The outlines and pleasing details of those black and white country dwellings with the graceful curves of their roofs are a relief to the eye after the endless miles of ugly little brown rabbit hutches of the towns. At Tokyo the enclosure and park of the Emperor's palace lay just outside the gates of our Embassy, surrounded by a moat so broad that it could be almost called a lake. It was curious in the heart of a town to see this moat covered with innumerable wild duck. Although I have been in the Imperial palace at Kyoto, I was never inside the one at Tokyo, so I cannot give any details about it. The glimpses one obtained from outside of its severe black and white outlines recalled a European mediæval castle, and had something strangely familiar about them. I was never fortunate enough either to be invited to an Imperial duck-catching party, which I would have given anything to witness. The idea of catching wild duck in butterfly nets would never occur to anyone but the Japanese. The place where this quaint amusement was indulged in was an extensive tract of flat ground intersected by countless reed-fringed little canals and waterways, much on the lines of a marsh in the Norfolk Broad district. I saw the Ambassador on his return from a duck-catching party. With superhuman efforts, and a vast amount of exercise, he had managed to capture three ducks, and he told me that he had had to run like a hare to achieve even this modest success. All the guests were expected to appear in high hats and frock-coats on these occasions, and I should have dearly loved to see the Ambassador arrayed in frock-coat and high hat bounding hot-foot over the marshes, his butterfly net poised aloft, in pursuit of his quacking quarry. The newspapers informed us the next day that the Crown Prince had headed the list as usual with a bag of twenty-seven ducks, and I always believe what I see in print. Really Europeans start heavily handicapped at this peculiar diversion. I have known many families in England where the sons of the house are instructed from a very early age in riding, and in the art of handling a gun and a trout rod, but even in the most sport-loving British families the science of catching wild duck in butterfly nets forms but seldom part of the sporting curriculum of the rising generation. Though the Imperial family are Shintoists, I expect that the Buddhist horror of taking animal life is at the bottom of this idea of duck-catching, for the ducks are, I believe, all set free again after their capture.
We always heard that the Emperor and his family lived entirely on rice and fish in the frugal Japanese fashion, and that they never tasted meat.
I had the opportunity of seeing a very fine house of sixty rooms, built in strict Japanese style, and just completed. Count Mitsu is one of the few very wealthy men in Japan; he can also trace his pedigree back for three thousand years. He had built this house in Tokyo, and as it was supposed to be the last word in purity of style ("Itchi-Ban," or "Number One," as the Japanese express it), he very kindly invited the ambassador and myself to go all over it with him. We had, of course, to remove our shoes on entering, and my pleasure was somewhat marred by the discovery of a large hole in one sock, on which I fancied the gaze of the entire Mitsu family was riveted. Nothing can equal the high-bred courtesy and politeness of Japanese of really ancient lineage. Countess Mitsu, of a family as old as her husband's, had a type of face which we do not usually associate with Japan, and is only found in ladies of the Imperial family and some others equally old. In place of the large head, full cheeks, and flat features of the ordinary Japanese woman, Countess Mitsu and her daughters had thin faces with high aquiline features, giving them an extraordinarily high-bred and distinguished appearance. This great house consisted of a vast number of perfectly empty rooms, destitute of one single scrap of furniture. There was fine matting on the floor, a niche with one kakemono hanging in it, one bronze or other work of art, and a vase with one single flower, and nothing else whatever. The Mitsus being a very high caste family, there was no colour anywhere. The decoration was confined to black and white and beautifully-finished, unpainted, unvarnished woodwork, except for the exquisitely chased bronze door-grips (door-handles would be an incorrect term for these grips to open and close the sliding panels). I must confess that I never saw a more supremely uncomfortable-looking dwelling in my life. The children's nurseries upstairs were a real joy. The panels had been painted by a Japanese artist with everything calculated to amuse a child. There were pictures of pink and blue rabbits, purple frogs, scarlet porcupines, and grass-green guinea-pigs, all with the most comical expressions imaginable on their faces. The lamps were of fish-skin shaped over thin strips of bamboo into the form of the living fish, then highly coloured, and fitted with electric globes inside them; weird, luminous marine monsters! Each child had a little Chinese dressing-table of mother-of-pearl eighteen inches high, and a tub of real Chinese "powder-blue" porcelain as a bath. The windows looked on to a fascinating dwarf garden ten feet square, with real waterfalls, tiny rivers of real water, miniature mountains and dwarf trees, all in perfect proportion. It was like looking at an extensive landscape through the wrong end of a telescope.
