IN DANGO-ZAKA STREET
The Japanese listen politely when foreigners tell that they have seen chrysanthemums just as large in America. Mere size is not all that they attempt, since these wizard gardeners can easily spread the petals to any diameter they fancy; grow the chrysanthemum on a stem six feet or nine feet high as easily as dwarf it to a blooming mite two inches tall, growing in a thimble-pot. Every season, some new fantasy in petals is presented, and the foliage of the chrysanthemum is as carefully considered as the blossom in Japan. With one question about the green leaves adorning the stem of the foreign chrysanthemum, Dango-zaka people can silence the braggart barbarian, who usually has to admit that no one thinks of the foliage in the West, and that he himself never noticed it before. The unkempt foliage of Chinese and Occidental chrysanthemums would not be tolerated in a Japanese flower show, where the leaves of the plant must be distributed, the composition balanced according to the rules of flower arrangement—that art beyond all arts, the last to be expounded to the Philistines, who consider the biggest bunch the best bouquet, and for a last barbaric touch introduce milliners’ bows of aniline-dyed ribbons to their monstrosities in floral arrangement. The touch of Western vulgarization is complete when the poetic and descriptive names of Japanese chrysanthemums are changed to suit the Western taste. The lovely white “Frozen Moonlight,” “Fuji’s Snows,” “Dashing Spray,” “Moonlit Waves,” and “Hoar Frost” become “the Mrs. John Smith” or “the Mrs. Peter Brown.” The coolie, who draws the visitor’s jinrikisha, is as voluble over the flowers as any of his patrons, and quite as discriminating an admirer. Instead of stopping to rest after his long pull to that hilly suburb, he follows his passenger, pointing out beauties and marvels, approving and exclaiming with contagious enthusiasm.
TEA-BLOSSOMS
In November, with the brilliant maple-leaves, the floral year ends. The coquette sends her lover a leaf or branch of maple to signify that, like it, her love has changed. Both the tea-plant and camellia are in bloom, but there is no rejoicing in their honor, and flower-worshippers count the weeks until the plum shall bloom again.
CHAPTER IX
JAPANESE HOSPITALITIES
Among Japanese virtues stands hospitality, but, until the adoption of foreign dress and customs by the court nobles, no Japanese allowed his wife to receive general visitors, or entertain mixed companies. The Japanese is, consequently, a born club-man, and makes the club-house a home. The Rokumeikwan, or Tokio Nobles’ Club, is the most distinguished of these corporations. Its president is an imperial prince, and its members are diplomats, nobles, officials, rich citizens, and resident foreigners. The exquisite houses and gardens of the smaller, purely Japanese clubs, are perfect specimens of native architecture, decoration, and landscape gardening. By an arrangement of sliding screens, the houses themselves may afford one large room or be divided into many small ones, besides the tiny boxes in which are celebrated the rites of cha no yu, or ceremonial tea.
Their elaborate dinners, lasting for hours, with jugglers, dancers, and musicians between the courses, are very costly. Rich men display a Russian prodigality in entertaining, which was even greater in feudal times. A day or two after arriving in Japan it was my good-fortune to be a guest at one of these unique entertainments, given at the Koyokwan, or Maple Leaf Club-house, on the hill-side above the Shiba temples. We arrived at three o’clock, and were met at the door by a group of pretty nesans, or maids of the house, who, taking off our hats and shoes, led us, stocking-footed, down a shining corridor and up-stairs to a long, low room, usually divided into three by screens of dull gold paper. One whole side of this beautiful apartment was open to the garden beyond a railed balcony of polished cedar, and the view, across the maple-trees and dense groves of Shiba, to the waters of the Bay was enchanting. The decorations of the club-house repeat the maples that fill the grounds. The wall screens are painted with delicate branches, the ramma, or panels above the screens, are carved with them, and in the outer wall and balcony-rail are leaf-shaped openings. The dresses of the pretty nesans, the crape cushions on the floor, the porcelain and lacquer dishes, the saké bottles and their carved stands, the fans and bon-bons, all display the maple-leaf. In the tokonoma, or raised recess where the flower-vase and kakemono, or scroll picture, are displayed, and that small dais upon which the Emperor would sit if he ever came to the house, hung a shadowy painting, with a single flower in a bronze vase.