When We Were Strolling Players in the East

by Louise Jordan Miln

In one way my fellow-Occidentals were a great trial to me in the Orient. Their ungainly presence was always blotching some otherwise flawless picture of Eastern life. But in Tokio one so rarely saw a European that one forgot to resent it when one did, and indeed welcomed it as one more unique detail of an enchantingly novel whole.

I believe that Madame Sannomiya stands alone—the one European woman, of high character, high intellect, and charming personality, who has become a naturalised and potential individual at an Eastern Court.[^[2]] I have seen, at the courts of native princes in India, European women who, to speak mildly, would never be received at the Court of St. James’s, and who would be painfully embarrassed if they were. But this European woman is very different. She is the respected wife of an eminent man. Her position is even very unlike that of the wife of a foreign minister, who is tolerated by diplomatic policy or welcomed by international courtesy. She is one of the Japanese. They like and honour her. She likes, and is certainly happy with them.

Yoshitane Sannomiya was the handsomest Japanese man I ever saw, and by far the manliest-looking. My husband, who had much talk with Mr. Sannomiya, found him the superior of his countrymen in general information, in mental grasp, and in his command of English.

A card of his lies before me as I write. Beneath his name is engraved: “Vice Grand Maître des Cérémonies, et Maître de la Cour de S. M. l’Impératrice.”

He was a first favourite of both Emperor and Empress, and I often heard his wife spoken of as the most influential person at the Court. The statement seems extreme; but when I came to see and know Madame Sannomiya, I grew to regard the expression as very conceivably exact.

Speaking broadly, the Japanese never do anything. They indicate everything. Madame Sannomiya indicated nothing. She did everything. The Japanese have two gifts pre-eminently: the gift of grace and the gift of touch. Their national gift of touch amounts to national genius. Upon a common piece of paper, with a blunt pencil, a Japanese artist (and almost all Japanese are artists) makes four or five strokes. When he takes away his hand you see a picture; not a thoroughly elaborated picture, but a picture in which every detail is indicated with inspired fidelity. He draws three petals—but draws them so that you see the whole flower. Yes, and you can smell it too, if your soul is half as artistic as his is! Madame Sannomiya was graceful, but hers was the grace of a large woman. Her grace supplemented her dignity. The Japanese admired her dignity; it was novel. It indicated a strange force of character, and it was saved from ever grating upon them, because it was never ungraceful. Madame Sannomiya had, rather than the gift of touch, the gift of grasp. If anything interested or concerned her, she thrust her supple fingers about its roots. But her fingers were white and warm. She was superlatively a gentlewoman; and her friends at Tokio respected her thoroughness and energy of nature, which they never dreamed of imitating.

I first saw Madame Sannomiya in her own house. I went to her to ask her a favour—went without a line of introduction. I wonder if any one ever lived who liked to ask favours? I hate it so much that I have almost never done it. I believe that I can count the times, partly because they have been so few and partly because they have made such a nasty impression on me. There were a number of reasons why this particular favour should be asked of the Empress by me, through Madame Sannomiya. I suppose every woman does her duty once in a lifetime; and I did my duty.

I remember that I felt very uncomfortable as I stepped out of the Imperial Hotel into my ’rickshaw. But put me in a ’rickshaw and whirl me through the streets of Yeddo, and I defy anything, short of keen physical pain or deep personal sorrow, to keep me in discomfort over five minutes. I forgot everything in looking. We may not all paint pictures, but we may all drink them in, if we are blessed with real eyesight.

It was a long ride. I had only been in Tokio a few days, and I drank deep, intoxicating draughts of beauty. We went through streets of native shops; not shops decked out with things affectedly, exaggeratedly, or occasionally Japanese—things grouped to snare the heavy-pursed Europeans—but shops stocked with the everyday necessities of ordinary Japanese life.

There is not, I believe, a European shop in Tokio. Think of it! It is the only place of any considerable size I have ever been in that was entirely destitute of a European shopkeeper.