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A JOURNAL FROM JAPAN


[Illustration: Yours very truly,

  M. C. Stopes.]


A JOURNAL FROM JAPAN

A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist

by

MARIE C. STOPES
D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S.







London
Blackie & Son, Limited, 50 Old Bailey, E.C.
Glasgow and Bombay
1910




TO JAPAN


    Land that mused while the world was striving!
    Land that dreamed while the nations fought!
    Truth with thy dreamers had forgathered,
    Peace, in thine isles enclosed, had taught
    Her secret laws of Beauty to thy sons.
    Then men spent hours beneath the cherry trees,
    Or watched the pointed Iris pierce the ground.
    They cultivated Wisdom on their knees
    And regulated life in ways profound.
    Then thy fair daughters ministered to men,
    Subduing and subdued their graceful form.
    Dreamland of Beauty, girt by glowing seas!
    Thou didst appear unfitted for the storm
    That broke upon thee from the lowering West.
          Yet thou hast risen and conquered.
        Thou dost stand, armed as a modern People
        In the front rank--and yet I say, alas!
        Who could have wished, in waking thou shouldst spurn
        The wondrous rightness of thy sheltered past?
        To be as others are thou seem’st to yearn,
        And for mere useful ugliness dost cast
        For ever from thee beauties unsurpassed.
        True, thou hast beaten them on their own ground,
        The Goths and Vandals whom as foes were found,
        Yet I would rather see thee still apart
        Than soiling thy traditions in the mart.
        Wouldst thou not weep if thy sweet cherry tree
        Dropped its light blooms to bear the hard rice grains?
        O cherry flower of lands! I weep to see
        Thy falling blooms. The whole World’s loss, thy “gains.”




PREFACE


This daily journal was written primarily because I well knew that time
would force the swiftly passing incidents and impressions to blur
each other in my memory. Then want of leisure tempted me to send the
journal home to friends in place of letters, and the two or three for
whom I originally intended it widened the circle by handing it on to
many others, until it has, in a way, become public property. Several of
those who have read it have asked me to publish it in book form, and
although I vowed that I would not add to the already excessive number
of books written on Japan, I have decided to publish this just because
it was _not_ written with a view to publication. It is this which gives
it any claim to attention, and guarantees its veracity. To preserve
its character I have stayed my hand where it has often been tempted to
change or revise statements which may sometimes seem too hard in the
softening light of distance.

Days about which there is no entry were filled with work on my fossils
at the University. Many evenings were spent with friends at dinners or
dances. Reference to these things has been deleted, for neither the
solid work nor the social gaiety is likely to interest any one now.

Personalities (alas, not always irrelevant!) have been eliminated of
necessity, but I have not attempted to give the text any literary form
which it did not originally possess. The words are exactly those jotted
down at the time and place that they profess to be, and therefore
mirror, as no rewritten phrases could, the direct impression that that
time and place made on me. Japan is changing swiftly, and I saw things
from a point of view that differs somewhat from any recorded, so that
perhaps these daily impressions may have an interest for those who
cannot visit Japan, and in the future for those who prefer facts to
fair sounding generalisations and beautifully elaborated theories.

  MARIE C. STOPES.

  HAMPSTEAD, _July 1909_.




LIST OF PLATES


                                                        PAGE

  PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR                      _Frontispiece_

  MY POLICEMAN IN HIS PRIVATE DRESS                       12

  COOKING THE BREAKFAST FISH ROUND THE CAMP FIRE          16

  THE SHALLOWS OF THE RIVER, SHOWING THE ROUNDED
  NODULES WHICH CONTAIN THE FOSSILS I WAS SEEKING         20

  THE PINE TREE TIED UP FOR THE WINTER                    82

  A LARGE AND INTERESTED AUDIENCE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
  WATCHED OUR PROCEEDINGS AT MERA                        122

  THE COAST ROAD ALONG WHICH WE WALKED ROUND
  BOSHU                                                  126

  THE BOTANICAL GARDENS IN WINTER DRESS. A GROUP
  OF CYCADS PROTECTED AGAINST THE SNOW                   254




INTRODUCTION


A purely scientific interest in coal mines and the fossils they
often contain led me to desire to go to Japan, for purely scientific
purposes. My naturally roving instincts warmly supported the scheme,
and my love of the East gave the prospect the warmth and colour which
only personal delight can lend to any place. The generous interest and
help of the Royal Society in my scientific projects made this long and
expensive journey possible. The influence of this learned body with our
Government and with that of Japan secured me every help and courtesy
during my stay in the country, without which no result would have been
obtainable. The scientific results, which most fortunately seem to be
justifying the expedition, are being published in suitable places;
there is no technical science in this journal. It is a record of some
of the human experiences through which a scientist goes in search of
facts lying beyond everyday human experience.

After the first month in the country, during which it was impossible
to travel, as I did, in the wilds without an interpreter, I made it
my business to learn enough of the spoken language to go about alone.
I also tried to come as close as possible to the Japanese people,
although when I look back on my attempts I see how often my impatience
with what seemed needless delay, with an unknown code of honour,
and with trifling inconveniences in non-essentials, must have acted
as a hindrance to free communication with a people so profoundly
patient. Yet in many ways I had wonderful opportunities of touching
the living reality in the Japanese; opportunities so exceptional that
it is to my lasting shame that my stock of patience and sympathy was
not always equal to them. It is hard when one is young, and chances
to be hungry and tired, to realise that it is not of one’s momentary
comforts one has to think, but of the vastly greater and deeper
purpose that accidentally brought weariness in its train. It is true
that from an ordinary standpoint there are many things in Japan which
are exasperating to a Westerner, but that was no excuse for me. Let
me quote in illustration a small incident that I have ever since
regretted. On page 43 you will find the account of my involuntary visit
to the courteous principal of a College when I was really bound for a
coal mine. This gentleman asked me to give a lecture to his young men,
and I refused. It is true that I was really anxious to go directly to
that mine, that it would upset my plans if I were to be at all delayed,
and that at the moment the disturbance of those plans seemed a serious
matter. But, nevertheless, I was the first European woman that many
of the people there had seen, and the first scientific woman that any
of them had seen or heard of. Their curiosity and interest about me
was as natural as my curiosity and interest about their coal mine,
but I gratified my own curiosity and not theirs. They may well be led
to conclude from the only example in their experience that European
scientists are in a hurry, and are selfish and lacking in personal
sympathy. It would be practically impossible for them to realise how
many other claims had been made on that hasty young scientist who
visited them, they would only feel that in place of the human interest
and understanding which might have been shown, there was a blank wall
of refusal. I tried to explain that Science is a hard taskmaster, but
what good are explanations?

In my deep desire to understand, and come in close touch with the
Japanese, I was handicapped, as every European must be, by our national
traditions. In England we read that clever book _Bushido_, and feel
that the old codes of honour among the Japanese are not so far from our
own but that they can be bridged by a little sympathy. Before living
in Japan one cannot realise that that book, like other volumes written
by Japanese with a knowledge of our traditions, is a translation of
their traditions in the terms of ours. The most faithful translation
can never catch quite the spirit of the original. Hence in Japan I had
to unlearn what I thought I knew before, as well as to try to learn the
truth. To help me in this I had the real friendship of several noble
Japanese. My work, too, gave me many opportunities, for it brought me
into touch with a large number of people of many different types, from
the peasants in the wilds to the higher officials in Tokio. Added to
these was the fact that I was a woman. Therefore I saw the Japanese
at their best, and with the men of science there was possible an
unadulterated, delightful friendship for which no European man coming
to Japan could get quite the counterpart; for there are no Japanese
women scientists. And although many literary and other people hold
scientists up to scorn in their relation to daily life, it is in truth
only from them that one can get an all-satisfying comradeship and
comprehension. There is further a quality in a pure and intellectual
friendship which comes to it only when the friends are man and woman,
a quality not necessarily better than, but different from other
friendships, and one which reveals much of the individual character and
the national character of those who form the tie. The man and woman who
are true friends give each other of their very best. As the first woman
scientist from the West to work in the University with the Japanese men
of science, I should have been wanting indeed if there did not come to
me much that in the end seemed to reveal some of the very life-secrets
of the nation.

With generalisations, with conclusions, however, this journal does not
have to do. It merely pictures something of the people and the country
of Japan, registering the impressions immediately, before the distance
of even a week distorted them with atmospheric effects, and in this way
it seems to hold the balance of impartiality by recording the _pros_
and the _cons_ as they predominated from day to day. This probably
gives a truer account of Japan than could be obtained by segregating
out the data and cementing them together with words not written on the
spot.

Japan makes one love her and hate her from day to day, from hour to
hour. She is like April weather with its sun and rain, like her own
ever-changing mountain. No account of her could be true that kept for
many pages together the same feeling towards her.




A JOURNAL FROM JAPAN

NOTE.--Initials in italics refer to Japanese people, and in
ordinary capitals to Westerners.


=August 6, 1907.=--We lost a good deal of the wonderful Inland Sea
at night, and there is no moon, but all this morning we have seen
fairy-like islands. I was up at five, and saw the morning sun lighting
the mists. Scattered all over the sea are green islands and little
cliffs, sometimes with a single tree on them, perched in just the most
effectively pretty attitude. These beautiful lands must have been made
on the seventh day, when God was resting and dreaming of Paradise.

=August 10.=--I am much surprised to find how like Venice Tokio is,
with its numerous waterways. This hotel is on a very tiny island with
six bridges, which connect it with the numerous other islands which
seem to compose a large part of Tokio--there are waterways, lakes,
docks, or rivers everywhere. It takes more than half an hour’s rickshaw
drive to get to the Embassy, where I called this morning. At first I
was a little disappointed in the streets, pretty and quaint though
they were, but when we came to the broad roads outside the moats of
the Imperial Palace, I found far more of beauty and wonder than I had
expected. Roads, grey sloping walls, green banks running up from the
green water which shadowed the great trunks of fantastic trees--the
heart of the city, and no sign of its life. In the grey sloping walls
was a silent strength and majesty, in the beautiful trees a fantastic
charm; the whole being one of the most impressive views I have ever
seen in a city--a sight that brought tears to one’s eyes.

Then just as I was passing, a few regiments of soldiers crossed from
one great gate into another--regiments with none of the new smartness
of ours. All their clothes were travel-stained and dusty, the reserve
boots packed on their backs were patched, their swords clean, but not
with the cleanness of the new metal. The two leaders of each company
had instruments like wide bugles, and one by one they answered each
other with a few notes up and down the line--only one sounding at once,
and apparently at haphazard, but together giving a weird chant as the
sun-scorched men went forward. Again that pull at the heart-strings
that Japan knows so well how to give.

The Embassy lies quite near the palace enclosure. I found Mr. L----
(representative of the Ambassador) away, of course, as in August no
one remains here who can go. His subordinate, however, got a series of
blue letters out referring to my case, and put me on my way. Apparently
they have taken a lot of trouble, and I shall find things very smooth
sailing in one way, but already I find the under-currents are swift and
difficult to steer through.

In the afternoon I went to the Botanical Gardens and Institute, of
which I cannot speak fully yet. The first impression, however, must be
recorded. The gardens are beautiful. The part with the little lakes
and streams, distant views and wistaria arbours, more beautiful than
anything of the kind I have yet seen. Some of the Gymnosperm trees are
also very fine indeed. Parts of the garden are allowed to run wild, and
there is a want of gardeners--the old story. The low, wooden-built,
picturesque Institute, with palms growing almost into its windows, can
show London and Manchester a good deal. A wonderful lot of special
apparatus and conveniences are there. At first I was most struck by
this “primitive” place possessing a large aetherising apparatus for
hastening germination in seeds, two chambers with double blackened
doors, etc., for the breeding of fungi, a special oven-room with a
variety of furnaces and ovens--in fact, several pieces of apparatus the
usual Botanical Department lacks.

When returning in the rickshaw at night (it is an hour’s drive to the
hotel) the pretty Japanese lanterns decorated the dark streets. Our
festival arrangements are here the daily custom. Alas, that there are
now several red and white brick abominations of buildings in this
low-built, grey wooden town. These brick buildings are quite new; but
some of the older Europeanised buildings are beautiful, for example,
the Japan Bank is dignified and graceful, of grey stone, set in
brilliant green gardens.

=August 11.=--I had an exciting time going about Tokio; of course
I could (and did until to-day) go in a rickshaw, but then one is
simply a parcel of goods to be delivered. To-day I sallied forth to a
place three miles away, and to get there had to take three different
tram-cars and walk a mile through little twisting streets. I took a
map and got there without losing myself once until within a hundred
yards of the place; then my guardian angel (in the shape of Professor
_F----_) turned up and rescued me, though as I had planned this
expedition without his knowledge, and spoken of it to no one, it was
nothing short of a miracle. Tokio is enormous, for its two millions
or so live in single-storied houses, and there are many parks and
gardens, so that it is very easy to get thoroughly lost, and no one of
the common people can speak English. In the afternoon I got one of my
desires, and saw a real Japanese house. It was perfectly exquisite in
snowy white, soft straw colour, and grey--I took the shoes from off my
feet. It belonged to the widow of an officer killed in the war and her
daughter; and as a most exceptional favour I am to be allowed to take
part of the house and live with them as a kind of lodger. I could sing
for joy. My rooms, of course, are small, but exquisite as a sea-shell;
I shall live as nearly as possible in true Japanese style. The house is
on rising ground, fifteen minutes from the Botanical Gardens, in a part
that is almost country, near a great Buddhist Temple; the air fresh and
inspiring after that on the flats down here in Tsukiji.

=August 12.=--Glorious weather. I conveyed my luggage to my house and
found that boxes look detestably out of place in such a dwelling, and
appear more unutterably hideous than ever.

In the afternoon I had tea in the big summer-house in the Botanical
Gardens. The room is really a good-sized lecture hall, only flat and
open after Japanese style; the three side walls had their screens taken
out, and so we looked on to the lakes and streams of the landscape
garden. At tea there was quite a party. Professor _M----_ most kind
and jolly--also several of the younger botanists, and the Director of
the Geological Survey, representing both himself and the Minister of
Agriculture and Commerce, within whose jurisdiction I come.

The _Stimmung_ is strange and fascinating, and quite indescribable.
Professor _M----_ is in Japanese dress; real Japanese tea (totally
unlike our tea) and real Japanese cakes, also as unlike cakes as
possible. One is a kind of jelly, made of seaweed, and is very nice. I
had my first lesson in eating with chop-sticks, and have “graduated.”

I had dinner with Dr. _M----_ and Professor _F----_, and then returned
for my first night in a true Japanese house. It is a myth that the
daughter of the house can speak English, and so I have to speak
Japanese! They all kneel on the matting and touch the floor with their
hands and foreheads, and I do a half-hearted imitation of the courtesy.
It crushes my frocks, but otherwise does me no harm to be polite. The
matting on the floor is delightful, so springy to walk on as well as
pleasing to the eye.

My _futons_ (soft, thick quilt-like mats) are beauties--silk and
velvet--and I feel ashamed to lie on them. The mosquito curtains are
nearly as big as the room, and make a high, four-square tent when
erected, but everything is put away in the day, and no sign of sleeping
remains; hence everything gets aired and there is no possibility of
dust collecting under beds. In many of the household arrangements we
are far behind the Japanese. They have reduced simplicity to a fine
art. The bath, where one sits upright instead of lying down, is most
comfortable; but of course mine was too hot after a short time in
it, as the fire is inside it, and I had to rush out and get help--in
Japanese!

At night the stillness was absolute, but the strangeness of the day
kept sleep away.

=August 13.=--If things go on at this rate, my Journal must cease to
record anything but bald facts. I visited the Imperial University,
a series of buildings scattered among landscape gardens and little
patches of wood, covering many acres. I saw the specimens of all kinds
in the Geological Museum from Hokkaido preparatory to going there, and
after that I was taken to lunch in another open house in the midst
of the University grounds, looking down on a lake called the Goten.
Afterwards I was allowed to examine further specimens, and then went
to a tea-party at Professor _F----’s_ house--a gem of a house, with
three little distinct gardens. We had the most wonderful dishes of
quaintly decorated rice and seaweed, fish, and cakes. I am glad to
say chop-sticks are now mastered. This afternoon’s visit deserves a
chapter instead of a paragraph. I dined alone in the same restaurant as
with the party last night, the food European, but all else Japanese.
On my way home I bargained in the shops for some trifles and succeeded
in buying them. As I passed the great temple near my house and looked
across the grove of trees toward it, I saw the wonderful Fujii mountain
standing out against a sky of crimson and gold, with a crescent moon
riding near--a view never to be forgotten.

One of the events of the day was a long newspaper interview, and when I
returned at 8 o’clock there was another reporter most politely waiting
for another interview--a nice, polite, pretty boy, who sat on the
floor and bowed and wrote down my honourable views on Japanese houses,
people, and customs, and on other things in general. It appears, that
though I have not been aware of it, the papers have published endless
“facts” about me--perhaps it is as well they are in Japanese characters
and therefore a sealed book to me. I have protested my little best
against the erection of hideous red brick buildings in this sweet city,
a desecration which I see beginning, and I hope they will take it to
heart, and forbid their erection.

=August 14.=--Some of the Professors kindly took me to visit the
Principal of the University in solemn state; he was most gracious, and
(through an interpreter) said most ridiculously flattering things.
According to him only one “specialist” lady has visited Japan before,
and she was elderly. Therefore they all marvel at me, as though I
were some curious kind of butterfly! We then visited the Director of
the Imperial Geological Survey. The Director is _most_ kind, as is
also the chief Inspector of Mines, and they put every facility in
my way. The Director gave me all the information he could and the
largest geological map of the district, which is very small, only about
one-hundredth part of the scale I am accustomed to do geological work
with, so that things will be difficult. The Government here has kindly
written to the Governor of Hokkaido and to the owners of the Mines, so
that I should fare as well as possible. The Director of the Survey gave
me an enormous, delightfully cooked, but curious lunch--beginning with
cold roast beef and salad, going to hot fish, and then three kinds of
meats, and ice-cream! They showed me the Survey Museum; the specimens
are just being shifted to a fine new building, but some were arranged,
and a few cases had been specially laid out for me. I feel quite
ashamed that they take so much trouble for me.

Tea at Professor _M----’s_ private house, which is even more
fascinating than Professor _F----’s_, with a beautiful green garden all
round it. He has brought several pictures and many things back from
England, and speaks as though he had enjoyed his visit very much. Both
Japanese and English tea were served, one after the other, as well
as cakes and fruit, which a daintily-dressed maid knelt beside us to
prepare.

=August 15.=--I spent the day at Enoshima, an island about two hours’
journey from Tokio. It is perfectly exquisite. The island is connected
with the mainland by a very long narrow bridge of rickety planks, over
the mile of sand which may be covered by the tide, or may be dry,
according as the sand drifts year by year. The little island is very
steeply hilly and well-wooded, and is laid out in long flights of
stone steps up and down the hills, leading to the numerous temples and
shrines. It is a sacred island, sacred to the goddess of Luck (and a
few others), and except for bazaars, where wonderful shells are sold,
and the houses for the pilgrims to rest in, there is almost nothing
but temples and shrines on the island. At every turn of the pathway
something quaint or pretty meets the eye, while the views out to sea,
across to the mainland and other islands, are magnificent. Going across
the bridge homeward the wind was so strong that we were nearly blown
off it several times, but the waves were grand, and a heavy rainstorm
added to the effect.

=August 16.=--A day of many final preparations for what is going to be
an arduous time in Hokkaido.

=August 17.=--Before starting for the northern wilds I received the
last pieces of advice and information at the station from the Director
of the Survey, Professor _M----_, Professor _F----_, Dr. _Ye----_, and
others, who all saw me off, and I am now alone and really started.

The life in this train is different from anything I have yet seen in
trains, yet very comfortable, with dining-car where they cook beside
you what you order. Near me was sitting a smart man, cultured-looking,
and extremely well-dressed in perfect English style. Thus he remained
for an hour; then, the heat being great, he took off his coat, then
his waistcoat, and finally came to his shirt alone! Then he pulled
over him a loose kimono and removed every stitch but that, finally
winding a soft silk sash round his waist and sitting down, all without
removing his gold-rimmed glasses or turning a hair! The transformation
was extraordinary, and during the whole ridiculous scene, acted within
two feet of me, he was so utterly unconscious and dignified, and so
many others in the long car did the same, that I began to wonder if we
aren’t a little super-prudish in England. During the night that man
was most thoughtful and kind to me, insisting on my using his rug, and
finally doing an act of service that called for such unselfishness that
I am sure we underrate the innate courtesy of Japanese men to women;
and he was, of course, a perfect stranger.

The scenery nearly all the way is simply glorious. These hackneyed
words are totally unfit for use in describing this fairy-like land;
one would choose to pick words freshly coined, beaten out of pure gold
of love by an artist, words as fresh as the greenness of this earth’s
garment, and as dainty as its feathery decorations of bamboos. Words,
in fact, which do not exist are the only ones fit to use about the
country of Japan.

The bamboo is so different from what I had imagined it, and is, in
fact, more like a graceful and unusually symmetrical birch tree than
anything else! These pretty trees (for one must look on each sprout as
a tree) grow in groves, but many of them stand singly, or scattered in
small numbers among the pines, with which they make a contrast similar
to that we sometimes see in England where birch and pine grow together.
Among the low wood, and through the hedges, stand numbers of our tall
white “Madonna lilies,” with even larger flowers than our best ones,
and a few red tiger-lilies; while in the ponds, though it is late, are
still blooming the huge white flowers of the lotus. The white lilies
are particularly wonderful--I have seen thousands to-day.

=August 18.=--I arrived at Aomori early this morning, and lost much
temper because I had to lose much time in getting on to the ship.
The language, of course, was partly the difficulty, but the natives
are excruciatingly slow to move. After _three hours_ of talking and
arguing and going over things again and again, at last I reached the
steamer--a very good little ship with nice state-rooms and saloons;
of course _very_ small. The state-rooms have three berths, and I find
my two companions are men. It was a shock at first, but they seemed
so surprised at my being surprised, that I thought again that we have
too much of the trail of the serpent about our customs. I slept in the
train with men near me, why not in the steamer? It is only for one
night.

=August 19.=--At Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, I was met by
Professor _My----_ and Professor _Y----_; both very kind. They brought
me to Mrs. B----, an English missionary lady, who is kindly putting
me up. Her husband is away; he is the renowned authority on the Aino
race, and they have adopted an Aino girl as their daughter. Professors
_My----_ and _Y----_ are kindly making inquiries about my trip inland,
and we are to call on the Governor to-morrow.

The most striking thing about Japanese travelling is the care they take
of the railway carriages. Every two hours the floors were washed down.
At night the guard came along and put every one’s boots and shoes or
sandals perfectly tidy and symmetrical in front of them as they slept.
My boots, with their long legs, caused him much trouble, as they would
not remain in a tidy position, the legs flopping first on one side and
then on the other as he tried to make them stand up.

There are now torrents of rain, so that I have seen little of Sapporo
yet, beyond the fact that its pretty green streets melt into the
country whilst still being in the town, and that their vista is closed
by green wooded hills. If this fearful rain continues my start must be
delayed.

=August 20.=--It is still raining; as they have not had any for weeks,
I fear it may last some time, and as I have to work _in_ the rivers
any way, it will be rather serious. Otherwise I am very content to
remain here for a while. This morning we went to call on the Governor
in state. He is old, and not at all like a typical Japanese, for he
is large and stout, and looks very German. He had studied in Germany
in the ’seventies and still spoke some German. All his Cabinet came
in, one after the other, and were introduced, and the process was very
solemn and awe-inspiring. They insisted on giving me two whole
sets of maps of Hokkaido, though I only needed the sheets of quite a
small district. Also the Governor insists that as well as Professor
_Y----_ (who is to be interpreter), _as well_ as an official from the
Department of Agriculture and Commerce, _as well_ as several coolies, I
must have a policeman to escort me to the mountains. I besought him not
to force him on me, but it is an honour they delight to give me, and
I had to submit. Too much zeal and too much kindness are as difficult
to contend with as too little. We then called on the Department of
Agriculture and Commerce, and there were more formalities and more
talk--when I shall get to the actual hammering of rocks I can’t
imagine. They showed me the College of Agriculture in the afternoon, a
huge campus with well-fitted departments scattered over it. It is to be
converted into a University on the 11th of next month.

With the help of Professor _Y----_ this evening I made a variety of
purchases, among them the cloth leggings and curious _tabi_ or stiff
socks, with a special place for the big toe, which we shall use with
straw sandals in the mountains.

=August 21.=--We started very early this morning and reached Yubari
(headquarters of a coal mine) about 3 P.M., the scenery by
the way being beautiful but not very striking. The valleys show how
recently they had been cleared of forest, by the numerous stumps
still left standing through the cultivated fields. The hills all clad
with untouched, impenetrable virgin forest. Yubari is a “big” town,
almost entirely consisting of the 4000 to 5000 workers in the coal
mines. We put up at the Club-house of the coal mine. I have one room,
which serves also as dining- and drawing-room; my party, including
the policeman (mercifully in plain clothes), has the other. There
were visits from the Head of the coal mine and others, and more talk,
and we got some information which will be valuable if it proves to be
reliable. Geology is peculiarly difficult here, however, as the ground
is so covered with forest and thick undergrowth that uncertainty is
inevitable about many things.

=August 22.=--We began the day at 5, and the regular escort is now
raised to 10, with temporary additions between every stage! I have
given up protesting that so many people require quantities of food,
which will have to be carried, and would now look on 100 without
a murmur. Life in the Club-house last night was not without its
interest. I couldn’t get to bed for constant visits and interviews from
officials; the last gentleman came after I had prepared for bed, and I
conversed with him in my night-gown (which, mercifully, was long and
rather like a tea-gown), but he never turned a hair--coming in on me
before I could put on a dressing-gown. The maids are all excessively
sweet and polite, but they slide open the partitions noiselessly, with
no warning, and catch me unawares.

We went a short distance farther by rail and then changed into very
small coal-trucks, which run on a small track to the coal mine of
Ōyubari, which has been recently opened. The vegetation of the clearing
through which the track was laid was very striking. The dominant plant
was _Sasa_, a species something like a bamboo, which reaches 3 feet
to 6 feet in height, and grows over everything, and forms a dense
undergrowth all through the forests also. Sub-dominant plants were
_Vitis_, a very luxuriant specimen with huge tendrils, and an extremely
prickly shrub that caught one round the feet. A noticeable plant was
a very large _Viburnum_, which has a liane-like habit and clambers up
high trees. At the end of the track lies a group of houses for the
people who are beginning to work the mine, the little wooden dwellings
surrounded by the limitless, untouched forest, and standing on its
very visible remains in the clearing. More bowing, kindness, and talk,
the Manager giving me for my absolute use and sole habitation his very
own house, where things are surprisingly pretty and comfortable. As I
am the first foreigner many of the work-people have seen, a certain
amount of staring was done, though they are by no means so rude as some
travellers would have us believe.

We went through the forest and up the river prospecting, and found
scrambling along the steep banks of friable shale by no means easy; but
the escort assists me greatly, and one of them carries me on his back
on the frequent occasions when it is necessary to cross the river. The
only use the policeman has been so far, was to lend his sword to cut
chop-sticks, which had been forgotten, and of course we had no knives
and forks with us at all, for I have learnt to get on very comfortably
without.

=August 23.=--A long day going up-stream collecting nodules, which are
very big and very hard to break. The scenery up the rivers, with the
magnificent forests, is very fine. It is a curious sensation to be in
the midst of this boundless forest and see peak after peak densely
clad by trees which no man has touched. Trouble with the coolies--a
traveller hasn’t all his time to gaze at Nature.

=August 24.=--Really it is hard work to carry tents and everything
along these rivers. Often I alone find it difficult to go, and I have
nothing to carry--except my fan and my hammer, both of which are in
constant use. Sometimes it would be impossible to go where we have been
with boots, the straw sandals give such a clinging grasp that we are
able to get a foothold on a steep rock which in boots it would be mad
to attempt.

Fortunately the river into which one would be precipitated is seldom
deep enough to be dangerous. The day’s scientific results are solid,
but not thrilling. Tents are a luxury, but I would rather sleep out
under the stars. With all these coolies and people I am not allowed
to do my own cooking, but I most fervently wish I might. The food is
rendered needlessly trying by their attempts at European cooking--but
they mean so well! They even carried a chicken for my consumption, but
will only cook it for ten minutes, so it is as hard as the stones we
are hunting for.

=August 25.=--This morning the whole party got up very early and went
off fishing in the river. Line fishing being slow, they used dynamite,
which is against the law of the land. However, it was suggested by
our policeman that the method should be used, and _he_ provided the
dynamite! As he was the only representative of the law within miles,
our consciences were clear. They chose a deep still part of the river,
the dynamite exploded with foam, and many dead fish floated up, which
the coolies plunged into the water to obtain. Our breakfast trout were
very fresh, and tasted delicious after being roasted on sticks over
the camp-fire. The camp is on a tiny island mid-stream, and with the
white tent, and the shelter of boughs for the coolies, is extremely
picturesque. On the bank opposite, luxuriant trees and ferns hang over
the clear water; if I were only here unofficially I should be perfectly
happy. It is a curious feeling being the leader of an expedition
and being fussed after so much, and determining whether a dozen men
shall go up-stream or down, sleep here or walk on farther. We are
returning to the little coal mine settlement of Ōyubari to-night, after
collecting a good many specimens.

[Illustration: COOKING THE BREAKFAST FISH ROUND THE CAMP FIRE]


=August 26.=--We went into the Ōyubari mine. One of its seams is 22
feet thick. There are quite simple workings, and no fossils. We then
returned along the track in trucks to meet the train for Yubari, where
I examined the rubbish tip of the mines, without much success. The
policeman never leaves me, and scrambles up and down the stones after
me with an extremely amused smile. The whole expedition causes him
considerable trouble, but also it is a source of many future jokes
and stories, for him as well as for me. To-day he was dressed in
the dignified flowing robes of grey and black silk worn by Japanese
gentlemen (policemen are of a much higher class here than with us), and
he looked far too beautiful to mess about the coal. (He is pictured in
the photograph which faces p. 12.)

[Illustration: MY POLICEMAN IN HIS PRIVATE DRESS]

=August 27.=--Mining and river work.

=August 28.=--We came to Poronai, which is often called Horonai, as no
Japanese name begins with P, and the word being Aino it is softened in
this way. The distance traversed was really very small, but mountains
and other things interfered, so that it took a long time to get here.
I went down the coal mine, which is very interesting. I proved to
be a source of intense excitement to the natives, who crowded round
in tiers, and formed a sea of faces with _round_ staring eyes. The
policemen frequently drove them off in a friendly way.

=August 29.=--Rather a sad day. Mr. _Y----_, my trusty and well-beloved
friend, was called away by telegram to Hakodate, where a fearful fire
has practically swept the town away, destroying more than fourteen
thousand buildings, and among them all the property of his parents
and other relatives. To look at the outer man, with his long arms and
legs sticking out beyond a white suit, 6 inches too small in every
direction, with several patches on his knees, and his hideous tie
sticking straight out in front of him as he walks through the streets
of the capital of Hokkaido, no one could imagine him to be a Professor.
After a glance at his quaint eyes, twinkling in his comical face
above his spectacles, one might suspect him of having a character,
but after travelling with him as I have done for these two weeks,
under very unusual circumstances, it is easy to recognise and admire
his exceptional character. He is one of the small dozen of men whom I
really like and respect. Now he is gone, and I must wrestle with an
escort which cannot speak as much English as I can Japanese, which
latter is next to nothing. The complexities of life are bad enough when
one travels with a policeman, a land-surveyor, a special courier and
correspondent, an interpreter, a local guide, and half a dozen coolies,
all in one’s private train! But when the interpreter is the one to
be snatched away, they are rather worse. Without him we went a stiff
journey to-day, over a track 6 inches wide, through the mountains. The
_sasa_ grows solidly over the whole land, usually shoulder high, but
often over my head, and the path is only on the ground, and is usually
quite invisible--one’s feet feel it, but one’s eyes cannot see it. A
hatefully prickly shrub and thick tangles of vine complicate matters
further. And an English botanist before my start said that Japanese
vegetation was like English! This endless _sasa_ and forest goes on
for miles, broken only by the streams. Down some of the streams we
walked, where blue hydrangeas and passion-flowers bend over the water,
and where little crayfish live in thousands. It poured with rain after
mid-day, and we were glad to discover a seam of coal cropping out in
the stream, and make a huge roasting fire. Coming back through the
_sasa_ in that rain was like walking in a river up to one’s neck.

=August 30.=--We all came on the few miles to Ikushimbets. As regards
food the tide has turned indeed, and I am literally stuffed with good
things, till I feel ashamed that I have not an infinite capacity for
containing them; yet this is the tiniest hamlet, existing only because
of the coal mine. We entered the mine in the afternoon; it has very
unusual workings, as the beds are practically vertical, and is most
interesting. How true was Lady Cicely Wainflete’s estimate of an
escort! One of my “protectors” took fright in the mine, and had to be
gently led by the hand and soothed with soft words, while I was left to
come alone down the slope while the sensation lasted.

=August 31.=--Another wet day. We worked up the river collecting. It
is rougher than Yubari river. The coolies manage to make roaring fires
even in the pouring rain. One of the escort is splendid, and does
nearly everything, including carrying me across the deep parts of the
river, which is really a coolie’s work. It is only a pity he can’t
speak English.

In the rain the coolies wear very effective coats made of straw, which
make them look like the most veritable hairy Ainos; for the straw
stands out all round for about 2 feet, and sheds the rain splendidly.

=September 1.=--This morning was by far the most difficult time we have
had. The recent heavy rains have swollen the rivers, and as we depend
entirely on the river bed for our track, it is serious. The water is
also muddy instead of clear, and there are very deep pools into which
it is easy to slip, so that every crossing is rather risky, and we
have to cross innumerable times. This river is much worse than Yubari,
being deeper, and often at the deep parts, where it is impossible to
go in the water, the rocks are steep or overhanging on either side.
Mercifully, even the apparently crumbling shale is not treacherous. At
last the escort made me realise its value; without a couple of them to
put their feet to make steps, or to give a hand round corners, I could
not have got along at all. Also in crossing a river we were so many
and all kept hands, and so there was no real danger. How the loaded
coolies could manage I cannot imagine. It was only the feeling that as
I was the leader I daren’t show fright, that kept me going over some
of those places. However, we were well rewarded, for the fossils I got
that afternoon were the best obtained so far, and after several hours’
brilliant sunshine the water perceptibly lessened. (The photograph
opposite shows the round nodules which I was collecting in the river.)

[Illustration: THE SHALLOWS OF THE RIVER, SHOWING THE ROUNDED NODULES
WHICH CONTAIN THE FOSSILS I WAS SEEKING]

=September 2.=--We came on to Itashinai--a distance which should have
taken one hour, but really took four and a half. In the lower part of
the valleys where cultivation has begun there are many little houses
scattered--houses made entirely of straw! Rice straw is put to all
imaginable uses: sandals, ropes, walls, roofs, cushions, coats, bags,
and many other things are made of it. Of these things the walls are the
least effective, and afford but a miserable shelter for the people in
the straw houses. In the fields where countless tree-stumps still stand
up through the crops, millet, beans, and maize are principally grown.
There are also small patches of leeks, carrots, potatoes, “egg plants,”
and herbs. There are no formal gardens, and flowers are few, except
for a large-flowered convolvulus and red tiger-lilies. The forest and
_sasa_ come right down to the edge of the cultivated patches, and in it
one could be lost in five minutes.

I spent the afternoon and evening trying to obtain information, and
the difficulties, not only of language, are immense. Every question
must be asked in at least half a dozen different ways, and an average
conclusion drawn; it requires more than the patience of Job.

=September 3.=--Coal-mining from early morning; the engineer of the
mines is very intelligent and speaks English, and I found some good
specimens, so the day was successful. With some of the other people I
have been driven to despair. The land-surveyor distracted me the other
day. After we had been walking for about four hours steadily up-stream,
I wished to find the exact spot where we were on the map, and, among
other data, asked him how far he thought we had come (a matter of 6
or 7 miles). “Oh,” he said, with pride, “nearly 500 feet!” I always
ask for all distances several times, in miles and Japanese _ri_ which
I can make out; but they like to show off by telling me in _feet_, and
nothing is so difficult to obtain as the answer to the question asked.

=September 4.=--Sapporo once more. A day of official calls, bowing,
compliments and formalities. They asked me to lecture to the women’s
Aikoku-fujin-kai: the request of the Governor can hardly be refused
after all he has done, so it had to be. The lecture was held in the
large hall of the Government House, the body of the hall filled with
women, the galleries with men; the Governor acting as chairman and
giving an immensely lengthy introductory speech, of which I could
only guess the drift from words here and there,--Professor _My_----
following on with another. It is easy to speak in an interpreted
address, because there is so much time to think between the paragraphs;
but I am sure it has not the same effect on an audience as the direct
address. Some, of course, understood my English. Before the lecture
there was a reception, and I was regaled with tea and cakes and left to
the tender mercies of the ladies, and men who can only speak Japanese;
later, however, the Governor’s German was available, and so it was all
right, and we were quite cheerful till the interpreter arrived with a
solemn face and a black suit.

The Japanese audience does not clap or make any sound,[1] but bows
low at the beginning and end of the speeches, and when I began, “Your
Excellency,” the Governor got up out of his chair and bowed. All the
ladies were in native costume, I was glad to see (how I detest the
semi-European clothes of the streets!), and some were in beautiful
taste, but, curiously enough, of all the 300 I alone had embroidery
on my dress, in the land where we imagine embroidery is rife! I have
already found that the “Jap” things we see so much of in England are
in small relation to the real Japanese things, but are chiefly “export
articles,” which is a Japanese term of reproach.

[1] This does not hold for Westernised places like Tokio, as I
afterwards discovered, where the European method of clapping is much in
vogue.

After reaching home, in about an hour, a courteous secretary followed,
bringing with him all the cakes which I had not eaten at the reception.
Alas, that etiquette demanded that I should return the pretty red
lacquer trays they came in!

=September 5.=--I spent the morning seeing the Museum (pathetic) and
the Botanical Gardens (most interesting) of Sapporo. Mr. B---- took
me out in the afternoon, and we had a long and delightful talk--even
though he is a missionary! I received a most valuable and magnificent
present from the people to whom I lectured last night. Apparently the
lecture pleased them--for of course no well-bred Japanese will tell one
to one’s face that he is pleased or otherwise with anything one does.
Mr. _Y----_ came to supper and we were all very merry.

=September 6.=--Another present! The Inspector of Mines “fears I shall
not be able to get good food when I leave Sapporo” and brings me a
dozen tins of the best meats! chicken, beef, and all kinds of things. I
often wonder why people say that the Japanese are not sincere in their
kindness.

I saw a most interesting method of laying a foundation of a native
building--two dozen women pulling on a fan of ropes, and singing in a
weird way, half drawing and twisting between each pull. A couple of men
directed the heavy pounder which they raised in this way, and let it
fall with a crash to stamp down the earth.

In the afternoon I paid two official and one delightful call, and saw
the beginning of the “Opening of the University” decorations. The
College attains the dignity of a University on September 11. They are
still actively building new departments and have unlimited ground for
more; the whole temple of learning is most pleasing, extensive, and
picturesque.

=September 7.=--I left early for Shiroi, a small village which is
largely pure Aino. A contingent saw me off at Sapporo, and I was
extremely sorry to say farewell to some of them; but to be alone once
more is a real pleasure. At Shiroi I saw all there was to be seen; the
little straw homes and boats (it is a fishing village) of the Aino are
very different from those of the Japanese.

Some of the Aino are extremely picturesque and dignified-looking, their
long, thick, black hair standing out all round their patriarchal heads.
They are not all small; most of the men I have seen are taller than
I am, and very thick-set. The women are terribly disfigured by green
tattoo marks on their faces, the most essential of which is the one
across the lips, which has the appearance of a moustache. One or two
of the young women who have not been tattooed are very handsome. They
are a fundamentally different race from the Japanese, and there is very
good evidence that they are actually descended from the stone-tool
using people, who once covered all the Japanese islands.

I came on to Noboribetsu to spend the night. It is about ten miles from
the station, and to it runs the first road I have yet seen outside a
village. Such a road! It is a marvel to me how we ever got out of its
swamps and ruts, and how the wheels could all be at such extremely
various and varying angles without coming off. Half-way there it got
dark, and the rest of the journey we went tearing down little slopes
or crashing and jolting over the ruts, when there was only a margin of
about a foot between us and a ravine. Yet nothing happened.

=September 8.=--I spent last night in the crater of a semi-active
volcano! Yet it was not so thrilling as it sounds. The crater is
nearly a mile across, and much of it is just like a deep-wooded
circular valley, in which are a little hotel and one or two houses.
Only a couple of hundred yards or so away from the hotel the active
part remains, however, and there are vents and small cones, bubbling
streams of boiling water, and piles of sulphur in any quantity. Some of
the boiling basins are black and solid-looking, and some frisky with
little geysers--most of them tame enough for close acquaintance, but a
few dangerous and impossible to approach. As I look out on the hotel
garden the steam rises in thick clouds from the boiling stream bubbling
through it, which is utilised for baths. The Guide-book naively says:
“The only drawback to a visit to the springs of Noboribetsu is the
chance of meeting naked bathers.” I would say “_certainty_ of meeting.”
But I got off quite alone and went up through the woods, following a
track of course--it would be mad to leave it here--and saw three snakes
in an hour, one nearly 4 feet long hardly moved from the path. I met
an Aino, tattooing and all, and we exchanged a few courtesies in bad
Japanese. Aino itself is a curiously hard language, nearly all _k’s_.

=September 9.=--A wet drizzling day, which blurs all the landscape, so
that trees, sky, rain and sulphurous clouds all merge into one another.
The air is heavy, and full of the odour of rotten eggs. I am the only
European here, and am living absolutely _à la Japonaise_. The place is
entirely untouched by our civilisation, and my room is a gem of native
art: the delicate wooden trellis-work and bands of black lacquer on
the paper doors and windows, the beautiful heavy metal fire-pot and
embossed kettle are _real_ Japanese of good quality. I sincerely wish I
could bring such a room to London, it would delight those followers of
the _art nouveau_ who have retained some of their original conceptions
of the beauty of simplicity. I was rather glad to leave the hot
choking fumes, however, and reach Mororan at night. It is a pretty
little port, in a beautiful bay forming a splendid natural harbour. I
went on board at 9 o’clock at night.

