A Journal from Japan: A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist

December 30.—At work again in the locked Institute, but the sun shone and we were consequently more cheerful.

December 31.—As it is the day before the New Year, Professor F—— is too busy to work, so I brought home my microscope and some fossils to do here, and had a nice quiet day at home. The days before the New Year are the busiest of the whole three hundred and sixty-five for every Japanese. In the evening Flora and I went down to the Ginza to see the big Matsuri and buy what took our fancy, provided our purses were large enough. This Ginza Matsuri is one of the features of Tokio this time of the year, and is particularly attractive on the last night of the year. The pavements on both sides of the streets are thronged with people, and lined with mats on the kerb, covered with curios and oddments and modern articles of all kinds. The pavement spaces are marked off and numbered, and let out by the police long before. As every one must pay all his debts by the end of the year, lots of curios go cheaper then than at any other time—though great bargains are not to be had in Tokio any more, too many foreigners have visited it. It was entertaining to watch the crowds, and lots of the curios were very nice. Gold screens I should love—but their size would make them terrible to pack for the journey. Fortunately the rain held off to-night, else many a poor person would suffer for his debts!

January 1, 1909.—A bright sunny day for the New Year. This year I did not enter at all into the national customs, but went for a walk with Flora to see her school, the Convent of which, I think, I have spoken before. The new grounds they now have are very extensive and beautiful—how delicious the reality of country one can get in Tokio! It is possible in their garden to feel miles from any habitation and in the midst of woodland. When we returned I found I had missed an event—a visit from the Dean in his Court uniform, cocked-feathered hat, gold lace, sword and all. He had much impressed my maid,—alas, that I should have missed the great sight of a University Professor in the panoply of state! All the higher Government officials must go to the palace (unless ill) and pay their respects to the Emperor on the morning of the New Year, after which they make a tour of calls on each other. In the evening I dined with the F——s; we were a merry party and danced till late.

January 5.—A national holiday, so work was once more impossible; instead, we went down to see the sea at Enoshima. I had great hopes that the cone of Fuji mountain would show above the coast over the water. It is one of the loveliest views of Fuji, and I have never yet seen it. The day was fine, but not clear enough for that, however. Enoshima island, reached by the long bridge from the sandy shore, has often been described, so there is no need to reiterate its beauties.

It was a solemnly lovely day—not a glowing one, and the line of black foreground on the opposite coast, overtopped by fainter and fainter jagged ridges of hills, had the beauty of an old Japanese master. Alas, that the jewel of it all, Mount Fuji, was not to be seen. In all the eighteen months here I have never yet seen the cone above the coast hills from the sea, which is the most lovely view of all, they say, and this is my last chance. After buying a few strings of shells from the countless stores on the little island, and watching a naked brown man dive into the deep waves and come up with a living fish in his hand, which he presented to me, and doing all the other things essential to be done in Enoshima, we returned to the mainland, and as we had half an hour to wait I insisted on going up an attractive-looking hill. It was a Temple hill, with beauty and solitude for its crown, and such a view as I shall never forget of rocky coast and grey villages, of the sea with its jewel islands, and of the wave-like crested hills, a grey and black and purple view, with a dull green foreground and an atmosphere of mystery. Tokio! most favoured city, to have such a coast so very near. What we miss in London!

January 6–8.—Working hard, morning, noon, and night, with packing of fossils and books, and household goods thrown in.

January 9.—At work all day at the Institute; in the late afternoon a call at the Embassy about the official thanks to the Japanese, then on to Miss C—— about the next Debate, and, finally, a scamper to dress for dinner at Mrs. W——’s. When dressed it was too late to do anything but cycle there, but half-way on my road it began to snow! We had a very jolly dinner, and I felt increasingly affectionate towards Tokio, the people were all so kind. The snow had stopped, so I cycled back, though it lay thick on the ground, and it came on again before I got home, but a chiffon scarf protects one wonderfully from snow, and it was so pretty riding through it, instead of being cooped up in a kuruma, with danger of the men falling and breaking one’s neck. Kurumas aren’t at all safe in snowy weather, and are bitterly cold.

