax, business tax, textile con- sumption tax and sugar excise. As showing the factor of growth it may be well to compare the revenue from taxes in some of the items in 1900-01 with those of the year 1917-18, that is of March 31 of this year, set down in yen, which coin m?iy b§ roughly conpted at half ^ dollar ; JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 323 1900-01 1917-18 Land Tax 46,717,797 72,815,747 Income Tax 6,368,039 36,880,640 Tax on Liquors 50,450,485 89,874,723 Customs Duties 17,009,815 31,653,908 The total from taxes 1900-01 was yen 133,926,095 against yen 320,434,489 for 1917-18. Going to make up the sources of ordinary revenue out- side the taxes are stamp receipts, public undertakings and state property, postal, telegraph, telephone services, forests and the profits of the three state monopolies, tobacco, salt and camphor, making a total of ordinary revenue of yen 557,379,584. Extraordinary sources of revenue totalling yen 157,- 154,443 included sales of state property, Chinese indemnity and public loans, the latter yen 19,430,963. The total 1917-18 revenue was therefore yen 714,534,127 against a total of yen 294,854,868 for 1900-01. To the available revenue for 1917-18 must be added treasury surplus of the preceding years transferred, yen 53,151,113. The land tax is laid proportionally to the value of the land taxed. The value is computed on the rent or the net revenue. The mortgagee pays on mortgaged land, the leaseholder on land leased for more than one hundred years, the owner on all other land. For arable land it runs at two and one-half per cent., on town land built on, seventeen and one-half per cent., not built upon, three per cent., rural properties built upon, five and one-half per cent. The income tax is laid upon all native residents except those with income below three hundred yen, and aliens of one year's residence or over in Japan, on absentee resi- dents with profitable interests in Japan to the extent of the income from such interests. It is on a sliding scale, the lowest for the smallest jncopie being two per gent., tb? 324 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND average two and one-half per cent. On incomes from 5,000 to 100,000 yen and beyond the rate mounts from two to over twenty per cent. Corporation and joint stock companies pay from two to ten per cent. There is a long list of exemptions. The textile tax is imposed on woollen goods at fifteen per cent., and on all other materials, ten per cent. Customs duties were first legalii;ed in Japan in 1859, but a new tariff was passed in 1866 which remained in force for thirty-three years to 1899, when a new tariff was passed based partly on the revised commercial treaties with foreign powers then coming into effect. At this time aU export duties were abolished. The war with Russia caused the imposition of a sur-tax on importations. A further re- vision took place in 1906. The growth of manufacturing in Japan caused a revision in the tariff field in 1910, the act then passed coming into operation in 1911. It enum- erates six hundred and forty-seven articles, classified in seventeen groups, and further subdivided and the rates as far as possible made specific duties. Raw materials are mostly duty-free, partly manufactured goods come in under light duties. Upon manufactured articles the rates vary from fifteen per cent, to forty per cent. Many lines of goods come under the lower rates, while the goods on which forty per cent, is imposed are small in amount of impor- tation. Again, though a duty of fifty per cent, is levied upon articles of luxury, their importation is also very small. • By tariff conventions with Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy, duty concessions were made on both sides. The outbreak of war on August 23, 1914, with Germany put an end to the German convention. The monopoly revenues noted heretofore are led by that on tobacco — the manufactured tobacco monopoly — which in its present form dates from 1904 when it succeeded the leaf JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 325 tobacco monopoly established a year earlier. Under the provisions of the law the cultivation of tobacco is permitted to individuals under a government permit, and the leaf tobacco grown is taken over by the government at a suitable price according to quality, and manufactured at a govern- ment factory, the manufactured article being sold at fixed prices by licensed dealers. Foreign tobacco cannot be imported except by the government or persons whom the government appoints, while exportation can only be effected by persons specially permitted to do so. The results are highly satisfactory to the government. The salt monopoly is a relic of the financial requirements of the Russian war and has been retained for its benefits at large as well as its revenue. Exportation is free. The camphor monopoly was primarily applied in For- mosa but later applied also to Japan Proper. Its object is to retain control of this important article so scarce among natural products. The extraction from the cam- phor tree of crude camphor and eamphor-oil is confined to licensed persons. All the product is sold to the govern- ment which declares the quantities for export. It yields only about yen 72,000. The National Debt of Japan may be divided into internal and foreign loans as to their raising, and into national development and war loans as to their object. In accom- plishing the great work of social and political reorganiza- tion after the Restoration in 1868, the new government at once suffered from deficiency of financial resources: con- sequently loans were raised. The first loan was placed in London in 1870 and the second at home in 1873, the first going to railway construction and the second to consoli- dating hereditary pensions, turning the debts incurred by the former feudal lords into national debts. For similar home development objects successive loans were placed 326 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND until war broke out with China, when an issue of yen 100,000,000 war bonds was made. The victory over China ushered in an era of domestic expansion and improvements which caused the issue of railway and industrial loans. One raised abroad in 1899 for industrial purposes was the first foreign loan siace 1873. Then came the Russian war with its mountainous expenses, necessitating successive issues of war bonds, internal and foreign, so that Japan's national debt increased enormously, jumping in fact from the 1904-05 total of yen 969,000,000 to the 1906-07 figure of yen, 2,135,000,000. Of this yen 800,000,000 was raised abroad during the war. Due to financial adjustments and railway nationalization, the increase continued after the war until, in March, 1911, it had reached a total of yen 2,650,395,115, that is, yen 39.571 or $19.78 per capita. Since 1909 the government has redeemed at least yen 50,000,000 a year until 1916 when in face of the European war the reduction was yen 30,000,000. The outstanding national loans as of March 31, 1917, were: Yen Internal loans 1,097,494,377 Foreign loans 1,370,207,560 Total outstanding 2,467,701,937 Original issues, yen 2,817,632,225; redeemed, yen 349,930,288. According to the objects ior which they were raised the amounts outstanding of loans, March 31, 1917, were : Yen Reorganization of public institutions 97,668,843 Railway construction and purchase 728,105,904 Igteel works, harbour works, telephone 42,401,183 O M JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 327 Ten Military affairs (war) 1,301,453,547 " (expansion of armaments) 81,109,424 Financial adjustments (new loans for old) 111,099,536 Monopoly loans 13,328,547 Exploitation of new territory, Formosa and Korea 92,534,953 Total 2,467,701,937 Per capita, yen 34.041. These loans bear interest at four, four and one-half or five per cent. Municipal loans. As part of the financial condition of Japan note should be taken of the local loans of prefectures, districts, cities, towns, villages and local associations. For the purpose of encouraging local enterprise and devising means of fostering the resources of the people, the govern- ment gives liberal encouragement to well-considered plans for local betterment whether in education, sanitation, in- dustry or public works. It has accordingly arranged with the Hypothec Bank of Japan and the Hokaido Colonial Bank to advance money for local use at low interest upon condition that the government should take over the debentures annually, using for this a portion of the postal savings retained in the finance department. These loans with some exceptions are raised by the local bodies or cor- porations only upon acquiring permission from the Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Finance, and, where edu- cational matters are involved, from the Minister of Educa- tion. The amount so supplied in the financial years from 1909-10 to 1914 was yen 27,166,000. At the end of the year 1916-17 the annual revenue of the local bodies of Japan Proper was yen 297,821,671 and their expenditures yen 292,893,756. Of the local loans made by the same corporations with government approval there were at the end of 1916 yen 340,625,008, and of loans not requiring government approval there were outstanding yen 7,442,026, 328 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND a total of yen 348,047,034. Industry, sanitation and public works led in the objects for which they were raised. Some local loans were very successfully raised abroad by the cities. The latter it may be said led in enterprise and the call for loans. The interest upon these loans and all the expense of the care for their repayment are met from local taxation. National expenditure. Under the stress of war condi- tions expenditure naturally rose sharply during the conflict with Eussia, and the necessities of the nation as a world power in trade and commerce as well as in naval and army strength have called for great increases in the cost of government. Thus in 1900-01 the total of state expendi- ture, ordinary and extraordinary, stood at yen 292,750,059, but the war costs in the budget for 1905-06 called for and obtained yen 420,741,205. The cost of armament and growing institutions of all kinds in succeeding years made necessary still greater expenditure, thus : Ordinary Extraordinary Total 1914-15 415,971,859 207,880,569 623,852,428 1915-16 386,516,456 196,753,397 583,269,853 1916-17 397,755,609 204,507,363 602,262,972 1917-18 estimated. 437,261,332 277,272,795 714,534,127 Under ordinary expenses are imperial household, yen 4,500,000, army, yen 80,240,568, navy, yen 49,810,653. The executive and administrative cost of the departments cover the departments of Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, Finance, Justice (including prisons), Public Instruction (yen 9,812,- 159), Agriculture and Commerce and Communications (telegraphs, railways, and highways). Extr9,ordinary outlays cover yen 19,244,207 for the army and yen 59,760,070 for the new navy building program, with yen 114,829,842 for Finance and yen 41,092,130 for Home Affairs. JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 329 War is the great increasing factor. After the China- Japan war of 1894-95, expenditures doubled, and before the century had closed were tripled. Compared with 1894- 95 the outlays are now up eightfold and increasing. In considering these figures of the current national finance of Japan it is worth pointing out that the Empire entered the European war period under conditions, partly forced on her it is true, which proved to be the best prep- aration for the era of prosperity now in process of develop- ment, namely, with the resolve upon the strictest economy. As regards the working budget for 1915-16 the war caused a very great decrease of revenue to the national treasury and, moreover, not only were the various laws relative to the reduction of taxes which had been established and promulgated in the preceding year brought into force, but as the various expenditures connected with the war were considered important, several urgent and indispensable measures were carried out by drastic curtailment of expenses in both the general and special accounts and postponement of many undertakings. Especially, the solution of the question of the increase of army divisions and construction of warships which had long agitated the political world of Japan will, it is believed, have a bene- ficial effect upon political administration in the future, accomplished as they are from ordinary revenue. Banking and Currency. Since 1872 when the national banks were created, the banking business has been carried on with growing effectiveness. Banks of every description have been instituted in rapid succession, and now the credit establishments for agriculture, industry, commerce and various other enterprises have been brought into full working order, their actual number being 2,159, with more than 3,000 branches scattered through the country. All classes of the community and all sections of Japan Proper and her possessions are served, and even Japan's monetary 330 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND resources oversea are taken care of. The banks are nat- urally divided into two classes, namely, those which have been established under the general banking laws and facili- tate the general circulation of capital, and those which, having been created under special banking laws, have special objects and functions. The latter as national institutions should be glimpsed at first. The trust com- pany as known in the United States does not exist in Japan, but trust company business is done by two of the special and eight of the ordinary banks. Bank of Japan. The banking business of the Japanese Empire, as it is carried on today, may be said to date from the establishment of the Central Bank or Bank of Japan in 1882. Up to that time a banking system modelled on the then existing national bank system of the United States had been in existence for ten years. The national banks had become profitable and popular, but did not wholly meet national banking requirements and a change in the direction of the French and English systems was sought, resulting in the present system. The national banks having reached the limit of bank-note issue, further creations of these banks was forbidden in 1879, and in 1882 of 133 in existence, two retired from the business, one was amalga- mated with another bank, the remainder continuing as ordinary banks shorn of the issuing power. The Bank of Japan was founded as a joint stock company with a capital of yen 10,000,000, which has since been increased to yen 60,000,000 in 300,000 shares, of which yen 37,500,000 is paid up. Its charter runs until 1942. Besides many agencies, branch offices have been established in eleven business centres, namely, Osaka, Moji, Nagoya, Otaru, Kyoto, Fukoshima, Hiroshima, Hakodate, Nanazawa, Niigata and Matsumoto. Outside regular banking busi- ness in deposits of paper or bullion it makes advances on current accounts or loans on deposit of public loan bonds, JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 331 bills or notes issued by the government under conditions meeting the approval of the Minister of Finance. It issues bank notes subject to government regulation and as has before been said is really the cashier for the govern- ment. The rate of dividend has been twelve per cent, for a number of years. At the close of 1916, the latest for which details are complete, it held deposits of yen 15,050,- 691,653. It had made loans of yen 470,249,588, discounted bills, yen 349,895,637. Its earnings were yen 17,867,972, expenses, yen 11,970,960, and net profit, yen 5,897,012. Dividend, yen 4,500,000, at the rate of twelve per cent, as usual. Its business for 1917 was enormously greater. Yokohama Specie Bank was founded in 1880 mainly to meet the requirements' of Japan's foreign trade. It began with a capital of yen 3,000,000, the government subscribing one-third of the capital so marked was the urgency for its existence. In July, 1887, special regulations were pro- mulgated and the capital doubled. Its rapid growth under very able management called for repeated additions to its capital of which the present authorized amount is yen 48,000,000, of which yen 30,000,000 is paid up. In 1916 it held reserve of yen 23,112,073. Deposits of yen 5,641,- 558,064, loans, yen 1,109,519,297, bills discounted, yen 228,365,955. Its dividend is regularly twelve per cent. Of all Japanese banking institutions it is best known to the foreign business world. It has thirty-one branches and sub-branches, twenty-seven of which are abroad. It deals in home and foreign exchanges, makes loans, receives deposits of money and custody of articles of value, dis- counts and collects bills of exchange, promissory notes and other securities and exchanges moneys. The Hypothec Bank of Japan was established as a joint stock company under a special law of 1897. It makes long-term loans at low interest on mortgages of immovable 332 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND property, and is a central organ for financing large agri- cultural and industrial enterprises, makes loans without security to prefectures, cities, towns and other legal public bodies, also to guilds for agricultural, industrial, fishery or forestry purposes. It takes up mortgage debentures for local hypothec banks. It has important privileges as to issue of debentures. In 1916 its authorized capital stood at yen 40,000,000, of which yen 25,000,000 had been paid: Reserve, yen 6,444,400, deposits, yen 25,853,348, loans, yen 256,833,777, bills discounted, yen 20,362,562, net profit, yen 3,757,627, dividend ten per cent., mortgage debentures issued, yen 13,482,200. The forty-six agricultural and industrial hanks were authorized at the same time as the Hypothec Bank to act locally in the same direction with the hypothec banks as their central organ. Between 1897 and 1900 the forty-six were established according to law, one in each prefecture. They have done a flourishing business in deposits and loans and have proved immensely useful to the expanding indus- tries of the country. At the close of 1916 the forty-six banks showed authorized capital of yen 53,970,000, paid up, yen 46,895,000, deposits, yen 143,546,258, advances, yen 190,910,184, bills discounted, yen 5,491,740, earnings, yen 22,195,236, net profit, yen 9,034,465, dividend, 7.3 per cent, debentures, brought over, yen 92,579,930, issued, yen 11,866,000. The Industrial Bank of Japan was established in 1902 under a special law as a joint stock company with the special object of handling bonds and shares of various kinds. It makes loans on security of national and local government loan bonds, companies' debentures and shares. It subscribes for or takes up such loan bonds and deben- tures: it does a trust business, discounts bills and makes loans on security of foundation prescribed by law. It makes advances within certain limits on current accounts JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 333 on security of sites and buildings belonging to factories. It does a thriving business. It may issue debentures up to ten times its paid-up capital. The latter stands at yen 17,500,000. While the Hypothec Bank may be described as a kind of credit fancier, the Industrial Bank may be considered a species of credit mdbilier. In 1916 deposits were yen 261,653,402; loans, yen 36,838,334; bills dis- counted, yen 178,941,227; capital trust fund, yen 60,716,- 223; new profit, yen 1,177,765; dividend, 5.8 per cent.; debentures issued, yen 15,000,000. The Hokkaido Colonial Bank, specially legalized in 1899, a joint stock corporation with a capital of yen 5,000,000 fully paid up, facilitates the exploitation of the island of Hokkaido and Karafuto (Saghalien). Founded in 1909 it had in 1916 deposits, yen 150,534,590; loans, yen 39,- 706,816; bills discounted, yen 42,288,569; dividend, 8.5 per cent. The banks of Taiwan (Formosa) and Chosen (Korea) do for these possessions on a limited scale much of what the Bank of Japan does for Japan Proper. In addition to usual banking business they carry out governmental money operations and issue bank notes of low denomina- tions. Their activities as represented by the figures of 1916 were: Bank of Chosen, paid-up capital, yen 10,000,000; de- posits, yen 659,737,457; loans, yen 151,237,847; bills dis- counted, yen 192,040,903. Bank of Taiwan, paid-up capital, yen 14,992,475; de- posits, yen 1,867,540,035 ; loans, yen 263,776,115 ; bills dis- counted, yen 392,544,133, Ordinary hanks, to the number of 1,434, which are car- ried on by private capital and supply banking facilities for the country at large, represent for 1916, paid-up capi- tal, yen 363,374,410; deposits (1915), yen 19,831,910,101; loans, yen 4,666,204,068; bills discounted, yen 5,697,685,- 334 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND 450 ; average of dividend, four per cent. Ordinary banks are placed under the control of the Minister of Finance, whose license is required for the establishment of a new bank or the amalgamation of existing banks. He is also empowered to order at any time investigation into the business condition and property of a bank. Every bank must each half-year prepare and present to the Minister a balance-sheet and other business reports and publish the balance-sheet in newspapers or by other means. Provisions also are made in the regulations with regard to business hours and holidays. Savings Banks. Under the law of 1890 which declares that they must be joint stock companies of not less than yen 30,000 capital, six hundred and sixty banks take charge of minor deposits on compound interest under suitable conditions as to deposit of bonds, national or local, as security. Of the 660 banks, 153 were in 1916 ordinary banks which added savings departments to their ordinary business. Savings banks, all kinds, showed in 1916 paid-up capital, yen 123,315,156; savings deposits (1915), yen 482,- 292,788 ; ordinary deposits, 2,061,116,677 ; loans, yen 988,- 662,732 ; bills discounted, yen 812,044,248 ; dividend (1915), nine per cent. Postal savings hanks (which should be considered in all observations of the financial condition of Japan) are eon- ducted by the Department of Communications. They were established in 1857 in connection with the money-order system, following the Belgian and British models. Ten sen (five cents) is the lowest amount received and one thousand yen the highest for a single depositor. The in- stitution has steadily grown in numbers of depositors and amount deposited. At the close of March, 1916, the de- positors were close to thirteen millions (12,700,105) and their deposits were yen 226,989,937. These included over four million farmers, a million and a half merchants, nearly JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 335 three million students, with, manufacturers, operatives, fishers and sailors, civil and military in figures from quarter of a million to over three-quarters, and still leaving over half a million to be classed as miscellaneous. During 1916-17 the general prosperity of the country added largely to the number of depositors and of the amounts to their credit. At the end of August, 1916, the deposits had mounted to yen 269,670,969. The system is applied to all Japan's possessions and provision is made to receive de- posits from Japanese subjects oversea. Insurance. Insurance companies were first organized in Japan in 1881 but until 1899 were not put under regula- tion. In 1910 the present insurance law was put into operation. Amendments and revisions were made in 1911 and 1912, and on September 11, 1914, the War Marine Insurance Indemnity Act was promulgated whereby any Japanese company insuring at a premium not higher than the authorized current rate, making good a loss caused by the war, the government is to grant as indemnity to such company a sum representing eighty per cent, of the amount paid. In 1915-16 there were forty-one native com- panies writing life insurance, carrying 1,816,292 contracts with insurance totaling yen 1,072,228,852; twenty fire in- surance companies carrying 990,283 contracts with insur- ance of yen 1,564,627,281; twelve marine insurance companies had 47,055 contracts with yen 153,109,583 insurance. There were two conscription insurance com- panies, one sickness insurance, four accident insurance, eight transport insurance, one fidelity (credit) insurance, one boiler and engine insurance, and one automobile insur- ance company. Foreign insurance companies operate in Japan under government regulations to the number of thirty-nine. Two life insurance companies are from the United States. FQurteen fire insurance companies hail from England, and 336 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND one each from France, Holland and Hong Kong. There was one from Germany before the war. Currency on gold lasis. The coinage system of Japan is based upon the Coinage Law of 1897 which established the gold mono-metallic system. The standard gold coins are of three denominations, namely five, ten and twenty-yen pieces. Subsidiary silver pieces are ten, twenty and fifty sen. There are nickel five sen and bronze one sen and five rin (half -sen). A yen as noted is roughly half a dollar. Bank notes are issued by the Bank of Japan and are convertible into gold. The bank is required to hold as conversion reserve against the issue of notes gold and silver coin and bullion of like amount. Silver coin and bullion must not form more than one-fourth of the entire con- version reserve. Coins in circulation at the end of 1916 amounted to yen 181,400,071 against yen 169,440,724 in 1915. Of bank notes issued by the Bank of Japan, the balance stood at the end of 1916 at yen 601,224,411. Difficulties and inequalities under the old system of conversion have been largely remedied by the new coinage system. The change of system did not disturb the relations of creditors and debtors. Prior to the change, 1 of gold to 16.174 of silver was the legal relative value of the two metals, while in actual price the rate stood at 1 to 31 to 35, and transactions were carried on the standard of silver. Under the new system, the weight of gold pieces was re- duced by one-half and the rate became 1 to 32.348. The important change that attended the reform was the trans- fer of the standard of price from silver to gold. Exchange business with gold-using countries has been made prac- tically stable and foreign trade with them greatly stimu- lated. Finally, one of the most important effects of the adoptic\i of the new system is that Japan's money market JAPAN'S FINANCE AND BANKING 337 has been brought into closer relation with the European markets. Not only have the public loans been raised abroad in much greater amount than ever, but the flow of capital from these gold countries has been stimulated and various undertakings have been financed in this way. At the present time, European and American capitalists are dis- posed to invest their money in Japan. This may be partly due to the fact that Japan's economic conditions have be- come better known, but the gold basis monetary system is also partly responsible for it. War Profits. The great addition to Japan's manu- factures and export trade through the war in Europe can be effectively gauged in a few figures showing the lively growth of transactions in the turnover of money and banking in Japan Proper. The following table comparing business at the end of August, 1916, with that of 1915 wiU carry a special illumination : 1916 1915 Coins in circulation 181,400,071 169,440,724 Deposits in associated banks of eight principal cities 1,582,925,601 1,183,149,650 Deposits in post oflSce savings bureau 269,670,969 212,465,274 Total of deposits and loans 3,439,229,533 2,583,377,790 August, 1916 August, 1915 Amount of bills cleared in clear- ing houses of eight principal cities 1,592,749,548 947,859,256 As in the United States the war conditions calling for a great supply of war material, clothing and foodstuffs have 338 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND brought about an inflow of gold to the Japanese vaults beyond precedent. The following figures are notable : Specie in Japan and abroad owned by the government and Bank Specie reserve of Japan 1913 yen 228,000,000 yen 376,000,000 1914 " 218,000,000 « 341,000,000 1915 " 248,000,000 " 516,000,000 1916 " 410,519,000 " 692,000,000 This increased business has allowed Japan to lend in all $550,000,000 to her allies. War orders for 1917 are cal- culated at over 1,000,000,000 yen. CHAPTER XXII KOREA, A MODEL OP COLONIAL UPLIFT Over the path of the great sea fight — Fusan — Korean peculiarities — ^Wonderful uplift work of Japan in seven years since an- nexation — Seoul, the city of the fallen dynasty and the new advance — ^A visit to Governor-General Terauchi — Increasing rice crop — ^Afforesting the mountains — The schools and helps to aU — At a technical school — 16,000,000 Koreans being led upward by a handful of Japanese. We had passed through the Tsushima straits with the twin Tsushima Islands rising darkly mountainous from the sea some seven miles away and the thought of the giant combat in these waters which laid low the pride of the Russian navy some ten years before was inevitable. One pictured the exploding shells, the onrush of the Japanese battleships, grey and terrible, spouting fire and hurling steel, and beyond the maiming, the surrendering, the sinking of the Russian ships which had come so far to suffer such over- whelming defeat. Then the commanding figure of Admiral Togo on his stout ship 's bridge. It was night. The air had a delicious mildness after the red sunset. To the northwest lifted in indigo a rugged coast line and presently lights gleamed. We were on the threshhold of Korea, at the gate of Asia ! The trip from Shimonoseki at the southern tip of the main island of Japan, one hundred and twenty-two miles, to Fusan, the nearest Korean port, is a matter of a dozen hours of smooth sailing in a well-appointed spotlessly clean steamer. There are four such steamers on the line, so the ?39 340 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND passage is a good deal of a ferry crossing. If it comes as in my case to a chance of sea rest between railroad journeys it is very welcome and enjoyable. There are morning and evening sailings at either end of the route. By all means take the morning route and do not miss the transit through the wide winding channel between headlands as you leave the Japanese coast. Through the increasing darkness a very bright three- flash light shone out. That was in Pusan harbour. A proper touch of mystery it brought to the scene. Soon we had entered the wide mouth of the haven, lights of Fusan showing in tiers on every side, and then the waterside sounds, tug whistles, sailor shouts, a distant melancholy flute. The puffing of a locomotive gave it the true modern touch. So ashore to the Kailroad Hotel and a night of balmy rest. Korea is no inconsiderable item. In territory it has 84,738 square miles, upholding its place between the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan with its mountain chains and its broad valleys and a population of some 16,000,000 souls. Its interest as a cradle of the very old civilizations does not with the casual visitor offer such attraction perhaps as the fact that it is the home of a once proud race fallen into ineptitude under a crushing, rapacious domestic tyranny and carrying down with it the family of sceptred kings or emperors who have ruled it and robbed it for over five hundred years. It was Korea that fed the islands of Japan with ideas on religion, ideals of art and crafts. It was through Korea that the Chinese ideographs brought the possibilities of literature to Japan — all over fifteen hundred years ago. You are therefore face to face with something very old in the human scale, if also of something very young in the story of world surface building. It seemed to me in approaching Asia from America that KOREA, A MODEL OF COLONIAL UPLIFT 341 in the Hawaiian group of islands one faced the most recent of earth developments. The volcanic peaks seemed to have risen from the ocean bed but yesterday, as it were. The sear of the inner earth fires seemed yet upon the mountain faces under the sparse green of their actual surface. In Japan the multitudinous upstarting mountain chains and groups fantastic seemed older, though still — as the earth's clock runs — recent in their subterranean origin. The narrow valleys seemed older, the rounding of hilltops older. In Korea one came upon a land older still than Japan, and yet young compared with the inner sweeps of the great continents of which it was an outpost — the great sweep across Siberia and Russia and Germany to the waters of the North Sea. Of more present interest still, it was the home of a fallen monarchic idol and the thrilling scene of a tremendously organized attempt to galvanize into primal abundance a terrain run fallow through centuries, and to resurrect into ambition and potentiality a people long inert and pitifully powerless — ^the scene of Japan's great experiment as a colonizer and builder. One may not see all these things in their cumulative aspect at first. Frankly I did not. The concrete state- ment to me of Baron Makino, formerly Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in the cultured quiet of his home in Tokyo, that out of Korea had come for centuries the influence most to be reckoned with in the relations of Japan with the rest of the world, had impressed me most about Korea. It was the source of keenest scrutiny. Whoever most prevailed in Korean counsels, whether it was China or Russia, had to be guarded against by Japan. It had been the land to be watchful of. "Now, happily," he added, "since the war with Russia, Korea has been annexed and that part of the problem eliminated. The problem now lies further afield." 342 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Thus it was with thel Korea purely of today as it met the eye and passed to the understanding that I was con- cerning myself as our party after a good night's rest sallied forth iu the morning for a glimpse of Fusan. Hailing kurumas we were soon on our way, the runners making good time. First it was notable that the authorities are hard at work improving and enlarging the harbour accommodations, which will soon include a pier for vessels up to thirty thousand tons. The Japanese have taken hold of this port to make it a great commercial gate to Asia. Work is in progress to that end in a dozen directions, and if a great commerce can be coaxed this way they will be ready for it. The government railroad that now runs to Seoul and Antung (connecting there with the South Manchurian railroad to Mukden and so to Vladivostock, Peking or to Moscow) has also a branch to Gensan, the most promising port on the eastern coast line. The railroad is broad gauge, making the cars roomier than in Japan, where the rule is narrow gauge. Other branches are planned. There are more Japanese than Koreans in Fusan, and even at a first glance it was easy to differentiate — 26,000 Japanese, 23,000 Koreans. Fusan for long has been settled by trading Japanese. The better classes of Koreans dis- dain trade altogether, preferring as elegant an idleness as they can manage, and as it proved they can manage it on very little. The Japanese quarter of Fusan is like a bit of Japan, neat, cleanly, well-built, while the Korean quarter is shabby, dusty, dirty, tumbledown; little shops huddled along the sides of the streets, their wares spread out on mats in front of them. Here and there among the saunterers one saw the dis- tinctive white, long-skirted costume of the Korean men, while the poorer working men wore short white jackets and short white trousers with a surprising gap between KOREA, A MODEL OP COLONIAL UPLIFT 343 them. A curious fashion among the married women who sport long puffy white petticoats is the wearing of a short yoke about the neck, while a wide opening displays the naked breasts in their entirety. It gave to my unac- customed eyes the effect of a shocking show-window. The exposure had seldom the slightest suggestion of the beau- tiful, — rather the reverse. The theory, I was told, is that to cover the breasts is to poison the milk. Some promising- looking women wore a light, filmy covering over their bosoms. Koreans are generally taller than Japanese, more in fact like Manchus in height, stridei and gait, and are a fairly good-looking people. The men make devoted husbands: in fact an exceedingly voluptuous uxoriousness is charged with much of their feebleness of character and want of stamina. Toil of one kind or another is the neces- sity of their existence, and they are to be seen, men and women, everywhere at work in the rice fields and the women besides in the little mud-walled groups of grass-roofed huts which are rudimentary villages. They say that the only set enjoyment these peasants know is to lay in a supply of cooked rice, when husband and wife give up work as long as the rice lasts, enjoying the luxury of idleness for days together. The vegetable and fish markets were crowded with Koreans and Japanese chaffering and chatting, the Koreans laughing loudly here and there in the interchange of the hour as our kurumas struggled through. The present condition of the Fusanese Koreans is de- scribed as greatly improved, both as to the condition of the people and the aspect of the quarter, over the look of things five or ten years ago. This change is reasonable, but there is much room for further improvement. When it came to leaving for Seoul it was a fine train that carried us, including a dining ear with meals for one yen and one and one-half yen, not perhaps as good as to 344 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND cooking and service as in Japan, but not bad, the price considered. The country resembles Japan, but the valleys are broader. Cultivation is general wherever arable land is available. The peasants were harvesting their barley crop or planting their rice. You get your first glimpse of the great work of afforestation in progress under the Japanese government. On hundreds of hills as you speed along you see literally thousands of small black-looking objects scattered over them like raisins on a plum pudding. These are young evergreens, pines, hemlock, spruce, firs destined to redeem the hills of their long bareness. Once a great forest land, it had, under the taxing tyranny of the Korean kings, become bare as the back of a crab. The last mountain tree had been cut down centuries ago. Hence not only timber scarcity, but a rainfall without any- thing to hold it from flooding the valleys. It will surprise one to learn that in two years — 1911-12 — ^the Japanese caused the planting of fifteen million young trees, and as many in the two years succeeding. It was difficult at first to prevent the Koreans from stealing and burn- ing them for firewood; but they stopped it — Japanese fashion. It is a run of eleven hours to Seoul, which we reached before dark, driving to Sontag's Hotel, which in the days before annexation had been run by the Korean government as a house for entertaining foreigners of consequence for whom it was not possible to make provision at the palaces. It is in the old legation quarter and nicely situated on rising ground. A new and fine hotel has since taken its place in the esteem of travellers. A good bed after a long railroad journey and a light supper is the best haven in the world. You sleep without dreams. Morning in the Land of the Morning Calm is certainly KOREA, A MODEL OF COLONIAL UPLIFT 345 delightful at this time of year in Seoul. (Pronounce it Sowl if you would do it offhand, but if you want to be very elegant and precise, say Sow-ool, shortening the "oo" until it is the merest murmur. The Japanese never get it right and so they sidestep it by calling it Keijo.) The air is clear and cool, the sky blue, a softness that is not enervat- ing pervading all — a climate for moving in a beatific dream on the wings of morning. Truly one walked abroad, with a lifting sense, and making one long for that dear one of all the world to share the pure delight of it. Sitting one afternoon on the porch of U. S. Consul-General Miller's house, formerly the home of our Legation, with that grave, kindly official and his charming wife, the picture of tall trees rising to the perfect sky across the stretch of a wide green lawn on which a colony of magpies were disporting themselves, I did enjoy the passing of time. To be sure he had given me New York papers newly arrived, the first that had blessed my eyes in months. The streets away from the legation quarter are generally not too inviting. The Japanese have, however, taken hold with surprising firmness and are metamorphosing the town, making broad avenues and laying the foundations of a fine city. These evidences fix themselves pleasantly on your senses in this morning calm. Note this stately Korean approaching you. His long, spotless white skirts are swinging with his long stride. His curious black gauze hat with the truncated cone crown and flat brim encaging his quaint and curious topknot is worn with Malvolian swagger. His long pipestem is held now like a court chamberlain's wand, now like a marshal's baton. His grey moustache and silver-wire chin whisker speak for a long life of dandyism; but his expression of well-bred scorn of you and all of your belongings is the delighting capstone of his rooted nationality and haughty conservatism. 