It is quite a good thing the snow put the party off, for it is the funeral day of the young Prince Arusigawa, and also we were not nearly ready with the cutting-machine—the automatic carborundum apparatus is still far from complete.
April 11.—I removed from Yakuojimaimachi to my own little house. After there was the bother of them having sold it while I was away, there was so much talk and bother about rent, cleaning, papering, and everything, that I got cross and said I would move on the 11th, as I originally said I would, and when I was in the house I would discuss all these points! That soon settled matters; my goods were put on two man-carts with great care by the entire family, and plants and all were safely brought to my little Azabu house. I began to pack this morning at 8.30, and was ready for the carts at 10.30! That is the outcome of the Japanese feruské (a square ornamental cloth in which goods are tied), it is so easy to tie up quilts, cushions, and looking-glasses all together in one huge coloured pocket-handkerchief. The placing of my few goods on the little carts took till 12.30, but they were in Azabu, unpacked and paid, by 2.30. Some things are cheap in Japan. Fortunately it was a lovely bright day, so nothing got wet.
I found the house being cleaned by my bright little maid, whose name is O Fuji-san, and who seems to like to have me for a mistress and to live next to the P——s, whose cook is her great friend, and trained her. She is rather a better-class girl than most servants, and was early left an orphan, and her guardian is glad for her to be with people who will look after her. She is quite pretty, and unusually bright and intelligent-looking. I expect it will seem to you a preposterous thing to do, to take a house and go in for “furnishing” and all the worries and expense of a household. But in Japan it is very different from in England—the houses need practically no furniture, the huge cupboards in every room hold all one’s goods, and so wardrobes, etc. etc. are superfluous (and, besides, they utterly ruin the look of a Japanese room), while the soft tatami (special thick mats in every house) serve as carpets, bedstead, and mattress, and all one needs is a thick quilt to lie on, another to cover one, with a couple of sheets and a pillow. I have the few chairs and the table and cabinet I had for the last house, and with a lovely brilliant blue cloisonné vase on an ebony stand, a dwarf pine tree, and a bunch of white cherry flowers in the tokonomo, my room looks an aesthetic dream, with its cream walls, cream floors, and wooden trellis-work with white paper windows. If I could but carry it as it is to London! Yet here people prefer Brussels carpets and rooms packed with knick-knacks. They are living in the realisation of the dream of our aesthetes and “simple livers,” and they prefer the things we are trying to escape. I speak of the foreigners, but even the richer Japanese are casting aside the exquisite refinement, the studied and cultured beauty of simplicity, to add a mêlée of “foreign” additions and “luxuries” to their rooms. The soothing harmonies of form and tone are broken, and there is a strife of shrieking colour, of glaring inharmonies.
April 12.—I gave my little maid carte blanche to buy the essentials for her kitchen. One stove, costing 5s., I had already arranged for, the rest she had to buy. At the end of the day she came with all the items written down in a bill 3 yards long. I went in fear and trembling to inspect it and the purchases, and was greatly relieved to find the sum total under ten shillings. Many of the items were deliciously amusing; for instance, 1 sen 5 rin (a sum equal to a farthing plus half a farthing) attracted my attention. It was a fan to fan the charcoal when it refused to burn. For one farthing she got a splendid lamp cleaner, for 8d. a lamp with white glass shade, while ¾d. more provided the chain to hang it up by. The second stove cost 5½d. and burns splendidly; it is made of red earthenware, and has a little door that opens and shuts. These items will make you think that I am either making game of you or of myself, but seriously, I set no limit to the girl’s purchases, and she has got the usual things an unsophisticated Japanese uses in her kitchen. Of course, I have a few things, and bought some expensive items like enamel saucepans and frying-pans—but I think this little house has not cost me £3 to fit up, and, as I said before, to fit up comfortably, and with a distinct beauty. I only hope the housekeeping will run as smoothly as it promises to do, and the house prove as convenient to live in as it is pretty to look at.
