Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

The afternoon of this day was set aside for the lecture, which was to be held in the large room of one of the city’s Primary-School buildings. On reaching the school we found the flags of both countries—the two that Ii Kamon-no-Kami and Townsend Harris had bound together by Treaty, a half-century ago—hung over the door, and at the back of the platform on which the speaker was to stand. But before he could begin, the guests must be presented to yet other of their hosts, who also came to leave in their hands testimonials of their pride in Ii Kamon-no-Kami and of the good-will of Hikoné to the visitors from the United States.

One will not easily find elsewhere a more intelligent and serious audience than the 500 who sat upon the floor of the school-room in the castle-town of the patriot Naosuké, on the afternoon of February 3, 1907. One will probably not find at all, outside of Japan, in a place of the same size, so many persons to listen so patiently to so long a discourse on similar themes. For the talk in English and its interpretation into Japanese required more than two solid hours. Nor could this time, of itself, suffice. There must also be elaborate thanks returned by the steward of the present Count, in the city’s name; and to the thanks a reply by the lecturer, both extended to a proper length. For such deliberateness in doing what it is thought worth while to do at all, is also characteristic of the time when Ii Kamon-no-Kami or the other Japanese Barons discussed with Townsend Harris every point of the Treaty, during the months so trying to the patience and ingenuity of both parties.

The lecture over, and greetings and leave-takings exchanged, the foreign guests were escorted to the station by a long row of following jinrikishas. In the private room of the station-master the time of waiting was spent in anecdotes and stories reminiscent of that disturbed and critical but glorious past. The chief of police who had been attendant, in order to give dignity to the occasion and to secure the visitors from the least shadow of annoyance—danger there was none—now comes forward to be presented and be thanked. Tea and cakes are served; and these are followed by renewed expressions of gratitude and friendship. In spite of remonstrance, the sweet-faced old doctor and the Christian pastor are instructed to accompany us all the way back to our hotel in Kyoto. And when, after renewed expressions of esteem for Ii Kamon-no-Kami and of the friendship for us and for our country, we send our escort back to Hikoné by the midnight train, we certainly—and I trust—they also, had pleasant and permanent memories established, connected with the beautiful castle-town on Lake Biwa and its now honoured, old-time feudal lord.

And I, for my part, had certain impressions confirmed by this interesting visit to the home of the famous lord of Hikoné. It is in the country places of Japan, and especially in its old feudal towns, that the choicest products of its characteristic civilisation are, at present, to be found. Here the virtues of chivalry chiefly linger; here these virtues are being combined with the intelligent outlook over the world imparted by modern education and with some of the virtues which are in particular fostered by the faith of Christianity. The result is a charming type of manhood and womanhood which the Western World may well admire, and, in some respects, emulate. It is this spirit of chivalry which has carried the nation along its wonderful career down to the present time. And it is the hope of the thoughtful Japanese, as well as of their sympathising foreign friends, that this spirit will not be quenched by the inpouring of the commercial spirit of the modern age.

Again also, it was impressed upon my mind that no other of the formerly “hermit nations” has hitherto incurred such grave risks in yielding to Western forces for its so-called “opening,” as did Japan in the years from 1853 to 1868. But then, no other nation has reaped such benefits from the yielding. For Japan was opened—the great majority of its leaders and people being reluctant and hostile—by the display of a superior force of Western armament and at the risk of having the national life deluged, if not extinguished, in blood. Yet the heart of the nation has learned to respond with gratitude to those who brought about such a turning of the door which had hitherto been closed to the world, upon the hinges of destiny. “Commodore Perry,” said Count Okuma to the writer some years ago, “was the best friend Japan ever had.” With the name of the Commodore we may fitly couple that of the Consul-General, Townsend Harris; and we may not unfitly add that one of the best foreign friends which the United States ever had was the Japanese Tairō, Baron Ii Kamon-no-Kami. When we remember what risks his nation ran, under his leadership, in order to solve peacefully the vexed question of foreign trade and foreign residence, may we not also remind ourselves of the propriety that somewhat more of the same spirit of chivalry should govern our conduct in dealing with the same question, now that a half-century of continued friendship has bound together the two nations, whose representatives—the one so patiently, the other so bravely—solved it in that older time of agitation and threatened disaster?

