Know a nation’s great men and you know the nation, says the spirit of biography. Marquis Ito is to Japan what Count Tolstoi is to Russia, with this difference: Ito is in power, Tolstoi all but exiled. You may say that one is a statesman, the other a writer, and that hence they are not comparable. Yet, each stands before the world as the most significant intellectual figure among his people.
There are other differences between the two. Ito is silent, Tolstoi has a clarion voice; Ito is omnipotent, Tolstoi powerless; Ito has no ostensible followers, Tolstoi counts his by the tens of thousands. Again you will say this is the difference not between men, but between statesman and prophet. Granted. But a curious fact lessens the force of that truth. Ito and Tolstoi are working for the same ends. Both seek the enfranchisement of men. The true difference between them is this: Ito sinks his personality in the cause he champions, satisfying Tolstoi’s own definition of the great man as being one too great to tell of his own goodness, while Tolstoi stalks his stalwart way to the limelight and focuses upon himself the attention of an age.
Hundreds have written of Marquis Ito, and the only reason for writing of him again is that he may thus be seen in some new light. He is not the only interesting man in Japan, nor the only great one, but he is certainly a dominating figure which fills the horizon with a mighty presence. He is not popular. The papers make only formal announcements of his movements. He passes to and from his country residence and the Imperial Palace without escort or demonstrations. He has no official position, Katsura being the prime minister, except the titular one of President of the Privy Council, which carries with it neither stated duties nor salary. He may be easily approached and is seen by all who have the desire. He is as free from pose as it is possible for man to be. He doesn’t chop trees like Gladstone or pet great danes like Bismarck or walk in melancholy solitude like Disraeli. As a picturesque personality he is disappointing. He is more like Ben Harrison leaving the White House to practice law in Indianapolis; or, imagine Abraham Lincoln surviving the war and settled quietly in a side street in Washington and you will have Marquis Ito as he is to-day. Only add to that the absolute confidence of an all-powerful emperor and the support of all politicians, even those of life-long enmity.
Yet, in spite of seclusion, in spite of a simplicity possible only to men of the very first rank, Ito charms and holds attention. One finds traces of him, hears accounts of him, feels his pervading influence everywhere. When I told of riding in the second-class coach with him from Yokohama to Tokyo the day of the imperial garden party, I did not tell of the talk I had with him after he had given up his seat to the abashed countryman and had taken one next to mine. After a minute and when I saw that he was not occupied I had the temerity to say:
“Your Excellency, I am an American, and as I see you are unoccupied would be glad if you might say a few words that I could repeat to my countrymen.” The never-to-be-forgotten way in which he turned to me replying, “Certainly,” was at once benign and shrewd. There was something of the fatherly old priest about him. Yet through his naïve simplicity there shone a canny alertness such as critics say the French landscapist, Corot, preserved in all his idealist vagaries.
The way in which the old statesman interviewed me was masterly, yet as gracious and lovable as any of the compelling things produced by any of the artists of these forty million. I had before then been sent on newspaper embassies to famous interviewers of the west. Of these J. Pierpont Morgan is of the roughest squeeze, ripping the marrow from a scribe with one smash of his lion paw. Elihu Root glances through one like a rapier, gashing incisive questions into the very pith of the attempt. But you leave such knights of power and purpose dismayed and disheartened. You have been baffled and beaten, the door slammed in your face; you have been caught up by a strong wind and flung blindly to the ground. You need not cry. It is only the wing of destiny clipping a wee mortal as it hurls skyward in its flight.
Not so with Ito. He is all gauzy silk over his shimmering steel. I left him satisfied, enthusiastic about his priceless simplicity, jubilant over his grave dexterity, worshipful at his fatherly equality. Surely, he was a great man worthy of the name.
What had he told me? Nothing.
What had I told him? Everything.
Do not laugh, thinking mine the joy of one self-pleased at his own prattle. No. It was sheer delight in the knowing of one who towers above the greatest without conscious effort, and who reaches to the lowest without condescension. When I shook hands with him I felt that I had known him all my life. When I saw him into his carriage ten minutes later I felt that I should call him brother through all the lives that Buddha promises.