=September 10.=--We should have arrived at 10 or 11 o’clock this
morning at Aomori (on the main island), but there was a storm, the
tail of one of the typhoons which are abounding this year, and we did
not get in until after 4 in the afternoon. While waiting three hours
to catch the train I saw a little of the town, and spent some time
soothing a distracted missionary and his wife, recently from America,
and not yet accustomed to waiting, and trusting large sums of money
to Japanese porters with no guarantee that they would get the tickets
they wanted. Japan takes some learning, and a highly-strung American
accustomed to New York bustle must find it a peculiarly hard lesson.

=September 11.=--I arrived at Matsushima station at 5 o’clock this
morning and took a _kuruma_[2] to the place itself, on the way stopping
to climb a small hill which overlooks the wonderful archipelago--one of
the three greatest sights of Japan. As I sat there the sun rose, and
lit up the gleaming water and the thousand pine-decked islands, whose
shapes are so fantastic that one can only imagine them to be the work
of the drollest of trolls, who with his drollery had a soul that was
rare enough to combine nobility of beauty with fantastic form.

[2] The native name for the mail-cart-like hand-carriage I called a
rickshaw at first. It is only in Yokohama and such Europeanised places
that the word rickshaw is understood.

The hamlet of Matsushima is built among similar rocks on the dry land,
which has certainly risen from the sea. This little place, utterly
unspoiled by European influence (I did not even see a European hat), is
the Japan I have dreamed of, and had begun to fear I should not find.
I cannot describe it here; if anything can move me to write literature
some day, it may be that place as I saw it at sunrise.

I sailed among the fairy islands in a dreamland boat--which went so
slowly and so smoothly that I thought it did not move--to Shiogama, in
which I saw no romance, and took a _kuruma_ for 5 miles off the line
of beaten roads, and the railway to a tiny hamlet by the sea. Here I
put up in an inn built on a little rocky peninsula, which is just big
enough to hold it and a few pine trees. When the tide is in we cannot
get into the front door! The room which I have opens on two sides to
the sea, the front is shut off only by folding-doors from another with
three sides open to the sea, so that at will I could have my three
walls removed and the sea view all round. A more ideally beautiful
situation it would be quite impossible to find: on either side stretch
blue bays with sandy shores, and rocky islets with twisted pines
growing on them in all manner of ways, and beyond lie line after line
of blue hills, which in the distance merge into the blue sky.

=September 12.=--To-day was spent in finding out paths to tiny fishing
hamlets along the coast, and seeing ever new and delightful rocks--one
is pierced by a big hole, 30 feet or so above sea-level.

At night there was a great sensation in the bay, as many big
fishing-boats came in. On the shore they lit huge blazing fires, the
men and women singing all the time, and every now and then one of them
seizing a burning brand and rushing into the water with it up to their
necks, and even swimming out with it to the boats. The new moon rose
clear and sparkling above the bay. It seemed wicked to go to bed. I am
the only visitor of any kind staying in this hotel.

=September 13.=--My hours are primitive: rising with the sun about 6,
and breakfasting; eating again at 12 and 6, and going to bed after
seeing the sunset shadows deepen into night and the stars rise over the
sea--_i.e._ about 7 o’clock.

I walked into Shiogama for some shopping, but was much noticed by the
country people, for I wore a white blouse, a skirt, and hat. Here the
women all wear long blue trousers and short tunic-like kimonos, and I
found they took no notice of me at all when I wore what I wore in the
mountains, namely, short close knickers and coat to match.

=September 15.=--Alas, it is the last day of my short holiday. The
weather has been perfect these four days.

=September 16.=--A long and tedious day travelling, beginning at 5 in
the morning. I did not reach my Tokio home till 11 at night, and then
found that they had given me up and all gone to bed. On the way I had
to change and wait two hours at Sendai, which I therefore explored
a little. It is noted for ornaments and trays made of fossil wood
so-called, which is found in quantity in a mountain near by. It seems
to be gymnospermic, however, and to correspond more to our “bog-oak”
than to an actual fossil, so I lost scientific interest in it, but
liked it well enough as a curiosity to buy some specimens.

=September 17.=--After a month’s absence my correspondence has
accumulated, and to-day has been spent largely in reading and writing
letters. Also, this is just the last day or so for the swimming out
of the spermatozoids of _Ginkgo_, and I spent a few delightful hours
in the Laboratory watching their infusorian-like movements and the
quick vibrations of their spiral crowns of cilia. Fancy cutting up
dozens of juicy Ginkgo seeds! I lunched in the Institute with the
botanical staff, who have a wonderfully detailed knowledge of all my
doings, likes and dislikes--from the newspaper! Apparently one or
other of my retinue has acted as special correspondent for the papers.
Mercifully, it is all published in Japanese characters, so that the
European residents can’t read it, or I should not dare to present my
introductions.

=September 18.=--A quiet day at the Institute, trying to overtake my
writing arrears. The last forty-eight hours it has rained incessantly,
and the roads are an interesting study. They may be divided into
three main classes, viz. those which are well made, and which have
been washed spotlessly clean by the rain--these are very few and far
between; those which have retained the water, and mixed it with their
own soil until there is a swamp of thick, boggy, squashy mud from 2 to
10 inches deep--these predominate; and those on which water alone is to
be seen, varying from 2 inches to 3 feet in depth. Through a quarter of
a mile of the latter I had to come, in a _kuruma_ of course, but the
man was up to his hips in water, and I was glad indeed that my house is
on the top of a hill as I saw the floods rushing through the houses.

=September 22.=--The roads of Tokio are a never-ending source of
delight when their muddiness does not force itself home. A hundred
times in a walk, even in the heart of the city, one comes upon a bend
of the road where groves of bamboo or pine trees are seen, as though
one were far away in the country; or a rivulet will cross the lane (so
many of the city roads are like nothing but our country lanes), and
its mossy banks hanging with ferns are luxuriant, as only our Lake
District streams are luxuriant, in their glorious greenery of delicate
fronds. Or perhaps a bend of the road will take one away from a little
village of shops into a narrow avenue of straight-growing cryptomerias,
leading to a tiny shrine or temple with its garden and moss-grown
stepping-stones. Along the line of the electric city railway we all
walk freely, and to-day I found corners of woodland and scraps of
meadow along its course--little forgotten scraps of land where small
bamboos and feathery grasses, and sweet white and blue flowers grow in
brilliant, fresh, dustless perfection. A hundred times a day I ask
myself, “Can this be a city?” While the main streets are “streety”
enough, the charming spots are always only a few yards away from them.

I cannot understand how it is that land and rents are so outrageously
dear, dearer even than in the parts of London just outside the city.
Here so much seems to be left to run wild, or to form a garden or field
round a tiny house--wasted commercially--but what a rich delight to
those who live in this sweet garden city!

Early this morning I had a real Japanese experience. I was wakened at
about 5 o’clock by a tremendous sensation among my walls and floor, as
though they were all striving to part company. I at once thought of a
typhoon, and as my floor was swaying like the ocean waves, I started
to rush downstairs, my room being the only one on the second story.
Then I rushed back, thinking of all the awful tales of robberies I
had heard, and seeing a figure approaching me, I accosted it angrily
and demanded it to give an account of itself and be off! It was some
time before I recognised myself in the glass! All the time the floor
was swaying violently in what I fancied was a fearful wind--when it
suddenly stopped, and I lay down feeling very sea-sick. Then, and then
only, did I remember that I was in a land of earthquakes, and had just
experienced my first. I heard later in the day that it had been a
moderately bad one.

=September 23.=--A rather broken day with papers at the Institute. I
have not yet worked off my Hokkaido debt of letters and presents.

There was a local festival in the temple near my house, and the houses
were gay with scarlet and white lanterns, and branches of scarlet and
white paper flowers.

=September 24.=--A universal holiday, and the Institute is shut. The
day was filled with sight-seeing, temples and gardens. Of the several I
saw, two in the heart of the city were in such striking contrast as to
be worth an attempt at description.

To the one, the approach was lined by rows of little open shops, whose
trivial gaudy wares were pressed upon the throngs of passers-by. In the
open court of the temple were many stalls and small tea-houses, and
hundreds of pigeons fluttering about to be fed. One could buy one sen’s
worth (about a farthing’s worth) of peas and rice from the numerous
little stalls kept by ancient women. The birds did not appreciate my
offering properly, as it was a festival, and they were already overfed,
and so contented themselves with pruning their feathers perched on
the great eaves of the temple, or on the nose or curly tail of some
of the many great dragons. In the vestibule of the temple (this is
hardly the right word, but I know no other to express it) hundreds of
people clattered in their wooden clogs, and chattered loudly, gazing
through the wire-netting into the inner portion, where the priests and
readers in gorgeous array and pomp were carrying on a service. The
whole effect was not unlike that of a good Roman Catholic Church, but
more glittering and richer. As I was watching, a large part of the
ceremony seemed to consist in turning over the folds of manuscript
very rapidly, giving the effect of endless streams of writing. Into
a money-box, as large as a small swimming bath, the devotees threw
their small coins, often over the heads of the groups in front of
them. Glitter, bustle, noise, and crowds characterise this temple. The
other I found by chance in one of the dear little side roads I love.
It stood grey and solemn in the midst of its green garden, its great
bell in a little house beside it, and its old stone figures and great
lotus of copper. Twisted pines and moss-grown paths around it, and
behind a silent grove of pine and bamboo. Complete silence in the heart
of the city, and though I remained in the garden some time no person
came to disturb its peace. Greyness and greenness--and one brilliant
golden butterfly dancing above the great green copper lotus, one shrub
with scarlet flowers flung against a grey sky--and in the heart of it
all the silence of Buddha, whose heart does not seem to beat as he
contemplates the universe.

=September 25.=--A tiring day, but little to show for it. Tokio
certainly makes one very sleepy, and also demands the expenditure of
much time to get a small result.

=September 26.=--Official visit to the Director of the Survey--time
spent getting there and back, three hours--length of visit, ten
minutes. The rest of the day at the Institute.

=September 27.=--An amusing day spent at the sale by auction of all
the household effects of the Spanish consul. It appears that these
sales are recognised social functions, and all the good Society was
represented, from the Embassy and some Baronesses downwards. I managed
to get two feather pillows for twice what they cost in England, but
half what they cost here in the shops; and so hope to rest more
peacefully at night now. There is such a frightful duty on all foreign
goods that every one here buys what they can at these sales; as they
are all the goods of friends, which have sometimes been the round of
several distinguished families, there is no feeling against obtaining
them. It only wanted tea and a little music to be like an “At Home.”

=September 28.=--A quiet day at the Institute. The gardens surrounding
it are largely situated on elevated ground, so that one looks down on
tree tops and out over an expanse of clear blue sky and lovely light
clouds. Now the temperature is like our best days in June, and the
actual sunshine still hotter and brighter.

=September 29.=--Sunday--so we went to visit temples. This time to
a tiny lonely one in the country to the north of the town. Though
it was less than 10 miles out of Tokio, everything was fresh and
beautiful, and quite untainted with the horrible suburban effect of our
environs--it was real country, though not at all solitary. Between the
green fields, where the crops looked as fresh and vigorously sprouting
and green as with us in the late spring, were quiet lanes and narrow
roads overhung by the swaying feathery shafts of the tall bamboos.
Every quarter of a mile or so in all directions were little woods of
bamboo and pine or cryptomeria, in the midst of which generally one
or two small houses nestled, their thick thatches overgrown by the
blue-flowered relative of tradescantia, which is here so pretty and so
plentiful. Surrounded by its little grove of cryptomerias the wooden
temple stands apart from all houses--a small closed building, hung with
gaudy pictures from the devotees whose prayers have been answered.
Leading to it is an imposing flight of well-kept stone steps, but as
there is no gate, and a dozen paths through the wood lead to the temple
by easier grades, they are more for show than use. A big stone trough
stands filled with water for the worshippers to wash their hands before
folding them in prayer--but I saw no worshippers, and I stayed there in
the quiet for a number of hours.

A fraction of a mile away was the small ill-kept cemetery, with little
grey headstones and forlorn wooden laths with the names of the dead,
but no visible graves.

The tall _tsuzuki_ reed, with its clusters of feathery fruits standing
out against the sky at evening, and the stars twinkling through the
beautiful bamboo and the trees of sweet chestnuts, all seemed far too
fresh and unsullied to be so near a city. The Japanese can certainly
populate a place without defacing it. The absence of all railings and
notice boards is also very soothing.

=September 30.=--A cut-up day at the Institute. Dr. _Y----_, one
of the geologists from the Survey, visited me and we spent some
time discussing the beds of Hokkaido. This country is an extremely
difficult one for us all, so little is yet quite reliably finished, as
exposures are so scarce.

=October 1.=--A long morning down at the Survey Offices with the
Director and Dr. _Y----_, chiefly planning for the next venture, which
is to be in the directly opposite direction from the last, and promises
difficulties not a few. This time I _will not_ go with a huge escort
like the last.

On the way back to the Institute I looked into the biggest drapers
while the sale of the year was on--all Japanese of course, and very
amusing.

=October 6.=--A miserable, wet day, spent with small profit at the
Institute preparing for another long expedition. The least heavy
rain seems to give rise to floods at some place or other, and again
the roads were quite impassable except for the coolies, who drew my
_kuruma_ through.

=October 8.=--I arrived at last at Okayama at about 3 in the afternoon,
very dirty after the night in the train, and tired for want of food--to
be met by a party of Japanese, most kind and welcoming, who took me
to a charming hotel and kept me sitting and talking for two hours
without a chance of even washing! They also took me to see the renowned
Koraku-en garden, and it was half-past six before I could get a bath,
and while I was still dressing the _kuruma_ came to take me off to a
meeting of Naturalists, which took the form of a dinner in my honour.

The gardens of Koraku-en were certainly very pretty, but less so than
one would expect from the descriptions of them one reads. They were
once the private property of the owner of the castle at the foot of
which they lie. In them are vistas and views cleverly constructed,
and many pretty little rocky islands and bridges. There are also some
sacred cranes which live in separate apartments in a house of their
own, and which take the air and sun themselves in the best part of the
day. What pleased me far more than these much-praised gardens were the
little courts and gardens of the hotel in which I was staying. From
my room I could look down from the verandah on to two little gardens,
with dwarf trees and green paths and grey stepping-stones leading to
imaginary distances.

On my way out, for the house was large and rambling, with several ways,
I could pass a square garden but 10 feet or so big, in which was a
little temple, with lanterns and lions and gateway all complete. Here
every evening the lanterns were lit, and incense sticks glowed, sending
a sweet scent along the corridors. It was the smallest temple I have
seen, and also one of the prettiest additions to a house.

The dinner with the Naturalists was a somewhat trying affair. There was
but one lady and she was obviously asked for my sake, and was put next
me at the table. The President and I sat opposite to each other in the
middle of the long table, and kept something of a conversation going,
though I had to furnish all the subjects, which was a little difficult
after more than twenty-four hours’ travelling and no rest after my
arrival. The others were mute, except when I turned to ask a definite
question, or said something which the President repeated to them, and
suggested discussion. All could speak English nominally. The dinner was
in foreign style and included four meat courses, and I found few of
those present knew which things to eat with which table implement, so
I was repaid in kind for the entertainment I must have afforded while
learning to use chop-sticks. Fortunately it was possible to leave very
early, and I welcomed a good night in my charming Japanese room.

=October 9.=--I was up at 6 to start to the real place for work and
was seen off by a deputation, and shaken for some time in the train of
a local branch line. After that came the truly awful business of the
day--four hours in a _kuruma_!

The _kuruma_ is a kind of mail-cart on two wheels (country specimens
have no springs), and is drawn by a man over stony roads. The works
of the thing jolt, jingle, and clang till one’s head splits and one’s
bones feel sore.

The road lay along a very beautiful valley, however, cut out of the
steep rocky sides running along the broad and beautiful river of
Takahashi. I entirely escaped the Guide-book--not so easy a job either,
as it is written by Chamberlain, who knows the country better than
most Japanese, and who has numerous collaborators who seem to inform
him of minute details, even of very out-of-the-way places. At the end
of the journey I found a much better inn than I expected under the
circumstances.

Then the excitement began--and I had to explain at the Prefecture that
I had come to see coal, and to find out where it was. The maps are so
small (Geol. Survey though they be) that one is extremely dependent on
local information. To do all this in Japanese with people who did not
understand a syllable of English, was no joke! It is the first time I
have been so absolutely cut off from English; they could not even read
Japanese names in Romaji print, in which my maps and all scientific
things are now done. It was interesting--and I hammered away till I
got my end, and found the _Triassic_ coal I sought, but, alas, there
was nothing in it of value to me. The trouble I had to get it began in
Tokio, where they told me first it didn’t exist, second, that it was
finished and the mines stopped down. In Okayama also they said no coal
in this district existed--instinct kept me at it, however, and though
the people even here said there was none, I insisted there was--and lo!
after a while they took me to it. It was the very smallest and most
primitive coal mine I ever saw, it is true--but it was coal. To-morrow
I am going to another place: it is sad to find no fossils just here,
they would have been such a triumph!

My dinner consisted of rice, green peas, and boiled chestnuts, with a
little fish as well. One learns to value green peas, even though they
be cold and floating in the water in which they were boiled, and eaten
one by one with chop-sticks!

No three consecutive minutes of peace were allowed to me. I was
desperately tired, and though I sat with my eyes shut for quite long
periods and hardly spoke to them at all, my visitors sat on and on till
I was frantic. I have a fellow-feeling now for animals at the Zoo.

=October 10.=--While still in bed, visitors began again this morning,
and I had to shout to prevent an official visitor from coming in while
I was taking off my night-gown. On starting two of them came with
me, and their number more than doubled before the day was out. More
terrible hours of _kuruma_ riding--but the little village of Jito was
worth a visit. Early in the morning heavy downy mists hung round the
hills, and swirled up from the trees as the sun caught them. All the
thousands of cobwebs were like fairy banners on the trees, and the
rocky sides of the mountains rose from the rivers to be lost in the
alluring distances. It was a sight well worth the shivering and the
jolting, and directly the sun shone on one it gave a comforting heat.
The nights are extremely cold, almost wintry, but the days are as hot
as midsummer, hence the thick mists.

We entered the mine, which, unfortunately, though Triassic, is of no
interest to me. A kind of dinner was given at the hotel at 2 o’clock,
and I saw many rather crude native customs.

The man who had led me in the mine, whom I took to be a coolie, and
to whom I gave sixpence, turned up at dinner. In the mine his entire
costume had consisted of a striped flannelette shirt, very short,
and a stand-up white collar!! Literally no more, and that was donned
of course in my honour. Trousers with a red stripe down each leg, and
socks, were added for the dinner.

Everything in this country seems to be the reverse of what it is with
us, and here the dinner _starts_ with much drinking of _saké_ and very
frequent exchange of the small cups; then no more is drunk and the food
begins and finishes the feast.

After the coal mine business was finished, I was taken to a big school
where there were festive sports going on, very similar in the main to
our school sports, and obviously in imitation of them. Many of the boys
and girls (the schools are mixed) were pretty and bright, though the
Japanese child has not yet appealed to me as it does to those who gush
over it.

=October 11.=--Things began at 6 this morning, when all the world was
shivering in its thick white mantle of mist. After riding for a couple
of hours the sun drove it all away, and by 10 o’clock I was streaming
with perspiration from every pore as I went up the hills toward the
little coal mine I had come out to see.

I thought I had fully impressed on the Japanese man who acted as local
guide that I was desperately pressed for time and must return to the
railroad town to-night--but after a couple of hours I found myself
inside the big “middle school,” bowing to an English-speaking head,
who soon asked me to give a lecture! Of course I refused, and said I
was going _at once_ to the coal mine, and would then return to Tatai,
but he accompanied me to the mine, leaving his rightful duties with
not the smallest compunction, and on the way requested me to stop and
have my photograph taken. The Japanese are perfectly infuriating to
one with a definite object and precious time. I cannot here retail the
multitudinous instances of senseless delay I have had to suffer from,
nor the irrelevant things I have had to examine. If I were to go at
their rate I should be still looking at coal mines in Japan ten years
hence. But I must not forget that I am seeing the country if I am not
getting directly to my goal, and that I am in myself a certain amount
of entertainment for them, a kind of creature they have not heard of
before.

After a rather fruitless couple of hours in the mine (results locally
interesting, as the Imperial Survey has mapped the district as solid
granite) I had six hours in a _kuruma_ returning to Tatai. The _kuruma_
was just as uncomfortable as country ones always are, and as I was
packed in with my fossils so that I could not change my position, and
the roads were in places very bad, I was hardly in the mood at the
end of the journey to be put into a train, merely to wait stock-still
at the first local stopping-place for three-quarters of an hour. I am
becoming far more patient than Job ever was, but at times my stock of
patience runs out.

Apart from the mere weariness of one’s bones, the _kuruma_ ride was
very delightful. Every time I see the little groves of feathery bamboo
in their grace and sweetness I rejoice anew. The valleys along which
the road wound were very steep, and the great granite hills majestic
and beautiful. The plants, too, are often charming, and one frequently
sees a single trail of ampelopsis flung across the grey boulders. One
great wall of granite was covered with blood-red ampelopsis and capped
with the native pine, which is so rich in curious curves, and so green
against the sapphire sky.

Although the country is quite wild and unspoiled, all along the
flatter part of the valleys were very many houses--clusters of houses
or hamlets lying at intervals of about one-eighth of a mile. It seems
curious how the little rice fields, which are tucked into every
available damp corner, can support so many people. Straw plaiting
is also a source of income, and in almost every house some one was
twisting the short lengths of gleaming white straw into braids.

The greatest charm of Japan is the way the natives have of inhabiting,
even thickly populating, a district without in the least spoiling
it--except of course where there is a railway, a few yards on either
side are necessarily spoiled a little.

The single line of telegraph wire puzzled me not a little to-day. I
could not imagine why, when it was raised in the usual way on posts 20
feet or more, it should be made of _barbed wire_, when I discovered
that the effect was caused by millions of dragon-flies, perched singly
on it at intervals of about 6 inches from each other! I never saw two
closer than that, or more than 18 inches apart, for about 10 miles!
Now and then one would fly off, or another settle, but most of them sat
quite motionless on the wire. So the only “barbed wire” I have seen in
Japan was made voluntarily by blue dragon-flies who sat there to sun
themselves.

=October 12.=--The hour for rising gets earlier every day. This morning
it was 5 o’clock, with the prospect of 12–14 hours in a wretched slow
train. I am writing in the train now, at the stoppings, which are
never less than five minutes, and often ten or fifteen minutes long,
at every station. The whole distance in all these hours of travel will
be less than 200 miles. The people in the train are, of course, a
little interesting, but far more saddening. Where the train with its
Western atmosphere has penetrated, the beautiful and dignified robes,
the silken skirts and kimonos of both men and women, though principally
of the men, are giving place to a hybrid mixture of all the vulgar and
hideous garments of “civilisation.” Only a few of the most cultured
Japanese know how to dress in good taste in our things, the others are
unspeakable.

Just now the train is skirting a part of the coast of the famous
“Inland Sea,” and small islands lie thickly scattered in it, with their
pines clinging by great twisting roots on to their rocks. The persimmon
trees, with their great golden fruits, look very beautiful beside the
pines, and are richly laden with their delicious fruit, so that they
are noticeable from quite a distance.

After arriving at Tokuyama in the evening I went at once to the Naval
Briquette factory of the Government, who own the coal mine farther on
which I wish to see. A most courteous and charming Director, who had
been in both France and England, put me on my way.

=October 13.=--I started early by train for Omine, where the mine lies
on a little railway built on purpose for it during the last war. The
coal is one of the very few smokeless ones in Japan, and therefore very
important. Omine is a tiny hamlet, practically composed of miners and
mine officials,--where the inn is poor but every one only too anxious
to please.

The mines are interesting scientifically, of Rhaetic age. As they
belong to the Navy, the surgeon attached to the mines wears the
uniform of a Naval Officer, little sword and all, and is very smart.
The coal is carried for a long distance by iron baskets on wires
across valleys--stretches of wire 200 yards, with no support. It is so
strange to find the mixture of modern engineering and science with such
primitive native ways.

The weather is lovely, still scorching midsummer sunshine floods the
hills, on which a tree here and there shows a flare of crimson autumn
colouring.

=October 14.=--The Chief Engineer here is most helpful, and offered to
come with me to Habu, a very small mine 20 kilometres or so distant,
where we had to travel by _kuruma_. At first I refused, but afterwards
I was very glad his importunity had prevented my coming alone. The
_kuruma_ left us to walk the last 3-4 kilometres. There was no
definite road, and an old woman volunteered to guide us across little
tracks through rice fields and along the sandy seashore, and through
rice fields again. The maps of course show none of these footpaths,
and without Japanese help it would have been impossible to find the
place. The mine, when we got there, was the most primitive I have
ever seen, smaller than at Nariwa. On the way our old woman leader
took us up from the shore to a big house standing by itself, telling
us that here the manager of the mine lived. As we had despaired of
ever finding the mine, this encouraged us, but we found the house was
only in the process of building, and was of course not inhabited. It
was a beautiful house, with a great temple-like porch gate, an inner
courtyard, and quite a number of out-houses and servants’ dwellings.
Then, when we came to the mine, we found the owner to be a common
working man, and we saw his wife going into the mine to work like the
rest of the peasant women! The whole situation seemed so ridiculously
incongruous. A case of _nouveau riche_ retaining their old habits while
their palace was being built.

In the mines I have often come across women, naked to the waist and
up to the knee, working underground with the men. To-day I saw such a
pretty girl, and her beautiful rounded body was far too sweet to be
smeared with coal.

To-night we went on to Shimonoseki, and my Omine companion kindly
took me to his father’s house there. A delightful house, with a
great flight of rough granite steps leading up to it like those to a
temple. Here I inhabited three big rooms, opening out of each other,
as well as a dressing-room. They were extremely kind, and only spoiled
things by refusing to believe that I could prefer not to have chairs,
etc. brought into their rooms for my use. I pleaded with them, and
was allowed to sit on cushions on the floor, but could not escape a
European dinner instead of the true Japanese meal. However, it was
very good, and I made up for several past meals of poor quality.
I was given the seat of honour, and my host and I ate alone--his
father, mother, aunt, and sister visiting us for short intervals, and
bringing various things, but never sitting with us. They are certainly
wealthy people, and not very cultured, yet there was not the slightest
attempt at display. All that the rooms contained were a single vase
of beautiful flowers in the corner by the _kakemono_ (long picture),
a couple of quaint ornaments, cushions, and in one of the rooms a
beautiful polished table 6 inches high, on which was a carved tray with
hand-painted tea-cups, and the _hibachi_ (charcoal brazier) with an
ornamental kettle boiling on it.

=October 15.=--I got up about 5.30, and crossed over to Kiushiu--my
host coming to see me off and giving all possible help. I did not
arrive at the mine--Namazuta--till 12.30. The mine is a large one, and
though of Tertiary age, contains very many interesting stones.

After examining the mine I returned very late at night to Fukuoka,
having escaped proper meals all day. The chief of the coal mine kindly
gave me fish and rice and a few real Japanese things at 4.30. At
Fukuoka the inn very noisy, but otherwise all right.

=October 16.=--Noise kept me awake till after 12, and I had to get up
about 6.30. I visited the head office, where officials are arranging
for my introduction to several small mines in Amakusa, which is an
island off the island of Kiushiu--and on which no human being speaks a
word of English, and all the natives speak such a curious dialect that
even the Japanese themselves cannot understand it. I guess I shall have
a gay time. On this whole expedition the amount of hours of travelling
per hour in a coal mine is very great, and I seem to be going night and
day to see a mine here and there. (Things have got wrong here somehow.
I have forgotten to mention the Miike mine.)

Some of the scenery is very beautiful, and though, of course, I am
missing all the regulation sights, I see glimpses of beauty here and
there.

The train arrived very late at Misumi, a little port, from which I
shall go to Amakusa. The moon was shining over the calm sea, stretching
into many inlets and set with many islands, and the effect was most
beautiful and romantic. Though I thought the train had landed me in
Misumi, it turned out that I had to take a _kuruma_ to the hotel, and
it went right out into the country, over a hill where not a human being
or habitation was to be seen, and I began to think the _kuruma_ man
had designs on my life and purse. After half an hour he landed me on
the other side of the peninsula, where the village proper lies, and
where there is a moderately good hotel. On the ride we passed many
mud-walled thatched cottages, without a sign of life in them. The
Japanese live in open houses by day, but at night they put boarded
shutters up before every window, so that no one (at least no Japanese,
_I_ insist on mine being opened) in Japan sleeps with fresh air round
him, which, I believe, is the reason there is so much consumption. They
cannot see the silliness of doing this, and are constantly bragging
that they live in the open air, when all their eight to nine hours of
sleep are spent in these very stuffy rooms, with a lamp and generally a
charcoal fire burning beside them.

=October 17.=--The boat was supposed to start at 9 A.M.
this day, but 1 P.M. saw it still gaily coaling. It is the
very smallest steamer I have ever been in, not really as good as a
ferry-boat, but the prospective journey is to last twelve hours. While
waiting about the landing-place I saw many strange fish which were
being brought in. One big fishing-boat had a load of huge creatures,
bigger than men, of two kinds. One kind like lovely dragons, with long
snouts and great wing-like fins, the other fish the most curious I have
ever seen, and apparently, though I don’t know at all, some kind of
shark. They were about 8 feet long and thick as a man’s body, and their
heads were quite flat and square-ended.

I could not have imagined such strange creatures, a drawing gives none
of the extraordinary effect they made lying there in numbers, their
great flat bodies heavier than a man could lift unaided. They are to be
eaten, but seem to me to be terribly coarse.

There is no first class on this steamer, and I am the only second class
passenger, but as my portion should be in a minute cabin with stuffy
curtains and tightly fixed port-holes, I am squatting on deck with
the third class people, who are as thick as flies round a honey-pot.
There are mats spread on the deck, and most of the people are lying
on them wedged against each other. I am sitting on my bags, leaning
fairly comfortably against the rail and next to the only man who is a
real cute traveller. He has spread his blanket (Japanese always travel
with blankets, generally _white_ ones!) its full size, and is lying in
the middle, with a clear 2 feet of spare space all round him, and it
is characteristic of Japanese travellers that though the others are
terribly crowded no one sits on his blanket or asks him to curtail its
extent. The scenery is lovely, and the sea without a ripple. On every
side are hills with range after range of jagged peaks, and in the sea
countless pine-decked islands; land lies all round, and it is difficult
to believe one is at sea. 2 P.M.--I am certainly seeing life:
we have just had tea in picnic fashion, squatting here together--and
indeed most picnics are made to far less beautiful places than this
island-dotted sea. One of the women had brought a tray of small cakes,
all looking excellent, but most of them made with the sweet bean
paste I have not yet learned to like, though there were delicious
sponge-cakes as well, five of which I got for 1¼d.--and I paid three
farthings for my tea, which was three times what any one else did. They
would have given it to the foreigner for nothing--but one must support
the honour of one’s country in a far land, and I have learned that
though the Japanese give very freely and refuse a dozen times to take
payment, they are not really at all averse to receiving it.[3]

[3] I now know that I ought to have given very much more than three
times the price to the peasants had I been anywhere but in the most
unsophisticated parts.

We are twisting in and out of the inlets and coming very close to the
islands, and if the landscape were not so much softer and greener and
more rounded, I could well imagine we were in the Fjords of Norway.
The rocks are in places very white, and here and there near villages
are groups of lime-kilns of primitive type. There are fleets of
fishing-boats everywhere--and I believe (by this time I have seen a
good deal of the country) that there are no consecutive 2 miles along
the whole coast of Japan without a fishing village! It is not on the
coast, but in the mountains that the really solitary places are to be
found.

I arrived almost in the middle of the night, to be welcomed on the ship
by various folk, from the inn-keeper upwards and downwards--there was a
regular lantern procession of people. They all stopped round or in my
room to talk or stare, according to their social stations; the landlord
coming midway, he sat just outside the limit of the room--which was,
of course, widely opened on three sides--and held converse with all of
us within, or hurled abuse at all the maids and boys and small children
who collected without. Fortunately the chief official of the mines
left soon, intimating that it was late, so I got to bed earlier than
I expected and slept well, though, as my window-walls were wide open,
it was so light that I had to put up my umbrella. It is getting quite
usual for me to sleep under my open umbrella, and as the mats they
spread on the floor are never more than 3 or 4 inches thick, it feels
very like sleeping on the seashore, and I quite enjoy it, though at
first I used to wake up and wonder where I could be.

=October 18.=--Early this morning I started to look at mines--with five
people in my official train. This island is one of the least civilised
of Japan, and there are practically no roads on it, though tracks here
and there, and some surprisingly big coal mines. We went from place to
place on foot and in small fishing-boats across the bays, which would
have caused very long detours to walk round; and these were numerous,
for these islands are very much cut up, and the sea surprises one
everywhere one goes, generally on two or three sides at once.

Some of the bigger fishing-boats we passed were most interesting, and
looked, on a small scale, exactly like my imagination of what an old
Egyptian boat must have been. The six oars (one can hardly call them
oars in our sense of the word, for they are thick, and much the same
shape from end to end, and with a little twist in them) were manned
each by three naked men, all standing clad in their skins (which the
scorching hot sun had burnt a lovely brown gold colour), and with the
minutest white-and-blue waist cloth. Round their heads they had a white
or white-and-blue towel tied fillet fashion, with a bow on one side.
As they bent and rose over the oars they shouted all the time and
very hoarsely a sort of meaningless refrain--but it was very good for
keeping time and could be heard a long way off. Of the three oars on
each side of the ships, two were pulled one way and one the other, and
as the pullers kept forgetting which was which, I could not understand
how the boats ever progressed, but they did, and at a pretty good
speed, but far out at sea they put up sails. My little boat tried a
sail for a short time. It was nearly square, with a bamboo to keep it
out at each end, but the peg which held it down gave out when a puff of
wind came and the boat tipped over gaily. The mast was tied in a very
primitive fashion, and I wondered how the fishermen ever dared to go
out to sea in such a craft. It landed us safely, however. One coal mine
we went to was high up, 700 feet straight up from the sea, and amid
pretty scenery. At one mine, where the people were most kind, they had
gone to the extent of carrying a tea-cup with a handle for me, because
they said I could not use their kind without a handle (as though I
never drank out of glasses), but the owner of the mine took off all his
English clothes, down to the shortest shirt I have ever seen, which
was open up the back, and did not think I might find _that_ a little
more difficult to put up with than a cup without a handle. It is a good
thing that I had all the up-to-date ideas of hygiene before I came!

=October 19.=--To-day was spent in returning to the main island of
Kiushiu, for the little ship took nine to ten hours about it. The start
to-day was made in good time, so that three separate sets of people
were late, and the steamer stopped to take them on one by one. A skiff
came along propelled by three boards pulled up from the bottom of the
boat, and left us two passengers. In order to get to the north of this
small island of Amakusa, though only 25 miles or so from the south
of the island, I must go back to the main island, to Mogi, and take
another steamer back to the northern port of Amakusa!--multiplying the
distance a hundred-fold, but there seems nothing else to do, it is
impossible (they assert) to go on foot, and very dangerous to go in a
small boat round the coast, and no steamer runs. The chief manager of
the mines, who has some in the north and some in the south, has to go
this ridiculous round every time he goes between them.

As the northern mines are the same formation and contain identical
specimens with those I have collected in sufficient quantity in the
south, I shall not return, it is too ridiculous and too expensive of
time.

=October 20.=--I reached Nagasaki and found Mr. G---- (the half
Japanese son of a Scotchman and an important person here) most kind.
He arranged for a delightful steam-launch all to myself to take me to
Takashima, a small island which exists for, and is entirely populated
by, the coal-mining people, to whom it belongs.

The mine was the first opened in Japan, and was for some time owned
by Mr. G----’s father; it is the most completely arranged I have yet
seen, probably owing to its age, but is rather dangerous to work, as it
goes miles under the sea, and there is a large quantity of gas. Last
year 300 men were killed in it--I was on the very spot where the chief
engineer was found dead.

There is another little island very near to it, with a coast-line of
only 4000 feet and a population of 2500! It also has a mine which is
entirely under the sea. If the little islands had not stuck up out of
the sea to show where the coal lay hid below it, Japan would have been
much the poorer. As well as working huge quantities, the quality of
this coal is the best they have. They must use salt water, of course,
so they combine their engine work with salt making, and thus make a lot
of money, as well as provide their thousands of people with distilled
water for domestic purposes. It was very funny to go only a couple of
yards from the black coal sacks to the great room filled with snowy
salt.

In the evening I went to dinner with the G----s, and then they took me
to a kind of semi-amateur theatrical performance at the theatre. About
3000 people were in the theatre, very crowded, and nearly all sitting
on the floor in the little divisions corresponding to boxes, but which
fill practically all the space of a Japanese theatre. The only amusing
thing--except the spectators themselves--was a huge dragon made to move
and wriggle by a dozen men, and which darted in and out after a golden
ball--it depends on some legend or other which I have not yet learned.

=October 21.=--Mrs. G---- saw me off at the station and brought butter
and fruit, and the largest pear I have ever seen in my life, which is
most delicious. A prospect of two nights and three days before reaching
Tokio.

=October 22.=--As this train only stops about every fifty miles or
so, and we have to pay extra for its being an express, there are
relatively few passengers, and none of them at all amusing except
one old man, whom I take to be a Chinaman. He is tall and dressed in
widest garments, the trousers being of such flowing description that he
hitches them up behind when he walks, as a lady does her skirts. He has
an amber-coloured silk jacket, slashed up the front, and into this and
the front of his lower garments he has stuffed so many things that he
looks very rotund, which he isn’t by nature. His long hair is done on
the top of his head inside a little fine gauze hat, with a band under
his chin, and he wears enormous brown horn spectacles attached to the
hat.

He smokes a pipe a yard long, and sits all day, with his swathed feet
crossed Buddha fashion, on a brilliant cerise-pink blanket. He cannot
speak a word of Japanese, but can of course write Chinese, so that when
any one wants his ticket or anything from him it must be written down,
or else his three attendants sent for. The attendants are travelling
third class, two in a costume like his, but simpler, the third in a
European knicker-suit combined with a similar gauze hat! Here we see
Chinese _writing_ acting as a medium of communication between these
people, who cannot understand a word of the other’s spoken language.

=October 23.=--I am surprised how well I sleep in these rackety
trains--but the East is very soporific. Much of the scenery is pretty,
particularly the hilly distances. Indeed, most of Japan seems to be
beautiful. I am spending the day reading through the dictionary, a
word here and there sticks and is useful sometimes. It is awful to be
so entirely without literature--nothing is obtainable but character
Japanese, of which, of course, I cannot read a word, and I have had
nothing to read for weeks on these tedious journeyings. This express
train is quite good, and there is an excellent luncheon car attached.

=October 24.=--A day spent at the Institute seeing after letters, etc.,
which of course have all been awaiting my return. I also received
congratulatory and other visits from several people. They seem to think
it some wonderful thing that I go _into_ the mines! At Nagasaki, the
trouble I had to escape interviewers! Two telephoned up for permission
to see me, two came to the hotel, and I refused to see them, and one
followed me to the station, and though I used some insulting Japanese
to him, he bought a ticket and followed me to the train. I wouldn’t
speak a word to him, so I guess very unfavourable comments appeared.

=October 25.=--A very full day, which I began by calling on the
Vice-Minister of Education, to whom an official call has long been
due. Once more I had to grieve over the poverty and bad taste of the
European furniture with which so many official Japanese are replacing
their own simple and dignified arrangements.

I then went to a Faculty lunch at the University--to-day being the day
when all the professors of the Science College meet and lunch together.
Through the week the other colleges and faculties have their day. I met
many friendly people, Professor _S----_ being particularly charming.
The dining-hall is in Japanese style, but tables and food European.
The floor mats being Japanese, we must take off our boots and patter
about in slippers, which are all made of one size and belong to the
University. I can’t keep them on, and people are always fetching me new
ones when I quietly discard an importunate pair.

The Minister of Education has this year started a sort of Academy
of Pictures, and gave me an invitation for the private view. There
were three sections, Japanese paintings proper, oils after the manner
of foreigners, and sculpture. The latter very bad; the two former
sections, though containing only about a couple of hundred exhibits,
yet had a larger number of beautiful things than our Academy ever
shows. The selection had been very careful, eight out of every ten
rejected, and each hung with at least 1 foot of wall space all round
it, and nothing skied!

=October 26.=--A party from the Botanical Institute went on a botanical
excursion to Nikko, a very renowned and lovely district about 2000
feet above the sea. The temples there are marvellous, and the whole
region one of the “three places” of Japan, and so well known and often
described that I shall not attempt to give any account of its technical
glories. A few things struck me specially, but the glorious carving and
gilding and rich beauty of the temples I am not qualified to describe.
In the temple I specially liked the Sacred Horse. Dear beast (he is
alive, of course), he had been at the war and come through safely, but
his rider, a prince of the Imperial house, who had been a High Priest
up to the dis-establishment of the priesthood, was killed. The horse
now lives in his beautiful dwelling in the temple, and is fed by the
faithful on beans, which are sold at a farthing a dish. It seems so
cruel to give him such small helpings at a time that I gave him half
a dozen simultaneously, and so the keeper-priest gave me a picture of
this animal in all his sacred trappings.

One of the principal glories of the temples is the magnificent avenue
of giant cryptomeria trees,--an avenue more than 20 miles long, all
planted 300 years ago by a single Daimio. Along the turbulent stony
river a quiet paved path runs beneath tall trees, and beside it are
many little shrines and temples. On the hill above, with a great flight
of stone steps leading to it, is the tomb of the first great Shogun,
a man in his time mightier than the Mikado. The stones used in the
building of the steps and foundations are enormous, and one wonders how
it was possible to engineer them 300 years ago. Now it would be almost
an impossibility to build in such a grand style. Close to the temples
is the small Alpine garden belonging to the University, and really a
branch of the Tokio Botanical Garden. It is small, but charming, with
many little streams and rocky pinnacles on which the alpine plants are
growing, and from it is a splendid view of the fine hills beyond. Every
tourist goes to Nikko, and every book on Japan describes it, so I need
say nothing.

=October 27.=--We continued on foot up the hills to Chuzenji, a large
lake about 4500 feet up--the steep valleys up which we went were quite
indescribably glorious, with the autumnal colourings of the maples and
other trees.

