And now Bob was actually a guest in the house of a Japanese samurai. The house was really a sort of two-storied bungalow, standing on rising ground, and approached by a flight of stone steps. A mountain rose sheer into the sky behind it; a stream dashed over a cascade, filled a fish-pond in the neat garden, and plunged into the river below. There was no furniture to speak of; nothing but straw covered with finely-woven bamboo, spotlessly white, a pot or two of flowers, and a curious-shaped stand for a paper lantern, by which, as he learnt afterwards, Kobo San sometimes read at night. But his surprise was mingled with admiration. The walls were plastered with sand of varied hues, inlaid with fragments of shell and mica; the ceiling was of light polished wood crossed by bars of a darker colour, and supported on light posts. Near the ceiling ran a long strip of exquisitely-painted paper; along the bottom of the wall a narrow border of the same was fixed. On one wall, from floor to ceiling, there was a kakemono,—a painted panel, representing storks standing in water dotted with moss-grown rocks. In a corner was a sort of inlaid cabinet let into the wall, where the futon, the thickly-wadded quilts, were kept; for every room in a Japanese house is a bed-room in case of need. Let into the floor was a charcoal brazier, with which alone the room was heated. Everything was spotless; the harmony of colour was perfect; and Bob could not help contrasting this charming simplicity with the elaborate tasteless furniture of the conventional English home.
While he was still admiring, Kobo came in. But it was a different Kobo from the frock-coated gentleman he had known in Tokio. His host was clad in the costume of his country,—the flowing wide-sleeved kimono, his feet encased in the mitten-like tabi—socks with a separate pocket for the big toe. He bowed very low as he entered the room, and there was a slight smile on his face as he explained:
"When I am at home, as you see, Mr. Fawcett, I preserve the old customs—the old dress, the old manners. I work in the present, I take my recreation in the past. Did you sleep well?"
"Very well; though I woke once with the idea that I was falling out of bed."
"Ah, you will soon become accustomed to the makura. No doubt you are now hungry."
He called, without raising his voice, and from the distance came a long-drawn answering cry: "Hai-i-i, tadaima!" Presently there entered two ladies, followed by four maids bearing food on little lacquer trays. The ladies went down lightly on their knees and bent over till their heads touched the ground, murmuring "O hayo!" Bob was somewhat embarrassed, but Kobo said something in Japanese; the ladies rose, advanced, and said "Good morning!" with the prettiest accent imaginable. Kobo explained that they were his wife and daughter, O Kami San and O Toyo San. Bob would have taken them for sisters, so alike were they in the graceful kimonos of lilac-coloured silk, girt with rich brocaded obi. They knew but a few words of English, but Bob felt almost instantly at home, so simply and charmingly did they welcome him.
Soon all four were seated on cushions on the floor, while the four musumés knelt in front of them, offering the first course of Bob's first Japanese breakfast. It consisted of beautiful white cakes made of bean-flour and sugar, and little cups of weak tea. This was followed by a sort of fish broth in lacquer bowls, with a condiment made of shredded daikon—the Japanese radish—mingled with green herbs. Bob found that he had to pick morsels of fish from the broth with a pair of chop-sticks, dip them into the condiment, and poke them into his mouth; and his first clumsy attempts with these novel utensils did not call the shadow of a smile to the faces of his polite entertainers. Then came prawns in batter, fish cakes, rice in bowls of gold lacquer, preserved plums, crystallized walnuts, and other dishes, in many of which fish figured in some form or other: all in such midget quantities that Bob felt he would still be hungry if he swallowed the portions of all four. He felt as Gulliver might have felt at a state banquet in Lilliput. At his side throughout the meal stood a beautiful porcelain bottle filled with saké, a liquor tasting like weak beer and water. Bob did not like it, but he had accepted Kobo San's invitation, and he was resolved to endure without flinching all that Japanese hospitality might involve.
When the meal was finished the ladies withdrew, and Bob was asked by his host to accompany him in a drive. At the door the former found his boots, and the latter a pair of sandals, which he fastened by passing a thong between his big toe and the rest of his foot. Outside there waited two handsome rickshaws with their coolies, who set off down the hill towards the magnificent avenue of cryptomerias that stretches in one almost unbroken line for twenty miles.
That was the beginning of as pleasant a week as Bob had ever spent. He grew accustomed to the simple ways of the house: took off his boots instinctively on entering; learnt to squat more comfortably on the floor, and to enjoy the novel fare; even to tolerate the plunky-plunketing of the koto when O Toyo San played to him, and sang strange songs which she tried in her pretty broken English to translate. On some days Bob was left much to himself; Kobo received many letters and telegrams which kept him busy for long hours in his own room, and at such times Bob would chat with Taru, the servant, who gave him many precious bits of information about his master's family, always with infinite discretion. Kobo was the descendant of a long line of samurai, who had themselves been the vassals of a daimio or great baronial family illustrious in the history of Japan. Taru himself remembered the time when Kobo's family had fought in the great civil war from which dates the wonderful advance of modern Japan. Previous to that time, foreigners and all things foreign had been regarded with the intensest hatred by the Japanese; Kobo's father had been among those who fired on the foreign settlement at Hiogo in 1868, and had been condemned to hara-kiri by the Mikado. Bob learnt the terrible details of that mode of execution, when the condemned man, without a murmur or a sign of reluctance or fear, deliberately took his own life at the bidding of his lord. Kobo was a boy of nine when his father thus died; he had grown up under the new system; he had played a considerable part in the Japanese Diet, and had won great honour in the war with China; and he now enjoyed the peculiar confidence of the Mikado's government. Taru did not explain what position he held, and Bob, for all his curiosity, did not care to ask; it was evident that the man held the master in boundless veneration.
Interesting as these talks with Taru were, Bob was most of all pleased when his host, in the evenings, after being invisible all day, entertained him with stories of his country's history, and recounted the picturesque tales of old Japan. He learnt of the long tyranny of the Shoguns, who kept the titular sovereign, the Mikado, in strict seclusion and usurped all his powers until the great Revolution of 1868, when the restoration of the Mikado overthrew the Shogunate for ever. He learnt about the old class distinctions: the daimios, great feudal princes owing vassalage to the sovereign, holding their fiefs on condition of doing military service; the samurai, the warlike retainers of the daimios, themselves chieftains of large bands of warriors, and often more powerful than their lords; the priests of the two religions, Shinto and Buddhism, some of whose wonderful temples in Nikko Bob visited in company with his host; below all these the trading and farming classes, who were held of no account, however wealthy they might become. He learnt of Japan's strange awakening that followed the Mikado's final triumph over the Shogun: the abolition of the feudal system, the disarming of the samurai, the eagerness to learn western ways, the readiness to adopt western inventions. Besides all this, he heard some of the legendary stories of old Japan, and one evening saw Kobo dressed in the old armour of the samurai, a combination of chain-mail and armour-plate, with penthouse shoulder-pieces, nose-piece and gorget, helmet and greaves, a long spear, and two swords worn one above the other on the left hip. Bob was carried back to the days of chivalry in Europe, when knights in armour went out adventuring, soldiers of fortune selling their services to any potentate who would employ them; and he understood something of the fierce energy and enthusiasm which, withdrawn from mere warlike enterprises, had found an outlet in Japan's astonishing development in commerce and industry.