CHAPTER XI
HIRO-MURA, THE HOME OF “A LIVING GOD”

Among the more startling but characteristic of the sketches of “Old Japan,” as drawn by the skilful pen of Lafcadio Hearn, there is perhaps no one which has excited a wider interest than that he was pleased to entitle “A Living God.” The few pages which it covers illustrate all the well-known excellencies and faults of this gifted writer. Purporting to give facts, but quite careless as to what the facts really were, exaggerating impressions and twisting the meanings of quaint old-time customs and faiths, Mr. Hearn nevertheless celebrates the deed of Hamaguchi so as to initiate the reader duly into the spirit of a half-century ago, in the Land of the Rising Sun. I say, “a half-century ago”; for although the story makes its hero to have died at an advanced age more than a hundred years before, the real Mr. Hamaguchi died in New York City, as late as April 21, 1889, at the age of sixty-six. He was then only thirty-two years old when in 1855 he enabled the villagers of Hiro-mura to escape with their lives from the overwhelming wave caused by the earthquake of that year.

It is worth while to correct some of the other mistakes of Mr. Hearn, before giving the narrative of a recent visit to Hiro-mura, where we were the guests of the present head of the Hamaguchi family. These mistakes, indeed, do not at all detract from the nobility of the hero’s action, nor greatly mar the writer’s reputation for picturing graphically a certain aspect of the spiritual life and character of the Japanese. Since it does not appear that he had ever travelled in this part of the country (we were assured by our host that we were the only foreigners who had ever been seen in Hiro-mura), the topical inaccuracies of Mr. Hearn’s story are easily excusable. Instead of Hamaguchi’s watching the merrymakers of the village from a farm-house on the hill-side, he saw the ebbing of the water that followed the earthquake and presaged the incoming wave, from his own house which was in the village itself. Indeed the heighth to which the water rose in its rooms was pointed out to us as it was marked plainly upon the wooden pillars in front of the tokonoma, or alcove where the artistic and other similar interests of a Japanese household are centred. Nor was the man himself simply the principal farmer of the district. For many generations his family had been one of the largest and richest in this part of Japan. Their wealth had been accumulated in the manufacture of Shoyu—the Japanese sauce invented as a modification of a Chinese original, which was introduced into Japan some centuries ago by a Buddhist priest, and without which no food “tastes good” to the modern Japanese. Moreover, the huge wave occurred in the middle of a moonless night; and thus the stacks of grain, which were not only his own, but also all that Hamaguchi could come upon in the village, served for lights to guide the villagers in their flight; and not at all, as Mr. Hearn would have us believe, for signals that their help was needed to rescue a neighbour’s property from fire.

Mr. Hamaguchi did, however, come perilously near to losing his own life for the sake of saving the lives of others; for he was himself the last to leave the lower ground of the village and escape to the hills. As it was, he was saved only by making a marvellous jump across a stream which checked the relentless wave that was pursuing and overtaking him. His son, Mr. Tan Hamaguchi, tells us this incident, which is unmentioned by Mr. Hearn, and adds: “I can recollect well that in my boyhood I used to bathe and fish in this very stream, without realising that it had been the means of saving my father’s life.” Nor is it true that the hero “continued to live in his old thatched house on the hill, with his children and his children’s children, just as humanly and simply as before, while his soul was being worshipped in the shrine below.” Even before the incident narrated above, at the time of the coming of the “black ships”—i. e., Commodore Perry’s fleet,—Hamaguchi Gōryo had been prominent in politics as one opposed to admitting foreigners without armed resistance; and, after their admittance, he organised the militia of his Province and drilled them according to his ideas of the European system. At the time that the supreme power was restored by the Revolution to the Emperor, Gōryo was appointed to a position corresponding to that of Postmaster-General. And later, in 1879, when the Ken-Kwai, or system of a local body of representatives, was introduced, he was elected president of the Council of his native place. Still later he organised a so-called “conciliation society,” which, while deprecating the then rising, ignorant strife of the political parties in process of formation, urged a “careful study of politics, rather than unrestrained violence and empty vapourings of irresponsible talk.” Like other notable Japanese of his day, Hamaguchi had for years previous to his death cherished the plan of foreign travel for the purpose of studying the social and political institutions of foreign countries. Indeed, it was in pursuance of this plan that—as has already been said—we find him in New York City, where he died in 1889.

But this true patriot did not forget his own humble village in his larger interest in the political development of the province of Kishu and of the country at large. The tidal wave of 1885 had left nearly the entire village of Hiro-mura desolate, and its inhabitants homeless, destitute, and quite unable to provide for themselves. Hamaguchi Gōryo found employment for them by organising and carrying through a scheme for building an enormous dyke to protect the village from future inundations. This dyke, now shadowed with well-grown trees, under which we took a part of our Sunday’s walk, March 10, 1907, is 1800 yards in length, 16 yards wide, and 5 yards high. “With the permission of the Daimyo of Kishu” (how thoroughly of the “Old Japan” does this phrase smack!), and with the assistance of his kinsman, Mr. K. Hamaguchi, the whole cost of this expensive construction was defrayed by their private means. Moreover, Gōryo did much for the roads and bridges, as well as the farms, of this region in Kishu.