"'Kara-ko, kara-ko, kara-ko!'" The notes she gave were the notes I had heard on the stone platforms of every station between Tokio and Yokohama, and going straightway to the piano I found those notes to be F and D in the scale of F Minor. Let the laugh proceed. The Happy Exile possibly might say that those notes were the prominent ones in some old national song, and that the geta-makers had been unconsciously reproducing them ever since.
It was raining. Alack and alas! the Little Maid carried an American umbrella-impious trail of the Saxon! while the Other Man and I bore picturesque Japanese ones that would have given the crowning touch to her, but looked simply ridiculous over us. Thus we went to meet the exquisite courtesy and genuine kindness of a real Japanese home.
Two kotos were played for us, while the players sang "Wind Among the Pines," and the tale of the fairies who fell in love with the fisherman.
"Do you like Japanese music?" said the Little Maid to the Other Man.
"Yes," he said promptly, lying like a gentleman.
"Don't you think it is rather monotonous?" she asked.
"Well-um-um. Don't you like Japanese music?" he said, taking refuge.
"Well," she said, "I like your music better, I think. It is more lively and has more variety."
Then we had tea, and after tea of the kind usually served in Japan, the husband, a fierce Samurai in the pictures he showed us, but now a genial, broad-smiling doctor of the old Japanese school, insisted that we should take bowls of powdered tea which he prepared with his own hands. In the drinking of this the Little Maid instructed us. We were to take the bowl, the left hand underneath, the fingers of the right hand clasped about it, lift it to the forehead, a movement of unspoken thanks, and very gently, so as not to suggest that the tea needed to be dissolved, were to roll the tea around in the bowl three times and then take one drink-making much noise, meanwhile, with the lips to show how much we enjoyed it.
"That is very vulgar in your country," interrupted the Little Maid, "is it not so?"
"Well," I said, "lots of people do it, but not for the reason of courtesy."
We were to roll it around three times more, and then drink again; three times more, and a third drink, leaving this time but a little, which, without being rolled around again, was to be drunk at a swallow-three drinks and one swallow to the bowl. O-kin-san says that this last swallow should be only the foam, which must be drunk to show that the tea is so good that the guest must have even the foam; and that not until then does the noise of appreciation come, and then only because the foam cannot be drunk without noise. It was well. We exchanged autographs and cards. With the kind permission of the Little Maid's aunt we took pictures of the interior, and then with much bowing and many "sayonaras" we passed out under the cherry trees.
"We say 'Good-morning,'" said the Little Maid, explaining the courtesies of Japanese greeting and good-by, "and we bow; and we say 'It is a long while since I have seen you,' or 'It is a fine day,' and we bow again. At the end of each sentence you must bow, and it is the same when you say good-by."
Before I learned that the Mikado had sent a general edict through the land that all foreigners in Japan were to be treated with particular consideration while this war is going on-thus making it safer for the tourist now in this country than it ever has been or will be, perhaps, for a long time-I had been greatly impressed by the absence of all signs of disorder, street quarrels, loud talking, and by the fact that in Tokio, one of the largest cities in the world, one could go about day or night in perfect safety. I told this to the Maid of Miyanoshita.
"So desuka," she said without surprise, and that means "Indeed." And when she said later that there were many Japanese novelists, but they did not write love stories, I was reminded further that I had seen no man in Japan turn his head to look at a woman who had passed him-no exchange of glances, no street gallantry at all.
"The song of the 'Goo-goo Eyes,'" I said, "would never have been written in Japan."
"What iss 'Goo-goo Eyes'?" said the Little Maid, mystified.
Then had I trouble-but I must have made it clear at last.
"Perhaps the Japanese girl does not want to be seen-looking."
"Oh, you mean that she may look, but the foreigner doesn't see it?"
"Well, we are all human. That is very frank, is it not?"
It was frank-very frank-and of an innocence not to be misunderstood save by a fool. Then I got a degree.
"But I am always frank with you, for if you are what you say 'guilty,' I think you must understand. I call you to myself a Doctor of Humanity."
Wallah, but the life is hard!