Crimson and scarlet, chrome, ochre, vermilion and orange, gold and
copper coloured trees, covering the grey rocks and massed against
a sapphire sky. Such magnificence of colouring was beyond all
imagination--and was indeed a “botanical lesson.” We passed several
notable waterfalls, one of which had a particularly interesting
geological structure.

=October 28.=--We returned down to Nikko and took the train to Tokio.
Though it is sad to leave their beauty we are glad to get back to
warmth, for the lovely heights were very cold.

=October 29.=--The day was spent at the Institute and paying official
calls. The fossil cutting-machine is going on splendidly. Professor
_F----_ is showing engineering genius in getting its house built.

=October 30.=--I was at work at the Institute all day, chiefly writing
letters to try to catch up the arrears. Late in the afternoon I called
at the Embassy, and found that the Ambassador is a very genial man, who
professes to be interested in fossils and asks permission to come and
see them. Will he, I wonder?

=November 1.=--A glorious sunny day, which lured me out from my room
in the Institute, and made me take my book to the little grove of pine
trees by the Laboratory, where I lay in the sun, as solitary as in the
middle of a forest--the blue sky above as brilliant as one can imagine
it.

=November 2.=--All to-day was spent in moving to my new rooms, which
are both upstairs, and open out of each other in the convenient
Japanese fashion, and as I am planning to sleep on the true Japanese
quilts (which are put away during the day), I shall have two reception
rooms, or one big drawing-room, at will. Along the rooms is a broad
verandah, so that, as the partitions can be moved between it and the
rooms, I have quite a lot of space if I like to give a party.

=November 3.=--I am increasingly charmed with my rooms. The hostess is
so friendly and nice, and the five dogs keep us so safe from robbers
that I can have all my walls and windows open at night if I like.

I looked out on to my little Japanese garden this morning and saw my
host with a watering-can, but the hasty conclusion which an Englishman
would come to, that he was watering the plants, was wide of the
mark--he was watering the stones, which are carefully chosen to lie in
an irregular fashion, and so simulate the rocky bed of a little stream.
There is also a pond in this garden, and a forest and a shrine, and the
whole thing is not more than 30 feet square.

Dr. _H----_ took me to a _Nō_ performance. These are extremely
interesting old plays, some of them written about 300 years ago, and
they are still acted in the same way as they were originally. The
intonation (which is most peculiar), dresses, steps, even the movements
of the hands, are all according to prescribed rules, and all so
highly specialised and conventionalised that it is hard even for most
Japanese to understand them. The arrangements of stage, actors, chairs,
musicians, etc. remind one partly of the old Greek plays and partly
of the original Shakespearean style of acting. There is no scenery,
but one pine tree and a few necessary implements; the music-makers and
chorus sit on the stage at the back and side, and chant in unison with
the “dancing” (which by the way is a series of slow and very stiff
poses, not dancing at all in our sense of the word). The stage is
square, and projects out so that the audience sit on three sides of it.

The performance began at 9 in the morning, but I was there soon after
half-past eight to see the audience come in. There was no artificial
light, and as it poured with rain it was at times rather dark, and
the rain came in in places. I left at 3.30 and it was still going
on--not being over till 4.30. This was not all one piece, but a series
of about six short plays, each representing only one incident or
situation, and quite disconnected. As the Japanese themselves do not
fully understand it without years of study, I could not expect to,
but was most interested nevertheless. Mr. Poel would have enjoyed it
vastly, for, as he considers should be the case with great literature,
nearly all scenery and such things are left to the imagination, and
the whole interest of the audience centres in the principal actor’s
words. It is impossible to describe this fully, the _Nō_ is totally
different from the Japanese theatre proper, and is only visited by
refined or highly-cultured people, who study it deeply. Dr. _Mk----_,
who was to interpret for me, went to sleep! Dr. _H----_ has studied the
pieces for years and knows them well, but can explain very little to me
about them. All the pieces are contained in half a dozen volumes, and
therefore the study is a possible one, just as the study of Shakespeare
is possible, but may take a lifetime. None of the pieces are less than
150 years old.

To-day was the Mikado’s birthday, and pouring wet!

=November 4–8.=--An uneventful week in Tokio, doing little, but
spending a lot of time and energy thereon. On the 8th (Friday) I
lunched once more with the Science Faculty at the Goten, and was
treated most kindly. There are, naturally, no other women there, but I
sit between the President and the Dean, and have quite a good time.

=November 9.=--The King’s Birthday and gloriously fine! I had luncheon
with the P----s, and went with them to the Ambassador’s garden party,
where we sat on the lawn and ate ices and strolled about. Numerous
ambassadors, princes, and ministers, and other big-wigs were on show,
some wearing massive decorations. The ball-room was open, and at about
4.30 we began to dance. Several Japanese in European costume danced,
but the prettiest Japanese ladies were those who wore their own lovely
ceremonial dress, which is far more dignified than ours.

I had dinner out, and then went to a dance in the evening, where the
belle of the ball was a girl whose father was English and mother was
Japanese. She had such lovely shoulders that I longed to be a man and
marry her.

=November 10.=--I stopped all night with the P----s. Poor Professor
P---- had to go off somewhere at 6 in the morning. As one can hear a
whisper from one room in the next, of course it woke me up, but I was
glad, because the sunrise was one of magically lovely clear tints, that
I have never seen out of Japan, and it shed a fairy radiance on glowing
crimson maple and golden _Ginkgo_ trees.

In the afternoon we had tea with Professor _M----_ and Professor
_F----_. The latter took me to the famous popular shows of
chrysanthemums, where the chief feature is the life-size models of
actors and theatre scenes, all made of millions of minute flowering
chrysanthemums still _growing_, the red skirt, white sleeves or golden
shield all being masses of self-coloured flowers. The effect is,
of course, simply curious, and an evidence of gardener’s skill--not
pretty. Some of the other exhibits were huge plants, with a “thousand”
blooms (really 300–400) all simultaneously open, and other plants with
every imaginable kind of chrysanthemum growing from one main stem, a
triumph of grafting, but not of beauty.

=November 15.=--A quiet day’s work, and in the late afternoon tea at
the British Embassy. In the evening an invitation “by order of the
Emperor” arrived for the Imperial garden party at Akasaka Palace.
It was amusing to see the awe with which my landlady viewed it--the
Imperial Crest being almost sacred in this country. She took it in her
hands as a good Catholic might a piece of the true cross, and raised
it three times to her forehead, and asked leave to take it to show her
husband. I shine from the reflected glory.

=November 16.=--The morning was spent at the Institute, and then the
afternoon at the lovely house and garden of Professor _S----_. It is a
very large and beautifully unspoiled Japanese garden of the old style.
The maple trees were red and the pines green--and here and there among
them were bushes bearing the loveliest fresh pink and crimson roses.
October and November are called by some “the little Spring,” and these
rose bushes might well be those of June with us. The scent of the
roses is not so sweet as with us, but the texture of the petals more
delicate, so that they have a wonderful semi-transparency, which ours
seldom attain.

=November 19.=--The Emperor’s garden party took place to-day, and was
attended by numerous Princes and Princesses, Ambassadors, Ministers
and the “élite of Tokio Society.” Americans flock by the hundred, as
their Ambassador asks invitations for them, and as they have no court
and “all men are equal,” some very queer ones come. The other nations
resent it, and the English Ambassador is particularly strict, so that
_very_ few English can come--unless they hold some official position
with the Japanese Government. My scientific mission secured me the
much-coveted invitation, and I am right glad I went, for the palace
gardens were extremely lovely. They are in the best style of landscape
gardening, and are most extensive. The glowing crimson of the Japanese
maple, and the golden of the _Ginkgo_ showed up brilliantly against the
many green pines; small waterfalls and lakes abound, and I think we
must have walked nearly half a mile before reaching the point where the
show of chrysanthemums and the meeting of the guests took place. The
chrysanthemums were very much like those at the popular shows, but of
course rather finer, and were spoiled by being tied to straight sticks
and arranged symmetrically. Some had enormous numbers of flowers, 800
or so from a single plant and all flowering simultaneously. The flowers
were arranged like the jets of a huge candelabra, and in one way were
most effective, but the people were by far the most interesting part
of the entertainment. The Empress was a little indisposed, so we had
to be content with the Crown Prince and Princess and a train of minor
Princes and Princesses. The Empress has, unfortunately, made European
dress compulsory at all Court functions, so that most Japanese ladies
do not come, and those who do are got up in garments which they do not
thoroughly understand and therefore cannot wear with grace. Also they
go hopelessly wrong in choosing the colours. And as to hats! But this
cannot be an article on millinery. The quaintest lady there was in
early Victorian costume--a hat like a Cambridge pork pie and a skirt of
rusty brown, that was hooped and looped up like those our mothers wore
when they were young.

Her husband was equally pathetic. She was a great contrast to the rest
of them, who were in ultra fashionable and befeathered robes, of a
style unknown to our “élite.”

The quaintest gentleman there was in a top hat of prehistoric date, a
frock-coat which showed every seam, and sand-shoes! And he was a high
official, who doubtless in his beautiful native dress looked dignified
and inspired respectful admiration.

When it came to feeding I was surprised to find that the Imperial
allowance was but one plate each, and on this the guests put ham,
tongue, and chicken, jelly, rolls, and ice-cream, sweets and cakes, and
ate them indiscriminately; even my English knights did not hesitate to
bring me jelly, ice-cream, sandwiches and cakes on one plate. There
was champagne galore, and beautiful cut-glass glasses, which one
appreciates in this land where glass is so expensive and bad, and
where most glass articles of everyday use at home are not obtainable.
(This reminds me that I have spent a fortnight hunting for a little
glass jug and cannot get one.) Admiral Togo was the most impressive
figure there, shorter than most of the Japanese, thick-set and upright,
and conversing with very few people. Baron Kikuchi remembered me,
which, as he saw me for only half an hour five months ago, speaks much
for his social gifts. As he came up smiling, and waited for me to
speak, I remembered him, for he is quite unlike any other Japanese I
have ever seen.

After the party the catching of one’s _kuruma_ was an exciting game;
there was no system of getting at them, and the several hundreds of
guests and several hundreds of coolies simply wandered about in the
maze of _kurumas_ shouting and looking for each other. When the police
were directly applied to they were helpful for a foreigner, as there
were few of us, and of course we are more easily spotted than the
natives.

I forgot to note that the only Princess with whom I chatted had a
strong American accent; it sounded very strange. She had found a lot
of fossils in her garden where they are sinking a well, and seemed a
little interested in them.

=November 22.=--Professor _S----_ took me to visit Count Okuma in the
morning; he is reported to be the second greatest statesman in Japan,
and has a lovely house and grounds, which he was gracious enough to
show me. Every ordinary day he has about thirty or forty visitors, and
is one of the busiest men in the country. He has an old face, with
almost no hair, and is tall for a Japanese, and dignified in his
silken robes, and distinctly pleasing. He could speak no English, so
that conversation was rather limited, as he spoke more than usually
indistinctly, but he was amused with Professor _S----’s_ account of
me, and very gracious. The rooms are nearly all provided with European
chairs and tables, rich and handsome, the drawing-room in which he
received me upholstered in gold brocaded silk, which harmonised well
with the handsome old gold and painted screens from ancient Japan which
stood round the room. I begged to see the Japanese wing of the house,
which he showed me. His Japanese guest chambers were, to my taste, far
more beautiful, though perforce less able to display his wealth. He is
the Chamberlain of Japan in one sense, and has the finest orchid houses
in the country. They were very beautiful, but not on the same scale as
with us. The Japanese landscape garden is the chief glory of his place.
He has also a fine collection of dwarf trees, and I watched one of his
gardeners pruning a mighty forest of pines three inches high, growing
on a headland jutting out to sea in a porcelain dish.

In the evening the Biologists gave a dinner in honour of Professor
_M----’s_ safe return from Java, and my advent. About forty or so
were there (all men, of course), and it was a very jolly dinner
indeed, commencing at 5.30, and as I was a foreigner and used to late
hours (!), continuing till 9. Nearly every one had been abroad, and
between them they knew almost all my European and American scientific
friends--so I did not feel at all as though I was in a strange land.
They all stood up to drink the health of the guests, so I had to make a
little after-dinner speech,--a thing I hate, and am not able to do very
well.

=November 23.=--This morning I got up while it was dark, and only
arrived here after dark--here being a district where beautiful fossil
Angiosperms are reported. There was a four-hours’ ride in a _kuruma_,
along one of the straightest roads I ever saw, for the first half of
the time. After that the mountains were lovely, clad with pine and
maple, a few of which were still crimson, with the clear water rushing
over the green rocks. Though they told me it would be frightfully
cold up in the mountains so late, I am very comfortable in this inn,
where the hot water for the baths runs perpetually from a boiling
natural spring. The baths are delightful, and if cyanophyceae make them
slippery, what matter?

=November 24.=--This morning early I started off on foot in glorious
hot sunshine to get the fossils, and succeeded in getting more than
my coolie could carry. I am almost the only visitor in the place, and
every one is very kind and very interested. My colloquial Japanese
comes a cropper now and then--but I get what I want, which is the main
thing. The rocky valleys and woods are very lovely, and I appreciate
the loneliness after these Tokio weeks. I should like always to live in
complete solitude two days in seven.

The rocks in the neighbourhood are volcanic and are of a lovely
green, so that the water rushing over them is particularly beautiful.
The woody valleys are quite deserted, but are still warm in the sun,
and gay with crimson leaves and berries, and some brilliant _purple_
berries of a colour I never saw in Nature before--it is just like one
of my detested aniline dyes, but looks quite beautiful when painting
the skin of a berry!

=November 25.=--Hours and hours of _kuruma_ riding, and then five hours
in the train, which in that time managed to do less than 100 miles,
though it was on the main line and there was no change anywhere.

During the _kuruma_ ride I saw the first flock of sheep I have seen in
Japan, about a dozen good-sized, clean, and healthy-looking animals.

I also learned that _monkeys_ are wild in the woods, but did not see
any.

=November 26.=--I spent the day at the Institute with the new fossils
and minor matters. At two o’clock I went to see the Marquis and
Marchioness _N----_, who have a fine house and garden in the centre
of the town near the palace. They were very kind, and showed me over
the houses and garden, the former in European style, rich, but not
quite aesthetic, the latter in Japanese style, with dwarf trees and
quaint cut bushes, placed with an eye to effect, and where the outlook
is over the tops of the town (where, I grieve to say, smoky chimneys
of factories are rising up to curse and kill the beauty of the town)
to the bay, with its ships on the blue water. Tea was served twice
in two different drawing-rooms, and I found I had to risk insulting
my hostess by speaking my low-class Japanese. I had expected her to
speak English, as the invitation had been in excellent English, but I
was forced to speak to a Court lady in the language of the vulgar. In
Japan there are more grades of language, and even more varieties of
vocabulary, than one can imagine, _e.g._ I already know for the word
_is_ the following:--

         { Gosarimasu }
         { Gosaimasu  }
         { Gosaimas   } (arranged according to
  _is_   { Arimasu    }    the politeness).
         { Arimas     }
         { Desu       }
         { Des        }

And of course there must be heaps and heaps of other forms I don’t know
yet.

=November 27.=--The morning was spent at the Institute; at 12.30
Baron and Baroness _K----_ had invited me to lunch with several of
the Japanese professors. Everything was in the best European style,
with excellent food and ten courses for lunch! After that the Baroness
kindly took me to the Japanese part of the house, where the dolls
were being aired. This, I think, must be explained. Dolls in Japan
are very important things, and have a feast and ceremony once a year,
in March; and these dolls are very valuable--wonderfully dressed
figures of ancient kings and their attendants, court ladies and
ministers, with houses and exquisite lacquered furniture, chariots and
sedan-chairs, boxes and swords and fans--the dolls from 4 to 10 inches
high, and the furniture in rough proportion, exquisitely lacquered and
finished--little gems, some of the things, and, of course, never given
to the children to play with.

I sleep just now with a sword by my hand, in case of robbers, who, by
the way, visited us every day last week but one. The dogs bark when
they come, and after ten minutes or so of furious noise my house Herr
gets up, armed with a mild wrath and a sword, and the robbers beat a
retreat. Now one day it chanced that Professor _M----_ had given me a
huge quince, hard as a stone. The quince had been given to me because
I had pined for quince jam, in the making of which I pride myself.
Well, I had made my jam one evening, and its fine smell rejoiced my
heart (and perhaps attracted the robbers), but the core of the quince
remained, weighing about half a pound, and as hard as a brick. At night
the robbers came, the dogs barked in vain for my house Herr to arise.
At last I looked out of my window, aimed the core of the stony quince
with all my might, and presumably hit the robber, for he decamped
suddenly, and with much more noise than he made coming. Hence I gather
that housewifely instincts in women may have uses hitherto undreamed of.

=November 28.=--A day at the Institute spent in soaking the fossils in
gelatine--a tedious but necessary job which I must do myself. Oh, Tokio
in the rain, what a place it is! In London we grumble if by accident we
step into a “mud pie” left by the street cleaners at some corner of
the road, but in Tokio in the wet one must walk through one continuous
soft mud pie, along roads where there is no footpath. Of course, take a
_kuruma_, is the native reply, but _kurumas_, though cheap, will easily
run up into three or four shillings a day at that rate, and they jolt
one’s spine to a jelly. The Japanese who walk do so on wooden clogs
of a curious kind, with two high stilt-like parts of quite thin wood,
so that it is difficult to balance. I fall off even the low kind, and
could not walk in them any distance, even if I didn’t fall, as one must
take such short steps.

=November 29.=--Still pouring wet. I went to lunch at the Faculty
lunch; however, the Dean was most charming, and the President of the
University did his best to be, but speaks very little English, so
that we say much the same kind of things to each other every day. How
ridiculous are the people who imagine “all Japanese are alike”; as I
look along the table I see every possible type (except the brutally
coarse or sensual one), which may be seen in the English nation, so
beyond the fact that all are rather darkly brown or slightly yellow,
what need to describe them?

In one way, how much more important the University professors are
to their country than is a similar body of Englishmen to England!
They represent practically all the science in the country, and the
Emperor receives them at Court thrice a year, when they wear beautiful
uniforms covered with gold lace, and in their hands lies largely the
honour of the country, the old spirit of nobility, as distinct from
commercialism and apart from mere militarism, both of which are now
getting so rampant here.

=November 30 to December 6.=--No time to write this up, though I have
been doing a lot of things.

=December 7.=--There was an interesting meeting at the University
to-day, when Professor _S----_ was fêted, because it is the 25th
anniversary of his professorship, as well as his silver wedding. The
meeting was held in the hall in the Botanical Gardens, where the
room opens out Japanese fashion on to the garden, just where it is
prettiest, with its ponds and landscape trees. About 200 were there, I
should imagine, and I was the only foreigner--his wife and daughters
the only other ladies. The speeches, of course, were in Japanese, so
I understood very little, but things were explained to me. They have
collected about £300, and will devote it to a prize for research in
chemistry. They have also got a nice likeness of him, which goes to his
family. Baron Kikuchi made the chief speech; he had met him first in
England, when they were university students together.

As I cannot understand enough to follow the sense of the speeches, my
attention is concentrated on the eloquence or otherwise of the speakers
and the musical qualities of the language. Judged from the individual
words one would expect it to be a very flowing and beautiful speech,
as every syllable ends in a vowel, but alas, it loses so much from
the abrupt breaks they make in the middle of the sentences, _e.g._
“Ano-né--anata nó--kiodai wa--uchi ní--mairimasho ká.” It is impossible
to give the rather staccato effect with pauses between the words. Also,
even the good speakers are very apt to hesitate for exactly the right
word, even more than our speakers do. This is not to be wondered at,
for, as well as their own language, they have incorporated the entire
Chinese language and classics (with a special pronunciation of their
own), as well as a good many words from other tongues. I know a man
who has studied steadily for forty years and is making a dictionary
which surpasses any that the Japanese themselves have produced, and yet
_every day_ he learns some new fact about a word, or some new word.

=December 8.=--To-day was wet and cold, so I stopped at home (it was
Sunday) and had visitors in the afternoon. We have had some frightfully
cold weather these last few days, and my furs are very useful. One
curious thing that I have noticed here, the gravel of the path to the
Institute is lifted several inches up in the air by little delicate
ice pillars, and these support the pebbles and sheets of mud so that
the path looks quite as usual until one treads on it, when, of course,
down one goes. The pillars are of clear ice, 1 or 2 inches high, and
less than a pencil stem in thickness, growing in a forest like moss
together. They even raise very heavy slabs of solid stone 20 or 30
pounds in weight, but they only come when the night is clear and still.

=December 11.=--A beautiful, warm, sunny day, the sky as blue as
midsummer and the air sweet. At the Institute doing nothing worth
recording in the day-time. In the evening I had been asked to give a
short address to some of the students of the Law Department of the
Imperial University. I spent more than an hour getting there, for “No.
3” _Y----_ Street represents at least thirty houses, as is so often
the case in Tokio, so that one must go from door to door asking the
householder’s name. Indeed, this is a “Land of Approximate Time.”

The club was small and very jolly, and I quite enjoyed the evening.
There was only one Japanese lady there, the mother of one of the
students, who was herself half German. She was very charming and much
more intelligent-looking than the pure Japanese women. There was a
small earthquake this evening.

=December 12.=--Another earthquake this morning! but quite small, and
still a third at midday, also too small to be any fun. We are having
lovely, hot, sunny weather, and for the first time there were a number
of house flies in my room.

=December 13.=--A bright sunny day with a clear blue sky and ice
pillars on the ground--such heavenly weather that I hated to remain in
the Institute. Dinner with the G----s at the Embassy in the evening.

=December 17.=--The machinery for the fossils is now installed and
very fine it is. It is far and away more compact, more ingeniously
contrived, and grander than our English outfit. I have been endlessly
astonished at the resource displayed by Professor _F----_ in the whole
business.

=December 18.=--A day at the Institute testing the cutting-machine.
As to-day the machinery goes for the first time, all the workmen have
to be treated to _Soba_ (a kind of macaroni made of buckwheat), and
we had the chief engineer from the factory to tea. The machinery goes
almost noiselessly, and the ingenious shield round the wheel makes
it very clean. At present, however, it cuts rather slowly, probably
because the wheels are new and have not got thoroughly penetrated by
the carborundum. In the evening I went to a nice dance.

=December 19.=--A quiet day at the Institute. The Japanese fossils are
harder than the English ones, and take a lot of cutting.

In the evening the Geologists of Tokio gave me a dinner--European
style, of course; they cannot understand that I would much prefer
Japanese style. There were no other ladies, and no foreigners, and the
dinner was very enjoyable; as nearly all of them could speak English or
German, conversation did not flag. I am beginning not to be so afraid
of after-dinner speeches, though I make them very short.

Afterwards we sat round and talked music the whole evening, some
examples of all their kinds being given by a dear old fat professor,
whose name I have forgotten, and who looked very German. It seemed
rude to refuse to let them hear English and other European music, so
_I_ sang a Norwegian, a Scotch, an English, and a German song; the two
latter they did not like--the two former pleased them, as I knew they
would. Their music is so fundamentally different that they cannot like
our music without training, particularly soprano singing; the minor key
Scotch things appeal to them much more directly. I rather like their
music, which is somewhat unusual for a foreigner--but the strained
sound in it which they cultivate (a question largely of breathing)
spoils it for me. On the other hand, our clear notes, with no sound of
the breath, do not please them!

But, as they are always telling me, a foreigner cannot understand their
tastes.

Two of the party saw me home at the modest hour of half-past nine, but
as the dinner began at five, my entertaining powers were pretty well
exhausted.

=December 20.=--A day at the Institute cutting slices of the fossils.

=December 21.=--I spent the morning at the Institute and the afternoon
shopping for Christmas, and the latter was most entertaining. The shops
are delightful, but the _kankobas_ are much nicer. They are a kind of
bazaar or arcade, where all manner of things are sold, and one walks as
through a maze between the stalls in little winding alleys. They are
filled with lower and middle-class Japanese, all buying their year-end
presents. Gifts are given from the 25th to the 30th of the month, and
every one has to give every one something. Also every one _has_ to pay
every farthing he owes by the New Year, so that it is a great time of
settling up, and those who cannot make two ends meet, though honest for
the rest of the year, are very apt to turn burglar for the few days
before the 1st. Householders have to be very careful just now.

=December 22.=--The fascination of Tokio streets is upon me. How often
does one come out into a lonely country lane, or turn into a gem of a
little temple garden so near a busy street!

Coming home down a steep hill at sunset I saw the great Fuji Mountain
standing out in all its calm magnificence, black and grey against a
crimson sky. The huge single cone, with sweeping curves, was like a
silhouette, and below rolled a tumbled wave of smaller hills, while
high above the one clear evening star shone over the great peak.

Every evening on my way home I see the clear evening star, that seems
larger and more brilliant in this land than anywhere else I have been.
The days and nights are heavenly now.

=December 23.=--All to-day I worked at the Institute--the
cutting-machine is now getting finally smartened up. The Hokkaido
fossils are unfortunately harder, and therefore slower to cut, than the
English ones were at home, as we have been testing to-day.

=December 24.=--More presents, and further work on the cutting-machine.

=December 25.=--A brilliant sunny Christmas. I was taken to church by
the P----s. Then went to midday dinner with Mrs. W----.

After that I went for tea (though after the dinner it was quite
impossible to eat anything) to the English Sh----s. Then in the evening
had dinner at the P----s, where I spent the night. We had a very jolly
time, and I won the prize (a silver spoon) at the Geography Game, of
all things!

=December 26.=--In the morning we all spent the time skipping in the
garden to work off yesterday’s feeds, and as the afternoon was my day
at home, I went home: several nice people called, among them Professor
_S----_, who brought gifts, one of which was a huge and beautifully
executed enlargement of the group at the University the day of his
silver professorship celebrations.

=December 27 and 28.=--The fossils fill all my time, so I cannot have
Christmas holidays. I worked at the Institute; nothing special arose.

=December 29.=--Round my house the garden is now ready for the
onslaught of winter. All the delicate shrubs done up in straw, and
decorated with little top-knots, they look quaint. Then the bare ground
is covered with straw, and very neatly edged with rope to look pretty.
Some of the pine trees which have rather brittle branches have a kind
of tent of string over them, which is to prevent the weight of the snow
breaking them, so that everything looks neat and well prepared for the
cold.

[Illustration: THE PINE TREE TIED UP FOR THE WINTER]

The Camellia tree has still opening flowers, out in this neatly
packed-up little garden, and they look gay among its glossy leaves.

It is only at nights that it is so cold, and then often there is more
than an inch of ice on our little pond, all to be melted in the sun of
midday.

=December 30.=--The University is shut for the New Year holiday, so I
cannot work there now, and played tennis in the morning and spent the
rest of the day “domestically.” The climate rots one’s clothes so,
that there is plenty to do. I also made up some writing.

=January 1, 1908.=--This is _the_ greatest day of the year in Japan.
Until long past midnight the people in my house were up preparing for
it. Outside the door of every house is a pair of leafy bamboos and
pines, and over every front door a line of pointed straws. Most also
have a wreath with fern leaves, sea-weed, fish, and a large kind of
bitter orange--each of these symbolic of some special aspect of good
luck. In the house are found the _mochi_ cakes, a kind of round cake
made with much-pounded rice-paste, a horrid glutinous sticky mass,
but very essential for the future welfare of the household! These are
put two together in little piles; and there is a pair of big ones,
10 inches or so across, and a number of little ones all round it.
The little ones are distributed on white papers in various nooks and
crannies of the house, and are said to be for the rats, though those I
have watched have not appealed as yet to those ubiquitous creatures.
At the end of the year there is a rampage of present-giving, in which,
of course, I had to join. The gift from my house lord overwhelmed
me with its splendour: he presented a beautiful ancient sword, with
pearl-inlaid sheath, a handle richly set, and ornamented with gold
flowers. I had given very small things, only cotton dresses to the
maids, and a silk bag to the lady. The sword is a gem, and I love it
very much--but perhaps it is only lent me for the year I am here: I
don’t quite know, but gathered from their flow of words that I was to
take it to England.

On the first day of the year every one wears their very grandest silk
robes, and instead of my usual breakfast I was requested to partake
of the prescribed New Year dishes. The two maids and the mistress,
all in their best (and in their best the Japanese women are truly
butterfly-like and fascinating), brought a tray, and on the tray a
stand of old valuable lacquer with three lacquer drinking-cups, out of
all of which I should have drunk, and exchanged with her, the special
sweet _saké_ that is a vital element in the proceedings. To pacify
my hostess I sipped from one, and handed it to her. She raised the
cup to her forehead and drank also a sip. Then I had to eat the three
foods. A kind of paste, or rather “shape,” of finely-pounded fish, a
kind of rolled omelette, and a mash of sweet stuff made principally of
chestnuts, and, of course, _mochi_. The three subsidiary dishes I did
not eat, one of which looked too queer, a kind of foundation of small
brown beans with brilliantly coloured pickles. The dishes were covered
with beautifully embroidered silk crape, representing a gold tortoise
or turtle (old age luck), storks (ditto), pine, plum blossom, and other
New Year symbolic plants and animals.

I had a present from one of the men at the Institute of a dear little
dwarf plum tree, with sweet-smelling pink blossoms, which scented the
room. There is not a sign of a leaf on the little tree, which is now
covered with blossom.

The streets of Tokio are simply enchanting, the pine and bamboo at
every door, and wherever there are shops, strings of gay red and
white lanterns. At night it is a fairy-land. All the girls, and a
good many of the boys, all in their very best, are out in the streets
playing battledore and shuttlecock with gaily decorated bats and light
feathered cocks--such bright, pretty groups.

In the afternoon I went to the reception at the British Embassy,
held after the Court, with nearly every one in Court dress and
uniforms--some too magnificent. There was quite a crush of Pomp and
Circumstance, and the brilliance can only be imagined by those who have
been to Court, and they need no description of it. Yes, clothes make
the man, and ’tis well that gold lace is so dear, or we would all be
Personages.

=January 2.=--This morning I started to the seaside, Kamakura, with the
P----s. This little village is only thirty miles or so from Tokio, and
one can run down in a couple of hours (quick for Japanese railways),
and get a nice sandy beach and wild hills.

At the hotel, which is quite European, there was a number of other
English, and we joined forces, and went picnics and had games and
dances together in high feather.

The principal sight of the place is the great Dai Butsu, or gigantic
metal statue of a seated Buddha. Most Japanese Buddhas are travesties
of nature and abominations of art--but this one compels reverence and
attracts devotion. Its stillness (a stillness far greater than that
of a house, a statue, or any ordinary inanimate thing), its great
size and the wonderful calm on the face, the beautiful human lips and
broad-based nose, all make one dream and presently drop a tear or
two if no one is looking. Several of us went together by day to see
it--but in the evening I slipped off alone to its little grove and saw
it in the starlight. Unfortunately there was no moon that night. For
technical descriptions of its size, etc. you can see the guide-books or
hear any traveller’s gossip. It is one of the sights of Japan.

=January 3.=--We all went for a picnic all day on the hills, looking
out over the sea on three sides: and we had a sleep on the hill-top at
noon, and came back as it grew cold at 4 o’clock for tea.

=January 4.=--Also a lovely day, only I wandered off alone and got lost
in the long bamboo grass, 10 feet high, and got no lunch. I came back
for tea at 4 all right, however. It is a curious sensation coming down
a steep hill-side with no path through this high stuff. I don’t want to
repeat it.

=January 6.=--The day was spent at the Institute: the floor of the
fossil laboratory is being concreted, so it is locked up for a bit. All
my time was taken up with the welcome letters which I found awaiting
me, having accumulated for a number of days, during which there was an
exceptional lot of mails.

=January 7.=--All day at the Institute, picking up dropped stitches.
The term has not yet begun for the students.

=January 8.=--I was at the Institute in the morning, and at Professor
_F----’s_ for tea in the afternoon, where some New Year customs and
flowers were shown, the New Year plants being the pine, the plum, and
the bamboo.

=January 9.=--The New Year decorations are beginning to be pulled down
from the streets, but a little tuft of pine is left in the place of
each, and sometimes surrounded with a garland of rope.

As I was at home this afternoon, I had long talks with my landlady,
to whom I seem to afford a great amount of interest. The clothes of a
Japanese woman are really very cold and draughty for winter, because of
the way the skimpy skirt opens in front (there is no front seam, it is
only folded and confined by the broad _obi_ or belt), though they may
have as many as half a dozen padded garments on at once. She sees me,
of course, in all stages of dress and undress, and greatly admires my
warm spun knickers and stockings!

=January 10.=--I have been in this house now nearly two and a half
months--except, of course, when I have been away--and _every night_ I
have had _identically the same things for dinner_. Dreadful! Not at
all--I have come to the conclusion that it is a most excellent plan.
How many men and women are worried and bored by the never-ending
question, “What can we have for dinner?” If you always have the same
things this most troublesome of all domestic problems disappears.
No one wants anything but water to bathe in, unless they be fairy
princesses or Queens of Scots, and yet the delight of a bath never
palls: in these months I have had the same things to eat daily and
relished them hugely. Consciously or unconsciously, we are so much
the creatures of habit that if we are led to expect variety in our
dinners, the same menu repeated twice becomes tiring and three times
insufferable. We even remember what we had last week--but if we have
daily food always the same, we judge only its quality, and if it is
well cooked, relish it. Of course the menu must be wide and well
chosen. I, for example, have the same five kinds of vegetables always
served with my small piece of steak, and the frying of the fish is
superb. From this peace I am now driven out by my landlady, who has
at last realised that some variety would be, to say the least of it,
usual. She consulted me about it, and has bought a cookery book of “sea
food,” as foreign cookery is called, so I gave her a lesson in soups
for a beginning, that being the part of the menu she managed least
well. Oh me!--those dear peaceful dinners--I recommend every one to try
the plan; it is philosophically sound and practically excellent.

I went to lunch at the Faculty and found many, but not all, the
Professors there. Term has only theoretically begun. The day has been
gloriously brilliant, so that one could shout for joy, though after
sunset it was frightfully cold. At half-past five the stars came out,
brilliant points of diamond light through the trees.

=January 11.=--I spent all the morning testing copper disks and the
gas-engine, etc., though it was Saturday. Late in the afternoon I
called on a Mrs. _K----_ with a card of introduction. Unfortunately,
I have been far too busy to present half my introductions, but I
wanted to know some more Japanese ladies, so called on this one. What
a contrast she was to the others I have met! Running downstairs to
meet me and chattering all kinds of greetings, expostulating against
my removing my shoes (a thing, by the way, which is absolutely
essential in all true Japanese houses, because of their beautiful
floors), commenting on the weather, and thanking me for coming till
my breath was quite taken away. Soon I discovered the reason for all
these unusual things--she had been eleven years in America, and had
studied at one of the Universities. Her husband had been eight years in
America. She was exceedingly nice, but so unlike a Japanese! with her
thickly scattered adjectives of “dear,” “sweet,” and “lovely,” though
she was dressed in Japanese style.

We were comparing the marriage customs of the different nations. In
Japan a man asks, “Whom does my father and mother wish for me,” if he
does ask anything at all. In New York the man asks, “How much money has
she?”--in Boston, “In which College did she study?”--in Philadelphia,
“Who were her ancestors?”--and in England, “Does she love me?” Mrs.
_K----’s_ marriage seems to have been made in Boston: her subject was
zoology and her husband’s medicine--all very unusual in a Japanese.
She informed me that Japanese clothes are so much more difficult to
make than foreign, which astonished me, for there are only straight
lines in a Japanese dress. But it has to be evenly padded and lined,
which makes the trouble. She also informed me that all the English and
Americans married to Japanese are so “sweet and dear”--the different
customs making their characters patient and charming.

It is true that in their eyes the average Westerner is childishly
quick-tempered and troublesome.

=January 12.=--New Year calls on Professor and Mrs. _S----_, and
a dinner-party at Professor _F----’s_, where every one but I was
Japanese. Though the food was all European, we sat on the floor all
the time and ate off a table a foot high. After dinner numerous
reproductions of famous pictures were brought out, and I amused myself
(and them also, I expect) by making them give their real opinions on
the beauty or otherwise of the people in them. Most of our beautiful
women would be wasted in Japan. Blue eyes are hard and unloving!
Burne-Jones’ chins are laughable; Botticelli’s Madonna has no beauty
and the saints are ugly. But Burne-Jones’ women’s hands are lovely,
and the reflection in the water of one of his attendants of Venus very
lovely too. Turner’s pictures are too crowded with detail!! Kaulbach
was much admired.

=January 13–15.=--These three days have been very cold, and I have been
at the Institute practically all the time cutting fossils; the machine
going at normal speed, giving finally very good results. But who would
have imagined that on the amount of water dropping on the revolving
wheel depends the rate at which you cut through your stone--or that
carborundum put on at 1 inch or 2 inches from the cutting point makes
all the difference in the world? These and a thousand little details
like them have to be learnt by series of experiments. The weather has
been lovely, and even wonderful. One day there was snow, and it covers
these little Japanese houses so picturesquely, picking out the detail
and making them more like picture-book-land than ever. The sky is
brilliantly blue, and the hot sun melts the snow on the little pine
trees, so that they are like fountains of glittering drops, while from
the grassy banks beneath them soft wreathing clouds of white steam curl
up and are lost in the blue, and I long to be a poet. But the next day!
The roads were quite unspeakable, and for many days following.

=January 17.=--At the Institute all day again. At 2 o’clock Sir Claude
Macdonald (the Ambassador) and Mr. Clive (the Secretary) came to see
me and the stones. The former is huge, and with his glorious fur-lined
coat and pale-green suède-edged waistcoat, looked sadly out of place in
my work-room, which is nearly filled with packing-cases and lumps of
coal, but they stayed ever so long. The people are much honoured that
the representative of his Britannic Majesty should have visited their
Institute.

=January 18.=--I worked at fossils all day, and this evening,
commencing at 5, was the Biologists’ supper. Every biologist in Tokio
comes, from head professors to first-year students, about 130 in all,
and I was the only lady, of course. This time we ate from high tables,
sitting on European chairs, but we ate Japanese food with chop-sticks!
The most thrilling things were sagittaria and _ginkgo seeds!_ cooked
quite soft in a dish which is a kind of cross between a soup and
a custard (a gay thing to eat with chop-sticks any way!), and by
carefully biting the tiniest piece off the top of the seed one can see
the embryo and suspensors; the endosperm alone, of course, is the only
part eaten. Just as we have chocolates or almonds on the table through
the meal, they had tins of tiny dried fish, about half an inch or so
big and quite crisp, like roasted pea-nuts. It was a very frivolous
meeting; there was story-telling with much laughter, and comic pictures
of various professors and students under amusing circumstances; and a
drawing by lot for gifts of all sorts of things, from an old newspaper
or a turnip to books or ornaments.

=January 24.=--Canada Balsam is causing much trouble in the fossil
work-shop, and I spent most of the day over its little fads and
vagaries. The young man who is to learn how to cut the fossils (after
we have learnt ourselves and can teach him) is very quaint in his
personal appearance, and reminds me constantly of the Golliwog, his
hair grows so far down his neck and the back of his head is so flat. I
fear some day I shall give vent to the amusement he causes me. But he
is undoubtedly quick in some ways and very tidy in his methods.

=January 25.=--I had to mess round over the gas-engine all the
morning, and in the afternoon (Saturday) went to watch some of the
mad foreigners playing, or trying to play, I should say, Hockey. They
were only six a side, but I really wouldn’t join in spite of their
entreaties, for they were not playing on grass, but on _bare earth_!
The dust was awful, and I should think very unhealthy. It is simply
impossible to get any grass in Tokio, it is only to be seen in small
quantities in a few sacred places, and even then dies down all through
the winter, so that it is quite unusable. Moss and liverworts grow
here so well that it is very curious that grass is so impossible to
cultivate. Professor _M----_ is trying experiments with English grass
seed at the gardens, but it isn’t very successful, though better than
the native product.

=January 26.=--I called on Mrs. G---- at the Embassy. I heard a true
story of certain small children in Yokohama, a girl and a boy: the
former caused her mother much sorrow because of her habit of fibbing.
Her brother fell out of the window and was helpless in bed for some
time, and she was left to amuse him one Sunday afternoon. When the
mother returned she found pencil scribbling all over her white
dimities, and said, “Who did this?” (a form of question she usually
avoided, using subtler means). “Brother,” promptly answered the maiden.
When asked why she told that lie, said, “Because I forgot Brother
couldn’t get out of bed to do it!”

=January 27.=--A day spent on work of various sorts on the fossils. A
terrible wind suddenly arose in the afternoon, and going home along the
streets it blew first on one side and then on the other, and the dust
it raised hung like a fog all over the city, while the sun, usually
a fiery brilliance at which one dare not blink, hung like a disk of
pale gold in the fawn-coloured sky. Along the road, as one walked,
fancying peace, suddenly a snake-like form would rise, its cobra head
would expand till it formed a huge surging wave, that spit and stung
and blinded; or a little whirlpool would start at one’s feet, shake
itself and open in a second into a great torrent, that showered upwards
instead of downwards. I never saw such dust, but they say it will be
worse in February.

=January 30.=--A national holiday, so no work was allowed at the
Institute. I gave a tea-party, only to about twenty people, of whom the
merriest and jolliest was Baron _K----_! When I have seen him hitherto
it has been in solemn manners. The intense agitation this caused in
my house all day cannot be imagined by you English people who give
tea-parties every little while! The entire household for the entire day
was quivering with excitement; and I must add to their credit that they
produced several treasures of art, _kakemonos_ and gold screens, from
the _go-down_ (or safe), where they are kept.

=January 31.=--I was fossil-cutting all day, a nice new stem and leaf
turned up to cheer us on. The following cutting may be amusing; it was
in the Japan _Gazette_ a few days ago:--

    An amusing incident occurred at an “At home” in Tokyo this week. A
    matron, talking to a slender young woman in a pretty art gown of
    blue velvet, said, “Oh, I hear Dr. Stopes is here. I want to meet
    the delightful old party. I understand he is strong on fossils.”
    Later on she said to her hostess, “Who is that girl I’ve been
    talking to, in the blue dress? seems a nice girl.” “That is Dr.
    Stopes, the learned geologist,” said the hostess, and the Yokohama
    matron collapsed.

=February 1.=--I was fossil-cutting all morning. Aluminium, of all
metals, seems to be forging ahead as the prize saw-maker.

=February 2.=--A dull day, so I didn’t go out exploring as I had
intended, but snuggled into bed all the morning to counteract the
cutting-machine, which is really rather wearing.

