Following the Sun-Flag: A Vain Pursuit Through Manchuria

by Jr. John Fox

"I do not understand the receipt I give you."

I pointed out my willingness to be proven wrong. He worked for an hour on the account and sighed:

"You are right," he said. "I mistake. I beg you my pardon."

He had overlooked among other things one item—the funeral expenses of some relative, which he had charged to me. I made it clear that such an item was hardly legitimate and since then we have had less trouble. However, when he wishes anything, he says:

"I want you, etc., etc., etc.," and at the end of the sentence he will say "please," with great humility; but until that "please" comes I am not always sure which is servant and which is master. From Takeuchi I have learned much about Japanese character, especially about the Buschido spirit—the fealty of Samurai to Daimio, of retainer to Samurai, of servant to master. It is useless to be harsh with or to scold a Japanese servant. Just make your appeal to that traditional spirit of loyalty and all will be better—if not well. He may rob you himself in the way of traditional commissions, but you can be sure that he will allow the same privilege to nobody else. But of Takeuchi—as of Fuji—more anon.

We sailed along at slow speed until we came to the Elliott Group of Islands. We paid a yen apiece for each meal, and the captain and the purser—a nice little fellow who got autographs from all who could write and pictures from all who could draw—were the only officers with whom we came in contact. We had poker o' nights, and sometimes o' days, and now and then we "played the horses." Thus we reached the Elliott Group of Islands.

There we had company, transports coming in until there was a fleet of ten; other transports going back to Japan, and an occasional gun-boat hovering on the horizon. There we stayed three wearing days—told each day that we should start on the next at daybreak. But there came one matchless sunset as a comfort—a sunset that hung for a while over a low jagged coast—a seething mass of flaming gold and vivid, quivering green; that smote the sea into sympathy, lent its colors to the mists that rose therefrom, and sank slowly to one luminous band of yellow, above which one motionless cloud of silver was, by some miracle, the last to deepen into ashes and darkness. And as it darkened in the West, some white clouds in the East pushed tumbling crests of foam over another range of hills, and above them the full moon soared. Thus, all my life I had waited to see at last, on a heathen coast, Turner doing the sunset, while Whistler was arranging colors in the place where the next dawn was to come.

Here we saw Chinamen for the first time on native heath. They came out to us in sampans, always with one or two children in the bow, to get scraps to eat at the port-holes aft, or empty bottles, which they much prized; or drifted past us on the swift tide, watching like birds of prey for anything that might be thrown overboard. And we saw the attitude of Japanese toward Chinamen for the first time, as well, and all the time one memory, incongruous and unjust though it was, hung in my mind—the memory of a town-bred mulatto in a high hat with his thumbs in the arm-holes of a white waistcoat, and loftily talking to a country brother of deeper shade in the market-place of a certain Southern town. One day a sampan, with a very old man and a young one aboard, made fast to the gangway. They had fish to sell, and during the haggling that followed, a Japanese sprang aboard, dropped a coin or two, picked up the fish, and tried to cast the sampan away—the Chinamen sputtering voluble but feeble protests meanwhile. In the confusion, the stern of the sampan struck a ship's boat that was swinging on a long hawser from the same gangway, the bow of it struck the ship's side, and the racing tide did the rest. The boat was overturned, old man and young one disappeared and all under water shot away. We thought they were gone, but there were two lean, yellow arms fastened by yellow talons to the keel, and in a moment the young man was dragging the old man to safety on the bottom of the boat. The ship's boat was cast away, the Japanese who had caused the trouble sprang aboard with the crew, gave chase to the bobbing wreck, caught it several hundred yards away, righted it, and later we saw the young Chinaman working it, half submerged, toward the distant shore, and the shivering, bedraggled old one being brought back to the ship. We were all indignant, for the officers of the ship, far from interfering, laughed during the whole affair, and, laughing, watched the old man and the young one sweep away. But no sooner was the old man aboard than the servants and interpreters gave him rice, saki, empty bottles, and clothes, and took up a subscription for him; and when the young one got to the ship an hour later the old man climbed into the sampan, mellow and happy. It seemed a heartless piece of cruelty at first, but it was perhaps, after all, only the cruelty of children, for which they were at once sorry and at once tried to make amends. To me, its significance was in the loftily superior, contemptuously patronizing attitude of the Japanese toward the yellow brother from whom he got civilization, art, classical models, and a written speech. Later, I found the same bearing raised to the ninth degree in Manchuria. Knowing the grotesque results in the efforts of one imitative race to adopt another civilization in my own country, the parallelism has struck me forcibly over here in dress, Occidental manners, the love of interpreters for ponderous phraseology and quotations, rigid insistence on form and red tape and the letter thereof. Give a Japanese a rule and he knows no exception on his part, understands no variation therefrom on yours. For instance, every afternoon we went into the sea from that gangway, and Guy Scull diving from the railing of the upper deck and Richard Harding Davis diving for coins thrown from the same deck into the water (and getting them, too) created no little diversion for everybody on board. On the third afternoon, Davis, in his kimono and nothing else, was halted by the first officer at the gangway. The captain had found a transport rule to the effect that nobody should be allowed to go in bathing—the good reason being, of course, that some of several hundred soldiers in bathing might drown. Therefore, we eighteen men, though we were in a way the guests of the captain's Government—in spite of the fact that we were paying for our own meals—and though for this reason a distinction might have been made, the rule was there, and, like Japanese soldiers, we had to obey. It looked a trifle ominous.

