YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Bought wfith the income
of the
MATTHEW C. D. BORDEN FUND

LETTERS FROM
CHINA AND JAPAN

LETTERS FROM
CHINA AND JAPAN

BY
JOHN DEWEY, Ph.D., LL.D.
Pbofbsbob of Philosopht in Columbia TTNirBKBiTT
AND
ALICE CHIPMAN DEWEY
Edited by
EVELYN DEWEY

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue

Copyright, 1920,
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Righte Reeerted

Printed in Ihe United Stales of America

PREFACE
John Dewey, Professor of Philosophy in
Columbia University, and his wife, Alice C.
Dewey, who wrote the letters reproduced in
this book, left the United States early in
1919 for a trip to Japan. The trip was
eagerly embarked on, as they had desired
for many years to see at least something of
the Eastern Hemisphere. The journey was
to be solely for pleasure, but just before
their departure from San Francisco, Pro
fessor Dewey was invited, by cable, to lec
ture at the Imperial University at Tokyo,
and later at a number of other points in the
Japanese Empire. They traveled and
visited in Japan for some three to four
months and in May, after a most happy ex
perience, made doubly sq by the unexpected
courtesies extended them, they decided to
go on to China, at least for a few weeks,
before returning to the United States.

vi PREFACE
The fascination of the struggle going on
in China for a unified and independent
democracy caused them to alter their plan
to retum to the United States in the sum
mer of 1919. Professor DeWey applied to
Columbia University for a year's leave of
absence, which was granted, and with Mrs.
Dewey, is still in China. Both are lecturing
and conferring, endeavoring to take some
of the story of a Westem Democracy to an
Ancient Empire, and in turn are enjoying
an experience, which, as the letters indicate,
they value as a great enrichment of their
own lives. The letters were written to their
children in America, without thought of
their ever appearing in print. Evelyn Dewey.
New York,
January Sth. 1920.

LETTERS FROM
CHINA AND JAPAN

LETTERS
FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tokyo, Monday, February.
Well, if you want to see one mammoth,
muddy masquerade just see Tokyo to-day.
I am so amused aU the time that if I were
to do just as I feel, I should sit down or
stand up and caU out, as it were, from
the housetops to every one in the world to
come and see the show. If it were not for
the cut of them I should think that all the
cast-off clothing had been misdirected and
had gone to Japan instead of Belgium.
But they are mostly as queer in cut as they
are in material. Imagine rummaging your
attic for the colors and patterns of past

2 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
days and then gathering up kimonos of all
the different colors and patterns and sizes
and with it all a lot of men's hats that are
like nothing you ever saw, and very muddy
streets, and there you have it. The 'rick
sha men have their legs fitted with tight
trousers and puttees to end them, and they
are graceful. They nm all day through
the mud and snow and wet in these things
made of cotton cloth that are neither stock
ings nor shoes but both, and they stand
about or sit on steps and wait, and yet they
get through the day alive. I am distracted
between the desire to ride in the baby cart
and the fear of the language, mixed with
the greater fear of the pain of being drawn
by a fellow-being. They are a lithe set of
little men and look as if they had steel
springs to make them go when you look at
their course. Still I have been only in
autos, of which there are not many here. I
get tired with the excitement of the con
stant amusement. This moming a man

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 3
came out of a curio shop. Bow. "Ex-
guse me, madame, is this not Mrs. Daway?
I knew you because I saw your picture in
the paper. Will you not come in and look
at our many curios? I shall have the
pleasure of bringing them to your hotel.
What is the number of your room,
madame?" Bow. "No, please doinot bring
them to my room,, for I am always out. I
will come in and see them sometime."
"Thank you, madame, please do so,
madame, we have many fine curios." Bow.
"Good-moming, madame."
The looks of the streets are like the
clothes, just left over from the past ages.
Of course Tol^o is the modern city of
Japan,, and we shall watch out for the an
cient ones when it comes their turn. I wish
I could give you an idea of the looks of
the poor. The children up to the age of
about thirteen appear never to wipe their
noses. Combine this effect (more effect
than in Italy) with several kimonos, one on