=February 3.=--At work all day on the fossils. Dinner at the P----s,
after which I had to give the long-promised lecture on fossils to
the Literary Society of Tokio. Naturally, to an audience in which
missionaries played an important part, but little science was
desirable. However, they seemed pleased to hear about the various
adventures connected with fossil collecting.

=February 4.=--At work in the Institute over fossils all day. In the
course of my walk to the Institute, which takes about forty minutes, I
pass quiet streets which are little frequented by the foreigner. In all
these months I have never yet met a single foreigner between my house
and the Institute, though in other parts of the town they are common
enough.

Every day I see something or other I long to record, and forget when it
comes to writing this journal what it was.

The shops are now full of oranges. Small ones, like our “Tangerines,”
but native grown, and _seedless_. They are sent to the shops in little
boxes, universally the same size. How sensible the Japanese are about
such things--in spots! But oranges are a little tedious, and there
is really almost nothing else to be had but tasteless and expensive
apples. This country is still in that primitive state when we can only
get the fruits and flowers that are locally in season. Even well-off
people, who at home could command strawberries in March and roses in
December, must here eat the things at the time Nature intended. It has
a certain charm but--I am a Londoner.

Another striking thing about this country’s products is the
extraordinary richness and variety of the vegetation,--palms and pines,
bamboos and magnolias, chestnuts and orange trees, rice and roses; the
number of plant species in the little country of Japan alone exceeds
that in all Europe. Also the number of species of birds and insects is
extraordinarily great, and their brilliance and beauty quite unusual.
Yet it has been said by one who knows the country, “The flowers have no
scent, the fruit no flavour, and the birds no song!”

To this, I myself would add, “and the people no souls.” And in the
whole saying there is truth enough to justify its existence, probably
as much truth as there is in any saying, for in all our sheaves of
words there are but a few ears bearing the grains of truth. Now I
hasten to add that a spray of plum blossom in January scents a whole
room with its fragrance; that the native-grown figs are the most
luscious and sweet I ever tasted, and the nightingales’ thrilling
melody to be heard even in the cities; while I have met men and women
who are as the plum, the fig, and the nightingale. And yet on the
whole, that hard saying is true.

=February 5.=--At the fossil workshop all day. Nearly every day in
this clear weather I see the great Fujisan, its whiteness high up in
the clouds on the horizon. The pearl of mountains, that, alas, I have
not seen yet except from this great distance. From her superb height
she looks down on this grey-roofed city, and I wonder if she sees in
it all the things I see! The dirt, for instance, and the horrors of
disease. I have praised so much in Tokio that I think you can bear to
hear something of the other side, of the sights that sicken and appal.
Of these, the ones that struck me first were the numerous children
(only very young ones) with frightful eczema; the one that now haunts
me is the sight of lepers. They are not allowed to _live_ in the city,
when in an advanced state of disease, but they are allowed to come in
and beg. One may easily touch one by accident! To-day I was within a
foot of one before I noticed it. They hold out their hands, with the
fingers eaten away, gruesome sights, and mumble prayers for alms. Once
one died, or nearly died, on the road, a crowd formed round, with a
policeman on guard, but no one would touch it to give assistance.

On the whole, the Japanese do not fear leprosy nearly so much as we
do, they say we over-rate its contagion; but how can they pretend to
civilisation with such sights in their streets?

One hears on all sides, from themselves and from others, that the
Japanese are pre-eminently a _clean_ people. _In_ their houses that is
true, but just outside! Even to-day in all the smaller streets of Tokio
a little gutter or ditch runs along on either side and carries away, or
is blocked by, as the case may be, all the refuse and drainage of the
houses near by. No wonder that even Ambassadresses get typhoid. I am
thankful there are chickens kept by so many poor people, that roam the
streets and pick at the dainties, but I wonder if it is wise to take a
raw egg beaten into milk.

=February 6.=--There are more stars in Japan than in (or over, should I
say?) England. After the glowing sun sinks from the cloudless blue sky,
the stars spring out at once, and by 6 o’clock the heavens are crowded.
In the milky way one sees not a haze of white, but a glittering stream
of bright minute gems. Sometimes too the stars have haloes, quite big
ones, such as we only see round our moon, and when they shine out of
the clear sky they almost dazzle.

=February 7.=--I was at the fossil laboratory all day, cutting away at
my stones. Dinner with the P----s, and after that the Tokio Bachelors’
Ball--a truly delightful function. I left at 2 A.M. and
walked the 3 odd miles home with two nice men. It was really too cold
to ride in these open _kurumas_, even with two rugs and an eiderdown.
The walk through the quiet streets under these ever enchanting stars
was delightful. One of the men was a military attaché here, and has
been to camp with Japanese regiments. I find every one who knows only
military men thinks less highly of the Japanese character than do those
who mix with the University men. It is not unnatural that the army is
rather suffering from “swelled head”--and then, who would give a German
Professor for half a dozen or more of the German officers!

=February 8.=--Though Saturday, and though I did not get to bed till 4,
I went to the fossils from 10 till 4, and then to tea with Professor
_F----_, where we discussed dancing, which does not seem to find favour
in his eyes, or in those of most Japanese.

=February 9.=--A nice quiet morning in bed; after lunch I went with
Miss C---- and J---- to see the temple of Kwannon at Akasaka. People
who habitually drive in carriages see less of the truly Japanese
streets than do the _kuruma_ riders. Most of the old roads are so
narrow that a carriage cannot pass, and they must perforce go through
the newer or widened streets, where they encounter electric trams
and maybe glass-windowed stores for “Foreign Goods.” Not that these
latter do not afford amusement--one may see a Store that carries on the
“Import and Manufacture of Grocers”--another that sells “Unnecessary
Provisions.” Of which latter I may add there are many in Tokio, to
wit, the beaded mittens, crochet atrocities, Paisley shawls, etc., _ad
infinitum_, that are destroying the beauty and harmony of the national
costume, and are making the people ludicrous in their hybrid garb. An
irritating little habit the coachman and _Betto_[4] have, is to cry in
hoarse duet to every child or old woman (of which not less than several
thousand seem to be encountered in a drive) to warn them off the road.
It becomes inexpressibly irritating to the unfortunates in the carriage.

[4] _Betto_, name for native groom.

I think I have already spoken of the temple, the most popular one in
Japan, where incessant crowds are praying or clattering through, or
come with aches and pains to lay their hands on the wooden figure
that will heal. It is a case of physician heal thyself, for the
poor god has all its features rubbed flat by the hands of a sick
humanity. The temple is so popular and so certainly described in
every book of travel, that I shall not stop to do so. It is situated
in the Whitechapel of Tokio, and the stalls and entertainments in
the neighbouring grounds are reminiscent in some degree of a Bank
Holiday--though noisy behaviour is lacking.

=February 11.=--A national holiday, so that schools, etc. are closed.
To-day the Emperor ceremoniously worships his ancestors, attended by
practically all the Government head officials, including Professor
_M----_, who wears a uniform smothered with gold lace. I went to lunch
with Mr. _Mj----_ in his house in Azabu, which is surrounded by a
lovely garden, with pines and a pond and regular scenery. The party was
composed of foreigners, and we sat at a table 1 foot high, and had a
sumptuous Japanese luncheon. His two little girls--aged six and eight,
in brilliant true Japanese kimonos--were very gay in entertaining us,
pouring out the _saké_ and singing many little songs (“God save the
King” among them), and bringing their dolls to table. Not at all shy,
and not at all like Japanese children in this, and yet not forward,
they were pretty, bright little things.

=February 13.=--Fossil-cutting all morning. We are getting on finely
now; it is nice to see the actual structure at last, leaves, stems, and
roots are turning up with all their cells very well preserved in the
stone.

=February 15.=--Fossil-cutting all the day. The engine has a curious
way of giving little explosions when it is not quite clean at the
burner--they make the boy jump to such an extent that I fear he is a
coward. Also, when I put the molten pans of metal into water and they
fizzle, he won’t go on working near me till I have assured him that it
is perfectly safe. I sometimes wonder if the Japanese are really brave
except when worked up to it _en masse_. Several people who have been
here some time tell me they think they are not.

=February 16.=--I spent the day out of Tokio in a country place, about
an hour-and-a-half’s walk from Akabane. The country was slightly hilly,
the sunshine brilliantly hot, and the jagged snow-covered hills in the
distance very lovely. The fields were cultivated with wheat and green
stuff, and here and there patches filled with the round tea bushes.
The houses were all set amid trees, tall and red-brown trees, though
“evergreens.” The same leaves, now looking so dead, revive their
chlorophyll, and become green in the spring. The plum trees, pink and
white, were in bloom, but they were the only flowers we saw. In the
plain were rice fields, all dead and brown, but here and there along
the little irrigating canals green grass roots flourished. Japanese
grass all goes brown in the winter, but I am beginning to suspect
that it is the dryness that does it, for here and there in damper,
very shady places, I find brilliant green roots. By the broad river,
with only one house near it, and that set some way back in clumps
of bamboo, was a plain of tall coarse reed-like plants, partly cut
down for mat-making. Here we are promised masses of pink primroses in
the spring. Some young bamboos were green, and amid these we lay and
listened to the absolute silence, undisturbed all the day. There was
not even a bird’s song or an insect’s buzz, and one might have imagined
it the top of some snowy peak for the stillness of it all.

In the evening I went to dinner at the G----s, and enjoyed it very
much; there were some entertaining people there.

=February 17.=--On my way to the College I pass a small factory, whose
owner keeps his coal piled up in a great heap _on_ the road against
the wall. It doesn’t seriously interfere with the traffic, as the road
is quite wide enough for a good-sized cart to pass even with it there,
and I have never seen two trying to pass. The coal has been there many
weeks now, but no one seems even to think of stealing it, though
the houses around are extremely poor. I thought it wonderful honesty
till I remembered that the Japanese think coal horrid, smoky, dirty
stuff, quite unfit for use in rooms, but even so, in their bath-tubs
they burn wood, and it might well tempt them to go after dark and help
themselves. The streets, of course, are totally devoid of “street
lamps.”

=February 19.=--I often wonder why I have not mentioned before the most
extraordinary furs worn by the Japanese men. Though the fox is a kind
of evil witch, a devil in popular imagination, yet practically every
man wears a great fox skin round his neck. No pretence about making
up into “boas” or anything: it is simply the whole skin, unlined, and
doubled, fur outwards, along the middle of the back. The tail is then
put through a hole in the animal’s head or neck, and both hang down
in front of the wearer. A really rich man has so fine a skin that the
bushy, brilliant red-yellow tail hangs down to his waist, waving around
when he walks. Japanese ladies almost never wear furs, except when in
foreign costume.

=February 20.=--Quietly busy over the fossils. There is no need to
relate the innumerable details that require attention or exasperate
one--the sections are yielding good results, all things considered, and
I quite enjoy the cutting.

=February 21.=--Though the sun is so hot through the day that I sit
in it with almost nothing on but a thin slip, night and morning are
so cold that one shivers, and the ice is thick on the little pond
in my garden. Yet a stark-naked youth comes to the well in the next
garden, and a trim little maid works the rope and brings up buckets
of cold water, which he pours over himself, and then proceeds to dry
himself with a towel which he first carefully soaks in water (in the
true Japanese way). This corner of the garden is the meeting-place of
three gardens, and the well is common to the three households, so that
sometimes a second maid may assist in his morning amusement. Behind the
trees I can see the painted wood walls of the Mission church, where
people go in European clothes to sing hymns.

=February 22.=--I had been really bullied into playing Hockey to
represent the world against Japanese-born British. They were, of
course, far stronger than we, as nearly all live together in Yokohama
and practice twice a week, while none of us had played together before.
We got 2 goals to their 4, however, and patted ourselves on the back.

Returning by train (Yokohama to Tokio, of course, is _the_ chief line
of rail in the country, so that the incident should not be compared
with doings in some far-off highland place in Scotland), the train
suddenly drew up with a jerk, far from one station and about the same
distance from the next. The passengers were surprised, some slightly
alarmed, and the train calmly waited for some time and then started
racing back to the station from which we had come. We all resigned
ourselves to a broken bridge, overturned carriages on the track, or
something of the sort, and finally drew up at the station we had just
left--much commotion on the platform, and we learned that from the
luggage van some parcels had not been delivered! They were delivered
over to the proper person and the train started off once more, to reach
Tokio not a little late.

=February 24.=--There have been signs of the coming Dolls’ Festival,
to take place on the 3rd day of the 3rd month. I have mentioned
them already (see p. 74). The shops are now full of them, and most
fascinating they are, but too expensive to indulge in as I should like.
The figures are all in little boxes, and sit solemnly, with their stiff
robes spread out, as though they were really the nobles that they
represent, and every one is interested in buying them, or at least
gazing at them in their temporary homes. Several shops have sprung up
this week filled with these boxes of dolls, and selling nothing else.

=February 25.=--At work all day at fossils, the record so far, for
with the boy I cut and finished eleven sections in one day, some very
nice. A ball at the British Embassy in the evening, very pleasant. Many
interesting and amusing things happened, but unless given in great
detail would not appeal to any one outside local gossip. Captain von
L---- introduced me to the loveliest woman there--an American (sad
to hear their awful accent coming out of such patrician lips!), the
one who at a previous dance had so entranced me and my young partner
that we spent our sitting-out time following her around to see her eat
ices and laugh; her manner was perfection--calm, still, and gracious,
honey-sweet looks in eyes that never smiled while one was speaking to
her, and that just broke into little curls of smiles as she answered--a
suggestion of humility while waiting to hear another’s banalities, yet
with it a commanding dignity that forbade any one else to interrupt the
person who was speaking to her. Her name is Mrs. D----, and I am going
to see her, as she very graciously invited me to do. I wonder if she
includes thought-reading among her other charms and read my admiration?
Her high-heeled pink satin slippers twinkled gaily in the dance; she
did not hesitate to lift the Worth frock very high--with such ankles I
wouldn’t! On her white soft neck were the loveliest little blue veins,
I never saw anything so suggestive of living marble. She was like white
marble, with an underflush of rose and violet. The little wrinkles at
the corners of her eyes added to her charm rather than detracted from
it. She is the only woman in Tokio who has bewitched me.

There was a very striking-looking girl, daughter of a French mother
and a Japanese father, her hair done cavalier fashion, with a side
bunch of ringlets under a big white bow; her very French frock and tiny
waist became her well, and she strode through the Lancers with such a
devil-may-care manner that we could not but remark her--favourably too
in spite of it all.

Tokio is a fine soil for gossip, very good-natured and amusing. I love
it, it’s such a relaxation after gas-engines and fossils.

=February 27.=--Sunshine wonderful again--just the remains of the
recent snow left here and there. I regret to find that the people in my
house have been lying to me for long about a point on which I laid some
stress--a whole complex of lies as well as the actual disobedience.

=February 28.=--I visited the Charmer to-day, and stayed an
unconscionably long time. No one has bewitched me in this way since my
school-days. She had a lovely gown of blue-and-white chiffon. Several
people were there--Baron and Baroness S----, Count C----, and the
wife of the Swiss Minister. I had about half an hour of the Charmer
to myself--her husband is the Naval Attaché. She was simply alluring,
and her house is far the prettiest I have yet seen in Tokio. She was
telling me how all the Corps Diplomatique agree that there is no
capital in the world where the social life is so delightful, and where
there is so much gaiety and friendliness among the Corps as a whole, as
in Tokio. Also there is really no other capital where other people can
enter the charmed circle; that, of course, is the result of the small
number of Westerners in the place, and their social position; as I have
remarked before, there are almost no commercial people in Tokio.

At lunch at the Faculty to-day. Dr. _Y----_ brought me a paper on
fossils to correct the English, he is soon starting for Europe. I have
mentioned him before as being a rising paleontologist, such a shy,
young-looking creature, utterly lacking in all social gifts; I wonder
how he will fare in Europe, perhaps some of you who read this may meet
him. He is predestined to be professor in a new University about four
years hence.

=February 29.=--I worked at the fossils till 12, and then set out for
Baron _H----’s_ long arranged luncheon party.

We were received in rooms with tables and chairs, and an oil-painting!
There were the “lace” curtains found in every “foreign style” Japanese
house, alas! The Baroness was very gracious and sweet, and acceded to
my request to play on the Koto, playing a very charming piece.

As we sat on the cushions I could just see out of the small panes of
glass put into the paper _soji_, and I delighted in the garden, with
its trees of pink and white plum just bursting into blossom. After some
time the men came in and Baron _H----_ showed us his collection of
sword rings and knives, etc., all good, and some very beautiful.

=March 1.=--It was terribly wet all night and this morning; I went to
lunch with Miss B---- (before mentioned as a very amusing lady, despite
the fact that she is a missionary). I think no one would be better
qualified to write memoirs than she. I was hearing something about the
inner life of the Court at Korea. She is a friend of the English lady
doctor who attended the royal ladies, and it was all extremely amusing,
but it is not my place to tell her anecdotes.

I returned early to do some writing, but was greeted by my landlady
with the announcement that to-day, to-morrow, and the next day are the
Festival of the Dolls. I must, therefore, drink some special sweet
thick _saké_ and eat various sweets, some nice little ones like fried
caterpillars being very tasty. I was also asked to come and see the
pictures and screens brought up from the store-house, two of them 200
years old, and one, a really magnificent one, 500 years,--gold with
plum blossom and birds. I am constantly seeing new treasures they have
in hiding.

They gave me a lovely granite hill with clustering rosy flowers growing
round its base--all 6 inches square--and we admired together the wet
pine leaves in the garden.

=March 2.=--Fossil-cutting all day; a very nice dance in the evening
after dinner with the P----s, where I spent the night.

=March 3.=--The Dolls’ Festival. Mr. _Mj----_ and his three little
girls have a very gorgeous collection; the dolls, however, are far too
exalted for any child to play with them. The _Mj----s_ must literally
have hundreds of these expensive little miniatures of the Emperor and
Empress in the old-style garments, of historical and mythological
figures, of musicians and actors from the _Nō_--all of whose dress is
a wonder of design and execution. Then there were all the household
utensils in tiny lacquered form, and on the little trays and dishes
was real food arranged, as well as large models of fish in sugar.
There was even a little temple, with most of the appointments correct.
A large room was given over to them, and looked like a bazaar, but
the arrangement was not merely chosen to display the detail, it was
all according to prescribed rule--the Emperor and Empress on the top
shelf, with their jingling elaborate head-dresses and long silk tassels
on their many robes; below them the musicians; on the lowest shelf the
tray of food, the little houses, screens and fans in inexhaustible
variety. The children are provided with special sweet food which they
themselves eat, the crisp sweet “puffed” rice, sweet blocks of jelly
and sugar concoctions of many kinds. The guests were also provided with
these dainties, and some of them were delicious, but I could not drink
the sauce-like _saké_.

In the evening there was our inaugural dinner of the London University
Union in Japan. I found there was quite a number of old U.C.L. students
in Japan, and so started the idea, which was very keenly taken up by
Professor _S----_; others joined in, Baron _K----_, Professor _S----_,
Professor _F----_, Professors L----, S----, etc. etc., up to the number
of twenty-one, are members, and the first dinner was quite a success.
Professor _S----_, Baron _K----_ and I form the Committee elected then,
and I hope the Union will live. Cambridge and Harvard, etc. all have
their Unions, why should London be less honoured and remembered by her
children?

=March 4.=--A long day at fossils.

=March 5.=--Fossils till 4--then I went to tea with Mrs. D----. She had
invited the American Ambassadress and her niece to meet me, and I liked
them both. The former is very like a slightly slimmer and handsomer
Miss S---- of Wintersdorf! Mrs. D---- had another lovely frock, and was
a dream of sweetness and beauty. Why do I always fall in love with
women!

=March 7.=--Fossils all day till 4.30, then to tea with Dr. _H----_
and his wife, recently married and very cordial; they live in a really
tiny Japanese house, no room more than six mats, but so spick and span,
with a dear little garden. Though I have done my best to teach that man
how to treat a wife--and he always seemed to be drinking it in quite
properly--she herself brought the tea for us two, taking none herself
(I know she has a maid), and sitting in the corner away from us, and
not even taking a cushion to sit on, when he had been shamed into
giving her one by my remarking that she had none. However, they seem
happy, and she looks quite well, and she has not a soul quivering with
every touch of the material things of life. She says he loves her very
much, and has loved no other woman.

=March 8.=--To-day I visited the sick. Poor Mrs. G---- was riding in a
_kuruma_ a week ago and the _Embassy_ carriage ran into her, knocked
the _kuruma_ to pieces, and the horse fell on Mrs. G---- and rolled
over! How she escaped fearful injuries no one knows, but a muscle is
severed and she can’t walk just now. She looked very pretty in bed, and
was holding quite a court. Horses in Japan are really dangerous and
constantly run away.

I called my duty call on Baroness _H----_ after the luncheon party, and
the conversation did not flag, though what she thought of my Japanese
(the horrors of which I am daily realising more acutely) I don’t know,
as she held it under with her fine native politeness.

I have read two interesting books this week--Lieutenant Sakurai’s
_Human Bullets_ and _As the Hague Ordains_, the supposed journal of
the wife of a Russian prisoner who comes to him in Japan, and is
gradually converted to love the Japanese. The first book was rather
a shock to all one’s preconceived notions about the unflinching
bravery and repression of feelings among the Japanese soldiers! They
were either weeping or embracing each other or writing sentimental
letters--on every other page. I was quite sick of all their tears and
self-adulation, though the writer gave a vivid picture of the ghastly
carnage of the siege of Port Arthur. Yet people praise the book and
don’t seem to notice the sentimentality as much as I do. I wonder if
those who praise it have read it.

I heard from an old resident (thirty years here) that the Japanese are
the most sentimental people under the sun. Oh, ye who stop at home and
dream your dreams about Japan! Stay there.

=March 9.=--The following happened a few days ago, and I should have
put it in then, but I forgot. The day was miserable, wet, cold, and
windy, with snow blustering about, and instead of quietly having
lunch in the warm Institute I was told we were to go to the big
state-rooms at the other side of the gardens. There I found that all
the Biology students and the Botanical and garden staff were lunching
in Japanese style. There was a special kind of pink rice, with small
beans boiled with it, and the various more or less savoury pieces of
fish, vegetables, and a kind of pancake that go to make up a _bento_.
Afterwards we all had packets of highly ornamental sticky cakes,
chiefly made of the stodgy bean-paste I cannot eat, but some were good.
This was the feast of the God Inari (the God of Rice), who is very
appropriately worshipped by the botanists. After the feast we cowered
under our umbrellas and went a pilgrimage through the gardens to his
shrine, where we found the hundred-year-old blue cotton banner put up
outside. Within the shrine was incense, lit by the Botanical Laboratory
attendant, and a great tray of cakes, the same as we had been eating.
Led by the Staff, we all rang the bell to call Inari’s attention to our
visit, and clapping our hands in prayer we gave him a few sens each,
throwing the copper coins in among the cakes. Then we ploughed our way
through the bog-like paths to the Institute.

=March 10.=--So seedy that I did not get up at all. It is the very
first day in my life that I have ever spent in bed (except for the
measles, when I was too ill to notice anything much), and I feel it a
solemn and important event. The first half of the day sped on magic
wings, and I wondered how one could be so _bête_ as to find bed a
wearisome place when one is surrounded by the lovely golden lights on
bare wood. How we spoil wood by staining and painting it! The range of
delicate colour in the woodwork of my room is a perfect delight. Then I
had also a little tree, shaped like a weeping-willow, but one mass of
rosy pink plum blossom, some flowers wide open, with recurved petals
and a flare of silver stamens, others in perfectly round crimson buds,
alluring as only roundness can be.

Till 3 o’clock in the afternoon that tree and the wood made me
blissfully happy, but the hours between 3 and 5 seemed terribly long,
and by night I was sated with the delights of bed. The next day seemed
very far off.

=March 13.=--I went to the Institute in the morning and cut some
fossils. It has simply been an influenza cold, but it has rather played
havoc; after lunch at the Faculty and a long and varied talk with the
Dean, I wasn’t fit to do any more, so I called on the B----s and went
to tea with the Charmer on my way home to bed. I went to bed before
6 o’clock, and was so worn out that I howled for an hour, but dinner
revived me, and I am now as cheerful as if I hadn’t contemplated
suicide two hours ago. Tokio is a terrible place for ups and downs.
To-day it is fearfully cold, even my bath towel frozen; and a week ago
it was like summer for two days--one day a miserable snowstorm, the
next glowing blue skies.

=March 14.=--In the afternoon a party had been arranged to visit a
noted plum garden at Omori, and have tea in a tea-house. As the H----s
had asked me to go home with them to dinner and sleep, I went, though
by the end of the day I was far too tired out. We carried cakes,
trusting the tea-house for cups and hot water. The plum garden was
indescribably beautiful, and a typical “Japanese” scene. The garden
sloped in the double hollow of a shell-shaped valley, and the rich
white bloom on the trees surged up it as the thick drifting mists
surge up a mountain pass. Standing out from the cloud-sea of blossoms,
like peaks from out the mists, were two or three tea-houses, white
papered and inhabited by gaily-decked maidens, and men who admired the
plums, in grey silk. The sky was clear sapphire, and the sea beyond lay
like a blue gauze veil along the horizon. While the others went on into
the midst of the trees, I left the garden and sat in the sun on the
steps of a little temple, which was a perfect harmony of curves, and
behind lay a bamboo grove.

Tea was amusing, for Captain S---- would not take off his boots, and
therefore had to walk with his feet in the air; which he did on his
knees or hands. The tea-house was perched on the side of a hill, and
looked down on rice fields and woody patches on little elevations.
After tea we explored the temple and its pretty groves, and had a
lovely merry-go-round ride on the old revolving library, a huge thing,
but so perfectly poised that we could all sit on it and go round
without its even creaking.

=March 16.=--Called on Mrs. P---- on my way to the Institute in the
morning. She captured me, and then and there my clothes were taken off
and I was put to bed--and was secretly thankful to be there. She is
quite exceptionally kind to take me in in this way.

=March 25.=--At work all day over fossils--then dressed in my
green-and-gold Venetian dress and called on Mrs. G---- on the way to
the Embassy dinner. She and her children were having a preliminary
view of some of the gowns--she is, alas, still in bed. The party was
splendid--several Japanese were there in magnificent old court dresses
and simply marvellous arrangements for their hair. Baroness _S----_
also wore Japanese court dress. Perhaps I had better shortly describe
it. The lower part consists of scarlet trousers with extremely wide
stiff legs, and the garment is much like our “divided skirt” of some
years ago, but the cloth is much stiffer. Over it is a gorgeously
embroidered kimono, with sweeping train. Some of the hair ornaments are
extremely bizarre, others (according to the period) rather simple, the
hair falling down the back and tied in three places.

[Illustration]

One, something like the sketch, was very effective, the funny little
brush of hair coming straight out at either side being its speciality.
Several of the Englishmen came as Japanese pirates, etc., with great
wigs of long hair, rich gold-embroidered robes and swords; the girls
were not remarkable. After dinner we all went along to the German
Embassy, and met there the parties from all the other Embassies. The
scene in the reception-rooms and in the beautiful white ball-room was
vivid and gorgeous beyond my power to describe. Whom to describe, when
nearly all were beautiful or striking, and nearly all of the important
folk in Tokio were present? Count _H----_ (the foreign minister) was in
old daimio dress, with two swords and rich brocade--and one could not
imagine how he ever came to wear anything else! The evening was one to
remember, with its brilliance and beauty and courtliness.

=March 26.=--Yesterday morning at breakfast I had imagined I would
remain in my present house as long as I was in Japan. This morning by
ten o’clock I had taken a house and garden of my own and engaged a maid!

Apparently, one can do things quickly sometimes in Japan, though it is
usually a terrible business to get a house. Of course, I haven’t yet
moved in, and “there is many a slip,” etc.

The house is tiny, but is said to have five rooms--the paper walls
between these can be taken out at will to make two, or even one room.
There are lots of cupboards, for in this, as in all true Japanese
houses, the solid walls are all lined with great cupboards, a yard deep
and reaching from floor to ceiling. The rent of the house with its
garden is about 7s. a week! Less than I have been paying for my two
rooms.

The joy of these houses is that one needs almost no furniture, they are
provided with the soft, thick straw mats (_tatami_), and these serve as
carpets if one likes. I infinitely prefer their delicate straw colour
and black borders, which harmonise with the cream walls and unpainted
woodwork, to the clashing carpets most people have. Then fireplaces
being absent, overmantels, fenders, coal-scuttles and fire-irons are
all represented by a little china bowl of ashes, manipulated with metal
chop-sticks. Beds, though introduced by many foreigners into such
houses, I dispense with, and use the native mattresses on the mats, so
that they are folded away in the big cupboards by day and the room is
used for what one will. Wardrobes are also needless incumbrances, the
wall cupboards serving excellently--wash-stands are but eyesores, as
the little bath-rooms are so arranged that one can splash at will and
the water all runs away from the sloping floor. So I am a householder,
and prepared to lead the simple life.

Providence must have arranged it all, for the cook next door (that is
at Mrs. P----’s, I forgot to state) has a protégée who wants an easy
place in a foreigner’s house, and doesn’t care so much for money, as
she is timid and wants experience before going to a big house--but she
can bake bread and Scotch scones and cakes! I pay her 18s. a month
and give her no food at all! She even brings her own saucepans and
mattresses! Well, it all looks too good to be true, and until I have
moved in I had better say no more about my own little house.

I went back to my present abode, for it was my At Home day, and I
entertained some Japanese, who were charmed with Arthur Rackham’s
illustrations of _Rip Van Winkle_, and thought they showed something of
the spirit of Japanese art, which I think is true.

I flew down to the station for Yokohama, and dined there with Mrs.
L----, and dressed in a fancy dress costume and set out with her and
her daughter to a _mi-carême_ ball. I enjoyed the dance hugely.

=March 27.=--Rushed up to Tokio in the morning; to the University
for lunch, where I had a long talk with the Dean. The Mitsui family
(the Japanese Rothschilds) gave the money for the fossil laboratory
and part of the apparatus, and the Dean proposes (now that everything
is practically finished in the making of the arrangements) to give a
tea-party in the Botanic Gardens to show the building apparatus and
slides (I have cut 221 so far), as well as the new herbarium buildings.
As I have often remarked, he is very English in his tastes and culture,
and he planned to give what would be usual in England--tea and coffee
and cakes. But when I saw him yesterday, how he had fallen! Nothing
less than meats and wines and jellies would satisfy him. It was not
his own wish, but he had been driven into it by the strength of the
custom in Japan, which demands that if you have guests at all (even at
3 or 4 in the afternoon) you must give them a meat feed, and that they
must eat like greedy schoolboys. Whence comes it? This mad ostentatious
display, and the guzzling, which is so foreign to their real culture.
A mutation derived from crossing such distinct cultures as those of
Japan and Europe, not even a hybrid with the characters of one of the
parents. Well, I laughed at Professor _S----_, for he said he hated
the custom and had hoped to set the fashion for simplicity in this
party of his, but that he was really afraid to do so; he would be
the laughing-stock of the Japanese if he _only_ gave tea, coffee, and
chocolate, ice-cream, cakes and sandwiches from 3 to 6 o’clock! I asked
him where the spirit of his Samurai ancestors lay sleeping--asked him
who could set the fashion for reasonable entertainments if not himself,
in his exalted position of Dean of the University--and got him to swear
to me that he would be a pioneer, that he would be brave and face the
ordeal of being the laughing-stock of the Japanese. I wonder how it
will go.

This unwritten law, which demands such a lavish hospitality if any
is given, is, I see, one of the chief causes that there is so little
social life, in our sense of the thing, among the Japanese. It is a
real strain on their purse and their time, and they naturally ask
guests seldom when they give so much trouble.

To ask a guest to come to your house and give him only tea and cake, or
a dinner of no greater magnificence than the one you eat yourself every
night, is almost impossibly rude.

After cutting fossils till 5, I went home to entertain a Japanese to
the same food that I eat every day. Am I a laughing-stock among them?
Doubtless, and for more things than one.

=March 28.=--Fossil-cutting all morning. Late in the afternoon I called
on Mr. and Mrs. B----, who have come up to Tokio for a couple of weeks
from Sapporo, where the snow is in parts 28 feet deep--the worst they
have had for more than twenty years. They have brought up their adopted
daughter--the Aino girl I described from Sapporo--this time we were
able to talk in Japanese, which of course she generally speaks.

=March 31.=--I am making the experiment of going on a walking tour for
a few days with friends, and we have chosen Boshu peninsula, as it is
little frequented and beautiful. We were up at 5 o’clock this morning.
Very late too, as we should have got up at 4.30. However, we managed
to catch the boat which is to take us to Boshu Province, the scene of
our tour. The sail past Tokio down the bay was very calm and lovely; we
had perfect weather and were allowed, as a special privilege, to go on
the top front part of the deck, where we had a good view. Fuji gleamed
white over clouds and pine tree foregrounds, and the sky was blue. The
journey lasted seven hours, and we saw many small bays and islands down
the coast, of perfect loveliness.

Landing at Hojo in Boshu about 1 o’clock, we walked across a point of
the peninsula to Mera. Here the inn we expected to find was demolished,
but we found another and got put up. It was next door to a big school,
however, and we had a very large and very interested audience of about
a hundred children in constant attendance. C---- had never been to a
Japanese inn before, and we were a very merry party indeed. The scenery
here was in no way striking, that I hope is to come.

[Illustration: A LARGE AND INTERESTED AUDIENCE OF SCHOOL CHILDREN
WATCHED OUR PROCEEDINGS AT MERA]

=April 1–5.=--We have been walking all day all these days, and there
was no time to write in this journal, for though we have walked and
slept very little we have eaten and talked and laughed so much that
we had time for nothing else.

The first day’s walk was disappointing, flat, not very near the sea,
and with villages every half-mile or so, but we reached a pretty place
by 5 o’clock, and slept at Chikura in greater comfort than we did at
Mera.

Between Chikura and Wada, our next day’s walk, the coast was prettier,
but the weather dull, raining, in fact, and we did not get the
sea-bathing we had hoped. At luncheon-time it was very wet, and we sat
in a row under the porch of a Buddhist temple (it is like a country
lich-gate) and ate our cold rations. An old woman stopped to gaze at
us, and M---- (who speaks excellent Japanese, having been here since
she was two years old) asked her if she thought we were funny to sit
there. “No,” she said, “you came to play and you are playing. This
child” (pointing to a baby of nine months on her back) “also plays.”
Parts of the road were fascinating, through bits of pine wood and past
many a little temple. I particularly noticed the great hedges, walls
really, of podocarpus, and the numerous lovely blooming camellias,
peach and cherry trees. Between Wada and Kominato the road was still
prettier, with rocky bays and pines. We attracted a good deal of
attention, because C---- and M---- had red hair and J---- yellow. I
alone escaped most of it. The evenings were really very funny. We all
dropped into Japanese ways soon enough. We had many jokes, but none of
them would interest folk eleven thousand miles away. Wada to Kominato
was our longest day, and half the walking party got driven! What with
our pack-horse laden with luggage and the two _kurumas_, M---- and I
were highly amused at the walking tour. We were able to get milk nearly
everywhere, which is noteworthy in Japan, where it is usually a great
difficulty to find it outside the cities. The Boshu people drink it
themselves, and excellent it was.

Kominato to Katsuura was a short walk, but a very wet one, and we
became more Japanese than ever. I discarded boots and walked with my
skirts up to my knees, bare legs and Japanese _tabi_, as did J---- and
C----. We bought the great round bamboo hats the coolies wear, and were
altogether very picturesque. I came to no harm, but the others were not
so well wrapped up in woollen under-things, and C---- in particular
suffered. It was funny, when she broke down, to see her gobble up
three hard-boiled eggs faster than M---- could peel them for her! It
became one of the jokes of the party. My saucepan (the little one I
have carried in all my walking and many other tours, and that I bought
in beloved München and made jam in) has also become proverbial. I told
every one to bring one, but they all laughed the advice to scorn, and
now grudgingly acknowledge the service mine does, though it runs itself
off its legs to provide them with cocoa, and to turn hard uneatable
meat into soup.

The hotels we have stopped at have been fairly good, but Japanese
cooking does not always coincide with our tastes.

At Katsuura we turned in, wet to the skin, and very hungry, to the inn
recommended to us, but found it rather more of a pot-house than any we
had been in, so M---- and I went out in the torrents and sought another
and found it--one with three stories (the first I have seen outside the
city), the top one consisting of two lovely rooms, with verandah, which
we took, and the beauty of the wooden trellis-work in the _soji_, the
reverential politeness of the men and maids, and the luxury of silk to
lie on and to cover us, was well worth the 5s. a day it cost! Hotels
in Boshu are very cheap, and for the first time I have been astonished
by the smallness of our bills--of course it is out of the way of Tokio
and Yokohama people (seven hours in a small steamer, with sudden and
frequent storms, keeps off a crowd), and there are no mines or special
industries to bring commercial people. It seems to be a little scrap of
Japan of thirty years ago, where the people were all simple-minded and
polite, and content with little money. The beauty is not superlative,
but is really very charming, and unspoiled, and with the lovely shore
and blue sea, the place is well worth the visit.

On Sunday (5th) it was simply pelting with rain, and the roads were
unspeakably awful with the heavy recent rains, so that we were quite
gloomy. The third miserable day in succession, and we had such
brilliant weather in Tokio for weeks! Ōhara is about 10 miles off,
and we had reckoned to walk in there in time to catch the 3 train to
Tokio, but it was impossible, and we chartered a _basha_ (a kind of
carriage), reputed to hold eight, but we four found it a tight fit. I
went with the others in it, instead of walking, though I felt like a
shorn Samson, because I wanted to see them off at Ōhara, and really
walking was an impossibility. After seeing them to the train, I was
going on farther by myself. They had to return, because they teach in
a school, and the holidays were to be over on Monday--but I am free a
little longer.

Well, that _basha_, it was quite worth going into! No windows, but
sides of beaten brass that would let down at our pleasure. The only
drawback to brass as a window is that it necessitates patience. Unless
we opened the windows we couldn’t see out, if we shut them they
crashed and clattered like drums and cymbals. If we shut them we were
stuffy, and if we opened them we were frozen and drowned by driving
rain. We managed with forbearance and care to fit our knees into the
space between the seats, but thought with wonder how a single other
knee could get in, and the space was legally that for four more! The
road was as indescribably rutty and muddy as a country road can be
in any country of the world, and it had further a dash of a Swiss
mountain road as it came along some of the cliffs by the sea. We were
frightfully cold, and stopped at a tea-house to fill “Tommy,” the
hot-water bottle, who had hitherto been a useless burden to the party,
but was at a premium to-day. At this tea-house we also bought three
bright red lobsters for 1¼d. each, and they helped to amuse us. Not
long after we found that the wheel was only held together by its
rim, and it had to be knocked into shape every few minutes; fortunately
it was the off-side one from the cliff. When I said farewell at the
train we were loath to part--but as I tucked up my skirts, slung on
my knapsack and put on my mountaineering cloak, I was consoled by the
thought I was really off _walking_ and _alone_, and once more had the
open road before me and my fancy as my guide.

As the roads were so terrible, and it was late and wet, I decided to
stop off for the night near by--and went about a mile and a half to
the coast and found a perfectly ideal inn. It was in a tiny bay, all
by itself, or rather on the cliff above a tiny bay, on the peninsular
point of which was a miniature temple. No human foot-print but mine was
on the sand of the shore, and none but the maids of the house within
call. I took a small room upstairs, facing the sea, where the breakers
dashed on to the cliffs, and found that though inside the house, on one
side it was open, because a big piece of cliff stuck right into the
building. This gave a charming view of moss-grown rocks, and a hollow
stone with a lake in it, all lying between me and the next-door room.

The bath-room was downstairs, and to reach it one went along a long
corridor hewn out of solid rock. The bath-room itself was also built in
the solid rock, and was a great vault-like place. How J---- and M----
would have revelled in it!

The food was such that my saucepan worked wonders with it, and
converted stony chicken, hard rice, and half-cooked green pickle
into a very tasty stew. The beds were excellent, though not of silk,
and I slept splendidly. Last night we had talked till one o’clock,
so to-night I turned in at 8.30 and slept till 8.15. Alternations of
solitude and company are refreshing, and though I enjoyed those girls
immensely, and laughed as I haven’t done since I left England, it is
delicious to be alone with the grey sea in a hotel half hewn out of
solid rock.

=April 6.= After pouring all night the clouds broke about 9 o’clock,
and I set forth in sight of gleams of blue between the grey; the hotel
people were all very polite, though all they got out of me was 2s. 8d.
It is a hotel I shall note and hope to return to, I wish I could bring
some of my friends there from home. In the next little bay, where the
cliffs are also very steep right down to the sea, so that there is no
beach at high tide, the fishermen beach their boats on a series of
piles and trestles, and very picturesque and quaint they look.

The cliffs here are all limestony and sandy, and seem rather recent and
unfossiliferous.

[Illustration: THE COAST ROAD ALONG WHICH WE WALKED ROUND BOSHU]

I walked partly by road, partly along the shore about 14 miles, a short
distance, but the way was very heavy and the day hot. About half-way
were some lovely pine woods with mossy floor and May-flowers, and I
lay there for lunch. Violets of many kinds had been the chief, almost
I might say the only, wild flower we had noted hitherto, but here were
several others. Daisies, like our home ones, only bigger and _purple_;
a lovely intense blue sedum, and a small shrub, with crimson flowers,
the Japonica, were the most striking and beautiful of those I noticed.

The last 4 or 5 miles lay along a curious shore. A greater contrast to
that of my last night’s lodging could not be imagined. The whole coast
was flat for several miles inland, and the beach was a great stretch
of dark grey sand with the small beginnings of dunes here and there,
and must have been more than a mile in width. Along its desolate extent
were dotted little houses, grey as the sand, and built with their
roofs touching the ground on two sides!--these sides presumably being
those of the prevailing winds. They looked as though the full tide
should sweep over them, the beach behind them appeared so unreclaimed,
but they seem to have stood there for long, some were almost buried
under the piled-up sand. I can give no idea of the vastness and the
desolation of this view. The houses seemed mere hummocks in the
wilderness, for under the eaves a man can hardly stand upright, and
the boats look almost as big as the houses. There is absolutely no
vegetation near them, only, at the edge of the dunes, a few small pine
trees venture farther out than anything, but the little ones run grave
risks of being buried. I had intended to spend the night at Jehinomiya,
but found it lies a mile from the coast, so when I found groves of pine
trees, a broad river, with a tiny village and a lot of country houses
of the summer-house type, I put up at the inn, which is not bad. The
hamlet is called Sendocre, and the inn looks out over a broad river and
into deep groves of pine. The frogs are all making as much noise as
they can with their watchman’s rattle-like voices, but otherwise there
is perfect peace; everything is in complete contrast to last night’s
cliff-perched, spray-splashed, storm-tossed house.