346 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Dozens and dozens of him you meet and presently you pass a Japanese not much more than half his height just hurrying about his business, and in every line of face and figure you recognize the why and wherefore of this sixteen millions of Koreans being led back to real manhood by a handful of the little islanders. It is yesterday and today. There are in fact few such pathetic shams as this kind of Korean gentleman. From the precarious rental of some small house or field he may have an income of twenty cents a day. It is enough. He inhabits some hovel away from the main streets. There his wife toils all day washing and starching his skirts, gathering dung fuel, cooking their meagre food. His daily swagger down the streets is his joy in life. For hours he will squat on his heels smoking his ridiculous little pipe at intervals and jabbering incessantly with a group of his own kind; then away he goes, darts suddenly down a side street and if you follow quickly may see him stoop double before a poor hut and disappeari in the bosom of his family. He is old Korea. But I like him in his knightly moment of disdain. He fits in with the great monumental city gates, with the mighty palace frontals that tell of the guilty old empire that wasted Korea to the bone and forced a soft degeneracy upon a race of warriors, poets, scholars, artists, artificers and patient toilers. Short of admiring him, you feel that he would prefer you to dislike him very much. Do any- thing but pass him unnoticed. Here in Seoul, with its population of nigh quarter of a million souls, of which barely fifty thousand are Japanese, which has been so long the capital of the country and the seat of its native emperor and court, there are naturally many well-to-do Koreans and nobles who exemplify the leisure class with more real distinction — ^men of parts and education, if of no more value to the Korea of today than KOREA, A MODEL OP COLONIAL UPLIFT 347 their congener of the copper-lined pockets and empty head whom we have just passed on the street. In the afternoon you may see on the principal streets specimens aplenty of the younger generation of these titled and elegant idlers. They are loungers, frivolous, proud, jocular by turns, recalling to me the young flaneurs of the second French Empire, who with their female parasites adorned the Champs Elysees and the grand boulevards in the years immediately before Sedan. It is, however, after Korea's debacle and in the face of her Japanese resurrec- tion that these survivals flaunt their gay ineffectiveness. The Japanese surely represent the commercial vigour of Seoul. There are only about twenty-five hundred Euro- peans and Chinese, including the consulates. There are Korean shops and stores without number. Koreans in the working crafts are nevertheless many, and among them many of real capacity. These are coming to their own under the new conditions. A Korean mining engineer, a man of strong frame and handsome face, was pointed out to me at the hotel as just returned from the north, where the mines are situated. He earns a salary of ten thousand yen a year, and has the unlimited confidence of the mine owners, who are largely foreign. Indeed at the snug hostelry in the evening I was for hours regaled by an American official of the robust type — ^the Far Western sheriff and marshal type — ^who talked at length on the virtues, aspirations and achievements of native Koreans whom he had met and cherished. Before retiring I was in receipt one evening of an invi- tation to lunch the next day with the Governor-General, Count Terauchi, at his official residence, which in other days was the home of the Japanese Embassy. Today he is Marquis Terauchi and Prime Minister of Japan. At twelve-thirty next day the Governor's carriage called for my party and it was something of a drive through the §48 JAPAN AT FIRST HAISTD town to the Governor's house, where a host of servants met us at the steps. It has a handsome entrance gate of hammered iron and stone pillars. The house itself is of unpretentious "Western" architecture, roomy inside and furnished in the sober good taste common to the best Japanese houses. The furniture included some hand- somely carved Chinese pieces, and there was some fine Chinese and Korean pottery, Mr. Seiki Hishida, one of the Governor's secretaries, a travelled man, affable, portly, painstaking, punctilious and wearing a small moustache, met us at the door and pre- sented us to our host, the Governor-General, Count Terauchi, who, dressed in soldierly khaki and flanked by a young-looking Major-General and a group of young, bright-faced army officers, received us with great courtesy and conducted us to a large salon, where we met United States Consul-General Eainsford Miller, a Japanese jour- nalist and some others of the English-speaking variety. Seating me near him, we had a somewhat formal con- versation in English, Mr. Hishida interpreting with a pardonable flourish. Count Terauchi is a massive man with the best diplo- matic manner of the military statesman type. His head is large and of a long oval, rather bald over the forehead and crown and wearing moustache and beard. He did not quite look his sixty-two years, which include forty-three years of active service of his country. I simply knew then that he had been militarily prominent in early life and had reached and held the high and onerous post of Imperial War Minister for eight years, during, preceding and following the tremendous flghting period of the Russo-Japanese war. He shakes hands using his left, a reminder of a battle- wound in the right arm in the civil wars of his boyhood when Japan was coming to her own. To any one capable of gauging the measure of that 1. A SUBURB OF SEOUL, CITY GATE IN DISTANCE 2. KOREAN COURT DANCING GIRL AND SERVANT 3. TYPICAL OLD KOREAN SWELL 1. NAMDAIMON (OR SOREIMON). THE SOUTHERN GATE OF SEOUL ^. TODAIMOX DORI (STREET), SEOUL. RUNNING TO THE EASTERN GATE KOEEA, A MODEL OF COLONIAL UPLIFT 349 gigantic task this was passport enough to respect for his brain capacity and the tough fibre of his mental quality. That his face expressed great strength or urbanity at will would be natural. That his very force constrained him to a fine courtesy was soon visible. His four years' adminis- tration of Chosen (the Japanese name for Korea, signifying the Faultless Clear Morning) was another title, perhaps as great, to respect for the ability to organize and to govern. I had been reading some of the Chosen government reports with their open statistical and detailed setting forth of the governmental activities since 1910 to date of the annexation and was in some position to talk it over as far as patience would permit him, but luncheon was announced and, about a dozen in all, we proceeded to the table laid elsewhere. Various wines were served, but when the champagne had been poured the Count raised his glass by way of toast and wished me a pleasant trip to China and the Liaotung Peninsula, to which I replied, wishing continued success to his high administration. Noticing that his wine was faintly tinged with claret, I said to my neighbour that surely the Count must have learned that particular blend in Paris, in Paris of long ago. "Oh, yes," replied Mr. Hishida, "the Count was long in Paris when he was a young man, yes, and French he speaks perfectly." So, across the white damask of this silver and crystal- garnished table in a palace in the Land of the Morning Calm, at the table of a government General of a proud Oriental Empire flashed a sudden ruby beam that had danced and sparkled on many a festive occasion above the board what time youth and folly clinked glasses in the Latin quarter of Paris — ^nigh half a century ago! Our host doubtless wondered at the joy that lit my face during the rest of the repast. 350 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND For coffee and cigars we repaired to the salon, and as the Count lounged easily in an ample armchair puffing contentedly, and sending forth generous clouds from a fat Havana, he remarked, stopping to look at the cigar in the fond way of old smokers: "1 stopped smoking for nine years and only resumed a month ago." He had certainly resumed with the certainty of the veteran. May I add that he was in veteran company. As with his smoking so with his French. The Count had begun the conversation saying that his French was rusty. It was not; it was fluent and he seemed pleased to revive the chronicle of old times in France. Then the French Empire as the military and artistic nation of Europe held eminence in Japan. Thither he had gone to study military science and he loved Paris as I did. After various advances in army rank he had returned to Paris a Major, as MUitary Attache to the Japanese Legation there from 1882 to 1885. Thereafter followed successive advances in the higher army grades, developing ability at each upward step. The Count is not a talker with the gusto of Count Okuma, but talks freely enough. In reference to his work in Chosen he laid the greatest stress on the official en- deavours to better agriculture among the legions of farmers. Under the old Korean conditions all progress, all enterprise was penalized. On the slightest evidence of success in farming the farmer's rent or taxes or both were increased. The situation in fact was as grave and as ferocious to the farmers as it had been in Ireland before the Parnell era. Now the yield of rice, for instance, had been increased thirty per cent, from the same land area. "Afforestation, as we are carrying it on," said the Count, "having planted perhaps twenty million trees, is destined to modify the wasting effects of the rainfall until Chosen shall be a land of heavily-wooded hills and super-fertile vales from north to south." KOREA, A MODEL OP COLONIAL UPLIFT 351 To restore habits of industry to the natives was just as steadily their object^, he said, holding out safety to their savings through government banks, promoting all enter- prise possible in the small manufactures peculiar to the people, and reviving through technical schools their ancient industries. "All this," he said, "has to go slowly. Confidence is a plant of slow growth. The idling class is a great draw- back and an evil example. Their scorn of labour, which is shown in their long finger nails, is held onto through every privation. The prosperity of others lessens, however, their influence daily. The change must move slowly. The thing is to keep it moving wisely and constantly." The question of the missionary schools in Korea was only incidentally touched on in our conversation. Under the old dynasty the missionaries had a clear field and no com- petition from the government. Hence they made headway with a growing popularity and attendance. It was perhaps inevitable when Japan took ever the country in 1910 and indeed during Prince Ito's resident governorship that the Koreans who clung to the old rule should use the school associations to an extent as a cover for anti-Japanese propaganda. There were it may be recalled unrest and unprofitable disturbances. An attempt was prepared on Count Terauchi's life, and arrests were numerous. Un- questionably the missionaries were innocent of all partici- pation, but it did not save them from suspicion, naturally. The schools were now operating, and relations were no longer strained, if not cordial on either side. "I have only one word to say on that matter," said Count Terauchi, "patience." One could linger long in Seoul with pleasure and profit to the traveller. There is much of the intimate to see and to enjoy, second-hand shops wherein to capture brass-bound coffer? »nd other Qurios, interesting streets to linger 352 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND through, vistas to take in and long remember, customs and habits of a quaint people to observe. I paid a day's visit by rail to Chemulpo, the open port where the Eusso- Japanese war began with the sinking of a couple of Russian ships by a vastly superior Japanese fleet under Admiral Uriu, a gentleman of quiet, gentle bearing whom I had met pleasantly in Tokyo and who was later most acceptably of the Japan commission to the exposition at San Francisco. Chemulpo when its mole and wet docks are finished will be quite a port. At present it cannot boast of much commerce. It is really a port of the future. The residence quarter is on a highland or bluff back of the sea front with lots of climbing to get anywhere. Here also are most of the large business agencies — Standard Oil and others. The white community is small and keeps to itself. They have a country club on a higher eminence with golf links. They lead an isolated life, but keep a cheery face to it, and welcome the rare visitors with effusion and cock- tails. Their great treat is a run to Seoul, and once in a long while a furlough to the homeland, be it America or somewhere in Europe. Few as they were they were all sorts — ^Americans, English, Irish, Scotch, French and — German. At every turn one met some evidence of the intensity of the effort Japan is making for the betterment of the land and the people. Said a man of missionary connections .whom I later met in Peking : "Oh, yes; I have no doubt, but all these activities are for the benefit of the Japanese settlers and not for the natives. ' ' "No," I replied; "it is nearer the reverse. All I noted was for the native benefit ; the Japanese settlers the authori- ties seem to regard as able to take care of themselves. ' ' He professed missionary surprise, which is an article notable for a polite gmile and a contradictory lifting of tlie KOEEA, A MODEL OF COLONIAL UPLIFT 353 eyebrows — a nice Pharisaical expression ; but it was typical of an attitude that prevails among the English-speaking people in China — a mental resolve to believe ill of the Japanese, to deny them decent motives for anything. The comprehensive governmental reports give such a body of information that it would be futile to attempt to give a fuU idea of these activities in a short space. Here are a few points summarized: Out of a total revenue of yen 58,873,403 for 1915-16 Japan contributed $8,000,000. Exports have quadrupled in ten years ; imports have increased two and a half times. Japan takes 82 per cent, of the exports and furnishes 70 per cent, of the imports. China takes 11.3 per cent, and sends 13.6 per cent. The United States took in 1915 $16,161 of exports and sent to Korea $1,966,920 of our goods, a large falling ofE from the $3,924,811 of 1913. Japan has established three hundred and sixty-seven common schools, fifty-three industrial technical schools and a dozen experimental agricultural stations. On a rainy morning rich with sudden refreshing April showers that dissolved magically in the sun, we ran in kurumas to the outskirts of Seoul to visit the Korean Industrial School, one of the most significant of all the Japanese uplifting agencies for the young Koreans — to bring back to them arts and crafts that once were prac- tised in Korea and make them once more part of the economic life of today. The building we found to be large if unpretentious architecturally. It was really a delight- ful experience. The assiduous director, Mr. M. Toyonaga, received us with a polite Japanese smile on his rather care- worn face, and at once began to show us around. He had one hundred and eighty Korean boys ranging from sixteen to twenty-three years in his charge. They were away from the classrooms at lunch when we arrived, which gave us a better Qbwee to look things over. Spread Qve? quite a^i 354 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND area were workshops fitted with the most modern imple- ments and apparatus for work in cabinet making, car- pentry, weaving, paper-making, ironwork, bronze-work, soap-making and pottery and a studio for designing. Nothing could be better. There were instructors in every branch, and the unfinished work lying on the benches and wheels showed how far the boys, young men rather, had advanced beyond the tyro stage. "We went then to an exhibition hall upstairs filled with finished specimens of their work. These were sold at intervals at modest prices to help the school which is otherwise government-endowed. I bought a wonderful small bronze ash-receiver on the model of a rice-pot and the director presented me with a small celadon jar in porcelain inlaid in white, copied from the ancient tomb porcelains of Korea — a little gem. In the studio we found an old Korean artist at work on a figure design, a sad-eyed man who did not view us with apparent pleasure, but a good word for his work bright- ened him. It was good too. He was old Korea. By now the sounds of hammer and throb of engines told us that the young workers had returned and again we went through the shops and classrooms ahum with work. A good-looking, open-faced intelligent lot they proved. They learn quickly and are very orderly. As the most novel thing we saw, I enjoyed most the making of paper by hand. Shaking the film of pulp on a tray, and lo a sheet of paper. For the farmers Japan has taken strong grip of the vital matter of irrigation, increasing yield and cultivable area in all parts. The planting of cotton in southern Chosen has advanced from a product of 33,000 pounds in 1906 to 10,000,000 pounds in 1912, with the expectation of 133,- 000,000 pounds by 1917. In silk culture Japan has furnished the farmers with 60,000 broods of silkworm eggs and in three years has distributed 10,000,000 seedling piulberry tr^es, shgwing ii^ KOREA, A MODEL OE COLONIAL UPLIFT 355 this lucrative "side industry" an increase in the number of families engaged in it from 76,000 in 1910 to 177,320 families in 1914. In all farm products the increase has been phenomenal. River and harbour improvements, wharves, street car lines and railways are all extending in scope and utility. Lumber preservation, tree felling on a scientific plan, salt making, ginseng growing and collecting are all in the grip of governmental urging. A force of 13,000 police and gendarmerie has been organized, of which 7,316 are native assistants. The decadent Buddhist temples to the number of 1,400 have been reorganized. In fact no summary will quite do justice to the widespread work so intensively followed up. Japan, so far as I can see, makes no hypocritical pre- tence about all this. It is bent on making its work in Korea or, as it says, in Chosen, the best model of modern, liberal, progressive, productive colonization in the world, all for the glory and honour of Japan. Incidentally, indeed as an absolutely necessary part of it, the native population must be heartened, uplifted physically, ma-' terially, mentally, spiritually. And to all this what is the attitude of the Koreans ? At first — under the protectorate — it was sullen, silent, impo- tent hostility — an abnormally vain nation humiliated beyond words. Then came feeble sputters of random opposition, a camorra without teeth. Later, with annexa- tion, came a still more hopeless non possumus attitude with the elders, but a wiser thought arose among the younger that herein lay the way to resurrection. And every day the hope and the benefit became clearer. Today the Koreans, heartened and bettered materially, are falling in with the situation and marching ahead. CHAPTER XXIII KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES A visit to the palaces of the deposed emperors — How the fallen emperors live — ^A glimpse at Korea's history — The palace of Prince Li — Wonderful Mr. Suyimatsu — ^At the museum of antique art — Celadon pottery from the graves of centuries ago — Finding the pieces — ^A story of archaeological detection — The murder of the Empress and the great abandoned palace — ^A melancholy sight. Accompanied by the sagacious Mr. Hishida our party enjoyed on the afternoon of our luncheon with Count Terauchi the privilege of a visit to the vast palaces in- habited by and those abandoned of the Korean monarchs. Two are occupied by the deposed — one by the latest of the Korean line, now Prince Li, and the other by his father and imperial predecessor, called Prince Yi. The Japanese government allows them an income of one million yen, the same as they enjoyed before annexation. They retain their guards of Koreans and native servants and palace officials and enjoy the freedom of their spacious grounds and the city and suburbs whenever they choose. Seldom, however, are they seen abroad. Nothing more mournful than an Oriental palace in decay and abandonment can well be conceived. Here it is raw and recent. They are not in ruins ; they are simply empty, their high estate vanished, their pillared halls vacant, their thrones dust-covered, their hinges rusty and creaking, their garniture faded, the tall grass waving as it springs between the stone and marble pavements of the courtyards and wide and deep quadrangles that stretch one after the other for m KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES 357 a mile maybe from the towering monumental gate of entrance between halls of audience and imperial offices back to the residence of the monarchs themselves. The mighty nature of the structures telling of power and ancient art, the picture of their import in the recent days of their magnificent use, peopled by an army of proud retainers, armed guards, servants, officials, courtiers, nobles, ministers came by contrast quickly to mind. All gone. The silence, the stillness ached with murmur echoed from the past as of yesterday. They say the lion and the lizard keep The halls where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep, And Bahram, the great hunter, the wild ass Stamps o'er his head, but cannot break his sleep. Here is no Jamshyd, no conquering Alexander, only the perished lustre of a degenerate line, soon to be merged altogether in the citizenship of a resurrected people, yet it carries the inevitable stamp of the tragic just as surely as the deeper desolation of the perished empires of three thousand years ago on the great Asian plateau behind China and Mongolia so much further to the west of this borderland of the Pacific. But the gardens and grounds still are green and fresh and fragrant, and the warm afternoon passed pleasantly in their drives and walks finally arriving at the museum of ancient Korean art, where in charge of Mr. Suyimatsu, its learned, enterprising director, we examined its many treasures. There is no need to write the history of Korea here, but it is as well to recall that she had been an autonomous power from the dawn of history, ruled it is true by successive absolute dynasties, but of her own race. Some- times China held her as at least a tributary state under her suzerainty. Sometimes Japan assumed to have such 358 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND control, but always Korea remained in the end mistress in her own house. The end of the last century practically closed that period. The idea of emergence from her back- ward condition of Hermit Kingdom under Japanese pres- sure had come too late. China as well as Japan had per- ceived that she was worth possessing strategically as well as politically. "She is a sword pointed at the heart of Japan," said one sage of Nippon. China wanted her as a "buffer state" under her control. A diplomatic battle of wits began at Seoul. The helpless Korean government appealed alternately to Peking and Tokyo. China sent troops to put down a rebellion. Japan sent troops to Seoul to guard its Legation which had suffered at the hands of a mob. Out of this condition grew the China-Japanese war, Korea really the stake. China, soon whipped to a standstill, agreed that Korea should thenceforth be under the protection of Japan. From that hour Korea's inde- pendence vanished. It was seen what a mere shell of power she was. The once efficient, manly race had be- come a nation of effeminates. Taxation wasted on court favourites and spent idly had sapped the life-blood of the people. They were utterly powerless to effect their own release from domestic tyranny much less make any show of strength against external enemies. Her Imperial House had ruled Korea for over half a thousand years, but at the last showed neither skill nor courage in disentangling her from the meshes she found around her. Russia, too, began knocking ominously at her door, and, unhappily for Korea, knocked elsewhere to the arousing of Japan. And so the Eusso-Japanese war that led to the overthrow of Russia was fought, and Korea was put completely in the hands of Japan. By 1910 the sulky attitude of the Koreans made Japan resolve to take Korea over bodily and proclaimed her annexation with none to say her nay. Her imperial family wer^ curtly, formally deposed, and the land became YT"^""""^ THE DEPOSED EMPEROK. OF KOREA, XOW KXOW-M AS ]'RI^'CE LI, AND LIVING IN HIS PALACE AT SEOUL I COURT OF GI'.NKKAr. AXII) I KNCi: IM IIKSKRTKI) I'AI.ACK. SEOUL NOTF. THF, MARBT.F. BALUSTRADK AlVI) CRASS-GROWN COURT .-. TAT-ACK WHKRK DK.I'OSKT) KORKAN MONAKCII LIVES KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES 359 known in Japanese documents as Chosen. It was in the course of the recent history thus outlined that the tragic murder of the Korean Empress occurred upon which the great imperial palace was abandoned by the old Emperor — the culmination of a series of involved Korean court intrigues never yet revealed in their entirety. Monsieur Brieux, the French dramatist, who made a tour of the East in 1912 gave the murder a religious colour. It was a bloody, remorseless deed, however originating. Hard upon her falling beneath the strokes of her assassins was to come the fall of the imperial house, forerunner of many such of greater note to follow. China, Russia — ^who knows ? Enough of attempts at historic interpretation. The story of my afternoon at Seoul among the palaces of the fallen may best perhaps be pursued in a few pages from my diary as I jotted it down at the time : "Our first visit was to the palace of the deposed Emperor, now known as Prince Li. Of course we did not enter the portion he was occupying and where he lives, surrounded by his own native attendants and servants and with a company of native soldiers and police to guard him — or keep up a sort of phantom state. He is at liberty to go out of the palace, but very seldom stirs abroad. He has space for all sorts of diversions in the palace gardens which are very large. Prince Ito when he was Governor before the annexation in 1910, had a fine roadway over a mile long constructed within the park where the Prince can drive. There is a Japanese pavilion, a Chinese pavilion and various small pavilions through the grounds, as well as a large conservatory. Two or three times a week he gives luncheons or dinners — once a week to the elder Korean statesmen. He likes to give luncheons in the con- servatory which is high with tall banana trees, and he has the table set in winter around the fountain in the centre: in summer near it. Often Count Terauchi dines with him. 360 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND The Prince dresses in the Korean fashion in the palace, but wears a general's uniform when he goes out or receives. "His father, the abdicated Emperor, lives in another palace near the Legation quarter some distance off. "Th€« approach to the palace has been much improved since the annexation. In fact, Prince Ito had mainly carried it out before that. "The entrance gate of Prince Li's palace is fine. It rests on a substructure of granite pierced by three arches, and has two towering roofs much in the Japan temple style (adopted probably from Korea), that is, with projecting curved eaves. It is very massive and impressive. Inside is a vast quadrangle, on each side of which were rooms for guards or servants, but this space is now converted into long passages covered with a sort of green linoleum. At the back of the quadrangle rises a stone platform — ^where the Emperor gave audience — approached by steps, and with another two-roofed gate rising high behind it and con- taining the inner hall of audience. When audience was given the court, guards and servants mustered in lines marked by two lines of low granite monuments inscribed with ideographs. These have been removed to the sides of the quadrangle and a fountain now stands in the centre. "The Hall of Audience is very fine. There are twelve pillars of single boles of pine in Indian red lacquer that rise fully fifty feet to the roof, and give great dignity to the interior. The decoration of the upper woodwork, carved in the Korean style, is painted in many colours, the prevailing tone being a celadon grey with red and black (much the colouring of the under side of the pagoda at Nikko which tinting also was probably Korean in origin) , and giving lightness. The lighting is efEective from high latticed windows. There are many large elec- troliers, decorated with yellow and red (Spain's colours) silk shades with a flaring effect. The throne stood opposite KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES 361 the front entrance under a showy baldachin, beneath which is a showy picture of two phcenixes by a Japanese artist. Two gilt armchairs represent the thrones. They are modern affairs, not the real ones. "Beyond this gate, within another enclosure is the actual residence. The Prince's abode and that of the Princess are notable from the fact that there is no heavy crown on the rooftree — as there must be nothing weighty between him and heaven! It is not the place to dilate on the impli- cations of fallen emperors, but here is certainly a picture ! He is now only forty-four years old, but is so enfeebled by indulgence and the Oriental sycophancy surrounding him that he falls from side to side on the arms of his supporters as he goes up or down a flight of steps. "We were driven through the wooded, picturesque park road which Prince Ito had constructed — and a winding, twisting road it is. We had been joined by Mr. Suyimatsu, director of the Museum, in another carriage, and together we left our carriage to view the quaint little trickling stream called the Treasure of the Mountain, whose bed — a few inches wide — is cut in fanciful curves in the solid rock and then dribbles down about seven feet to rocks below, while a pompous inscription in ponderous playfulness speaks of its falls '250 feet high with the roar of 10,000 thunders. ' It is said to be hundreds of years old. Alas ! "We now retraced our steps, crossed the road and descended a slope to a pavilion where we found tea and cakes awaiting us as if they had been brought there by magic, as no one was in sight. The rest here was grateful, but we soon started and reached the Museum, where we spent more than an hour examining the tomb finds from the sepulchres of Korean kings and notables with pottery eight and nine hundred years old — beautiful celadon, inlaid with delicate white or white and black, vases, teapots, dishes, plates, saucers, but what was most interesting was 362 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the display of fragments unearthed by Dr. Suyimatsu himself in an investigation into the places where these ancient porcelain pieces had been fashioned so long ago. Authorities hitherto had settled on a locality not far from Seoul, and this had gone unchallenged for some time. A countryman it seems had found a broken piece of the old porcelain a point to the south, not very far from Fusan. This gave the Doctor an idea. He would search for the ancient kilns there. So to work he went with pick and spade in the section indicated. At first there was great difficulty, he said, in recognizing the signs, but at length he unearthed an ancient kiln. Thus encouraged, he pro- ceeded unearthing over one hundred kilns, and in the spoiled pieces and fragments found, he was able at last to identify the kilns where the very best pieces had been made, fired and glazed, and found pieces at every stage of manufacture. Here is food for thought. Pieces buried with the dead six hundred years ago, now looked at side by side with the rejected shards left by the living at that remote day to the mercy of time. The potter and the king, and the common clay. "There were iron Buddhas of great size, smaller bronze Buddhas and figurines and big bells and charms and dainty implements and adornments of queens — combs, hairpins — even earpicks. There were also ancient kakemonos, some of them very well done. It was indeed a rare treat to have these things explained by a master of great modesty and great acquirements. "We entered another wing of the palace, and passed through a dining room where the Prince entertains occasionally and through another large parlour and then into a long room with two French billiard tables at the farther end where the Prince plays at times. Not long since Count Terauchi played with him. The Count's right arm is shortened, the result of a wound in the shogun ANCIENT BRONZE BUDDHAS FROM THE SEOUL MUSEUM ANCIENT KOKKAN (JOLUEN ORNAMENTS AND POTTERY IN THE SEOUL MUSEUM KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES 363 rebellion of 1877, and it is not of mueh use to him, and he uses a rest. Anyway the Prince beat him, and was fatuously pleased. At the other end of the room was a phonograph with a great pile of discs on the ground. "The Prince also has a Japanese, a Chinese and a foreign pavilion in the palace compound which covers some hun- dreds of acres. The Japanese pavilion has a very large room covered with mats with an outlook on a small lake on which are a loudly painted fantastic barge and a European boat. "Our last visit of the afternoon was to the great deserted palace which was vacated by the old Emperor when the Empress was murdered there some fourteen years ago. The story, it seems, is now well known, but as it was told to me, it represented the Empress as the real head of the court and hence of the Empire. Whoever she favoured found place and profit; whoever she opposed faced ig- nominy. Hence court intrigues and cabals in which some Japanese took part. She was murdered by Japanese conspirators as the outcome. The old Emperor abandoned the great palace as I have said, and since it has gone to sad decay. It looks like the deserted palace of a fairy tale of old and not the theatre of a drama in real life within the span of this young twentieth century. "It is vastly impressive in its decay. The great entrance gate with its substructure of granite with three arches and the J:owering Korean double roof is supported on either side by a tile-capped wall that runs down on either side to a boundary wall some fifteen feet high. Passing through one enters a great quadrangle whose side walls are pierced in the centre by low Korean gates. It is grass-grown and untended. A path has been trodden through the bare spots. At the further end, a mountain rises