Chapter VIII

There is, perhaps, no good reason why the stranger should be often astounded, rather than merely amused at the contrasts of Japan. Any nation, particularly so far removed and individualistic a nation, hedging itself round for more than two centuries with a Chinese wall of seclusion, then suddenly emerging into the sunlight of to-day and making frantic efforts to overtake its modernized fellows, could not but present a similar spectacle. Yet I confess myself still not immune to shocks of this nature. To stroll from the mammoth wrestling pavilion of Tokyo, with its wholly un-Occidental pastime, throng, contestants, point of view, to the commonplace field a gunshot distant where a group of Japanese youths in baseball uniforms were defeating at our national game a similar group from one of our own universities, was like stepping across a thousand years of time in a single stride. Side by side there travel, carouse, and worship men of whom one seems no farther removed from us either in garb or mentality than a Frenchman, while the other might that very moment have stepped forth from a _daimyo’s_ train in the “Cipangu” of Marco Polo. In the heathenish interior of an Asakusa temple, most popular with the rank and file of all Tokyo’s myriad places of worship, there pause to toss a copper coin into the enormous grated hopper, to clap their hands thrice and call the wandering attention of the gods to their prayers, even to buy tissue-paper charms written by a Buddha-faced priest, men in faultless Broadway attire who have spent the day in modern offices between telephone and stenographer. Under the fantastic garb of a wandering pilgrim, with his jingling bells and his prayer-written staff, is often concealed a doctor or a lawyer of Western training, with perhaps a fluent command of English.

Among the cabin-passengers on the Nippon Yusen Kaisha liner that brought us across the Pacific was a brilliant young Japanese who had been teaching the intricacies of a medical specialty in one of the oldest and most famous of our universities. Outwardly, at least, nothing remained of his Orientalism except a hint of foreign accent in his English, and his telltale eyes. Even his point of view on matters large or small seemed that of the American colleagues he had left behind. On the dock at Yokohama he was met by his future wife, properly chaperoned, shrinking subserviently within her modest kimono and pillow-like _obi_. The pair bowed solemnly to each other at some two yards’ distance, he moderately, she almost to the stone flagging; then as he stalked away she clattered behind him in her wooden clogs, lugging his American hand-bag.

Our passage had been enlivened also by a naval engineer from one of Japan’s great government shipyards, who was returning from two years of study and observation among those of America and Europe. He was to have remained a year longer, but both his father and his fiancée had suddenly died. I visited him one day at his home in Tokyo, one of those frail little houses of the capital set in its quaint, inevitable garden. His latest European garb had been altered only by the removal of his shoes; but an elder sister kowtowed profoundly at his curt, quick command and hurried away, to prostrate herself before us on the matted floor a moment later with a tray of tea and sweetmeats.

He would be going away in a few days, I suggested, to the naval base to which he was attached?

“As soon as I have arranged my marriage,” he replied.

“But,” I said, “your fiancée is no longer living?”

“Ah, yes, that one died,” he answered, in an expressionless monotone, “but my sister has picked out three other girls for me to choose from, and in a few days I will decide....”

“And the marriage?”

“In about three months, as soon as everything is prepared. You see, my father having died, I have become the head of the family, and I must marry quickly.”