=April 7.=--What a day of sights and impressions! I cannot tell a
quarter of them, or to-day’s experiences would fill this volume.

The mile to Jehinomiya lay along the river by a narrow foot-path, with
pine plantations near at hand. From thence to the next town (Mobara)
was 10 miles of road, at first between villages and large farm-houses.
The rice fields lying on each side of the road were the scene of the
country people’s labours, men and women working together up to their
knees in the soft black squelchy mud. They were dressed quite alike,
with dark-blue cotton clothes, very tight-fitting trousers down to the
ankle, and long tunics with a blue-and-white towel tied over their
heads. Some of them burrowed in the mud for roots of weeds, some used
a heavy fork to bring the soil into ridges, and in one field I saw
a wooden plough dragged by a dejected-looking horse. The chickens,
everywhere abundant, seem a particularly large and healthy type,
and they too worked in the rice fields, hopping from ridge to ridge
after the workers had turned it over and revealed small grains and
worms, which they captured. As in Boshu, so in this province, cows are
remarkably plentiful and good-looking. The clusters of cottages with
their grey thatched roofs made a series of lovely pictures, beside
each was one or more glowing bush of apricot or peach, and the white
feathery branches of cherry flower, soft, rich, and with a feeling like
whipped-cream when you kissed them, floated over the rest like white
clouds. For 3 or 4 miles the road lay through pine woods, real pine
woods, with a soft mossy floor and violets, not the high, coarse bamboo
usual in Japan, that makes it impossible to pass. At the edge of the
road were many low shrubs with thick masses of the terra-cotta-coloured
flowers, like Japonica, so that a line glowed on either side of the
sandy track. There were also purple pansies and pale violets, and the
world seemed a very fair place.

At Mobara I passed a school just coming out, and very few of the
little boys even troubled to follow me; none called out any remarks.
My knapsack is carried in somewhat the native fashion for slinging
bundles, and even though I wear skirts, they think I am a man--their
men wear skirts too, and a plain panama sun hat very like mine. Thank
heaven my hair isn’t red. A few discover I am a woman, but the fact
excites little interest.

A less beautiful 5 miles took me to Chōnan, and from there 2½ more
to the place where I branched off across the rice fields to see a
famous temple of great age. The last mile of the road was splendidly
hilly and well wooded, and on the banks were huge blue forget-me-nots.
The road passed under one of the hills by a bent tunnel, pitch dark,
and very weirdly echoing. I could not see where my feet were going, and
wondered if any local bandits made it their headquarters; they could
not have found a more excellent place. Slightly disappointing, was it
not, that I went through that cavernous tunnel alone and without any
incident? To reach the temple I had then to follow narrow paths across
the rice fields, and was not surprised to learn from the people at a
tea-house at the foot of the temple hill that they had never seen a
foreign lady before. The hill on which the Buddhist temple of Kasamori
is built is magnificently wooded; on the summit stands a high isolated
pyramid of rock, and on the top of this the temple is built. This main
building dates from 1028, extremely old for Japan, where the original
buildings of the oldest temples have usually been destroyed by fire and
rebuilt again and again.

The view from the temple itself was superb. One stood on a level with
the topmost branches of the giant trees, and looking through them saw
all round stretch after stretch of green valleys, and crest after crest
of darkly wooded hills. The trunks of the trees near by were covered
with epiphytes and creepers, and in the valleys grew ferns and violets.

In a little tea-house I made myself some cocoa in my saucepan, and
the people wanted to taste it, and seemed highly amused with me,
particularly with my folding knife and spoon, and the metal cup that
fitted on so neatly. Thus fortified I retraced my steps to Chōnan,
and towards Mobara. I expected to find an inn on the way, but none
appeared, and I had to walk right back to Mobara. Then troubles began,
and after walking these 27 miles I was tossed from inn to inn, no room
anywhere! Not that there were so many inns, for it is a small town,
and at last, in despair, I decided to go to the station and take a
train to Chiba, the provincial capital, where there would surely be
room, but I was tired and hungry, and had two hours to wait for the
train. In Japanese inns it is very different from ours; if you have no
room you cannot get a meal, as there is no such thing as a dining-room.

However, I found a charming little tea-house, where I got a rest and a
meal, and they arranged with a hotel by the station to put me up, or
shall I say “take me in”? for certainly I would not have gone to the
place under other conditions.

=April 8.=--Came back by the 8.15 train and reached Tokio early in the
afternoon. After calling on Miss B---- I went to the P----s to dinner
and to make the finishing touches to the arrangements about my removal,
which is planned for two days hence. The blow that awaited me should
not have been unexpected in this land, where no one seems to consider
a promise more binding than a compliment is true. Well! though I had
taken it before I went to Boshu on certain understandings, I found my
house _sold_ to some one else when I returned! As I had arranged with
my present people to leave directly on my return from Boshu, I was not
a little vexed, particularly as the house suited me so perfectly in
every way.

The new owner was willing to let it at a rent of 40% higher than I
had taken it for, and he further refused to do any of the necessary
papering and plastering that I had had guaranteed me, so that instead
of ordering the removal carts, I have to sit down and argue with the
landlord, and it may take three weeks to settle. I really grieve that
it is so utterly impossible to trust the Japanese; I had loved them so
before I had suffered so much of this sort of thing.

=April 9.=--The cherry flowers yesterday were like great clouds touched
rosy by the setting sun, and to-morrow is the garden party of Professor
_S----’s_ ambitions, and to-day! nearly a foot of snow on my window
ledge--everything buried and broken, as none have seen them before.
There is more snow to-day than there was through all the winter put
together, and the pink cherry flowers are cloaked so as to conceal
their very existence; they do not lend the snow even a flush of pink.

There was no way of getting to the Botanical Institute but by walking,
and I am very glad indeed that I did choose to venture out, instead
of listening to the counsels of the Japanese and remaining at home.
The streets were almost deserted, and I trod unspoiled snow, which
sometimes reached half-way to my knees. It still snowed heavily, and
the weight of the umbrella became a burden, as well as being a useless
encumbrance, as I was always putting it to one side or the other to
gaze at some new delight, while the gusts whirled in and under it from
every side. Devastation and ruin lay on every side; great boughs were
blown off the cherry trees and lay across the road. The magnolias which
yesterday sent up glittering white chalices to heaven, to-day hung
limp yellow rags beneath the snow-laden boughs; even the glow of the
flaring crimson plum was quenched. In front of a temple I daily pass, a
great cryptomeria was shattered across the road, its main shaft broken
into three pieces, so that the whole tree shut down like a concertina.

Every telegraph and telephone wire was broken, the ends lying like
traps curled under the snow ready for one’s legs, and the rest looped
from pole to pole in festoons of white rope, for the snow stuck to
the wires till they were as thick as my arm. On the tram lines a few
snowed-up and deserted trams stood helpless, and not even a _kuruma_
passed to jeer at them.

It continued snowing all day, and as the roads were so unspeakably and
unusually bad, I decided to go calling and see the town thoroughly
when I was about it. So I walked to the Embassy, about 2½ miles or
so, and saw the streets, one after the other, in the same condition of
ruin. The traffic was still almost _nil_, but some people had been up
and down the big main street by the Kudan, and a certain amount of snow
had melted. That Kudan hill was a bog on the surface and a river below,
and as there were no footpaths, I was through it nearly to my knees.
After paying several calls in the neighbourhood, I decided to go and
see what Azabu looked like, and walked over there; the P----s would not
let me away again, the roads were too terrible, and so I stopped the
night there.

Obviously the garden party is postponed.

=April 10.=--The snow is still lying thickly everywhere, but on the
road the foot tracks are nearly knee-deep in slush. The papers are full
of accounts of yesterday’s storm. It appears that all the railways, as
well as trams and telegraphs, were cut off. There was no possibility of
getting to Yokohama even, and the Kobe express was snowed up for the
day 10 miles from Tokio. A few trams are running this morning--they
are repairing wires as quickly as possible. By the end of the day
nearly all the cars were in working order; I think they have been quite
remarkably quick over them, but the telegraph wires are still hanging
in festoons or tripping one up.

It is quite a good thing the snow put the party off, for it is the
funeral day of the young Prince Arusigawa, and also we were not nearly
ready with the cutting-machine--the automatic carborundum apparatus is
still far from complete.

=April 11.=--I removed from Yakuojimaimachi to my own little house.
After there was the bother of them having sold it while I was away,
there was so much talk and bother about rent, cleaning, papering, and
everything, that I got cross and said I would move on the 11th, as I
originally said I would, and when I was in the house I would discuss
all these points! That soon settled matters; my goods were put on two
man-carts with great care by the entire family, and plants and all were
safely brought to my little Azabu house. I began to pack this morning
at 8.30, and was ready for the carts at 10.30! That is the outcome of
the Japanese _feruské_ (a square ornamental cloth in which goods are
tied), it is so easy to tie up quilts, cushions, and looking-glasses
all together in one huge coloured pocket-handkerchief. The placing of
my few goods on the little carts took till 12.30, but they were in
Azabu, unpacked and paid, by 2.30. Some things are cheap in Japan.
Fortunately it was a lovely bright day, so nothing got wet.

I found the house being cleaned by my bright little maid, whose name is
O Fuji-san, and who seems to like to have me for a mistress and to live
next to the P----s, whose cook is her great friend, and trained her.
She is rather a better-class girl than most servants, and was early
left an orphan, and her guardian is glad for her to be with people
who will look after her. She is quite pretty, and unusually bright
and intelligent-looking. I expect it will seem to you a preposterous
thing to do, to take a house and go in for “furnishing” and all the
worries and expense of a household. But in Japan it is very different
from in England--the houses need practically no furniture, the huge
cupboards in every room hold all one’s goods, and so wardrobes, etc.
etc. are superfluous (and, besides, they utterly ruin the look of a
Japanese room), while the soft _tatami_ (special thick mats in every
house) serve as carpets, bedstead, and mattress, and all one needs
is a thick quilt to lie on, another to cover one, with a couple of
sheets and a pillow. I have the few chairs and the table and cabinet
I had for the last house, and with a lovely brilliant blue cloisonné
vase on an ebony stand, a dwarf pine tree, and a bunch of white cherry
flowers in the tokonomo, my room looks an aesthetic dream, with its
cream walls, cream floors, and wooden trellis-work with white paper
windows. If I could but carry it as it is to London! Yet here people
prefer Brussels carpets and rooms packed with knick-knacks. They are
living in the realisation of the dream of our aesthetes and “simple
livers,” and they prefer the things we are trying to escape. I speak
of the foreigners, but even the richer Japanese are casting aside the
exquisite refinement, the studied and cultured beauty of simplicity, to
add a mêlée of “foreign” additions and “luxuries” to their rooms. The
soothing harmonies of form and tone are broken, and there is a strife
of shrieking colour, of glaring inharmonies.

=April 12.=--I gave my little maid _carte blanche_ to buy the
_essentials_ for her kitchen. One stove, costing 5s., I had already
arranged for, the rest she had to buy. At the end of the day she came
with all the items written down in a bill 3 yards long. I went in
fear and trembling to inspect it and the purchases, and was greatly
relieved to find the sum total _under ten shillings_. Many of the items
were deliciously amusing; for instance, 1 sen 5 rin (a sum equal to a
farthing plus half a farthing) attracted my attention. It was a fan
to fan the charcoal when it refused to burn. For one farthing she got
a splendid lamp cleaner, for 8d. a lamp with white glass shade, while
¾d. more provided the chain to hang it up by. The second stove cost
5½d. and burns splendidly; it is made of red earthenware, and has
a little door that opens and shuts. These items will make you think
that I am either making game of you or of myself, but seriously, I set
no limit to the girl’s purchases, and she has got the usual things
an unsophisticated Japanese uses in her kitchen. Of course, I have a
few things, and bought some expensive items like enamel saucepans and
frying-pans--but I think this little house has not cost me £3 to fit
up, and, as I said before, to fit up comfortably, and with a distinct
beauty. I only hope the housekeeping will run as smoothly as it
promises to do, and the house prove as convenient to live in as it is
pretty to look at.

=April 13.=--The way that maid manages a four-course dinner, with three
saucepans and half a dozen bits of charcoal in the fivepenny stove, is
nothing short of miraculous--everything was very well cooked too. I
wasted about an hour over the house this morning, but got off to the
Institute after that. It is rather farther to go now, and takes some
time even with the tram, but one can’t get everything one wants, and
were I near the Institute, I should be so far from all the foreigners
as to be quite isolated, and that, I find, in this climate, is not very
healthy.

=April 14.=--The cherry trees are now wonderfully beautiful; contrary
to the croakings of the pessimists, the snow has not ruined them, and
the trees are covered with bloom. They say they are bleached, and
certainly the pink is so delicate as to be entirely elusive when one
looks at an individual bloom. I went to the renowned Oyeno Park, where
groves of trees are laden with bloom. It was a little late, and some
of the petals were falling, so that there seemed to be a whirling
snowstorm of flakes that gleamed pearly white in the sunshine. The
ground was covered, and all the pools of water left by the recent snows
were thickly fringed with white. Tokio is everywhere a fairy-land of
beauty, for cherry trees by the hundred are blooming in it. One has
the impression of being in the midst of clouds that float between
the branches of the pine trees, and rest over grey roofed cottages.
The strip of soil in front of the Embassy is covered with a treble
avenue of flowering trees, and the paths are petal-strewn between the
brilliant green grass patches. The difference in the grass in the last
two weeks is very noticeable--from a brown patchy covering over bare
earth it has become a thick emerald cloak.

=April 15.=--My little maid’s guardian came to see me and to thank me
for taking care of her. As a matter of fact it is she who is taking
care of me; I couldn’t have imagined a house run more smoothly. The
guardian is a nice man, good-looking, though middle-aged, and able
to speak German, so we got on all right. He brought me some pots of
pretty flowers, and some pansies with scent which are treasures, as the
lovely pansies here are scentless. It is a very curious point, how well
English flowers grow here, getting lovely large blooms, but one and all
losing their scent. It makes one quite sad when great luscious roses,
pansies, and even mignonette, are scentless--they seem to have lost
their souls.

=April 19.=--I spent the morning gardening; in my little garden nothing
much is growing yet, the last people were very careless. I have dug
and planted, the chief thing I planted being stones. I have learnt
their value in a garden, and I also go out with a watering-can and
water my poor little stones. Alas, all the really beautiful ones were
too expensive to buy. I went in to lunch with the P----s, because they
were having ice-cream, and afterwards went to tea with old Mr. G----
(father of the Mr. G---- I mentioned at the Takashima coal mines, near
Nagasaki). His house is surrounded by an extremely lovely garden, with
masses of flowers, and a view right across to Fujis. While we were
standing on the lawn a lady visitor turned down her glove and rubbed
some bites on her arm. Mr. G---- bent over her, and with an air of
courteous solicitude, said, “That is not one of my fleas, I hope.” No
one seemed to think the remark in any way curious till I said I wished
I had a snapshot of that to send to _Punch_.

=April 22.=--Cutting fossils till 3.30, and then I went to Professor
_M----_, and then on to the _S----s_ to pay my party call. Professor
_S----_ was out, but Mrs. _S----_ at home, and as nice and talkative as
could be expected in Japanese, when the concrete bounds the realm of my
speech. When I got home I found Professor _S----_ had just been to see
me! and we had each travelled 6 miles to visit each other, and crossed.
I was very sorry. He had brought some butter, made by the agricultural
students, hoping I should like it. I had once mentioned how difficult
it was to get butter fit to eat in Tokio.

To-day I saw the first bewitchingly pretty child I have seen in this
country--with great round black eyes, with a look of heaven in them.
She was dressed in a scarlet flowered kimono that showed the outlines
of her little limbs, and her hair was tied with scarlet ribbon in
a little tuft at either side. She was dancing along with a parasol
held high over her head, but she would not even smile at me, and I
would gladly have taken her in my arms and kissed her, she looked so
perfectly in tune with the dancing cherry clusters and the blue heavens.

=April 23.=--I feel that I can never go into a tram again. The horror
of my last ride! A leper came and sat down beside me, almost on top
of me, and the cars are so crowded I could not get away. He was not
in the worst stages, of course, but some of his finger-tips were
eaten away and one eye was blinded--there is none of the “white as
snow” business about lepers, it is an eating away of the digits, and
finally the limbs. I was only near him for five minutes, till the first
stopping-place--but----. I have said before, I think, that the Japanese
don’t think it really contagious; there was perhaps not the least
danger, but we are accustomed to think mere contact with a leper fatal.

The single cherries are now over, and the long double ones beginning.
They are rose pink and really as big as small rambler roses, each head
hanging down on its long stalk. The rich clusters on the branches are
quite unimaginably beautiful; could one suppose the kisses of tiny
children materialised and hung by fairies against the blue sky, one
might well believe the cherry flowers to be the kisses of all the
golden-haired pink-cheeked babies.

=April 24.=--Friday again--how fast and furious fly the weeks, and
there are only four in a month, four and a few days ōmaki. When
they give you a one-sen present after a five-dollar purchase, they
call it ōmaki here, and many a sen have I received that way. I wish
Nature would give me a few years ōmaki here and now, I want to stay
here longer. I went to lunch at the Faculty, the first of the term.
Professor _S----_ very nice; afterwards I went to inquire how Professor
_F----_ was, but he was too ill to see me.

=April 25.=--Saturday. Fossil-cutting all morning. The double cherries
are now beginning and are showing masses of colour between the trees
of single cherry, which are quite green. Pansies are everywhere in the
little shops, and so are gold-fish. Many small shops have suddenly
added glass globes of gold-fish to their wares; the white glass
sparkles in the sun, and the fish are very bright and pretty. They are
very clever at grafting gold-fish. One may get them with two or more
tails so neatly grafted on that the creatures live very happily, and
look quite as though they had been born so, and were rather proud of it
than otherwise.

=April 26.=--A very beautiful sunny day. I dried my hair in my little
garden--it will break my heart to leave this house and garden, there
is no doubt about it. It isn’t more than 20 yards square, but it
is full of features--two ponds, a river, stepping-stones, woodland
glades, pansy beds, and tiny grass plots. As I sit in it and look
over the roof of my tiny house I see the blue sky through a group of
tall cryptomerias, with a tall silver ash stem, a maple and chestnut
clothed in vivid green to throw up their blackness in strong relief. I
picked the dead flowers off the blooming plants, and then set out with
sandwiches and some writing to the woods, which I was optimistic enough
to expect to find in Tokio! And I found them! Within half an hour of my
house I came upon a sudden steep track off the high road, and followed
it into a wood on a hill, where I lay all day, with a vast panorama of
green valleys below my feet, violets and wild wistaria around me, and
pine trees over my head, and no human being near me all the time. Thank
God for the quiet woods. It is the best source of strength and comfort
I know, to lie on a hill alone all day.

This little wood is the first quite solitary comfortable place I
have found in Tokio’s immediate neighbourhood--one could hardly have
expected to get so sweet a place so near a big city. But I trust to my
feet to lead me to woods wherever I am, even in London’s suburbs, and
they generally do.

=April 27.=--A quiet day at work at the University; some new delight in
the way of flowers appears every day and charms me. I put a new plant
into my garden most evenings.

=April 28.=--After this week of glorious weather that to-day should
be wet--cruel! _The_ day when the Emperor and Empress had invited
me (as well as a few hundred other people!) to the Imperial garden
party. All the morning it literally streamed with rain, but I hoped
against hope, uselessly, of course, for the early morning decides
whether the Emperor will be there or not. However, about half-past
one my hope was rewarded, for the rain stopped, though it was not
bright, and that meant we would be allowed to see the gardens, which,
of course, is a thing in itself well worth doing. So I decided to set
off, not, of course, in my best bib and tucker, and Mrs. P---- went
with me, a little against her will. The others would not come, though
J---- had bought a new frock and a four-guinea hat for the occasion,
which is _the_ event of the summer season. Right glad I was that I
went--the gardens were lovely, and there were a lot of people in
semi-garden-party state. We ate the chicken and ice-cream, fruit and
champagne intended for the whole party, and had really a much more
enjoyable, if less distinguished, time than if the official party had
taken place and the Emperor been present. A number of the diplomats
were there.

By far the most striking individual was an Indian prince, in a glorious
pale-blue and gold uniform, with turban and a delicious gold pompon. He
was extremely tall and thin, and held himself erect as a young pine.

The cherry petals were falling, and whitened the pines and floated
on the lake in wind-blown drifts. The wistarias were covered with
buds just clouded with a purple haze, and every one of the many pines
and other gymnosperms gleamed brilliant green among trees, the young
shoots’ vividness giving an effect of bloom, where the maple leaves
were crimson. The maple, which has crimson leaves in spring, does not
get the brilliant colouring in the autumn, like the other species, but
is equally highly prized for its spring beauty. The garden slopes down
to the sea, which runs along one wall of stone, and in the trees were
hundreds of sea-gulls. The benevolent despot has fenced off a part of
the garden; here no one is allowed to enter, and here the wild-birds
nest--the sea-gulls building and rearing their young on branches of
trees covered with luxuriant epiphytes! Some of the trees are very
old, and in one I found a big tufted bamboo growing as an epiphyte
in the ancient stem of a flowering cherry tree. Something disturbed
the nesting birds--was it the smell of champagne and cigars in the
neighbourhood, or the clanking of spurs and swords?--and they rose in
hundreds and wheeled in the sky, such a flight of them I have never
seen. Some were pure white and gleamed like cherry petals in the grey
sky, but most were grey, like the drifting clouds.

=April 29.=--A quiet day’s work, the weather was bright, lovely, out of
sheer perversity. My maid gave me some fritters for dinner, of a kind I
had not ordered, and when I asked her what they were, she said _hassu_,
that is, the lotus. The sacred flower makes delicious fritters! I
daresay if one could capture the rosy-tinted evening clouds they would
make good ice-cream.

=May 2.=--I went to Professor _Fw----’s_: he was kindly taking me as
his guest to an afternoon luncheon-party at the Admiralty gardens. At
his house I met an interesting Japanese who spoke excellent English,
and who is said to be one of the greatest Japanese musicians. He
invented an organ of some sort, and has had a special audience with the
Kaiser Wilhelm. We drove to the Admiralty, passing safely the fierce
bayoneted sentries, and across a yard hideous with brick buildings and
smoky chimneys--through a gate in a high wall, and were--in a deep
forest glade, under shade of palm trees and ferns, back in time three
hundred years! The gardens were those of a very famous Daimio, and were
laid out with the greatest care and at a boundless expense. In them
are all the stages of the Tokkaido,--scenes from China, wild mountain
views and iris gardens, falls of water and lakes. In fact a series
of scenes of wonderful beauty, of peace and suggestion, of dreamland
poetry--only the tallest of the cryptomerias and pines were standing as
dead skeletons, killed by the smoky chimneys on the other side of the
boundary wall. These great gardens are entirely closed, and it is very
difficult even to get permission to see them, the authorities of the
Admiralty are so afraid of spies.

The special party to-day was to welcome the married daughter of one
of the earliest and most useful of the American missionaries, a Dr.
Brown, who had had a school in Yokohama, and who had as pupils many
men now very distinguished. Among other people I was introduced to a
very charming, thoroughly Europeanised, and handsome man--and of course
did not catch his name. He walked with me a little while through the
gardens, and we talked of the beauty of Tokio and the destruction of
that beauty by “reformations” some years ago, before the Japanese had
learned to appreciate native art as well as they do now (though much
of the same sort goes on to-day), and I quoted one of the specially
terrible places, the hideous red-brick Exhibition-like buildings
(Government buildings) that ruin the view of the grey moat with green
banks and trees and old white and grey buildings round the palace, one
of the most lovely sights any city in the world can show. I exclaimed
against the vandalism, the criminal folly of the architect, whom I
surmised was some second-rate foreigner. “Yes,” my companion answered,
“it _is_ bad. I was the Chairman of the Building Committee at that
time, but I suppose the architect was morally responsible.”

You may imagine my feelings. I knew, of course, by the look of the man
he was some one of importance, but how could I guess who he was? I am
not sorry, however, that he heard it.

A further surprise awaited me; he made the speech of the evening, and
turns out to have been Dr. Brown’s youngest and most promising pupil,
and to-day to be the world-known Ambassador Tsuzuki, representative
at the last Hague Conference! He said good-bye very graciously--his
laurels don’t rest on the beauty of those buildings, and I had not
touched him on a vital point after all.

=May 3.=--I really had to make up my mind once for all to learn to
get on a bicycle by myself without the aid of a devoted male friend.
Hitherto I have always ridden with people who put me on--here I am
alone. I bought a bicycle from the missionaries, which had been
discarded by one of their number. But after being at the bicycle shop
for a little it seems in good order, for it was an excellent frame,
and now I determined to ride, as Tokio’s distances waste so many
hours a day that I can stand it no longer. After a few hours’ steady
determination, I find I can get on very well without the male friend.
But those of you who read this and have played that part, don’t think I
could have got on without you at the time.

About midday I decided to go and see the renowned Azalea gardens at the
village of Okabu, some few miles off, and so I took my maid as a treat
for both of us (she never having seen the flowers), and shut up the
house. There is no lock or key, and any thief had only to slide a paper
screen and slip in, but we told the cook next door to keep a weather
eye open, and set off gaily in the sunshine.

Along the main street of Okabu are a dozen nursery gardens, all
filled with azaleas, and so laid open that you can walk round and
see everything, and buy what you please, but not unless you please.
Even when you want to buy it is rather difficult to find any one who
will sell to you. When you do, he will just seize the flowering bush
and pull it up, shake the mud off the roots, wrap them in paper and
tie a big loop of string to it; you carry it home, stick it anywhere
in your garden, and it goes on as though it had never moved an inch.
The sunshine and rain make things grow so easily here, it certainly
doesn’t depend on any special “skill of the Japanese” in this case, for
I myself stuffed the azaleas into my garden and saw the man pull them
up like weeds.

In one garden there was an entry fee--of three farthings. Here the
whole garden was filled with plants all one height (about 3 feet),
and all flat on the top, and all covered with flowers--a crimson sea.
Generally speaking, though, the flowers individually were far less
beautiful in colour, and smaller in size than our azaleas, the interest
and special charm lay in the masses of them, and the number of gardens
one after the other that cultivated them.

There were crowds of people in their best clothes, and stalls on the
road selling sweets, and the inevitable hair ribbons of brilliant
colour; with here and there a gold-fish dealer or a seedsman.

We lunched in a little tea-house and came back laden with flowers--four
beautiful glowing azaleas, a brilliant fern-like green shrub, and
a budding yellow broom, for which I paid a sum total of exactly
elevenpence.

The roots were all tied up neatly in paper--and then they wouldn’t
let us on the car! Other people were carrying them tied up in
_feruskés_ just exactly as ours were in paper, so I was furious and
asked a policeman why. “Had we no _feruskés_? Then we must cover them
completely in paper, and the officials would not see them.” “But the
roots were covered in paper,” I replied, “other people have them like
that.” “Ah, they have roots in _feruskés_ or handkerchiefs, then the
officials cannot see that the roots are there, but they can see the
roots through paper. If, however, you cover them completely, then they
will not know they are flowers at all. Roots are not allowed on the
tram.”

We went to a shop and got newspapers to cover them up, and the same
officials who had barred my way smiled approval!

=May 4.=--A pouring day, the roads simply awful, as it came down in
torrents all night. My little plans for getting to work early on my
bicycle were all knocked on the head. I saw not a soul in the Institute
all day, and was glad when Mrs. P---- came across to have a little
chat. I am arranging about a Debate, Tokio doesn’t seem really to know
what that is! But we meet at parties and talk endless gossip, so I
am going to give a tea-party, have an amusing Debate (if possible),
and found a society which, I hope, will live for ever, like Mother’s
Norwood one. I forgot, because in a way it came in between two days,
that the other night we went to the Greek Church Easter Service. It
is held at midnight, and the Russian Greek Church is by far the most
successful of the churches here. It is the only one with an imposing
building, the only one with a great choir, and a sense of wealth and
success in the appearance of the interior. The great domed building
stands high on a hill, and can be seen from most parts of Tokio. We
found a huge crowd of Japanese waiting to go into the gates, and as
they entered each bought a candle and lit it, so that, as well as the
regular altar and other candles, the church was illuminated with
hundreds of these tapers. The Bishop, in gorgeous white and gold, was
seated in the centre of the church, and swung incense over the people,
while a choir, quite unaccompanied, sang the whole service. This choir
is splendid, though composed of Japanese, and is one of the wonders
of the church. The congregation crowded into the church area, where
there were no seats, but the floor was covered with carpet (which would
certainly be a sea of candle grease in the morning), on which the
people stood or sat. There were very many children present, some very
tiny, and all in their best. A few of them were charmingly beautiful
pictures. The service, sung by the choir, was followed by few of the
congregation; they stood or sat reverently, seeing to their candles and
sometimes crossing themselves, but they did not hesitate to go through
their ceremonial bows if they met an acquaintance, some going down on
the floor and touching it with their foreheads, to the peril of the
tapers. The service was principally chanted, but sometimes the voices
rose into a grand chorus, and all the time the Bishop and his clergy
kept up a picturesque ceremonial. The altar was magnificent, vast, and
gilded and lit with huge candles. We felt the whole ceremonial and its
setting splendid, impressive, but almost weird. The power of the Bishop
is clear, if one only knew that he got all those hundreds of Japanese
out at midnight, while for social functions they find 9 o’clock too
late.

We had to walk home, and came through the outer palace gardens
and under the ancient Japanese gates, lovely in the moonlight, and
palpitating with the lives of the past.

=May 5.=--The weather cleared up nicely and I set off gaily on my
bicycle, but a dozen things went wrong with it, and I left it at a
shop, hoping they would steal it, and I should never see it again.
I cut fossils all day without seeing a soul to speak a word to, and
went back to the shop and found they had not stolen the bicycle, but
had put it right, so that it went quite well. I set off on it to
cross Tokio and call on Miss H----, who had a private view of some
copper-plate etchings done by a friend of hers, and very charming they
were. The roads of Tokio should be simply blood-curdling. There is no
rule for the traffic, the electric cars are the only things that keep
any kind of order, and foot-passengers and playing children simply
swarm. Fortunately there are few carts or carriages, but those few dart
about anyhow, and the horses often run away. One has simply to thread
one’s way through this stream of things. The children are particularly
trying, and take no notice of violent bells and shouts.

=May 8.= Professor _M----_ came to take me to the Faculty lunch. A
serio-comic incident happened just before we started. He came for me
to the fossil laboratory, and waited a minute while I was finishing a
stone. As he stood there, a stone, which I was heating in molten zinc,
exploded, and the zinc flew in drops all over the room, and settled
on all of us, but fortunately only on our clothes. The bright hard
drops looked quite funny on his coat and hat, and some of them wouldn’t
peel off. There must have been some internal moisture or gas in the
stone; it is the first time such a thing has happened. After lunch
Professor _S----_ took me and Professor _Y----_ to see his garden (he
lives within easy walking distance of the University), and it was a
delightful sight. I have described the house and garden before, and
now it was gay with pink roses and many different coloured azaleas.
His tiny daughter was running about with “bells on her shoes.” Little
bells were fastened on the under-side of the wooden clog, “on the same
principle,” the Professor said, “as the bell is round the neck of a
kitten--it is convenient to know where it is.”

After an hour’s rest I returned to the fossils, and at 4 bicycled off
to Baroness d’A----’s garden party,--bicycled in a white muslin frock,
which, had the people not thrown buckets of water into the roads,
would have come through scathless, but as it was, was heavily specked
with mud all up the front, and I felt all the carriage folk staring at
me. Otherwise I had a good time, and arranged some details about the
forthcoming Debate.

=May 9.=--At work all day on fossils. Dr. _M----_ came to the
laboratory about 2, and we had a long chat; he is one of the very few
Japanese who know enough of my work to be really interested.

=May 10.=--On Sunday Professor _S----_ asked me to go to see the
celebrated Buton flowers (paeonies), and I set off at 9 and met him and
his wife at Ryonokubashi at 10. We then drove to the gardens, which
lie across the river, in quite a slummy part of the town. The south
part of Tokio, across the river, corresponds in a way with the south of
London, and is distinctly its working quarter.

The paeonies were under the shade of straw mats, which roofed them
and the spectators in, and a lovely sight they were. Each flower was
really huge, about a foot across, but, as a rule, there was but one on
a plant. White, pink, crimson, and almost black, and all the shades so
beautiful and artistic, they were infinitely more pleasing than the
chrysanthemums.

In the same garden were also a number of dwarf trees--now I have bought
several at various times, and was always astonished at the cheapness
and prettiness, but here, a very (to me) inartistic one cost £4, and
the only one I really liked was £9!

After lunch we took the train, and went out of Tokio for some distance
to a place where there was a very renowned wistaria flower. The trunk
of this enormous tree was twisted and gnarled with intertwining
branches, and all together was about 12 feet in diameter. The branches
were all trained on props over bamboo, and formed a great flat roof,
over an appreciable part of an acre! The flower clusters hang so
thickly and evenly as to give the appearance of a ceiling of long
tassels. The tails seemed to be only a foot or so long, but when
measured were found to be 2 or 3, some even 3 feet 6 inches long! The
whole sight was very charming, and quite startling, but perhaps less
romantically beautiful than one had imagined it. The gardens had only
this one tree on show, and under it the people sat and walked about and
drank tea.

On returning we missed the connecting train and had an hour and a half
to wait; it was cold and began to rain. I didn’t mind, for Professor
_S----_ was very interesting, and we talked of nearly everything under
heaven and earth--but the more I see of him the less I think he is a
typical Japanese; he is an exceptional one. I was sorry for poor Mrs.
_S----_, however, who could not follow our conversation very well, and
who had no one else to talk to. We dined at a restaurant in Tokio, and
I got back home after a thirteen-hours outing, practically _tête à
tête_ with a Japanese man--and bored I had not been for a moment, and
people here say you can’t get any real companionship from the Japanese.
I say it is those people’s own faults.

=May 11.=--Torrents of rain all day, so that I did nothing but work
at the Institute--which was somewhat hampered by the absence of the
boy who runs the engine. I got home in an awfully bad temper, after
battling with everything all day--but the bright dripping green of the
trees all round me, and the peace of my little house, soon soothed me
up.

=May 12.=--Pouring rain all day again; it was so hateful ploughing
through these streets, with no side-walks and mud 6 inches deep, that
I decided not to go to-morrow, but stop at home. There was a dance at
the K----’s, and I had a good time. A charming American was there, who
smiled all the time and made one happy just to look at him. There
was also a young, fair-haired Mr. B----. His teachers must have been
very proud of him; he had the bright smile and the “good” look of a
favourite boy, and an ornament to the Y.M.C.A. I felt sure he must be a
missionary, but he turned out to be an artist, just out, and to stay a
year, painting all sorts of things, Japanese portraits among them. He
seemed much astonished when he found I had travelled alone--I am sure
his sisters never would,--and when I tried to soothe him by quoting my
French and other tours (to show I thought it an everyday sort of thing
to do), he seemed so very astonished that I drew in the rein and got
him to talk of his own character, which causes him trouble and interest.

=May 13.=--The rain cleared off, but the roads are still bad, yet by
the time I came home they were beginning to be dusty.

They dry here at a quite wonderful rate, and in the most terrible
weather one has always the consolation of knowing that when it clears
it will do so thoroughly and completely.

=May 14.=--After the day’s work I called round to see how Professor
_F----_ was, as I had heard nothing of any kind for a fortnight. I saw
him for a short time--his face was rather swollen, for they have been
injecting strychnine, but otherwise he _looked_ all right, only he
could see so little. The cure seems to make almost no progress.

As I was near, I called on the _S----s_ as a duty (and pleasure) call,
and came away with a lovely bunch of roses, the Professors, when caught
unawares like this, are always in true Japanese dress--and look so nice
in it.

In the evening was the last Cinderella--and a very nice dance it was.

=May 16.=--I stopped at home to-day--as the great Debate began at 3,
and I had to borrow chairs from several neighbours. I hope to-day to
found a Debating Society in Tokio (there is such a dearth of anything
more than dances and gossip, you at home couldn’t believe!), and have
been raking people out--I have got Miss C---- and Miss H---- to oppose
each other on the subject, “Chaperons should be abolished.” Frivolous
enough--but one must put the pill in jam here in Tokio, and I hope
gradually to get sober and instructive. The Debate was really more of a
success than I had dared to hope, and I got nearly every one to speak
by the little device of drawing numbers by lot, even Baroness d’A----
and Mrs. P----, who swore they wouldn’t. I had thought, after founding
it to-day, to leave it till the hot season passed, but people are keen
to have one in June--so it is encouraging. The use of a Japanese house
came out strikingly to-day--when I took out my sliding partitions and
made nearly my whole house one big room. The weather and the garden
behaved themselves--and mercifully everything went off well. Of course
the motion was lost, only two people wishing to abolish chaperons.

=May 18.=--A nice bright day. I bicycled home by the library and got
some books of Hearn’s; I am thinking of getting up a Debate on Lafcadio
Hearn next time, if I can; most people here knew him personally--and so
few seem to realise that he was great, and almost all run him down! So
I expect a very interesting time of it; there will be no difficulty in
getting speakers to condemn, but who is going to stand up for him!

=May 19.=--I just called in on Miss B---- on my way home, and asked
her to propose “That the picture of Japan presented in Lafcadio
Hearn’s books is totally fallacious.” She consents--I anticipate some
fun, and she is (I believe I have remarked before) quite the best
conversationalist in Tokio, and a missionary (whom Hearn detested) to
boot.

=May 20.=--Fossil cutting and examining all day. I have been arranging
the fossil slides, the series got mixed, and it is no joke to keep them
straight. Professor _Y----_ called in to see me (he is off to Europe
very soon); and invited me to “tiffin at 5” in a few days. The wording
is a little puzzling, isn’t it?

I called to inquire how Professor _F----_ is, and was glad to find him
a little better, though very little, but with no prospect of perfect
recovery.

Strawberries are beginning in the shops; it is such a treat after
having had only apples and oranges for all these months. The
temperature is delightful, like our July, and I enjoy it greatly, but
the nights are still very cool, so that I have a hot-water bottle
and the winter quilt. Things are beginning to bite me again, great
horrid things of all kinds. Spiders and centipedes come out at night,
and all sorts of creatures I never saw before; already I am rendered
unnecessarily hideous with bites, what it will be later on I don’t
know. I saw the J----s to-day, who once lived here twenty years;
they said that Japan is a country that “grows on one” till it is
heart-breaking to leave it. I feel that already, it is a pity I have
stopped so long. I don’t ever want to go now except to escape insects.
The horrid “semi” have begun to sizzle to-night. They are the things
that sit in the trees all night and make a sound as though you have
a headache; only when they stop for a second or two, you realise you
haven’t got one inside your head--but outside. Well, even in Eden
there was the serpent, and I suppose sizzling semis aren’t as bad as
serpents, at any rate their influence is less far-reaching.

=May 21.=--Fossilising all morning, and in the afternoon I was “at
home”--blessed day! These two days in the month I look forward to
hugely. A number of people came, among them Mrs. H----, a charming
woman, young Mr. _M----_, son of the man who was Dean of the University
before Professor _S----_, and Professor _S----_ himself. He came at
an interval between Mrs. G----’s call and some others, and we started
on Japanese poetry. It seems to be very subtle, so subtle, in fact,
that even such a cultivated man can’t understand it right away. Though
there is no rhyme and the form lies in the middle of syllables,
there is great ingenuity shown in finding words with double meaning
suggestive of some poetical idea. The G----s, who called also, have
been here thirty years, at least the Mrs. G---- has, and both she and
her daughter like the Japanese greatly, and are much liked by them. I
am going to get Miss G---- to oppose Miss B---- in the Debate on Hearn.
I am glad to find some one who will stand up so sincerely and heartily
for Lafcadio Hearn.

=May 22.=--After fossil-cutting walked along to the Faculty lunch with
Professor _M----_ and talked nothing particular, as usual. At 5 I went
over to Professor _Y----_ “for tiffin,” and was received in a foreign
style room, and sad it was. Though so tiny a man, he has a large
family, as all the Professors seem to have, unlike the corresponding
men in our country. A Mrs. _N----_ was there, and a Miss _X----_, a
teacher in a school. I resent very much the fact that all women school
teachers (as well as girl pupils) have to wear a special kind of skirt
(and very hideously ungraceful it is) over their kimonos, so that every
one knows them to be teachers, just as we know hospital nurses. Perhaps
it is the hideousness of the skimpy skirt, all open at both sides, that
I resent, as much as the fact that it is a uniform marking these women
out as apart from their fellows. Once, when I asked why it was all the
teachers I saw were so plain featured, I was answered by a Japanese
man, “well, if a girl is pretty, she can be married and does not need
to go in for teaching.” And we hear so much of the “reverence of the
Japanese for teachers.” It seems to me the Japan that we Europeans have
at last learned to know, and whose characteristics we have had drummed
into our ears, is already a thing of the past, and as _altmodisch_
as our early Victorian furniture, which the Japanese are picking up
as “new styles.” But though our furniture may change so fast as to
bewilder them, does our national character too change with a startling
rapidity equal to the Japanese?

The streets to-day looked unusually upset, and the reason of it is
that it is the time of universal spring cleaning,--a spring cleaning
that does not originate from the domestic tyrant, but from the main
Government, and that is inspected by the police before you have a
little yellow tab of paper pasted on your door to say that you are
clean. All the _tatami_ must be taken up and beaten, all the boards in
the kitchen floor, under which lie hidden oil cans and charcoal, shoes
or saucepans, according to the pleasure of the maids, must be taken
out and the glory holes cleaned and smothered in white disinfectant
powder; the front step of your hall, which, of course, is also a box in
disguise, is cleared of its winter _geta_ and powdered white, while the
props of your house (all Japanese houses are raised about 1½ feet
above the ground) are smothered till one thinks it has snowed. When the
policeman is satisfied that all this has been done, and then only, will
he give you the yellow ticket. It seems to me an excellent plan--one
which would be applied with advantage to some of our slums. The
smaller streets to-day were perfect markets, as from the little houses
every single thing is turned out on to the road, and the mats beaten
there. It added not a little to the thrills of bicycling, and was an
instructive illustration of the simplicity of the smallest households.

