Letters from China and Japan

by John Dewey; Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

Tuesday, February 11 (Tokyo).

To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the bank, but we can go to a meeting where they will discuss universal franchise and democratization generally. The Emperor is said to be indisposed, so he will not come to the celebration. His illnesses, like everything else about him, are arranged by the ministers and mistresses, as near as we can make out.

We are having so many interesting experiences and impressions that it is already difficult to catch up in writing them down. Yesterday morning we went to walk and in the afternoon we were taken out in a car so that we have got over the first impression of the surface. We saw the university and the park where the tombs of the shoguns are, and those tombs are wonderful, just to look at from the car. About to-morrow we may be able to go to the museum. The rows of stone lanterns are impressive beyond anything I had imagined; hundreds of them which must have given to the nights they illuminated a wonderfully weird spectral look.

It is not fully true that the Japanese are not interested in their history. At least the educated are, as in any other country. A friend told us about the revival of interest in the tea ceremony. He is going to arrange for us to go to one somewhere, he did not say where, but it will be accompanied by a grand dinner and will express the magnificence of the new rich as well as the taste of old Japan, to judge from the impressions he gave us. He told us of an old Chinese cup for the tea ceremony that a certain millionaire has recently paid 160,000 yen for. That means $80,000. He says the collectors have various sets, and each set will often represent a million dollars. This particular bowl is of black porcelain with decorations of bright color. He told us also of a tea which is now produced in China by grafting the tea branches on to lemon trees. He has some of this tea which was given him by the Chinese ambassador and so I hope we may get a taste of it.

Apropos of this hotel you will be interested to know the manager who runs the house has just come home from the Waldorf and from London where he has been learning how to do—people. The exchange rates they offered Papa seem to be an index of their line of development and they are going to build more. This is the one first-class hotel in Japan. At present they have only about sixty rooms or a little more.

In general, things are coming along promisingly. I should be through lecturing by the first of April here, which is just the time to begin traveling. It turns out a good scheme to come in winter, for the weather, while not cheerful, is far from really cold, though it is not easy to see just how the palms thrive in the snow. Japan seems to have developed a peculiar type of semi-tropical vegetation which endures freezing and winter. I can foresee that we are going to be busy enough, and for the next few weeks your mother is going to have more time for miscellaneous sightseeing than I. It is indescribably fascinating; in substance, of course, like the books and pictures, but nothing really prepares you for the fact that it is not only real in quality but on such a vast scale—-not just specimens here and there.

Tokyo, Thursday, February 13.

We have done our first independent shopping to-day. I can’t get over my astonishment at the amount and quality of English spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in this store, the big department store, as it is at home—much easier as respects attention and comfort. They give us little wrappers or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Think of what an improvement that would be in muddy weather in Chicago.

This afternoon is sort of a lull after the storm of sociability and hospitality which reached its temporary height yesterday. Let me give the diary. Before we had finished breakfast—and we have eaten every morning at eight until to-day—people began to call. Then two gentlemen took us to the University in their car and we called on the President again. He is a gentleman of the old school, Confucianist I suppose, and your mother was much impressed at being taken in, instead of staying in the car, but I think he was much more pleased and complimented by her call than by mine. Then we were taken to the department store to which I have already alluded. Many people do all their buying there, because there are fixed prices with a reward for a discovery of any place where the same goods are sold cheaper, and absolute honesty as to quality. But they also said that was the easy way to visit Japan and learn about the clothes, ornaments, toys, etc., and also to see the people, as the Japanese from all over the country come there to see the sights. There were a group of country people in; they are called red blankets, not greenhorns, because they wear in winter a red bed blanket gathered with a string, instead of an overcoat. Then at night it comes in handy.

The stores are already displaying the things for the girls’ festival though it doesn’t come till early March—this is the peach fête, and the display of festive dolls—king and queen, servants, ladies of the court in their old costumes, is very interesting and artistic. They have certainly put the doll to uses which we haven’t approached. Then we had lunch at the store, a regular Japanese lunch, which tasted very good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then they brought us back to the hotel, and at two a friend came and took me to call on Baron Shibusawa—I suppose even benighted foreigners like yourself will know who he is, but you may not know that he is 83, that he has a skin like a baby’s, and shows all the signs of the most acute mental vigor, or that for the last two or three years he has given up all business and devoted himself to philanthropic and humanitarian activities. He does evidently what not many American millionaires do; he takes an intellectual and moral interest, and doesn’t merely give money. He explained for about half an hour or more his theory of life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a religionist of any kind), and what he was trying to do, especially that it isn’t merely relief. He is desirous to preserve the old Confucian standards only adapted to present economic conditions; it is essentially a morality of feudal economic relationships, as perhaps you know, and he thinks the modern factory employers can be brought to take the old paternal attitude to the employees and thus forestall the class struggle here. The radicals laugh at the notion here much as they would in the United States, but for my part if he can get in a swipe at the Marxian theory of social evolution and bring about another type still of social evolution, I don’t see why he should not have a run for his money. According to all reports there is very little labor and capital problem here yet, though the big fortunes made by the war and the increased prosperity of the workingmen have begun to make a change, it is said. Up to the present labor unions have not been permitted, but the government has announced that while they are not encouraged they will not be any longer forbidden.