4 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
top of the other, made of cotton and wool
of bright colors and flowered, with a queer
brown checked one on top ; this wadded and
much too big, therefore hitched up round
the waist. Swimg in this outside one a baby
is carried on the back, the little baby head
with black bangs or still fuzzy scalp stick
ing out, nose never yet touched by a hand
kerchief, wearer of the baby with a nose
in the same condition if at a tender age —
I scream inside of me as I go about,
and it is more exciting than any play ever.
We are as much curiosities to them as they
are to us, though we live where the most
foreigners go. Now on top of it all we can
no more make a car driver understand
where we want to go than if we were
monkeys. We can't find any names on the
streets, we can't read a sign except the few
that are in English; the streets wind in any
and every direction; they are long and short
and circular, while a big canal circles
through the part of the city where we are

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 5
and we seem to cross it every few minutes;
every time we cross it we think we are going
in the same direction as the last time we
crossed it. About this stage of our search
your father goes up to a yoimg fellow with
an ulster on, and capes, and a felt hat that
is like a fedora except for a few inches taken
out of its height, and says to him, Tei-ko-ku
Hotel, which would mean the Imperial
Hotel if he had pronounced it right, and the
boy turns around and says, "Do you want
ee Imperialee Hoter?" And we say, "Yes"
(you bet), and the fellow says, "Eet is ze
heeg building down zere," so we wade
along some more with aU the clog walkers
looking at our feet till we come to this old
barn of a place where we are paying as
much as at a Fifth Avenue hotel, and get
clear soup for dinner. Just like any one
of those old-fashioned French places where
they measure out with care all they give you,
and where the head is a most distinguished
and conspicuous jack-in-the-box who jacks

6 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
at you aU the time, bows every time you
go down the hall and all and all and all.
It is all so screamingly funny. The shops
are nearly as big as our bedrooms at home
with enough space to step in and leave your
shoes before you mount the takenomo and
walk on the mats. We could not go into
any shop, except the foreign book stores,
because we were too dirty and had no time
to unlace our shoes even if we wanted to
wear out our silk stockings. We shall have
some nice striped socks before we begin to
do shopping. I am possessed with the no
tion of trying the clogs.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 7

Tuesday, February 11 (Tokyo).
To-day is a holiday, so we cannot go to the
bank, but we can go to a meeting where
they will discuss imiversal franchise and de
mocratization generally. The Emperor is
said to be indisposed, so he will not come
to the celebration. His illnesses, like every
thing else about him, are arranged by the
ministers and mistresses, as near as we can
make out.
We are having so many interesting ex
periences and impressions that it is already
difficult to catch up in writing them down.
Yesterday moming we went to walk and
in the aftemoon we were taken out in a
car so that we have got over the first im
pression of the surface. We saw the uni
versity and the park where the tombs of the
shoguns are, and those tombs are wonder
ful, jusfi fto look at from the car. About

8 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
to-morrow we may be able to go to the
museum. The rows of stone lanterns are
impressive beyond anything I had imagined;
hundreds of them which must have given to
the nights they illuminated a wonderfully
weird spectral look.
It is not fully tme that the Japanese are
not interested in their history. At least the
educated are, as in any other coimtry. A
friend told us about the revival of interest
in the tea ceremony. He is going to ar
range for us to go to one somewhere, he did
not say where, but it will be accompanied
by a grand dinner and will express the
magnificence of the new rich as well as the
taste of old Japan, to judge from the im
pressions he gave us. He told us of an old
Chinese cup for the tea ceremony that a
certain millionaire has recently paid 160,000
yen for. That means $80,000. He says the
collectors have various sets, and each set
will often represent a million dollars. This
particular bowl is of black porcelain with

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 9
decorations of bright color. He told us also
of a tea which is now produced in China by
grafting the tea branches on to lemon trees.
He has some of this tea which was given
him by the Chinese ambassador and so I
hope we may get a taste of it.
Apropos of this hotel you will be inter
ested to know the manager who runs the
house has just come home from the Wal
dorf and from London where he has been
learning how to do — ^people. The exchange
rates they offered Papa seem to be an
index of their line of development and they
are going to build more. This is the one
first-class hotel in Japan. At present they
have only about sixty rooms or a little more.
In general, things are coming along
promisingly. I should be through lecturing
by the first of April here, which is just the
time to begin traveling. It tums out a good
scheme to come in winter, for the weather,
while not cheerful, is far from really cold,
though it is not easy to see just how the