January 10.—The snow must have fallen nearly all the night, for it lay deep this morning. Soon after 10 it became bright and clear, and I set off to see the temples in Shiba Park. Very few people were about, and in the park just a stray poet or two and a photographer. I climbed one of the hills in it, and before me lay the sea, beneath the snow-clad trees and temple roofs. I turned, and scarlet through the festoons of gleaming white glowed the fretwork of a pagoda. Up and down little hills I wandered, the great trees standing free as in a forest, and the ground, as in a forest, trellised with big roots. The snow hid the low bamboos and gave the whole hilly landscape such a look that one needed no imagination to fancy oneself in a distant mountain forest, till the curved roof and crimson sides of a temple showed between the trees. In absolute solitude I walked, on untrodden snow, with no sight or sound of man—round me the musical clouds of snow that fell as the wind swayed the boughs of the tall cryptomerias above my head. And this is the heart of a capital city, Tokio, queen of cities. The long line of stone lanterns, the crimson bridge, the temples and trees, as well as the forest beauty, were rendered indescribably lovely by this snow. A friend was to have come with me to see the temples, and the snow prevented him—poor foolish man! But I am glad I was there alone.

January 11.—A brilliant, clear day. I was at work all the morning. In the afternoon was the party at the Nobles Club, given as a farewell for me by the London University Union. Quite a lot of people came, and I was transfixed in the middle of it all by a presentation from Baron K——, in the name of the Union, of three lovely gold lacquer boxes. Gold lacquer! A thing I have longed to possess, and a gift as well as a party from the dear Union, which I never dreamed would notice my departure.

It was not a little overwhelming, and I had to make a speech of thanks, and bungled it, of course.

Most of the fifty or so people who came to the party were my friends, guests of the Union, and one of them, as she said “Good-bye,” said to me also “Thank you.” I answered, of course, “Oh, you mustn’t thank me, I did not give the party.” “Well, then,” she said hurriedly, “thank you for going away.” My raised eyebrows and appealing eyes perhaps made her add, as she did going out of the door, “so that we can have a party.” She was not a humorist, but one of those dear, solemn people who take life seriously.

This party and the beautiful gift has touched me deeply; all the members of the Union contributed, English and Japanese alike.

January 14.—The last lunch at the Goten, I expect, for next week will certainly be busy. These Faculty lunches have certainly been very pleasant, and I am sorry they are coming to an end, like many another thing in this country for me. More P.P.C. calls in the afternoon. As I returned in the dark I met more than one man running with tinkling bell, clad in only a white cotton kimono. I have noticed several such quaint folk lately, and Professor F—— told me that in the coldest season a number of people will do this. It is a kind of remnant of the old “hardening” processes of Bushido, when children were sent barefoot and hungry across the snow, or sent supper-less to bed. None of those I saw running looked very robust, and I wondered whether such spasmodic hardening as a run on a cold winter’s night, practically naked, might not defeat its own ends. It looks on the face of it as though daily hardening might be more effective, in which case these same youths could discard the thick woollen mufflers they wear over mouths and ears and noses as they go out in the sunny streets.

January 17.—At 1 o’clock I sallied forth with a long calling list. Fortunately, one can call early on Japanese ladies. Baron and Baroness H—— were both in, and very gracious. It is difficult to say “good-bye.”

There were several other short calls, and then my last visit to the S——s’ pretty house, from which I saw the beautiful garden for the last time.

Afterwards I went to see the grey lady, Mrs. N——. Four-year-old Brownie remembered me and welcomed me in, doing the honours of the house and showing me all his toys. The grey lady is revealing herself a little—I am sorry I must go, and so will not see her again; people who really interest one are not too many on this earth. She started life as a scientist, but found chemistry so easy that it was no mental discipline, so she took to history, where dates have no reasons and are therefore hard to remember, but here, too, she came out top of the classes. She lies behind the poetry of that Japanese poet who wrote in English, and was so praised by Rossetti, the N—— of American fame, if I am not much mistaken, though she does not tell one so consciously.

