Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

After the lecture and the inevitable photographing of the group—a species of photographing in which the Japanese peculiarly excel—a considerable party accompanied the guests to a grove, high up upon the hillside, from which the fields, and school and villages, and bay, could be overlooked. There chocolate and cake were served. And from there, after the descent to the plain was made, we walked to the house of our host along the dyke, under the shadow of the pine-trees, and looking down upon the waters which had once deluged the place—all speaking to the memory, sympathetic with Japanese ideas, of the spirit of Hamaguchi Gōryo.

The plan had been to start our jinrikisha ride back to Wakayama not later than half-past six the following morning. But things in the country places of Japan have not yet learned to occur at the expected hour. Or rather, the experienced traveller has learned not to expect to start his journey exactly at the promised time. We were doing well when we bade our friendly host and hostess good-bye an hour later than the one appointed. The return ride was indeed pleasant; but it lacked the charms of brightness and of novelty; for the sky was overcast and the air was that of March rather than of May. We changed kurumas at Kuroé, as before, but did not stop there; and making the run of some eight miles without a single pause, we arrived at Waka-no-Ura about half-past eleven o’clock.

Now Waka-no-Ura, as the very name signifies, is the “coast” (Ura) for which the old feudal town, the capital of the Province of Kishu, Wakayama, is the “mountain” (Yama). It is one of the most notable for its beauty of all the sea-coasts of Japan. The picturesque features of the landscape, which have been celebrated in innumerable poems by centuries of poets and poet-asters, were all in evidence on that day. There were the storks standing on one leg in the water, or flying low above the rushes. There were the rocks and the pines—not straight, of course, like ours, but by their knarled and knotty shapes, irregularities and eccentricities of outline, provoking in the mind of the Japanese all manner of sentimental expressions and similes touching human life. There were the boats of the fishermen, at sea or lying in the offing; and nearer by were the boats of the women who were gathering sea-weed for their food or for sale.

A regular “shore dinner” of fish and birds was somewhat hastily concluded, in the company of the Governor of the Ken, the Mayor of the City, and a representative of the Educational Societies. Immediately after this, the Governor excused himself and, mounting his bicycle, went on ahead of us, who followed in jinrikishas. The highway along which we passed rapidly, was, for much of the three miles between the coast and the city, made picturesque with its shading of pines; and once within the more thickly settled streets of Wakayama it circuited the castle walls and brought us to the Government-building where the afternoon’s lecture was to be given. Here, as everywhere, the audience, which numbered about eight hundred teachers and officials, many of whom had come from considerable distances away, bore convincing testimony to the interest of the Japanese people at large in questions of education and ethics. But we were not to carry out the plan of seeing more of the sights and of the people of Wakayama. For a telegram informed me that Marquis Ito had already left Oiso and would reach Kyoto that evening, where he would plan to see me the next morning. Directly from the hall, therefore, we were taken in haste to the station, and by late evening we had reached our hotel in Kyoto.

But Hiro-mura and Hamaguchi Gōryo cannot be dismissed with propriety from our present thought, however pleasant its purely personal reminiscences may be, without recurring to the more impersonal and important impressions, such as are made by Lafcadio Hearn’s story of “A Living God.” In a little book published in England about five years ago, the son, Mr. Tan Hamaguchi, tells us of the following incident: He had been reading a paper on “Some Striking Female Personalities in Japanese History,” before the Japan Society of London; following which a lady in the audience raised the question of a possible relationship between the reader of the paper and the hero of Mr. Hearn’s tale. The question led, not only to the exposure of the intimate character of this relation, but also to the correction and amplification of the more fanciful of the points emphasised by the celebrated foreign romancer of Japan’s characteristic ideals and forms of behaviour. It was admitted that “Mr. Lafcadio Hearn throws around the facts a golden aureole of fancy.” But it was justly claimed that, although the long list of posts held, and services rendered, by a good patriot to his country may “lack the glamour of a single action, which has the fortune to attract the genius of a sympathetic writer, and so carry his name and fame on words of English eloquence across the world,” discerning readers will none the less see in these offices and services “so many fresh titles to veneration and regard.” There was—we have already said—no shrine built to the hero during his life-time by the villagers of Arita. The shrine was “metaphorically erected in their hearts and on their lips.”