seemingly behind, but of course far back of the second gate also double-roofed, which opens on the second quadrangle at 364 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND whose sides are the rooms of guards and servants, thirty or forty on each side. The floors of these are earthen — smoothed but utterly uncovered by board or carpet. The second gate was used for administration offices and guards. Beyond the second quadrangle rises the third gate and beyond that the third quadrangle at whose sides were also rooms for officers and servitors. In two lines down the middle are low, square granite pillars engraved with signs for the standing of the various myriad officials of the court. Before the third gate is a great granite platform of audience. Above this platform and in the fourth gate itself was the throne room with the throne raised still higher, and at its back a screen of three sides behind which, it is said, stood the Minister who, speaking through a loophole, dictated what the Emperor was to say to those who came before the throne. The doors of the great Interior Hall of Audience were locked, and it was too late to send for the key, so we simply peered through the latticed doors into the great silence of crimson-lacquered pillars and painted roof seen dimly. We passed another detached administration building. Beyond this was the palace proper with the houses without roof cappings — and further still the retreat of the royal inscribed over the gate as ' ' The House of Pleasant Intercourse. ' ' We passed into its desertion and silence. A dim-eyed Korean came, scraping and bowing out of some dim room beyond, and shoved back sliding doors for us where the Empress had slept, was murdered in the night and lay when dead. It was ghastly! "It was now six o'clock. The sun was taking the calm of evening gold, and sunset red was showing faintly above, and we took our way back (avoiding the steps up and down of the gates) over the rough granite flagging of the inner quadrangles. Between all the flagstones the grass was springing tall and waving a little in the evening KOREAN PALACES AND ANTIQUES 365 breeze. It was grass on the grave of a newly buried empire. "Thus we passed out through the long quadrangles and so through the outer gate. The carriages were waiting, and we drove to Sontag's Hotel with a hint from our guide that we might tip the driver. The mundane surely dogs the sublime, and plays tag with the tragic — and that is realism — ^the part that is usually left out." CHAPTER XXIV OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD On 203 Meter Hill — In a droshky — Over the field of Liaoyang — Where Taehibana won deathless renown — Kuropatkin's pru- dence — Mukden's great struggle — Nogi's bulldog attack — The three farm houses — The final retreat — Beans, barley and kaolin blotting out the battle lines. SuBELT, it is important not to prophesy unless you know. On the Liaotung Peninsula I was following the trail of the armies, Japanese and Russian, which had battled and stormed from Port Arthur to Mukden ten years be- fore, fighting battles the greatest to that hour in his- tory as to numbers engaged, tremendous in the use of modern weapons of destruction and frightful in loss of life. Surveying these fields of "ten years after," I was often tempted to speak of that war as the last and greatest of combats; to think of wholesale human slaughter as having its last innings on Manchurian soil, so profound seemed the peace of the world — the Balkans at rest, even Mexico quiet and the great powers occupied in rocking small per- turbed populations to peaceful slumbers — ^no war cloud above the horizon. I did not prophesy anything, partly, I fear, because it seemed so easy and so obvious. Were not Russia and Japan friendly after all their dogged, ferocious fighting? Was not Andrew Carnegie the titular god of the new arbitra- tion millennium and William J. Bryan his prophet? The spirit of Amida Buddha, the sparer of life, the lover of OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 367 peace, seemed spreading his arms in benediction over tlie West as well as the Bast. I was sitting on a broken Russian cannon on the summit of 203 Meter Hill above Port Arthur — that sacrificial summit soaked with torrents of good fighting blood — and looking over the inside of the oval on hilltops that formed the landward bastions of the Russian defences, not one of which had fallen without its Homeric struggle. With a turn of the head I could see the harbour where the Russian warships lay and the heights of Golden Hill, whose great guns defended the harbour entrance to the last. Imagina- tion easily closed out the beauty of the day, and under a darkened sky I saw the line of hilltop forts alive again with flashes of flame, the great howitzer shells from the Japanese battery a mile back hurtling through air overhead and bursting on the battleships three miles off in the harbour, their thunders reverberating in the hollows of the hills and their shocks shaking the ground beneath me. Never again, I was thinking, would the like be seen of civilized man. How futile, how sentimental, it seems now with a tenfold greater struggle drenching all Europe with human blood — the champions of progress like dogs at each other's throats ; the time-worn shibboleths more potent than ever in luring men to slaughter. And, irony of ironies, Japan, now friendly with Russia, attacking and capturing another Port Arthur, this time held by Germans, at Kiao-chow. A month later on the ocean, the story that a Bosnian boy had shot an Austrian Archduke dead troubled no one abroad, but presently a wireless message came out of the blue that the Kaiser had turned on the Czar ; that France was struggling for life and that England had leaped into the fray. My jottings of the battlefields of Manchuria seemed as if written two hundred years ago. At the coming of the rainy season in Japan it had seemed best that I shQuld suspend my studies and observation^ 368 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND there and betake me to the scenes of the great struggle of 1904-05 between the little island empire and the giant Russian power. "We so associate this small spearhead of Chinese land thrust southward into the Yellow Sea with battle and disaster and human bravery and human suffer- ing that no one apparently knows what a delightful climate it enjoys, mild in winter, cool in summer and always bracing, and that this former charnel house of history is successfully putting on the airs of a summer resort. There is a nice and well-kept Yamato Hotel for for- eigners, where one may linger in comfort, and there are breezy walks and pleasant drives. The boomers of the place all brag about the joys of the neaf-by beach and rather ignore the siege that made Port Arthur famous. Newcomers, however, are not to be put off so easily and hasten to the ruined forts on the hills — tortured and shat- tered, just as they fell to Japanese prowess, they remain today — and the monuments to the dead of Russia and Japan and the War Museum, and glimpse the forts on Golden Hill and Tiger's Tail that are still on guard, but under different gunners, above the entrance to the harbour. From the point of Port Arthur to the city of Mukden, where the campaign ended, is two hundred and forty-six miles to the north, and up and down this territory from May of 1904 to March of 1905 the flame of battle ran. The war had two tremendous sides, the naval side upon the sea and the military side on land. On the sea Japan, sustaining certain losses, it is true, triumphed with scarcely an interruption against the Russian fleets, sinking in the open water or driving to shelter Makaroff's Port Arthur fleet, driving the Vladi- vostok squadron and smashing the great ragbag fleet of Rojestvensky in the straits of Tsushima. That unexampled tale would Ipe worth the telling in detail, but the se^, is OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 369 smooth where the great ships foundered, and there is not a trace of the Eussian ships today outside the relics that abound in the shrines and museums of Japan, where a captured gun or a shell-punctured funnel ministers to the national pride. Outside Port Arthur and its environs there is little trace of the great struggle of the land armies. When Kuroki, coming through Korea with the First Army of Japan, crossed the Yalu River on the first of May, 1904, driving the Russians before him, how surprised we all were in America. He did not linger, but pushed on across the Liaotung Peninsula, putting himself between the main Russian force and Port Arthur, which General Nogi's army was presently to besiege. Before that, however. General Oku with the Second Army of Japan was to fight the battle of Nanshan on May 26, setting a pace for personal bravery that only heroes could imitate, namely, hurling infantry in night attacks against fortifications armed with all the modern appliances of destruction. It succeeded at Nanshan, where a steep mountainside was then bloodily won ; tens of thou- sands of brave lives were lost to little purpose in the great combats that followed. While it placed Japanese courage, loyalty and devotion at the limit of the heroic, it was undoubtedly the great tactical sin of the campaign, suc- cessful beyond expectation though the latter proved. The unopposed capture of Dalny after the storming of Nanshan and the bottling up of forty-seven thousand Russians under Stoessel at Port Arthur marked the first period of the war. So, leaving the siege aside for the present, we take our way up the peninsula and ten miles below Liaoyang find the main Russian army over two hundred thousand strong under Kuropatkin facing south, for he had been told, by the Czar to raise the siege of Port Arthur. His entrenched and fortified line is thirty miles long. Reinforcements 370 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND keep coming to him marvellously at the rate of a thousand a day over the single-track Siberian railroad. In front of him and in touch with him, the three Japanese armies of Oku, Nozu and Kuroki, some one hun- dred and eighty thousand men, are making ready for the great fight. By the end of August they feel ready to attack, and battle is joined along the whole line. The battle of Liaoyang is on. The Eussian engineers have done well ; their artillery is strong and well posted. Why, with superior force, choice of position — a line of hills and eminences running east and west — and a dogged bravery in the battle line they did not win, is susceptible of many explanations. The Japanese staff lays it to Kuropatkin — his lack of initiative, his extreme caution. Pound, hammer, charge by night and day from August 23 to September 3 as they would, the Japanese could not break the Eussian line. Their costly efforts in human life only pushed the Eussian right, centre and left centre into stronger positions prepared for them beforehand by the Russian engineers. In these positions despite the greatest heroism in an unwearied offensive the Japanese could not budge their foe. It was a solid thirty-mile line of iron belching flame and death that met the Japanese. Men died like flies hurling themselves against it. In this juncture Kuroki with a single division was sent on a flanking movement around the extreme Russian left. He made some progress before he was discovered. Kuro- patkin sent three divisions against him, but Kuroki man- aged to hold precariously for three days, and Kuropatkin, with thousands and thousands of men in his reserves, men whom he had never brought under flre, took fright. He magnified Kuroki 's single division into a flanking army turning his line, and on the night of September 4 ordered a general retreat! He got safely away. That was the OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 371 battle of Liaoyang, bloody, exhausting, a Russian defeat by inferior numbers. This was explained to me by Colonel Tsudo of the Japanese army at the railroad station of Liaoyang with the aid of a set of wonderful war maps, lettered in German text, but printed at Tokyo, they told me. Then a major and lieutenant were detailed to show me what points I might wish to visit in the battle line. I left the choice to my guides and off we went southward, the soldiers riding and my party in a droshky, across the ancient tumbledown town of forty thousand inhabitants, with its crumbling twenty-foot walls and its dilapidated single Buddhist pagoda of eleven rings towering over all its squalour. The town is literally hacked in two by the river Taitze, which has cut a deep bed for itself. The road runs for some distance along the river bank. It would, it seemed, have been easier to drive in the river bed. Once out of town and as we wind across the plain the solitary pagoda asserts itself to the backward glance and becomes an iden- tification mark as well as giving dignity to the outline of Liaoyang. There is a Japanese quarter of the town, cleaner than the rest, but the Chinese who swarm and have their being along the muddy river banks would take a prize for dirty surroundings. The Oriental contentment passes belief. Our way was now through a flat cultivated country under a broiling sun tempered by a faint breeze and over a vile road that had been tracked by heavy carts when soft and now had deep ruts in the hardened earth. On either side stretched the fields, rich with crops, the Chinese farmers busy with their work. Five or six miles out the major began pointing out land- marks of the war, emplacements for Russian batteries, the seats of the heavy guns, all fast disappearing under the assaults of Generals Sun, Wipd and Rain. The tall kaolin, 372 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND the waving barley and the tangle of the soya bean are soldiers aiding the elemental generals in wiping out the sears of the battlefield. Liaoyang has become a low-lying group on the horizon, with its single pagoda spire upstanding. We are nearing a range of grassy hills running east and west, the line where Kuropatkin made his stand, and one could not but admire the frontal strength of the redoubts and enfilading possi- bilities of the position, the stands chosen for indirect fire. The road from Liaoyang ran between two hills, one a precipitous rock six hundred feet high, named Sou Shan, and the other a saddle-shaped, two-peaked, grassy hill about a mile long and four hundred and twenty feet above the plain and with sharp but accessible slopes. Hereabout was the fiercest fighting, so up the hill we clambered. The view from the crest was far-reaching. Less than a mile south were the Japanese lines, extending far on the right of Sou Shan. East and west every point was strongly overlooked by redoubts with indirect fire. Along the foot of the hill ran a long deep trench that extended east for thirty miles and which could still be traced, facing the open vaUey land. In front of this trench the tall kaolin had been cut for eight hundred yards by Chinese coolies, who worked indifferently for Russian or Japanese, for whoever hired and paid them. The near-by villages on the right had all been strongly held. Although Kuroki was astride of Kuropatkin 's extreme left, the Japanese were taking no chances along the rest of their lines. They were pressing at every point. Again and again they advanced against the defences and were annihilated. Again and again they captured points only to be driven from them with fearful losses. The indomit- able pluck, devotion and tirelessness of the Japanese were fairly matched by the dogged resistance of the Russians. Night and day the attacks were kept up and the f orlora OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 373 hope heroism of campaigns in other lands became the commonplace of the soldiers of Nippon. Many were the assaults on Tung Shan, where we were standing. Twice it was captured, but the defenders each time recaptured it, aided by a terrible cannonade. One attacking regiment lost fifty per cent, in killed. It was here that Major Tachibana of the Thirty-fourth Infantry gained imperish- able renown and lost his life on the crest. With his battalion of four companies he attacked in the early morning, sending up three companies and keeping one in reserve. Russian grape and shell rained on them. Even the crossfire of the Japanese guns struck them here and there. They were decimated in breaking through the lower trenches and swept by a hail of Mauser bullets from the lines above, and yet the company ascending the hill nearest the road put men over the parapet above. Tachibana on the second hill led his men or what was left of them over the crest, where he slew right and left with his short Japanese sword, falling at last from a bayo- net thrust. The Colonel of the Thirty-fourth Regiment, whose feet had become so swollen that he could not wear his boots, had followed the attack, leaning on two of his men. He fell dead from a shot at the foot of the hill in a clump of trees still waving below there in the wind. At a village to the right and front of Sou Shan a Japanese brigade advancing to the attack was allowed to come within a couple of hundred yards, when a fire of rifle bullets and machine guns suddenly swept them down by hundreds, compelling the remnant to retreat. The Major told stories of other parts of the bloody field — how at one place the cavalry horses could not be pushed forward, so many were the corpses at their feet. Tachi- bana, the hero who had died where we stood, was, it seems, in peace the gentlest and most lovable of men and had been ^n aid to the present Emperor, Yoshihita, when the latter 374 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND was Crown Prince. Two imperial princes had the week before climbed the hill as we had and paid homage to the shade of Tachibana. They were Prince Higashi Kuni and Prince Asahi. Tachibana was surely entering the domain of the Japanese gods. Talk turned back to the battle time, and the Major, summing up the conditions on the Eussian front, made a sweeping gesture east and west, and said simply with a shrug: "Do what we would, we could not." Yet because he could not force back one Japanese division on his extreme left with three of his own, and with twenty thou- sand men never under fire, Kuropatkin gave the order to retreat to Mukden, fifty miles away! Long we lingered on the hilltop in the hot lashing wind that swept over it. Liaoyang showed barely on the northern horizon. Our gaze swept the hills around and the plains beneath. The grove where the Colonel of the Thirty-fourth fell among his men was waving its slim, graceful trees ; the fields were green with the growing crops and the enclosing village walls and roofs lay yellow in the bright sunlight under a clear blue sky. It was a picture of smiling peace and plenty where gaunt devastation and the wholesale murder of war had reigned ten years before. No monument marked the little- visited scene of the great conflict. Of all the dead that matted the hillside not a vestige was in sight, yet within a range of a mile over ten thousand men of both sides had fallen; In irony, as we came down the fatal hill, we noticed four small mud cones marking the graves of four recently dead Chinese peasants. But at Liaoyang there are monuments to the Russian and the Japanese dead. But as we drove back in the evening hours, starting the black pigs grunting from their mud wallows, seeing the naked children playing with lazy mongrel dogs or with other children wearing chest prO' o < O < O Pi < K H W M E-t M > 15 OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 375 tectors that ended where decency calls for covering, the peasants trooping home to the evening meal, it seemed hard to realize that we had just left the scene of the fight that had go recently decided the fate of eastern Asia for maybe a hundred years. In a way my experience at Liaoyang was repeated the next day at Mukden. Two smart officers, a major and a first lieutenant, waited on me at the Yamato Hotel there, and with their excellent maps explained the greater field, and then arming ourselves with field glasses and lunch baskets we took our way to the critical point of the battlefield. Although the battle of Liaoyang was materially only the prelude to the greater combat of Mukden and in so far indecisive it really governed the end. On September 4, when Kuropatkin drew off his army, his intention was to go to Tiding, one hundred miles away. He wanted to get to some point where the Japanese line of communication would be as tenuous as his own. That single-track Siberian railroad of five thousand miles was surely as thin a retiring line as one could desire for an enemy. He was not allowed to move north in peace. He had to turn and fight from the fifth to the tenth of October at the Shaho. Further north on January 27, 1905, he turned again somewhat savagely at Sandepu, and with a little more boldness would have scored a Russian victory. As it was the action gave him time to reach Mukden, and to form the determination of giving battle there to Japan. He had received reinforcements. His forces all told reached nearly 400,000 men — 310,000 on the fighting line — when he flung out his trenches and manned them and fortified. In all the lines were seventy miles long, but the true battle line was forty-seven, from ten to fifteen miles south of the town. His left and centre were planted in the hill country to the east. On his right centre and right 376 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND stretched the beginning of the great Manchurian plain. The weather was deadly cold, but there had been little snow. Besides endeavouring to defeat the Japanese army before him Kuropatkin had ever to keep in mind that he must never let go his hold on the railroad behind him. From his right centre it ran back through Mukden and beyond. Bear that in mind and it is not hard to understand even so great a battle as Mukden. Despite the haste in which his entrenchments had been thrown up they proved strong and sufiScing during the seventeen mortal days that the terrible combat lasted, with battle all the time night and day along the line. Again Kuropatkin had his chance and again he failed to test his fortune to the uttermost. The Japanese meanwhile, like the little girl in the tradi- tional nursery tale of our civil war, "had not been idle." The fall of Port Arthur on January 2, 1905, had released General Nogi's army, which now had come up and taken its place on the left of the Japanese line before Mukden. A fifth army under General Kawamura, organized in the late autumn, was brought up on the extreme right. Their battle line held over three hundred thousand actual fighting men disposed from left to right in five armies under Nogi, Oku, Nozu, Kuroki and Kawamura — all but Kawamura 's men toughened and hardened veterans. The fighting began on February 23 with mutual carnage, but as the month wore on the result was more in the nature of defining the lines than in material advantage. Kawa- mura 's new troops were sent forward to make a feint on the Russian left, but only felt the strength of the Russians in front of them. From that on right, centre and left of both armies pounded their opponents with artillery and threatening rather than performing, movements of the OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 377 infantry. A curious feature was for how little the Cossack cavalry counted in this as in previous engagements. The Russian centre was especially strong and three days of massed cannonading made little impression on it. Indeed the Russian guns were generally superior to the Japanese, well placed, well directed and well served. Of course a general staff as enterprising as the Japanese could surely be expected to manufacture some surprises, but day after day up to March 6 nothing new had developed. On the seventh something happened. Nogi with his veterans began a grim and searching advance around the extreme Russian right. At first it had gone undetected by Kuropatkin as a menacing movement, and even then did not attract the attention it merited. On the eighth of March, partly for what might come of it and partly to mask the flanking movement of Nogi, General Oku made a powerful forward move with infantry masses that made a great dent in the Russian line opposing him, although it did not break the formation. Nogi had meanwhile worked around the Russian left and was swing- ing round north of Mukden with the now plain object of reaching the railroad in the Russian rear, and it was the stroke of Nogi — grim, relentless soldier — ^that told. Kuropatkin, alive at last to his danger, rushed masses of troops and field artillery to his right and they clashed bloodily with Nogi. By March 7 Nogi, pressing northward in a curve, actually reached within two miles of the railroad at the village of Tashichao. Against that point and Nogi's line for ten miles south, Kuropatkin hurled his battalions. It was to this critical point on the battlefield we were proceeding over the plain south and west of Mukden. Here the immense field sown with the soya bean — China's newest crop, exported by the cargo in a score of vessels — spread out on all sides to the horizon in a pattern of furrows, sometimes straight, sometimes gently curved. The men 378 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND were toiling under the sun and the women finely dressed sitting in groups under little groves of shade trees, gossip- ing and watching their lords and masters work, for that is the way of it in Manchuria and most of northern China, where a woman is an article of cash value, and only to be relied on if treated to the very best. Over these fields in the bitter cold of 1905 had the soldiers struggled. Through the seventh, eighth and ninth of March attack, defence, counter-attack went on without intermission, fluctuating with advantage here to one side and there to another, with heroism and sacrifice on both sides.. Nine times has the plough-share turned over the soil for the growing of beans and corn, barley and millet, the peasant reaping bullets and shells and human bones with his beans and barley. The battlefield seems effaced. But there are points on the level landscape that remain. A hot driving wind has risen, tossing up cloudlets of dust that recall the striking of shells on the earth. Far off there is a line of trees on the horizon. The heat haze that lingers close to the earth brings a mirage effect as if the trees stood on river bank or lake rim; they float in the haze. Little groves of ash are dotted here and there among the furrows that run straight for a mile or curve in green parallels as far. Major Shirai rose in his saddle and pointed. Lieutenant Yano rode up. A small compound with the usual mud walls enclosing a group of small buildings lay near the horizon and it was to that he was pointing. ' ' The three farm houses, ' ' he said. Beyond it, maybe half a mile to the right as we ap- proached, lay a village enclosed also by the yellow mud walls. "Wi-fon-ton," said the Lieutenant. On the first alarm at Nogi's turning movement the Russians seized the village and the enclosure of the three OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 379 farm houses. They had a couple of days before thrown up a redoubt about a mile to the south and on it planted a battery of field guns. They dug a line of trenches that ran from the three farms to the southward. Then in the night came the Japanese, the Sixth Regiment creeping up on the village and the Thirty-third Regiment making a dash in the dark on the farms. In both cases the attack was discovered before delivered and the night became hideous with deadly fire. The Japanese loss was heavy. The Colonel of the Thirty-third met a soldier's death before the mud walls ; the Colonel of the Sixth, wounded in arm and leg, still kept his feet and went with his men over the walls into the village. The Russians were bayoneted or driven out of both places. With daylight came another foe. The fire of the Russian redoubt withered the lives of those in the three farms whom the night attack had spared. Only 100 of the 1,000 of the night attack were living an hour after daybreak. The bodies of 900 comrades lay around them and just outside the walls. In a few hours as the morning grew came sixteen Russian battalions supported by the fire of the redoubt. They cap- tured the three farms and the western half of the village. The main street lay between the two forces and for two days the fighting was incessant, but neither could make the other budge. Four thousand bodies of Russians and Japanese lay over the fields and within the walls. It was stubborn, sleepless, heroic. The Japanese attacked the three farms again and again without success. In one attack they had agreed to attempt to scale the seven-foot wall, but when with a spring they threw their arms over the top the Russian officers inside chopped them off with their sabres. It is characteristic of the Japanese to keep on, and they kept springing up and falling back with chopped off or shattered arms until 380 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND ordered away. Half a score of arms were found inside when the battle was over. In the village street along the high mud walls on either side, pierced by heavy doors to the front yards of the houses, the tiny rifle missiles sung and stung all day. The rain of lead has left innumerable traces in the doors and doorposts, a sinister poek-marking that can still be seen. Where Russians and Japanese on each side of the street pierced the mud walls for loopholes the peasants have plastered fresh mud, but you can count them still and easily figure out the fierce-eyed mujik or equally glaring Oriental in his battle frenzy firing at any living thing in sight. Nightfall brought no cessation. Hungering, thirsting, sinking with fatigue, the hmnan animals with the lust of blood could still ram in their cartridges and fire to kill for three terrible days and nights. Death was all around them, and for a foot or two before them, but the cry of "Holy Russia!" or "Dai Nippon!" was ringing in their ears. We went into the three farms enclosure ; it has now four farm houses. We fingered the patched mud walls while the mild-eyed Manchus gazed at us in wonder. Visitors must be few. They brought us rifle bullets and grape shot. An old peasant came running from a field hard by with a couple of two-inch shells, perhaps from the guns on that redoubt that slaughtered the remnant of the Thirty-third on that red morning. In the village they crowded around us and conducted us to the little Buddhist temple, which with its poor ornaments and images had lived as calmly through the siege as it had for a hundred and fifty years before. The old, slim priest with a small white moustache and a gentle face stood aside in his black robe looking wistfully at us. The chil- dren stood wide eyed around — children to whom war in its terrible panoply sweeping over their door sills was only a OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 381 word heard around the hearth fires in winter when the nights were cold. We rode ahead a mile past other crumbling works of the battle on low hillocks by the way. One Russian work had a ditch around it and a platform with a screen to hide the riflemen. Their artillery was on another enfilading hillock half a mile away ; one could see the emplacements for the guns. Death found out the Russians posted there and the Japanese who attacked it. Fragments of human bones strewed the ditch. The orderly handed us a bone from a soldier's foot that had perhaps first trod the earth in Moscow or haply in Kyoto— who knows? Not the Manchu peasant looking on at the remnants of men who had come with military music and the louder drumming of the guns to leave their foot- bones rattling at his doors. Under a clump of trees still nearer to Tashichao — Nogi's furthest in the battle — ^we ate our lunch. And there was drawn for me the closing picture of the mighty struggle of six hundred thousand fighting men. We have seen Nogi advancing and cheeked within sight of the railroad. Kuropatkin's alarm was expressed in the vigour of the Russian counter attacks on Nogi, which could not budge him, but held him fast. In return the pressure was now made heavier still along the whole Japanese line. We have seen that Oku had pushed the Russians back a space along his front, but the Muscovites still held fast together. Great was the carnage and the victory was on neither side. Then on the ninth Kuropatkin had a similar Spasm of prudence or fear to that he had at Liaoyang and resolved on the same manoeuvre — ^to withdraw his troops along the whole line of battle, sacrificing this time the gallant fellows who were holding Nogi fast on his doubled- up right. In vain Nogi, maddened by the sight of trainload after 382 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND trainload of Russians moving up the line, called and clamoured to Oyama for help. "Give me another division and I can cut the railroad, stand astride it and end the war." But Oyama could not spare a man — or else General Kodama, said to be the real commanding if not the titular genius of the campaign, thought he could not. Then, in the night, leaving a thin line behind, Kuro- patkin's army began its flight. On his left and part of his centre the way was open for him through the hilly country north, and they got away, but on his right centre and crumpled right the lines of retreat naturally converged. The retiring masses ran into each other in the darkness. Formations were broken. They became a mob. A dust- storm such as only Manchuria can raise blinded them. They staggered along helpless. In the morning light the thousands left on the fighting line surrendered and forty thousand men were herded by the Japanese north of Mukden in the neighbourhood of the tombs of the Manchu emperors. The Russian loss was ninety-seven thousand men, and the glory of the Czar trailed away in the back track to Siberia. Back a hundred and fifty miles went the Russians as best they could along the railroad until they reached a range of hills that they held until the Peace of Portsmouth was declared. The Japanese did not follow in force. It explains in some degree why the Russians held out at the conference table in New Hampshire against all indemnity. Something more certainly was in it than the stubbornness in the Kalmuck jaw of Witte. He knew and the Japanese knew that Japan had gone her limit. The sun was getting around to the west as the story of this great Japanese victory, this final touch to the Russian overthrow, was pricked off on the wide landscape around us, and it gave food for much silent thought till OVER THE MANCHURIAN BATTLEFIELD 383 the outlines of Mukden, identifiable by the dome of the new railroad depot, arose out of the plain. And the thought pointed to one grim conclusion, that in war sacrifice at the right psychological moment is the key to victory. Kuropatkin never apparently knew when to make it. The Japanese made it with an unparalleled lavishness. Had the Russian commander made it on his left at Liaoyang or his right at Mukden, made it unstint- edly as: the Japanese did, it might have been a different story. As we have seen he made it in spite of himself and, too late when he tore up his firm lines, abandoned the heroes on his right and turned his back on his enemy. In the choice of occasion lies the difference between defeat and victory. One thing struck me, pleased me. Among the Japanese ofScers of high grade and low I found a gallant recognition of the strong qualities of the Russian soldier. Their opinion of the Russian officers was much higher too than I expected. They laid the mistakes of the Russians where they seemed to belong, to poor information, lack of superior initiative; but to the masterly Russian engineers and to the general military qualities of officers, rank and file they were fain to give a manly military salute. And apropos of the matter of the real genius of the campaign they tell a nice little malicious story in Tokyo. A lady sympathized with the marchioness : "You must suffer horribly with your dear husband ex- posed to such dangers, all the slaughter going on around him and the terrible responsibility resting on him." "Oh, not at all. He is very comfortable. All he has to do is to sign the orders that Kodama writes out for him." But it was great team-work whoever did the planning. CHAPTER XXV PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW Two sieges won by the Japanese — ^A fascinating pilgrimage over fortified hills and mighty forts that fell before valour and eleven-inch guns — The war-lessons of the fray— -Russian bravery as well — The lady's slippers. It was beyond expectation that within a couple of months of my visit to Port Arthur, a decade after the great siege, it would fall to the Japanese to undertake a very similar task within a few hundred miles of the Liaotung Penin- sula. The siege of Kiao-chow presented a problem very similar to that of Port Arthur, but it was considerably less of a task. They had learned their art of war from the Germans, and were now able to give them a valuable lesson in return. Like Port Arthur the German leased territory in China was at the point of a peninsula on the coast of China. It also encloses a harbour with a highly defensible mouth making evident the necessity of mainly reducing it from the land side. Its hinterland is very hilly, like that of Port Arthur ; indeed it is in some ways more difficult. Its hill country is more irregular. There is one long valley to be sure, but it is too obvious to be altogether tempting as an approach. Then it has some dominating peaks and a group of hill forts. The town of Tsing-tao in the German territory is of greater pretensions than the town of Port Arthur was when the Russians held it. In a way it combines th& conven- 384 PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 385 iences of Dalny, now Dairen, with those of the Russian fortress town. It is the fruit of a longer growth. The whole settlement had some advantages for defence over Port Arthur. One is the marshy quality of so much of the terrain in the first approach from the land in the rear of Tsing-tao. One great