January 18.—A long day at the Institute working and packing, and then to the M——s’ to dinner. The house is being re-done up, and some of the rooms are now very charming. Mr. M——, Mrs. M——, Mrs. H——, and several others were there, and the dinner was pleasant, but afterwards the treat came. When we went into the drawing-room I noticed a tray with lots and lots of white vases and cups and plates, and wondered what they were for. They told us almost at once. They had a great porcelain-maker there, and on the stone verandah were set up the furnaces and ovens and attendants, and we were to paint the porcelain, and it would be baked and glazed and finished before our eyes that evening! What it is to be a millionaire, and how much more to be one who could devise such charming pleasures. We all set to work gaily, the sons and little girl came in, and we had a very merry time. The quality of our painting doubtless left something to be desired, but we did not think of that till after, and really some of them were pretty, even the next day. The baking was the great excitement. The little furnaces were surrounded by glowing charcoal, fanned by the white-clad potters till a cloud of sparks rose over the fiery clay. We were half shut in in the verandah, but could see between the fires the snowy garden. The heat was so great that we rushed in and out of the drawing-room with no thought of cold, and multiplied our pots and vases rapidly. The time flew too swiftly, and I had to leave many still to be baked and to be seen to-morrow. This, too, was a farewell party for me, and the kindness and grace of my hostess made it a very pleasant one.

January 19.—Called at 9.30 at the M——s’, just to see the exhibition of our last night’s pottery-making, and found a big show, only one piece having been broken in the baking, which seems very good for furnaces erected in a private house. I had to hurry away to the Institute, for every moment is now urgently needed for my scientific work, and, fortunately, got on pretty well with it to-day.

January 22. A busy day—calls on the way home and a dinner at the P——s’, where I am now going to stop the two nights till I leave, as my house must get packed up and sold up. Professor S—— came to dinner, and the F——s. Professor P—— has only been back a few days from London by Siberia, and had home news. After the guests left at 11.30 I went over to my house, took off my evening frock, and prepared for a night’s work. There was no help for it—packing, letters, P.P.C. cards, and a hundred things had to be done, and still there was work at the Institute. The night flew by, with cocoa and cake at 3.30, and after breakfast I went to the Institute to finish up things there. A few calls had to be paid on the way back, so much kindness from so many friends necessitates calling. After dinner I was approaching insanity over the folly of the men who were padlocking my trunks.

January 24.—The P——s were very good, and let me wake them up at 6.30; then there were a few little things to do, a look round mine own little house, all empty and forlorn, and we set off for the station.

As I left at 8.20 on Sunday morning I never expected any one to see me off, except perhaps one or two special friends, but there was quite a big crowd of kindly folk, the M——s with lovely flowers from their greenhouse, and all with good wishes. Why I didn’t break down and howl on the platform I don’t know. Professor S——, Professor F——, Dr. M——, Dr. H——, and my maid came to Yokohama to the boat with me, where they cheered me till it started by photographing the party in groups and writing picture post cards, and walking round the deck with me one at a time in friendly converse.

Then, just before we sailed, I saw a gleam of what looked like Fuji mountain. Was she going to forget her cruelty and coyness and show herself to me over the water at last, at the latest possible moment? But the clouds closed again, the tender took my last friends from me, the ladder was up, and we steamed away as the bell sounded for lunch. Then after it I went on deck, and before me lay a wonderful panorama, near rocky coast, pine-crested, then beyond a dark line of more distant woods and bays, and in the midst, perfect, peerless, cloudless, the cone of the snow-white Fuji mountain!

I gazed and gazed for an hour at the changing view of ever lovely coast and ever lovely mountain!