By and by this remarkable Little Maid went on:
"The Japanese may be what you call in love, but they must not tell it-must not even show it."
"Not even the men?"
"No, not even the men. Is it not so in your country?"
I laughed.
"No, it is not so in my country." I found myself suddenly imitating her own slow speech. "That's the first thing the man in my country does. Sometimes he tells it, even when he can't ask the girl to marry him, and sometimes they even tell it over there when they don't mean it."
"So desuka!"
"They call that 'flirting.'"
"Yes, I know 'flirting,'" said the Little Maid.
"It is not a very nice word," I said. "There is no flirting in Japan?"
"There is no chance. Parents and friends make marriage in Japan."
"They don't marry for love?"
"It is as in France-not for love. And in America?"
"Well, we don't think it nice for people to marry unless they are in love."
"So desuka," she said, which still means "Indeed." And then she went on:
"Japanese girls obey their parents." And then she added, rather sadly, I thought, "and sometimes they are very unhappy."
"And what then?"
"Oh, deevorces-are very common among the lower classes, but among the middle and upper classes it is verry difficult."
"So desuka!" I said, for I was surprised.
"So desu," said the Little Maid, which is the proper answer.
The Maid of Miyanoshita loves flowers, and at sunset this afternoon I saw her coming down from her garden, where she had been at work. She had a great round straw hat on her black hair. I got her to draw it about her face with both hands, and with a camera she was caught as she laughed. We went down the steps and stopped above the cascade which shook the water where the goldfishes were playing.
Now I have been a month in Japan; I have seen the opening of the Diet, heard the Emperor chant the fact that he was at peace with all the world save Russia, and observed that he must show origin from the gods in other ways than in his stride. I have dined with the gracious representative of the Stars and Stripes and his staff, who seem to have taken on an Oriental suavity that bodes well for our interests in this Far East, and have seen an Imperial Highness play the delicate and difficult double rôle of hand-shaking Democrat to Americans and God-head to his own people-while both looked on. I have eaten a Japanese dinner at the Maple Club, while Geishas and dancing-girls held fast the wondering Occidental eye; have heard, there, American college songs sung by Japanese statesmen, and have joined hands with them in a swaying performance of "Auld Lang Syne." I have seen wrestling matches that looked at first sight like two fat ladies trying to push each other out of a ring-but which was much more. I have been to the theatre, to find the laugh checked at my lips and to sit thereafter in silence, mystification, and wonder. I have tossed pennies to children-the "babies" who here "are kings"-while wandering through blossoming parks and among people whom I cannot yet realize as real. I have visited shrines, temples; have heard the wail of kite and the croak of raven over the tombs of the Shoguns, and have seen a Holy Father beating a drum and praying a day-long prayer with a cigarette-stub behind one ear. I have learned that this is the land of the seductive "chit" and the deceptive yen which doubles your gold when you arrive and makes you think that when you have spent fifty cents you still have a dollar of it left. Moreover, I have seen the glory of cherry-blossoms. But of all these trifles and more-more, perhaps, anon. I pulled a little red guide-book out of my pocket.
"That word," I asked, pointing to the proper one, "would you use that word to your-well, your mother?"
"No," she said very slowly, and with straight eyes, again answering impersonal inquiry with response even more impersonal, "I-don'-don't-think-you-would-use-that word-to your-mother."
The sunlight lay only on the great white crest of Fuji. Everywhere else the swift dusk of Japan was falling. In it the cherry-tree was fast taking on the light of a great white star. In the grove above us a nightingale sang.
Truly 'tis hard.
III
Table of Contents LINGERING IN TOKIO
I might as well confess, I suppose, that these "Hardships of the Campaign," pleasant as they are, ecstatic as they might be to an untroubled mind, constitute a bluff pure and simple. Here goes another, but it shall be my last, and I shall write no more until the needle of my compass points to Manchuria. A month ago the first column got away when the land was lit with the glory of cherry-blossoms. We have been leaving every week since-next week we leave again. One man among us now calls himself a cherry-blossom correspondent. He was lucky to say it first. Clear...