10 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
palms thrive in the snow. Japan seems to
have developed a peculiar type of semi-
tropical vegetation which endures freezing
and winter. I can foresee that we are go
ing to be busy enough, and for the next few
weeks your mother is going to have more
time for miscellaneous sight-seeing than I.
It is in4escribably fascinating; in substance,
^f course, like the books and pictures, but
nothing really prepares you for the fact that
it is not only real in quality but on such a
vast scale — not just specimens here and
there.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 11

Tokyo, Thursday, February 13.
We have done our first independent shop
ping to-day. I can't get over my astonish
ment at the amoimt and quality of English
spoken here; it is about as easy shopping in
this store, the big department store, as it is
at home — ^much easier as respects attention
and comfort. They give us little wrappers
or feet gloves to put over our shoes. Thinlc
of what an improvement that would be in
muddy weather in Chicago.
This aftemoon is sort of a lull after the
storm of sociability and hospitality which
reached its temporary height yesterday.
Let me give the diary. Before we had
finished breakfast — and we have eaten every
moming at eight until to-day — people be
gan to call. Then two gentlemen took us
to the University in their car and we called
on the President again. He is a gentleman

12 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
of the old school, Confucianist I suppose,
and your mother was much impressed at
being taken in, instead of staying in the car,
but I think he was much more pleased and
complimented by her call than by mine.
Then we were taken to the department
store to which I have already alluded.
Many people do all their buying there, be
cause there are fixed prices with a reward
for a discovery of any place where the
same goods are sold cheaper, and abso
lute honesty as to quality. But they also
said that was the easy way to visit Japan
and learn about the clothes, ornaments,
toys, etc., and also to see the people, as
the Japanese from aU over the country
come there to see the sights. There were
a group of country people in; they are
called red blankets, not greenhorns, because
they wear in winter a red bed blanket
gathered with a string, instead of an over
coat. Then at night it comes in handy.
The stores are already displaying lEe

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 13
tWngs for the girls' festival though it
doesn't come till early March — this is the
peach fete, and the display of festive dolls
— ^king and queen, servants, ladies of the
court in their old costumes, is very interest
ing and artistic. They have certainly put
the doll to uses which we haven't ap
proached. Then we had lunch at the store,
a regular Japanese lunch, which tasted very
good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then
they brought us back to the hotel, and at
two a friend came and took me to call on
Baron Shibusawa — I suppose even be
nighted foreigners like yourself will know
who he is, but you may not know that he is
83, that he has a skin like a baby's, and
shows all the signs of the most acute mental
vigor, or that for the last two or three years
he has given up all business and devoted
himself to philanthropic and humanitarian
activities. He does evidently what not
many American millionaires do ; he takes an
intellectual and moral interest, and doesn't

14 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
merely give money. He explained for
about half an hour or more his theory of
life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a
religionist of any kind) , and what he was
trying to do, especially that it isn't merely
relief. He is desirous to preserve the old
Confucian standards only adapted to pres
ent economic conditions; it is essentially a
morality of feudal economic relationships,
as perhaps you know, and he thinks the
modem factory employers can be brought
to take the old paternal attitude to the em
ployees and thus forestall the class struggle
here. The radicals laugh at the notion here
much as they would in the United States,
but for my part if he can get in a swipe
at the Marxian theory of social evolution
and bring about another type still of social
evolution, I don't see why he should not
have a run for his money. According to
all reports there is very little labor and
capital problem here yet, though the big for
tunes made by the war and the increased