=May 23.=--After working at fossils all morning, I cycled over to
Miss B---- for lunch. She was as entertaining as usual. I often
think she is one of the best talkers I have met. After lunch she
took me to call on Mrs. _M----_, and I followed her _kuruma_ on my
bicycle. The _M----s_, of course, live in a splendid house, equally,
of course, it was “foreign style,” with signs everywhere of wealth.
The hall was like that of a hotel, and not a modern Waring furnished
hotel either, and the drawing-room filled with chairs “upholstered”
(there is no other word for it) in various brocades, with different
heavy-patterned brocade curtains hung over every door and window in
the stiff symmetrical style of last century’s low-water period. On
the lovely verandah, looking out into a splendid garden, were round
iron marble-topped tables, one was almost surprised there was no
advertisement for whisky, or at least Cerebos salt match-holders. That
was all I saw of the house to-day, except one little statue carved out
of marble, so pure and transparent that the light shone through it as
it stood in the window, among a tableful of various articles of cost.
Its lovely curves were transfigured by the light behind it, so that
they shone ethereal, and one could fancy it a fairy form coming in on a
sunbeam--I had not realised fully before how transparent white marble
is, and how suited to suggest unearthly beauty when carved in human
form. I fixed my eyes on this and forgot the pink-and-green upholstered
chairs.

The Women’s University owed much to this family at its foundation, and
they asked me if I would like to see over it, which of course I would,
so they are to take me on Friday. It will perhaps seem curious that I
have made no previous effort to see this very important Institution,
but I had my reasons, and the _M----s_ are the best possible people to
take me now; I am glad to go. I did not know before going there, but
found out afterwards, that they gave the land on which it was built,
and that Mrs. _H----_ (sister of Mrs. _M----_) was, with Marquis
Ito, one of the first people to whom President _N----_ went with his
plans fourteen years ago, and from whom he got much encouragement and
practical help.

=May 25.=--I am getting quite an expert on my bicycle. The people
in the street, too, seem to have got used to seeing me, and do not
bump into me as often as they used to! Though there are some who are
unspeakably idiotic; one to-day, for instance, walking toward me
steadily for a long way, seeing me clearly, went suddenly at a right
angle into the front wheel. The traffic here is exasperating, as
the roads are very narrow; there is no foot-path and no rule of the
road, and people dodge about like flies, while just this week Diabolo
has arrived in Tokio apparently, and is played now in the middle of
the road. It is quite startling, the suddenness of this universal
appearance of Diabolo, and it is made in a form that the poorest
children can buy for a few farthings. Yet with it all I think there is
less danger of a real accident in Tokio than in any place in England,
because nothing goes fast, no motors or hansoms come on fleet-tyred
wheels, and if one bicycles moderately it is really very safe. I have
only knocked one baby over, but I shall never forget its eyes looking
up at me through the spokes of the wheel, it looked so reproachful, but
it was entirely its own fault, and it was not hurt a bit.

=May 26.=--Why do the Japanese lie so circumstantially, and then not
even blush when they are found out? I had ordered some cards to be
printed for the Debating Society and went round to see why they did
not come. The man whom I asked went away and came back saying that the
printer foreman had sent me three or four proofs, and having received
no reply could not proceed with the work. I said I had returned a
corrected proof some time ago, and sent him back to inquire again
(knowing of old that determination generally produces the thing
you want); he returned saying my proof had not come, but if I here
corrected it the cards would be printed to-night; still I was not
satisfied, and sent him back again, and lo, he brought the 300 cards
all printed, and _with the corrections in them I had added in the proof
I returned_.

And each succeeding story was uttered with such an amount of detail and
an air of conviction!

=May 28.=--I got to the _M----s_, as arranged, at 9 o’clock, and
there found Mrs. _H----_, who wished to come with us to the Women’s
University. She was very unlike Mrs. _M----_, and dressed in European
style, but her hair was very slightly streaked with grey, and I
thought her 45--she told me she was 60. President _N----_ told me
she herself had opened a coal mine in Kyshyu twenty-five years ago,
and she was the first woman who had ever done anything of the kind
here. We drove over in their carriage, as it is a long way to the
University, and I was very agreeably surprised. I had heard a good
deal about it, particularly that it was more of a school than a
College, and not a University at all--partly this is true, but it
is already a College with the foundations of University teaching
and equipment, and particularly in chemistry, for which there are
four laboratories, strangely enough, the arrangements are excellent.
The University buildings practically amount to a village, for there
are 700 or more students in residence, and more than 1000 students
altogether, and there are numerous different subjects taught, from
chemistry to cooking, and from flower arrangement and tea-making to
law and mathematics. Law, by the way, is compulsory in the Domestic
faculty--not a bad idea, is it? There are two children’s classes and
schools, and a kindergarten, all part of the University--the idea being
that women should be brought up in touch with children. Another very
good feature is, that by far the largest number of the women graduates
go back to their homes and get married, so that nearly all the students
are studying to get the _culture_, not working for exams., so as to be
able to become teachers.

Mr. _A----_, the Dean, was with us nearly all the time, and was dressed
in Japanese ceremonial robes and a bowler hat. When he took off the
bowler, one saw that he had a fine forehead, and that his face was
altogether one of considerable beauty. His was undeniably a face with
ideals. Mr. _N----_, the President, was rather a similar type of man,
but perhaps less artistically fine. Both were very cordial, and we
had an interesting talk, for they were all-round developed men, and
one could talk to them as to an Englishman--not like so many of these
Japanese scientists, who are (or try to be) that and nothing more.

The _M----s_ then took me back to lunch, which was in European style;
the food was excellent, but with all their wealth, they had no dainty
silver on the table, whose large extent looked rather drear.

After lunch they showed me the garden, taking me to the Japanese
part, which was splendid, hilly with green groves and streams, and a
waterfall. I saw also their Japanese rooms, most beautiful, except that
they had a blue plush carpet put over the mats; there was, however,
nothing else in them but the proper appointments--and I delighted in
their quiet harmonies.

I got back to the laboratory in time to get in an afternoon’s work.

=May 30.=--Fossils all morning--and preparing microscope, etc. for my
Monday’s expedition, when I am going after cycads. Went along to tea
with Professor _F----_, who is a little better now, and from whom I
needed some information about the place I was going to.

=June 1.=--The household was up at 5 this morning, and I got off to the
station a good deal too early for the train, which is a fault on the
right side. After seven hours along the renowned old Tokkaido, where
to-day a railway runs, I landed at Yejiri, and went in a _kuruma_ about
a couple of miles farther to a very noted cycad temple. I deposited my
microscope and baggage on the temple steps, which I converted into a
temporary laboratory, and scratched myself sadly on the cycas leaves
while examining the coming fruits. The cycads are really wonderful--so
tall, and curved and branched innumerably.

After pottering around for a while, I broached the subject of stopping
all night at the temple, and soon got my way. The priest is extremely
old and frail, and looks stupid, but I don’t think he is; there is
also an old woman, whom I presume is his wife, who will do what little
cooking I shall get.

It is a charmingly situated temple, and the gardens are very sweet,
so decked with the beauties of age. It lies on the slope of a hill,
just midway between the top and the flat rice fields below us, and
is one of the most peaceful habitations it is possible to imagine.
The priest seems to spend all his time, clad like one of the poorest
peasants, working in the gardens, which are very well kept, and which,
like all true old Japanese gardens, suggest that the little details
had been planned to please a child. On tiny islands are perched minute
lanterns, and across streams over which one could step are bridges or
stepping-stones.

There are such hundreds of frogs just at present, as he walks one
would think the priest was spilling his basket of plants into the
water, there are so many splashes where he passes, but it is only the
countless frogs hopping out of his way into their native element.

After a rather meagre supper of eggs and rice (it is quite surprising
how tired one gets of eggs and rice, even in one meal) I wandered
round the garden, tottering along with great circumspection, for I
was mounted on _geta_ (the wooden clog-like things I have previously
mentioned). The stillness was complete, as the temple was closed to
visitors and the old priest and his wife were in the house. Range after
range of hills stood back from the sea towards Fuji mountain, whose
position I knew, but who was hidden in the clouds. In the valley the
ripe barley glowed golden, and between its little fields were the bare
wet patches waiting for the rice to be planted out, and reflecting now
the clouds that hung low in the sky. Brilliant emerald squares marked
the nurseries of the tiny rice plants, growing in neat little oblongs
by themselves, and still less than 6 inches high. Suddenly I felt an
electric presence, and looked behind me at a cleft in the hill to see
the slimmest silver curve of a new moon that I had ever seen. She rode
in the sky so swiftly that, as I watched, I could fancy the waves of
blue ether tossed from the prow of the little boat, and while I gazed
she passed again behind the hill. So delicate a moon, a silver thread
curved on a bow, but its fairy light was more bewitching than many a
great round moon’s brilliance.

In the night the priest woke, and gave a cry to his wife, and I looked
out, but the night was black, the fleet moon had lured every star away.

=June 2.=--Early they rose, and though I took about an hour leisurely
eating my breakfast, it was finished before half-past eight. I went
to the cycad trees for a while and worked at them. How huge they
are! The one on which I am now sitting, eight feet or so above the
ground, spreads all round me like a grove of trees, but is only one
much-branched individual. At my feet, in the main trunk of the tree, is
a minute temple, but I think the gods have deserted it, for within is
only one image half a foot high, from which the paint has worn away.

[Illustration: THE CURIOUS BENT CYCAD IN THE TEMPLE GROUNDS.]

Opposite me is a funny old cycad, not branched at all but bent. It
grows on a slope, and is propped up with legs here and there. In the
morning I saw Mount Fuji quite magnificently. She stands alone in
the sky, three times higher in appearance (and more in fact) than any
hill near, with a coronet of snow, and a cloak of clouds round her
shoulders, which cut her off from the earth. Immensely more impressive
than when seen from Tokio.

What a peaceful day! I stop in the midst of my examination of
the cycads to fall into an aimless reverie, and am waked up by a
frog croaking from a porcelain-green throat at my side. Big black
butterflies come lumbering along, and one thinks they are stupid birds
till they settle on a crimson azalea flower, and coming up from the
rice fields is a low-toned rattling chorus of frogs and semi. Just
before supper I went up the next little hill to see the temple of
Kwannon on its top. There are 270 solid stone steps up to the temple,
all neatly squared and nearly 8 feet wide--but the temple itself is
built of mouldering wood. It commands a splendid view of the rice and
barley fields, and then the sea, which lies but a mile away. Behind the
temple is a hilly country with many trees and little cultivated patches
here and there. There are lots of white Canterbury bells among the tall
grasses, and the wild Fuji wistaria branches climb round many a trunk.

After supper the moon rode high in the pale grey sky--but it is so
small even now, only what I would have thought was a first day moon in
England. Perhaps the brilliantly clear air of Japan last night allowed
me to see the crescent before it was really a moon at all, but was the
soul of a moon before it was born.

=June 3.=--To get me to the station by 8.30 the good people started
getting up at 5, and talked so that I could hear every word, repeating
again and again the time that they must wake me. But once they had
“waked” me, not a word did they say, and crept about like mice. The
contrariness of the Japanese is incomprehensible. The _kuruma_ came an
hour before I ordered it--and I kept him waiting more than an hour by
their clock, and then got to the station sixty-five minutes too soon
for the train!

After a few stations, I was struck by a pretty beach, and hopped off
the train, determined to have a bathe and go on by the next, whenever
it might be, to-day or to-morrow. The station-master was very nice,
and took charge of my luggage, from which I extracted a towel. The
village--Kanbara by name--was very small, and there were a good many
fishing-boats at intervals along the shore, but they were nearly
deserted. The water was just delicious, so warm that one could not
feel it at all, I never bathed in such a perfect temperature, but I
expect our creeping cold water is more bracing. I sunned on the beach
for a while, and found a train at midday that will take me a good deal
quicker than the one I left, as it is a semi-express.

I had to wait about twenty minutes on the platform for it, and was of
course gazed at solemnly by a number of small children who did not
offer a remark, they were so young that very likely I was the first
foreigner they had really seen at close quarters. There was a good deal
of difference of opinion as to my sex. My panama hat always bewilders
them, as only men wear them here.

The station-master came up and had a little chat, and took me to his
room, because there was a chair there, which was very nice of him;
though the chair was no more comfortable really than the bench, the
quiet and coolness of his room was pleasant.

When I got off the train I had not told him that it was my intention
simply to get a bathe, but had diplomatically said I wished to see his
neighbourhood, which had evidently pleased him. I told him about the
bathe afterwards, which seemed also to please him, for I had enjoyed it
very much. I got to Tokio quite uneventfully before night.

=June 8.=--Fossil-cutting all day. In the afternoon there was a quite
terrific thunder-storm, one peal seemed to break inside the very house.
Then hail! The largest known for forty years, and really the hailstones
were as large as eggs, some were measured by Professor P----, and were
2½ inches in diameter!

By a really quaint coincidence it was the Festival of the God of
Thunder, and the storm took place in the middle of the temple festival.
There seems some justification for a folk-belief in mythology. When the
worshippers prayed for mercy from the fearful hail, the sun soon shone.

=June 9.=--Professor _F----_ came to tea in my house, which he now saw
for the first time--and when I think how he had to arrange everything
with my landlady in the last one, I feel quite proud of my progress. He
is still ill, though a little better, and to-morrow goes away to some
celebrated hot springs.

=June 11.=--Working at fossils all day: I developed some photos of
cycads I took at Yejiri, but the weather is so hot the gelatine
dissolves!

The air is now filled with mosquitoes and minute biting flies, and I
would like to be a hedgehog. They sing so loudly outside the net that
I can’t sleep, and though they don’t get inside the net much they are
so vexed about it, and I am “so sweet to eat,” as my little maid says,
they just howl on the top note of rage.

=June 12.=--A working day, in which the only attempt at excitement was
the lunch at the Goten, but as Professor _S----_ was away it was a
little like flat soda-water.

=June 13.=--I went to see the Agricultural University; it is at the
end of the Aoyama tram, and quite away into the country. It possesses
a very impressively beautiful stretch of ground, over which the
different Institute Buildings are dotted. Dr. _M----_ met me and took
me over. The botanical department is not very big, but those who do
research there get every convenience. The only noteworthy thing was
the curious arrangement of the paraffin oven, stuck right down in the
ground like the hut of a cave-dweller, with steep steps into it and
a metal entrance door. This is an old arrangement as a precaution
against fire, for, of course, all the buildings are of wood. Of the
other departments, I was principally interested in the silk-worm
houses, where huge numbers of worms were reared. A scientist was there
doing experiments with hybrids, and working at Mendel’s laws and the
commercial value of different crosses. More convenient creatures for
such a purpose one could hardly imagine. They need no cages, for they
can neither fly nor run! When the moths hatch out you can pick them
up, pop them down beside any other one you like, and they stay where
you put them and mate, and you get a new generation in about thirty
days. They are kind enough to fasten their eggs themselves in series on
numbered cards, and are, in fact, as well behaved as any scientifically
constructed animal could ever be imagined to be.

It was very wet, so the picnic planned for the afternoon did not come
off, and I stayed a long time. It was interesting to notice some native
Indians studying here, and to find that they, and one or two others who
could not speak Japanese, had special classes held in English and given
by a Japanese teacher for the various subjects. Who needs to learn any
“world language” but English?

=June 15.=--An uneventful working day, but in the evening there was
the Debate. We are going to have alternately afternoon and evening
meetings, so as to try to please all varieties of people.

Miss B----’s paper was very amusing, as we all expected it would be,
but very superficial also, so that I felt she had been convinced on
the side of Hearn, for she brought no real serious argument against
him. Miss G---- opposed her well, and brought far more solid reasons
in favour of Hearn’s view of Japan; the two supporters were good,
particularly “the Poetess,” who supported Hearn. Many of the audience
spoke very well, but when it came to voting so many refrained that the
votes were level, and I had to give the casting vote, of course in
favour of Hearn.

=June 19.=--All yesterday the Institute had been undergoing extensive
cleaning, and this morning was spent in expectation and preparation of
exhibits--the great Dr. Koch, the world-famed German bacteriologist,
was coming to see the Institute. Professor _F----_ was brought back
from the mountain before his cure was finished to be on duty; my fossil
slides were borrowed and put under microscope, and the spermatozoids
of _ginkgo_ were on show. He came, after the whole Institute and Baron
_H----_ had waited in a flutter of excitement for nearly an hour; he is
a big stout man, not very intellectual-looking. Though interested he
had evidently been trotted round a great deal. He seemed to like the
fossils, and asked me to show him a section of a leaf, as well as those
I had under the microscope.

Then he was trotted off to a purely masculine dinner at the garden
house. The newspapers have been full of his coming, his doings, and
sayings. They say they are going to put a telephone up Mount Fuji, so
as to be able to interview him from the top!

=June 22 and 23.=--Uneventful working days, with a little reading of
Matthew Arnold’s _Essays in Criticism_ in the evening. I am reading
aloud to Mrs. St----, who lives next door but one, and who must not
use her eyes at present. We are doing Arnold pretty thoroughly, life,
poems, and essays, and patted ourselves on the back when we found in an
essay on his work that he “appeals exclusively to the cultured section
of the educated classes!”

=June 24.=--At work all day; in the evening I gave a farewell party
for the P----s (who leave on Friday), and invited about 30 people, of
whom 26 or so accepted. It would have been preposterously ambitious
in England, but here my little house, with the rooms thrown into one,
and the garden lit with Chinese lanterns, made it a pleasure to play
at entertaining. The room lit with lanterns looked very pretty; chairs
and lemonade glasses I borrowed from next door, and all went merry
as a marriage bell. Though it was the rainy season, the night was
gloriously fine. The Dean and one or two Professors of the University,
two clergymen and some minor folk from the Embassy disported themselves
like children. Even the Poetess came, and entered into the games. We
had a collection of 20 sen toys for Professor P----, and some of the
things people brought were charming. By 11.30 all but a select few
departed, but it was after 12 before these went. What a simple happy
thing life in a Japanese house can be!

=June 25.=--Fossil-cutting all day. Miss _M----_, Mrs. _H----_, and
President _N----_ came to see the fossil cutting-machine at work, and
also some of the slides under the microscope. They were interested, but
of course did not fully realise their significance, for fossils are
principally for specialists.

=June 26.=--At 6.30 this afternoon Professor and Mrs. P---- left. What
a crowd there was to see them off! By the same train the wife and
daughter of the Austrian Ambassador were leaving, and that brought
all the Legations’ representatives. Really the platform was so packed
we could hardly move--and if there had been tea going round it would
have seemed like a garden party. The train looked comfortable, with
_wagons-lit_--and every one was entertained by the huge “send-off,” so
that few tears were shed--but I am deeply sorry to lose the friends
that train carries away.

=June 30.=--A good day’s work. In the evening there was a dinner
where met all the botanists of Tokio. One or two could not come,
but there were 18 men there. Seemingly foreign food is greatly
appreciated--certainly there were more courses than the laws of health
allow. It was amusing to note knives slipped furtively down after
they had touched asparagus when their owners noted me holding a spike
aloft in bare fingers--but otherwise the company behaved and looked
much as a similar set of people would look anywhere. The sky, seen
out of the windows, was the most astonishingly blue I have ever seen.
The soft velvety depth of it suggested the impossibility of stars
gleaming on its surface (as they usually do at night), they would
have been drowned. The brilliant blueness like that of a cornflower
or a solid mass of cornflowers that had flung off their colour into
the surrounding air, till every particle for miles, each separate and
distinct, was blue. Usually the sky seems a flat or a dome-shaped
sheet of colour over us, to-night it was a solid vapoury mass of
quivering blue particles--indescribable, but thrilling as an electric
shock, and as unforgettable. After we had dined we talked, until I
suggested Dr. _H----_ should give us a piece of _Nō_ recitation; he
studies its peculiar singing-like declamation and renders it well. Then
others sang, and I was convulsed by “Home, Sweet Home,” sung by one of
the young lecturers, “to prevent me feeling home-sick.” His rendering
of it was intensely funny, but his voice was pretty good. Afterwards he
sang a long Japanese battle song. We left at 9.45, and some of us, I
fear, will be ill after that dinner.

=July 1.=--An uneventful and solitary day’s work. Professor _F----_
too ill to come. I only suffered spasmodic anger from an outraged
digestive mechanism, and continued my usual occupations, and dined with
the Sh----s in the evening. The little Japanese girl I have mentioned
as staying with her is pretty nice. Alas, to-morrow she is going to be
put into foreign dress! She is going to marry Prince _S----_, however,
who is very pro-English, and as she will be much about the court, is
compelled to wear it by that sad decree of the Empress.

I heard one good story of a little English girl who went home after
having spent all her early years in Japan. In the train between
Southampton and London she was much interested with the outlook, the
sheep particularly fascinating her, and she called on her mother to
admire them: “Look, what a lot!” “Why, here is another!” “There,
mother, look, look!” she kept exclaiming, when a benevolent old
gentleman said, “Why are the sheep so interesting, little girl? Haven’t
you seen a sheep before?”

“Of course I have,” she answered, drawing herself up; “of course--we
have _two_ in the Zoo in Tokio.”

=July 2.=--Fossil-cutting all morning--I seem to be followed by
misfortune, for the boy who works the engine has been away all this
week, and my scientific colleague here only one afternoon! However, I
keep at it, and slides are slowly accumulating, with a few nice things
in them.

=July 3.=--Fossils in the morning and lunch at the Goten; Professor
_S----_ jolly and talkative, and a great pleasure to meet. Professor
_F----_ came in the afternoon, and we did a lot of looking through
slides. There are a number of pretty little things among the fossils
that puzzle us completely.

=July 5.=--There was a luncheon party with some nice neighbours to-day,
and while we were there some strolling Japanese singers came to the
door, and we gave them a few sen and watched them. There were an old
woman and a young woman, both good-looking, and with the quaint huge
round hats of their class, the young man wore a battered European-style
hat--a jarring note, that was repeated in the little girl’s hat, red
stockings, and European shoes. It is always the men and the children
who wear the horrors of civilisation.

The child danced, clumsily and heavily with her feet, but moving her
little body in all kinds of ways with wonderful grace and agility,
and a strength in holding difficult curves; her hands too, so prettily
shaped, were carefully posed and moved, now rigid, almost bending back,
and now swiftly fluttering; she had an old gilt fan, which she opened
and manœuvred, but her round pretty face was absolutely set. There was
a haunting suggestion of bedraggled beauty in it all, beauty that had
once adorned a noble’s palace and had been cast into the streets, and
from soft white _tabi_ and silk robes had taken to tight cotton gowns
and old red stockings, with a hole showing above the down-trodden heel
of a shoe.

Yesterday the Ministry resigned--and the commercial people are on the
verge of revolt against the fearful expenditure on army and navy, while
the country is so poverty-stricken. I could weep with Hearn over this
country, and the hats they wear are enough to start me off!

I have read every word of the cross-examination and trial of Bethell
over the Korean matters; you have probably heard of it at home; in
many ways I feel that the Japanese use their catch phrases, “love of
country”--“love of Emperor,” as cloaks for unscrupulous behaviour
public and private, just as our county councillors seem to lose private
honesty in dealing with public affairs. The Japanese have 20,000
troops active in Korea, and cannot keep order--my only surprise is
that any Koreans submit at all without decent open warfare; they were
not conquered, but tricked and coerced into having their Government
absolutely controlled by the Japanese Government. Were I a Korean I
should at least demand to be properly conquered. Yet, of course, from
the point of view of world politics Japan must control Korea, only--God
pity the Koreans who have themselves a spark of “love of country” or
“love of Emperor.”

=July 6.=--A solitary day’s work--on the way home I called to inquire
after Mrs. _M----_, who has been in bed for about a month, and I
noticed that the ceiling of their big drawing-room is all of satin,
_embroidered_ with huge flowers and life-size peacocks and other birds.
One can only think of the cost of it, and deplore that it was not put
as hangings where one could admire the work.

I had to go by tram to-day, as the bicycle is in hospital, and noticed
such a quaint sign over a shop. Most of the very funny ones have been
gradually weeded out by thoughtless people informing the owners of
their eccentricity, so that the streets are not nearly so entertaining
as they were years ago.

This I saw, however:--

“Au Klnds wool are sell in her.”

I also noticed “Fruit’s Shops.”

How lazy a bicycle makes one, it feels a serious imposition to have to
walk 2 miles of city road, though the Tokio streets do not seem to get
any less entertaining because I am accustomed to them.

=July 7.=--We had a fine afternoon, so I did a little tidying up in
my garden. During these many days of heavy rain the leaves have grown
luxuriantly, but the flowers have quite ceased to come out in a world
where they are only drenched with unkind torrents instead of being
kissed by the warm sun they will get if they wait a few weeks longer.
My four little lawns, altogether no bigger than a billiard table, are
now like a jungle, and I planted them so few weeks ago. It is very
pretty to watch the little side paths, where the moss and lichens and
liverworts seem to grow every day; the small paths where O Fuji-san (my
maid) does not walk are now quite green--more aged-looking than paths
a hundred years old with us. The little stone lantern I bought the day
of the paeony flowers, is also green, with a faint haze of centuries
over it! It is the lovely greenness of Tokio that marks it out from
every city I have seen before. To-day, bicycling along the road above
the moat, I could well have believed myself far in the country, with
the high green grass on the steep banks of the moat and the grey-green
pines growing above and shading it. The green and the grey and the blue
that lies in and over this city, blue in the sky and blue in the gowns
of every one; grey on the tree trunks, the moats, and the houses; green
everywhere there is foot-hold for a moss plant, are a harmony that
thrills one’s very soul.

=July 9.=--Work till 5.30, and then dinner at 6, with Professor
_S----_. This was arranged to suit Professor B----, from New Zealand,
who goes to bed at 8.30 or so. Professor _O----_, the seismologist,
and Professor _T----_, the anthropologist, were also there. It was, of
course, a “foreign style” dinner, and was done with great magnificence.
Professor B---- talked with almost no comments from any one, but the
conversation was never dull.

Professor _S----’s_ garden was more of a dream than ever,--lit with
stone lanterns and with a few red roses among the green, the moon being
in a watery mist, and we turned the light down, and listened to the
bell-like tones of a little “Bell insect,” hanging in a 2-inch cage in
the garden. The note was slightly muffled, but musical, penetrating,
and sad--one of those notes that act as an “Open Sesame” to the gate of
emotions--that is, I should say, to some people’s emotions. Professor
B---- had the insect under a “scientific scrutiny” for a whole minute,
and then produced his note-book, and the light was turned up while he
wrote down his observation that the noise is made by the rubbing of the
wings where they slightly overlap.

=July 10.=--The last day’s lunch at the Goten, and a lot of work of
one sort and another got out of hand. Collecting plant-material, etc.,
takes more time than one would think. The fossil lab.-boy is ill again,
and fossils are hanging fire a little, for I can’t do more than three
things at once.

=July 12.=--Writing all morning; the weather is glorious, and the rainy
season seems to be pretty well over, and has been a record one. The
rain came at the right time, lasted the right length of time, and was
cool instead of “steamy hot,” as it often is--we cannot be too thankful
for these mercies. Even as it is, the inside of my writing case and the
whole of my shoes and straps are covered with blue mould.

I paid several calls in the afternoon--my neighbours are off to the
mountains first thing to-morrow morning--lucky people! How I wish I
could feel free to do the same, instead of grinding over these old
fossils. Soon Tokio will be empty of all the sane people who inhabit it
in the winter.

As I am writing I hear the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” set to Japanese
and sung lustily. It is one of the favourite foreign tunes among the
Japanese, and many sing it without knowing it isn’t Japanese, I believe.

=July 13.=--I was in the garden with Professor _F----_ for the first
time this year. We were getting some gymnosperm material, and found a
brilliant green frog sitting in the sunshine on a brilliant green leaf.
He told me he would be brown on a barky branch, so I picked the frog up
and put him on the curve of a broad brown branch, and, sure enough, the
webs of his feet went quite brown in a minute, and his back went a much
darker, duller green, but we couldn’t wait to see him all turn brown,
it took too long.

=July 14.=--Absolutely alone all day. The engine and fossil boy and
Professor _F----_ are all ill again, and the other people not visible.
I felt more than a little ill myself, and my bicycle was so bad it had
to go into hospital. A very grey day--and in the evening torrents of
rain fell from the heavens, and I began to feel inclined to weep also,
when Mrs. _F----’s_ little daughter came round to ask me to go in to
dinner, as the weather was so depressing. Eastern life has its share of
compensations.

=July 15.=--At 11 I started my work, and took some micro-photos, and I
am also seeing about chemical analysis of nodules, covering glasses
of great size for fossil slides, printing of photos, artificial
cultivation of _ginkgo_ prothallia (and the wretches insist on going
mouldy, like my boots), collecting of gymnosperm material, and half a
hundred other things that are pulling me in as many directions as the
points of a compass for a universe of six dimensions. Why I was such an
ass as to undertake both fossil and recent work, I can’t imagine--one
must go to the wall.

Coming home late to-day (Professor _F----_ turned up about 3.30),
I passed through the road to a temple where there was a children’s
festival, along whose sides were rows of gay little stalls with all
manner of bright things to tempt the children, who throng in holiday
attire. I never saw more children and fewer elders, and all the
children were so bright, and, excepting for the crude, almost savage
decorations in their hair, so prettily dressed. The various toys and
eatables are indescribable, all brilliant and all ridiculously cheap,
from half of a farthing up to a penny or so being the normal prices.
Among the eatables were little brown germinating beans, with long white
rootlets sticking out, then there was a special stall for a kind of
clear seaweed jelly, which was squeezed into a glass cup through a
bamboo squirt.

Very decorative little stalls were arranged with brilliant seaweed and
shells, and one man did quite a lively trade cutting up small wriggling
living fish. That is one thing about eating raw fish, it should be
alive to be really good. As you may imagine, I have not yet tested it.
Then there is the man that “pops” sugary beans over a charcoal fire,
and makes a delicious noise with his shaking grid-like box. The dealer
of live red crabs attracts a crowd, and the crabs crawl up the sides
of his cage as he pours water down on their backs. Though why any one
should buy the crabs, I don’t know, for they are less than 2 inches
from toe to toe. One boy I met had a lovely toy--a great dragon-fly, 6
inches across the wings, eagerly flying attached to a red thread--but
alas! I soon saw it was real.

All the sentimental nonsense that is written about Japanese love of
animals is simply not worth the paper it is written on, and as for
their treatment of horses! In England I would go up and beat a man
myself that I only pass quickly here, with a prayer for his horse.

There was inevitably among the stalls one for second-hand odds and
ends. These I examined carefully, for it is just at such times one can
get lovely curios very cheaply. This time I got a tiny double figure,
most delicately carved, and an old carved horn comb.

=July 16.=--My “At Home” day--and therefore, of course, pouring in
torrents. When I get to the level ground below the Botanical Gardens I
found the road under 2 feet of water. Fortunately there were _kurumas_
waiting to ferry one across, and I got in one, and had a man to carry
my bicycle on his shoulders. It was serio-comic to see the houses with
2 and 3 feet of water in them, and clothes hung up out of reach of
the dirty flood. The channels between the houses are deep, and I saw
several people waist high, with a pole, feeling their way. To think
that less than six hours’ rain made that flood, and that it is in the
_city_ of Tokio, and that it happens every few weeks in the summer,
fills one with surprise. How can they put up with it? It only means
the deepening of the channel of the little stream which drains the
district--but men and women tuck up their skirts and wade a quarter
of a mile up to their knees, and those whose houses the water invades
place what they can of their goods out of its way--and probably the
last thing any one of them would do would be to grumble at the City
Council.

I bought some peaches coming back, they are now in season, and in
Tokio more than in any place I know it is a case of “gather ye roses
while ye may.” They were very big, soft, and glowing crimson, and cost
one halfpenny each. When we cut them the stones separated perfectly,
and the rich blood-red flesh stained one’s lips and fingers with its
juice. In buying fruit and vegetables the only Chinese character I know
is of great use, it is that for “Mountain,” and is used for piles of
cucumbers or trios of peaches, and I can read “one mountain cost 10
sen,” or whatever it may be that a cucumber mountain costs.

By the way, it may interest you at home to know that a pile of four
cucumbers costs 3 sen, which is exactly 3 farthings the lot. Are you
surprised that I eat boiled cucumbers with white sauce? It is at home a
vegetable we could not often indulge in, with cucumbers 1s. each, but
here, where all things are ridiculous prices, being either too dear or
too cheap, I have the power to indulge in this delicate dish.

Eggs are funny things here; they get dear in the summer, just when
the man in _Punch_ finds his hens begin to lay. Here the extreme heat
enervates the hens for a couple of months in the summer.

=July 17.=--A long solitary day’s work till the late afternoon, when
Professor _F----_ came, and we did a little “joint work”--it is
beginning to be almost farcical; however, without him I should never
have got on at first, so it is all right.

=July 18.=--Work till 2, when a party of provincial botanists came to
the laboratory, and I met once more the Mr. _O----_ who was kind to me
at Okoyama in my second tour, as funny and as amusing as ever, with
his twinkling black eyes and mobile eyebrows, that so incongruously
reminded me of “the silk-worm moth eyebrows of a woman.” At 3 I left
the party, who had, of course, to see all the sights of the Institute,
among which was the “Fossil Lab.”

=July 19.=--At 6.30 I got up to go and see the “Morning Glories,”
huge brilliant convolvulus flowers, which are specially cultivated in
a number of gardens in a part of the town near Oyeno Park. We went
to about a dozen gardens, and saw many of the flowers, though it is
still a little early in the season. The flowers are trained in pots
to grow round light bamboo frames, and are specially cultivated to
be very large. Each morning at ten o’clock all the flowers that have
bloomed that day are picked off, so as to ensure the next day’s blooms
shall not be deprived of any nourishment. The bells are very large and
extremely brilliant, blue, purple, magenta, all the possible intense
shades of each. The flowers are almost a little crude, some verging
on vulgarity in their flaring tones. Many of them are delightful, and
some so large they are said to reach 8 inches or so across a single
bloom; such huge ones I did not see, but what I saw made it possible to
believe in the bigger ones.

In some of the gardens there are many other beautiful things to be
seen, one in particular was almost like a museum of precious things.
There were open rooms in it, with the flowers arranged according to
the best artistic styles, with valuable dwarf trees and curios placed
beside them; there were three old _kakemonos_ I should have loved to
possess. In this garden also was a wonderful collection of landscape
stones, arranged as islands on flat porcelain trays filled with water.
It was indeed a case of bringing the mountain to Mahomet--perfect rocky
scenes, with gleaming waterfalls made by streaks of white quartz. The
innumerable lovely stones--from an inch to a foot high--represented
perfectly, enchantingly, all types of grand, beautiful, natural
scenery. The one I liked best was (even in Japanese things my fancy
usually hits on the most expensive) just a thousand yen in price!

An old man, apparently master of the garden, came up and talked to us,
he was curious to see a foreigner so interested in stones, and wished
to hear which I liked best, and so on. I wished I could speak fluently
with him, he was just the type of character that seems to be dying out,
and that is so rich in interest and quaint wisdom and remote culture.
His deep wrinkles and keen light eyes were so attractive. I wished I
had gold to spend in that garden, he and I would enjoy the good old
Japanese way of spending several days over selecting the treasures. He
had a pretty little piece of carved white jade among his flowers, six
inches long and an inch high--a foil for a dark foliage arrangement,
£20 it cost, he said, and he didn’t lie as to its worth.

This is the first nursery garden I have been in that seems to be the
creation of an _old_ artistic Japanese, it was indeed charming.

Afterwards we lunched in Oyeno Park, and then I went a round of calls
on my bicycle, then home to have two friends to tea, and a view of
copies of old Japanese prints: half a chapter I forced myself to write
in the evening sent me to sleep.

=July 20–24.=--An uneventful week of work, all the Institute seems
asleep, and Professor _F----_ only came an hour or two for some of the
days till Friday, when we worked very hard.

=July 25.=--The cycads in Tokio won’t flower, and it is a long way to
go to the places they are reported to grow, so that when I heard they
were to be found in Yokohama, I went off at once by an early train to
visit the various gardens where they are said to be found. There were
two female trees and a male, but they were not very healthy; still,
as the Tokio ones refuse to bloom, and as I need them, they will be
visited by my pilgrimages.

What a hideous influence is the “foreign” style at Yokohama, where red
brick warehouses and treeless streets covered with a pall of smoke
remind one of the “advance” made by modern Japan. Fortunately the
plague spots are not very extensive, one needs to go but a very little
way to find beauty again, but I shudder for the future when moss-grown
walls and green hedges shall have been ousted from the cities, as they
are from ours.

=July 26.=--I got up at 6 to go to Boshu after more cycads, as the
temple, Awajinja, is reported to have fine ones. The sail down the
coast in the little steamer was very pleasant. It took seven and a half
hours, but we passed very pretty scenery, and for some time seemed
out of sight of land in a sea dotted with innumerable white-sailed
fishing-boats. In the middle of the day many of the fishers were taking
a siesta, the square sail lowered so as to lie along the boat and form
an awning, under whose shade they slept.

When we neared the coast, it required but the smallest imagination
to picture myself in a savage country, for over the rocks ran and
scrambled dark brown men, stark naked, not even the proverbial string
of beads to adorn them. They had long bamboo poles in their hands,
which they waved like savage spears, and gave them a truly wild aspect.

After landing I bicycled about 8 miles to the temple, and found
splendid male flowers on the cycads, but no female. Last year
there were lots of female. It is too bad, this year seems to be so
unfavourable for the seeds.

I put up at a little hotel near the sea, and after six went down for
a bathe. The coast was perfect, shelving rocks sloping out to sea,
with little bathing coves and sheltering rocks, and, as I imagined,
perfect solitude. But, of course, in this out of the way place I had
been noticed, and before I was in the water a minute a crowd of women
and children had collected. Nothing I could do or say would drive
them away, and so I had to get out and dress under the fire of their
eyes and criticisms. In their long-drawn country tones they kept up a
running commentary, “Ooā--how white she is!” “Is she married?” “Why
does she wear a dress in the sea?” “How old can she be?” “Perhaps
twenty years.” There was no escape from nearly fifty people forming
a cordon but 3 feet away from me; if I had fled they would have
followed; so I dressed as leisurely and as unconcernedly as if I were
at home, and gravely buttoned the little buttons of my bodice and put
on my stockings while I returned the compliment and made a searching
examination of them.

The boy children were naked, with smooth glowing copper limbs like
sun-burned clay--as indeed they were. The girl children had usually
some floating robe of a dressing-gown nature, open to show the whole
body, or caught at the waist and turned down to leave the upper part
free. Bright-eyed they were and muddy-cheeked, but neither pretty nor
attractive. The women were naked to below the waist, the kimono being
turned down over the girdle to form a kind of double skirt. No one wore
any ornament of any kind, save a few coloured beads to tie their hair,
but few of them had even that. The men wore 3 inches of cloth round
their waists and sometimes a band round their heads made of a small
Japanese towel. All were perfectly quiet, and the remarks were made one
at a time by the older women; the children stood open-mouthed. I know
that the blue of the sea-water makes one gleam like white ivory, and as
all my clothes were white, I suppose the effect must have seemed novel
to them. The deep colour of the Japanese is chiefly due to sunburn, but
as they are exposed to it from their earliest days it gets so ingrained
that they may not realise it is an attempt at clothing on the part of a
body otherwise so unprotected.

=July 27.=--I rode back again to the starting-point of the steamer, and
got there twenty minutes too soon, and so went along the shore and had
a bathe. The steamer was very crowded and hot--I wonder who it was that
started the fiction that a Japanese crowd does not possess an odour?
Why, the detestable smell of the rancid oil in the women’s hair is
enough for one alone, without any of the other items, which include a
peculiarly virulent pickle, _daikon_, and an odour of decayed fish that
hangs over a good many in a poor crowd.

The heat is now upon us, and as I returned on my cycle through the
Tokio streets I met gentlemen with fans, schoolboys with fans,
errand-boys with big baskets and fans, _kuruma_ men with fans, even the
men dragging heavy carts fanned themselves as they struggled along. Yet
very few women had fans, only the ladies riding in _kurumas_.

=July 28.=--I had to go up to the University and to several places and
get ready for my start to-morrow. Fearfully hot.

=July 29.=--Started for Hakone. After the railway journey there was a
tram ride for several miles along the old Tokkaido road; a beautiful
avenue of Cryptomerias shaded it most of the way, and on one side
gleams of the blue sea shone between the tree trunks. After reaching
the foot of the hills there was a four-hours’ walk up the pass, by
a steep and very rough path, with beautiful views of a clear river
rushing over big rocks, and blue hills rising peak by peak behind the
trees.

My luggage was carried by the quaintest human being to whom I have
ever spoken--a dwarf. He hardly reached up to my elbow, and had bent
legs and long arms, yet he was very strong and very genial, though so
hideous. His back view was like this sketch, and his short stick, about
18 inches long, was very thick and used as a walking-stick or a support
to prop up the saddle-like luggage-holder when he rested.

Going with him quite alone through the narrow paths in the woods I felt
as though I had been transported into the Middle Ages, where damsels
were served by strange dwarfs who led them to witches’ haunts and
fairies’ palaces. I walked slowly in this dreamland, and he pattered
along, half in a run, for his legs were so short that my slow pace was
haste for him. But I need not have felt that his burden was too heavy,
I met several charcoal-burners carrying six and seven times more than
his load. It is wonderful what the natives can carry here.

We passed a mountain hamlet, a double row of houses built along a path.
There was a runnel of clear water rushing down the middle of the road,
and a tributary stream brought between each of the houses to join it.
In its building the village must be very old, and is not so “Japanese”
looking as the buildings of the plain. There seemed to be no gardens,
but in the space between the houses grew banks of blue hydrangeas,
crimson phlox, and great white lilies.

[Illustration: THE QUAINTEST BOW-LEGGED DWARF CARRIED MY LUGGAGE, AND
TROTTED ON AHEAD LIKE A BEAR.]

After a long and rather weary pull up the hills, where the road was bad
and very stony, we crested them, and looked down on the lake of Hakone,
girt with Cryptomerias.

In the evening I was housed in an old dwelling where daimios used to
sleep when they travelled along the Tokkaido--by the lake whose farther
shore was cut off by driving clouds. One could imagine it an ocean, and
cool fresh breezes made me forget the stifling heat of Tokio.

