“Japanese scenery looks as if it ought to be etched. Large broad masses of light and shade would fail to convey the full effect. Between trees varied in colouring and delicate in tracery peep the thatched cottage roofs and the neat grey rounded tiles of little wooden houses standing in gardens gay with peach blossom and wisteria; while the valleys are mapped out into minute patches of green young corn or flooded paddy-fields interspersed here and there with trellises over which are trained the spreading white branches of the pear. Everywhere are broad river-courses and rushing mountain streams, and now and again some stately avenue of the sacred cryptomeria leads to a temple, monastery, or tomb. Nothing more magnificent than these avenues can be conceived. The tall madder-pink stems rear their tufted crests in some cases seventy or eighty feet into the air, and the ground below is carpeted with red pyrus japonica, violets, ferns, and, near the romantic monastery of Doryo-San, with a kind of lily or iris whose white petals are marked with lilac and yellow. The avenue leading to Nikko extends in an almost unbroken line for over fifteen miles, the trees being known as the offering of a daimio who was too poor to present the usual stone or bronze lantern at the tomb of the great Shogun Ieyasu.”
At Tokyo we were hospitably entertained at the Legation by Mr. (now Sir Maurice) de Bunsen, Chargé d’Affaires, in the absence of the Minister. The Secretary of Legation, Mr. Spring Rice (afterwards Sir Cecil), added greatly to our pleasure by his knowledge of things Japanese and the trouble he took to explain them.
A letter to my mother, dated April 1893, resumes many of my impressions of a Japan of nearly thirty years ago when it was still only emerging from its century-long seclusion.
“You cannot imagine what a delightful country Japan is. Not only is it so pretty, but it is so full of real interest. I had imagined that it was rather a joke full of toy-houses and toy-people—on the contrary one finds great feudal castles with moats and battlements, gigantic stones fifteen feet long, and the whole place full of legends of knights and their retainers, ghosts and witches and enchantments.... The Clan-system here was in full-swing till just the other day, when Sir Harry Parkes routed out the Mikado, and the Shoguns (Tycoons) or Great War Lords, who had ruled the country for centuries, had at last to give way.
“Even now the representatives of the greatest clans hold chief places in the Ministry and Naval and Military Departments, and the question in Parliament here is whether the radical opposition can break up the clan-system and distribute the loaves and fishes of Government patronage evenly amongst the people. Meantime I doubt if the Mikado, or Emperor as it is most proper to call him, is very happy in his new life. He thinks it correct to adapt himself to ‘Western civilisation,’ but very evidently prefers the seclusion of his ancestors and has credit for hating seeing people. There was to have been a garden party—the Cherry Blossom Party—at the Palace last Friday, but unfortunately it pelted, so it was promptly given up and everyone said that His Imperial Majesty was very glad not to have to ‘show.’
INTERVIEW WITH THE EMPRESS
“However G. had an audience with him yesterday and all of us with the Empress. It was rather funny. In the first place there was great discussion about our clothes. G. went in uniform, but the official documents granting audience specified that the ladies were to appear at 10 a.m., in high gowns—and in the middle of the Japanese characters came the French words ‘robes en traine.’ The wife of the Vice-Chamberlain—an Englishwoman—also wrote to explain that we must come without bonnets and with high gowns with trains! So we had to write back and explain that my latest Paris morning frock had but a short train and M’s smartest ditto none at all.
“However, they promised to explain this to the Empress, and we arrived at the Palace, which we found swarming with gold-laced officials, chamberlains, vice-chamberlains, and pages, and ladies in their regulation costume—high silk gowns just like afternoon garments but with long tails of the same material, about as long as for drawing-rooms—how they could have expected the passing voyager to be prepared with this peculiar fashion at twenty-four hours’ notice I know not, and I think it was lucky that I had a flowered brocade with some kind of train to it.
“The saloons were very magnificent—built five years ago—all that was Japanese in them first-class—the European decorations a German imitation of something between Louis XV and Empire, which I leave to your imagination. G. was carried off in one direction whilst we were left to a trained little lady who fortunately spoke a little English, and after a bit we were taken to a corridor where we rejoined G. and Mr. de Bunsen and were led through more passages to a little room where a little lady stood bolt upright in a purple gown with a small pattern of gold flowers and an order—Japanese, I believe. She had a lady to interpret on her right, and two more, maids of honour, I suppose, in the background. The interpreting lady appeared to be alive—the vitality of the others was doubtful. We all bowed and curtsied, and I was told to go up to the Empress, which I did, and when I was near enough to avoid the possibility of her moving, she shook hands and said something almost in a whisper, interpreted to mean that she was very glad to see me for the first time. I expressed proper gratification, then she asked as to the length of our stay, and finally said how sorry she was for the postponement of the garden party, to which I responded with, I trust, true Eastern hyperbole that Her Majesty’s kindness in receiving us repaid me for the disappointment. This seemed to please her, and then she shook hands again, and went through her little formulæ with M. and G., giving one sentence to the former and two to the latter, after which with a great deal more bowing and curtsying we got out of the room and were shown through the other apartments. I heard afterwards that Her Majesty was very pleased with the interview, so she must be easily gratified, poor dear. I am told ‘by those who know’ that she is an excellent woman, does a great deal for schools and hospitals to the extent on at least one occasion of giving away all her pocket-money for the year and leaving herself with none. The poor woman has no children, but the Emperor is allowed other inferior spouses—with no recognised position—to the number of ten. I do not know how many ladies he has, but he has one little boy and two or three girls. The little boy is thirteen and goes to a day-school, so is expected to be of much more social disposition than his papa.”
THE SACRED MIRROR OF THE SUN-GODDESS