disadvantage to the hesieged was the smallness of the garrison, the highest estimate putting it at seven thousand Germans as compared with the forty-seven thousand Russians who at first manned the defence of Port Arthur. The German ships in the harbour too were much inferior in weight of metal they could throw to the Russians at Port Arthur. While this kept the German naval contingent practically out of action so far as the blue water was concerned it may be remembered of what small avail the larger Russian fleet became under the weight end enterprise of the Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo. The siege of Kiao-chow, it was clear from the start, should resolve itself into an investment by sea and land, to be carried to victory mainly by the forces on shore — Port Arthur over again. For the sake of the besieged as well £is the besiegers it was well that Kiao-chow did not witness the human suffering, the destruction of life and material that marked the siege and fall of Port Arthur. The defence indeed proved weak and inadequate, and fortress and town fell to the first assault in force, after the deliberate and well-planned Japanese advance from the land side. Landing on the Chinese coast far from Kiao- chow the advance to the rear of Tsing-tao was slow on account of bad weather. Once on the ground, however, no time was lost in beginning the fighting and — ending it. The fortification lessons of Port Arthur were lost on the German engineers and the lesson of the assaults was not lost on the Japanese and British allies before Kiao-chow, 386 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND On the greater field of the war in Europe it may be noted that the Germans alone applied from the very start to their armies in the field the great lesson of the Port Arthur siege, namely, that nothing short of very great guns counts against modern fortifications. It took five months of unprecedented sacrifice of life for the Jap- anese to learn it. Until they brought up their eleven- inch guns from their fleet — the guns that smashed the tops of the Russian forts to flinders — they could not make a serious dent in the defence. The Germans at the opening of the European war went one better with their sixteen-inch howitzers mounted on "caterpillars," and their work at Liege and Antwerp astonished the world. The Allies in the campaign in the north of France undoubtedly drew to some small extent upon their navies for high-calibre guns to offset the great German siege train as soon as they found their great disadvantage, but it was really toward the end of the second year of the war that they brought into action in sufficing numbers the new great guns that put them on a par with their enterprising enemies. The effectiveness of the various grades of modern artillery, including machine guns, was thoroughly tested in the Russo-Japanese campaign, not to speak of search- lights, land mines, live electric wires and wire entangle- ments. The French have shown advances since in the lighter guns as to range, missile and rapidity of fire, but no other great change is visible anywhere in the twelve years since Port Arthur fell compared with the use of aviators to keep the commanders informed as to move- ments of the enemy. The degree of destruction which the travellers of the air can visit on the enemy beneath is not yet very high. Like the submarine the aeroplane's use for destruction will, without doubt, develop, making the lot of the fighter m the garth's or wa,ter's §Tjrfac§ PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 387 still more difficult. They have modified strategy but little; but they will influence tactics more and more. Finally, the example of the Japanese in the handling of masses of infantry has profoundly influenced the world of war. Despite the murderous effectiveness of the machine gun and the modern rifle, they revived the use of the bayonet in the battle charge. It had been agreed that the breechloading rifle had made the bayonet obsolete. Nothing short of the tremendous courage and limitless devotion of the young soldiers of Nippon could have proved the contrary. We have seen how their example was applied in the Balkan war by the Serbs, Bulgarians and Greeks, making a surprising end of the Turks. It is not astonishing, then, that the lesson has been applied in the great war now raging in Europe, making the combats more than ever strenuous and deadly. It was something, then, to have been so recently privi- leged to visit the scene of the historic struggle at Port Arthur. My son and I came down from Mukden in the comfort of the South Manchurian Railroad and stayed long enough at Dalny, now Dairen, to see how completely all traces of war had disappeared from that costly creation of the Russian occupation before the war with Japan. The home of a flourishing commerce and a hive of indus- try had arisen on the ruins of the costly experiment of the Russians. Japanese industry and enterprise have transformed the place. Its wharves accommodate a legion of freight and pas- senger-carrying steamers and are piled up with merchan- dise awaiting transport. Thousands of tons of soya bean cake like piles of grindstones keep coming in and igoing out. At the South Manchuria Railroad shops they are building every kind of railroad car, The haudsQni? WW hotel was 388 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND ready to open. An air of cheer and prosperity brightened the faces one met. But Port Arthur was our objective, and we simply stayed overnight at Dairen for a morning start to the fortress town at the spear head of the Liaotung Peninsula. It is a short run to Port Arthur. We arrived before noon and noted that it was not so easy to hide the wounds of war here as it had been at Mukden, Liaoyang and Dairen; the cuts had been too deep. But that did not worry the inhabitants, Japanese or Chinese. They were more concerned in Port Arthur's growth as a watering place — summer and winter — ^than in its flaming war history. And truly the air is fresh and delightful and a joy to any one coming from the sun-baked uplands of Manchuria or the roasting spots of southern China. There is a gem of a beach, with a good seaside hotel and there is excellent accommodation in Port Arthur itself. But we, at any rate, were there to look into its battlepits and tread its battle heights, so we may be permitted to pass just now with a glance over its great college and engineering and metal- lurgy, to which advanced pupils come from all Japan and find one of the best equipped, befit endowed schools in the world; over its fine women's high school and its technical schools of many grades. There is a garrison of course and a naval headquarters, and a snug, little Yamato Hotel — ^the name common to all the well-kept South Manchurian Eail- road caravansaries. We were given the pleasure of meeting the high Port Arthur officials on our arrival, and the handsome Captain Hoshogawa, a veteran of the war, was courteously assigned to the task of being our illuminator among the scenes of the one hundred and fifty-four days of siege in 1904-05 ; for all of which kindness I beg to register my hearty thanks. An exquisite afternoon of bright sunshine, blue sky and high white clouds it was, with a gentle breeze blowing when PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 389 we set out to drive to 203 Meter Hill, the capture of which by the Japanese on December 5, 1904, opened the way for the fall twenty-seven days later of the great fortress with its five strong forts and score of minor fortifications and miles and miles of trenches on the long arc of an oval from sea to sea. Including the great and to the last uncaptured forts on Golden Hill and Tiger's Tail guarding the harbour mouth, those outer hillside forts, lunettes, batteries, re- doubts formed roughly the defensive strength of Port Arthur. The town lies well back of these around the water's edge. The fort-guarded outer arc is maybe five miles long and its eminences are some two miles back of the harbour. It made a very strong position. All this comes out gradually as we trot to the northwest through the picturesque, modern town under the lee of Monument Hill and past the Russian Memorial out into the open country. The overlapping green-clad hills still plainly gashed with trenches, some vertical, some slanting and some horizontal and crowned with dismantled works, are just as war's fury left them. There are fine military roads, and to the northwest they rise on easy gradients, bringing out more and more of the fascinating landscape. One feels somehow that it is the pit of a green and silver amphitheatre where a great war drama has been played twice and may be played again with another shift of char- acters and another personnel. The hill we were seeking lifted its two rounded shoulders above us and a deep green valley lay below us. Alighting where the rise became too steep for wheels, we went afoot the rest of the way up a sharp westerly grade for half a mile; then, turning south along the inner (Russian) side of the hills, landed on the rocky summit, just in front of the battle monument, and just before us the other peak of the hill that rises some twenty feet higher. The hilltop is strewn with broken rock and is ten feet lower than when it 390 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND was measured to receive its name — an effect of the terrific cannonade that it endured in October, November and December, 1904 — its head literally blown off. The view is superb. On the inner eastern side it gives one a clear idea of the whole defensive system of the fortress. It dominates everything. The girdle of over- lapping green hills is seen to be roughly oval from west to east, curving sharply southward at the eastern end and turning from where we stood on the apex of the hill in a south-east sweep to Tiger's Tail at the harbour mouth. It was along the west to east curve that the Russians had constructed their permanent landward forts and heavier works. They had fortified some of the hills around 203 Meter Hill, but curiously had done nothing for the high double-peaked hill itself until the siege was under way. Looking north — ^the point from which it was ultimately taken — three hills with moderate slopes are seen to stand in echelon, namely, Akasaka, Namako and 174 Meter Hill. All of these had been strongly held, but 174 Meter Hill was captured in August as one, almost the only fruit of the first general Japanese assault. It stands about three-quarters of a mile from 203 Meter Hill. To the west the view ranged across country to a corner of Pigeon Bay on the west coast of the promontory. To the south the view lay open to the lofty heights of Lao-ti-shan, just then crowned with a fleece of rolling cloud. The view to the harbour below lay fair and inviting over lesser hills, and one thought how narrow after all this amphitheatre of the giant struggle — ^the silver line of the water not three miles away. And this was 203 Meter^Hill, a broken six-inch Russian cannon all that remained of its war-time outfit ! To reach its summit had cost fifteen thousand brave lives ; to defend it had cost thousands also, but when one looked down the steep ascent up which the assailants had come in spite of concentrated fire and many kiijds pf obstacles how much POET ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 391 greater the courage needed and endurance to be tested to the utmost human limit for such assault. The western side, up which the assailants came and went and came again for grievous months, is not so deep as on the inner side, but is far steeper. One looked in wonder that men should attempt it. The Boers at Majuba Hill in South Africa had won a similar height by surprise in their first brush with the British, thus furnishing a model ; but here no surprise had been possible; still they came to it and stayed by it till they won. Raking Russian fire from Akasaka and Namoka and dropping fire from other points, a line of Russian trenches half-way down the hiU and encircling it, barbed- wire entanglements all combined to make it seem impossible of achievement. The general assault of August had not endangered it. In the assaults of September it seemed all but taken by the ferocity of the assault, but still was securely held. It was not in fact until the eleven-inch naval guns had been planted in October on 174 Meter Hill that the hold of the Russians became precarious. It did not fall until December 5 after continual bombardment and an assault unexampled for persistent fierceness. M. Nojine, a Russian journalist in Port Arthur through the siege, thus pictures the assault of September 21 : "From the early hours of the twenty-first the Japanese attacked 203 Meter Hill, upon which their gunfire was also concentrated. The whole of the western front and part of the eastern replied by massed fire. The assault increased ; column after column rushed far forward to 203 Meter Hill, covering all its fore hills and slopes with heaps of dead, but at 8.45 a.m. they were repulsed. "This assault wag marked by particular obstinacy. I myself saw how, when their attack was repulsed, instead of retreating, the Japanese began to build parapets of their 392 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND dead comrades on the granite slopes of the hills. From these parapets they kept up rifle fire all day on 203 Meter Hill and its spurs, on Fort No. 5 and on the military road, making all communication impossible. From morning until late in the evening the Japanese guns kept up a constant bombardment on 203 Meter Hill, and its position became more critical every hour. "Having got three-quarters of it they meant to get possession of the whole at all costs; they slowly crawled upward, fell dead, rolled back, and others dashed forward ; they lay concealed and waited for reinforcements ; nothing would drive them back. All their thoughts, all their endeavours were to get possession of this hill. Our men began rolling great boulders from the top. These bounded down, flattened out the dead and sought out the living, who in dodging exposed themselves, and were shot by our men on the lookout." During the night of September 21 "about nine hundred corpses were collected under 203 Meter Hill." No greater tribute to Japanese valour can be given than the above. The assault had been delivered on the theory of General Nogi that no bullet went so sure as the intelligent "human bullet," but the theory had perforce to be abandoned except where the gun support was adequate. October 2 was the day on which it was abandoned for good, when the eleven- inch guns were put in position. Thenceforth the hill was doomed. The men were called on for no less an effort than before, but at least they had substantial artillery backing. Through October and November the fight went on, heroic doggedness on the hill and deathless valour below. The final prolonged series of assaults which won the hill did not begin till November 27. Progress with the whole siege had been slow. The eastern forts held out stoutly. It should be 203 Meter Hill or nothing. I BARRACKS OF NORTH FORT, KIKWANSHAN, JAPANESE TROOPS AT THEIR RATIONS AFTER THE CAPTURE ^. DEAD ON 203 METER HILL, DECEMBER 5, 1904 From a Japanese Photograph >. ON THE SUMMIT OF 203 METER HILL, PORT ARTHUR Captain Hosokawii, of the Japiinesc Ilcavy Artillery and Who Fought through the Siege, standing behind the Author and His Soti Harry, both Seated on a Big Dismantled Russian Gun 2. RUSSIAN RESERVES UNDER 203 METER HILL, PORT ARTHUR From a W.Trtlmc Photograph. The .Japanese Assanlts wei-e from the Other and Steeper 81de PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 393 Words fail the Russian narrator to describe the fury of the fresh Japanese assaults. ' ' They fought and fought like fiends — ^fought till exhausted, till they lost consciousness, one of their battalions being literally swept from the face of the earth. It was dark before the last of them was driven off and the fighting ceased; but there was no rest, for all dug through the night — in many cases dug their own graves. At dawn a single shot echoed from the besieging lines, and in a few seconds the hill was a smoking crater — the focus of concentrated fire of many guns whose shells were bursting in clusters. Then the assault began and continued all day." But the agony was not over yet. There were, we learn, divided counsels among the Russians. General Stoessel, incompetent by temperament and training, at the head of affairs, was always at loggerheads with Smirnoff, the com- mandant, and Kondratenko, his assistant, the able soldiers who really made the great defence. StoesSel was for let- ting the fort go. Thousands of Russians were on the sick list ; food was shorter than ever. The defenders, therefore, worked under great difficulties. All day on November 28 and 29 the battle raged around the hill. Once one of the peaks had been seized. Assaults had come from the left and from the right. After long argument Smirnoff succeeded in getting reinforcements from Stoessel ; the Russians regained the hill on the morn- ing of November 30. On the fourth day the attack was repeated in greater crescendo. "What took place there," says Nojine, "cannot be written of with an ordinary pen: it could only be described in blood." The Russian loss in wounded had been over four thousand men and thirty-fieven officers. What must the assailants' losses have been? On December 2 the hill was still in Russian hands. On December 3 the assault was renewed in a hurricane of war. All that day and the next it raged, scarcely dying down at 394 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND night. On December 4, bright and frosty, Nojine Says: "It was now hardly a fight that was taking place on this accursed spot ; it was a struggle of human flesh against iron and steel, against blazing petroleum, lyddite, pyroxyline and melinite and the stench of rotting corpses. It was the last day but one of the long-drawn agony." The Russians were still there on the shattered crest, in the crumbled trenches under the sweeping hail of shells. All day the battle went on, the Japanese mounting higher and higher. At nightfall they were still creeping, push- ing, struggling upward. Officer after officer was shot down among the Russians. At last as the sun rose on December 5, with wild cries of "Banzai!" the Japanese came over the top, the Rising Sun flag flying, and driving the Russians before them. It was not even then too late, even the Japanese say, to recover the hill if only for a time. They could for one thing have been shelled from a hill in the rear ; could even have been attacked if the charge had been delivered at once. It was not. The divided counsels made for Russian delay. Japanese entrenchments went up like magic. The Japanese carried up sandbags, and got up their men. A feeble attempt at attack was made next day, but it was easily repelled ; 203 Meter Hill was lost to Russia — and the knife was in the vitals of the Port Arthur defence. The Japanese never fortified the hill ; they pretended to. What they did was to erect a signal tower on the higher peak, from which they directed the fire of the eleven-inch navy guns at 174 Meter Hill on the Russian fleet in the harbour, sinking them at their moorings. The great forts along the eastern front still remained, but their doom was seakd; there were other eleven-inch guns within range of them. Looking around it was hard to conjure up the horrors and terrors of those days of blood and fire. The green- clad, smoothly-rounded hills had no sign of war about PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 395 them; the shattered six-inch Russian gun on the northern end of the plateau served for a seat for our party. Rank green weeds strove through the broken rocks on the sacred ground. Below the declining sun was gilding the slopes of the cultivated valleys and the aprons of the hills that ran eastward from Akasaka by Erlungshun, Bodai and across to the North Port of Tung-chi-kwan-san. It made the far waters of the western harbour glisten and brought strongly out the white houses at the water's edge. Golden Hill, the high and haughty at the harbour mouth, and Tiger's Tail, nearer and lower, all stood out in the golden light. All was bland and serene. The next morning was warm and misty. We visited Monument Hill and the touching memorial battle shrine, as I have told elsewhere. We drove down to the Navy Club in the old town at the harbour's edge and were met by a natty young officer in spotless white uniform who explained to us the fine model showing the naval operations in and outside the harbour. Interest centred on the efforts to seal the mouth of the harbour, four attempts by the Japanese and at least as many by the Russians themselves, the former to keep the Russians in ; the latter to keep the Japanese out. The first Japanese attempt was made by Commander Hirose when his sacrifice ship went on the rocks under Golden Hill. His second attempt was made with many other heroic volunteers on four ships, and in this he lost his life near Tiger's Tail. At least thirty ships dotted the model to show where the small ships sunk by the Russians lay as they went down. Thus instructed in the progress of the siege from the naval point of view, the Lieutenant took us aboard a smart little naval tender and we steered out through the harbour entrance, only one thousand feet across, with Golden Hill rising sheer in naked rock on our left and the lower but forbidding rocky shore of Tiger's Tail on our right. With 396 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND quiet precision the Lieutenant pointed out the spots where the Japanese vessels were sunk, how so many drifted away from their intended point of submergence and where the crew of one of the doomed vessels that had been thrown against the rocks of Golden Hill clambered up the pro- jections where they were annihilated by rifle fire from above. Then as we pushed out into the open sea he pointed out where the Eussian battleship was sunk by a floating mine, carrying with it all on board, including Admiral Makaroff, the fleet commander, and Verestchagin, the great Russian painter. He showed us where the Japanese battleships lay ten miles off shore under Admiral Togo's command, just letting their funnel tops be seen from shore. Through the heaving waters outward for a mile and then back to the wharf inside again. Fair behind the centre of the harbour mouth with a stretch of silver water to the shore rose the symmetrical bow-shaped curve of Monument Hill, the white uplifted finger of the tower at its crest, an exclamation point of victory. It was a picture to treasure in the memory in a day of pictures. Ashore we visited the War Museum near by, with great Russian guns of many fashions and dates, captured with the fortress lining the approach, some of them dented, smashed or warped by Japanese shot and shell. Over a bridge with a balustrade fashioned fantastically of gun carriage wheels we passed and then on and through an array of shells of every shape and size, like an asparagus bed of steel. Entanglements of barbed and common wire strung upon painted posts, wooden chevaux de frise for stopping cavalry, planks with upstanding nail points were about — obstacles of Russian invention or application from the works of the siege. Within, the collection of weapons and other man-killing devices was very varied, as well it might be with the debris PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 397 of such a terrible battlefield to glean from. There were cases f uU of Russian uniforms, caps, boots, rifles, bayonets, on every side, very dusty and very grim. The only romantic touch of all was a pair of dainty white satin slippers found in the wreckage of a deserted casemate of the great North Fort after the flight or death of the owner of the tall war boots found standing beside them. Whether she who wore them was a reincarnation of Joan of Arc, a colonel's devoted wife or reckless lady of lighter love, who can tell? The little slippers would fit many a foot. One Russian woman at least was found to have served in soldier's uniform through most of the siege. Prom her picture it can be concluded that the slippers were not hers. After lunch, accompanied by the good Captain Hosokawa of the Coast Artillery, who commanded a battery in the battles on the eastern front during the siege, we started in carriages up the sweep of the north-east mountain road that rises gradually to the foot of the hill on which stood the fort of Tung-chi-kwan-san. Ascending to the narrow plateau we gazed across the valley to Takushan, which, as an outwork, cost so many noble lives in the assault of August 8. Great was the struggle for the fort above us, but I was anxious to see the North Fort of Kwan-san, where war was at its worst, and Erlungshun, the most extensive per- manent Russian work, and with the North Fort the most stubbornly contested. We passed around the valley edge behind the mountain and wound up to where the North Fort had been dug for the most part from the solid rock. What it must have looked in its strength and pride one might guess from the ruins. A rock-cut fosse twenty feet deep and as many wide had surrounded it. The galleries and barracks had been hol- lowed from the rock and arched over with massive re- 398 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND inforced concrete in wMcli steel rails formed a network. So of the casemates and Itmettes. Held by a sufficient force of riflemen, armed as it was with heavy six-inch guns, quick-firers and machine guns, it would seem, while ammunition lasted, impregnable to any attack save that of General Hunger and General Thirst ; yet it was bitten into by the desperate teeth of Japan in a series of terrific fights, and occupied in part and so held literally breast to breast with the enemy. It was here that General Kondratenko, the life and soul of the heroic defence, was killed by an eleven-inch shell on December 15, when the generals with whom he was holding council were killed also. With a final explosion of dyna- mite, followed by a blasting hand-to-hand struggle with the last defenders, slain/ almost to a man, it passed into the hands of the Japanese on December 18. Now, ten years after, all was still appalling ruin. Shat- tered counterscarp, exploded roof, crumbling passages choked with broken rock met the eye in succession. Bend- ing low after crossing the fosse on the pile of detritus, one crawled into these stricken halls of the strong and saw in the galleries the same agony of broken arch and rock column on all sides. Here it was that the Japanese after months of sapping and mining and exploding gained a corner of the fort and held it, the defenders unable to dislodge them and they unable to gain an inch. In addition to machine guns each side stormed the other in this little corner of hell with hand grenades of dynamite, pausing every now and then in a truce of mercy to extricate and bury their dead, and again beginning the work of mutual extermination in the heart of the hill. How had the beleaguered strong ever come to that dire pass ; how had the advancing foe come with life so far? Out on the glacis beyond the fosse one looked down on PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 399 the wide apron of the hill to a now smiling valley three- quarters of a mile wide and then rising gently to the slopes of the lower fortified hills beyond. It had been no easy task to reduce these outlying sentinels. Miracles of valour had been multiplied in creeping up their fronts and sides by night and day before they had been captured. But the same method failed utterly on the greater works. In the first assaults thousands fell. Captain Hosokawa told me that for two days his battery, stationed two miles away, had rained three-inch shells on the roof of the fort. "As well have pounded it with dried peas," he said. The "human bullet" scheme had been tried and despite partial successes failed. There was nothing for it but the spade and the heavy gun. So we look with understanding down the slope to the right for half a mile and see the gash of the great zigzag line of the approach by trenching tools. It had been slow work, deep and open and not long to be concealed from the besieged. At last it reached a point where not only could it be seen but could not be protected, and then the engineers resorted to the tunnel. Not long had they been at this when the Russians found it out and began furiously to countermine toward the Japanese — ^two sets of human moles scraping their way to meet in the dark. Would I ascend to Bodai — the Eagle's Nest — a bare, pointed hill towering conical and sharp above us, with two long disabled Russian guns still pointing northward over vaUey and hill beyond? One who has been on 203 Meter Hill can picture that without the climb. So we drive be- hind Bodai and begin to mount up the massive back of Erlungshun, the mightiest fort on the great fighting line. Broader, wider, deeper, with rock-cut fosse and counter- scarp, its capture presented even greater problems than the North Fort. For one thing it had room in its long galleries for a weightier force of defenders — ^i^ carried heavier gun^ 400 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND and more of them. It was supported right and left by lesser forts and redoubts, Sangshu on the left being very strong indeed. A short mile in front it had a stout advance guard in Fort Kuropatkin, and nearer in the same line were the fort and armed trenches protecting the water works. The Temple lunettes were a little to the left in front. Surely, it was a strong castle on a hill. It held up firm even when its outlying supports were taken one by one, but at last the eleven-inch guns were at work on it and it was crumbling inch by inch. Fort Kuropatkin had been swept over. The water works had been cut and held (the fortress still had ample water from its wells), the Panlury forts on its right had fallen December 5, following the capture of 203 Meter Hill, two miles away on the west. Sangshu, on its left, had the Japanese almost at its walls. The days and nights follow- ing ring with tales of heroism, tales of burrowing, of explosions of tons of dynamite overwhelming the assaulting party, and the latter, where not slain outright, calling from beneath the debris to the comrades coming to extricate them: "Never mind us. Crown the crater! Go on! Don't lose this chance!" And trampling over their bodies on they went. Like that of intermingling fiends was the struggle that followed there in that heaped-up fosse, through those ruined case- mates, along those shattered, cluttered galleries, hand to hand, foot to foot, blade to blade, with shots and yeUs and shrieks. It did not last long, but long enough to stretch or tumble its defenders dead — and Erlungshun was taken. The curtain falls on the defence of Port Arthur with 20,500 sick and wounded in the Russian hospitals and the fighting strength reduced to 18,000 men, with 1,000 army non-combatants. Some of the officers were fgr fighting PORT ARTHUR AND KIAO-CHOW 401 further on contracted lines, but the end would come sooner or later. When, however, we recall that the complete release of General Nogi's victorious army allowed it to be the turning factor in the battle of Mukden two months later there was some reason in the penalties dealt out to Stoessel and Fock on their return to Russia after the war. Contrasting with the great destinies one heard stories of the Chinese inhabitants, the natives, to whom all this parade of slaughter and heroic endeavour was a mockery, who worked indifferently for whomsoever paid them; who risked their lives to pick up spent bullets for which they were paid half a cent apiece, and who stole out at night to rob the corpses of the fallen for the few coppers, the cheap trinket, the watch perhaps they found in the clothes, even digging up the graves in their ghastly gleaning of the battlefield. "My crop," one of them remarked with an appealing smile when they asked him what he had in a small parcel of such treasure. In less exciting times he was a farmer where the shells were now falling. CHAPTER XXVI A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA Mukden and Manchuria — The upstanding Manchus — The land of soya beans — The imperial tombs — The railroad to Peking — The Great Wall — Some of the sights of Peking, the city of the dead empire and living people — The busy streets and the silent ones — The spirit walls — The Altar of Heaven, the temple of Confucius — The Lamasery — The Summer Palace —The Forbidden City. I WENT to China for two reasons, either good enough. The first and main reason was to get a chance to do some writing in comparative peace. If I could see a little of China well and good. I would keep my eyes open. A month back I had had a talk with Baron Kato, the Japanese Foreign Minister and he had said on the topic of China in the course of our discussion of the business ambitions of Japan : ' ' Yes, our Japanese merchants and bankers are pushing their trade in China, and succeeding well. It was natural this should be so. It was an immense market, and when fully opened China would be a very great customer. She needed more railroads to develop herself, and unfortunately Japan had not the money to build them. ' ' He was not sure that Yuan Shih Kai would be long secure there. Certainly the government viewed as a Republic was unrealizable. Can he make himself an emperor? I asked. "I scarcely think so," he replied. "Yuan does not belong to a really noble family. He has all the daring perhaps, and is by long odds their ablest man." My first steps in China were on coming up from Korea m A GLIMPSE OP NORTHERN CHINA 403 and crossing the Yalu River over a long steel bridge to the considerable town of Antung in Manchuria. Near here it was that the Japanese army under General Kuroki fought the battle of the Yalu on May 1, 1904, forcing the crossing under Russian fire and occupied the town of Antung. It was the first land clash of the belligerents. A new munici- pality it presents little of interest to the traveller. There is a Japanese quarter whose inhabitants make about one- fourth of the population. The rest is trade and Chinese squalour. Mukden, toward which I was bent, was one hundred and seventy miles away, and after a short stop including a cursory examination of baggage by the Chinese customs officials, busy little chaps, quite polite, my son and I continued our journey as night was closing in. That night we slept in the Yamato Hotel in Mukden. The name of Mukden has been carried to the ends of the earth as giving its name to the great battle fought in its vicinity in January, 1905, and the correspondents with both the Rus- sian and Japanese armies told a lot about its history to a world not enraptured over its name. It was from this town known to China as Feng-tien, that the Manchu overlords sprung to empire in 1625, making it their capital until 1644 when they removed to Peking where their rule held good until 1910. Hence it has been for near three cen- turies a place of imperial memories with empty palaces to show to the curious during all that time and since. I saw them in the hands of minor officials who ushered one about with a quaint apathy. Mukden is a walled city of over one hundred thousand inhabitants, and like all I subsequently saw of China impressed one as ancient magnificence of site and architecture embedded in modern and crowded squalor. Monumental gates, broad streets and a jumble of houses, ramshackle and irregular, running over with human beings. But the Manchus themselves strike one favourably as a fine race with tall, athletic 404 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND figures and good open faces. They walk with a fine, free carriage. The men shave the front half of the skull and wear their pigtails down the back — the pigtails that the Manehu emperors imposed on the Chinese and which the Chinese with one accord cut off as soon as the Manehu emperors were deposed. They dress in dark-blue pyjamas. Their women are also tall and wear extraordinary high head-dresses, some in high puffs, others wearing a great triangle over which the hair is turned. The streets are unpaved and turn from mud to dust as the elements desire. While I was there they called for dust and got it. There is indeed a dusty, unseemly look over all. Old Mukden is dirtily picturesque. It has one long, fairly wide street lined with all sorts of shops and businesses carried on frankly in front — carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights — one of the latter repairing an ancient Manchurian wheel which I would have thought coeval with Noah — a large central timber from rim to rim instead of a hub and from which two Cyclopean spokes ran out to the felly on either side. Most shops are open, but there are a few glazed windows and before many of the houses are hanging signs of bronze and metal pieces and strips of coloured cloth with tassels, which, with the perpendicular signs in ideo- graphs, give the town a gay appearance that somehow triumphs over the dirt one sees everywhere. They are great feeders, these Manchus, eating freely in the open be- tween meals, and the many big restaurants of the cheapest kind seem always crowded with men hungrily devouring their soups and vegetables. The country around seems prospering agriculturally, the great plain being mostly sown in the new crop of the oily soya bean which the rail- road obligingly carries off mostly to make soap for civi- lization it seems and to furnish cattle feed. It is worth while to note the peasants toiling in the long furrows while theip wives in grand clothes gather for ^ chat in the shade A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 405 of a few trees. Two things a Chinaman must save for early and late, first to buy a wife and next to buy a coffin. Having bought her of her father at a stiff price, he must treat her well or she will leave him. Hence, poor chap, saving for his coffin is slow work. The Mukden monument I heard most of during the Russo-Japanese war was the Pei-ling or imperial tombs. There are two, one on a mountain to the north-east and another