As seen at the rare court functions, at military reviews, and races, the Emperor is easily the central figure. Taller than the average of his race, and possessing great dignity and majesty, his slow, military step and trailing sword effectually conceal the unequal gait rheumatism sometimes obliges. He wears a trimmed beard, and his features, more decided and strongly marked than is usual with the aristocratic type of Japanese countenance, wear a calm and composure as truly Oriental as imperial. In public he wears the uniform of generalissimo of the army, a heavily-frogged and braided one of dark-blue broad-cloth in winter, and of white duck in summer, with a gold-mounted sword and many decorations. In recognition of the honors and orders conferred upon him by other royalties, the Emperor bestows the cordon and jewel of the princely Order of the Chrysanthemum. The Order of the Rising Sun is given for merit and distinguished services, and its red button is worn by many foreigners as well as natives.
Of late, the Emperor has abandoned his attempts to learn English and German, and relies upon interpreters, but he reads translations of foreign literature with great interest. When he passes through the streets, he is received with silent reverence, an advance guard of police and a body-guard of lancers escorting him. While his own people never shout or cheer, he accepts very graciously the foreign custom, and bows an acknowledgment to the hurrahs that sometimes greet him at Yokohama. While the Emperor has been absorbed in the changing affairs of state during the two decades of his reign, he still seems, in comparison with European sovereigns, to dwell in absolute quiet and seclusion. Often, for weeks together, he remains within the palace grounds, where he has riding courts, archery, and rifle ranges, well-stocked fish-ponds, and every means of amusing himself. Disliking the sea, he has no yacht, a chartered mail-steamer or man-of-war carrying him to naval stations or new fortifications, when the railroad is impracticable. His mountain palaces and remote game preserves he never visits.
Immediately after establishing his court at Yeddo, the boy-Emperor returned to Kioto to wed Haruko, daughter of Ichijo Takada, a kugé, or court noble of the highest rank. The marriage was solemnized by some Shinto ceremony within the temple of the palace, a ceremony so sacred and private that no Japanese even conjectures its form.
The Empress Haruko, born May 29, 1850, was educated in the strictest conventions of old Japan, and taught only the Chinese classics, her own literature and poetic composition, the use of the koto, the forms of cha no yu, needle-work, and the arrangement of flowers—a broad and most liberal education for a maiden even of high degree.
Upon her marriage, an extraordinary life opened before the little Empress, demanding a very unusual activity and study, courage, adaptiveness, and comprehension. She is poetic as well as practical, and her poems are not only traced on imperial screens and kakemono in autograph characters, but several of them have been set to music as well.
Even now, her Majesty is more delicately pretty than her younger sisters, although for years an invalid. She is short in stature, slender, and small, with the long, oval face and refined features of the ideal aristocratic type of Japanese beauty. At her marriage, she shaved her eyebrows, painted two shadowy suggestions of them high up on her forehead, and blackened her teeth, in accordance with Japanese custom; but after a few years, she ceased to disfigure herself in this way. It was an event, in 1873, when she gave her first audience to the envoys’ wives. It cost the court chamberlains months of study to arrange for the appearance of the Emperor and Empress together, to reconcile the pretensions of their suites as to rank and precedence, and to harmonize the Occidental, chivalrous ideas of deference to women with the unflattering estimate of the Orient. When, on the day of the declaration of the new constitution (February 11, 1890), the Emperor and Empress rode side by side in the same state carriage through the streets of Tokio, and when, that night, he offered his arm to lead her to a twin arm-chair in the state dining-hall, a new era was begun in Japanese history.
The Empress has her secretaries and readers, and gives a part of each day to informal audiences. She visits her schools and hospitals, and makes liberal purchases at charity bazaars. She exercises in the saddle within the palace grounds, and drives in a brougham with half-drawn curtains, her men on the box wearing a dark-blue livery with red cords and facings, silver buttons, and cocked hats.
IN THE PALACE GARDENS
One of the two annual imperial garden-parties is given when the chrysanthemums are in bloom, and the other at the time of the cherry blossoms. The etiquette of these is quite simple, although an appearance at one is still equivalent to a presentation at court. A few days before the festivity each guest receives a large chrysanthemum-bordered card: