When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

When I had to go she gave me a silver pipe she had bought for me. It was in a satin case, and the case matched a pouch which was filled with Japanese tobacco. A little white box held the whole. I made her write her name upon it, and mine. We often handle it, and speak of her and her husband, and I set great store by the excellent photographs she gave me of her two babies.

CHAPTER XXIII

FOUR WOMEN THAT I KNEW IN TOKIO

The Countess Oyama[^[1]] and Mrs. Uriu

Stamatz Yamakawa was born very near the top of the Japanese social ladder. Shige Nagai came into the world a few rungs lower down.

Assimilation is the forte of the Japanese. They create nothing, but they improve everything they touch. Japan was once conquered by China. The Japanese retaliated by completely mastering every detail of Chinese art, and developing from it a Japanese art system, superior to anything the Chinese artists have ever been able to accomplish. Japan successfully invaded Korea. From the spoils of that war (and they were many) Japan learned to still more enrich her arts.

When Stamatz and Shige were babies, Japan had turned covetous eyes upon Europe and the United States. Not upon the territories of these countries, but upon their modes of life, their social customs, their thought-methods even. The Japanese are complacently conscious of having the most beautiful country upon earth, and they, the wisest of them at least, quite understand that they would cut a sorry figure in battle with a great Western Power. Japan never sought to conquer Western acres; but Japan longed to acquire everything that was good in Western thought and in Western methods of life. Things European became highly fashionable in Japan,—the fashion grew and grew. In ten years it was a rage. The Japanese Government encouraged boys and young men to visit Europe and America, and to there take University degrees as far as possible. The Japanese Government did more; they sent eight or ten (I think it was eight) girls to America to be educated. All of these girls were of gentle birth; several were noble. The youngest was seven years old, the eldest was twelve. The Japanese Minister at Washington, to whom they were sent in the first instance, was instructed to divide the little band into twos, and to place each pair into separate American homes,—of course, only in the homes of men and women of exceptional culture. Stamatz and Shige were received into the home of Dr. J. S. C. Abbott, the historian. He was a man of fine attainments, and the newcomers were initiated into a simple home-life of great refinement. Five and a half of the ten years they spent in America were spent in that New England home. They met there a considerable contingent of eminent Americans. Their home-sickness was mitigated by frequent visits from the Japanese students at Harvard. They saw the purest American form of good behaviour. They learned American literature with the rare advantage, or disadvantage, of intimacy with many of the men who were making American literature. They studied English literature under a man who reverenced it. They made delightful trips through the adjacent parts of America with the best companionship. After five years and a half they entered Vassar College at Poughkeepsie-on-the-Hudson. Stamatz Yamakawa entered the freshman class of 1882 with a high average. Shige Nagai was less capacitated to benefit by the prescribed College course than by a more elective system of education. She became an “Art Student,” and devoted herself to music. She was obliged by the College regulations to pursue the lighter of the studies embraced in the ordinary College curriculum.

DANJERO IN HIS FAVOURITE RÔLE. DANJERO IN EUROPEAN COSTUME. DANJERO AS I KNEW HIM. P. 253.