Jinrikisha days in Japan

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

Tokio court circles have, of course, their factions and cliques, their wars and triumphs, and the favor of the sovereign is the object of perpetual scheming and intriguing.

The peerage of Japan numbers eleven princes, thirty-four marquises, eighty-nine counts, three hundred and sixty-three viscounts, and two hundred and twenty-one barons. All kugé families are in this new peerage, and such daimios of the Shogun’s court as give aid and allegiance to the Emperor, or made honorable surrender in the conflict of 1868. Rank and title were conferred upon many of the samurai also, the leaders in the work of the Restoration, and the statesmen, who have advised and led in the wonderful progress of these last twenty years; but the old kugés have never brought themselves to accept the pardoned daimios and ennobled samurai of other days. It is the Oriental version of the relations between the Faubourg St. Germain, the aristocracy of the empire, and the bureaucracy of the present French republic.

The imperial princes of the blood, all nearly related to the Emperor, rank above the ten created princes, who head the list of the nobility. Five of these ten princely houses are the old Gosekke, the first five of the one hundred and fifty-five kugé families comprising the old Kioto court. With the Gosekke, which includes the Ichijo, Kujo, Takatsukasa, Nijo, and Konoye families, rank, since 1883, the houses of Sanjo, Iwakura, Shimadzu, Mori, and Tokugawa, sharing with them the privilege of offering the bride to the heir-apparent.

The Emperor visits personally at the houses of these ten princes, and recently the Tokugawas entertained him with a fencing-match and a No dance in old style, the costumes and masks for which had been used at Tokugawa fêtes for centuries. In accordance with other old customs, a sword by a famous maker was presented to the guest of honor, and a commemorative poem offered in a gold lacquer box. Yet the head of the Tokugawa house is a grandson of the Shogun who first refused to treat with Commodore Perry, and son of Keiki, the arch rebel and last of the Shoguns, who for so long lived forgotten as a private citizen on a small estate near Shidzuoka, keeping alive no faction, awaking no interest—attaining, in fact, a political Nirvana.

Under new titles the old fiefs are lost sight of and old associations broken up. The marquises, counts, and barons of to-day are slender, dapper little men, wearing the smartest and most irreproachable London clothes, able to converse in one or two foreign languages on the subjects that interest cosmopolitans of their rank in other empires, and are with difficulty identified with their feudal titles. The Daimio of Kaga has become the Marquis Maeda, his sister married the Emperor’s cousin, and the great yashiki of their ancestors has given way to the buildings of the Imperial University. The Daimio of Satsuma is now Prince Shimadzu. It is not easy to associate these modern men-about-town, who dance at state balls, who play billiards and read the files of foreign newspapers at the Rokumeikwan, who pay afternoon calls, attend teas, garden-parties, dinners, concerts, and races; who have taken up poker and tennis with equal ardor, and are victimized at charity fairs and bazaars, with their pompous, stately, two-sworded, brocade and buckram bound ancestors.

There are great beauties, favorites, and social leaders among the ladies of the court circle, and the change in their social position and personal importance is incredible. Japanese matrons, who, a few years ago, led the most quiet and secluded existence, now preside with ease and grace over large establishments, built and maintained like the official residences of London or Berlin. Their struggles with the difficulties of a new language, dress, and etiquette were heroic. Mothers and daughters studied together with the same English governess, and princesses and diplomats’ wives, returning from abroad, gave new ideas to their friends at home. Two Japanese ladies, now foremost at court, are graduates of Vassar College, and many high officials are happily married to foreign wives; American, English, and German women having assumed Japanese names with their wedding vows. The court has its reigning beauty in the wife of the grand master of ceremonies, the richest peer of his day, and representative of that family which gave its name to the finest porcelain known to the ceramic art of the empire.

Tokio society delights in dancing, and every one at court dances well. Leaders of fashion go through the quadrille d’honneur, with which state balls open, and follow the changes of the lancers with the exactness of soldiers on drill, every step and movement as precise and finished as the bending of the fingers in cha no yu. The careless foreigner who attempts to dance an unfamiliar figure repents him of his folly. Japanese politeness is incomparable, but the sedateness, the precision, and exactness of the other dancers in the set will reproach the blunderer until he feels himself a criminal. The ball is the more usual form of state entertainments. The prime-minister gives a ball on the night of the Emperor’s birthday, and the governor of Tokio gives a ball each winter. From time to time the imperial princes and the ministers of state offer similar entertainments, and every legation has its ball-room. The members of the diplomatic corps are as much in social unison with the higher Japanese circles as it is possible to be with such subjects at any capital, and the round of tiffins, dinners, garden-parties, and small dances makes Tokio very gay during the greater part of the year.

The first formal visiting of the season begins in October, and by May social life is at an end until hot weather is over. Lent makes little break in the social chain. Great seriousness and exactness in social usage is inherent in this high-bred people. Visits of ceremony are scrupulously paid within the allotted time, and a newly-arrived official in Tokio finds no diminution of the card-leaving and visiting which awaits him in any other capital. At the houses of the imperial princes cards are not left, the visitor inscribing his name in a book in the hall. After each state ball, a guest must call at once upon the princess, or minister’s wife, who presided, and any remissness strikes his name from her list.

Garden-parties are the favorite expression of Tokio hospitality. All official residences in the city have fine grounds, and many ministers of state own suburban villas. A few of the legations are able to entertain in the same way, and many military officers make the garden of the old Mito yashiki, now the Arsenal grounds, the scene of their courtesies.

There is a stately court journal, which is the official bulletin, but Tokio has not yet set up a paper of society gossip and scandal for the rigorous censorship of the Japanese press to expunge; nor are there books of court memoirs. Yet what memoirs could be more interesting than those that might be written by the men and women who were born in feudal times, who have lived through the exciting days of the Restoration, and have watched the birth and growth of New Japan.