tha burial place of a real emperor, empress and imperial concubine, to the north-west. The latter is nearer and that I set out to visit. Passing out through a city gate I saw a group of loaded camels setting out on some long journey — a reminder that the great desert of Gobi stretched out not so very far away. The day was dear and warm, and the great Manchurian plain as we trundled in a droshky (made in Odessa) over horribly lumpy roads lay like a billiard table before us, green with the growing crops that the conical-hatted Manchurians, their pigtails down their backs, were tending as we passed. Our route was northward, and as the town receded behind us we seemed entering a sea of verdure with distant shores marked as it were by a coast line of trees. On the outskirts of the town we passed through a great graveyard, the most extraordinary I had ever seen. The sandy soil was tossed in all directions into hills and hollows. Not a blade of grass. A few inscribed low square-cut pillars marked some few tombs. Here and there were new-made graves showing a cone of bare earth with a cap-piece of mud or clay. To make the cone the earth had been shovelled up from all around it. Then, we were told, some Chinese, believing (on account of the growth of the town) that the whole graveyard would be commandeered for residences, had been removing their dead. Anyway, it was a forlorn miserable sight. The tombs of the emperors are some four mileg out. For scores of years they had been 406 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND neglected. The then reigning Manchus had done little or nothing to keep them in repair. Grass invaded the enclo- sures : timbers exposed to the elements were washed almost clear of paint : roofs were losing tiles : decay on every side. For the last four years, however, the local Manchurian (Chinese) government had been repairing and renovating. The roads, as we approached the groves of trees that stand around the tombs, were in better shape, and finally when we reached the tombs we found a national monument where the glaringly new in tiles and paint was replacing the decayed and mellowed. It will take another ten years to give it the patine of time which belongs of right to the old — if not the venerable — in mortuary shrines. Anyway, now that the Manchu dynasty was relegated to private life, and Yuan shih Kai ruled in the name of a republic at Peking, it showed something of a germinating patriotism to take this care of an olden mausoleum of a race of rulers deposed and suppressed. It may be noted that the Manchus had not cut off their queues, so this people once dominant are still tall and stalwart, industrious and hardy, if as yet embedded in the habits and ways of the past, may count for something in the distant future of Asia when education has done its deadly work. The work is over two hundred and fifty years old. It has the "temple" laying-out which has been indicative of Asia from the time of Solomon and doubtless long before — that is a series of buildings within an enclosure of mounting degrees of sanctity, the highest or holiest the last. Thus mystery and exclusiveness (privilege) were main- tained in structure as well as in imagination, in the in- terests of the priesthood, the potentate and the ruling caste. Here the endeavour was toward stateliness and magni- ficence as it was understood in northern China of the time. The Manchu capital was here at Mukden (Feng-tien). Thej ruled at the palace and at respecta1?le distance th^ij" A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 407 tombs should be. The wall enclosure is a long parallelo- gram with a three-arched, one-roofed gate of entrance (now kept closed). It faces the length of the enclosure and a long stone-paved avenue (still grass grown), called the Road of the Spirit, runs up from it, flanked on either side by six large statues of animals, thus: lion, griffin, griffin, horse, camel (kneeling), elephant. They are very badly done, and, except the griffins, look like a poor attempt to imitate Western sculpture. They are to signify doubtless the Emperor's rule over the lands of the horse (Tartars), camels (southern Mongols), elephants (Indian) and griffins (China). At the further end of the avenue rises the two-roofed structure enclosing the imperial mortuary monument which consists of a tall oblong shaft about fifteen feet high with a sculptured cap rounded at the edges. There is a large lettered inscription in the upper part, and a very long inscription in one-half inch characters running down in several columns on the lower part, vaunting, no doubt, the lands the dead monarch ruled and the things he did or was supposed to have done. The shaft is borne on the back of a nine-foot tortoise much conventionalized as to the legs and with a long thick protruding neck and head, with short tusks evidently modelled from a walrus! The sculptor had probably never seen either, unless he had an idea of including the North pole and the Far South in one composite animal. A little beyond the tomb on each side is an isolated column — ^wang-in-to — with a peculiar frame-like protuberance on each side near the top. It recalls the Sorinto at Nikko. The quadrangle covering the imperial mound beyond the tomb is really fine. A great gate of stone, with machico- lated coping, is surmounted by a great three-roofed temple structure of wood with glazed bronze-yellow tiles on the roofs, and painted on the under sides of the eaves in pale green, white, red, black and gold, and with four supporting 408 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND pillars on each story in Indian red. On the connecting wall at either end is a lower two-roofed flanking tower. One rounded arch pierces the gate, its edge of blue glazed tiles. Altogether the effect is majestic and has a unity that appeals, but the glare of the new tiles and new paint match ill with the old time-worn portions. Time will soften this. Passing through the arch we reach an ultimate quad- rangle with a two-roofed temple (library) at the further end and with two-roofed flanking towers at the corners, thus making four corner towers with the two supporting the great gate. Before the library is a stone or slate marble platform about five feet high, highly carved with much undercutting in the finest Chinese manner. It is approached from the front by three stone stairs. The centre has low wide steps on either side of a slope carved with the imperial dragons. Over this slope the Emperor alone might pass supported by attendants on both sides walking on the steps. One of the old slabs on this slope has been cleverly replaced by one newly cut. This completes the parallelogram of the design, but the temple offices through which we entered are situated right angles to it on the side nearest to Mukden. It was through this side entrance that we reached the enclosure after passing down an avenue between fine trees. The hand- some entrance gate is perhaps the most satisfying single structure of all with its single roof, its triple arches of entrance and its large enamelled dragon plaques on the walls. As to the mental impression of it all it was not sad. I care nothing for Manehu emperors, however dead, how- ever ancient. There is an attempt to revive, to rejuvenate, which will bear fruit in time and make a Manehu place for pilgrims and tourists. There are several lusty young trees in the quadrangle back of the tomb, but there is one A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 409 old pine bent over and supported on posts. It is probably coeval with the temple, but it is dead. And so is the imperial Manchu line. As I have told elsewhere at some length I also visited the great battlefield of Mukden and so passed down to Liao- yang and Port Arthur, but many a tale I heard before I left of the Russian officers in 1905 thronging the cafes at night and drinking deep and riotously with frail ladies until ungodly hours, while the Russian soldiers huddled together out on the great plain in the bitter cold awaiting the coming up of the Japanese armies. And then of mad scenes of riot and debauchery when the rout began as Kuropatkin gave the final order to retreat. Also they showed the Catholic cathedral which the Chinese Boxers in 1900 cannonaded, killing a Monsignor, some nuns and two hundred native Christians. Oh, Mukden is a lively place even yet. On my second visit I merely halted in the town on my way from Port Arthur to Peking, leaving behind the splendid trains of the South Manchurian line, and taking the less comfortable line to Peking. It was characteristic of the modern leaping of great distance to learn that our train for which we were ready to start on schedule time — 1.30 A.M. — only crawled in at eight-thirty, due to "a wash- out at Irkutsk" on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, twelve hundred miles off in a straight line, and Lord knows how many more by rail. The run from Mukden to Peking is five hundred and twenty-one miles, and consumed nineteen weary hours. It was a train de luxe but not very luxurious. Still the road- bed was fairly good and the spaces generous. It was not crowded. I chatted with a tall brawny Scotch civil engineer attached to the line, who had filled his post for two years, and was still grimly cheerful. He amused him- self, he said, studying the ways of the people, and had much 410 JAPAN AT FIEST HAND quaint information there anent. Their superstitions ap- pealed to his sense of dry humour. Eecalling my visit to the Manchu tombs, I spoke of the great tortoise monument. "Now," said he, "be verra careful in talking to a Chinese how you talk about the tortoise: above a' never call him a tortoise: that's a mortal offence." I assured him I never would call a Chinaman a tortoise, but asked him why not if he happened to be as slow as one. And then he explained that the tortoise is a very low-down animal and lives at the bottom of the river in the mud, and "he is reputed by ornithological comparison to be like the bird we despise in Scotland." By which he meant, I suppose, the cuckoo. The flat country was well cultivated through which we were passing in the morning hours. In places the paral- leling of the furrows was remarkable, the lines running off straight as far as the eye could see or else all taking con- tinuous curves as if made by a giant rake that streaked the whole countryside at a stroke. After the small carpet- size farms of Japan, I supposed that this great husbandry, as in our own "Western wheat country, denoted large owners. My Scotch acquaintance said no: the land was parcelled out in very small tracts with individual owners. "You see," he said, "it's canny: they waste nothing on fences; but how they identify their own patches passes me." When the train stopped at stations I noted armed Chinese guards patrolling one part of the platform and Japanese soldiers another section — signs of something like strained relations, growing out of the years of war. Nothing untoward happened. Toward evening nearing Shan-hai-kwan we got a glimpse of that stupendous futility, the Great Wall of China, not far from its start near the sea running on over the landscape with its turrets at intervals, and its nakedness of human use for many hundred miles. Presently the train passed through it in A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 411 an open cutting, leaking raw and gashlike. It was seen, as I gauged it, to be about forty feet high, the centre of red earth about thirty feet thick and faced on each side with a double course of bricks. Soon after came the night and we reached Peking at 4 a.m., going with our baggage, amid a babel of chattering porters, a dozen at least, to our rooms in the Hotel des Wagons Lits near the station. As soon as the loquacious, ill-smelling fellows could be bodily pushed out, sleep was sought and easily found. It was closing June and very hot in Peking. The hotel with the curious name proved of immediate interest when morning after a solid sleep revealed it. It was not the tourist season but yet there were tourists and others, — ^the "swarm." The Sleeping Coach Hotel proved to be the landing stage of everybody foreign who comes to the capital of China, that is, any one with pretension to style or im- portance of object. There are other "foreign" hotels of inferior type, but the drop is great. There are many Chinese hotels and caravansaries but these are nearly im- possible to the outlander. And yet in a sanitary way the Wagons Lits was in the class of seventy years ago. There is a fine dining room and good food, and fair service, and rates are not too high for the best in a great capital. That greatness, no matter how marred and maimed, is what first forces itself upon you. Somehow you feel the vastness of China in the sense of vastness about you. Vastness of the present going back to vastness B.C. assails you and confronts you at every turn. You have seen great Asian palaces and palace compounds : here are the greatest. You have stood upon the walls of towns and cities : here are the greatest, the longest of circuit, the highest, the thickest. You have passed under monumental fortress gates and towered palace portals: here are the most imposing. Temples? Some in their full glory of architecture in marble and stone with unbroken histories of a thousand 412 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND years, some fully manned with priests of their old beliefs — Confucian, Buddhist, Taoist — and some in majestic decay or ruin, with the life of the present passing, crowding, squirming even in its denseness around them — Baalbec and Rome in one. In every direction Peking spreads out around you. Mount one of the walls and the city seems swallowed up in greenery. Far as you can see it is trees and trees. Then the "cities" come out. You trace busy streets in long lines swarming with people with groves of trees between — nothing like the banked and ranked wilderness of houses that we call a city. You are told that is the Chinese city at your feet. Over there is the Tartar city where the Manchus swarm and ululate. That vast walled stretch with rising roofs and glimpses of frond-bordered water pools is the Imperial City. In an- other direction they point to the Legation quarter behind its walls. Walls and gates, streets and groves, temple tops and compounds, it spreads over the plain endlessly it seems. And the eminences you are told have been piled up by the labour of hundreds of thousands of human ants hollow- ing out the basins for the lakes created to make a charm of the eye for the emperors of such and such a dynasty. No art enterprise in the world is on a par with this stu- pendous, if simply conceived, outreach for the beautiful. Pass out for a morning drive to the Summer Palace through the dirty, dusty streets and a dense population living from hand to mouth, and see for yourself this magnificence of design and its actual accomplishment. "Son of Heaven, Brother to the Moon, Emperor of the Earth, your intolerably glowing and high-shining Majesty would surely love the view here if you saw it from a great height overlooking wide water-spaces dotted with green islands and with bridges and monuments in marble. Your distinguished relative who made the world furnished a distant hill background, and I, your slave, baeked by the yiKai3a^2^s&"«?^ I THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA -i. A STREET IN MUKDEN r GATE TO COURTYARD, NORTH MAUSOLEUM OF THE MAN- CHU EMPERORS, MUKDEN ^. THE CHINESE CART THAT YOU MEET ON MANCHURIAN' ROADS; SOMETIMES AN OX IS ADDED TO THE BEASTS A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 413 picks and shovels and hand-barrows of say half a million other slaves, will do the rest." So spoke a Chinese engineer of long ago to an Emperor whose careless self-indulgence had no bounds, and lo, the thing was done. And all over Peking it seems the same, a sense of the mighty, the massive, the beautiful in neglect and decay amid the turbid currents of a people of picayune aims and sordid lives. The majesty of marble and carven stone, of mound and pool is the majesty of an empire that is dead leaving its insignia behind, hopelessly out of date nine-tenths of it, of no use to its successors, but a witness to and a reminder of the might and weight of a country and a people that some day must return under utterly changed conditions to its place of strength and win back the respect of the world. Hopeless it looks now, but even in the inchoate republic the slow leaven of progress is working, amid an officialdom that counts "graft" and "squeeze" among its most prized assets. Peking is attractive to the eye, bating the squalor that rubs elbows with its richness. One learns by shopping in a city new to one 's experience as much as by deliberate sight- seeing. There are, as all through Asia, many shops where the unattractive outside is small guide to the magnificence, the fineness of the wares within — silks, brocades, rugs of wonderful weave, pottery, cloisonne, antiques, jewels, what not. You must haggle everywhere, for the ethics of busi- ness do not include much regard for the truth of a war- ranty, or a nice approximation of asked price and actual value. Tenfold must the buyer beware. An American lady whose specialty was the collecting of Chinese snuff boxes, and who had nearly a hundred of them — she had no children, and snuff boxes served for a defence against boredom as well as any other collectible commodity — ^told me in exhibiting them that the first she had bought were the poorest and the dearest, but that she was averaging 414 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND fairly, and she enjoyed it to the uttermost. Many streets with signs of striking banners, exposed shop fronts and crowded walks were picturesque to a degree. From the many eating houses cooking odours filled the air, which, mixing with the incense smoke of Joss sticks made a com- posite of smell familiar to American nostrils in the Chinese quarter of many far Western towns. Thei little Manchurian carts like packing boxes on two great wheels, the horsemen, the occasional automobile, the drays and trucks gave motion to the middle of the street, and the sauntering pedestrian crowd made mostly on the sidewalks. Mud or dust signified rain or sun : just now it was all dust. Restaurants abound for all classes, from rich ones where Chinese dainties such as birds' nest soup, lily bulbs, man- darin duck of a succulency, bamboo shoots and jeUyJike sharks' fins are food for the gods, down to the homes of bean soup and boiled rice of the humbler toilers. There are theatres and cinematographs. The Chinese have taken obviously to the movies and enjoy them in a charmed silence. Nowhere are the business streets busier than in Peking, and nowhere are the residence streets more secluded, even forbidding. Every one above poverty or the step above it lives behind walls. You may pass through street after street without seeing a soul, ifigh walls are on each side and here and there a closed door. If the doors are opened you see another wall within a few feet of it, — ^the spirit wall. It is a short high wall standing alone. There is more or less of a court behind it, and then the house or houses, generally one story and oftenest of stone tiled in various colours. No doubt the little wall tells of the time when lurking enemies might be expected to make a dash upon the little fortress, and the wall would stop them, and give the defenders a chance to keep the assailants out : but A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 415 that use which must have proved unnecessary many hun- dreds of years ago did not prevent the builders, following with Chinese conservatism, from continuing to build them, so a new legend grew, interesting as the American practice of "knocking wood," where of old one would say, "The Lord be thanked." A material age will make its own superstitions. The Chinese legend is "The wall keeps out the evil spirits. They come feeling along the street wall looking for a house. They find an open door, and say, 'Ha ! here is one. ' They go in, and they find another wall : they stop and say, 'Here is no house,' and they turn back and go out again." Simple of them, certainly: but the belief in it is general. A man I knew, an American, rented or bought a new house on this model and among the altera- tions he resolved on, the first was to take down this spirit wall, so that he could run his automobile into the court- yard. Asked to take it down, the mason builder shook his head, — the American man must do it himself. I saw the other alterations going on, but up to the date of my leaving Peking the search for an unsuperstitious demolliseur had not succeeded. The Chinese are probably the most super- stitious people in the world ; they have been accumulating their examples of lucky and unlucky so long. I went out the first day in Peking to see the Altar of Heaven. Yuan shih Kai was ruling with an iron hand in the palace of the old Empress Dowager who used to make him crawl on his stomach before her in the early days of his appearance as her adviser; his cabinet ministers and secretaries were ruling in his name from palaces and offices sacred in other days, not a decade ago, to the functionaries of the Empire. Yuan's police were ruling the streets of the capital, and a boy under ten, who would be a real emperor in other times, was playing phantom emperor in one of his ancestor's palaces amid lakelets and gardens behind yellow-tUed walls which he could not pass — a 416 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND pathetic, ironic little empire surely with Yuan holding the key to the locked gate of the palace. Incidentally, Li Yuan Hung, Yuan's vice president, equally elect with him- self, was making what he could of life in another palace of the Red City, virtually a prisoner of Yuan's, for although the gate was open, he never dared go out. He had been told the open air was unhealthful for him, and he needed no sage or fortune-teller to tell him what that meant. Up on the wall of the Legation quarter United States marines were doing their sentry-go, a practice harking back to the Boxer rebellion when the amiable Heathen Chinee so lusted after the blood of Europeans that they set it flowing wher- ever they saw a chance. Across from the hotel steps stretched a string of ricki- shas, a hundred of the "boys" shouting together whenever a possible customer appeared. Bright, nimble, athletic- looking, these boys in their early twenties, and they do carry you along at a clip, racing and laughing for the very joy of living. "We are ofE out through the great gate. We take a turn under the Baron Ketteler monument — a sort of gate across the street inscribed to the memory of the German diplomat whom the Boxers butchered, the in- scribed tablet setting forth the facts and recording the regret of the Chinese government. Its erection satisfied the German Kaiser, but it had been made to satisfy the Chinese lower classes by telling them that it had really been put up in memory of the Boxers who had done the deed. Down to the south of the Chinese city we trundled merrily in the sunshine of the afternoon, stopping at a gate in a long wall along a ragged stretch of forlorn dusty road. We dismounted, and showing our credentials the door opened just wide enough to let us in one by one. There was evident hesitation about letting us go further, but an old Chinese evidently kept for the purpose made that gesture which rubs the thumb over the tip of the forefinger A GLIMPSE OF NORTHEEN CHINA 417 and signifies "give backsheesh" all over the East. I replied with a silver coin of dime size, and the proud official bowed and I passed on. We were in a large court of the temple compound with beautiful old trees — acacias, cypress, pine — on either side of a central path. It was a hot walk, but the wrinkled, yellow old guardian who accom- panied us seemed to enjoy an eternal calm. Presently we reached another wall, the gate opening a few inches at our approach with a long skinny hand and lean arm thrust out receptively — another dime. Court after court was this walk and dime ceremony repeated until at last we stood in the open space before the wide enclosure of the wonder- ful circular Altar of Heaven, ornately carved of white marble rising in three tiers from the ground. It is beau- tiful to an inspiring degree, and worth a journey from the ends of the earth. Here came the Emperor to worship the Shang-ti or overlord of the heavens, the only deity the pampered Chinese mortal on the imperial throne was sup- posed to look up to. In the imperial desolation of today, in the neglect written all over it, its beauty and majesty still conquer you, and when you mount its marble steps to the marble platform and gaze around you gather slowly an idea of the profound artistry that conceived it, and the skill of its execution. A little way off one sees a similar marble platform rise, but crowned with a circular temple structure roofed conically with tiles of a miraculous deep blue — ^the Temple of Heaven. If one has read his Madrolle guidebook of northern China with its copious if difficult interpretation of the monuments one can call up the picture it presented when the Emperor clothed in the pontifical dragon robe, and under the grand baldaquin, followed by the princes, dukes and officials made procession "in robes of many colours" from the Temple of Heaven to this "Platform of Majestic Space," the whole enclosure filled with priests, attendants, musicians and §£teriifi,cers, and 418 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND proceeded amid a tide o:fi sacred song whose burden was peace— "Splendid Peace," "Peace and Long Life," "End- less Peace" — to worship the Ruler of the Heavens. How impressive to the Chinese mind the bare story of it must have been. When a year later Yuan shih Kai in pursuit of his daring dream of Empire revived the ceremony with his chubby self as the celebrant it became pretty plain to an observing world which way he was heading. Probably he did it as a test of Chinese feeling, for I recalled the Jap- anese Foreign Minister's exclamation over Yuan's plebeian family ancestry as a bar to imperial aspirations in a country of caste like China. Partly too, no doubt, Yuan harked back affectionately to the olden Chinese customs and rituals. He was never more than half-converted to the "Western" idea of progress which had fascinated Japan to such purpose. That was evident to me at the time of my brief visit. Among the "sights" which stand out, and there were many crowded between days of work and days of disable- ment by the numerous indispositions whose germs float into one 's being on the Peking summer-dust, three or four stand out as memorable. One was the Temple of Confucius, the most satisfying to me of the Chinese religious struc- tures. The purity and symmetry of its architecture, the green loveliness of its setting, the old, old cypress trees, the sense of the enduring in the beliefs it stood for, its many ancient lordly tombs, stele and monuments, and an old and worn black marble slab in its courtyard inscribed as covering the remains of Kublai Khan laid there over six hundred years ago. Here was something tangible that connected with my old friend, Marco Polo, whose wonder story of his travels and experiences the Western wiseacres of centuries were prone to doubt. The ruler who founded Peking as the capital in the thirteenth century, who A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 419 rounded out the conquest of China, was suzerain of Persia whose sway reached westward over Asia, over mid-Russia and up to the borders of Poland. And here was the West setting up a republic in the very nesting-place of Kublai with Yuan shih Kai as its protagonist ! Another trip was to the great Lamasery, a Buddhist monastery on the borders of Peking. The uncomfortable itchy feeling that developed while viewing its temples and shrines and bronze and wooden Buddhas always comes back when I think of it. Our guide was a monk innocent of English, an ill-favoured and dirty-skinned, undersized brown person in a dark robe. He snuffled and perspired appealingly as we went from shrine to shrine and paid a few cents each time for incense-sticks to burn before the statue seated so contentedly above the gimcrack decorations of his altars. There were over one thousand of these monks harboured there, and some hundreds of boys whom the rickisha boy with a smattering of pigeon-English called "little lamas." Their coming and going were interesting to me. I had knoAvn monks and monasteries in the "West, but those who were the children of the church of Rome never made the painful impression of those who there looked up to the Grand Lama of Tibet. It was interesting to learn that their vestments on days of sacred service were so like those of the "Western" churches — Roman and Russian — and that, however the tenets of belief differed, their rituals had strong resemblances. An official of the Y. M. C. A. told me unpleasant stories of these lamas, but one cannot repeat them. Zealots of one religion are not the safest guides in criticism of the members or beliefs of others. That my guide was an uninspired-looking and not personally clean person was not wholly to the discredit of his religion. He had little to show for his lifelong devotion, if he was devout. Certainly the cell which he took me through a (Jorpiitory building to see was a poor 420 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND enough abode, with its two hard pallets — they sleep two in a cell. It was uninviting and stuffy enough to house a saint. He did not look like the latter however. The Summer Palace was a dream. Three centuries ago it had been turned from dream to reality, and in its up- building the art skill of the Jesuit fathers then in favour at the court had sway to great purpose. Their knowledge of hydraulics no less than of light architecture was respon- sible for much of it. The run out by automobile was pleasant in the early morning. The road is not bad, for it was the route by which the court traffic went and came when the Court was summering, and its six miles outside the city were negotiated without a stop, though with a few bumps. Well I recall the sensation of 1860 when the news came that after the bombarding of the Pei Ho forts, the combined French and English forces had marched upon Peking, and seized, occupied, looted utterly and then burned the Summer Palace, the Emperor barely escaping in the night of the surprise attack. The Summer Palace, conveyed to my young mind, I fear, nothing more than the idea of a building like Buckingham palace, or the Tuileries, but here had been a thing unique in palaces, a series of light, beautiful, ornate dwellings with pavilions innumerable crowning and dotting at every turn a long artificial wooded hill overlooking a beautiful wide-spread- ing artificial lake paradisiac almost in its beauty of nature and art. Bridges of marble, islands marble-rimmed and the quaint and the beautiful in trees of varied kinds every- where along its borders. The palaces were burned, it seems, because some Chinese soldiers fired on a flag of truce, about which they could not be expected to know much, such being the nice way of justice among soldiers before that time — and since. Well I recall seeing specimens of the loot in London, exposed in shop windows, for every soldier, rank and file, grabbed what he could lay hands on, knowing a§ A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 421 much about its value as the Chinese warriors, some of whom had bows and arrows and terrible masks, did about the mortal difference between a white flag and the red, white and blue. It was costly stuff you may rest assured. Long did the palace lie waste, but the old Dowager Empress about thirty years after rebuilt some half of the structures on the palace mound and restored much of its beauty. The Court resumed its summering and the road to town was bright once more with equipages and digni- taries, uniforms and robes, until there ceased to be any Court. Since then a few cormorant caretakers, probably paid in the backsheesh they exact from visitors, are the lone inhabitants. There are fixed charges for breathing the air as well as being rowed about the lake on sampans. One amusing trick was to row you to an island for so much, land you and leave you there, charging a fresh fee for being coaxed back tq take you off. Another was for tea which a placard announced would be served for so much on the Marble Boat — a conventionalized replica in stone of a paddle steamer erected by some crazy emperor a few feet from one of the banks. On the tea being duly swallowed the charge was doubled on the score that it was served on tha upper deck some eight feet above the placard. And they would not accept payment in small silver — nothing but dollars, for in some way or other it gave them ten or fifteen cents additional. Our self-attached guide who only spoke Chinese, but who supplied a whole world of comic pantomine accompanied by a flow of language was, I may say, cheap at two dollars mex. It was certainly a won- derful morning. Lastly a visit to the Forbidden City. Our Minister had gone on a vacation to Switzerland, and the young Charge d 'Affaires, Mr. H. A. V. McMurray, had failed to procure for me even a glimpse of Yuan shih Kai, not to speak of an interview. It was mainly, I think, because between 422 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Minister Paul Reinseh's departure and my sequestration at the hotel for three days, my application had been lost sight of, and my arrangements did not permit my remaining the eight or ten days necessary for traversing the red tape of the Chinese Foreign Office with a new application. So the amiable young diplomat in his most charming manner said: "I have admissions for a party to the Forbidden City on Monday afternoon, why not come along? I have not seen it myself." So, in the cheerful spirit of that office- seeker who asked a cabinet secretaryship of President Jackson and finally accepted an old coat, I went. Such permits were very rare, and were mostly sought in vain. The Forbidden or Red City lies in the heart of Peking, in the heart, indeed, of the Imperial City. We rode thither in rickishas and were halted by a sentry before a lofty gate. We were evidently expected, for the barest brandishing of pasteboard resiilted in our passing through the low arch of entrance into a bare open court of great extent with still another gate and low arch beyond. There we left our rickishas and two Manchu officers with an armed guard of ten soldiers received us with every show of courteous but reserved welcome. They were, the higher officer said, to be our escort: to see that we came to no harm, and he bowed with dignity. It was something in Tuan's favour that he kept a guard of Manehus for the Forbidden City, in part of which the deposed boy emperor lived amid a phantom court, knowing perhaps that a Chinese guard would make short work of the boy and any who upheld him, as they had slaughtered in cold blood some twenty- four thousand of the Manchu inhabitants of the Tartar city when the republic was proclaimed — a horribly cruel iattue of unarmed men, women and children. And close as wax the Manchu officer and his men stuck to us wherever we went. We were in the holy of holies, as it were, of the newly A GLIMPSE OF NORTHERN CHINA 423 perished empire, and as we entered the first vast quad- rangle the sense of weight of the long,, great past of which I have spoken descended on us. For in the walled enclo- sures behind and beyond this immense empty space had lived long lines of these emperors from the time of the Ming. Here was the space we were told where in thou- sands the princes, mandarins, governors and ofileials came to pay their New Year calls, barely to glimpse the Emperor ; where new honours were awarded, and cunningly belated punishments were often meted out to men who came from remote provinces. The procedure was said to be simple. A mandarin, say, in secret disfavour entered and took his place. He was called on by an official to follow him. Conducted through the sombre No. 5 gate, a soldier cut off his head as soon as he stepped outside. The city is not called red on that account, nor for any prevailing tint in tiles or structures, but because the word or something like it is used to describe the pole-star: this red city is the pole-star, the fixed shining pivot around which everything in the Empire revolves — ^no vulgar blood in it. We pass through the imposing Exposition Gate, and over a wonder of carved marble balustrades and high marble steps rises the lofty Hall of Audience across the intervening square. The marbles. match the delicate work of the Altar of Heaven. Still empty of life is it all. Before the build- ing stand massive gilt incense burners. We climb the steps followed silently by the guard. A tall door swings open and we enter the great Audience Hall of the Dragon Throne. Great columns of lacquered wood support the lofty roof, and our footsteps echo on the marble pavement as in the dim light we approach the empty throne. It is of ebony or ebonized teak wood carved with ornate lattice work. The steps leading up to it on the front and on either side are double and peculiarly bowed. One of us, not I, slipped up the steps and sat on the central seat 424 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND when the discreet officers were not looking. Somehow the moment was not onp of deep impressions. Mr. McMurray pretended not to see, perhaps he did not; as for me I turned away to examine the great pillars. The phantom of the vanished dynasties in their moment of highest estate and imperial pride there regnant amid all their pomp of silk and jade and gold and power over the destinies of hun- dreds of millions only came for an instant to me as I turned back for a while in passing out through the door. The Charge d 'Affaires was doing what he could with a kodak, and was not doing badly as it turned out, considering the growing dusk of the grey afternoon. We passed to a square beyond, where stands the House of Prayer again fronted with the carven white marble steps to a marble platform. We did not enter. Again we found a great quadrangle beyond and on its further side the stately House of Study with a colonnade. There the Emperor was supposed to come at intervals and study the sacred books. A great wall stood back of this building, and behind it the palace of residence of the Emperor, now the home of a boy who will never reign. And that was all. One cannot go through this great widespread city of a million souls, stand upon its ancient massive walls, pass under and through its monumental gates, enter its hoary, decaying temples, sumptuous in decay; walk through vast areas of its palaces, its audience halls, its broad marble- paved courts with the grass upgrowing, its expanses of neglected gardens without feeling the crushing pressure of something mighty, something old and outworn, something great — and dead. You are on the ashes of an empire amid a living people. CHAPTER XXVII PEKING IN THE HEYDBY OF YUAN Why the President kept to his palace — A virtually imprisoned Vice President and an immured boy-emperor — Dr. Goodnow and the autocratic Constitution — The "swarm" — Hotel a nest of international intrigue — Minister Reinsch — Some Chinese portraits, the cheerful Admiral Tsai Ting Kan and the sad rinance Minister — Yuan shih Kai at close range. "Men shoot." I had asked my rickisha boy who spoke some English as we skirted the Winter Palace on our way to see the marble bridge, why President Yuan shih Kai did not show himself in public. It was an ominous answer. They had at- tempted to assassinate him some months before, and he was not anxious to give his enemies another chance. But who were the enemies from whom he must keep close behind guarded gates: how many: for what did they stand? Answers were difficult to get in Peking then, but since then the questions may be answered. It can be put into a single word — ^idealists. Nothing seemed farther from the answer then. Many whom I questioned upon the probable make-up of a revolutionary or reactionary party seemed indisposed to answer, a caution common to countries auto- cratically ruled, but to me it seemed then that it was a wide discontent with the man who had betrayed the revo- lution, and that it must run pretty wide and deep to keep the head of a government growing stronger every day from being seen in a carriage or afoot outside his palace walls. 