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 15
prosperity of the workingmen have begun
to make a change, it is said. Up to the
present labor unions have not been permit- 1
ted, but the government has announced that
while they are not encouraged they will not
be any longer forbidden.
But I must get back to the story. An
other friend had asked us to go to the
theater with him, the Imperial Theater,
which has European seats and is a fine and
large building, as fine as in any capital and
not overdecorated like a New York one.
The theater began at four, and, with about
half an hour intermission for dinner, con
tinued tiU ten at night; the regular Japanese
theaters begin at eleven in the morning and
continue till ten at night and you have your
food brought to you; also they have no seats
and you sit on your legs. None of the
plays was strictly of the old historic type,
but the most interesting one by far was
adapted from a classic — it centers to some
extent about a faithful horse, and the

16 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
people are country farmers of several cen
turies ago. The least interesting was a kind
of problem play — ^mostly philosophical dis
course of the modem type — the right to ex
pression of self and an artistic career,
aphorisms having no dramatic appeal to
even the Japanese audience. These people
certainly have an alert intelligence — ^almost
as specialized as the Parisian, for the audi
ence was distinctly of the people, and no
American audience could be got to pay the
close attention it gave to performances
where the merits, so far as they are not
strictly artistic, in the technique of acting
which is very highly developed, depend
upon catching the play of moral emotions
rather than upon anything very theatrical.
However, the classic drama which is based
upon old stories and traditions is more
dramatic and melodramatic. The Japanese
also say the old theater has much better
actors than the semi-Europeanized one
which is, I suppose, supported by the gov-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 17
ernment. In the Imperial, the orchestra
seats are one dollar and a half; they are
more — on the floor at that — in the all-day
theaters. Even in this one they have not
introduced applause, though there was
slight handclapping once or twice when the
curtain went down. The Japanese have al
ways had the revolving theater as a means
of scene shifting; it works like a railway
turntable apparently. WeU, that ended the
day yesterday. Except we had invited two
gentlemen to dinner, and when we told our
friends about it, they said, "Oh, just tele
phone them to come some other day," which
appears to be good Japanese etiquette, as
it is also to make calls at any time of the
day, so we did. But unfortunately they
had to telephone to-day that they couldn't
come to-night.
To-day has been comparatively calm; we
have only had four Japanese callers and
two American ones. Of the two Japanese,
one is a woman who is the warden of the

18 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Girls' University, and the other is a teacher
in it, a young woman of a wealthy and aris
tocratic family who has become too modern,
I judge, for her family. I hope aU you
children wiU make a bow to every Japanese
you meet and ask him what you can do to
be of service to him. I shaU have to spend
the rest of my life trying to make up for
some of the kindnesses and courtesies which
so abound here.
I am afraid much of this is more inter
esting to me to write about than it is to you
to read, to say nothing of being more in
teresting to go through than to read about.
But you can then save the letter for us to
re-read when we get old and return from
our Odysseying, and wish to recover the
memories of the days when people were so
kind that they created in us the iUusion of
being somebody, and gave us the combined
enjoyments of home and being in a strange
and semii-magic country; semi-magic for us.
For the mass of the people, one can only

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 19
wonder at their cheerfulness and realize
what a reaUy old and overcrowded country
is and how Buddhism and stoic fatalistic
cheerfulness develop. Don't ever fool your
self into thinking of Japan as a new coun
try; I don't any longer believe the people
who teU you that you have to go to China
and India to see antiquity. SuperficiaUy
it may be so, but not fundamentaUy. Any
country is old where birth and death are
like the coming and dropping of leaves on
a tree, and where the individual is of as
much importance as the leaf. Old world
and New world are not mere relatives ; they
are as near absolutes as anything.
We heard a whistle making its cry outside
and Mamma thought it was the bank mes
senger, so I rang the bell for the boy to
bring him in — ^but alas, it was much less
romantic; it was the call of the macaroni
peddler.

20 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tokyo, February.
Here we are, one week after landing, on
a hiU in a beautiful garden of trees on
which the buds are already sweUing. The
plums will soon be in bloom, and in March
the camellias, which grow to fairly large
trees. In the distance we see the wonderful
Fuji, nearby the other hills of this district,
and the further plains of the city. Just
at the foot of our hiU is a canal, along
which is an alley of cherry trees formerly
famous, but largely destroyed by a storm a
few years ago.
We have a wonderful apartment to our
selves, mostly all windows, which in this
house are glass. A very large bedroom, a
small dressing room, and a study where I
now sit with the sun coming in the windows
which are all its sides. We need this sun,
though the hibashi, or boxes of charcoal.

