Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

The fear that their foreign guests would not be entirely comfortable, even if entertained in the best Japanese style, made it difficult for us at first to discard or neglect the accessories especially provided, and disport ourselves as though we were really cherishing, and not feigning, the wish to be treated by them as their feudal lord would have treated his friends at the beginning of the half century now gone by. In the end, however, we succeeded fairly well in the effort to merge ourselves, and our modern Western habits and feelings, in the thoughts, ways and emotions of the so-called “Old Japan.”

Flags were hung over the quaint Japanese doorway of the villa; and the manager, the landlord, and all the servants, were in proper array to greet the long line of jinrikishas which were escorting the guests. Our shoes removed, we were ushered through numerous rooms and corridors, made attractive with the quiet beauty of choice screens and the finest of mats, into the best apartment of the house. Here bright red felt had been spread over the mats; a tall lacquer hibachi, daimyo style, stood in the middle of the chamber; and large lacquer or brass candlesticks, with fat Hikoné candles and wicks nearly a half-inch thick, stood on either side of the hibachi and in each of the corners of the room.

Thus far, the surroundings were well fitted to carry our imaginations back to the time of Ii Kamon-no-Kami himself. But there were two articles of the furnishing sure to cause a disillusionment. These were a pair of large arm-chairs, arranged throne fashion behind the hibachi, and covered with green silk cushions (or zabuton) which were expected to contribute both to our comfort and to our sense of personal dignity, while we were “officially receiving”—so to say. Without offending our kind hosts, I trust, and certainly to the increase of our own satisfaction, we begged permission to slip off from our elevated position, so calculated to produce the feelings of social stiffness and remoteness, and sit, in as nearly polite old-fashioned native style as our lack of physical training would permit, upon the cushions transferred to the floor. In this way when our callers, who included such truly gentle men and ladies as the Mayor of the city and his wife, the steward of the Count, the daughter of an ex-Mayor of Osaka, Baron Kimata, the venerable Doctor Nakashima, for thirty years a pillar of the church and a prosperous physician, Mr. Kitamura, whose father was a retainer and served as secretary of the Baroness Ii, and others, came in, knelt upon the floor and touched their heads three times to the mats, we, too, could return their salutations with the same delightfully elaborate but now rapidly vanishing attention to the etiquette of playing host and guest.

The reception over, with its accompaniment of tea served in ceremonial cups, we were urged, in spite of our protest that we had had dinner upon the train, to a bountiful feast. This, too, was of a mixed character; part of it taken from two large hampers of foreign food sent on from our hotel in Kyoto, and part of it fish from the lake, cooked a la Japonaise and served on pretty shell-shaped plates, rice in covered bowls manufactured in Hikoné in the days of the great Baron, and other native viands, made more tempting by the harmonious suggestions of the dishes in which they were served. Such delicate pleasures of suggestion, also, belong to the art of living as practiced in feudal Japan. And when, notwithstanding remonstrance, the dishes themselves were divided between guests and hosts,—the portion of the latter to be retained, it was explained, as “memorabilia of the honour of being permitted to serve, etc.,”—this, too, was quite in the spirit of the time when Ii Kamon-no-Kami was lord of Hikoné.

After the supper we were led to the large audience-hall of the former villa, where all the shoji were plain gold-leaf and the ceilings chastely but beautifully panelled; here we were fairly compelled to sit in the throne-like chairs on the raised alcove, which was in feudal times reserved exclusively for the lord of the clan. The cold made the combined efforts at heating of a modern oil-stove at the back, with antique hibachi on either hand, by no means ungrateful. Beside each of the guests knelt an interpreter, who was to announce the different numbers and translate their comments on the music; while all the hosts sat ranged along the other side of the hall, native fashion on the floor. Thus a somewhat weird but vivid and interesting picture, reminiscent of the older times, was made by this large and dimly lighted baronial hall, in which the lord of Hikoné may well enough himself have listened to some of the same music which was played for us. The first number on the programme proved to be a selection of the oldest style of Japanese concerted music; it was played on three different kinds of flute by three young men, all dressed in dark silk kimonos and in head-dress of two hundred years ago. Then two pretty girls, beautifully gowned and with faces powdered and lips tinted vermillion and gold,—the ancient manner of decoration in such cases,—together with their teachers, played a Spring “nocturne” on three Kotos, or Japanese harps. Other selections followed; and the concert closed with a queer fugue-like performance on Chinese flutes—one short and the other a full yard long, but both gaily decorated with silken cords and tassels.

The evening’s entertainment over, we returned to our room, which had now been converted into a bed-chamber in truly royal native style. Six large wadded futons, three to lie upon and three for covering, all made of fine silk, had been laid upon the floor, with quilts rolled up and tied together for pillows, and lead tanks covered with a soft flannel and filled with hot water to secure additional warmth. For the thin wooden shutters which enclosed the piazza and the paper shoji within, however closely drawn, could not serve efficiently to keep out the cold, snow-laden wind. It was part of the stately fashion with which everything was conducted, to assure us that all the bedding was quite new and had never been used before.

“[ALL COVERED WITH FRESH FALLEN SNOW]”

In the morning, when the room had been again prepared for its day-time uses, the beauty of its screens and other simple furnishings, painted in raised chrysanthemums by one of the Kano school, was made the more charming by the light reflected from the snow-covered ground and cloudy sky. The garden was a picture such as can be seen only in Japan; its tiny curved stone-bridge over an artificial pond, the dark green twisted pines, the stately mountains in the distance; and [all covered with fresh-fallen snow]—a landscape made dignified by nature and exquisite by man.

The later morning hours were occupied with receiving calls, each one of which bore some fragrance of the memory of the man who had, as the sons and daughters of his retainers firmly believed, sacrificed his life in the country’s cause. For still in Hikoné, the memory of Ii Kamon-no-Kami, and the pride in him, confer a certain title to distinction upon every citizen of the place. And not only this; but we, being Americans and so of the people with whose representative their feudal lord had joined himself to bring about a period of peaceful and friendly intercourse between the two nations, were expected to sympathise with them in this feeling. In genuine old-fashioned style, many of these visitors brought with them some gift. Among these gifts was a small bit of dainty handiwork, made by the Baroness Ii and given to the father of the man who gave it to us, in recognition of his services as her secretary. It was the sincerity and simple dignity of these tokens of friendship which raised their bestowal above all suspicion of sinister motive, and made it easier for the foreigners to receive them and to transport themselves into the atmosphere of the “Old Japan.”