42S 426 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND I had learned in Mukden that they did not love a gov- ernment which had dethroned the Manchu dynasty, had taken from the Manehus their primacy among the Empire's races, and had, for sign, allowed every Chinaman to cut off his queue — which the Manchu emperors had im- posed on him. Yuan, indeed, made claim upon their sympathies hy keeping Hsuan Tung, the boy-emperor, alive with Manchu guards about him, and directing the repair and re-embellishment of the imperial palace at Mukden and the Pei-ling tombs; but he had solemnly abandoned the Empire, and Manchuria was peevish about it. It was seen in the swagger of the Manehus of Mukden. With the southern provinces it was different. There the Chinese brand of republicanism was born. Young Chinese who had been educated in America or Europe had brought back new ideals of government. In our colleges and marts, in our own Chinatowns, the world's opinion of the back- wardness of China had backed up the observation of the Chinese themselves of the freer world about them. The idea of reforming China grew apace among the better class of the Chinese studying, working or trading in the United States. But the reception not only by the imperial but by the local officials of proposals for admitting into China any "Western" light was disheartening. It might do for the islanders of little Japan, but for the great Empire of China? Nonsense! People have forgotten the long process of attempt answered by persecution which at- tended the first steps of the reformers. The attitude of the Dowager Empress was unequivocal. Many a reformer perished, but such seed does not die out. Propaganda becomes conspiracy. Armed rebellion succeeds protests. Suddenly politic fellows in power reading success in the new idea join forces with the rebels, and it is revolution. When it was all over with the Empire in 1910, and the PEKING IN THE HEYDEY OP tUAN 427 Manchu emperors had gone in a night from their throne of two and a half centuries and all the other twenty centuries of other dynasties, Dr. Sun Yat Sen and his fellow-republicans, having but a theoretic conception of republicanism — just plain idealism — ^were in a poor way to make China a republic. They found that government is a business, and they had never been in the business. Stories I heard among the newspaper men in Peking of the Sun Yat Sen government at Nanking were amusing to them but tragic to China. One story of a high official moving his yamen several miles out of the town to escape the importunities of the thousands of Chinese seeking office and the hundreds of foreigners seeking concessions was a sample. Scarcely installed in-his new quarters the official looked out one morning to see the entire road back to Nanking lined with a procession comprising everything on wheels in the city, and he cried out: "Would I be safe from them in the ocean ? ' ' The revolution of 1910 indeed awakened a new life. It created aspirations as well as expectations, even in remote China, that is, China remote from the seaboard. Wise- acres will tell you (with feeble persistence in ideas holding true up to a dozen years ago), that the "average China- man" is indifferent to progress; cares nothing for China as a whole ; nothing for his province ; only asks to work in peace and pay as little taxes as possible ; but I have many proofs that Chinese patriotism, certainly an all-China con- sciousness, is growing: that there is more than a glimpse of the idea of representative government, and that it will not be denied; that the new lines of official "graft" and "squeeze" — the Oriental curse — are destined to live hard lives. There are schools now in China where there were none ; there is some light where all was darkness. To the soldiers of the new republic loot became the accepted order of things. There was no settling down. It was in despera- 428 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND tion really that they turned to the wily but very able and strong old servant of the Empire — Yuan shih Kai. He took everything off their hands, agreed to their conditions, the new experimental Parliament and all: he became the second president, and gave Sun Yat Sen what looked like a profitable job. For a little while he put up with the ineptness of the Parliament, and then drove them out. A few disappearances among the protesting members made the others disappear voluntarily. It was at this time that he secured the good offices of Dr. Goodnow to write an essay giving his opinion that China was not prepared for self-government. It was measurably true, but it was un- fortunate. It played Yuan's game with the foreign lega- tions, and by that time he was prepared to deal with China himself. There is no saying how successful he might have been had Yuan resolved to govern along the lines he had taken to that point, but the imperial itch was in his bones, and he could not restrain his selfishness. Even the farcical constitution which he proclaimed might have lasted for years if his personal ambition had been kept under cover. "That is very simple," was said to be the late Jay Gould's criticism of the very late Jim Fisk's explanation of his way of doing a stock business: "When a customer deposits any money with us we divide it among the mem- bers of the firm." The Yuan constitution was just as simple. There might be a Parliament, but Yuan might bend it, break it and end it. No such naive statement of one-man power has been put forth in centuries. In the name of a republic it was derisory. Louis XIV said : " I am the state, ' ' so said Yuan. "It appears to me like this," said an American marine, doing his sentry-go on the city wall, "Constitution of the Chinese Republic : ' The President is the whole push. ' ' ' The comment of those around one at Peking was cynical PEKING IN THE HEYDEY OF YUAN 429 enough, but the general voice was that Yuan was simply frank: that he needed the power if he was to hold China from the disturbers within and the wolves without. One apologist, however, should be heard, namely. Dr. P. J. Goodnow, legal adviser of the Chinese government and then president-elect of Johns Hopkins University, an able, learned man of most agreeable manners and thought-worn, kindly face with whom I had the good fortune to exchange a few thoughts one morning. He said many fine drawn things to the Far Eastern Review regarding what might be done in a legal way for popular rights under the new instrument. They may safely be passed over as illusory. Indeed he finally gave up explanation as a bad job, and said, with what foundation one may well inquire, "It is to be remembered that this constitution is not intended as a permanent constitution, but on the contrary has been pro- vided to enable China to make safely and with the least possible friction the transition from the past autocratic to some form of representative government. ' ' One can pass the abortive thing by. The fact was the taste of popular rule still lingered in the south. It evi- dently had some palates in Peking which still relished the recollection of it. The gossipers about the Wagons Lits pooh-poohed it. "Yuan is too strong for them." But there was Yuan who had no fear to risk his person in the old days of his service in Korea, nor in his later bold passage through the troublous days of the falling Empire in China; there he was immured in the Winter Palace watched over by guards, with his vice president immured in another palace (for his health, Yuan asserted with a grim humour) and the little boy-emperor immured in still another palace. So, the Yuan who was "too strong" for any opposition lived in fear for his life. And it was through the dead heart of his government in the Forbidden City, in and about the Hall of Audience where the imperial 430 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND throne was gathering dust that I spent a grey afternoon with a walled-up President, Vice President and young deposed emperor within a stone's throw, and a young American Secretary of Legation taking snapshots. And the laconic reply of the rickisha boy came back to me. I registered at the time and now repeat that, lamentably deficient in the theory and practice of parliamentary rule as China may be, no government can there survive which is not measurably founded on popular control. Yuan was wrecked on another shoal, but sooner or later the keel of his ship of state would have found itself in the shallows because of his doing to death of the legislature and the bur- lesque nature of the one he proposed to substitute for the debating club of the idealists who were then as the rickisha boy intimated — "out for him with gun." It did not make for easy access to him. The "swarm," for instance, did not waste time seeking to see him. But let me elucidate the "swarm." Under the roof of the Wagons Lits there sheltered a polyglot gathering that would come close to a mass meeting around the Tower of Babel the morning after verbal misunderstandings were started on the globe. Some, of course, were mere tourists, taking their Summer Palace in the morning, their Temple of Heaven in the afternoon, their trips to the bazaar toward dusk, and the cinematograph at night, sometimes making two days of it, and then off again to further skimming of the Oriental pot, laden more or less with curios and "antiques" of doubtful antiquity. But these were not the "swarm"; it was not the tourist season. If it were, the hotel people would not have had quaint workmen in queues and blue blouses hammering, sawing, pounding and clamouring at the tops of their voices from cock crow to sunset. No: the swarm did not mind the noise, could scarcely hear it. It was made up of German, French, Dutch, Russian, English, American, PEKING IN THE HEYDEY OF YUAN 431 Austrian, Italian, Japanese promoters of big commercial enterprises, of concession seekers, of confident, newly appointed managers, of chagrined, retiring ditto, of happy chaps getting a vacation and unloading detailed advice on the locum tenens who were staying through the dog days. It was wonderful to watch them in the large lounging room where all white male\ Peking seems to pause for a chat or a smoke at some time in the course of the day. Bach group suspected the other, and so closed in, heads together, and looking sideways with as little movement of the head as possible. In a few moments the group would scatter. The hundred rickisha boys across the street would then take them up in twos and threes or singly, and the Minister from this country or that, some high Chinese ofScial, some middleman with a Chinese "pull," some rich Chinese merchant with great inland trade would receive their visits. Such a hotbed of commercial, industrial, political intrigue never was. For China, like a great dead lion, the dead lion of the Empire of China, lay there before them, its exposed vitals swarming with a minute new life. That wriggling mass is the China of today, the Republic of China, its 4,000,000 square miles, its 200,000,000 to 400,000,000 inhabitants, its eighteen provinces, its great wealth, its great poverty, its slow, ceaseless activity, all inviting exploitation. For, mark you, it is alive all over. And this only concerned the trader, the concession seeker, as it betokens an enormous population alive to new wants. It wants railroads, tele- graphs, telephones, harvesters, sewing machines, mining machinery, cotton, clothes, oil, naphtha, even soap. That is why the "swarm" was and still is active as it never was at Peking. There is trade to be done, with more and more of it in prospect. It is the great land out of the whole world for the bold risking of adventurous millions— millions that will take a big loss for the chance 432 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND of huge gain. The cash millions of England — which have beeni active in the Orient the longest — had offered them- selves; also the cash millions of France, tired of two and three per cent.; the cash millions of Germany, eager for anything, regular or predatory; some few cash millions from America, millions from Holland, even from Venice, Lombardy, Barcelona. Most of all, no doubt, it concerned and still concerns Japan. For Japan in its new industrial and commercial expansion era lies right alongside, and naturally desires and must from every circumstance insist on not being denied its share. The rising against Yuan shih Kai in 1915 was a direct consequence of the attempt which he had carried so far to make himself emperor. He was practically overthrown when after a short illness he died in the palace amid his wives and twenty-four children. No doubt he was sick unto death for some days, but whether his going was hastened as a matter of state by palace poisoners as widely hinted, or was indeed due to the shock of suddenly awaken- ing to the overthrow of his castle of imperial dreams, may never be known. At any rate the confused condition of affairs thereafter kept the "swarm" busier than ever. Whether Li Yuan Hung, the new President or Premier Tuan and his kaleidoscopic Cabinet or the Parliament should rule was a long guessing season for them. The reactionary uprising of 1917, the brief appearance of the boy-emperor as a momentary ruler and his just as sudden disappearance made another time of trouble for the intriguers of the Wagons Lits. Through all these periods the German group had been perhaps the busiest. They stood high with Yuan, how high will be known in time. There is little doubt that the various orders from Peking designed to hamper the Japanese in their attack upon and reduction of Tsing-tao were of German suggestion, and that the subsequent resistance to and gutcry against the Jap- PEKING IN THE HBYDEY OF YUAN 433 anese proposals to China were of German inspiration there is now no doubt whatever. To what extent the British and American journalists of Peking were the dupes of the German network of intrigue will also be divulged in time. At any rate the German influence waned under British and Japanese pressure, and today is crushed out of sight, its last struggle being against the entry of China into the war on the side of the Entente Allies. It leaves the way pretty clear for Japan, America, Great Britain and France in China's trade after the European war, and for Japan and America till the war is ended. To cross a certain street from the Wagons Lits Hotel is to find oneself in a world apart from the rest of Peking. You are in the Legation quarter. Its aspect is rather that of a university town in Europe than anything peculiar to Asia. The grey stone look of walls and buildings, the paved, sidewalked streets, the occasional stately entrance gates of the homes of the embassies with a glimpse of dignified inner court, the general quiet all make their impression. Armed soldiers of the different nationalities are on guard inside the gates, and in different localities one catches a glimpse of companies in the different compounds at drill. My rickisha boy once running in by that route from the outskirts saw as I did the manoeuvring soldiers in open grassy spaces on either side of the road. Toward one he waved a hand and said: "Qui, oui," and to the other, "Ja, ja," laughing delightedly. They were the French and German contingents at drill. Within a couple of months they were each to carry their rifles with a dif- ferent meaning. Down by the British Legation, the scene of the Boxer siege of 1900, there was a bullet-pierced piece of wall with the inscription, "Lest we Forget." So our civilization halts between times of battle. Naturally my first visit in the quarter was to the Upited States Legation in its comfortable quarters near 434 JAPAN AT FIEST HAl^D the city wall, on top of which American sentinels in the uniform of the marines marched to and fro. Minister Paul Samuel Reinsch, who received me courteously was, as I have stated in the previous chapter, about to start for his summer vacation in Switzerland. He had the look of the jaded bookman, and seemed worn down under nervous strain. He had, apparently, much on his mind that he would be glad to see solved before his departure. We talked of the condition of China about which he seemed to be hopeful. He was anxious when I mentioned a desire to see President Yuan, that if the Legation succeeded in obtaining the permission, I should limit myself to shaking hands and saying how do you do. His departure within a few hours left, as I have already stated, the visit to Yuan in the air, where it still is and will be for all time. A very informal morning reception, attended scatteringly by Legation secretaries civil and military of other nationali- ties and a score or so of Americans, was all that officially marked the Glorious Fourth when it came around. The young officials and the American civilians managed, how- ever, to put a little warmth into the quiet affair. A base- ball match among the marines was the only other festivity of the day. That did not lack energy. I paid a couple of visits to the Japanese Embassy, then also in charge of a locum tenens, the courteous, long-headed Mr. Yukioki Obata, one of them a recherche dinner of rare Chinese comestibles with a bright international company that made a long evening pass pleasantly. At the church funeral of an official in the diplomatic circle the notable thing was the assembly of equipages of various types, some very showy and others somewhat shabby tenanted by very solemn-looking men, most of them in black and others in the uniform of a dozen different armies. It was an un- pleasant reminder of the fact that the Japanese ambassa- dor tQ vfliQia J C£irri§d an introduction from Tokyo and the THE TE.MPLE OF HOAN'G I,T' GATE, HEAVEN, J'EKING TEMPLE OF CONFUCIUS, PEKING AMONU THE DESERTED I'ALACES IN THE FORBIDDEN (.TTV, PEKING PEKING IN THE HEYDEY OF YUAN 435 Charge d 'Affaires, Mr. Midzuno whom I had known during his consul generalship in New York as a bright cosmo- politan and thorough good fellow had both died within a few weeks of each other, both after my arrival in Japan. It confirmed me in the idea that Peking was an unhealthful place for the foreigner in summer time. Most people one met, except natives, were troubled internally one way or another. Although I did not see Yuan, I met several of the high Chinese officials. The most interesting to me was Admiral Tsai Ting Kan, whose resounding name had in some way a joyous suggestion of my childhood. He was found in a yamen not far off to whose inner offices one was ushered without much formality after an examination of creden- tials. It was an old stone structure with a low stone gate. One passed through a bit of garden and in a well-lighted room, a stalwart man of robust middle age with short black hair and moustache above a strong, open face of European rather than Mongol outline, lighted by an engaging smile, rose from his desk table to greet me. He seemed younger than his over fifty years and spoke English fluently and with little trace of accent. When one learned that he had spent eight years as a student in America, being a very young man when he with others accompanied Yung Wing to the United States in 1873, one was not surprised that there was no hesitation in his speech. He was then and to the day of Yuan's death his secretary, very close to him and thoroughly loyal. Chinese naval history is not of the proudest, but in whatever there was of personal glory Tsai had a full share. On his return from America he entered the torpedo school, and during the China-Japanese war of 1895 commanded a flotilla of torpedo boats in the naval engagements off Port Arthur, on the Yalu and at Wei- haiwei. He rose in the service after the war, and had the good fortune to attract the attention of Yuan shih Kfti 436 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND when the latter was Governor of Chihli, the province which includes Peking. His breezy manner, his cheerfulness and a certain steady glance of the eye are not often in the Chinese temperament, but they captivated Yuan, and rank followed service. He had been chief of a department in the ministry of the navy, but on Yuan's coming to Peking he was transferred to his personal staff at Yuan's special request. He seemed happy in his job, but would probably look happy anywhere. Very optimistic he was about China's future under Yuan. He told of the President's wide knowledge of men through- out the vast republic and his shrewd valuation of them, giving instances beyond my power to recall and dwelt upon Yuan's ability in creating order, his creation of the Chinese army and police. Also he admitted the greatness of the task of having the revenue collected with an elimina- tion of the old, old process of dwindling to a fraction be- tween the payment of the tax and its reaching the treasury at Peking. One could expect no less from a presidential secretary talking to a foreigner, but there was a ring of sincerity about his utterance. China was at peace with the world without, and order had been re-established within. A certain bandit chief then much in the public eye who also proclaimed himself a patriot under the title of the White Wolf, and who had been harrying towns and villages in the Western provinces and always escaping Yuan's slow-footed soldiers. Admiral Tsai dismissed with a wave of the hand. "We'll catch him," he said. They did, too, for soon thereafter, after many flights, the White Wolf "disappeared." Of Yuan himself he was cautious in speaking. He praised his industry as well as his grasp, his intelligence in his great task, looking graver than in speaking of anything else. His confidence in his master seemed very profound. It is not improbable that Admiral T$ai Ting Kan cpuld t^U a§ jaych as any one aboijt the PEKING IN THE HBYDEY OP YUAN 437 hidden side of the last days of Yuan. That way lies great drama. A subtler mind and more official Chinese face belonged to Mr. Chou Tsi-eh'i, then Minister of Finance, whom I visited a couple of days later at the office of that ministry. He also had been educated in America and spoke English in a way at once fluent and constrained. His temper seemed far from sunny, and his voice had the thin com- plaining quality. Yet he seemed very anxious to be civil, and explained the complicated and at bottom unsatisfac- tory condition of China's finances with patience and where necessary with fulness. These things of which I made copious note after leaving him, are only of relative interest now, but I recall his deploring the withdrawal of the United States from the Chinese Quintuple Power loan with a real regret. The same withdrawal had moved Mr. Denison, the American adviser of Japan, to similar regret mingled with some feeling that America ought, however administrations might change, to pursue a consistent policy in things like that. As I was not the custodian of Secre- tary of State William J. Bryan's conscience, and had no answer of my own that I cared to make I held my peace with both of the Asiatic statesmen. Mr. Chou brightened a little in talking of the great success of the Salt Gabelle or governmental salt monopoly under the management of Sir Richard Dane, an Irishman long in the British India civil service, filling many posts of honour and hard work and finally from 1898 to 1913 concerned in managing the Indian salt revenue, being then chosen to rescue the Chinese salt tax from the dominions of "graft" and "squeeze." That he was a native of Kingstown, County Dublin, where I had been born, certainly took nothing from his lustre in my eyes. Peking just then was ringing with tributes to the business methods of Sir Richard, and the $60,000,000 which replaced the slim 13,000,000 taels of former years trimmed 438 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND down on its way to the imperial exchequer. But Mr. Chou only brightened for a moment. There were other troubles — banking, currency, indemnities, foreign loans — and the needs of the government tugging ever at the treasury door. He was indeed plaintive in his reproach to Japan over her desire to pay less than the five per cent, customs duty on cotton. "Why can't they be satisfied with the rate as it is?" He almost wept. It did not make an attractive picture of the Secretary's high office in the government of a power as great as China. His curved nose became peaked, his small dark eyes roving suspiciously almost closed with his emotion, and he per- spired freely. He had been in the diplomatic service under the Empire and had held positions in the finance depart- ment when Yuan came to power, once Acting Minister, then Governor of the Bank of China and later Minister of Com- munications. He accumulated sorrow it would appear with each elevation. He always saw how much better things could and should be, and no doubt tried to better them. Whether it was intense inner honesty or merely successive souring, the outlook was not cheering to Mr. Chou. He went down in Yuan's crash, and was lucky to be able to seek harbour in Japan. From one or another it was not hard to get a pretty full- length picture of the central figure in this great turnover. To my mind Yuan shih Kai, despite his services to the state, was always a self-seeker and coarse-of-grain, with a grim sense of humour, shown for instance so frequently in his decrees, wherein he bestowed various disabling diseases and conditions upon officials whom he was removing from office : " He will go to Honan or Shantung, as the case might be, to nurse his infirm legs or rest his swollen arms or cure his headaches. ' ' That official lost no time in leaving Peking, for Yuan had little compunction about taking life in cold blogd, hike the inefficient ballet-girl who was "good to PEKING IN THE HEYDEY OF YUAN 439 her mother" and so was kept in the line, Yuan was good and kind to his family however he hurt or helped others. It is at best an animal trait, and comports with many an ugly attribute in patriarchs as well as quadrupeds. A friendly view of him at that time described his attitude to his task: "He wants to act unhampered. He wants to reorganize the personnel of the entire government, as he says, 'in the interest of the whole country.' He believes he knows the pace at which China can march, and he will not force it a single step ; but he will have responsibility in office. He is organizing the finances ; he wants development of natural resources; he is granting concessions that do not destroy the dignity of the state or sign away its birthright, but which mean substantial progress in this part or that of the great territory — and profit to the government. He depre' cates haste; China is old, is conservative and must not be hurried. "He puts on no style. He dresses plainly. At official receptions he wears a marshal's uniform. When the President is in mufti, wearing a short jacket, he gives nowadays the impression at first glance of a prosperous Chinese trader. He is not big — about five feet six inches high — and chunky rather than obese of build. His silver white hair is cropped short, and he wears a thick, white 'old man's' moustache and a little tuft under his lower lip, although he is only fifty-five years old. He does his daily stintf of work in a rather small Chinese room in a single-story building at the palace, not far from where he lives in the Winter Palace, once the home of the late Empress Dowager. He is deliberate in speech, with a large apparent tolerance, which is really a self-imposed patience, for he has generally made up his mind long before arguments are over, often before they have begun." 440 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND It was thus that Joseph Leiter of Chicago saw him about a month before my visit to Peking. He was not fond of seeing people like that, but asked Joseph if it was his first visit to China, beamed cordially on him and said good- bye. And his own good-bye was not so far off. CHAPTER XXVIII SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS Factors that have wrought a change — ^Yuan shih Kai's death and the Chinese Republic — ^America's entrance into the war — The aborted anti-Japanese attacks — An answer to an assailant — Failure of the pro-Chinese Cabal — The Lansing-Ishii agree- ment that closes the chapter. The death of Yuan shih Kai, President of the Chinese Republic, following so closely the overthrow of his am- bitious plot to make himself Emperor of China, changed matters materially in the Far East. It restored the Chinese Republic which, however poorly organized it has since proved, makes by that much for some semblance of popular government, and I believe ensures a gradual if slow advance in solidarity and ordered rule. The outbreak which for a few days of 1917 saw the boy-emperor taken from his palace prison and placed upon the throne in the Forbidden City only to be hurried back to obscurity again, cost but a few rounds of machine-gun ammunition, and a few lives. Under a new President and Cabinet with more or less of a Parliament, with more or less unity between north China and south China, the republic resumed. That in the course of my brief visit to Peking in 1914 in the fulness of Yuan shih Kai's sway, I detected that wily person's bent toward making himself Emperor, and re- corded the opinion that Yuan was facing the impossible in attempting to rule without a real Parliament, is a source of satisfaction to me. He is gone now, his childish auto- cratic constitution with him, and may all the Confucian 441 442 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND consolations rest in the hearts of his mimerous widows and twenty-four children! According to the latest lights showing Yuan in the act of allowing German intrigue to be the real factor in his attitude to Japan, America and the rest of the world, it should make him revolve in his coffin to see the Chinese government declare a state of war between the Chinese republic and the German Emperor. The entry of America into the war is, however, a mightier factor of change in Far Eastern conditions and outlook. For one thing at a stroke it lays the ghost of that bogey of American and other demogogues "the Japanese menace" to the United States and her interests' in Asia. As the visit of the Imperial Japanese Commission to the United States under Viscount Ishii demonstrated, Japan stands side by side with the United States as an ally in war, and proclaims that her interests in peace are as our interests based, so far as China is concerned, on the "open door" of John Hay's diplomacy, on "equal opportunity" in trade throughout China, and pledges her- self to respect hereafter the "territorial integrity" of China. That all this is in a manner sealed in the agree- ment between the two governments is very gratifying. The outlook, therefore, for an uninterrupted reign of peaceful trading and a growth of good will between China and Japan is excellent, as it is for fruitful friendship be- tween Japan and the United States. When to these are added the prospect that the German grip upon China can never be retaken : that Great Britain and France will fall in loyally with the new condition, and that Russia, in her new if violent democracy, will never again attempt to play the part of tyrant in the Far Bast, the foundations seem securely laid for sealing in clear and definite terms and for a long future a pact of peace for all the lands border- ing on the Pacific Ocean. From this much changed and cheering condition I think SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 443 it useful here to look back to my part in a struggle In defence of the very things which time has evolved as the solution of complications of some years back. One cannot study closely a country and its problems without reaching some conclusions on the latter. In Peking, as I have shown, these Japanese problems were made to wear an entirely different aspect in the view of many whom I met there. In America itself after my return home, I found these views, reinforced and expanded, being flung before our public with extraordinary bitterness in a series of news- paper attacks. They plainly derived from German sources, using what I have designated as "the swarm" in Peking — would-be concessionaires, job-seekers, some among the mis- sionaries, floating diplomatists, interested professors and English-speaking journalists as well as Yuan himself. The outbreak of the European war, the wresting of Tsing-tao from the Germans by the Japanese, the treaty between Japan and China thereafter were the outstanding events which these new assailants of the peace of nations treated as the conditions precedent to their arguments. It seemed easy to divine that the attacks were instigated by Yuan shih' Kai, but not so easy to discover that they were the result (however unconsciously on the part of the actors), of German intrigue in Peking and Shanghai. And yet, as it turns out, it was so. Nor should it be surprising when one considers the great web of the fatuous and the futile woven by Germany's donkey diplomacy all over the world preparatory to its declaration of war which was to lay the world at its feet. Quite of a piece with the Zimmer- mann masterpiece of inciting Mexico to war on the United States "with Japan as an ally" would be the idea of setting Japan and the United States by the ears over the trade of China. While this sinister campaign has been whistled down the wind and its protagonists stricken with something like the 444 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND fate of Belshazzar's legions, it was for a time a disturbing factor. In answer to its manifestations in the press to which, like all sensational matter, it found a ready entrance, I had, among others, written in reply. Once when one of the attacking party — ^Mr. George Bronson Rea — dressed up a series of these attacks in pamphlet form with the special view of influencing the United States Congress and pub- lished it in Washington under the title "Japan's Place in the Sun — the Menace to America" a number of the replies made as the articles appeared were gathered between covers and published under the title "Japan's Real Attitude To- ward America." To this collection I contributed a paper, "Mr. Rea and His Mission" which threw into one article the main points of communications which appeared in the New York Herald, New York Tribune and Public Ledger of Philadelphia, traversing many of Mr. Rea's anti- Jap- anese vagaries, and adding thereto some narrative and comments which his later efforts against the peace of the United States seemed to call for. It is a live part of a lively battle for the right and hereinafter follows : "Mr. George Bronson Rea in his recent pamphlet, adorned ironically on its cover with the sunburst of Japan, and which he devotes to an endeavour to upset the good rela- tions between the United States and Japan, is guilty of a double offence: "1. His garbling, mutilating and deliberate misconstru- ing of quotations to help his unworthy cause make one branch of this unscrupulousness. "2. His hideous and unpardonable statement in the same pamphlet to the effect that all Americans who stand for the good faith of Japan, agaiiast the bitter misrepresen- tations of himself and his kind, are traitorously engaged in putting stumbling-blocks in the way of American 'pre- paredness' is the other. SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 445 "The latter — a black falsehood and an infamous libel — is not to be passed over lightly, not merely on account of its personal bearing, but because it is the one foul item on which he counts to inflame the minds of the thoughtless, and incite a belief in the coarse propositions that follow it. It is shameful. ' ' The mental and moral calibre must be very low to make so base a charge in face of the ease of controverting it. ' ' He says, with some glimmer of perception, that when he emits one of his misshapen missiles, he is sure to awaken some one