Round the mountain top light clouds collected and dispersed like flying veils; one rose from the crater and dissolved like a puff of smoke, some circled the base and shut off the crown from the black fringing trees below.

So, as I left Japan, her greatest beauty showed herself to me.

CONCLUSION

Innumerable times have I made believe to answer the question, “How do you like the Japanese?” or the even more impossible one, “What do you think of the Japanese?” Questions generally put by new acquaintances directly after introduction, in crowded drawing-rooms, where we were liable to be torn apart at any moment, and the qualifying clauses which would have followed a preliminary statement to be separated eternally from their principals, which cut but a poor figure without them. I soon found that in common justice I must avoid answering that query. Yet now, at the conclusion of this journal, when there is no escape, the question presents itself once more. A complete answer even here is impossible. Those who have read the foregoing pages will have already the key to much of the answer. But often they were smaller and more subtle things than could be recorded in this journal that built up the real impressions of the country.

Judging from the books on the subject, and the questions which I have been asked since my return, it seems fairly safe to say that nearly everything which is commonly held in England to be “Japanese,” and typical of that country, is not so. The number of horrible “export articles” which have been shown to me as “real Japanese,” or are said to have been brought back from Japan by some relative who had visited it, show that there is not a very wide knowledge of the true domestic culture of that country here. There is a phrase which seems to hover over every conversation on Japan, which should be included in the Book of Bromidioms. It is, “Of course everything in Japan is so artistic!” It sometimes appears in the alternative form, “The Japanese are a nation of artists!” As a result, everything which is guaranteed as coming from Japan is accepted as artistic by most people, and one finds otherwise cultured ladies serving their tea in the most unutterable crockery, which was made in Japan according to the Japanese merchant’s idea of what European (barbaric) taste must be, in defiance of every law of beauty both in Japan and here.

The Japanese are no longer a nation of artists. They cannot afford to be. In the security of their long peace, and when they were shut out from competition with the rest of the world, they evolved for every detail of daily life, and not only for their churches and palaces, formulae by which every workman could construct intrinsically beautiful things. These formulae, where they are undisturbed to-day, still make of the common workman an artist, in so far that he creates a beautiful thing, even if it be only a farthing piece of pottery. But alas, Western influence has in many places disturbed or broken these old traditions, and the craftsman is then like a mariner at sea without a compass. Apart from their own traditions, there is in the great majority of Japanese practically no artistic instinct. As a wise Japanese man once said to me, after deploring the lack of artistic feeling in his countrymen, perhaps it will reappear in another generation. The present one has had to use all its energies and thought for national defence. Commerce, Diplomacy, Education, Scientific Research, all, as well as war, he included in national defence. In these years of stress, Art, being of little account in the Western civilisation which they were trying to assimilate, had to stand aside. Where the progress in a new direction has not disturbed her courts, she is still served as she was served before the revolution, often best in the simple things of life, which in England have not yet been reached by an all-pervading genius, such as penetrated everywhere in the Japan of long ago.