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 21
do wonders in warming up your feet and
drying hair, as I am now doing. We are
surrounded by all the boolis on Japan that
modern learning has produced, so we have
never a waiting moment. The house is very
large, with one house after another covering
the hiUtop and connected by the galleries
that are cut off the sides of each room in
succession. I shaU try to get a photo. At
the extreme end of the house is Mr. X  's
library of several rooms, and at the limit of
that the tea room for the tea ceremonies.
Our host is not one of the new rich who
buy sets at a miUion dollars for performing
this ceremony. He laughs at that. But
there is a gold lacquer table which is like
transfixed sunshine, and there are other
pieces of old furniture, which are priceless
now, and which have come down in his
famUy. You would be amused to see us at
breakfast, which 0-Tei, the maid assigned
to us, serves in our sun parlor. First we
have fruit. Two little lacquer tables to

22 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
move wherever we want to sit. The dishes
and service are in our fashion in this house.
Nice old blue Canton plates and other things
Japanese. After fruit she makes toast over
the charcoal in the hibashi, two Uttle iron
sticks stuck in the bread to hold it. On
these prongs she hands us the toast. Mean
time she teaches us Japanese and we teach
her EngUsh which she already knows, and
she giggles every time we speak. Well,
we put our toast down on the plate and
she disappears. The coffee pot is on a side
table and we desperately look for cups for
ourselves, though with some fear of disturb
ing the etiquette. No cups, she forgot them.
After a whUe she comes up again with the
cups and we get coffee, then she goes down
again and brings scrambled eggs on the nice
old blue plates. Then she giggles a Uttle
more and taUis in that soft voice that is
Uke nothing else we ever heard, as she
hands us a nice hot piece of toast on an
iron spike; she is much pleased and giggles

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 23
because I tell her the toast is not harmed by
dropping it on the clean floor, and she walks
off into the big bedroom to bring the coffee
from the gas heater. It is all like a pretty
play unmarred by any remote ideas about
efficiency, and time and labor-saving de
vices. Then two maids make our beds ; then
they dust the floor, one holding up the sofa
on edge whUe the other whisks underneath
it, and they smile and bow and take an in
terest in every move we make as if we were
their dearest friends.
Enter now the housekeeper who, with
many bows, announces v-e-r-y s-1-o-w-l-y
that she would like to accompany me to go
about the city and to explain things to me,
as I would thus teach her English. I asked
if she were going to church and she said she
wasn't a Christian. Think what a funny
sound that has. She is the secretary of Mr.
X  and a student in the new Christian
coUege of which he is the President. She
comes in now to wait on us at breakfast and

24 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
she stays and repeats English after us. She
knows a lot of EngUsh, but it is so literary
that it is quite amusing to turn her into the
ways of ordinary talk. To get her to open
her mouth and break the polite Japanese
whisper, in which the Japanese women
speak, is what I work most on. Yesterday
we visited the Women's University which is
within walking distance of this house. The
President, Mr. Naruse, is dying of cancer.
He is in bed but is able to talk quite
naturally. He has made a farewell address
to his students, has said good-bye to his
faculty in a speech, and has named the dean,
who is acting in his place now, as his suc
cessor. At this University they teach
flower arrangement, long sword, and Jap
anese etiquette, and the chief warden is a
fine woman. She says I may come in as
much as I like to see those different things.
In the afternoon we had callers again,
among them two women. Women are
rare. One, a Dr. R  , is an osteopath who

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 25
has practiced here for fifteen years and is
an old friend of our host's. The second.
Miss T  , has just returned from seven
years in our country. I heard much of her at
Stanford and brought letters to her. She
has a chair in the Women's University. It
is a chair of Sociology, but she says the
authorities are afraid the time has not yet
come for her to start on sociology, so she
wiU begin with the teaching of EngUsh and
work into sociology by the process of in
gratiating it into her classes. She is an in
teresting personality. She was sent to me
to say I might be lonely because your
father was away so she was to take me,
with any other friends I wanted, to the
theater. As we had already been to the
Imperial Theater and sat in the Baron's box
it was finaUy arranged to go to the Kabuki,
where we sit on the floor and see real old
Japanese acting, which I am very anxious
to do. I understand it begins at 11 in the
moming and lasts untU ten at night.