who deplores the 'wrong impression.' That is very euphemistic for the utterances that should characterize his defamatory output. The late Horace Greeley would have expressed it otherwise. Tennyson has said: " 'A lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.' "Mr. Eea's utterance regarding American 'prepared- ness' and the attitude of the American believers in Japan's good faith falls within the first category. His garbling and misquoting fall under the second line." In one of his latest letters Mr. Rea devoted a stream of inky epithets to myself among others, slurring our devotion to America or, as an alternative, our intelligence. However it may be about the tetter, no man shall in my case impugn the former. A man's loyalty is sacred ground, and no Dugald Dalgetty can trespass on it. That is my personal part of it. I shall deal with "preparedness" further on as a general proposition, I trust conclusively. Meanwhile let us look a little closer at Mr. Eea. He complains of "personalities" ! Why, they are of the very essence of this argument. It is in vain that Mr. Rea of Washington, D. C, wishes to throw off all personal con- nection with the Mr. Rea of Shanghai, China, who wrote 446 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND another recent series of articles in American papers attack- ing Japan in the interests of China whereof the hand- writing was that of Mr. Rea, but the voice was that of a mandarin. They were without effect. They did not stir a ripple. Later, since the Peking government has fallen into its tangle with the Chinese revolutionary republicans, and the efforts of his Chinese congeners to enter the American loan market have been thereby aborted, Mr. Rea felt that he should create a devil-fish flurry in the waters and write his future attacks on Japan from the "American stand- point," if you please. Is it right or fair that he should shed his skin in this matter, leave out altogether his Chinese association, his pro-Chinese incitations to attack on Japan, as easily as he had shed his badge of service to the Chinese Republic and to Sun Yat Sen? Who is he to vilipend all those loyal, honest Americans who like myself will not take his word that Japan's policies are the seizure of China and the conquest of the United States. If he added to this program the annexation of Siberia and the bagging of India and Australia it would be scarcely more irresponsibly fantastic — and mentally lamentable. Mr. Rea some years since established himself at Shanghai, China, and there in company with a well-known journalist, now of Peking, founded the Far Eastern Review. It is amusing to note that this partner is one of those whom Mr. Rea is fain to quote when he is claiming support for his various "views." In time came the sudden overthrow of the Manehu dynasty in China, and Mr. Rea attached himself to the revolution, accepting high office from Sun Yat Sen. When the infant republic went under, Mr. Rea went over to the new government which put a price upon the head of Sun Yat Sen ! Mr. Rea appeared in the United States last year apparently in the train of the Chinese governmental delegation that came over in the interest of Chinese loans and so forth, appearing, according to the SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 447 papers, at the Chinese restaurants in New York where the local Chinese feted the delegation. At the same time he began his first series of letters aiming to show that Japan was about to swallow China. And whom, in his pamphlet directed against the peace of the United States and Japan, does he put forward to vouch for him? Professor Jeremiah Jenks, long in the service of China, director of the New York Chinese Bureau, and now understood to be on his way to Peking in pursuit of his Chinese employment. Truly most naive, the whole proceeding. And of these is the fount and origin of the latest attack upon Japan! It is inevitable that he who sows distrust, sharpens suspicion, provokes enmity, or pours poison drops of hatred into the mind should, in times of stress, be given readier access to the vehicles of public information than he who simply stands for faith and trust in common honesty and common sense. Your poisoner is more piquant. At what does Mr. Eea strike? At America's faith in the honesty of Japan, a friendly, civilized, compacted, organized, progressive nation. As at his start, so at his finish, he cries out, "Beware! Beware of Japan!" Unfortunately the refuge of the false prophet is the indeterminedness of his malefic forecast, leaving time as the only final arbiter. Yet as other false prophets of Japanese hostility have fallen on the time test, we may safely put Mr. George Bronson Eea in the class with Captain Hobson. I have afiirmed that Mr. Kea's object was to champion the idea that China was the desirable friend of the United States, not Japan — "Codling is the friend, not Short." In his last letters, however, he has set about his cultivation of the anti-Japanese virus under cover of an appeal for American "preparedness." Surely his cause is desperate when he seeks to hang its piebald) tatters on the coat of 448 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND mail which America in her sturdy self-respect is fashioning today. It needed the flame and shock of arms of a war-mad world to put America in her present frame of mind. When the shifts and schemes of wrangling statesmen in the rear of the battling armies were breaking down the govern- mental moralities of the world, tearing up treaties, ignoring international laws, it at last behooved the great neutral nation of the West to remember that her good intentions, her long practice of justice and proved good will might avail nothing before a conquest-crazy power flushed with bloody victories. America's strength must be as visible of all men as her sense of justice. It was no menace from Asia, Africa or Oceanica, but from the powers at the heart and heaving centre of our most modern civilization — from Europe. Apart altogether from what they stood and stand for in the great struggle, it was the menace of war-mad Ger- many, Austria, France, England, Russia, Italy, Turkey and the little fighting powers in any combination, aye, all com- bined — the Old World against the New — that woke up the United States. This need of defensive preparation struck no single watchman on the tower; it had no original pre- cursor ; it sprang full-armed from the minds of the millions. It was not in succession to any lobbyist who schemed before the war to sell dynamite to the government or to build battleships in private yards on pretence that this distant nation or the other had a measurable sea power or land power to do us harm. Such calculations have been the commonplace of the chancelleries, our own sea and land service included, for half a century. We did not care how many their ships, their cannon or their armed men ; we would be a model of trust in normal human nature and continue to see the normal ia peace and law-abiding. We coined the word SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 449 "unthinkable" to show paradoxically what we thought of the war pedlar's dismal outcries. But with the progress of events in Europe the nation saw, as beneath a search- light of a million candle-power, that the safety, the honour, the inviolability of this continent depended on our being prepared to defend our shores, our soil, our homes, to the last dollar and the last man. And that is how America feels today and will feel to- morrow and hereafter until sanity is restored to the world or a wide disarmament renders harmless the human animals of prey among the nations — until the Golden Rule is more than a shibboleth, is translatable into acts the world around. We are bent upon it now as never before have we been bent upon a great movement, and he, big or little, who holds any other belief or clings to any other policy, call himself pacifist or what not, shall be swept away among the unconsidered or the despised. And to this people, thus engaged, thus devoted to the idea of ample warlike defence, come Mr. Eea and his con- geners with all sorts of unmusical instruments, shrill like Mr. Eea or double-bass like Professor Jenks, to say: "Japan is the enemy; China is the friend; beware of Japan. ' ' In the count of possible elements of hostility, certainly in the purview of the professional soldier and the theoriz- ing tactician of private life, Japan counts for so many ships, guns and trained, brilliant fighting men, but not else and no further. On the other side, however, she may and must be counted, namely, on the side of the possible, powerful, supporting friend. Why not? She stands as isolate in her islands under the lee of China as we stand with regard to the powers now at war in the West. She wants our trade, our good will, as we want hers. All her tendencies, national, financial, commercial, are averse to conflict with us ; all her interests likewise. Beside 450 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND these tangible, palpable things — ^like silk, tea, banking and scholarship — the fair, courteous words of her statesmen, her captains of industry, her Mikado, her generals and admirals, are weak as proofs of friendliness, be they never so sincere and timely. Therefore, by the manly, friendly word as by the national need and the great gulf Stream of profitable trade, Japan stands, I hold and claim, among our friends for the ages, and not by any cause in sight to be counted among our foes. This is the story of America's campaign for "prepared- ness" to which Japan does not make, cannot make, any objection. Rather should she welcome the thought that her possible or probable fellow-champion of free government should in the event of Teutonic victory in Europe be able to rise in her might and defend the Western hemisphere against the demon of governmental militarism, as Japan would have to do in eastern Asia. And now to the point for Mr. Rea. Where has he ever found a word uttered by an American friend of Japan against American "preparedness"? So far as I am con- cerned he falsifies. He read my declaration of faith months ago in my reply to his first pro-Chinese series in the Herald. It is brief and to the point, and I requote it here : I believe in the United States, the doctrine of Monroe, a strong army and navy, a fortified canal, the pan-American communion, the freedom of trade and the freedom of the sea, the forgiveness of fools when they are not also knaves, the commanding of peace on the Pacific in understanding with Japan, the friendship of civilized nations and progress everlasting. And against all who for whatever cause would stir up passion and hate to the up- setting of that doctrine, I would proclaim anathema. Of what rags does he construct his argument? Japan }ie says is overtaxed aiid underfed, ig all but and soon will SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 451 be (or was about to be, but wasn't in July last) bankrupt and, therefore, since her population is increasing (as pros- perity always increases population) , she is bound to go to war with some one soon, and, of course, she will at once proceed to attack the United States! That sort of hare- brained, helter-skelter nonsense does not convince any one, but is the purport of three of his letters viewed as one. Looked at separately they are simply a series of his mislead- ing opinions and quotations and without basis in actual fact in the directions he describes. He of course foully wrongs the Japanese gentlemen who resented the gross mistrans- lation, coarse exploitation and ascription of a certain Dream Book of War to Count Okuma and the leaders of Japan. I can add one fact, however, on that point, namely, that the National Defence Board of whose title he makes sinister use was not brought into existence because of any possible difficulty with America, but simply as a means whereby the appropriations for army and navy could go before their Parliament with the highest official and expert , authority. I was in Japan at the time; the matter was so stated in all the papers. It will be remembered that ministries have been wrecked on the question of army increase — the Two Divisions question. There was abso- lutely no anti-American feeling extant that I could dis- cover, but not a little criticism of Baron Kato's publication of the diplomatic conversations and letters on the questions between Washington and Tokyo. The existence of the National Defence Board was as widely known as any such fact in the governmental makeup. The contrary idea is more than a "wrong impression" on the part of Mr. Rea! While I hold it manifestly absurd that the only way for a publicist to serve China is by misrepresenting Japan, yet that seems to be Mr. Eea's idea and practice. Let it be understood that his "vital irritants," as he aptly calls them, are applied to help China by setting, if possible, 452 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Japan and the United States at loggerheads, and a proper discount may be put upon his narratives and his very hollow protestations of impartiality. Moreover, the process is distinctly of Chinese origin. Centuries before the Germans fired their asphyxiating gas bombs into the trenches of the Allies, the Chinese used their celebrated hand-thrown jars of evil name with exactly the same object, approaching the foe as if holding a gift, and then smother- ing them with escaping gases. The stink bomb was not effective in winning campaigns then any more than now. And why, in Heaven's name, should China be counted now in a military sense on one side or the other? Her unordered bigness is her weakness. Her advocates dwell upon her lamentable powerlessness in appealing on her behalf against Japan. She is a vast market, and the United States and Japan are as one in their interest as well as good faith in keeping real and valid the "open door" and "equal opportunity." There is no honesty in proclaiming the contrary. China is struggling to live, and the United States wishes her well in the struggle. Whether she shall be lent money for salaries or railroads depends upon the order in her big rambling house and lot, upon her collateral; not, as Mr. Bea thinks, upon America's opinion of Japan. Less embittered, less loquacious advocates of China might find time to see that. I do not intend to follow Mr. Rea through his stories that have "part a truth" in them, but it is as well to note that his diatribe opens with a phrase from Count Okuma, which Mr. Rea traces to one of his Chinese sages of a long time ago, but which might as aptly be put in the mouth of our Secretary of War or the King of Dahomey: "To know one's enemy is to know oneself." It is, however, Mr. Rea's drop of poison, meant to flavour all that is to follow. His clear intimation is that "the attitude of Japan" toward SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 453 this country is the attitude of an enemy. Mr. Rea's igno- rance of the text or suppression of his knowledge leads him here into a quagmire of absurdity. Next he serves up the good-hearted, unsuspecting American, blind to everything that will work him woe from under the pleasant aspect of things. Does he not at the start misjudge and insult American intelligence? Then follow quotations to show that there is such press censorship in Japan as to make government policy of whatever he may find in the papers which so much as mention the question of discrimination by the state of California as to land-owning against Japanese residing in that commonwealth. That is untrue, but if it were true, let us admit that the discrimination is one which most naturally hurts Japanese pride. It is in contravention of a treaty with the United States. Must they not dare to complain of it on peril of having Mr. Rea come down on them ? Must they not venture, however meekly, to ask for a way out of it? Long has Chinese exclusion been the policy of the United States. Where are the Chinese laundries now ? Weak and without spirit, China makes no difficulty about it, and, as Mr. Rea has lived so long in China, taking the Chinese view of things, he may really be unable to put himself in the place of any other Asiatic people. I shall not argue the Japanese contention here. Sufficient to recognize its existence, and to hope that American statesmanship will be able to meet Japan on some middle ground, as Baron Shibusawa said not long since to the American guests at a dinner here. And this unsettled question for statesmen to solve is the whole "lock, stock and barrel" of the verbal gun with which Mr. Rea isi bombarding Japan, the missiles being wads of twisted pellets from the publications of Japan. It, therefore, is pertinent to ask which one of them— 454 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND even that pellet from the yellow Yorodzu — is of the stuff that real threats are made of? No "fake" like the United States paymaster imposition is too transparent for Mr. Rea's purpose. No lifting article like that of Count Okuma on civilization is too plainly laudable for any race or any people but Mr. Eea must quote it at length and wag his head over it as an implied threat that Japan will do some horrible thing to the United States. One may conceive an Oriental — a Chinese as well as a Japanese sage — thinking and saying that the East has something to give to the West. Of course Mr. Eea will think a Chinese might but a Japanese must not think of such a thing, much less say it. Yet let us requote a paragraph : A nation recreant to its divine mission is lost. Our military and naval power will ampunt to nothing if we fail in our duty to humanity. It will profit us little to acquire all the learning of the West if we have nothing to offer in return; it is more blessed to give than to receive. Most men of heart or honest feeling would find some excellence in such a brave sentiment. Not so Mr. Rea. Significant of his method I note another sly attempt to confuse issues. A certain Dream Book of War exploited coarsely by the Hearst papers and shown to be irresponsible, foolish — and mistranslated — is referred to in such a way as to make it possible for the reader to imagine that the matter Mr. Eea quotes further on in his letter is from the same book. It is not, and he knows it. Permit me also to doubt his quotation of a single opinion from a pair of princes which he charges up to the Osaka Mainichi. That Prince Higashi Kuni after his visit to the Man- churian battlefields spoke of "half -human Yankees" I do not believe. It so happened that I made the same pil- grimage as the princes a fortnight after them, and the same Japanese officers who were my mentors and guides at SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 455 Port Arthur, Liaoyang and Mukden had been theirs. On the Liaoyang battlefield I heard that Prince Higashi Kuni had taken photographs of the celebrated Tachibana Hill, named for the hero who had stormed it and died fighting on its summit. I expressed a desire for copies to my guides as there were no cameras in the party. On my return to Tokyo I was waited upon by the secretary of his highness and presented with reprints of the photographs, with a warmly courteous expression of good will. Finally I would say that no civic crime can be greater than that of inciting nations at peace to mutual murder, and more shamefully so if it be done for sordid ends. Following the departure for home of the Imperial Jap- anese Mission to the United States headed by Viscount Ishii, it was made known by the State Department at Washington that an agreement had been reached on November 2, 1917, between the two governments by means of an exchange of identical notes dealing with the policy of the United States and Japan in regard to China. Mr. Lansing's note follows: "Department of State, "Washington, November 2, 1917. "Excellency : "I have the honour to communicate herein my understanding of the agreement reached by us in our recent conversations touching the questions of mutual interest to our governments relating to the republic of China. "In order to silence mischievous reports that have from time to time been circulated, it is believed by us that a public announce- ment once more of the desires and intentions shared by our two governments with regard to China is advisable. "The governments of the United States and Japan recognize that territorial propinquity creates special relations between countries, and, consequently, the Government of the United States 456 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND recognizes that Japan has special interests in China, particularly in the part to which her possessions are contiguous. "The territorial sovereignty of China, nevertheless, remains unimpaired and the Government of the United States has every confidence in the repeated assurances of the Imperial Japanese Government that while geographical position gives Japan such special interests they have no desire to discriminate against the trade of other nations or to disregard the commercial rights here- tofore granted by China in treaties with other powers. "The governments of the United States and Japan deny that they have any purpose to infringe in any way the independence or territorial integrity of China, and they declare, furthermore, that they always adhere to the principle of the so-called "open door" or equal opportunity for commerce and industry in China. "Moreover, they mutually declare that they are opposed to the acquisition by any government of any special rights or privileges that would affect the independence or territorial integrity of China, or that would deny to the subjects or citizens of any country the full enjoyment of equal opportunity in the commerce and industry of China. "I shall be glad to have your Excellency confirm this under- standing of the agreement reached by us. "Accept, excellency, the renewed assurance of my highest consideration. "ROBERT LANSING. "His Excellency Viscount Kiknjiro Ishii, Ambassador Ex- traordinary and Plenipotentiary of Japan, on special mission." Viscount Ishii 's note confirming the above word for word it is, of course, unnecessary to quote. But to those who have read in the earlier pages of this chapter the story of the throwing back of the anti-Japanese assaults on the peace of the United States, it will be gratifying doubtless to hear how remarkably Secretary Lansing bears out the story of the base intrigue, and will be startled to learn how close to disaster it brought the two nations, the United States and Japan. Secretary Lansing said: SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 457 "Viscount Ishii and the other Japanese commissioners who are now on their way back to their country have performed a service to the United States as well as to Japan which is of the highest value. "There had unquestionably been growing up between the peoples of the two countries a feeling of suspicion as to the mo- tives inducing the activities of the other in the Far East, a feeling which, if unchecked, promised to develop a serious situation. Kumours and reports of improper intentions were increasing and were more and more believed. Legitimate commercial and indus- trial enterprises without ulterior motive were presumed to have political significance, with the result that opposition to those enter- prises were aroused in the other country. "The attitude of constraint and doubt thus created was fostered and encouraged by the campaign of falsehood, which for a long time had been adroitly and secretly carried on by Germans, whose government, as a part of its foreign policy, desired espe- cially to so alienate this country and Japan that it would be at the chosen time no difficult task to cause a rupture of their good relations. Unfortunately, there were people in both countries, many of whom were entirely honest in their beliefs, who accepted every false rumour as true, and aided the German propaganda by declaring that their own government should prepare for the conflict, which, they asserted, was inevitable, that the interests of the two nations in the Far East were hostile, and that every activity of the other country in the Pacific had a sinister purpose. "Fortunately, this distrust was not so general in either the United States or Japan as to affect the friendly relations of the two governments, but there is no doubt that the feeling of sus- picion was increasing, and the untrue reports were receiving more and more credence in spite of the earnest efforts which were made on both sides of the Pacific to counteract a movement which would jeopardize the ancient friendship of the two nations. "The visit of Viscount Ishii and his colleagues has accomplished a great change of opinion in this country. By frankly denounc- ing the evil influences which have been at work, by openly pro- claiming that the policy of Japan is not one of aggression, and 458 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND by declaring that therd is no intention to take advantage coift- mercially or industrially of the special relations to China created by geographical position, the representatives of Japan have cleared the diplomatic atmosphere of the suspicions which had been so carefully spread by our enemies and by misguided or overzealous people in both countries. In a few days the propa- ganda of years has been undone, and both nations are now able to see how near they came to being led into the trap which had been skilfully set for them. "Throughout the conferences which have taken place. Viscount Ishii has shown a sincerity and candour which dispelled every doubt as to his purpose, and brought the two governments into an attitude of confidence toward each other which made it possible to discuss every question with frankness and cordiality. Ap- proaching the subjects in such a spirit and with the mutual desire to remove every possible cause of controversy, the negotiations were marked by a sincerity and good will which from the first ensured their success. "The principal result of the negotiations was the mutual under- standing which was reached as to the principles goveming the policies of the two governments in relation to China. This under- standing is formally set forth in the notes exchanged, and now made public. The statements in the notes require no explanation. They not only contain a reaffirmation of the 'open door' policy, but introduce a principle of non-interference with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China, which, generally applied, is essential to perpetual international peace, as clearly declared by President Wilson, and which is the very foundation, also, of Pan- Americanism, as interpreted by this government. "The removal of doubts and suspicions and the mutual dec- laration of the new doctrine as to the Far East would be enough to make the visit of the Japanese commission to the United States historic and memorable, but it accomplished a further purpose, which is of special interest to the world at this time, in expressing Japan's earnest desire to co-operate with this country in waging war against the German government. The discussions, which covered the military, naval and economic activities to be employed with due regard to relative resources and ability, showed the same SOME ANTI-JAPANESE POLEMICS 459 spirit of sincerity and candour which characterized the negotia- tions resulting in the exchange of notes. "At the present time it is inexpedient to make public the details of these conversations, but it may be said that this government has been gratified by the assertions of Viscount Ishii and his colleagues that their government desired to do their part in the suppression of Prussian militarism and were eager to co-operate in every practical way to that end. It might be added, however, that complete and satisfactory understandings upon the matter of naval co-operation in the Pacific for the purpose of attaining the common object against Germany and her allies have been reached between the representative of the imperial Japanese navy, who is attached to the special mission of Japan, and the repre- sentative of the United States navy. "It is only just to say that success which has attended the intercourse of the Japanese commission with American officials, and with private persons as well, is due in large measure to the personality of Viscount Ishii, the head of the mission. The natural reserve and hesitation, which are not unusual in nego- tiations of a delicate nature, disappeared under the influence of his open friendliness, while his frankness won the confidence and good will of all. It is doubtful if a representative of a different temper could in so short a time have done as much as Viscount Ishii to place on a better and firmer basis the relations between the United States and Japan. Through him the American people have gained a new and higher conception of the reality of Japan's friendship for the United States which will be mutually beneficial in the future. "Viscount Ishii will be remembered in this country as a states- man of high attainments, as a diplomat with a true vision of international affairs, and as a genuine and outspoken friend of America." CHAPTBE XXIX JAPAN AT A GLANCE Emperor — Administration — Parliament — Privy Council — The Judiciary — Religion — Education — Army and Navy — Topog- raphy — Climate — Population — Natural products — Manu- factures — Railways — Tramways — Steamships — Shipbuilding — Posts, telegraph and telephones — Japanese possessions. Emperor. His Imperial Majesty YosMhito, one hun- dred and twenty-second emperor of Japan, born August 31, 1879, ascended throne July 30, 1912. Administration. The Cabinet, consisting of the Premier and nine ministers of state, at present filled as follows: Premier, Marshal Count Masakata Terauchi; Minister of Finance, Mr. Kazuye Shoda; Foreign Affairs, Viscount Ishiro Motono ; Interior, Baron Shimpei Goto ; Justice, Mr. Itasu Matsumuro ; Education, Mr. Kyohei Okada ; Agricul- ture and Commerce, Mr. Kiyishi Nakashoji; Communica- tions, Baron Kenjiro Den; Army, Lieutenant-General Kenichi Oshima; Navy, Admiral Tomosaburo Kato. Parliament. House of Peers and House of Represen- tatives. The House of Peers is a composite body of nobles and distinguished commoners. Princes of the Blood Imperial and princes and marquises sit by right of their title. Counts, viscounts and barons elect certain representatives of their orders. Men of erudition or of distinguished service are appointed by the Emperor. Highest taxpayers, one from each prefecture, are included. The House is now composed of twelve princes of the blood, thirteen princes, 460 JAPAN AT A GLANCE 461 thirty-three marquises, seventeen counts, sixty-eight vis- counts, sixty-six barons, one hundred and twenty-two im- perial nominees, forty-eight highest taxpayers. The House of Kepresentatives is composed of members elected by male Japanese subjects of not less than twenty- five years of age and paying a direct tax of not less than ten yen. The House consists of 381 members of which 181 come from urban electoral districts and the rest from rural districts. Privy Council. Under the presidency of Marshal Prince A. Yamagata and with a vice president and twenty- four councillors, the Privy Council responds to the inquiry of the Mikado on important state affairs. The Judiciary. Japanese courts of law, as to composi- tion, jurisdiction and qualifications of judges, are the creation of parliamentary law. There is no trial by jury ; the judge or judges decide. Candidates for judgeships must pass examination. They are selected and appointed for life. No judge can be unseated except by way of criminal sentence or under disciplinary punishment. The judges sit in both civil and criminal cases. Laws passed by the Imperial Diet rule. The courts are — one supreme court with twenty-five judges and six procurators; seven courts of appeals with 135 judges and thirty-six procurators; district judges, 955 jn all, with 353 procurators who sit in fifty district courts, seventy-four district branch courts, 312 local and 1,409 branches of local courts, making a total of 1,853 seats of justice with 1,115 judges of all grades and 395 procurators. Religion. Religion is free in Japan, and in the religious world there is conspicuous friendliness between the mem- bers of different creeds and sects. Shinto (the Way of the Gods) is the ancient native cult. It is divided into thirteen officially recognized sects. In 1915 there were 120,809 shrines and 14,342 priests. 462 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Buddhism, which is no longer supported by the state, but which still has great possessions from past times, and many millions of followers, is divided into twelve sects with 71,686 temples and 50,983 priests. Christianity, including the Catholic, the Greek Church and several Protestant denominations, has many flourish- ing institutions. In 1915 it was declared to have 1,288 churches, meeting houses and missions, with 2,905 pastors, of which 1,361 were foreigners, with a following, native and foreign, of 148,338. Education. Educational affairs are generally under control of the Department of Education, which consists of three bureaus of special education, general education and religious. The exceptions to this control are the Peers' School, various military and naval schools and colleges. Nautical School and Post and Telegraph School. All public schools are strictly secular; private schools are at liberty to include religion in their curriculum. The universities. There are four imperial universities, ranking the highest in the Empire, with 865 instructors and teachers, and 9,611 students in 1915 produced 2,585 graduates. Public and private universities and colleges, Keio University and Waseda University being the most important, had, in 1915, 23,178 students and sent out 3,430 graduates. Middle schools— 319 schools, 6,453 teachers, 136,778 pupils. High schools (girls) — 346 schools, 4,389 teachers, 90,009 pupils. Elementary — 25,558 schools, 159,754 teachers, 7,263,733 pupils. Technical— 792 schools, 7,505 teachers, 428,732 pupils. Including the schools for blind and dumb, the normal, special and miscellaneous, the number of schools is 37,810, with 192,291 instructors and teachers, 8,275,497 students and pupils, and 1,468,499 graduates in 1915. Aemy and Navy. The defence forces of Japan rest on JAPAN AT A GLANCE 463 universal service. The system requires all able-bodied Jap- anese from seventeen to forty years old to respond to the nation's call. This in practice, however, has never been made in full. There are three services, the active, the reserve and the depot. Active service is two years with the colours ; reserve service extends to four years and four months; depot service ten years. There are certain rare exemptions and some alternative service for students as one-year volunteers. Conscripts are sent either to army or navy. Military and naval education for officers is imparted in special schools. The army on peace footing calls for twenty-one divisions or some 315,000, with a large reserve. The navy floats twelve battleships, eight battle .cruisers, nine first-class cruisers, twelve second-class cruisers, three first-class and thirteen second-class coast defence ships, three first-class and five second-class gunboats, two first- class, six second-class, twenty-four third-class destroyers, sixteen first-class, fifteen second-class torpedo boats and thirteen submarines. Of sixty-five leading ships the displacement is 628,321 tons. The new and extensive constructions are of the dread- naught, destroyer and submarine classes. Aviation service for army and navy is attracting atten- tion following its development abroad. Topography. The Empire of Japan, a chain of many islands off the eastern coast of Asia, stretches in oblique line from north-east to south-west along a line of 2,900 miles, from Saghalien to Taiwan (Formosa). Its curve embraces the peninsula of Chosen (Korea) and encloses the East China Sea, the Sea of Japan and Okhotsk Sea, and covers an area of 257,673 square miles. Of these territories, Hondo (the main island) occupies 33.53 per cent., Hokkaido 11.70 per cent,, Kyushu 6.02 per 464 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND cent., Taiwan (Formosa) 5.35 per cent., Karafuto (Sagha- lien 5.08 per cent., Shikoku 2.72 per cent, and the penin- sula of Chosen (Korea) 32.50 per cent, the rest 3.10 per cent. The islands are mountainous with countless sharp peaks and narrow valleys and relatively small, mostly coastal plains. Arable area is thereby reduced to about fifteen per cent, of the whole. Forests are plentiful. Coast lines with many indentations aggregate 18,118 miles. Along the south-east coast of Hondo Island and Kyushu are many deflections and good harbours, such as Nagasaki, Kobe, Osaka and Yokohama. Hokkaido has only a few bays. Taiwan very few. Climate. Generally mild and salubrious, but, running from sub-arctic conditions in Saghalien to the sub-tropical Formosa, has many variations. June is a month of rains. This moistness combined with high temperature makes for the growing of rice, the main cereal staple, of which 7,641,417 acres were under cultivation. Population. In December, 1916, the population of the Empire was estimated at 77,289,494, of which 39,379,556 were males and 37,909,398 were females. The population of Japan Proper was 55,965,189, of which 28,279,603 were males and 27,685,586 females. Chosen (Korea), 17,519,865; Taiwan (Formosa), 3,752,710; Saghalien, 51,730. The population as to Japan Proper is divided for ad- ministration purposes into 47 prefectures, 636 rural dis- tricts, 71 cities, 1,263 towns and 11,004 villages. In 1913, the latest year of census research, there were in Japan Proper 3,707,088 families engaged solely in farming and 1,736,631 farming families with subsidiary occupations. Total farming families 5,443,719, constituting nearly 40,- 000,000 souls and cultivating about two and one-half acres per family, the average size of a farm. There were 270,580 JAPAN AT A GLANCE 465 mine workers in 1914, and the factories employed 853,964 operatives, 318,667 male and 535,297 female. The urban population (cities and towns over 10,000) in Japan Proper numbered 12,669,635 