Another of the myths common in this country about Japan is that her people are all brilliantly, almost diabolically, clever. This, I think, is very far from being even a semblance of the truth. With very few exceptions, individual men and women among the Japanese are capable of very much less mental activity in a day than a corresponding English man or woman. An educated Englishman has his hobby, often more or less intellectual, to come to when the day’s work is done. He reads, as a matter of course, a number of books and reviews on all sorts of subjects, and he spends a good many hours per week in social life of various kinds. Because he goes to the theatre one evening or takes his wife to a concert, it does not mean that he requires to come two hours late to work the following day, or that he thinks it an excuse for absenting himself all morning from business. A dinner with a dozen friends in the evening may often precede several hours’ writing late at night, in the life of an English Professor. But the average Japanese intellectual man could not do this at all, or could not do it often. An individual Japanese may make as good a show in his profession as the Englishman, but he is generally economising every possible expenditure of brain force outside this profession, and will enjoy less social life in a month than the average working (not social) Englishman indulges in in a week. It seemed to me to be characteristic of the average Japanese to be only able to hold the reins of one set of thoughts at once. I shall never forget the astonishment with which I listened to a Professor who explained that the reason that he came two hours after the time he should have given his University lecture was that his child had been naughty that morning and required correction, and that it took thought and time to accomplish it. It is difficult to give concrete examples, but on many occasions I have watched one thought ousting another in a Japanese mind which in an Englishman’s would have developed together. This gives an impression of what often appears very like stupidity in a Japanese, outside the range of the one thing that he has in hand, and sometimes even within it. But this does not affect the general position of the nation as a whole when it sets itself to any task, let us say the conquering of the Russians in a war. In Government Departments each man has his special duty, and can concentrate entirely on that. The man above him has to correlate that with the rest, and so on to the top of the service, where the places are generally filled (certainly in the University, a Government Department) by brilliant men, who have what I feel inclined to call the English capacity for controlling a number of things at once. Most of the men at the top have been in the West, and even without that additional training they form exceptions to the rule which the others seem to exemplify. The nation as a whole then, composed of individuals who are rather stupid, led by brilliant men, and worked with a splendid system of organisation, assisted by the old feudal spirit not yet dead, presents to the world as good or better a front than one in which the individuals are each more independently developed.

Even in merely manual labour, the Japanese in Japan do not seem to do so much as workmen do at home. A Japanese coal mine has in its pay nearly one-half as many workers again as an English mine with the same output. The climate has much to do with this, and the national customs. The climate, although beautiful and sunny nearly all the year round, has a subtle lethargic effect, so that even the Englishman in Japan does less than he could do in England. Generations of this insidious influence have undoubtedly affected the Japanese; the children playing so quietly with none of the obstreperousness of vigorous youth are an index of its power.

A question that few of my drawing-room acquaintances spare me is one on the religious condition of the Japanese. This is generally so worded that it is clear that the interrogator is already certain that they are devoid of religious feeling, but that he trusts the West is doing something for the stimulation of their souls. Again I must disagree with the popular impression in this country. There is no land in which I have been where there seemed to be a more universal religious feeling, none in which the religion formed more an integral part of daily life. The religious temperament is strongly developed in the majority of Japanese. But the religious temperament is not to be confounded with any particular religion. It is indeed often most strongly developed in those who appear to have no religion, perhaps because the very strength of their religious instincts debars them from being satisfied with the formulated religion of their time. In little-educated people too that instinct often finds expression in superstitions, or in the popular forms of religions which have a pantheon of gods or saints. Thus is it in Japan. Their feeling for religion is gratified constantly throughout every day, not kept apart for the Sabbath, as it is here. It is true that the religious ideas of the mass of the people are neither very clear nor very high, but they are a very real part of their daily life. In the country in England one may go many miles without seeing a church, and we do not have wayside shrines, but in Japan there is some shrine or temple at every turn, in nearly every house, even in most hotels. And these shrines are not deserted, they are tended daily by the passers-by as well as by the dwellers in the immediate neighbourhood. In the main streets of Tokio, the streets where the West has penetrated, even there I have seen little shrines, perhaps like dolls’ houses, only a couple of feet high, reverently tended by passing labourers, or coolies who set down a long pole with its swinging burdens to present some little offering to the spirit of the shrine. It may be that all they have to offer are the worn sandals which they take off their feet, or a wisp of straw.

