The weather is lovely, and one could not imagine it was really November, but for the swiftly waning light. The roads riding home are terribly dark, but fortunately fewer children play in them at night than by day.
November 8.—I rode over to Shingawa to lunch with the D——s (he is Naval Attaché). They haven’t been in the house long, but they had brought out with them treasures given to their parents years ago, and so have many gems of Japanese carving and porcelain. The house is pretty within, and it was nice to meet some one who had recently come from home.
Afterwards I rode over to Hongo—an awful way across the country and city, to dinner with Professor S——, his wife and family. He had his lovely dream of a garden lit by a brilliant full moon, and the translucent stone lanterns among the trees. Roses grew on the trees, huge dainty ones, and sweet-scented rose-hearted buds. It was a vision of perfect beauty to be remembered. Afterwards he and his brother, who is an excellent singer, sang me some Nō songs, and everything was so harmonious, so lovely, so simply dignified.
November 9.—At work on fossils all day after my lecture, which was the last. Professor S—— spoke and “made me blush,”—his English is simply wonderful, I know few Englishmen who speak better,—the substance of what he said for me was more than kind, though I must deduct something from him, as from all Japanese, for, whatever faults they may have, they really are polite to people they know.
November 11.—Fossils all day. In the evening the great event—my farewell dinner from the University, given at the famous Maple Club. A farewell dinner, and they all know quite well that I do not sail till January! The reason it is given now is partly to thank me for the lectures and partly because of the weather! As the entertainment is to be true Japanese style, in a Japanese house, it is deemed necessary to have it before it becomes really cold.
I have looked forward very much to this party, for it is quite one of the treats of Tokio to be entertained at the Maple Club. My hosts were, of course, all Japanese, the University Professors, among them were a few Japanese ladies, one of whom I knew pretty well, the daughter of Baron H——. I was the only foreigner.
The rooms are splendidly large, about 100 mats when all opened out. It took me quite a long time to count up the mats, for I am rather stupid at it. In an ordinary room one can estimate immediately whether it is an 8 or 10 mat room, by the way they are placed, and without any counting. We were seated all round the edge of the end room, I in front of the tokonomo, as the chief guest. It left a large space in the middle to start with, but very soon the maids began to bring dishes of things to eat, and every guest had the same placed before him on the ground; as dish after dish was placed in front of us all, each in the same relative position before every guest, there grew up a symmetrical border pattern all round the room, which slowly encroached on the centre.
It made all moving about very difficult, really impossible for one with skirts, which most of us had, as a number of the men came in hakama (stiff silk divided skirts worn by men when dressed for ceremony). Moving about would not have been at all out of place, as the feeding was very intermittent, and it was only towards the very end of the evening that they brought the rice. While we were eating, a kind of superior geisha danced; three girls dressed in ancient-time costumes performed an old well-known dance supposed to bring good luck. Afterwards they brought in a red-arched bridge and some flowers, and did the butterfly dance—two red-and-white and two white, in such lovely embroidered dresses with butterfly wings on their backs, which they opened and shut. The whole effect was charmingly pretty. They said they were the same girls who waited on us earlier, but I did not recognise them. All the rooms and dishes and lacquer were ornamented with maple leaves, and they brought sweet cakes in the form of coloured maple leaves, which we ate before dinner and through the evening.
Professor S—— made a speech which really made me blush. He, in the goodness of his heart, may have meant what he said, but I can’t believe it voiced the views of any of the others. Then they all banzaied, and drank my health. Of course, I had to make a reply speech—after one of the men who had come to the lectures thanked me,—and read a poem he had made about me—it is a thousand times harder to make an “after-dinner-return-thanks” speech than a long scientific lecture. I did it somehow. Later, I proposed the health of the future of Japan, amid hearty banzais—but always feel a miserable failure at such things.