We were only ten hours' sail now from Port Arthur, and one morning we did get away just before sunrise. The start was mysterious, almost majestic at that hour. For three days those transports had lain around us—filled, I was told, with soldiers, and yet not one soldier had I seen. Blacker and more mysterious than ever they looked in that dark hour before dawn—only the first flush in the east showing sign of something human in the column of black smoke that was drifting from the funnel of each. It showed, too, a gray mass lying low on the water, and near a big black rock that jutted from the sea. That gray mass gave forth one unearthly shriek and that was all. Instantly thereafterward it floated slowly around that jutting rock; one by one the silent black ships moved ghostlike after it, and when the red sunburst came, that gave birth, I suppose, to the flag of Japan, all in single file were moving in a great circle out to sea—the prow of each ship turning toward one red star that looked down with impartial eyes where the brown children of the sun were in a death-struggle with the cubs of the Great White Bear. By noon there was great cheer. The Japanese word was good at last—we were bound for Port Arthur. The rocky shore of Manchuria was close at hand. A Japanese torpedo-boat slipped by, its nose plunging through every wave and playful as a dolphin, tossing green water and white foam back over its whole black length. A signal-station became visible on one gray peak, and then there was a thrill that took the soreness of five months from the hearts of eighteen men. The sullen thunder of a big gun moaned its way to us from Port Arthur. There was not a man who had not long dreamed of that grim easternmost symbol of Russian aggression, and each man knew that no matter what might happen on land, Port Arthur held place and would hold place for dramatic interest in the eyes of the world. Port Arthur we should see—stubborn siege and fierce assaults—and gather stories by the handful when it fell. Dalny was to our left, and it was rather curious that we did not turn toward Dalny. But no matter—we were going into Talienwan Bay, which was only a few miles farther away, and we could hear big guns: so we were happy. Talienwan—a thin curve of low gray stone buildings, hugging the sweep of the bay, spread the welcome that the officer of that port came to speak in English—and we landed among carts, Chinese coolies, Japanese soldiers, Chinese wagons, mules, donkeys, horses, ponies, squealing stallions, ammunition, a medley of human cries. The bustle was terrific. A man must look out for himself in that apparent confusion. As it was an ever-faithful day for Takeuchi that day, I was serene and trustful. Davis was not, and beckoned to a coolie with a cart. The man came and Davis's baggage was piled on the cart. Along came a Japanese officer who, without a word, threw the baggage to the ground—including a camera and other things as fragile and hardly less precious. Davis turned to the Post Officer:

"Can I have one of these carts?"