Read Ebook: Rare days in Japan by Ladd George Trumbull

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I VISITING THE IMPERIAL DIET 1

II DOWN THE KATSURA-GAWA 25

V JAPANESE AUDIENCES 99

VI GARDENS AND GARDEN PARTIES 126

X HIKON? AND ITS PATRIOT MARTYR 248

FACING PAGE

"The Picturesque Moat and Ancient Wall" 18

"The Charm of the Scenery Along the Banks" 32

"To Tend These Trees Became a Privilege" 38

"The Villages Have Never Been Rebuilt" 56

"For Centuries Lovers Have Met About the Old Well" 72

"Dark and Solemn and Stately Cryptomerias" 78

"Class and Teacher Always Had to be Photographed" 108

"The Bearing of the Boys and Girls is Serious, Respectful and Affectionate" 118

"It is Nature Combed and Trimmed" 130

"Winding Paths Over Rude Moss-covered Stepping-Stones" 142

"The Worship of Nature in the Open Air" 152

"In One Corner of the Stage Sits the Chorus" 194

"Leading Actors in the Dramas of that Day" 208

"Leading Actors in the Dramas of that Day" 212

"The Chief Abbot Came in to Greet Us" 226

"Where Nichiren Spent His Last Days" 234

"Picturesquely Seated on a Wooded Hill" 250

"All Covered with Fresh-Fallen Snow" 276

"Peasants Were Going to and from Their Work" 294

"You can not Mock the Conviction of Millions" 302

"The Beautiful Grounds in Full Sight of the Bay" 308

"They Took Part in Out-Door Sports" 320

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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