=July 30.=--We are living in the clouds; below, above, and around us
they swirl and writhe in the wind, sometimes breaking a little to show
us the edge of the lake, but then directly driving together again and
shutting us out from all but our own garden. Below us in the plain the
sun will be shining and the people sweltering, but we are cool--and
damp.

=July 31.=--Still the mist and clouds dance past and wreathe round the
trees in such enchanting wise that they make poems and pictures and
mysteries of the swift visions they are allowed to reveal.

Sad that I am ill--terrible pain in the night, so that I had to rouse
the house; and all day I have done nothing--but grin sometimes when it
returned.

August 1.--Clouds still there; and I am a little better though not
well. The household in which I am staying is unconsciously amusing. It
is to join J---- that I came; the other inmates are missionaries of
uncertain age,--very high church, with prayers night and morning, grace
before and after meat, with devout crossings and bows, till I long to
tell them they are popish idolaters, but refrain, for J----’s sake. The
first night I felt too crushed to venture a remark at meals; the book
I brought (a clever light thing by Barry Pain) was said to be “such
weak rubbish it seemed a pity to read it” by the lady who told us all
one evening that she “had read a _very_ great deal--and among it no
rubbish!”

J---- begs me not to catch her eye at meals, and I refrain. The
Pan-Anglican Congress and the Bishops attending it are the staple
articles of interest at present.

While we are not supposed to be seen in a kimono “because the Japanese
think us ridiculous in them” (with which I quite agree in one way),
the Japanese servants are brought into prayers, and I wonder whether
prayers said in Japanese by an English woman escape the ridiculous!

The village street was illuminated last night and to-night with square
paper lanterns, for to-day is a great festival at the temple by the
lake; and there will be a week’s _matsuri_, during which time the
carpenter cannot mend the boat because he wishes to play with his
children. Sunshine came for a couple of hours and we went in a boat to
the temple. The boat was beached at the end of a little path, leading
straight up from the water to the temple, by a flight of grey stone
steps, moss-grown and decked with ferns. On either side were great
Cryptomerias and bamboo, a cool deep wood in which the greyness and
the greenness were set off by huge white lilies and their visitors,
black butterflies with blue-tipped wings. Our path was solitary, but by
another meeting it trooped gaily dressed villagers, brilliant in blue,
red, and pink--sometimes whole families, father, mother, sons, and
daughters in blue kimonos all alike.

The temple service was already well begun before we got there, but
we came in time to see the presentation of the first-fruits. In the
outer part of the temple the congregation sat on the floor,--the front
rows all occupied by elderly gentlemen clad in their black _haori_
with white _mons_, behind them sat the small boys, and at the back the
young girls. By accident, or for some reason I do not understand, there
were no women at all in the temple, though a few old ones with babies
stood outside. They made no difficulty about us entering, so perhaps
it was the preparations for the feasts to follow which kept (as it so
often does at home) the women from worship. While the solemnity of
presentation went on a man with a ridiculously flat face, dressed in
semi-foreign style, played a harmonium, like the ones missionaries use
on the seashore in the summer holidays. It was only given the chance
of droning half a dozen notes with no tune audible to Western ears,
but it was solemn enough, and had a certain fitness for the occasion.
Three priests officiated, one in white and one in yellow over-dress
with baggy trousers, just like a Turkish lady’s, beneath, and one in a
lovely peach-coloured satin dress, an exquisite “Liberty” colour, and a
great contrast to the harsh yellow one. The other brought the lacquer
trays of offerings to him, with many slow reverences, and he walked up
the altar steps and presented them. The walking up the steps was quite
a feat--he turned his body sideways, at right angles to the steps, and
brought both his feet together on each step. I noticed that his toes
were moved up and down in the way prescribed in the ceremonial walk of
the _Nō_.

One of the missionary ladies amused me as we were coming away. She
dropped behind with another missionary and said in a tragical stage
whisper, “Did you see that English lady in a red-striped dress? She
was buying charms and mementoes of the priest! Oh, I _hope_ she is not
_one of them_! It is so horrible to think of----” This dear lady takes
all things very seriously, and is as devoid of humour as any one I have
met. I marked the lady in a red-striped dress, and discovered that she
was carrying a quite new scarlet Kelly & Walsh (a little phrase-book
used by all tourists). We all buy little odds and ends when we are
touristing.

=August 2.=--I feel still ill. I expect it was the relative cold and
the constant wet, for all the time the clouds were driving through us.
So I walked down the pass and went back to Tokio--a long hot journey.
Last summer I described all the varieties of undress one can study in
the railway carriage, and as the Kobe express cars are as big as big
Pullmans and crowded, you can imagine I did not lack entertainment.

=August 3.=--I went up to the University and the Bank in the morning,
and in the afternoon Professor B---- came to tea. He is as talkative
as ever, but is now thoroughly disgusted with the Japanese. Their
“futility,” their “absurd waste of time,” their “indirectness” irritate
him, as they must irritate any one; and he sees no deeper to the
things one loves, and which in some degree compensate. He proclaims,
infuriated, that all the mysticism that was ever in Japan was brought
there by Lafcadio Hearn himself.

=August 4.=--I set off with my bicycle, carrying all my luggage, for a
fossil-insect hunt in Shiobara. The train takes five hours, according
to the time-table, to go to the nearest station, and after that I had
about 16 miles to ride to the haunt of the fossil insects. Fossil
insects are shy and scarce, and I am the first to stalk them here, so
I came with a double lot of patience; and I believe I remarked half a
year ago, I have been so battered and worn in this country, where my
impetuous spirit tugs at Oriental passivity in vain, that I have now
normally the patience of two Jobs.

The train journey was remarkable only for the small quantity of
clothing the passengers in the cushioned second class (pauper as I am,
I only once travelled third) considered essential. Then the bicycle
began, and as I spun past the jolting _kurumas_ the other travellers
engaged, my heart rejoiced, for not only was I safe from their horrors,
but I should reach the hotel first and get the pick of what rooms there
might be; for it is a hot-spring place, and much frequented in August.

The first half of the journey was nearly flat, and I have described
it before, when I came to this place hunting plants; and then the
hills began, but the road was splendidly graded, and I rode up all
but one with great ease. The road followed the winding valley, and
sometimes seemed to hang over the roaring flood of the river beneath,
so precipitous was the slope. At each curve of the road a broiling
sun shone on me, and at each convex bend there was a waterfall, which
seemed to emanate the coolness of hidden ice, and as the road curved
and wound in and out like a Chinese dragon’s tail, I did not lack
sensations. The beauty of the solitude of a million trees whispering
together, of the silvery blue water and the grey rocks, shone with a
clearness and brilliance that is so rare in England, and that is one of
the chief charms of this country.

When I arrived and settled into my rooms, I had a bath. It was a big
hotel, built for the hot springs which ran directly into the baths, and
I was ushered into a bath-room where a man and woman were disporting
themselves after the manner of Adam and Eve before the Fall. I felt
like the serpent; but refused, with more tact than he showed, to form
a third. This surprised the bath-attendant, who, however, allowed me
to wait, and then stood outside the door all the time I was bathing to
keep others out, and only peeped through the broken glass in the door
now and then just to see whether I was ready to come out. After the
bath he escorted me across the road (I had to sleep in the annexe),
holding the umbrella over me, as I trotted along in a kimono and a
pair of stilt-like gheta. In the luxury of idleness after supper I
watched a woman in the house opposite. She was clad in a brilliant
blue kimono, just the right old china blue--open at the throat, and
her face and neck were the colour of warm sun-tanned unstained wood.
“Olive,” I suppose people call the complexion, but it was warmer,
and more beautiful than that, while her hair was smooth and black as
polished ebony, arranged with a series of rich curves in it. The old
abused word “chaste” expressed her more exactly than any other I know.
The tawdry fluffiness of most of our women’s dress and hair seemed
like flannelette beside rich satin as compared with her. Yet a curl
may bewitch one and entangle one’s soul, I know--a curl, but not the
frippery and broken lines that are so rife in Europe. I wonder till
I verge on lunacy how it is that the West has not yet discovered the
glory that lies in smooth curves and gleaming surfaces, and in lines of
cloth, unbroken by frilling and tucking and ruching and pleating.

=August 5.=--I hunted fossil insects morning and afternoon, and got a
haul, better than I might have expected, if not so good as I had hoped.
I left the bicycle at a primitive little saw-mill, turned by the river
one has to cross to get the fossil quarry. The people are all greatly
interested in it, never having seen a woman’s bicycle before. The hotel
is about a couple of miles from the fossil place, so I go on it as far
as I can get, for it is hot to walk, and stones are heavy to carry.

=August 6.=--Another quiet day. I took a walk over the stream up a
branch valley. How gloriously limpid and clear the water is. The
solitude is complete, and yet there are footpaths where one can wander
without battling with _sasa_. It is a particularly charming place.

=August 7.=--I got very wet while getting fossils, indeed, it was
like fishing rather than anything else. After I got back there was
a terrible storm, really a small typhoon; one realised then why the
houses are built with such greatly projecting roofs. The rain washed
over them in a torrent, a white cascade, and streamed off the sides
and swirled up into the air like a great waterfall. I have never seen
anything like it; the whole building was like a giant fountain of
dashing white water, and the wind blew till I feared for our roof.

=August 8.=--I had great luck cycling back to the station in excellent
weather, but found the train was two hours late, owing to the
destruction of last night’s storm; and before we got back to Tokio it
was three hours late, so that instead of getting home just in time for
dinner, I arrived, famished, at nearly 10. A kind Japanese lady gave me
some biscuits in the train, for which I was grateful indeed; they were
Huntley and Palmers’ “Osborne,” and M’Vitie and Price’s Shortbread! The
joy of meeting these dear old friends in such an unexpected place was
even greater than the relief my internal economy felt. They must have
been wealthy people to have such biscuits, as, indeed, I had previously
suspected, for the girls’ blue and white kimonos, that would naturally
have been of cotton, were made of silk--poor children! for it is really
much hotter than the plebeian cotton.

=August 9.=--A quiet day of rest. It is very hot, and I expect I am the
only foreigner fool enough to be in Tokio.

=August 10–12.=--I spent a short time at the Institute and the rest at
home, writing in my garden, and battling with mosquitoes and mould, but
really having a restful time, for I ran away (thinking it the better
part of valour) from the former, and write inside a mosquito net.

=August 13.=--I set off with my bicycle to Yejiri to see the cycads
again. As it is 7½ hours’ journey by slow train, I went to the
farther station of Shizuoka, at which the express stops, and got there
in five hours, to bicycle 7 miles back to the temple. The wicked old
sinner of a priest had written to me, in answer to my requests, to say
that there were no cones this year, and I had believed him till I heard
by chance it was false. And I found quantities of cones--twenty-six
huge things, a foot and a half long, on one tree!

The smell of these cones is very strong, like pineapple and cake
fermented together; it is a very thick smell, and in a room one of the
cones was very persistent and penetrating, though it did not seem to
attract any insects at all.

I had difficulty with the females, for the trees are awfully tall and
shaky, but by tying two ladders together I got at them, and clung for
my life to the sturdy leaves. The temple is as sweet as ever, but the
evening was wet. As I sat over my supper in the house, which is all
opened up so as to look very big, the priest unconcernedly took off his
only garment and had his bath without closing the bath-room partition,
while his wife went about all the time with about a yard of cotton
round her hips.

Clothes, you will say, fill a large part of this journal, but Japan
is one great exhibition in the art, mistakes, or want of clothes.
Everything from perfection to nothingness is to be seen nearly
every day. Everything from a soul-thrilling beauty and dignity to a
side-aching farce of incongruity.

=August 14.=--I set off at half-past six to get back to Shizuoka, as I
expected Professor B---- to tea in the afternoon in Tokio. Well, first
they put me on the sea road, which at the start seems more direct than
the one I came by, but actually follows the bays and hills, and adds
several up and down miles to the journey. Then, even when I started,
it was steadily pouring with rain. Then both my tyres went flat with
punctures, quite unmendable in those wilds. Then the road was bad and
narrow, and made of stones the size of marbles up to the size of a
doubled fist. Then the streams flooded, and I had to go through thirty
or forty of them which had decided to go _over_ instead of under
or beside the road. Then the roar of a landslip added a fillip of
excitement. Then the growl of thunder and the brilliance of lightning,
which I fancied might be attracted by my spokes. Then, not torrents of
rain, but cataracts, waterspouts, Niagara falls!

I said naughty things ever so many times, but stuck on my bicycle
and wouldn’t get off for the stony-bedded little torrents that
impertinently crossed the roads, and just went through them. What
matter if I couldn’t see the bottom upon my bicycle, I couldn’t see it
any better if I waded them. I folded up the sheets (I always travel
with sheets for sleeping), put them in a pad under my cloak to try and
keep my back dry, but soon they were saturated and merely added to the
general weight of water. I never felt more depressed and more weary;
what with the road as it was, the floods, and the punctures, I couldn’t
go much more than 5 miles an hour, and that with jolting like an Irish
cart, and at an expense of effort that would have taken me 20 miles an
hour the day before. All the time I ploughed along I remembered the
part I was to act by 4 o’clock in Tokio, clad in white samite (I mean
muslin), gracefully dispensing tea and small talk to a distinguished
visitor.

There was nothing to do to counterbalance the leg-aching pedalling or
to lend a little warmth to the clammy, dripping mass that I was. I got
to the station and missed the train! There was two hours’ interval
to the next, and I was so drowned I couldn’t go to a hotel, for the
abominable sun had come out as I got to the station and the sky was
blue and innocent-looking, and every one was dry, and supercilious to
a creature who left pools at every step. A little sweet-shop provided
hot water and peppermint, and things drained off a little as I rode
slowly back, and then walked round and round and round the waiting-room
reading Thackeray’s _Pendennis_, as the crowd entertained itself with
speechless staring, and the porters volubly sympathised as I took a
towel out of my bag, which was less saturated than the rest of me, and
dried my hair a little.

When the next train came it was mercifully the Nagasaki express, with
a dining-car attached, so I left my car and went along and had coffee.
The waiters were so sympathetic, that as I was the only customer, one
offered to lend me a nice dry kimono of his own while I took everything
off, and they dried them over the train fire. As every other passenger
was in a kimono I felt less shy than the situation warranted, till I
saw the stuck-up nose of an English lady tourist at the far end of the
passenger car as I returned in my Japanese rig-out.

However, it was better than sitting five hours in a super-saturated
condition. They dried my things very quickly, for fortunately they had
nothing else to do (the weather was now glorious), and except that all
the colours from belts, books, and cases had got on to the garments I
was normal again, and got back to Tokio in time to have just changed my
dress, when the cheery voice of Professor B---- hailed me in the garden.

=August 17.=--What a thunder-storm! I never could have imagined
anything like it. One peal lasted eleven minutes, and another began
again after a couple of seconds’ interval, and so they kept it up for
an hour and a half, rolling round and round the heavens, as though
the gods played nine-pins with Mount Fuji. The lightning was almost
continuous, too, and filled the heavens with broad sheets of flame. Yet
with all the terrific massiveness and grandeur of the storm, it lacked
the point of sharp concentration that would have added terror. I always
enjoy a storm, unless it is centred and concentrated just above me.
And this stupendous storm was the finest display I have ever imagined,
let alone experienced, and I did not grudge the hours of sleep of which
it robbed me.

The morning dawned clear and still, but the garden was full of wrecked
things.

=August 19.=--Are the gods never going to have mercy and stop their
cruel play of battering Professor _F----_, and through him me and our
fossil work? Instead of coming early in the morning, as we arranged,
he came very late, with the horrible news that he had just heard that
the people who lived in his house before him (he moved last year) had
a _leper_ in the family! Consequently he and his household have stood
grave danger of getting this ghastly disease, and may actually have
it now, the latent period is so uncertain and often so long that the
doctor cannot tell for some time to come. It sometimes lies dormant for
years. Of course, he must move at once, and in the meantime take every
possible precaution. A nice waste of time, even if there were not the
horror hanging over it all!

How this country can possibly pretend to be a first-class Power, how it
can build warships and drill armies to the blare of trumpets, how it
can have a “World’s Fair” in a few years, and invite all the nations to
join in its Exhibition, and all the time have hundreds and thousands
of lepers scattered about the country, and _marrying_--how they can do
this simply passes my comprehension.

In this land of islands why don’t they take one, fenced round by the
sea, and isolate the fearful disease? In a generation Norway cleared
the country of lepers--but here one may touch one any day. On my
way back I saw several beggars, ghastly creatures, kneeling by the
wayside, with fingerless hands, all purple blotched. True, it is not so
contagious as we imagine it to be, being chiefly hereditary, but that
makes it all the easier to stamp out if they will do it.

I am not really afraid (not terrified, at least) for Professor _F----_
(and through him, for myself), but I fear the removal will still
further hinder the progress of the fossil work.

=August 21.=--I worked all day at fossils, and was much vexed to
find that the powerful heat has brought bubbles in the Canada Balsam
of nearly every slide! Botanists alone will understand the tragic
significance of this, and they will sympathise and be merciful when I
bring the bubbly preparations home!

You at home can hardly understand how hot the sun is, really burning
hot, and many of my trays were so placed that the sun has been falling
on them all the time I was away, resulting in thousands of bubbles. I
discovered it by chance to-day, when I had mounted and examined some,
and then left them for an hour where the sun got at them, and I found a
thousand minute bubbles in each of the scorching slides. Alack!

=August 27.=--This morning at breakfast, thinking over cones, a
question arose in my mind about those of _Cryptomeria_ which I could
not settle without a specimen, and which checked my line of thought,
so I gave it up and glanced out of the window beside which I was
sitting in search of lighter amusement (for there is a nice vine there
whose tendrils curl round and round in a very pretty way), and by my
hand, growing on the little hedge I had never noticed very specially
before, was a _Cryptomeria_ cone! Having associated the _Cryptomeria_
always with the stately giants that surround the temples, I had never
associated these green hedges, three feet high, with them, nor did I
realise that they could bear cones while so young. It still remains
a problem whether perhaps a fairy, listening to my thoughts, had not
touched with her magic wand the branch nearest me, so that it produced
the cone, for not another was to be found anywhere around.

I gathered it, cut it open, and settling the point I wanted, was able
to pick up all the dropped stitches of the argument and carry it on.
Fairies are most useful creatures to scientists!

=August 28.=--As my bicycle was once more having a puncture mended, I
had to go in the tram, as it is far too hot to walk all the way. In
this boiling weather the tram was as full as ever, 50 people where but
20 should be, standing so thickly all down the middle that they were
pressed against each other on all sides, and _every window_ and _every
ventilator_ and the door all closed! I slammed down two windows, but
could not reach the ventilators, as they are so high up; directly I got
the chance, I opened a window on the opposite side, but no one else
followed the example, though the Japanese seem to feel the heat much
more than I do, _when not in a foreign style_ vehicle or house.

Taking this in conjunction with the remarks Japanese have often made to
me about the foreigners’ dislike of fresh air, and in conjunction also
with numerous other observations of a similar nature, I am forced to
conclude that the Japanese, as a nation, are not at all sensitive to
bad air. Their houses, built according to the ancient plan, force them,
by their construction, to live in ideally fresh rooms, but put them in
a foreign house, and everything is hermetically sealed.

=August 29.=--I went into one of the Laboratories to-day, and found
four men, three gas burners, and a stove at work, without an inch of
window open--it nearly stifled me. I have noticed this Laboratory
before, and _never_, all through this scorching summer, have I seen the
windows unclasped. It is a foreign style building, of course.

=August 30.=--I got up very early and set off on my bicycle to see
the sacred lotus flowers on the great pond near Oyeno Park, but I did
not get there in time to see them burst open, for that takes place at
sunrise, but the flowers were fresh and fair, still unfaded by the heat
of the day when I got to the edge of the water. There must have been
several acres of them, with their great leaves overtopped by huge rosy
flowers. The purity and radiance of their opaque yet lustrous petals is
something I have never seen surpassed in any other flowers, and as they
stand up in a rich succession of curves to form a 9-inch bowl, their
cumulative effect is magnificent, while in them glows a golden radiance
of captured sun-rays. Glorious flowers!

A little island lies in the pond, which is reached by a bridge, and on
it is a temple, with shrines standing on it. There those who come to
see the lotus worship in their simple way, pulling the temple bell and
clapping their hands to ensure that the gods hear the short muttered
prayer and put to their credit the half-farthings they bestow. One is
always hearing of the lack of religion among the Japanese, but there
never was a land with so many shrines and temples. On my way back I
passed a shrine under a tree trunk on a crowded thoroughfare. It was
only a toy building a couple of feet high, but a workman was busy
arranging his offering of dangling white papers. Religion and daily
life are mingled here.

=September 2.=--I set off for Hayama, a little seaside place not far
from Tokio, hoping to escape this dreadful heat. Though really a very
trifling journey, it takes several hours, as the trains are so slow.
It lies beyond the well-known Kamakura, and is much more beautiful and
open, as it is round the point of the bay, and is mercifully free from
most of the crowd that overwhelms Kamakura in summer.

The little hotel I went to stands on a hill among the woods, looking
down on the sea; it was beautifully quiet, but it was “foreign style,”
and the beds were miserable. I made a most interesting observation very
shortly after my arrival: some ants had built the most extraordinary
galleries all up the branches of a tree, and they had taken the leaves
and rolled them up, and built houses inside them.

Then in some cases they had covered the whole twig over with their
sandy houses, and just left little bits of leaves sticking out here and
there.[5] I was ever so much interested, and found several plants of
the same kind (a species of smooth-leaved holly) with the same thing
happening. I fancy it is new to science, and I wish now I had brought
down some instruments and reagents to examine it properly, but I
brought nothing as I decided I would have one week’s real holiday.

[5] An account of this has appeared in the _Transactions of the
Manchester Philosophical Society_, 1909.

It was amusing to find how difficult it was to get anything to fix the
specimens and bring them back home. There was only one shop that sold
foreign biscuits and so had tins, but they wouldn’t sell or give a tin
for love or money. No, they said, they had no tins; of course I did not
believe them, and roamed round the shop opening every tin to see what
was in it, and I found one that was empty. But they refused absolutely
to sell it. They were returning to Tokio, it was the end of the season,
and they needed it for packing their own things, and they would not
sell it--no, not for a yen. But I grew desperate in the thought of my
specimens, probably new to the scientific world, and whose preservation
depended on that tin; the man who owned it sat and smiled on his
Japanese mats, his _geta_ (sandals) were not in sight, and I knew I
could run fast enough to get a start any way. So I took the tin under
my arm (a huge square biscuit one it was too) and smiling, explained
that I _must_ and would have that tin, and put down 30 sen on his table
and said I was just going to take it, and off I went. He didn’t chase
me; I suppose he thought it hopeless, and besides, I had paid a very
good price, for the tin was ancient and bent.

Then came the search for spirit to preserve it in, for I wanted to
have the ants and all _in situ_; but one could not expect to find
spirit in such a village, and it was no shock to find there was none.
Then I bethought me of _saké_, the poet-famed drink, the wine of the
marriage cups and the friendly festival, and I sent a maid for a jorum
of _saké_; the wine is reported to be very highly alcoholic, I know two
spoonfuls sent me to sleep after weeks of sleeplessness, and in the
_saké_ I plunged my specimens and hoped for the best.

=September 3.=--I moved to a Japanese hotel down on the shore, far more
comfortable for bathing--and with much cosier sleeping arrangements.
It is curious, but I am miserable in a bed now unless it is soft and
_safe_ feeling. If it is hard and rises up in the middle I dream of
precipices all night, for all this year I have slept on the floor,
which seems so nice and _safe_, and really the obvious thing to do when
you have _tatami_ floors.

This hotel has a garden with pine trees, and a swing and cross bars,
so I can exercise myself to my heart’s content, while it is quite
isolated, the last house in the village and far from its neighbours. A
delightful spot, to which I shall hope to return. The maid, O Sayo San,
is the politest I ever met; and of all wonderful things, they refused
_Chadai_ money the first night when I offered it in an envelope in the
ultra best Japanese way on my arrival.

=September 4.=--It is rather too bad, but the weather has turned
miserably cold, both here and in Tokio, and I should have been at work
in comfort, while bathing is not the pleasure it would have been the
week before in the broiling sun. But there are several nice people down
here, Tokio friends.

=September 5.=--I got the loan of the “Bromide” book from Mrs. C----,
how good it is. Have all you who read this read the little book called
“_Are you a Bromide?_” If not, do so; for I fear if you haven’t, much
of the humour of life is a sealed book to you. It has added greatly to
my enjoyment, and it can be read in half an hour.

Coming home I looked into the grove of the village temple, a pretty
little place on a small hill, and was at first much puzzled by an
apparition.

You know (or more probably don’t know) that the most usual form of
decoration in a temple is torn strips of white paper, which hang down.
Real paper usually--only very grand temples have gold as a symbol of
torn paper! Such hanging strips are put in the mouths of the sacred
animals very often, and you may see a pair of foxes sitting, carved
in stone, with these paper spouts streaming from their mouths or
floating on the breeze as they sit immovable. These foxes are often
more dog-like than fox-like, and sometimes cleverly painted, but no
one could confuse them with a _real_ dog. But in this temple grove was
a wonderful creature--a single one, not a pair as is usual--and instead
of sitting on either side of the path to the shrine, he sat absolutely
in the middle of the path--upright, pointed nose straight ahead, ears
erect, and from his mouth the long fluttering streamer of sacred paper;
so he sat, immovable, and before him I stood immovable but astonished,
so marvellously was he wrought and coloured; could he but move, one
would swear he was alive, but his gleaming eyes fixed glassy and
unwinking on the distance to infinity in front of him, and only the
paper fluttered in the breeze. I walked to either side and gazed--there
was something impellingly arresting about this silent image--and for
ten minutes I must have lingered near it, perhaps hypnotised by the
fluttering white paper and the gleaming eyes; and then the creature
rose, still holding the sacred paper in its mouth, and without a sound
or a movement except the inevitable placing of its feet, walked down
the centre of the path into the shadows of the shrine.

A dog?--a spirit? A wonderful dog then, and surely a spirit such as one
only meets in the haunts of medieval religions.

=September 7.=--A simple day--bathing and walking and emptying my mind
of thought as much as possible. Fuji mountain, alas, I cannot see, as
the rain clouds cloak her, but on the horizon lies, dimly, Oshima, the
burning island, and round the points of the rocky shore are countless
islets crowned with a twisted pine or girt with white-fringed waves.
From the hills one looks down on a long series of bays with brilliant
blue horizon and solid white line at the shore--the Japanese artists
are much truer to nature than we think.

=September 9.=--I went early to the Institute, where there is grand
excitement over _Ginkgo_; the sperms are just swimming out, and they
only do it for a day or two each year. It is no such easy business to
catch them, in 100 seeds you can only get five with sperms at the best
of times, and may get one and be thankful. I spent pretty well the
whole day over them, and got three, and several in the pollen tube, not
yet quite ripe. It is most entertaining to watch them swimming, their
spiral of cilia wave energetically.

=September 10 and 11.=--Hunting _Ginkgo_ sperms nearly all the time;
but about 3 on Friday I began to feel so queer and feverish that I went
home and took my temperature; it was 103°, so I went to bed.

=September 12.=--Still so feverish and queer feeling that I stopped in
bed, though the temperature is down a little; but this is usually the
case with fever, and I have been almost delirious in the night with the
most absurd ideas.

All this long quiet day I lay and enjoyed the beauty of my room. I
had the quilts which make a Japanese bed laid in the drawing-room, as
several people came to see me, and for my own pleasure; it is nicer
in the room with one’s favourite vase and kakemono. How funny this
mixture of bedroom and drawing-room will sound in England! But there
is nothing “bedroomy” in a Japanese house.

People who have seen my rooms may wonder where the beauty was that
could keep me occupied a whole day in its contemplation, because
most people seem to judge rooms by the _number_ of beautiful things
massed into them, and to think that twenty beautiful vases massed
together on a stand counteract the clashing effects of three discordant
antimacassars (this word is so old-fashioned, I never learnt how to
spell it!)

As I lay I faced a wall of pale, warm, creamy distemper, with a band
of cream unpainted wood about two feet from the unpainted beams of
the ceiling, which show so beautifully their graining and the curving
designs of their natural growth. In one side of the wall is a window,
with wooden bars crossing and re-crossing till it looks like a
diamond-paned window, only the glass is replaced by semi-transparent
paper. This is taken down though, and I look out on to the smooth grey
bark of a tree whose leaves are like the shining laurel leaves in a
Burne-Jones design, and interlaid against the vivid blue of the sky.
The window-ledge is inside the room (not outside in our mad Western
way), and on it stands a low grey-green dish in which is growing a
graceful spraying plant beside a gnarled grey stone that looks like
a piece of a forest rock. Beside the window are short grey-green
curtains, edged with a broad band of Chinese embroidery in which blue,
pink, and coral run riot with half the other colours on the palette
of a Watts. The other half of the wall is occupied with a bamboo
settee, covered with the same cloth as the curtains, above which is a
square of Japanese embroidery--a great golden flower (a richer tone
of the colour of the walls) on a grey-green ground, with butterflies
hovering over it--framed in dark brocade with a thread of gold. Above
the band of wood is a picture, yellow, brown, and grey, a river scene
at dusk. At right angles to this wall I can see the Tokonoma recess--a
yard deep and two yards long and nearly as high as the room. It is
dark brown, with one long kakemono--a grey-brown bird on a withered,
gnarled branch, the work of an old and valued Chinese artist (lent me
by Professor _S----_); below it to one side a stand of ebony, with a
brilliant blue cloisonné vase round the slender stem of which curls a
fiery dragon, and its colour is living and gleams against the brown.
Then on the other side grows a little bent and twisted tree, in a flat
earthenware bowl, and in the corner stands my sword. The left side of
the house as I lie is open to the garden; there is no wall, and I look
out over my own little green plot, with its Thuya trees and glowing
“morning glories,” to the tree tops of the land around. In the verandah
hangs a square black lamp which I had lit as the swift night fell,
and from whose opaque white sides shines a light so soft that it does
not frighten the moon or the fire-flies. Then the floor of my room is
covered with _tatami_--straw mats closely fitted and edged with black,
and the sliding walls of the cupboard recesses that make the room solid
are also straw-coloured, with a narrow border of black. The wooden
fretwork of the _soji_ supports the white paper through which light
shines so radiantly and softly; then there are a few straw-coloured
chairs, a dark wood table and grey-green cushions--and that is all.

=September 14.=--As my temperature rose to 104° last night I felt I
ought to have a doctor--the first doctor I have called in in my whole
life! I felt it a serious and terrible event. But I am not seriously
ill, an internal chill (probably the cold bathing at Hayama, one gets
chills here so easily) and a temperature which runs up very soon in
this country. He is taking the temperature down with drugs. I told him
I _must_ go to the Institute to-morrow, but he laughs.

=September 22–24.=--Quiet uneventful days at the Institute, working at
fossils hard. What a lot of results you will expect! But to get one
line of result often means days of labour over petty detail that does
not show.

=September 26.=--At work all day till I went to the meeting of the
Botanical Society where Professor _M----_ spoke of his visit to China
during the vacation, but I couldn’t understand very much.

=September 28.=--At the Institute all day, at night how it rained! Like
a typhoon rain, only lasting all night at high pitch; I couldn’t sleep
for it.

=September 29.=--The results of that rain! It was fair in the morning
so I bicycled, thinking that as the rain was so heavy it would have
cleaned the roads. And so it had, cleaned them just as long boiling
cleans the bones of a chicken, and there was only left the stony
skeleton of most of the roads; but in the high ground of Azabu, where
the roads are pretty well made, they were passably good.

But then I got to Koishikawa, and about a mile from the Institute the
entertainment began. Coming down a tram-line road I had been rather
astonished to see straw piled up all round the telegraph posts, and
several domestic articles such as pillows lying about the road, but
where the tram stops I saw the reason, this road, a big main high road,
was entirely under a rushing flood of water. I asked a policeman if
there was any way of getting to the Botanical Gardens without going
through it, but there was none.

I got a _kuruma_ man to take me and my cycle on a _kuruma_, and by
keeping in the central ridge of the road, he waded with me through
this mile of water. But what devastation on either side! Men walking
by their houses (placed a little lower than the road) up to their
shoulders in water, though it had subsided a good deal already, all
sorts of things floating about, and signs of ruin everywhere. The
underground channel they had made for the river burst through in one
place, and at the side of the road a regular roaring waterfall. As
we went along floating _tatami_ (heavy mats of straw, as much as one
can lift and about 6 feet long and 2–3 inches thick) rushed on the
_kuruma_, and my man had difficulty in getting round them, for he
couldn’t drop the shafts to free his hands for that would have landed
me in the water. We got there without mishap, but saw many tragi-comic
sights, for the loss and wreckage among the small one-storied shops is
terrible.

Coming back the water had subsided a little, but there was still much
to go through. It was funny to watch people wading through it; on the
shore on either side men balanced themselves on one leg on their high
stilt-like _geta_ (no easy feat I can assure you) and drew off their
trousers, but not always without a spill. Piles and piles of straw
mats, washed into pulp, were all over the place. When I returned home I
heard that in the low ground in my neighbourhood six children had been
drowned.

=September 30.=--In the papers one reads of many deaths and terrible
loss of property from the floods, which were almost universal in the
low ground of the city. There are regular hills of straw and wreckage
all along the main highway I passed yesterday in a _kuruma_ and the
smell is far from pleasing, but there is no other way into the gardens,
as the other roads are still under water.

In the evening we had a Debate, “That lies may be justifiable”; an
excellent meeting, nearly all of the people speaking, and very amusing.
One missionary got up and said she was most strongly in favour of lying
and that she told three or four every day! Shrieks of laughter, for she
spoke immediately after a very sweet missionary who spoke in favour of
truth. All the rest of us were about equally divided, and the truth
only won by three votes on more than thirty.

=October 4.=--Went to Ōmori and walked on to the temple on the hill
beyond. Its green groves and quietness were very peaceful and lovely.
It is almost woodland there, and there are few people. In the temple
grove was a scarlet high pagoda, which gleamed between the stately
trees. The spot is so peaceful and sweet and I was so tired of working
that the day was very pleasant. We collected moss, and some little
stones covered with it, and I had five _Cryptomeria_ seedlings to
make a forest, and with them I made a miniature landscape in a flat
earthenware dish when I returned home--but it isn’t half as easy as it
looks!

=October 5.=--At work on the fossils; at 2 o’clock I gave the first
of my course of lectures at the University, the room was more than
full, several standing all through the hour, and there were several
Professors and the Dean there. I didn’t do so badly as I feared, after
being so long out of practice, but the flying chalk made me hoarse.
It was a little terrifying, and half of them didn’t understand very
much owing to the language difficulty, but the others did. It is nice
lecturing again, it is an excellent tonic.

=October 12.=--At work at fossils in the morning--my lecture at 2. I
find as I have to speak so slowly to be clear, that there isn’t much
time in an hour. There is a sort of demonstration with microscopics
afterwards which helps.

It is now very cold at night and in the early morning, but still warm
enough to wear cotton frocks in the middle of the day. The clear moon
is wonderful.

=October 13.=--At work all day on fossils, cycled back in time to dress
for a dance, to which I cycled, as it was a lovely night. It was a very
jolly dance and not the least pleasure of the evening was cycling back
with Mr. G---- instead of jolting and freezing and catching cold in a
slow _kuruma_. Out of every 24 hours the cycle saves me one to two or
more in this slow Tokio, so that I shouldn’t grumble at it.

=October 16.=--At work all the morning, lunch with the Faculty at
the Goten, and then at work all the afternoon. The fossils proved so
enticing that though I had worn a traily frock all day intending to go
to the Belgian Legation garden party, when it came to the point the
fossils won, and I didn’t go. In the evening I cycled down to dinner at
our Embassy.

When once one makes up one’s mind to a cycle, one can even go out to
dinner on it. I wondered, however, what the footman thought when he had
to lift it into the Embassy hall in case of thieves getting it in the
garden (I was told he has a brother who is an attaché at the French
Embassy! The Japanese are very quaint that way--one Count or Baron
or other is driven up to the door every day by his own brother as a
coachman). Thanks to the unmoved countenance of flunkeydom, added to
the immobility of the Japanese, I could sail into the dining-room, past
the same man, trailing a pink silk skirt with apparent dignity.

=October 21.=--Fossils all day. I cycled round on my way home and paid
my dance calls. The streets, particularly in the neighbourhood of the
_Ginza_ and the station, are now very gay and crowded for the American
Fleet, of which a really enormous fuss is being made. There are arches,
and bands, and processions, and all manner of things all over the
place. Bands of school children go about with flags, and--for the first
time since I have been in Japan--I was insulted on my cycle by grown
men, not once, but six times in the course of half an hour! Not badly,
but in a coarse rude tone I was called out to, and one madman waved a
lantern suddenly in my face on the cycle and nearly upset me. I suppose
they are over-excited, for everywhere the echo rings with protestations
of undying devotion to the Americans, for one of whom I would naturally
be taken.

=October 22.=--A horribly wet morning, but by midday a lovely sun came
out, and it felt almost like midsummer. When I got to the Embassy
garden party (it was given to welcome Admiral Sperry) I found it had
been postponed in the morning, but as the weather was now so lovely, it
was put on again. That is to say, it was half on and would be repeated
to-morrow. So we had one of the bands, and quite a lot of the American
officers and other people turned up. The chief sight was seeing Admiral
Sperry and Admiral Togo sitting side by side looking on at a kind of
sword-dance. The dance itself was very dull, as all Japanese posture
dances are unless you understand them intimately, but there were
some sparks when the swords clashed, and one of the swords broke by
accident, which was entertaining. It was rather wonderful the way the
dancer to whom this happened kept his countenance, and put it in the
sheath at the appointed time as calmly as if it hadn’t been a mere
stump.

The American officers were a sad disillusionment. One fancies good
class Americans must be all like the soulful adoring youths at the feet
of the Gibson girls, but they aren’t--at least those officers aren’t.
In fact, though they would be mad to hear it, they were mostly not easy
to distinguish from Japanese when both stood with their caps down over
their eyes, as they always wear them, except that the Americans looked
the less smart owing to the untidy appearance of their small squash
caps. So many of them were short and insignificant. Admiral Sperry,
though not imposing or impressive in any way, seemed pleasant and keen,
and was tall.

=October 23.=--Lunch at the Goten, with quite a lot of foreign
visitors,--two Russians, a geologist and a botanist, and two Germans
interested in law or some such thing. I hear we are to have Sven Hedin,
which will be really interesting. I hope I shall see him.

=October 24.=--The Fleet left to-day, and the following was put in
the paper: “Gentlemen will not be allowed on the platform except in
frock-coats and silk hats; ladies in corresponding dress.”

The passion of the Japanese for the silk hat is intense, fervid, one
might almost say it has become a fetish. But _we_ have hitherto been
spared a corresponding dress!

Think of its parallel in England--no gentleman allowed into Euston
Station without a silk hat.

After working at fossils all morning (as you can imagine, I didn’t
go to the station) I went along to preside at a Debate at Baroness
d’A----’s. This Debate was on marriage. I had asked a very cultured
missionary lady, with silver hair, to take a literary debate. No, said
she, she was not interested in that, but if she might propose that “The
unmarried life is the happier, then she would take the Debate.” So we
had quite an amusing Debate, fortunately rather superficial.

The people here are not in touch with all our modern types, and I
did not need to speak against the ranting type, who rave against men
and marriage and prove themselves deformed. No, there were no such
“problem” people here, only young spinsters who didn’t dare to say
they would like to be married, and wives who didn’t dare or wish to
speak against marriage, and elderly spinsters who were clever enough
to be amusing without touching a fundamental note. The ranting type
seems mercifully to be confined to big communities; I suppose it is an
inevitable result of city life, where some must sterilise, but it is a
pity when they have the power to write books.

In the evening I had a few of the Japanese botanists to dinner, and
they seemed pretty well amused, or were sufficiently polite to pretend
to be so. Fortunately they are not accustomed to violent amusement,
nor have they the jaded palate of the European city dweller, so they
are less exacting, for which I am thankful, as it was the first
dinner-party I have given.

=October 25.=--In the afternoon I went to tea with Professor _F----_
and met Professor R---- from Russia, and others. We taught Professor
R---- to use chop-sticks, and we examined dwarf trees, of which
Professor _F----_ has some beautiful specimens. In a room in which
dwarf trees are displayed everything must be specially simple and
dignified. If the tree is not in the _tokonomo_, for instance, the
screen behind it must be white, pure white, not even flecked with
gold-dust. And when one sees it arranged rightly, one realises the true
rightness of it, and the beauty seems to stand out clearly, with the
outline of the tree against the background of white. I love more and
more the simple culture of the old style Japanese when in harmonious
surroundings. Though they have quite lovely and valuable dwarf trees
in Kew, they are lost in the greenhouse with all the other things; the
rays and suggestions from the other plants around them intermingle and
conflict, till they produce a grey haze of mist in which the spirit of
beauty envelops herself and is invisible; but if you place but one of
those trees in the right place, she steals out and is radiant before
you.

=October 28.=--A long quiet day of work. While we were at lunch an
envelope was brought to Professor _F----_ containing 75 sen, partly
in copper coins. It was a present from the Emperor! When I had done
laughing he explained to me the reason. It is soon the Emperor’s
birthday, and therefore all Government officials are expected to go
to the palace to pay their respects, when they would receive a cup of
_saké_ and some light food. But to go one must have a grand gold-laced
uniform, and many of the younger men don’t have it, also if every one
went there would be an impossible crush, so that only the seniors go.
The juniors now dispense with the formal letter stating that they are
ill, but continue to receive the price of a cup of _saké_ from the
Emperor! Though the sum may seem ridiculous, it is an interesting
survival, and as there are about ten thousand officials in the country,
it is no joke for the Emperor!

=October 30.=--An uneventful day lunch at the Goten. I had been invited
to go to the Peeresses School for their sports, as the Emperor was
to be there, and I wished to see the school and the Royalty watching
sports--but was prevented by the fossils.

=October 31.=--Frightfully cold and raining in torrents. I lit the lamp
in my room in the Institute to try to warm me a little, but with lots
of thick clothes as well, I shivered all day. In the evening I put on a
fur-lined coat over my gown, and even then was too cold to write. There
will be floods again if the rain continues so torrential.

