After all, I have no right to decide what constitutes greatness. Is a forest greater than a maple leaf? I doubt it. Art is so infinite,—all artists are so finite! The artists of Japan embroider with their pencils, and paint with their needles. They follow their own art ideal. Because it appeals to us less, it is not necessarily a smaller ideal than our own.
The very delicacy of touch and mind that makes the Japanese the most exquisite of all workmen, makes them the most sensitive of all peoples, the most petulantly resentful of criticism. I fear that it would be impossible for a European to write an article about Japan that would be inoffensive to the Japanese, unless it were an article of unqualified praise.
We reached Nagasaki in the early daylight. So should one always first see Japan. To touch the shores of Japan in the dawning, to begin a new day and a new exquisite experience, to steal with the sun into Nagasaki; that is something to remember for ever, with gratitude. As we approached Nagasaki it looked like a collection of cheerful Orientalised Swiss chalets.
Nagasaki nestles against the hilly side of fair, green Kiu-siu like a quaint burr clinging to the petal of a huge, lovely flower.
Japan in many parts is not unlike Switzerland—Switzerland grown warm and comfortable, Switzerland reduced to a minute scale, Switzerland burst into myriad bloom and softened into a new and gentle beauty. The sun lit up the island more clearly as we stepped into the clean, little, canoe-like tug that came to take us ashore.
A long line of ’rickshaws, as impatient as prancing horses, stood at the low, sandy landing-place. Hundreds of quaintly-clad, bright-eyed people, brown-skinned and buff, were moving daintily about the delicate scene.
Over a very serious, but a rather lazy-looking wooden building floated the Stars and Stripes, and the Union-Jack-adorned British Consulate looked as eminently respectable and as unpicturesque as did the official residence of the American Consul.
Our family divided into three parties when we were well ashore. I was the only adult wicked enough to ride behind a “human horse.” My husband went to call at the Consulates, and to inspect the theatre, at which we intended to play on our return. And Nurse marched bravely off, leading the boy bairn, and followed by the wee girl bairn, who looked like a great human snowball in the arms of black John the Madrassi.
I made a bargain with a sturdy, cheerful-looking jinrickshaw coolie, who spoke good English and better French, and he started off into the heart of bright, busy Nagasaki.
That coolie was a genius. And, unlike many genii, he had not mistaken his avocation. He was a capital cicerone. He rang, or rather ran, the changes on the Nagasaki sights in the deftest and most admirable way. From the choicest shops to the queerest temple, from beside the jolliest little vine-hung stream into the densest coolie quarter, for seven hours he directed my travels in a masterly manner. And just when the captain (so he afterwards told me) was almost beginning to use inelegant English, the clever little native whirled me down to the shore, bowed me into a tug, clapped his hands, laughed, and cried, “Sayonara.”