The polite infants who inhabited this child's paradise received us with immense courtesy, lying at full length on the floor on their little tummies, and wagging their little heads in salutation, till I really thought they would come off.
The most interesting thing in Count Mitsu's house was a beautiful little Shinto temple of bronze-gold lacquer, where all the names of his many ancestors were inscribed on gilt tablets. Here he and all his sons (women take no part in ancestor worship) came nightly, and made a full confession before the tablets of their ancestors of all they had done during the day; craving for pardon should they have acted in a fashion unworthy of their family and of Japan. The Count and his sons then lighted the little red lamps before the tablets of their forebears to show that they were not forgotten, and placed the exquisitely carved little ivory "ghost-ship" two inches long in its place, should any of their ancestors wish to return that night from the Land of Spirits to their old home.
The underlying idea of undying family affection is rather a beautiful one.
That same evening I went to a very interesting dinner-party at the house of Prince Arisugawa, a son-in-law of the Emperor's. Both the dinner and the house were on European lines, but the main point of interest was that it was a gathering of all the Generals and Admirals who had taken a prominent part in the Russo-Japanese war. I was placed between an Admiral and a General, but found it difficult to communicate with them, Japanese being conspicuously bad linguists. The General could speak a little fairly unintelligible German; the Admiral could stutter a very little Russian. It was a pity that the roads of communication were so blocked for us, for I shall probably never again sit between two men who had had such thrilling experiences. I cursed the builders of the Tower of Babel for erecting this linguistic barrier between us.
I found that I was a full head taller than all the Japanese in the room. Princess Arisugawa appeared later. This tiny, dainty, graceful little lady had the same strongly aquiline type of features as Countess Mitsu, and the same high-bred look of distinction. She was beautifully dressed in European style, and had Rue de la Paix written all over her clothes and her jewels. I have seldom seen anyone with such taking graceful dignity as this daughter of the Imperial house, in spite of her diminutive stature.
The old families in Japan have a pretty custom of presenting every European guest with a little black-and-gold lacquer box, two inches high, full of sweetmeats, of the sort we called in my youth "hundreds and thousands." These little boxes bear on their tops in gold lacquer the badge or crest of the family, thus serving as permanent souvenirs.
In a small community such as the European diplomats formed at Tokyo, the peculiarities and foibles of the "chers collègues" formed naturally an unending topic of conversation. There was one foreign representative who was determined to avoid bankruptcy, could the most rigorously careful regulation of his expenditure avert such a catastrophe. His official position forced him to give occasional dinner-parties, much, I imagine, against his inclinations. He always, in the winter months, borrowed all the available oil-stoves from his colleagues and friends, when one of these festivities was contemplated, in order to warm his official residence without having to go to the expense of fires. He had in some mad fit of extravagance bought two dozen of a really fine claret some years before. The wine had long since been drunk; the bottles he still retained with their labels. It was his custom to buy the cheapest and roughest red wine he could find, and then enshrine it in these old bottles with their mendacious labels. At his dinner-parties these time-worn bottles were always ranged down the tables. The evidence of palate and eye was conflicting. The palate (as far as it could discriminate through the awful reek with which the oil-stoves filled the room), pronounced it sour, immature vin ordinaire. The label on the bottle proclaimed it Château Margaux of 1874, actually bottled at the Château itself. Politeness dictated that we should compliment our host on this exquisite vintage, which had, perhaps, begun to feel (as we all do) the effects of extreme old age. A cynical Dutch colleague might possibly hazard a few remarks, lamenting the effects of the Japanese climate on "les premiers crus de Bordeaux."