26 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Febmary 22.
Yesterday we went to the theater, he-
ginning at one and ending about nine; tea
is constantly in the box, and little meals —
and a big one — between the acts. We liked
the old Japanese theater better than the
more or less modernized one. Baron Shi
busawa presented us with a box — or rather
two of them — and his niece and another
relative and the two young people from the
house went. I won't try to describe the
dramas, except to say that the way to study
Japanese history and tradition would be to
go to the theater with some one to interpret,
and that while the theater is as plain as a
medieval European one, the dresses are even
more elaborate and costly. The stage is a
beautiful spectacle when there are forty
old Samurai on it, as the garments are gen
uine, not tinsel. Mamma went more than

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 27
I, because I had to leave at half -past
four to go to the Concordia Society — ^in
fact, I hadn't expected to go at aU at first,
as the Baron said that he sent the offer of
the box because he feared Mamma might
be lonely when I was away! There were
about twenty-five Japanese and Americans
at the meeting and after I had spoken for
half an hour we had dinner in an adjoin
ing restaurant, and then sat around and
visited for an hour or so.
The great event of the week, aside from
the theater yesterday, was visiting the
Women's University — ^you mightn't think
that a great treat, but you don't know what
we saw. We started early to walk, since it
isn't far and we had been shown the way
once, but we were rubbering so busUy at the
shops that we failed to notice where we
were tiU we got to the end of things and
then had to turn around and walk back, so
we got there late. The forenoon we spent
in the elementary classes and kindergarten.

28 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
which are their practice school. Those very
bright kimonos for children you see are real
— aU the chUdren wear them, as bright as
can be, generaUy reds, and then some. So
the rooms where the little chUdren were are
like gardens of flowers with bright birds in
them — ^gay as can be. The work was aU
interesting, but the colored crayon draw
ings particularly. They have a great deal
of freedom there, and instead of the chil
dren imitating and showing no individuality
— ^which seems to be the proper thing to
say — I never saw so much variety and so
little simUarity in drawings and other hand
work, to say nothing of its quaUty being
much better than the average of ours. The
chUdren were under no visible discipline,
but were good as well as happy; they paid
no attention to visitors, which I think is
ultramodern, as I expected to see them all
rise and bow. If you will think of doing
aU the regular school work — including in
this school a good deal of hand workj draw-^

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 29
ing, etc. — and then learning by the end of
the sixth grade a thousand or more Chinese
characters, to make as well as to read, you
wUl have some idea of how industrious the
kids have to be, and of course they have to
learn Japanese characters, too. Then we
had a luncheon, ten of us altogether, cooked
and served by the girls in the Domestic De
partment; some luncheon! — and garnished
in a way to beat the Ritz — ^European food
and service. Then the real show began.
First we had flower arrangement, ancient
and modem styles, then examples of the
ancient etiquette in serving tea and cakes to
guests,^ and then of inferiors caUing on
superiors; then Koto plajdng — a thirteen-
stringed harp that lies on the floor — ^first two
girls and the teacher, and then a solo by
the teacher. He is blind and said to be the
best player in Japan; he gave "Cotton
Bleaching in the Brook," and said he rarely
played it, only once a year. WeU, you
could hear the water ripple and f aU, and hit

30 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the stones, and the women singing and beat
ing the cotton. I could hear it better than
I can hear spring in our music, so I
think perhaps my ears are made to fit the
Japanese scale, or lack of it. Then we were
taken into the tea house and shown the tea
ceremony, being served with tea. Mamma
sat tatami, on her heels, but I basely took
a chair. Then we went to the gymnasium
and saw the old Samurai women's sword
and spear exercises, etc. The teacher was
an old woman of seventy-five and as lithe
and nimble as a cat — ^more graceful than
any of the girls. I have an enormous re
spect now for the old etiquette and cere
monies regarded as physical culture. Every
movement has to be made perfectly,^ and it
cannot be done without conscious control.
The modernized gym exercises by the chil
dren were simply pitiful compared with aU
these ceremonies. Then we were taken to
the dormitories, which are in a garden,,
simple wooden Japanese buildings, like