It is curious to notice how largely straw enters into the place of religious offerings. Straw ropes hang before the temple gates, or single straws depending from a line make a decorative fringe; old straw sandals, or new and monstrous sandals specially made for the purpose, are offered in piles to a small shrine. This offering of straw is symbolic in a land where so many things are made of it. The matting and nearly all the comforts of the house are made of straw, the sandals and rain coats, the labourer’s hats,—in the very poor places even the walls as well as the thatch of his house are all made of straw. Those who are too poor to give the ears of the rice except on special occasions, can yet afford a wisp of rice-straw for many a shrine, and rice is naturally symbolic of all their material welfare. It is not only in the peasant that this close daily touch of religion may be found. Driven back to the secret places of the house, and not spoken of to foreigners, is yet the shrine, kept with its daily ministration, in homes where one would least expect to find it. I asked an “atheist” scientific professor once what he would do if the woman whom he loved should die. He told me that he would engrave her name on the tablet in his shrine, before which was a prayer made every day. The religious instinct is a far greater thing than any formulated religion, and though missionaries may continue to tell the world that the Japanese are naturally irreligious, that will not prevent the Japanese from being deeply religious—until they have assimilated the Western attitude to religion, as they are doing toward other things. Perhaps one reason that the missionary finds the Japanese irreligious is that they take religion so happily, and make of it so much a part of their daily life, laughing in the temples, playing round the temple grounds, lighting the light of their little shrines in their homes when their household lamps are lit. One of the commonest sights in Japan is a band of peasant pilgrims on their way to some shrine, and it is the ambition of innumerable poor folk, who could never afford ordinary travel and holidays, to visit every temple of importance in the country. How many English common folk since the days of the Canterbury Pilgrims would travel on foot for a hundred miles to lay a wisp of straw on a shrine? Because the Japanese are not (and I think never will be in our sense of the word) Christians there is no excuse for our concluding that they are not religious.

Only of one thing more will I now speak. Sometimes carelessly, sometimes sadly, it has often been said that there can be no true understanding, no deep friendship between the East and the West. Even Lafcadio Hearn is quoted as an instance of the disappointment that must await the foreigner who tries to get to the heart of a Japanese. And Lafcadio Hearn, as is now being recognised, has shown us more truly and more beautifully than any other writer the inner life of Japan. He tells us, it is true, that in the end he found that it was only with the children that we could reach a real and close understanding and love, that as they grew up to men and women they receded farther and farther from one, till a great wall was built between them, and the lovable and loving child had become a friend who had lost the key of sympathy. This is perhaps true in most cases, but we must not forget that with his genius for suggestive and true description, and for poetical rendering of the things around him, Hearn seems to have had also a perfect genius for destroying individual friendships. Evidence of this is found cropping up in many places in Japan, where he shattered his friendships with English and Japanese alike; and it is already made clear in his Letters. One of the tests of friendship is time, and only at the end of a lifetime can one say just which men and women had been one’s real friends, but circumstance is almost as good a test as time, and that may give its stamp to a relationship very swiftly. Some Japanese—perhaps, nay certainly, they are exceptional natures—have a genius for friendship. There is in them a sweetness and delicacy, a sensitive comprehension of moods, a depth of feeling and a beauty of feeling which only the exceptional Westerner could match. The almost inhuman coldness which is so often attributed to the Japanese is not at all truly characteristic of them. Their reserve appears to us to be reserve only because we do not know how to read the signs of their expression, and because many careless Europeans before us may have trampled on holy ground. The apparently immobile face is immobile only because we ourselves are not alive to its subtle changes. When you know a Japanese face it is as eloquent as that of a sensitive English girl. And the moods and feelings it mirrors are not alien to ours. Some of the thoughts and some of the conclusions from the same premises may be different from ours, but they are not the essentials in friendship. The coldness and the insincerity of the Japanese are qualities which we have largely invented for them to save us the trouble of learning their truths, and of cultivating the power to read their subtle expressions. Nor are they always difficult to read if we have the privilege of friendship. In the “changeless eyes” of the Japanese I have seen fire and mist, radiance and storm. I have seen men’s tears welling up from the sweetness beneath to veil the eyes that looked on sorrowful things, or things so beautiful as to be a pain—as is Mount Fuji in an opal morning. In the hearts of some Japanese I have found friendship, tested by circumstance, true, and generous, and sweet. Those from the West who cannot find it also need not lay all the blame on the Japanese.