April 29.—A quiet day’s work, the weather was bright, lovely, out of sheer perversity. My maid gave me some fritters for dinner, of a kind I had not ordered, and when I asked her what they were, she said hassu, that is, the lotus. The sacred flower makes delicious fritters! I daresay if one could capture the rosy-tinted evening clouds they would make good ice-cream.
May 2.—I went to Professor Fw——’s: he was kindly taking me as his guest to an afternoon luncheon-party at the Admiralty gardens. At his house I met an interesting Japanese who spoke excellent English, and who is said to be one of the greatest Japanese musicians. He invented an organ of some sort, and has had a special audience with the Kaiser Wilhelm. We drove to the Admiralty, passing safely the fierce bayoneted sentries, and across a yard hideous with brick buildings and smoky chimneys—through a gate in a high wall, and were—in a deep forest glade, under shade of palm trees and ferns, back in time three hundred years! The gardens were those of a very famous Daimio, and were laid out with the greatest care and at a boundless expense. In them are all the stages of the Tokkaido,—scenes from China, wild mountain views and iris gardens, falls of water and lakes. In fact a series of scenes of wonderful beauty, of peace and suggestion, of dreamland poetry—only the tallest of the cryptomerias and pines were standing as dead skeletons, killed by the smoky chimneys on the other side of the boundary wall. These great gardens are entirely closed, and it is very difficult even to get permission to see them, the authorities of the Admiralty are so afraid of spies.
The special party to-day was to welcome the married daughter of one of the earliest and most useful of the American missionaries, a Dr. Brown, who had had a school in Yokohama, and who had as pupils many men now very distinguished. Among other people I was introduced to a very charming, thoroughly Europeanised, and handsome man—and of course did not catch his name. He walked with me a little while through the gardens, and we talked of the beauty of Tokio and the destruction of that beauty by “reformations” some years ago, before the Japanese had learned to appreciate native art as well as they do now (though much of the same sort goes on to-day), and I quoted one of the specially terrible places, the hideous red-brick Exhibition-like buildings (Government buildings) that ruin the view of the grey moat with green banks and trees and old white and grey buildings round the palace, one of the most lovely sights any city in the world can show. I exclaimed against the vandalism, the criminal folly of the architect, whom I surmised was some second-rate foreigner. “Yes,” my companion answered, “it is bad. I was the Chairman of the Building Committee at that time, but I suppose the architect was morally responsible.”
You may imagine my feelings. I knew, of course, by the look of the man he was some one of importance, but how could I guess who he was? I am not sorry, however, that he heard it.
A further surprise awaited me; he made the speech of the evening, and turns out to have been Dr. Brown’s youngest and most promising pupil, and to-day to be the world-known Ambassador Tsuzuki, representative at the last Hague Conference! He said good-bye very graciously—his laurels don’t rest on the beauty of those buildings, and I had not touched him on a vital point after all.
May 3.—I really had to make up my mind once for all to learn to get on a bicycle by myself without the aid of a devoted male friend. Hitherto I have always ridden with people who put me on—here I am alone. I bought a bicycle from the missionaries, which had been discarded by one of their number. But after being at the bicycle shop for a little it seems in good order, for it was an excellent frame, and now I determined to ride, as Tokio’s distances waste so many hours a day that I can stand it no longer. After a few hours’ steady determination, I find I can get on very well without the male friend. But those of you who read this and have played that part, don’t think I could have got on without you at the time.
About midday I decided to go and see the renowned Azalea gardens at the village of Okabu, some few miles off, and so I took my maid as a treat for both of us (she never having seen the flowers), and shut up the house. There is no lock or key, and any thief had only to slide a paper screen and slip in, but we told the cook next door to keep a weather eye open, and set off gaily in the sunshine.
Along the main street of Okabu are a dozen nursery gardens, all filled with azaleas, and so laid open that you can walk round and see everything, and buy what you please, but not unless you please. Even when you want to buy it is rather difficult to find any one who will sell to you. When you do, he will just seize the flowering bush and pull it up, shake the mud off the roots, wrap them in paper and tie a big loop of string to it; you carry it home, stick it anywhere in your garden, and it goes on as though it had never moved an inch. The sunshine and rain make things grow so easily here, it certainly doesn’t depend on any special “skill of the Japanese” in this case, for I myself stuffed the azaleas into my garden and saw the man pull them up like weeds.
In one garden there was an entry fee—of three farthings. Here the whole garden was filled with plants all one height (about 3 feet), and all flat on the top, and all covered with flowers—a crimson sea. Generally speaking, though, the flowers individually were far less beautiful in colour, and smaller in size than our azaleas, the interest and special charm lay in the masses of them, and the number of gardens one after the other that cultivated them.
There were crowds of people in their best clothes, and stalls on the road selling sweets, and the inevitable hair ribbons of brilliant colour; with here and there a gold-fish dealer or a seedsman.