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 31
bams our girls would think, but everything
so clean you could eat on the floor any
where, with the south side all glass and sun,
and the girls sitting on the floor to study on
a table about a foot and a half high; no beds
or chairs to Utter up the rooms. Then
after we were taken over some of the other
rooms, we went back to the dining-room
and had a most exquisite Japanese vege
tarian Buddhist lunch served — just a
sample, aU on a Uttle plate, but including
the sweets for dessert, five or six things all
quite different and elegantly cooked. Also
three kinds of tea.
Politeness is so universal here that when
we get back we shall either be so civil that
you won't know us, or else we shaU be so
irritated that nobody is sufficiently civil that
you won't know us either. Mr. X  took me
in his car and brought me back. When we
got to the hall there were five maids bowing
and smUing to get our slippers and hang
up our coats and hats. Just going in or

32 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
out is like going to a picnic; I think the
maids enjoy this change in their regular
work, for they really smile, as if they were
having the time of their lives. If it is per
functory and put on, they have me fooled.
Well, I'll spare you all any phUosophical
reflections this trip. Besides, I've been too
busy having a good time to think of any.
They will probably grow spontaneously in
China. I forgot whether I told you in my
last letter that the Minister of the Interior
has given me a monthly and renewable pass
first class on the Japanese raUways. A
friend here asked him for one for Mamma,,
too, but he said he was very sorry, that privi
lege could not be extended to a woman. So
I'm the only grafter in the famUy. I
haven't had a chance to use it yet, but shall
make one at the first opportunity in order
to get the sensation.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 33
Tokyo, Friday, Febmary 28.
I don't get much sightseeing done except
in the way of seeing street sights. I am
generally accompanied when I take a walk
for exercise and always taken by some new
way. The other evening we went out after
dinner and took a walk to a lively street
not far off — ^bookseUers with their things
spread out on the sidewalk or rather road,
little lunch wagons, crowded streets and
shops — ^they have electricity everywhere,
and some geisha girls trotting along with
maids to carry their samisens. We went
into a Japanese movie beside rubbering at
everything and then went into a Japanese
restaurant. Their eating places here are
specialized — this was a noodle shop, and we
tried three kinds, one wheat in a soup, one
buckwheat with fried shrimps, and another
cold with seaweed. For the entire lot for
the two of us it cost 27 cents American

34 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
money, and the place, which was an ordinary
one, was cleaner than any American one,
even the best. The movie story seemed
more complicated than any of ours, and was
certainly slower, because there is a man and
a woman in a little coop near the curtain
who say What the actors are saying when
ever their lips move, this gives a chance of
course for more talk. There were a few
knockouts and a murder and a villain and
a persecuted damsel, and an attempted sui
cide to provide thriUs, but I couldn't make
out what it was about even with the aid of
the guide with me. Such are simple pleas-
xu'es here, save that when we walk in the
daytime we generaUy go to a temple where
on the whole the people are more interest
ing than the temples, though sometimes the
layout of trees is beautiful and gives much
the same effect of rehgious cahn as a cathe
dral. In general the similarity between
worship here and the country Italian
Catholicism is more striking than anything

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 35
else. They are sUghtly more naive here —
to see the dolls, woolly dogs, and pinwheels
at the shrines of the children's gods, besides
their straw sUppers, straw sandals and an
occasional chUd's kimono is quite touching,
also sometimes a mother has cut off her hair
and pinned it up as an offering. Other
things are as humorous as these are pathetic,
such as making spitballs of written prayers
and pasting the god with them. Some of
the gods are now protected by wire netting
on this account. I have got fairly well used
to the street scenes now and can teU most
of the kinds of shops, such as an under
taker's from a cooper's. What makes the
street so interesting is that you can look in
and see everything going on. I forgot to
mention the most interesting street thing
I've seen, a bird catcher with a long Umed
pole Uke a bamboo fishing rod, a basket
with a valve door to put them in and some
other utensils. I didn't see him catch any,
though.

