Then we adjourned to the sitting-room, where the musician brought out two antique Chinese objects, one bearing resemblance to a flute and the other to a violin with shaggy, semicircular bow. On these he produced, not without effort, very weird sounds, which I was obliged to eulogise as being entirely novel and remarkable, for I could not compare them with any melodies familiar to European ears. I believe the others shared my relief when a painting competition was suggested, for they could all handle a brush as easily as I a pen, and the eye is less fastidious than the ear. The first bout was in three colours, sepia, Indian black, and red, though the last was sparingly used. The designs were rapidly and lightly touched in—a hawk pouncing on a goose; a carp swimming against the stream; a frog climbing up a reed; and a terrified child, with shaven pate, running away from a temple-dancer, masked by a lion’s head. Next a batch of fans was distributed to the competitors, who speedily adorned them with fanciful arabesques, in which curled clouds played hide-and-seek with Fuji, or moonlit pines peeped out from drifted snow. We drew lots for these souvenirs of playful skill, and to me fell the picture of the child flying from the lion-mask. But at this point Mr. Nomura’s own children, two charming little girls, brought us in presents of flowers and cakes wrapped in silver paper. The rickshaws were at the door; sayonara rang cordially in our ears; one of the pleasantest calls I ever made came to an end.
Curiosity prompted me to attend the service held by native Christians in an abandoned Shintō temple perverted to evangelical use. Most of the congregation belonged to the more credulous sex. Mothers, carrying their babies on their backs, sat in rows on mats, while one or two chairs were placed for foreign visitors. All joined heartily in the hymns and listened attentively to the simple prayers. Sometimes a shōji, or sliding shutter, was gently pushed aside, and an inquisitive face peered in on the worshippers. The missionary, a man of athletic frame, with the cold, fixed eyes of a fanatic, preached with fervour on the subject of original sin. He held the doctrine that perfection was to be realised on earth, and believed that he had personally attained it. From all accounts he was a hard-working idealist, who spared no pains to make converts, but his ascetic views must seem violently out of harmony with the Shintōist easy-going faith, which has for moral code the single maxim, “Follow your impulses and obey the Emperor.” Although not subjected to persecution, a native Christian hardly ever remains in his birthplace. The Matsuë converts whom we met had come from Hiroshima, Ōsaka, and other spots. Some estimate of the progress of Western religion among Matsuë merchants may be based on the proportion of believers in the middle school, to which all the boys of the better classes are sent. Out of about five hundred boys and sixty masters, two boys and one master profess Christianity.
Etiquette is luckily assimilated to foreign custom among Japanese Christians. When Judge Nomura returned my call, he was accompanied by his wife and little girls, who were delighted with some dolls and picture-books which I had purchased for them in London. At first O Ai San and O Dai San, diminutive damsels aged four and five respectively, sat solemnly in a corner burning fireworks—hana-bi, as they are called—with tied tongues and eyes fixed on the spluttering flowers of flame. But gradually they thawed, and losing all their shyness, played battledore and shuttlecock, blindman’s buff, and other games. When the babies had gone home with their nurse, the judge and his wife remained to dinner, and a lay preacher, who spoke English perfectly, proved an invaluable medium of conversation. As my guests expressed a desire to conclude the evening with hymns, we sang a great many, from which they derived spiritual pleasure, while my knowledge of their language was much enlarged. The lay-preacher had always two or three hymn-books in his pocket, English and Japanese versions being printed on opposite pages. Suddenly this pious exercise was rudely interrupted. A tipsy geisha, holding a saké-cup in her hand, staggered into the room and addressed some bacchanalian words to the lay preacher, who chanced to be near the door. She had escaped from a rather noisy wedding-party, which was feasting and clapping hands in the room below, while the bridal couple had retired and the shimadai, an emblematic group of pine and bamboo, crane and tortoise, remained for a symbolic centre of festal joy. We took this intrusion for a hint to separate, and it certainly jarred on a devotional mood. To my friends this apparition must have suggested the “scarlet woman,” whose cup is full of abominations, but I could not regard it in any other light than the opportune assertion of la joie de vivre, protesting against the gloomy gospel of Puritan restraint.
III
And yet the joy of living, dissociated from any principle but that of self-indulgence, is apt to produce strange types of Anglo-Saxon degeneracy. Dr. Silenus, whose hospitality and frankness are a byword in Azabu, would seem to have fallen victim to that fatal fascination which Mr. Kipling ascribes to the lands “East of Suez, where the best is like the worst; Where there ain’t no ten commandments, an’ a man can raise a thirst.” Thirst was never absent, and the decalogue rigidly banished from the epicurean establishment, which I take leave to describe as a warning and a comfort to the “unco’ guid.”
Sunday afternoon was regularly set apart for pagan revels, to which the whole neighbourhood was admitted, for the large-hearted Doctor loved to see his house full of friends and acquaintances. When you had skirted the moat which encircles the imperial palace, and climbed the steep daimachi, you hailed with relief a row of houses, mostly inhabited by Europeans and surrounded by similar high fencing. But, the gate once passed, all similarity between Liberty Hall and its respectable neighbours ceased. In no other courtyard would you be greeted by the sight of a hawk, an owl, a goat, and several monkeys dwelling together in unity. Lucullus, the goat, was an epicurean like his master, but less eclectic, for his diet included wood and iron and stones, nails and lighted cigars and boxes of matches. Indeed, he might still be living, a triumph of desire over digestion, had he not one day tried a dose of refined camphor, which brought death and a costly Shintō funeral.
Having penetrated the bodyguard of animals, you would enter a large room, adorned with fine bronzes and screens, which you had not leisure to examine, for so many unusual sights claimed attention. At the back would be masked dancers or musicians, rather cramped for space by reason of the motley, semicircular crowd of men, women, and children, who filled the foreground as far as a row of chairs set in the verandah for barbarian friends. Dominating all sat the master of the revels, his huge torso bare to the waist and profusely tattooed with elegant designs. As he passed the whisky to the “parasites” (for so he was accustomed to call the band of adherents who made his house their own), the genial, rotund Doctor looked the very incarnation of Ebisu or Silenus.