In at least two important respects, however, the facts are more honourable to Hamaguchi Gōryo and to his countrymen than are the fancies of Mr. Hearn. For it was not one seemingly supernatural deed of heroism, but a life-time of service such as all may try to perform, which constituted this hero’s claim to immortality; and the time, instead of being more than a hundred years gone by, was in the generation of yet living men. It is, therefore, thoroughly representative, both of the spirit which still animates many of the leaders and principal citizens of Japan, and also of the kind of recognition and grateful remembrance which Japan accords to those who serve her in this spirit. Thus much, which tends to foster the “worship of ghosts” and the multiplication of “living gods”—to borrow phrases from Mr. Hearn—is a fairly effective and most praiseworthy force in the country down to the present hour.

Nor is this force evanescent, ineffective, and limited to politicians and promoters of large business enterprises, as is for the most part the case at present with us. It is the “ghosts” of great “rulers and teachers,” as well as of warriors and heroes; of those “who lived and loved and died hundreds and thousands of years ago,” as well as of the successful and influential man of the passing hour. And the hope of being numbered among the innumerable host that have served their country, and that are regarded as all of one band, whether here on earth or members of the “choir invisible,” is no impotent factor in that spirit with which Japan met its enemy (now its friend) in the war of 1904-’05. As one of her generals said to me: “It is the spiritual training of the soldier which we find most difficult and on which we place the greatest emphasis.” This worshipful attitude toward the great and the good of the past, which is something more than admiration and even something more than mere reverence, and yet is not quite what we call “worship,” it is that binds the living and the dead together in a peculiar bond of unity; that fills the actor of to-day with an inspiration and a hope which takes a hold upon the universal and the eternal; and that makes the sacrifice of what is temporal and selfish more prompt, cheerful, and easy to bear. And who shall say that there is not something admirable and eminently hopeful for the nation in this? Or, at least, such are the thoughts connected in my mind with the visit to Hiro-mura and with the facts, even when stripped of the pleasing but not veritable fancies of Mr. Hearn, concerning the history of Hamaguchi Gōryo.

CHAPTER XII
COURT FUNCTIONS AND IMPERIAL AUDIENCES

Everything important connected with the Imperial Court of Japan is regulated by law in the most careful manner. These regulations include, not only the Peerage of all ranks, but also those natives who belong to the civil service or who have been judged deserving of recognition on account of some special contribution to the public welfare. The latter system of nominal honours is called “ikai,” or more commonly “kurai”; but it has no outward badge to represent it. The holder of a fourth or higher grade of “ikai,” however, even when he is no longer in Government service, receives an invitation on the occasion of certain state festivals,—as for example, the Birthday evening party. The heir of a Peer is entitled to the fifth-grade junior “ikai” as soon as he reaches his majority. A number of wealthy merchants possess this nominal honour, which they have gained by contributions of money to public purposes. Besides these, there are those who have been “decorated,” both natives and a few foreigners, all of whom have their court rank prescribed according to the Order and the Degree of the decoration conferred. Of these decorations, the six grades of “The Order of the Rising Sun” are the most coveted; because this Order is bestowed only for “conspicuous personal merit”; and hitherto it has been only sparingly bestowed. When the Grand Order of Merit and The Grand Cordon of the Chrysanthemum are added to the First Class of the Rising Sun, the fortunate person has been invested with the highest honour accessible to a Japanese subject. Only eight personages, exclusive of Imperial Princes, and mentioning only those who are still alive, have attained so high an honour. At the head of this list stood Prince Ito; and following him are such well known names as Yamagata, Oyama, Matsukata, and latest of all, Admiral Togo.

It can easily be imagined that fixing the order of precedence at the Imperial Court of Japan is not a matter in which the inexpert foreigner can intermeddle safely, whether by way of his own proposed conduct, or even of the expression of wishes or of opinion. The actual arrangement, as given in the “Japanese Year Book” for 1908, mentions by name about eighty gentlemen and twenty “court ladies,”—the precedence of all other persons who have either the occasional or the regular privilege of attending court being fixed, by general rules, according to their rank. Foreigners having decorations come in the same position as natives of the same Order and Class of decoration. For example, those who have the 2nd Class Order of the Rising Sun have with it a court rank between the Counts and the Viscounts; and those who have the 3d Class of the same Order fall between the Viscounts and the Barons.