=November 1.=--Gloriously sunny and clear. In a tussore silk frock
I sat all day writing in my garden. One need never despair during
rainy weather in Japan,--it doesn’t leave one in the clouds for long.
Fresh green peas were brought in the pods for my approval, which they
naturally got. There is a kind of second spring in November, and the
roses are blooming in beauty. In the evening I went up the mound near
me and looked down on the tree-covered country below, where curled
white mists between the black trunks. Straight opposite stood Fuji
mountain, with a coronet of golden clouds and a cloak of crimson, while
in the deep blue behind began to peep out tiny stars.

=November 3.=--A national holiday, so the laboratory was locked up, and
I couldn’t get work done there.

In the afternoon I went to a tea-party with friends. Coming home we did
a lot of shopping, and had quite a festive time, as there was a kind
of fair on and the streets were gay with lanterns and a bright crowd,
and the shops full of the most delightful trifles. This street near our
hostess is one of the best for shopping, as it is little frequented
by foreigners and is a well-known shopping place for the Japanese. We
went into both the _kankobas_ (a kind of open bazaar I have described
before), and I only wished for a bottomless purse. Nevertheless one
must not run away with the idea, so often suggested by tourists, that
_all_ the native Japanese things are artistic and beautiful. Many are,
but by far the greater number are not, and even when prepared to buy
I often have to wait long and examine many stalls before finding the
thing I want.

=November 4.=--Fossils all day. On the way home I called at the
American Embassy--had the good luck to find the O----s alone.

I often wish Mrs. O---- were not the Ambassadress, as she is so
charming and beautiful, I should like to know her intimately, but as it
is, of course she is always overrun with people.

=November 7.=--Work in the morning. In the afternoon I went to a garden
party at a Japanese Professor’s. He has a pretty garden, with houses
in it for the various scions of the family. He had a lottery and all
the guests had presents, some very pretty Japanese things. There were
a number of remarkably bright and attractive little Japanese girls in
brilliant kimonos, and some pretty maids a little older. At 4 we sat
down to a typical “first class party” tea--cold meats of a dozen kinds,
savoury jellies, hot soup, cakes, sweets, fruit, beer, ginger-beer
and tea (at the end) were served to every one. And yet if you ask a
Japanese about the old customs of the country he will assure you that
simplicity and frugality is the chief note in their entertainments,
and so it is and was in the pure Japanese style, but when they touch
anything “foreign” they must outdo the foreigners.

We were placed curiously at the tables, the Japanese ladies put
_indoors_, where the room opens wide on the garden, the foreign ladies
in the garden, and the gentlemen somewhere else in the garden, quite
out of sight of the ladies! And the men were perhaps quite happy that
way, for they could smoke in peace.

The weather is lovely, and one could not imagine it was really
November, but for the swiftly waning light. The roads riding home are
terribly dark, but fortunately fewer children play in them at night
than by day.

=November 8.=--I rode over to Shingawa to lunch with the D----s (he
is Naval Attaché). They haven’t been in the house long, but they had
brought out with them treasures given to their parents years ago, and
so have many gems of Japanese carving and porcelain. The house is
pretty within, and it was nice to meet some one who had recently come
from home.

Afterwards I rode over to Hongo--an awful way across the country and
city, to dinner with Professor _S----_, his wife and family. He had
his lovely dream of a garden lit by a brilliant full moon, and the
translucent stone lanterns among the trees. Roses grew on the trees,
huge dainty ones, and sweet-scented rose-hearted buds. It was a vision
of perfect beauty to be remembered. Afterwards he and his brother, who
is an excellent singer, sang me some _Nō_ songs, and everything was so
harmonious, so lovely, so simply dignified.

=November 9.=--At work on fossils all day after my lecture, which was
the last. Professor _S----_ spoke and “made me blush,”--his English
is simply wonderful, I know few Englishmen who speak better,--the
substance of what he said for me was more than kind, though I must
deduct something from him, as from all Japanese, for, whatever faults
they may have, they really are polite to people they know.

=November 11.=--Fossils all day. In the evening the great event--my
farewell dinner from the University, given at the famous Maple Club. A
farewell dinner, and they all know quite well that I do not sail till
January! The reason it is given now is partly to thank me for the
lectures and partly because of the weather! As the entertainment is to
be true Japanese style, in a Japanese house, it is deemed necessary to
have it before it becomes really cold.

I have looked forward very much to this party, for it is quite one of
the treats of Tokio to be entertained at the Maple Club. My hosts were,
of course, all Japanese, the University Professors, among them were a
few Japanese ladies, one of whom I knew pretty well, the daughter of
Baron _H----_. I was the only foreigner.

The rooms are splendidly large, about 100 mats when all opened out. It
took me quite a long time to count up the mats, for I am rather stupid
at it. In an ordinary room one can estimate immediately whether it
is an 8 or 10 mat room, by the way they are placed, and without any
counting. We were seated all round the edge of the end room, I in front
of the _tokonomo_, as the chief guest. It left a large space in the
middle to start with, but very soon the maids began to bring dishes of
things to eat, and every guest had the same placed before him on the
ground; as dish after dish was placed in front of us all, each in the
same relative position before every guest, there grew up a symmetrical
border pattern all round the room, which slowly encroached on the
centre.

It made all moving about very difficult, really impossible for one
with skirts, which most of us had, as a number of the men came in
_hakama_ (stiff silk divided skirts worn by men when dressed for
ceremony). Moving about would not have been at all out of place, as
the feeding was very intermittent, and it was only towards the very
end of the evening that they brought the rice. While we were eating,
a kind of superior geisha danced; three girls dressed in ancient-time
costumes performed an old well-known dance supposed to bring good
luck. Afterwards they brought in a red-arched bridge and some flowers,
and did the butterfly dance--two red-and-white and two white, in such
lovely embroidered dresses with butterfly wings on their backs, which
they opened and shut. The whole effect was charmingly pretty. They
said they were the same girls who waited on us earlier, but I did not
recognise them. All the rooms and dishes and lacquer were ornamented
with maple leaves, and they brought sweet cakes in the form of coloured
maple leaves, which we ate before dinner and through the evening.

Professor _S----_ made a speech which _really_ made me blush. He, in
the goodness of his heart, may have meant what he said, but I can’t
believe it voiced the views of any of the others. Then they all
_banzaied_, and drank my health. Of course, I had to make a reply
speech--after one of the men who had come to the lectures thanked
me,--and read a poem he had made about me--it is a thousand times
harder to make an “after-dinner-return-thanks” speech than a long
scientific lecture. I did it somehow. Later, I proposed the health of
the future of Japan, amid hearty _banzais_--but always feel a miserable
failure at such things.

Baron _K----_ sat next me--he had just returned to Tokio, because
to-morrow the great Sven Hedin is going to arrive, and he is on the
reception committee. The dinner began at 5.30 and I went at 9.30,
though I could have enjoyed it still longer, for the border of dishes
had begun to melt, and we could move about a little. There is a
beautiful garden, too, with a view of the sea in day-time, the Club
being situated on the crest of the hill above Shiba Park. The whole
building and atmosphere of the place is very charming, and I enjoyed
the evening greatly.

I was shopping in the _Ginza_--the so-called “Regent Street” of Tokio.
I need hardly say that the name is given by the Japanese. Paper was one
of the things I needed. It is curious, in this land where so much is
made of paper, how very difficult it is to get anything like our strong
brown paper for parcels, or our letter paper, or our manuscript paper.
The native sheets are unglazed, and though tough in one way are useless
for parcels unless one gets oil paper, and even then the sheets are
very small and are pasted together.

=November 16.=--Sven Hedin lectured to-day at the University, and I
had been asked to tea previously to meet him before it. He is rather
short, but sturdy, and very bronzed and rosy. His face is narrow, his
eyes close together, and looking still closer, as he is evidently
short-sighted, and has an exceptionally deep vertical groove between
them. He gave me the impression of being a genial, friendly, hardy,
_pushful_, but not a great man. The only other lady there was
Madame G----, the mother of the French Ambassador, whom I think I
have mentioned before. She was very gracious, as she always is, but
cannot speak a word of anything but French. We all walked over to
the Lecture Hall from the Goten--a slow and solemn procession. About
the only people who spoke were Hedin and Madame G----, a few people
said a sentence or two to me, but even the genial Dean seemed to be
overpowered by the funereal solemnity of the march. I had my cycle,
and the French Ambassador helped me to haul it up the steps! His only
remark was, “Très moderne,” which was very moderate of him. In the
lecture I was placed in the front row, between Madame G---- and Baron
_K----_, and got into nice hot water! The poor lady couldn’t understand
a word of the lecture, and Hedin often said things to make us laugh,
and she could not join in, so now and then I translated a word or two
for her. This upset Baron _K----_, who nudged me violently from the
other side, so I had to stop, but then I hurt the lady, for I didn’t
dare answer her further questions. After the lecture, when Hedin said
he knew we were all interested, because no one spoke a word, and that
was the sure test of interest, I felt worse and worse!

Hedin was received with tremendous applause, and spoke for two hours or
more. His account was most interesting, though once or twice we felt
he “drew the long bow.” His English was fluent, but amusing--“Here
was I catched”--“There I did a beautiful discovery”--“We took camels
laden with ice” (pronounced “eyes”)--so that I wondered quite a while
what on earth “eyes” were for, and I worked up a little theory that
they were part of the devotional paraphernalia of the Lamas before he
said that they melted the “eyes” to give water in the desert. There
is no need to give an account of his lecture--it has already appeared
in _Harper’s_, and he is writing a book. He is not at all shy about
his work, and is very clever at “buttering” the Japanese, so will be
popular here. The students were very quiet while he spoke, and seemed
to follow all his jokes.

=November 17.=--After fossils all day, I went to Hedin’s second lecture
at the University. Several of the American Legation people and some
ladies came this time, and he lectured for more than two and a half
hours! Yesterday he tried to draw a tadpole on the board, and failed
miserably, showing complete ignorance of its shape and of how to draw,
but to-day there were many excellent sketches of the country and people
given as slides on a screen. I did not get home and begin dinner until
8.30, and the lecture began at 4.30. He was cheered splendidly after
his lecture; the papers are full of him and his doings. I thought I
would escape Baron _K----_ this time, and got in a filled row behind
the American Ambassador, but some people moved along--in came Baron
_K----_ and sat down by me! However, as I had no one to talk to to-day,
I behaved quite like a model schoolgirl, and took off my hat when the
views came on without being asked, so perhaps I have reinstated myself
in his eyes.

=November 23.=--A national holiday, so the Institute was locked, and I
had, perforce, to take a holiday. It blew a perfect hurricane all day,
and I was thankful to be able to stay at home. The dead leaves whirled
into the garden, but the sky was brilliant, and the crimson maple trees
glowed in the sunshine. My little house was protected, and I sat all
day on a wide-open verandah. The day passed very peacefully and swiftly
and I did some sewing for my clothes, that, even with an ideal maid,
requires one’s own attention. At 4.30 the sun left the house, and the
cold descended on me.

=November 24.=--From an early hour preparations were made to have
a Botanical Demonstration for Sven Hedin. _Ginkgo_ and cycas
spermatozoids were provided, yeast of the native wine, fossil slides
under the microscope--all in working order. But the poor man is being
rushed all over Tokio to such an extent that but a short time was
available for each thing. He was cordial and nice, and professed to
like the fossils, and seemed fairly intelligently interested, and made
every one feel pleased with him.

He lunched in the festival rooms at the foot of the garden, and when
he had gone Professor _S----_ sang a Te Deum, and Professor _K----_
came back and looked at the fossils again, and with Professor _F----_
we had a merry tea-party. After the day was done I called in at the
Embassy on the Z----s, who returned recently, and found them at home
with a few guests. It amuses me very much to note the conversations in
the different Tokio sets. The continual cry among the diplomats is,
“There are _no_ women in Tokio!” “So few women, we can’t give dinners,”
etc. etc. Up the old cry came again to-day. But in the houses of the
permanent residents, the clergy, missionaries, University professors,
etc., the cry is, “There are so many, too many, girls, so difficult to
get men for the dances.” Professedly the two sets mix, but practically
they don’t to any real extent. But the tactless bad manners of the
diplomats, who will announce to the ordinary people in Tokio that there
are no women in Tokio, while those same ordinary people know that there
are, and that the diplomats know that there are, is very amusing to
one outside it all. One of my secret seldom-expressed ambitions, even
as a girl at College, was to be an Ambassadress. Who would believe it?
But now I am only too thankful that I know what a life it is, and will
never need to fear that I drop into it dazzled and unawares. It is an
endless round of calling and dining: they profess to complain of it
themselves, but take little interest in anything else. Some one said to
me, “The diplomats have no interest but themselves, and no subject of
conversation but themselves,” and it really isn’t far from the truth.

=November 25.=--After working till it was dark, and worrying the
laboratory attendants (for, nominally, we should all clear off at 4
now, but I can’t get out of the habit of working later, particularly
now that there is so much to do), I called on Mrs. _N----_. She is the
American wife of a Japanese journalist--a writer whose articles I have
noticed. We started a correspondence, and she came to see me, but I
was out. It was no easy job to find the house, for she had recently
moved, so I went to the old house, but as it led to a little incident
which illustrates the courtesy of the nice Japanese, I will relate it.
I went to the house called No. 90, but, as I have remarked before,
there may be twenty houses of the same number. Of course it was the
wrong one, but they told me the _N----s_ had left the house, and gone
to Kamakura. The little lady of the house at which I inquired sent her
maid to fetch the address, and asked me to sit down while she went.
Then, with gentle voice, she asked all the polite questions--where I
lived? how long I had been in the country? what was my native land? All
capped by compliments on my Japanese. She fetched a book of picture
post cards to entertain me, and when her maid returned, sent her again
to make sure if Mrs. _N----_ was not living in the neighbourhood. When
she found that she was, the lady herself came with me a little way to
show me the road to follow, as if I had been an honoured guest.

As at last the gate was reached, a young lad came out in the dusk,
and of him I inquired if it was really the house. He too had a soft
voice and a courteous manner, and helped me to open the gate. After
I had conversed with Mrs. _N----_ a little while, I learned that he
was Lafcadio Hearn’s eldest son, the one he loved so, and wrote of so
sweetly in many of his letters.

Mrs. _N----_ was dressed in grey: perhaps it was the shadow of the
lamplight, but I received the impression that her life was in grey
shadows. Her little son, however, was a bright contrast--round eyes,
rosy cheeks, with a woollen cap with a long point and a dangling
tassel--he was like a pixy. He was only four years old, but acted
as interpreter between his mother and the maid. There was also the
merriest kitten I ever saw--round, soft, and tailless, with a scatter
of claws and a jump like a grasshopper, as it dashed after the shadow
of the tail it never had. The grey woman spoke with such a sad lifeless
voice--slowly, as though it were rather troublesome to have to speak at
all, but not in unfriendly fashion. I heard much of the Hearns, as Mr.
_N----_ is a very intimate friend of the family, and Mrs. _N----_ has
come close to the eldest lad, and teaches him.

I heard from her what I have heard from many people, that Mrs. Hearn
can neither speak nor write a single word of English. That baby English
at the end of the _Life and Letters_ is either a translation or a
concoction.

There are many letters of Hearn’s to his wife in childish Japanese,
that, since the appearance of Gould’s atrocious book, Mrs. Hearn has
placed in Mr. _N----’s_ hands for publication, though before that she
had not wished to make them public.

=November 27.=--After the morning’s work, I went to the Goten for
the Faculty lunch. Professor _T----_ took me from there to see the
Anthropological Department of the University. They have a very
considerable space, and lots of specimens of all kinds, though I did
not see many European ones. The stone implements naturally interested
me most. There are extraordinary numbers of arrowheads, and a good many
celts of rough polished stone. It appears that there are no palaeoliths
in the country; it is certainly true that none have been found, but
that does not satisfy me that palaeolithic man did not live in Japan.
Shell mounds of late Neolithic age seem to be the chief _fundorts_
for the tools. In many cases earthenware, beads, and such like are
found with them. The arrowheads are made of flint, rather more opaque
and with a duller patina than English flint. But many of them are of
obsidian, some of which are beautifully clear. There are also agate
and chert ones, and one perfect gem of pure quartz. Their shapes are
much like those common in Scotland, but a few were a little unusual
with particularly fine edges, and some were very minute. The arrowheads
rather preponderated, but I was more struck by the scrapers, which were
particularly beautiful, and of a type I have not discovered anywhere
before. There were many variations among the scrapers, the top edge
being beautifully chipped; it was evident that a thong had kept them in
a handle. Of the type composed of a straight single flake, so common at
home, I saw very few.

Professor _T----_ has made the best arrangement for keeping the
specimens I have ever seen--small _tin_ boxes, with glass tops, and
fastened by a tight ring clasp. The specimens, placed on cotton-wool
in it, are immovable when the lid is shut, and the boxes can be placed
in any position, but directly they are open they are free, and can be
handled, unlike those sewn on to the irritating museum cards.

=December 5.=--At the Institute all day. I don’t at all approve of this
Saturday work, but am too busy to feel justified in taking a single day
off, as I can only work in the Institute; even writing for this work I
can’t do at home, because I need the specimens and books at my hand.

=December 6.=--Lovely brilliant sunshine, but a heavy wind, so I am
spending the day lying on a _futon_ on the _engawa_ (open verandah
all along the house), in perfect shelter, for the ∠ shape of the
house keeps off all the wind and cuts off none of the sun, and I am
lying in a pink cotton kimono with my hair down, and can fancy myself
on an August beach! but I know directly the sun goes in, Jack Frost
will pop out, and in my thickest padded clothes I shall shiver. The
sunshine is everything here--no wonder they put the sun and nothing
else on their flag. The sky is more blue than our August heaven--and
although dead leaves are whirling, the cryptomerias are green and the
maples blood-red, while my rose bush has flawless leaves, with crimson
petioles. Would it were always November in Japan!

=December 11.=--I have been too busy to write all these days, and as
it happened, there has really been nothing worth recording except my
discontent with the artisans and trades-people, which had perhaps
better be left untold. To-day I lunched at the Goten and met Baron
_M----_, last year the Minister of Education. He was very friendly and
“made conversation” in quite a European and un-Japanese style, though
I thought him stiff last year.

In the evening we had the second dinner of the University of London
Union. Viscount _I----_ was there, the first Japanese to come to London
to study, and a very entertaining brusque old man he is! Count _H----_,
recently Ambassador to England, took me in, and there were sixteen of
us altogether, seven foreigners and nine Japanese. It was quite a jolly
dinner.

Count _H----_ proposed the toast “The University,” and later on
Professor _S----_ proposed the toast “M. C. S.,” which they all stood
and drank with _banzai_, so I have had my health drank by an Ambassador
and a Viscount. But one has to pay for these delights--and the price
is heavy--an after-dinner-return-thanks speech! Now I can lecture
without feeling quite a fool, and I can speak at Debates, but when it
comes to after-dinner speeches I am done for. I don’t know why I remain
so stupid over it; this time in the return-thanks speech I entirely
forgot the thanks! After dinner there was some business, and we elected
Professor L---- to the Committee. Then various of us told stories or
gave recitations, and we had a little laughter. I walked my bicycle
back with Professor L---- to the broad road, and we discussed Dante,
Milton, and other great ones on the way, and I am much relieved to find
he doesn’t approve of the translation of Dante I have been reading.
I began to fear I must be a monster, as I couldn’t feel the expected
respect for Dante.

I then mounted my iron steed--which was champing its bit, a habit
it has lately, and I can’t break it off with any amount of oil--and
rode through the silent streets with an undertoned caroling. There is
something very exhilarating about a ride under brilliant stars, through
silent roads where silhouettes of pine trees cut the sky--after a good
dinner and jolly company.

=December 12.=--Went over to Oyeno Park to see the Imperial Museum.
It is really very fine indeed, a much more extensive and beautiful
collection than I had expected, particularly of lacquer, _kakemonos_,
and costumes of old Japan. Their Japanese collections were magnificent.
But as I expect they are described by a thousand other pens, I won’t
repeat. Suffice it to say that we had planned to go out to lunch at 1,
though the usual University time is 12, and when we thought to look at
a watch it was half-past two! and we were very cold as well as hungry.
There are nice gardens round the Museum, which lie in the Park, and it
was a very pleasant morning altogether.

=December 13.=--It has been a brilliant day with glowing sun, and at
one Mrs. _N----_ and the Brownie son of hers came to lunch. The Brownie
looked and acted splendidly, and was a pleasure, and his eyes twinkled
a keen appreciation rare in men of four years old when, after warning
him to be good and not to spill anything, I tipped the pheasant’s
bread-crumbs into my own lap, and he got through the meal without
a mishap of any sort. Almost immediately after lunch we went over
to--Where do you think?--Lafcadio Hearn’s house, to see his wife and
family! A rare privilege, for the sanctum is unusually well guarded.
But Mrs. _N----’s_ friendship has won me the way in, for, as I said,
the eldest boy learns English from her and is devoted to her.

The house is some way out of town, in pure Japanese style, with
a Japanese name on the lamp, for you will remember Hearn became
a Japanese and took a Japanese name, which is written in Chinese
characters over his door. “Koizumi,” we pronounce it.

There is a nice garden, visible partly from the entrance, where was
the children’s swing. As we entered we passed along an _engawa_
(verandah) bounding a tiny internal square of garden on our way to the
reception-room. This was in the purest Japanese style, well built,
with pretty woodwork, a thing one learns to notice in this country. I
immediately observed the _kakemono_, which was exceptionally beautiful,
tall peaks of bare rock pillars standing up against a grey sky, where a
moon half shone through a band of cloud. A picture that one could never
forget and yet would ever wish to see instead of merely remembering. I
remarked on it to Mrs. Hearn, who told me that “Lafcadio had very good
taste in _kakemonos_,” and always bought only what pleased him exactly.
Wise man! when he had the cash! There was also a bronze in the room,
the bent stalk of a fading lotus leaf with the collapsed blade of the
leaf, and though there sounds no beauty in that, the bronze throbbed
with it. Mrs. Hearn was very friendly: less shy and quiet than most
Japanese women, she was yet distinctly Japanese in her shyness and
quietness. Without beauty, she pleased.

She and the children were all in usual Japanese costume, and the only
“foreign” things in the room were ourselves and the cakes and cups of
tea she brought us. I inquired if she liked foreign food, and she told
me that she did, _very_ much, and that “Lafcadio” always ate it, for
though he liked all the things to be pure Japanese, and would have
nothing he could help that was not, Japanese food upset him, and he
always had foreign food, but that now she never prepared it. We chatted
about many things, and she spoke freely of Hearn, of whom I did not
dare at first to ask any questions till she had spoken voluntarily so
much, to show that she liked to speak of him.

After the tea and cakes we went to Hearn’s study, and got a sight of
the real Japanese garden at the back of the house. The study was lined
with low book-shelves filled with many charming volumes in French and
English. There was a very high table made specially for him, for his
extremely short sight, and the famous pipe box, with dozens of long
tiny-bowled Japanese pipes.

The children were with us freely, and also a friend, a Mr. ----, who
was the first student Hearn had in Japan, and who has remained faithful
through everything, and now acts as adviser and friend of the family,
and lives in part of the house. He was bright and intellectual-looking,
beyond the average, and speaks excellent English.

Mrs. Hearn _insisted_ on us staying to a meal, which we could not avoid
doing without positive rudeness, though we had only expected afternoon
tea. It was a “first-class” Japanese meal, with nearly all the things
I like (sometimes the things are quite uneatable, as, for example, the
“sea-cucumbers” in a raw salad, which are also first-class things), and
I enjoyed it, but I got home at 8 instead of 5 as I expected.

The children were with us most of the evening, showing Brownie
picture-books, of which they had a fine stock. Hearn evidently liked
Andrew Lang’s fairy books, for they were nearly all there.

In his study, where we had supper, was the little family shrine, built
rather like a miniature temple of plain wood; within was Hearn’s
photo, and before it burnt a tiny lamp and stood dainty vases of small
flowers. According to Japanese ideas, the spirit of the departed
inhabits this dwelling and needs the love and attention of his kindred,
and takes part in their life. Is Christianity more consoling to the
bereaved than this? From the window by the shrine could be seen the
grove of the tall bamboo Hearn loved, and in the room floated one or
two of the mosquitoes with which he had such sympathy.

To see the eldest son, after having read that tender, wonderful letter
of Hearn’s about his birth, was, I believe, a mistake. Hearn’s words
had made me love the child--but he isn’t a child any longer, and is
now a thin lanky youth, shy of manner and slow in English speech. But
perhaps--for there is promise in his face--I shall like him well as
a man in the years to come. How Hearn wove words into an opalescent
cobweb! I could imagine him feeling intoxicated with the beauty of
words--nay, he must have been, for as a reader I am intoxicated by
words of his, which must have affected him a thousand times more
strongly.

=December 16.=--It has been blowing a perfect hurricane, and is blowing
still, so that I panted on my cycle to the University, but enjoyed the
ride back, for by a most unusual chance the wind didn’t turn and face
me on my home way also, as it generally does, but stopped respectfully
behind me and blew me gaily at full speed up hills which always make
me dismount on usual days. The sky was brilliantly clear, and Mount
Fuji shone blue-and-white in the morning, and purple-black in front of
a copper-and-gold sky at night. Wonderful mountain! “The only thing in
Japan that is not overrated,” as some one told me he felt it was.

=December 20.=--Writing all the early part of the day, but went along
to tea with the D----’s and met Ambassador O----. We had a cosy time;
in the course of conversation the Ambassador told me to listen,--and
then said that it was not necessarily the _cleverest_ people who made
the most mark in the world, but the people who wrote what they knew,
who gave to the world of their knowledge, instead of letting it die
with them, as so many of the truly great have done. The D----’s house
is peculiarly charming--it is not, of course, a “salon” in any sense of
the word, but more there than anywhere I know people really converse
and sometimes say things that the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
might pop straight into his book. Though what they actually are I
cannot record, the after effect is much the same as reading a chapter
of a light, well-written book.

And the rooms too are so pretty, a charming mixture of Japanese and
Western daintiness, like a black-eyed rosy-cheeked Eurasian, who
sparkles with the beauty of both the parent countries.

=December 21.=--I worked hard all day. Professor _F----_ is back and we
got quite a lot done. In the evening I went to some pretty tableau from
_Pride and Prejudice_, arranged by a number of people I know, and at 10
went into the Opera House, where I met a party of friends. This Opera
House merits a word of description. As in the newspaper it said--“For
the first time we in Tokio can sit in a foreign theatre, listen to a
foreign orchestra, and see a foreign play played by foreigners all at
one time.” The theatre, or Opera House, built partly on the Vienna
model, was opened only a few days ago, and is now playing _Dorothy_,
by amateurs, but many of them have professional talent and training.
The white-and-gilt interior, the brilliant lights without, and the
real “home” effect of the piece were delightful after all these months
without the possibility of anything of the sort. To permanent residents
here it will be a very great boon, and is already patronised by all
the Legations and many of the best Japanese. Outside were panting
motors, and--I discovered that the smell of petrol is delightful in its
reminder of home!

=December 23.=--I learn that last evening the D----’s house was burnt
to the ground! That pretty house I liked so much! I am indeed grieved.
The danger of the houses, which are all wood, is very great here. I
have been in Japan about eighteen months, and in that time the Naval
Attachés of both the British and American Embassies have been utterly
burnt out. If a Japanese house goes, only one or two of the curios
which are in use will be destroyed, the rest are safe in a “go-down,”
but in a foreign house all the curios are about and in use, and a fire
sweeps the whole away. How extravagant we foreigners are!

=December 24.=--I went up to the University intending to have a day’s
quiet work--but at 9.30 Mrs. _M----_ (one of the family who gave the
gas-engine) brought her sons to see the fossils being cut. Not much
was done before lunch, when Dr. _Mk----_ was there. Soon after that
the Dean came, and made a delightful stay, and we had just finished
tea with him when the President, Baron _H----_, came and wanted to see
some fossils, so we showed him some of the prettier ones under the
microscope. I am glad he came and really saw the things. So that, after
all, the Christmas eve I had expected to work through became a series
of “parties” all the time, and I enjoyed it more than I had expected
to, though I worked less.

=December 26.=--I got to the University at 9.30, though this same morn
I crept into bed at 1 A.M. Work did not seem very exciting,
but it was soon laid on one side, for the Dean came again. This time
in an official capacity, bearing a huge box tied up nicely. This he
solemnly opened up, and we found another box inside tied with broad
green silk cord, which when opened revealed cotton-wool and yellow
wrappings, which when removed gave place to squares of heavy rich white
silk brocade, which were wrapped round the most wonderful blue-grey
silver cloisonné vases--not the ordinary, but the special, new, rare
and precious kind, made with very few silver wires, so that the
colours melt into each other, and it looks like Markazu or Copenhagen
porcelain. Far more than half are marred in the manufacture, so that a
perfect pair are gems. These two of mine (for now I am the proud owner
of them) are as beautiful as can be, on little carved ebony stands.
Only far too beautiful for me. They are an official present from the
University, in “recognition of the stimulus I have been to botany in
Japan!”

I went round to call on Baron _H----_ (the President) on my way back
home, to say my few halting words of thanks--but what can one say on
such occasions, when, moreover, the present should come _from_ me,
who have accepted their hospitality so long? But they, out of their
goodness of heart or courtesy, reverse everything, and profess to be
indebted to me! I cannot cope with it at all.

=December 27.=--Time is now so precious, and the College will be shut
for the New Year very soon, so I went to the laboratory to-day and
worked till nearly 4 o’clock. A miserable wet day, with the streets
ankle deep in slush. The pines and bamboos of the New Year are
beginning to appear before the doors, and at the corners are stalls
which sell the knotted rope festoons which every house will have over
its gate. But the weather has a depressing effect to-day, and lanterns
and gay street stalls are few and far between.

=December 28.=--A bright sunny day, but the roads are just unspeakable.
My bicycle got quite blocked up a dozen times, so that the space
between the mud-guard and the tyre was filled tight from top to bottom.

Hard at work at the Institute all day, for this is the last day before
we are locked out for the New Year’s holiday.

=December 29.=--The Institute was quite locked up to-day, not even the
attendant coming, but as we are so hard pressed I got permission to go
and the garden porter unlocked the door for me, and let me into the
cold echoing building. I was dripping wet and very cross at coming in
the rain, no one who could possibly arrange otherwise would ever go out
in the rain in Tokio. The old man brought me a little fire of charcoal,
which started the stove, and then left me all alone in the place,
where the only sound was the rain dripping and the scratching of an
occasional rat, which made me think robbers had come to the place when
the whole responsibility lay on me. After an hour I heard soft stealthy
footsteps, and stood prepared to pounce on the unlawful intruder--when
there was a knock at the door and in walked the Dean. He came nominally
about the farewell party the University Union is getting up for me,
but I expect it was also semi-official, as to have the place open was
rather an anxiety, I fear. His stealthiness was the result of the
rain, for he came in rubbers!

Later on Professor _F----_ came, and we got on well with the work,
because there were none of the usual disturbing demands of the other
workers in the Institute. On the way home it was forced in upon me that
life was not worth living in Tokio when it rained.

[Illustration: THE BOTANICAL GARDENS IN WINTER DRESS. A GROUP OF CYCADS
PROTECTED AGAINST SNOW]

=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.




INDEX


  Admiralty gardens, 147

  Agricultural University at Sapporo, 25;
    at Tokio, 174

  Aino, village at Shiroi, 25;
    in the forest, 27;
    language, 27

  Akabane, country round, 102

  Alpine garden, at Nikko, 62

  Amakusa, island of, 50;
    arrival at, 53;
    mines at, 54;
    difficulties of transit in, 56

  American Fleet, in Japan, 226, 227

  Anthropological Department of University, 242

  Ants, discovery of curious habits of, 213

  Aomori, 11, 28

  Art in modern Japan, 266

  Azaleas, at Okabu, 149


  Balsam, troubles through, 93;
    bubbles in, 210

  Bamboo, beauty of, 10;
    loved by Hearn, 249

  _Basha_ (native carriage), delights of, 125, 126

  Bell insect, 184

  Bethell trial, 181

  Boshu, walking tour in, 122 _et seq._

  Botanical festival at the shrine of Inari, 114

  Botanical Gardens in Tokio, first impression of, 3;
    tea-parties in, 5, 120;
    branch of, at Nikko, 62

  Botanical Institute in Tokio, first impression of, 3;
    work in laboratory, 31 (and constant references after)

  Botanical Institute of Agricultural University, 174


  Camping in the virgin forests, 16, 17

  Capacity of the Japanese, 267

  Cherry flowers, blooming through the snow, 134;
    beauty of, in Tokio, 139;
    double blooms, 142

  Cherry garden party at the palace, 144

  Chikura, 123

  Children’s stalls at holiday fair, 186

  Chinese writing, value of, 59

  Chōnan, 131

  Chrysanthemums, popular exhibits of, 66;
    Imperial exhibition of, 68

  Chuzenji, autumn colouring at, 62

  Coal mines at Ōyubari, 15, 17;
    Ikushimbets, 20;
    Jito, 42;
    Omine, 47;
    Habu, 47;
    Nariwa, 48;
    Namazuta, 49;
    Miike, 50;
    Amakusa, 50, 54;
    Takashima, 57

  Costumes, old Japanese style, 117

  Crowds, smells of, 194

  _Cryptomeria_, splendid avenues of, 61, 195;
    cones of, 210;
    seedlings of, 224

  Cutting-machine, for fossils, 63, 82, 91, 102;
    testing disks for, 89

  Cycads, expeditions to collect, 168, 205;
    ancient and branched specimens of, 170;
    at Yokohama, 191

  Cycling, in Tokio, 153, 165, 225;
    in country, 201, 206;
    through floods, 206


  Dancing, street, 180

  Debating Society, started in Tokio, 158, 175, 228

  Debts, all to be paid by New Year, 255

  Dinners, advantage of uniform menus for, 88

  Disease in Tokio, 98

  Dolls’ Festival, preparation for, 106;
    food for, 110;
    arrangements for, 110, 111

  Dwarf as luggage carrier, 195, 196


  Earthquake, the first experience of, 33;
    small shocks of, 79

  Emperor, garden-parties given by, 68, 144;
    present to all officials from, 229

  English language used by Japanese professors to lecture to other
      Asiatics, 175

  Enoshima, 8, 256

  European artists, Japanese views on, 91

  European entertainments given by Japanese, elaboration of, 120


  _Feruské_, Japanese wrapping, value of, in removals, 136;
    use when carrying plants, 150

  Fishing, use of dynamite for, 17

  Floods, in Tokio, 187, 221;
    in the country, 206

  Foreign influence in Yokohama, 192

  Fossil plants, 16 _et seq._;
    insects, 201

  Fox, apparition of? 217

  Friendship with Japanese, 273

  Frog, changing colour of, 185

  Fruit, only obtainable in season, 97

  Fuji mountain, 7 (and constant reference all through);
    last view of, 264

  Fukuoka, 50

  Furnishing in Japanese house, 118, 137

  Furs worn by Japanese men, 104


  Garden, watering stones in, 64;
    beauty of, in November, 67;
    Imperial palace, 68, 145;
    arrangements for winter in, 83;
    old garden of the Admiralty, 147;
    Japanese party in, 232.
    _See also_ Botanical Gardens

  _Ginkgo_, swimming out of spermatozoids of, 31, 218;
    exhibited to Dr. Koch, 176

  _Ginkgo_ seeds cooked, 93

  _Ginkgo_ tree, golden colour of, in autumn, 66, 68

  Gold-fish with double tails, 143

  Greek church in Tokio, Easter service at, 151


  Habu, small coal mine at, 47

  Hail, exceptional size of hailstones, 173

  Hakone, 195

  “Hardening” process, 260

  Hayama, 213

  Hearn, Lafcadio, debate on, 159, 175;
    eldest son of, 241, 249;
    visit to house of, 247

  Hearn, Mrs., 247

  Hockey, attempts to play without grass, 94, 105

  Hojo, 122

  Hokkaido, arrival in, 11

  Holidays, sight-seeing at temples on, 34

  Horonai, 18

  House cleaning, instituted by Government, 162

  House hiring, difficulties of, 133

  _Human Bullets_, by Lieut. Sakurai, 113


  Ice pillars, curious effect of, 78

  Ikushimbets, mine at, 20

  Imperial crest, reverence towards, 67

  Inari, festival for, 114

  Inland Sea, beauty of, 1, 46

  Insects, noise of, 160;
    song of, 184;
    fossil specimens of, 201

  Interpreter, loss of, 18


  Japanese houses, simplicity of, 118

  Japanese language, difficulties of, 74;
    sound effect of, 77

  Jehinomiya, 130

  Jito, village of, 42


  Kamakura, 86;
    Dai Butsu at, 86

  Kanbara, bathing at, 172

  _Kankobas_, delightful bazaars, 81, 231

  Kasamori, Buddhist temple at, very ancient, 132

  Katsuura, 124

  Kitchen in Japanese house, 138

  Kiushiu, 49, 56

  Kominato, 123

  Koraku-en gardens at Okayama, 38

  Korean affairs, 181

  _Kuruma_, country travel in, 40, 44, 72


  Lafcadio Hearn, debate on, 159, 175;
    eldest son of, 241, 249;
    visit to house of, 247

  Lectures in Government House, Sapporo, 23;
    at the Imperial University, 224;
    by Sven Hedin, 236

  Lepers, 98, 209;
    contact with, 142;
    marrying of, 209

  Lies told by tradespeople, 165

  London University Union in Japan, 111, 245, 259

  Lotus, fritters made of, 146;
    flowers of, at Oyeno, 212


  Maple Club, dinner at, 233

  Matsushima, beauty of, 28

  Mera, 122

  Misumi, arrival at, 50;
    delayed start from, 51

  Mobara, 130, 131

  “Morning glories,” 189

  Mororan, 28

  Museum, Imperial, 246


  Nagasaki, 56

  Namazuta, coal mine at, 49

  Naval Briquette Factory, 47

  Naval officers on duty in coal mine, 47

  Neolithic implements, 243

  New Year, gifts and debts of, 81;
    special food for, 84;
    streets during, 86

  Nikko, excursion to, 61;
    avenue leading to, 61;
    Alpine garden at, 62

  _Nō_, performance of, 64

  Noboribetsu, 26;
    crater at, 26

  Nodules containing fossils, collecting of, 16 _et seq._


  Ōhara, 125

  Okabu, azaleas at, 149

  Okayama, visit to, 38

  Okuma, Count, 70;
    garden of, 71

  Omine, mine at, 47

  Omori, plum blossom at, 115;
    temple near, 223

  Opera House, foreign style, in Tokio, 251

  Ōyubari, recently opened mine in, 15, 17;
    scenery of neighbourhood, 15


  Paeonies, show of, 155

  Pictures, special exhibition of, excellent arrangement in, 60

  Poet, American wife of Japanese, 240, 246, 261

  Police, as escort, 18;
    regulation of house cleaning by, 162

  Porcelain, makers of, brought to private house, 262

  Poronai, 18


  Rackham’s illustrations, 119

  Railway train returns to deliver forgotten parcel, 105

  Railway trains, life in, 9, 12, 58;
    snowed up in April, 136

  Religion in Japan, 270

  Rivers, work in, while collecting, 20, 21

  Roads, effect of rain on, 31;
    beauty of, in Tokio, 32

  Robbers, frequent attempts of, 75

  Roses, fading of scent of, in Japan, 67


  Saké put to scientific use, 215

  Sapporo, capital of Hokkaido, 11, 12;
    Government of, 12;
    scenery of, 13;
    return to, 23;
    University at, 25

  Sendai, “fossil wood” at, 31

  Sendocre, 129

  Sheep, flock of, 73;
    scarcity of, in Japan, 179

  Shimonoseki, 48

  Shiobara, 201

  Shiogama, 29, 30;
    women’s dress in neighbourhood of, 30

  Shizuoka, 206

  Shop signs, humorous, 182

  Silk-worms, useful for scientific breeding, 175

  Smells, of a Japanese crowd, 194

  Snow, exceptional fall in April, 134;
    beauty of, at Shiba, 258

  Stuffiness, endured by Japanese in Western-style vehicles or
      houses, 211, 212

  Sven Hedin lecturing in Tokio, 236


  Takahashi, beautiful river of, 40

  Takashima, coal mine at, 57

  Teachers, special dress for women, 161

  Telegraph wire, dragon flies perched on, 45

  Temples, two contrasting, 34, 35;
    a country temple, 36;
    at Nikko, 61;
    at Kasamori, 132;
    stay at country, 168;
    service in, 199;
    near Omori, 223;
    at Shiba, in the snow, 258

  Tertiary coal, 49

  Thunder, god of, 173;
    continuous peals of, 208

  Tin box, difficulty in obtaining, 214

  Togo, Admiral, 70, 226

  Tokio, likeness to Venice, 1;
    getting about, 4;
    beauty of streets in, 82;
    streets at New Year, 86;
    floods in, 187, 221

  Tokkaido, old road, 195

  Tokuyama, 46

  Traffic, lack of regulation of, 164

  Triassic coal, 41, 42;
    difficulty in finding, 41


  University, Agricultural, 174;
    Imperial, 6, 7, 60;
    farewell party from, 233;
    Anthropological Department of, 242;
    present from, 253

  University for women, 164, 165


  Wada, 123

  Walking tour in Boshu, 122 _et seq._

  Wind storm, 94

  Wistaria, enormous flowering plan of, 155

  Women’s University, 164, 165


  Yejiri, 168, 205

  Yubari, 13




       *       *       *       *       *




Transcriber's note:


Illustrations have been moved next to the text which they illustrate,
and may not match the locations in the List of Illustrations. A
duplicate "INDEX" heading has been removed from the text.


The following apparent typographical errors have been corrected:

p. 88 "princesess" changed to "princesses"

p. 119 "intosuch" changed to "into such"

p. 127 "solid rock." changed to "solid rock,"

p. 136 "_feruske_" changed to "_feruské_"

p. 177 "(who leave on Friday" changed to "(who leave on Friday)"

p. 236 "Baron K----" changed to "Baron _K----_"

p. 279 "159, 175," changed to "159, 175;"


The following possible errors have been left as printed:

p. 86 went picnics

p. 166 Kyshyu

p. 187 When I get

p. 244 beach! but I

p. 263 the F----s


The following are inconsistently used in the text:

foothold and foot-hold

footpath and foot-path

Fujii and Fuji

Fujisan and Fuji-san

midday and mid-day

seaweed and sea-weed

tradespeople and trades-people

workshop and work-shop