in 1908, the last census, but the drift to the cities is as elsewhere in advancing countries continuously growing, and is now proportionately greater. There were then 8,583,094 married couples. The marrying age is greatest at between twenty and thirty years, largest before twenty-five. Populations of principal cities were, in 1913: Tokyo, 2,033,320; Osaka, 1,387,366; Kyoto, 508,068; Nagoya, 447,- 951 ; Kobe, 440,766 ; Yokohama, 396,101 ; Nagasaki, 160,450 ; Hiroshima, 159,000. Natural Products. Kice, the great cereal staple, 1916, was harvested to the amount • of 292,215,235 bushels. Wheat, rye and barley, 116,754,020 bushels. Other crops were : Millet, soy bean, red bean, sweet potato, seed cotton, hemp, leaf indigo. Of potatoes 938,332 long tons ; sugar cane (in Formosa), 971,827 tons; soy bean, 19,038,395 bushels were grown in 1915. Tea, a large and valuable crop, was grown in aU varie- ties; green (four kinds), black and oolong to an amount of 87,010,278 pounds. Silk, to) the culture of which the government is giving great attention, is produced in ever-increasing volume, more and more farming families taking up the rearing of the worms and the cultivation of mulberry patches. The use of filature companies for unwinding the cocoons by machinery has much simplified the culture. In 1916 the production of raw silk was 50,196,349 pounds, employing in all 284,500 reelers. Sugar cane production in Formosa shows every sign of growth, the companies engaged combining for higher ef- ficiency and economy. In 1914 the raw sugar production was 148,925 long tons. 466 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND Tobacco leaf in 1915 was valued at yen 13,311,386. The forests of Japan Proper may be roughly divided into state, crown and privately owned. State and crown own more than half. Cryptomeria and hinoki are among the most highly prized woods. Pines and other conifers are a feature. In all there are several hundred kinds of timber-producing trees, many valuable. The forest yield in 1915 was in lumber, yen 65,629,492; by-products, yen 18,059,394; bamboos, yen 2,248,041. Fisheries in an island empire naturally abound, and from the frozen to the tropic seas vary in fish of the most desirable kinds. Raw marine products in 1915 were valued at yen 94,836,004, and manufactured products at yen 63,527,567. Mining makes continual progress in Japan Proper and Korea. Copper and coal are by far the most important mineral products. Gold, silver, lead, zinc, antimony, iron, coal and petroleum and some rare metals are found. Iron ore of good quality does not exist in quantities to meet the demand. The coal is mostly bituminous. In 1915, the yields were: Gold, yen 10,804,546; silver, yen 5,287,624; copper, yen 53,731,798; lead, yen 976,389; pig iron, yen 2,497,130; steel, yen 1,164,762; coal, yen 65,068,894. Petroleum. The best production is in Echigo, but oU. is worked in eight localities. In 1915 crude oil production was 1,900,000 barrels of fifty gallons each. Salt, 1915-16, yielded yen 11,246,562. Horses and cattle. The improvement of stock is in government hands. Stallions and bulls of good breeds are imported — American, Hungarian, Arabian, Anglo-Arabian and Clydesdale horses and Ayrshire, Simmenthal, short horns, Devon and Dutch cattle. Swine breeding is also aided by government direction. There were at last enum- eration, 1915, 1,579,517 horses, 1,387,922 cattle, 2,768 sheep, 97,396 goats and 333,276 swine. JAPAN AT A GLANCE 467 Manufactures. A great advance in Japan's manu- factures has been the result of the war in Europe, largely because of the cessation of exports by the Teutonic coun- tries, thus opening the market for Japanese goods, and largely because of demand for war munitions, clothing and foodstuffs by Japan's allies, notably Eussia. Government has aided largely by increasing technical education. The creation of "conditioning houses" in all the exporting industries will soon add a necessary factor for successful export. Factories and enterprises at the close of 1915 numbered 16,809. Of these 8,406 were textile, 1,426 machine and iron-work, 1,838 were chemical, 2,377 foodstuffs and bever- ages and 2,585 miscellaneous. Cotton manufacture is the most elaborated of the indus- tries with (1915) 278 cotton mills, 85,279,734 yen capital, 2,787,720 spindles working daily, with the total production of cotton yarn 683,629,704 pounds. In woven goods (silk fabrics and hemp fabrics) there were in 1915, 418,419 weaving houses with 680,530 looms, producing 380,128,122 yen worth of goods, a great advance. Japanese paper, European paper, matches, porcelain and earthen-ware, matting, camphor, lacquer-ware, straw- plaits, electric and gas enterprises, together with the government factories, go to make up the factory total and are to be considered apart, from the many thousands of smaller home enterprises employing fewer than ten persons. Railways. The railway enterprises in Japan Proper were taken over by the state in 1906. They were narrow gauge, but the task of relaying them all at standard gauge is likely to be undertaken shortly. At the end of 1916 the total mileage open to traffic was 7,500.73, of which 5,756.76 miles belong to the state, the rest being private concerns. The total cost of construction is 882,317,936 yen. There 468 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND were 3,107 engines, 8,347 passenger carriages, 48,335 freight cars. They carried 223,680,340 passengers, with 4,218,450,278 of traffic mileage earning total fares of yen 57,010,631. Handling 41,591,143 tons through 3,385,781- 767 ton miles (traffic mileage), the railways cleared 59,- 356,070 yen in freight. Tramways. At the end of 1916 the municipal and private tramways with a,uthorized capital of yen 344,- 158,190 had 1,469 miles open to traffic. With 5,303 cars they carried 698,889,746 passengers, total receipts being yen 55,704,654. Seventy municipalities and companies run these tramways. Steamships — Shipbuilding. Japan's merchant marine is advancing with great strides. All the shipyards are working full blast. The principal steamship lines, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Toyo Kisen Kaisha and Osaka Shosen Kaisha are adding to their "bottoms and tonnage. Lines are being extended and created to New York and Brazil direct; for instance, at the end of 1916 Japan had 2,159 registered steamers with gross tonnage of 1,696,631 tons, and 9,314 sailing vessels. The encouragement of ship- building by the government in granting subsidies to steam- ship lines greatly stimulated construction and operation, and by the end of 1916 there were altogether 182 vessels of 700 gross tons and upward built at home, aggregating 637,230 tons. There are 216 private shipyards and sixty- two private dry docks in the country, some handling con- struction of the largest vessels. Twenty-eight companies in 1916 with a capital each of over yen 300,000 and total authorized capital of yen 131,- 450,000, ran 603 ships with a gross tonnage of 980,793. The earnings were yen 151,904,364 and dividends were at the average rate of 90.1 per cent.; one company paid 720 per cent. Posts, Tehegbaph and Telephones are in government JAPAN AT A GLANCE 469 control and operation. At the end of 1916 there were 7,358 ordinary post offices open to the Japanese public and over routes of 51,418 miles carried 1,910,305,841 letters. At the same time 7,358 parcel post offices transmitted 26,387,563 parcels. Telegraph offices numbering 5,112 with over 106,500 miles of wires transmitted 34,503,501 messages. Wireless messages numbered 51,150. Telephone stations number- ing 2,603 ordinary and 719 automatic took 1,212,977,361 messages. Japanese Possessions. Chosen (Korea), Taiwan (For- mosa) and Karafuto (Saghalien) are the scenes of con- tinuous effort to bring backward populations into the line of modern progress with highly encouraging results. The reforestation of southern Korea, and its progress in edu- cation, agriculture and manufacture are real triumphs. The taming of the head-hunters of Formosa is another great feat. Eevenue and expenditure of Chosen for 1917-18 is estimated at yen 62,589,309. At the end of 1915 Korea had twenty-four agricultural, forty-three industrial, one hundred and nine commercial, twenty-five transportation and fifteen other enterprises with authorized capital of yen 55,116,740. During 1916 she exported merchandise to the value of yen 56,801,934, while importing yen 74,- 456,805 worth of goods. Her mining prospects are very great. At the end of March, 1916, Chosen had 1,066 miles of railways open to traffic, carrying over 5,000,000 passengers. Taiwan presents a harder field for progress. It did, however, a business of yen 130,214,432 with Japan Proper in 1916. Its sugar-cane culture is very promising. Karafuto returns rich rewards in her fisheries and holds great promise also of metallic product in her min- ing sections. 470 JAPAN AT FIRST HAND . Status of Japan in finance, trade, national debt, banking and currency is shown in Chapter XXI. Note. — Owing to the conversion of standards of weight, measure and mileage from the Japanese to the American, complete accuracy cannot be claimed for some figures ahove given. THE END INDEX Abacus, former use of the, 318. Ablutionary, the, 102. Actors, in women's parts, 153; (ill.), 149. Actresses, beginning to appear, 153. Affection, manifestation of, dis- allowed, 148. Agnosticism, growing, 90. Altar of Heaven, the, 417; the worship, 417-18; Yuan officiat- ing, 418. Ambulance, an, 185. America. See United States. Ancestor-worship, 87-8; survives, 90, 119. Ando, Mr., his factory, 178. " Anti-Japanese Polemics, Some," 441-59. Antiques, Korean, 361-2. Architecture, 96; of temples, classified, 166. Bee also Tem- ples. Art, Schools of, 171-5. Asahi, the, Tokyo, 293 ; com- posing-room of (ill.), 260. Asano, Lord, 151 Asano, Soichiro, ship-owner, 40; hia hospitality to passengers, 269 ; his house — personality, 270; (portrait), 310. Asia, as a trading ground, 312. Asiatic Mystery, the supposed, 1 ; to what due, 4, 7; Kipling's use of, 4; there is no real, 113. Athletics, 59. Author, the, address by, 51-2; poem by, 155-160; article, 444- 59. Automobiles, 188. Baiko, Mr., in "The Adventur- ous Millionaire," .(ill.), 149. Bank of Japan, the, 319, 322, 330; (ill.), 326. Bank Presidents, a characteristic of, 318. Banks: Yokohama specie, 331; (ill.), 327; Hypothec, 331; agricultural and industrial, 332-3; colonial, 333; ordinary, 333; savings — ^postal, 334. Baseball, 60. Barmaids, at Paris Exposition, 210. " Beloved Vagabond, The," char- acter resembling, 149. Bennett, Arnold, allusion to " Five Towns," 310. Benton, the goddess, 91. Bicycles, 188. Biwa, Lake, 225. Blacksmith Shop, Engineering College, (ill.), 52 Boxers, the, 416; memento of siege, 433. Bribery scandals, 266-7, 282, 283. Brick-making, 303-4. Bridge-openings, 208. Bricux, Eugene, plays of, 359. Bryan, W. J., 366, 437. Buddha, great bronze of Kama- kura, (ill.), 91; prayer to, 95; figures of, 168, 169-70, 216; spirit of, 366. Buddhism, 6, 88; its missionary zeal, xxvii; temples let for dwellings, 88 ; disestablished, 89; the higher, 90; Hearn quoted, 90; temples, 95, 96; paintings, 171. See also Tem- ples. Bureaucracies, die hard, xxv. Bushida, code of, 6. Business, 299-317; methods, 3. Butsugwa art, 171. 471 472 INDEX Capital, removal of the, 287. Carnegie, Andrew, 366. Carpenters at work, (ill.), 11. Carvings in wood, 170; (ill), 176; the three monkeys of To- goshu, Nikko, (ill.), 164; in ivory, 176. Catsubushi, 24. Ceramics, 176. Chairs, for travel, 186; (ill.), 185. Chamberlain, Mr., in " Things Japanese," xvii. Charms and amulets, use of, 94. Chemulpo, 352. Cherry, the festal, 71. Children, happiness of, 2. China, attempt to embroil with Japan, xxx; policy toward, xxxi, xxxii; profits from lease- holds, xxxii; question of trade with settled, xxxv; relations with, 263-4; opportunities for trade, 431; the salt revenue, 437; agreement in regard to, 455. China, the Great Wall of, 410-11; (ill.), 412. China-Japanese War, 358. Chinese, not employed in banks of Japan, 320; on the battle- fields, 401. Chinese cart, (ill.), 413. Chinese Republic, the, 402, 425- 40; the Dowager Empress, 415; the boy emperor, 415, 422, 424, 432; the revolution, 425-6 ; reactionary outbreak, and its failure, 441. See also Yuan shih Kai. Chinese stage, conventions of the, 154. Chiro, Mt., 231. Chosen (Korea), 349. Chou Tsi-ch'i, Mr., 437-8. Christianity, makes little prog- ress, xxvi. Chuzenji, Lake, 228-32; (ill.), 231. Cloisonne, 177-9. Collegians at study (ill.), 52. Conservatism, in the old only, 47. Constitution, adoption of the, 288; its provisions, 288-9. Cossacks, ineffective, 377. Cotton spinning and weaving, 308-10. Counting-frame (abacus), 318. Cryptomeria tree, the, 99; ave- nue of, Nikko, (ill.), 230. Currency, 336. Customs duties, 324. Daikon, 23. Daikyokuden, temple at Kyoto, 97. Daimios, the provincial, 6; re- volt of, 287; battles between, 288 Dairen (Dalny), 369, 387. Daiyagawa River, the, IQO. Damascene-work, 176. Daughters of the house, the, (ill.), 37. Dance, a hieratic, 104-5. Dances, of the geishas, 202; (ill.), 207. Dancing, in plays, 143. Dancing girl and servant, (ill.), 348. Dane, Sir Richard, 437. Dead, the, shrines to, 19, 38; nothing more alive than — Hearn quoted, 119. Dead on 203 Meter HiU, (ill.), 392. Democratic sentiment, growing, xxii, xxiv. Deva kings, sculptured, 96, 101. Dinner-party, a, 41. Diplomacy, 262. Divers, Prof., 53. Divorce, 45. " Doll's House, A," acted, 150. " Dream Book of War," 451, 454. Earthquakes, 14. East, the, no mystery in, 1. Education, free, 2; system of, 7; furore for, 47; foreign, 49; statistics of schools, 49-50; technical, 50, 55; commercial, 51; in Korea, 66; of women, 56-8; in art, 171-5. INDEX 473 Embroidery, by men, 179. Emperor, an, address to, by en- gineer, 412. Emperor, the, his policy, 287; hia victory over reaction, 288. Emperor, the boy, of China. See Hsuan Timg. Emperor of Korea, the deposed, his deserted palace, 363-5. See also Li. Empress Dowager Hakuro, re- named for eternity Shoken, 112; her funeral, 106-17; ap- propriation for funeral, 295-7; mourning for, xxvi. Empress Dowager of China, the, 415. Empress of Korea, murder of, 359, 363-4. Engineering College, blacksmith shop, (ill.), 52. England, struggle for democracy in, xxiii; ruling class like Japan's, xxiv. Enoshima Island, 216, 219. Erlungshun, Fort, siege of, 399- 400. Exposition, the Tokyo, 10. Family, the, 43-5. Farmers in Parliament, 293. Farming, 11, 15-16, 18. Fencing class, a, 69; (ill.), 66. Feng-tien (Mukden), once cap- ital, 403, 406. Festival car at Kyoto, (ill.), 221. Feudal system, the, 6, 7; aboli- tion of, 288; purpose of, and result of its downfall, xx. Finance aild banking, 318-37. Fine Arts, the, 161-80. First-class car, the, (ill.), 193. Fisherman's dance, the, 202. Fishing village, (ill.), 17. Fishing industry, the, 20-3. "Flight of the Prince, The"— play, 147. Flowers, festivals of, 70; school of arrangement of, 72. Foods, 14-15; Prof. Nitobe on, 23. Forbidden City, the, Peking, 422 ; deserted palace in, (ill.), 435. Foreigners, curious old pictures of, 54; tricks of trade by, 315. Fujiwara Michinori, established geisha order, 199. Fujiyama, Mt., 8, 22, 190, 214- 16, 218; difficulty in seeing, 215; (ill.), 220. Furuya, Mr., tea merchant — ^his smile, 280. Fusan, 342-3. Fusumas (sliding doors), 36. Gallagher, Patrick, quoted, xix. Gardens, 70-85; (ill.), 73, 80. Geisha dance, with orchestra, (ill.), 207. Geishas, 61; the real, 198-213; their dances, 202-3; as models, 204-5; training of, 206-7; ex- hibitions, 208; their morale, 208-9; procession of, (ill.), 206; enjoying a meal, (ill.), 207. Genro, the, 282. Geography, of the islands, 13-14. Germans, bribery by, xxii; the bureaucracy, xxv; intrigues of, XXX, 432-3, 442, 443; not su- preme in science, 49; donkey diplomacy, 443. Ghosts, on the stage, 152. Girl before mirror, (ill.), 165. Girls, how they read and study, (ill.), 53. " Glimpse of Northern China, A," 402-24. Gods, the making of, 118-36; col- lection of figures of, 168-9; in lyemitsu temple, (ill.), 164. Gods of Wind and Thunder, (ill.), 164. Golden Pavilion, the, Kyoto, 83. Gongen style of architecture, 166. Goodnow, Dr. F. J., played Yuan's game, 428, 429. Gould, Jay, quoted, 428. Government, five principles of, 287. " Hachi-no-ki," drama, story of, 140-3; scene at, (ill.), 148. Hakama, the, 53. 474 INDEX Hakone Lake and village, 217; Fujiyama reflected in, (ill.). 220. Hakuro. See Empress Dowager. " Hall of a Thousand Mats," the, (ill.), 242. Hannihal, the Japanese, monu- ment to, 122. Hara, K., leader of the Seiyukai, 297; (portrait), 276. Harakiri, 130, 131. Harvest Dance, the, 202. Hatoyama, Mme., 57. Hayakawa, G., banker, 40; his garden, 81-2; his home, 273-4; (ill.)i 36; his daughters, (ill.), 37; his portrait, 310. Hearn, Lafcad.io, his mysticism, xvii; cited, 68, 90; on ancestor- worship, 119; impressed by Japanese art, 164. Hideyori, defeat of, 236. Hideyoshi, Toyotomi, 54. Higashi, Kuni, Prince, phrase at- tributed to, 454. Higashi Hongwanji, temple, 223; hair rope at, 224; imperial messenger gate, (ill.), 91. " High Lights of the Road," 214- 27. Hinoshita, Kaisan, the, 62. Hirose, Lt. Commander, 135, 136, 395. Hiroshige, 167. Hishida, Seiki, 348, 356. History, early, of government, 5-6; of art, literature, reli- gion, 6. Hobson, Capt., xxx. Hokusai, 167. Home-life, 35; (ill.), 5. Honden, the lyeyasu, 93, 103. Hondo island, 13. Hoshogawa, Capt., 388, 397, 399. Hot Springs, 220. Houses, arrangement of, 16, 19, 36. Hsuan, Tung, boy emperor of China, 415, 422, 424, 426; his sudden appearance and disap- pearance in 1917, 432. Hyogo, cotton-mill at, 72. Industry, leaders of, 277. Inland Sea, the, 241. Inonye, J., Yokohama bank, (portrait), 310. Insurance, 335. Inukai, Mr., party leader, 298. " Invisible, the," on the stage, 154. Iriya, Shoseku, carving by, 176. lae, shrine of Shintoism, 91. Ishigawa, Mr. and Mrs., 29- 30. Ishii, Viscount Kikujiro, recep- tion of, xxxi; agreement with, XXXV, 455. Islets, artificial, 246. Ito, Prince, 297, 359, 361. Ivory-carving, 176. lyeyasu, conditions before, xx, xxi. lyeyasu and lyemitsu, shoguna, their tombs and temples, Nikko, 99, 100; terraces and gate in lyegasu temple, (illl), 102; gods in lyemitsu temple, (ill.), 164. Japan, influence of its opening, XX, xxi; its advance, xxii; se- curity of the throne, xxiii; democratic sentiment, xxii, xxiv; the ruling class, the four great clans, xxiv; titles of no- bility, XXV; in the European war, its effect upon finances, xxix; attempts to embroil, xxx, xxxi; foolish distrust of. " Japan at a Glance " — its gov- ernment, religions, educational affairs, army and navy sys- tems, topography, climate, population, products, indus- tries, railways, shipping, post, telegraphs, telephones, terri- torial possessions, and finances, 460-70 ; desires America's friendship, 449-50; war with Bussia. See Eusso-Japanese War. " Japan's Place in the Sun," pamphlet, 444. INDEX 475 "Japan's Real Attitude toward America," reply to the above, 444; article from, 444-59. Japanese, the character of, xlx, 1, 2, 4, 8, 113; business meth- ods, 3; physique, 11-12; in California, 453. Japanese Menace bogey, the, 442. Jenks, Prof. Jeremiah, 447. Jimbutsu Art, 171. Jimmu Tenno, Emperor, 111. Jingoro, Hidari, carvings by, 170. Jinrickisha, the, 181-5; in China, 184; (ill.), 184. Jiu-jitsu (judo), 66; (ill.), 60. Johnson, Dr., quoted, 86. Journalism, breeds democracy, 257. Judo (jiu-jitsu), 66-9; school of, 67; class at practice, (ill.), 60. Kago, mountain chair, the, 186; (ill.), 184. Kakemono, the, 37, 163. Kamakura, former capital, 5, 216-17; Buddha at, 169; (ill.), 91. Kanagafuchi, cotton mill of, 72. Kanda, Baron, his commercial school — address at, 51. Kaneko, Viscount Kentaro, 275; (portrait), 277. Kano, Hogai, picture by, 175. Kano, Prof. Jigoro, 67, 69; (por- trait), 60. Karamon gate, the, 103. Kato, Viscount Takaaki, 266; organized party, 267; his per- sonality, 267; plan to make premier, 283-4; quoted, 299, 300; on China, 402; (por- trait), 276. Kawamura, Gen., 125. Kegan Fall, the, 230, (ill.), 236. Keijo (Seoul), 345. Keio University, 252. Kensekai party, the, 284-5-6. Ketteler, Baron, monument to, 416. Kilwanshan, barracks of north fort, (ill.), 392. Kipling, quoted, 4. Kitamura, Mr., in a modern piece, (ill.), 149. Kizuchi, Mr., in a modern piece, (ill.), 149. Kobe, visit to, 236-7; dock yard, 305-6; cotton mills, 309. Kodama, Gen., 125, 382, 383. Kokuminto party, 298. Kondratenko, Gen., 393; his death, 398. "Korea a Model of Colonial Up- lift," 339-55. Korea, industrial schools in, 56; territory and population, 340; history, 340, 357-9; Japan's debt to, 340; reforesting, 344, 350 ; under old conditions, 350 ; mission schools, 351 ; revenues — schools, 353 ; irrigation — silk culture, 354; ancient pot- tery kilns in, 362; illustra- tions, 348, 349, 359, 362, 363. Korean Archipelago, the, 242-5. Korean monarchs, the deposed, 356, 358, 359-60; murder of the empress, 359, 363-4; their palaces, 356-7, 359-65; por- trait of deposed emperor, 358. Korean Palaces and Antiques," 356-65. Koreans, their idleness and pride, 342, 343, 346, 347, 351; costumes, 342-3, 345 ; some pro- gressive, 347; their attitude to the new regime, 355. Korean swell, a typical old, (ill.), 348. Kose-no-Kanaoka, 166. Koshino, Mr., in a favourite part, (ill.), 149. Koto, 42. Kotsubo (Red Bluff), village, 21. Kowta Island, (ill.), 243. Kublai Khan, tomb of, 418; his sway, 418-19. Kudan shrine to dead soldiers, 92. Kiunagai, Mr., 60. Kuni, Prince, 136. Kuroki, Gen., 125; in Russian War, 369, 370; at the Yalu River, 403. 476 INDEX Kuropatkin, Gen., sent to Port Arthur, 369; at Liaoyang, 370; retreat, 370, 374; at Shaho and Sandepu, 375; at Mukden, 375-83; retreat, 382; his mistakes, 383. Kuroyuwa, S., journalist, 252. Kurumas (rickishas), (ill.), 184. Kwacho Art, 171, 172. Kwammu, Emperor, 100. Kwannon, goddess of mercy, 168, 170; picture of, 175. Kwan-san North Fort, taken, 397-9. Kyoto, former capital, 5; gardens at, 83, 84; incident, 84; Dai- kyokuden and Chonin temples, 97; visit to, 222-7; transfer of capital, 223; Fine Art School, 175; illustrations, 10, 90, 91. Lacquer-work, collection of, 170. Lamasery (monastery), a, 419. Language, the, difficult, 3. Languages, foreign, not easily ac- quired, 3, 4. Lansing, Secretary, note by, 455-6; quoted, 457-9. Lawn tennis, 60. " Leaders of Men," 262-80. Leiter, Joseph, quoted on Yuan, 439-40. Li, Prince, deposed emperor of Korea, 359, 361; his palace, 360-3; wins at billiards, 362; (portrait), 258. Liaoyang, battle of, 135, 220, 370, 372; the town, 371; Lama tower at, (ill-), 374; natural cave temple near, (ill.), 374 Lion Dance, the, 203. LI Yuan Hung, vice-president, 416; president, 432. Lloyd George, xxiv. Lord rides forth, the, (ill.), frontispiece. Lovers' Leap, the, 87, 224. Love-song, a Japanese, 34. Luwu, Chinese poet, quoted, 31. McMurray, H. A. V., 421, 424. MaikoB, 212, 262, Mainichi, the, Osaka, 257-8; proof and copy of editorial from, (ill.), 261. MakaroflF, Admiral, death of, 396. Makino, Covmt, 40. Makuza ware, 177. Malaprop, Mrs., 195. Manchuria, illustrations, 374, 375, 392, 393. "Manchurian Battlefield, The," slaughtered, 422 ; disaffected, 366-83. Manchus, the, 403-4, 406; 24,000 to Yuan, 426. Man-power, used in transporta- tion, 9, 10. Manufactures, 300. Manuscripts, ancient, S3-4. Maple Club, banquet, a, 202, 203. Marco Polo, stories of, 418. Marionette shows, 1, 153. Marriages, how arranged; 42-3; dissolution, 45; ceremony, 45. Masaoka, heroine of play, 1. Mats, 38. Matsukata, Kojiro, shipbuilder, 277-8, 305. Matsushima Island, 245-6; (ill.)^ 243. Mayeda, Marquis, 40, 62. Mayo Brothers, surgery of, 49. Meiji, Emperor, change under the, XX, xxi. See also Mutsu- hito. Merriewold Park, xviii. Mikado, effect of restoration of, 7; a god, 121; coronation pro- cession, (ill.), 206. Mikadoate, succession to the, 106. Military class, the. See Samurai. Miller, Bainsford, consul-general, 348. Mishima, Viscount Yataro, 272. 321. Miso, 23. Missionaries in Japan, xxvi; in China, xxviii; in Korea, 351, 352-3. Mitsui, Baron H., 40; room in his house, (ill.), 42; his gar- dens, 79; lawn, (ill.), 80; his lamily, 272-3; (portrait), 310. INDEX 477 Mitsunaka, Shogun, monument to, 218. Miyajima, island, 240; pagoda and torii, (ill.), 242. Miyanoshita, 217-18. Mizumachi, K., 321. Monkeys of Toshogu, the three, carving, (ill.), 164. Monopolies — tobacco, salt, cam- phor, 324-5. 'Morinubu, Kano, picture by, 182. Mujin, 126. Mukden, visit to, 403-9; the Manchu capital, 403, 406; the imperial tombs, 405-9; inci- dent of Boxer rebellion, 409 ; a street in, (ill.), 412; gate of mausoleum of Manchu em- perors, (ill.), 413. Mukden, battle of, 124, 128, 368, 375-83; memorial, (ill.), 375.' Mulberry tree, the, 26. Municipal loans, 327. Murata, Tamotsu, 278-9; his speech in House of Peers, and resignation, 279. Muroran, steel works at, 304. Musicians, wandering, 233-4. " Music Master, The," acted, 150. Musumes, apprentice geishas, 206-7. Mutsuhito, Emperor, 122-3; his death, 129; his name after death, Meiji — ^his shrine, 166; transferred his capital, 223. Nagare-zukuri, architectural style, 166. Nagoya, porcelain factory at, 177, 178, 310. Nakano, Buyei, 139; his help to foreigners, 275-6; an authority on investments, 314; (por- trait), 277. Nanshan, battle of, 127; a tactical sin, 369. Nandaimon Gate, Seoul, (ill.), 349. Nantai San, Mt., 231; pilgrims to, 232; (ill.), 231. Nara, former capital, 5, 221-2. National debt, the, 325-7; ex- penditure, 328. Navy, German bribery in, xxii. Newspapers, 247-61; early dai- lies, 249; five leading, 250-1; circulation of seventeen, 251; owners and editors, 252-3; in English, 255-6; the Tokyo Asahi, 293; composing room of the AsaM, (ill.), 260. Newspaper-men, visit of, to America, 247-8; at home, 248. Newspaper offices, dinginess of, 256-7; the composing room, 258-61. Nikko, 99; temples at, 99-105; visit to, 228-34; illustrations, 102, 164, 176, 230. Niomon Gate, the, 101. Nippon, the main islands, 13; old art of, 173; soul of, 140-3. "Nippon, The Soul of," poem, 155-60. Nirvana, 90. Nitobe, Dr. Inazo, xviii, 23, 276. No Dramas, the, quoted, 76, 77; dance in, 81; legend, 81; de- scribed, 137-44; likeness to Greek drama, 138 ; translation, 139-40; story of a, 140-3; farce, 143-4 ; scene at " Hachi- no-ki," (ill.), 148; audience, (ill.), 148. Nodzu, Gen., 125. Nogi, Gen. Coimt Kiten, 124-30; his sons, 126-8; their por- traits, 126; poems by, 127, 128; his death, 130; his will, 130; relies of, 132; his house, 132-3; his grave, 134; (ill.), 126; his sword and harakiri knife, (ill.), 126; at Port Arthur, 369; at Mukden, 377- 82. Nogi, Mrs., portrait, 126; her grave, (ill.), 126. Nogi, the new Count, 130. Nojine, M., quoted, 391-2, 393, 394. Nomibiki Waterfall, 237. Obata, Yukioki, 434. 478 INDEX Okakura-Kakuso, his book on tea, 31. Oku, Gen., 125; at battle of Nan- shan, 369; at Mukden, 377. Okuma, Count, 40; university founded by, 55; his garden, 80; after-dinner speech by, 254; his personality, 264-5; re- tirement, 266-7; his ministry, 283; resignation, 284; in Par- liament, 296; on armaments, 302; article by, quoted, 454; (portrait), 276. Okura, Baron Kikachiro, his school and collections, 50-1, 168-9; visit to, 82; his busi- ness genius — endowment of schools — charities, 270; (por- trait), 310. Omar Khayy&m, quoted, 357. Omori, Dr., seismologist, 277. "One-sided Love," play, 149. Onomichi, Kowta Id. at, (ill.), 243. " On Wheels," 181-97. Osaka, marionette show at, 1; visit to, 234-6; castle and siege, 235-6; temple with tur- tle court, 236; rice exchange, 236. Otenmon Gate, Shinto Temple, Kyoto, (ill.), 90. Oyama, Marshal, 124, 382, 383. Ozaki, Yukio, his oratory, 268; his personality, 268; his wife, 268; his intended speech, 285; (portrait), 276. Ozeki wrestlers, the, 62. Pacific, the, to be a pathway of peace, xxxv. Palace gardens, Tokyo, (ill.), 72. Palanquin, a, (ill.), 184. Panama Canal, effect of, on Japanese shipping, 308. "Parliament, and Politics," 281- 98. Parliament, how constituted, 289-91; salaries, 291-2; elec- tions, 292-3; opening of, 294; costume, 294-5; the chambers. 295; House of Representatives, (ill.), 290. Peace, prospect of universal, 366. "Peking in the Heyday of Yuan," 425-40. Peking, route to, from Mukden, 409; journey to, 409-11; ho- tels, 411; its vastness, 411; temples, 411-12; the cities, 412; the engineer, 412-13; shopping in, 413; restaurants — movies — theatres, 414; walls to keep out evil spirits, 414-15, the Altar of Heaven, 417; tem- ple of Confucius, 418; the Lamasery, 419; Summer Pal- ace, 420-1; the Forbidden City, 421; the Legation quar- ter, 433; unhealthy, 435; Tem- ple of Heaven, (ill.), 434; gate, temple of Confucius, (ill.), 434; deserted palaces in the Forbidden City, (ill.), 435. Peng Chi-Foo, natural cave tem- ple near, (ill.), 374. Perry's Fleet, picture of, 54. Perspective, 165. Photography, influence of, on art, 171. Pilgrims, groups of, 86; to Ise, 91 ; at Nikko, 93. Pine Island, (ill.), 243. Pine Tree Dance, the, 233. Ploughman, the, his weary way, (ill.), 20. Political parties, all liberal, 287, 291; conservative forming, 296-7; how divided, 298. Porcelain manufacture, 310-11. Port Arthur, Shinto shrine at, 92; captures of, 126, 127, 128; struggle at 203 Meter Hill, 367,369; fall of, 376; as a sum- mer resort, 368, 388; schools, 388; the siege, 389, 390; 203 Meter Hill, 389-90; assaults upon, 391-4; summit of 203 Meter Hill, (ill.), 303; Rus- sian reserves under hill, (ill.), ■ 393. " Port Arthur and Kiao-Chow," INDEX 479 384-401; similarity of siege problems, 384. Port Arthur Technical Institute, the, 55. Portsmouth, Peace of, 382. Portuguese, possible descendants of, 239. Pottery, manufacture of, 310-11; ancient Korean, 362; (ill.), 363. Press, freedom of the, 248; cen- sorship, 248-9; dummy editors, 249; Yomiuri, primitive pa- pers, 249; influence of, 252; associations, banquet of, 253-4. Priests, the early poets, 76. Proof and copy from a Mainichi, editorial, (ill.), 261. Queues still worn in Manchuria, 404, 406. Railroads, 189; travel by, 191-96. Eea, George B., pamphlet by, and reply, 444 et seq., xxxi. Eebellions: Saga, 286; Samurai, 288. Eeinsch, P. S., American min- ister to China, 434. Religion, a live, 95; shrines of, at Port Arthur and Tokyo, 92, Religions and temples, 86-105. Rice, planting, cleaning, and pounding, (ills.), 16. Rickisha, the, 181-5; (ill.), 184. Rockefeller Institute, rank of, in bacteriology, 49. Rokotan, 238. Ronins, the forty-seven, their graves, 131; significance of the story, 150; outlined, 151; plays on, 152; their tombs, (ill.), 127. Roofs in Tokyo, (ill.), 10. Room, a model Japanese, (ill.), 42; a semi-European, (ill.), 42. Roosevelt, Theodore, his lessons in judo, 69. ■ Root-Takahira agreement, the, XXXV. Russian officers, tales of, 409. Russo-Japanese War, the, 358, 366-83; scene of sea-fights, 339; beginning, 352; sea ac- tions, 368; 203 Meter Hill, 367; battle of Nanshan, 369; Liaoyang, 370; Mukden, 375- 83; effect of annexation of Korea, 341; Port Arthur, 384, 400; assaults upon 203 Meter Hill, 389-94; siege of North Fort of Kwan-San, 397-9; of Fort Erlungshun, 399-400; battle of the Yalu, 403; relics of, 401; illustrations, 375, 392, 393. Saga rebellion, the, 286. Sakatani, Baron Yoshiro, his pas- sion for statistics, 269. Sake, 201. Samurai, the, 6, 7; skill in ex- ercise, 59; abolition of sword- bearing by, 288; rebellion of Satsuma, 288. Sancho Panza, quoted, 51. Sano Ganzaimon, 157-60. Sansui art, 167, 171, 173. Satsuma Samurai, the, revolt of, 288. Savings banks, 334; postal, 334. Sculpture, 176. Seiyukai party, the, 286, 297. " Sending Avray " of an Empress, the, 106-17. Sengakugi Temple, Tokyo, gate of, (ill.), 127. Seoul, 344-52; industrial school at, 353-4; palaces, 356-65; suburb of, (ill.), 348; south- ern gate, (ill.), 349; street, (ill.), 349; palace and court, (ill.), 359; Buddhas from museum, (ill.), 362; ornaments and pottery, (ill.), 363. Seppuku, 131. Servants, domestic, 44. Shang-ti, overlord of the heav- ens, 417. Shemmei architectural style, 166. Shibusawa, Baron E,, 313; his enterprises, studies, poems, cal- ligraphy, 271; (portrait), 310. 480 INDEX Shintoism, 6, 87-8; temples and torii, 88; precept of, 90; tem- ple at Kyoto, (ill.), 90. Shiohara Matasaku, 278. Ship-building plant, 305-6. Shipping companies, 306-8. Shipping law, the La Follette, effect of, xxxiii, 308. Shirabyoshi, the, 199. Shogunate, the, 6; fall of, 7, 286. Shoken, Empress Dowager, fu- neral of, 106-17. Shops in Tokyo, (ill.), 10. Shoyu, 24. Silk culture, 25-30; silkworms, 27-8; taking out the sleeping, (ill.), 28. Smirnoff, Gen., 393. Soga Brothers, monument to, 218 "Soul of Nippon, The," 140-3; poem, 155-60. Sou Shan Hill, 372-4. Soya bean, the, 404. Soyeda, Dr. Juichi, 40, 275; (portrait), 277. Spider Dance, the, 202. Sports, manly, 69. Statuary, portrait, 122. Steel works, 302-4. " Step-mother, The," play, 148. Stoessel, Gen., surrender of, 128, 393, 401. Straw hats, making, (ill.), 11. Streets, appearance of the, 9, 10. Suffrage, 291; call for extension of, xxii. Sugimura, Mr., editor, 256. Suicide, the ritual, 130, 131; re- garded with favour, 148, 231. Summer Palace, the, 420 ; burned in 1860, 420; the loot, 420-1. Sumo, 61. Sumptuary laws, 7. Sun-goddess, the, 87. Sun Yat Sen, Dr., his govern- ment, 427; oflSce and conces- sion seekers, 427. Superstitions, 94, 415. Suylmatsu, Mr., 357; finds an- cient pottery, 362. " Swam," the, 430, Tachibana, Major, 119, 135-6; his heroism and death, 373. Tachiyana, champion wrestler, 61, 66; his muscles, (ill.), 61. Tai fish, the, 21. Takahashi, Baron, 321. Takamine, Dr. Jokichi, xviii. Takata, Mr., actor, 150. Taketorni, T., a leader of the Kensekai, (portrait), 276. Tang Kangtzu, 220. Tanyu, picture by, 182. Taxation, 321-24. Teachers, preference for native, 48-9. Tea culture, 30-4; picking, kneading leaves, (ill.), 29. Temple, a natural cave, (ill.), 374. Temples of Confucius, Peking, (ill.), 434. Temple of Heaven, Peking, (ill.), 434. Temple servant, a, Nikko, (ill.), 230. Temples, the, 75, 86, 95-105; curious rope in a, 95; offer- ings, 86-7; classified archi- tecturally, 166; at Kyoto, 223-5; Osaka, 236; turtle court, 236. Terauchi, Marquis, policy of, 263; his personality, 265-6; his work in Korea, 266; made premier, 284; dissolves parlia- ment, 286; wins in election, 286; significance of these events, xxiii; entertains, 341- 51; defeated at billiards, 362; (portrait), 268. Theatre, the, 137-60; "No" dramas, 137-144; buildings, 145, 146. Titles of nobility, xxv. Tobase school of art, 167. Todaimon Dori, street in Seoul, (ill.), 349. Togan, his pictures, 274. Togo, Admiral, 125. Tokiowa restaurant, the, 199. Tokiyori, 156. Tokonoma, the, 37r INDEX 481 Tokugawa Shoguns, rule of, 5, 6, 235, 236; victory of lyeyasu, 236; revolt against, 287. Tokutolin, I., journalist, 252. Tokyo: art school at, 172-5; ex- hibits at exposition, 10, 73, 178; Imperial Museum, 170; Kudan shrine, 92; illustra- tions, 10, 72, 73, 80, 127, 192, 260, 290. Tokyo University, 52; collections at, 53-5; Women's University, 56-7. Tombs, imperial, 405-9. Tortoise, a sculptured, 407, 410. Tosa Ryu, school of art, 167. Toyonaga, Dr., 56. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, equestrian statue of, 122. Trade, the great problem, 8. Travel, humours of, in Tokyo, (ill.), 192; trials of— the snorer, (ill.), 193. Trees, treatment of, 74, 79, 81. " Trees in Jars," drama, 140-3, 157. Trolley, travel by, 187. Tsai Ting Kan, Admiral, 435-6. Tsing-tao, 354; taken by Japan, 432, 443; probable disposition of, xxxii. Tsuchida, Bakusen, picture by, 175. Tsuda, Miss, 57. Tsugi, Rihel, tea-planter, 32-3. Tsushima Islands, the, 339. Tuan, Premier, 432. Uji, tea picking and kneading at, (ill.), 29. Ukiyoye school of art, 167, 173. United States, the, entrance of, into European war, xxxiii,' 442; Japan as ally, 442; Ger- man attempt to embroil, with Japan, 443; relations between the two, xxxiv, 300, 317; trade opportunities for, 313-14; pre- paredness, 448-9, 450; with- drawal of, from Chinese Quin- tuple Power loan, 437. TJniver^iti??, the four imperial. 52; others, 55; sporting ele- ment slight at, 55. Urami Falls, 232. Uriu, Admiral, 352; (portrait), 277. Uyeda, Dr., 220, 238. Uzdaemon, Mr., in " The Prince's Flight," (ill.), 149. Vehicles in use, 181-197; (ill.), 184, 185. Verestchagin, death of, 396. Village, a fishing, 21. Village road, a, (ill.), 4. Volcanoes, active, 14. Wagons Lits Hotel, Peking, the, 411; its guests, 430. Wakamatsu, steel works at, 302-4. War, the European, beginning of, 367; lessons of former wars applied, 386-7; Japan in, xxix; entrance of America, xxxiii; art of, taught, 6; memorial, Mukden, (ill.), 375; profits, 308, 318, 337; results of the two great, 8. Whistler, J. M., 167, 176. " White Wolf," bandit, 436. Wife, position of the, 43-4. Wi-fon-ton, village and three farms, fight at, 378-80. " Woman's Revenge, A " — ^play, 146. Women: in social life, 40-2; changing status of, 44; educa- tion, 44, 46; field-work, 59-60; factory, 304, 309-10; in China, 378, 404-5. Wood-carving, 170; (ill.), 164, 176. Wrestlers, two younger, (ill.), 61. Wrestling, 61-66. Yahushi-do, the, 102. Yalu River, battle of, 403. Yamagata, Prince, 124; in old age, -264. Yamagawa, Dr. Kenjiro, 52; University president, 276. 482 INDEX Yamamoto, Mr., 146. Yamashita, Prof., judo teacher in Washington, 69. Yamato, an ancient name of Nippon, 13, 112. Yamato Ryu school of art, 167. Yamomoto, Baron, his ministry, 282. Y. M. B. A., the, xxvii. Y. M. C. A., the, success of, xxvii. Yasukawa, Mr., college given by, 55. Yedo (Tokyo), 5. Yokohama Specie Bank, interior, (ill.), 327. Yokosuna, the, 62. Yomeimon temple, Nikko, gate of, 103; (ill.), 102. Yomiuri, early newspapers, 249. Yoahihito, Emperor, 106; funeral address by, 116; American message to, xxxv. Yoshimitsu, Shogun, 83. Young, Mr., journalist, 255. Yoyogi, shrine at, 109. Yuan shih Kai, President, 263; his attempt against Japan, XXX; his tenure, 402; in his palace, 415; as celebrant, 418; in seat of Kublai Khan, 419; reasons for his seclusion, 425, 429; his regime, 428; his con- stitution, 428, 429; his death, 432; his method of dismissing ofiScials, 438; a friendly view of, 439; effect of his failure and death, 441; his ambition to be emperor, 441.