Chapter XXII

I have already given it as my humble opinion that the Japanese are not particularly adaptable. This was impressed upon me once more in Takao, principal port of southern Formosa and the end of the main line of the railway. The island is small; American or European visitors are rare; the “foreign office” in the capital had insisted on showing me special attention—which of course was not entirely mere courtesy. As I descended from the train at Takao, the government official who met me turned out to be one of those charming gentlemen into which the brighter pebbles of Japanese humanity can be polished under favorable circumstances, who spoke English perfectly, and who was a Christian into the bargain, whatever difference that may make. He made the inexcusable error of mistaking me for a person of importance, and we were soon spinning away in his high-powered motor-car to the best inn of Takao. It was the absolutely unchanged Nipponese character of this hostelry which emphasized the old impression that the people of Japan do not readily adapt themselves to a new environment. From its arched entrance to the tiny back garden the principal inn of Takao might have been in the heart of Tokyo—and in the depths of midwinter. There were the same polished wooden floors between the step-shelf at the door where one exchanged one’s footwear for inn slippers; the square, mat-floored room with almost as large an antechamber to which I was assigned had been as hermetically sealed as paper _shoji_ and sliding wooden outer walls could make it. The three or four quilts spread on the floor in the middle of the room would have been an excellent bed in northern Manchuria in January; on an early October night in the tropics a sheet would have been a much more welcome covering than the arctic quilt in the form of a kimono, the invariable one under which the guest of the Japanese is forced to smother himself in all climates and latitudes, or go uncovered. For toward morning there is a mild chill even in southern Formosa, which the immense mosquito-net all but filling the large room could not entirely shut out. To say that the inn was Japanese is also equivalent to mentioning that electric lights blazed throughout it during the night, glaring fiercely in upon the pseudo-sleeper even though he may have found some means of turning out the one immediately over his head.

But if every other suggestion had been lacking, the bath alone would have proved how thoroughly Japan has been transplanted to this southernmost point of the empire. The lady of the house herself conducted me to the place of public ablutions; no respectable Japanese hostess would leave to a mere servant-maid this courtesy toward a guest whom the attentions of the government proved a distinguished personage. She was as comely a young woman as an uncomely race ordinarily produces, eminently respectable, I am sure, in the Japanese sense of the word, with a plump baby of the vintage of the previous summer, and a husband who would certainly not have endured with equanimity any suggestion of unseemly conduct, from his Nipponese point of view, on the part of his wife. A shadow projected upon the glazed glass of the bath-room door showed that it was occupied. I know of ladies who might have turned back under the circumstances; my Japanese hostess slid the door wide open and courteously invited me to enter with her.

In the middle of the wet floor, between the big steaming wooden tub and the small wooden bucket with which he had been rinsing his parboiled body, stood a young man, a stranger for the night, like myself, as I gathered from the subsequent conversation. He was clothed in a wet skin and a welcoming smile. On the wall within reach of him hung a large towel that would have covered him completely; he might even have turned his back; but he was too well bred a Japanese gentlemen to indulge in selfish personal activity while receiving guests, as it were, in a temporary abode. He bowed courteously to us, begging me with a gesture and a word to make myself at home, then stood smiling as serenely as if he had been arrayed in a frockcoat gleaming with the order of the Rising Sun.

The more old-fashioned and circumspect of American ladies might perhaps by this time have found some fitting excuse to discreetly withdraw; my hostess could not, of course, think of subjecting me to such a discourtesy. She had still to show me where the soap was kept, to indicate the tub of steaming water, to point to the wooden wash-basins strewn about the floor and to the cold-water faucets from which to fill them when I wished to cool my cooked skin, and to imply that all these things were at my disposal, though it would surely not have required genius to guess all this without her immediate personal assistance. Meanwhile she had opened conversation with the gentleman garbed in the welcoming smile. He had found his chamber comfortable, she hoped, my scanty knowledge of Japanese told me. He had indeed; and would she be good enough to have him called in time for the early morning train south? From this auspicious beginning social intercourse went smoothly on, through what seemed to be a comparing of the number of friends, or enemies, lost in the great earthquake, and such other matters as might come up between a lady and a gentleman at a dinner-table or in a ball-room. Then at length the dripping guest, having fulfilled the proprieties by showing no unseemly haste to attend to his own insignificant affairs in the face of social requirements, strolled across to the towel-rack, thrust his feet into rubber slippers, bade us a courteous good evening, and shuffled out into the hallway.

My hostess showed no indication of following, but waited politely for me to slip off the newly laundered kimono that had been laid out for me upon my arrival. There was in her manner no suggestion of a Chinese curiosity to know how foreigners bathe, or whether their skins are that color all over; such questions she had probably long since solved. She was merely waiting upon me like an attentive servant, quite as she might have waited to pour out my beer or to fill my bowl with rice at dinner. Perhaps she meant to soap my back or.... Luckily her husband looked in at last, to bow ceremoniously to me and to tell his wife that new guests had arrived, requiring her attention, if I would be so good as to excuse her. Nor was this, of course, the trumped-up story of a suspicious husband, as the sounds of thrice-clapped hands throughout the house indicated. Truly a Japanese would have felt as completely at home in the principal inn of Takao as within sight of the moat of the Imperial Palace; even the charge of five yen for the privilege of lying a few hours on the floor would have struck him as home-like in its exorbitance.