One, something like the sketch, was very effective, the funny little brush of hair coming straight out at either side being its speciality. Several of the Englishmen came as Japanese pirates, etc., with great wigs of long hair, rich gold-embroidered robes and swords; the girls were not remarkable. After dinner we all went along to the German Embassy, and met there the parties from all the other Embassies. The scene in the reception-rooms and in the beautiful white ball-room was vivid and gorgeous beyond my power to describe. Whom to describe, when nearly all were beautiful or striking, and nearly all of the important folk in Tokio were present? Count H—— (the foreign minister) was in old daimio dress, with two swords and rich brocade—and one could not imagine how he ever came to wear anything else! The evening was one to remember, with its brilliance and beauty and courtliness.
March 26.—Yesterday morning at breakfast I had imagined I would remain in my present house as long as I was in Japan. This morning by ten o’clock I had taken a house and garden of my own and engaged a maid!
Apparently, one can do things quickly sometimes in Japan, though it is usually a terrible business to get a house. Of course, I haven’t yet moved in, and “there is many a slip,” etc.
The house is tiny, but is said to have five rooms—the paper walls between these can be taken out at will to make two, or even one room. There are lots of cupboards, for in this, as in all true Japanese houses, the solid walls are all lined with great cupboards, a yard deep and reaching from floor to ceiling. The rent of the house with its garden is about 7s. a week! Less than I have been paying for my two rooms.
The joy of these houses is that one needs almost no furniture, they are provided with the soft, thick straw mats (tatami), and these serve as carpets if one likes. I infinitely prefer their delicate straw colour and black borders, which harmonise with the cream walls and unpainted woodwork, to the clashing carpets most people have. Then fireplaces being absent, overmantels, fenders, coal-scuttles and fire-irons are all represented by a little china bowl of ashes, manipulated with metal chop-sticks. Beds, though introduced by many foreigners into such houses, I dispense with, and use the native mattresses on the mats, so that they are folded away in the big cupboards by day and the room is used for what one will. Wardrobes are also needless incumbrances, the wall cupboards serving excellently—wash-stands are but eyesores, as the little bath-rooms are so arranged that one can splash at will and the water all runs away from the sloping floor. So I am a householder, and prepared to lead the simple life.
Providence must have arranged it all, for the cook next door (that is at Mrs. P——’s, I forgot to state) has a protégée who wants an easy place in a foreigner’s house, and doesn’t care so much for money, as she is timid and wants experience before going to a big house—but she can bake bread and Scotch scones and cakes! I pay her 18s. a month and give her no food at all! She even brings her own saucepans and mattresses! Well, it all looks too good to be true, and until I have moved in I had better say no more about my own little house.
I went back to my present abode, for it was my At Home day, and I entertained some Japanese, who were charmed with Arthur Rackham’s illustrations of Rip Van Winkle, and thought they showed something of the spirit of Japanese art, which I think is true.
I flew down to the station for Yokohama, and dined there with Mrs. L——, and dressed in a fancy dress costume and set out with her and her daughter to a mi-carême ball. I enjoyed the dance hugely.
March 27.—Rushed up to Tokio in the morning; to the University for lunch, where I had a long talk with the Dean. The Mitsui family (the Japanese Rothschilds) gave the money for the fossil laboratory and part of the apparatus, and the Dean proposes (now that everything is practically finished in the making of the arrangements) to give a tea-party in the Botanic Gardens to show the building apparatus and slides (I have cut 221 so far), as well as the new herbarium buildings. As I have often remarked, he is very English in his tastes and culture, and he planned to give what would be usual in England—tea and coffee and cakes. But when I saw him yesterday, how he had fallen! Nothing less than meats and wines and jellies would satisfy him. It was not his own wish, but he had been driven into it by the strength of the custom in Japan, which demands that if you have guests at all (even at 3 or 4 in the afternoon) you must give them a meat feed, and that they must eat like greedy schoolboys. Whence comes it? This mad ostentatious display, and the guzzling, which is so foreign to their real culture. A mutation derived from crossing such distinct cultures as those of Japan and Europe, not even a hybrid with the characters of one of the parents. Well, I laughed at Professor S——, for he said he hated the custom and had hoped to set the fashion for simplicity in this party of his, but that he was really afraid to do so; he would be the laughing-stock of the Japanese if he only gave tea, coffee, and chocolate, ice-cream, cakes and sandwiches from 3 to 6 o’clock! I asked him where the spirit of his Samurai ancestors lay sleeping—asked him who could set the fashion for reasonable entertainments if not himself, in his exalted position of Dean of the University—and got him to swear to me that he would be a pioneer, that he would be brave and face the ordeal of being the laughing-stock of the Japanese. I wonder how it will go.
This unwritten law, which demands such a lavish hospitality if any is given, is, I see, one of the chief causes that there is so little social life, in our sense of the thing, among the Japanese. It is a real strain on their purse and their time, and they naturally ask guests seldom when they give so much trouble.