April 13.—The way that maid manages a four-course dinner, with three saucepans and half a dozen bits of charcoal in the fivepenny stove, is nothing short of miraculous—everything was very well cooked too. I wasted about an hour over the house this morning, but got off to the Institute after that. It is rather farther to go now, and takes some time even with the tram, but one can’t get everything one wants, and were I near the Institute, I should be so far from all the foreigners as to be quite isolated, and that, I find, in this climate, is not very healthy.
April 14.—The cherry trees are now wonderfully beautiful; contrary to the croakings of the pessimists, the snow has not ruined them, and the trees are covered with bloom. They say they are bleached, and certainly the pink is so delicate as to be entirely elusive when one looks at an individual bloom. I went to the renowned Oyeno Park, where groves of trees are laden with bloom. It was a little late, and some of the petals were falling, so that there seemed to be a whirling snowstorm of flakes that gleamed pearly white in the sunshine. The ground was covered, and all the pools of water left by the recent snows were thickly fringed with white. Tokio is everywhere a fairy-land of beauty, for cherry trees by the hundred are blooming in it. One has the impression of being in the midst of clouds that float between the branches of the pine trees, and rest over grey roofed cottages. The strip of soil in front of the Embassy is covered with a treble avenue of flowering trees, and the paths are petal-strewn between the brilliant green grass patches. The difference in the grass in the last two weeks is very noticeable—from a brown patchy covering over bare earth it has become a thick emerald cloak.
April 15.—My little maid’s guardian came to see me and to thank me for taking care of her. As a matter of fact it is she who is taking care of me; I couldn’t have imagined a house run more smoothly. The guardian is a nice man, good-looking, though middle-aged, and able to speak German, so we got on all right. He brought me some pots of pretty flowers, and some pansies with scent which are treasures, as the lovely pansies here are scentless. It is a very curious point, how well English flowers grow here, getting lovely large blooms, but one and all losing their scent. It makes one quite sad when great luscious roses, pansies, and even mignonette, are scentless—they seem to have lost their souls.
April 19.—I spent the morning gardening; in my little garden nothing much is growing yet, the last people were very careless. I have dug and planted, the chief thing I planted being stones. I have learnt their value in a garden, and I also go out with a watering-can and water my poor little stones. Alas, all the really beautiful ones were too expensive to buy. I went in to lunch with the P——s, because they were having ice-cream, and afterwards went to tea with old Mr. G—— (father of the Mr. G—— I mentioned at the Takashima coal mines, near Nagasaki). His house is surrounded by an extremely lovely garden, with masses of flowers, and a view right across to Fujis. While we were standing on the lawn a lady visitor turned down her glove and rubbed some bites on her arm. Mr. G—— bent over her, and with an air of courteous solicitude, said, “That is not one of my fleas, I hope.” No one seemed to think the remark in any way curious till I said I wished I had a snapshot of that to send to Punch.
April 22.—Cutting fossils till 3.30, and then I went to Professor M——, and then on to the S——s to pay my party call. Professor S—— was out, but Mrs. S—— at home, and as nice and talkative as could be expected in Japanese, when the concrete bounds the realm of my speech. When I got home I found Professor S—— had just been to see me! and we had each travelled 6 miles to visit each other, and crossed. I was very sorry. He had brought some butter, made by the agricultural students, hoping I should like it. I had once mentioned how difficult it was to get butter fit to eat in Tokio.
To-day I saw the first bewitchingly pretty child I have seen in this country—with great round black eyes, with a look of heaven in them. She was dressed in a scarlet flowered kimono that showed the outlines of her little limbs, and her hair was tied with scarlet ribbon in a little tuft at either side. She was dancing along with a parasol held high over her head, but she would not even smile at me, and I would gladly have taken her in my arms and kissed her, she looked so perfectly in tune with the dancing cherry clusters and the blue heavens.