36 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Sunday Morning, March 2.
I am writing early because we are going
to-day to Kamakura. You have probably
heard of the big bronze Bud(Uia — ^fifty feet
high — ^well, that is there. A friend has ar
ranged an interview for us with the most
distinguished or most learned of the Bud
dhist priests in Japan — ^who belongs to the
most philosophical of all the sects, the Zen,
which believes in the simple life and is more
or less Stoical; this is the sect that had the
greatest influence on the warrior class in the
good old days. Kamakura is on the other
side of Yokohama, an old Shogun capital;
has lots of historic shrines, etc.
Yesterday I made my first speech with
an interpreter to a teachers' association,
some five hundred in all, mostly elementary
school teachers conspicuous for the fact that
only about twenty-five were women. In the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 37
evening we went to a supper and reception
of the English- Speaking Society, Americans
and Japanese, mostly the latter; both men
and women and the most generally sociable
thing we have seen yet. We have heard said
it was the only place in Tokyo where Japan
ese men and women reaUy met in a free
sociable way, and the president said that
when Japanese met for sociable purposes
they were reserved and stiff — at least till the
wine went round — as long as they spoke
Japanese, but speaking English brought
back the habits they got in America and
thawed them out — an interesting psycho
logical observation on the effect of language.

38 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.
You would be surprised to see how free
from all affectations this country has re
mained, at least so far as we see it. There
is a social democracy here that we do not
know. All Japan is talking democracy now,
which is to be taken in the sense of repre
sentative govemment rather than in the
sense of tearing down the present form of
government. The representation in elec
tions here now does not seem to extend much
further, if any, than to include those large
taxpayers who would under any system be
a force in forming policy. The extension
of the suffrage is the great question under
discussion at present. That and the expan
sion of special education for men are the
turning points for the coming legislators.
Japan has acquired many new milUonaires
during the war and those men are already

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 39
founding new schools for vocational pur
poses for men. Four hundred and forty stu
dents are to be sent abroad with a very gen
erous allowance for living in the different
foreign countries, none of them women, and
no women are mentioned in any of the new
appropriation bills. Not even a mention of
the needs for women.
Yesterday, to begin, was spent thus: It
was the famous festival of dolls. In the
raorning I made a dress for a poor sort of
foreign doll I had hunted out for a Uttle girl.
It was aU American. Another ridiculous
imitation of American baby, looking half
caste Japanese, has still to be dressed when
I can find the material for long clothes, but
I presented it as is. They invited me in to
see their exhibition. Some of their dolls are
two hundred years old from their mothers'
famUy. I shall try to find some literature
on tbis festival as it is too long to write
about. But it is true that one begins imme
diately to get the passion for doUs ; they are

40 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
not dead things like ours, but works of art
symbohc of all the different phases of na
tional Ufe. The little girls were delighted
with their possessions. If I had only known
about this I should have known what to
bring to Japan for gifts,, instead of feeUng
as helpless as I did. If you come, bring
doUs. In the aftemoon I was invited to go to
the best or one of the best coUections in the
country and that was a great experience. It
began very painfully for me because I got
lost and was three-quarters of an hour late
at the Imperial Hotel from which we
started. The family that owns this famous
collection is very old and the wife is the
daughter of a Daimyo, hence the dolls are
very old. And they are wonderful, and
more wonderful still their housekeeping
equipment of old lacquer and porcelain and
glass. The doll refreshments are served in
tiny dishes on tiny tables while the guests
sit on the floor, the hostess and her family

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 41
doing aU the serving. We had the thick
white wine made from rice poured out of
wonderful little decanters into tiny glasses.
We drank to the health of the family and
the stuff is delicious, with an aroma such as
no honey can excel. After these refresh
ments we were shown the room for the tea
ceremony and then taken back into the for
eign part of the house for real refreshments,
which consisted of many and .wonderful va
rieties of cakes. The tea was served in cups
with saucers decorated with plum blossoms,
this being the time of plum blossoms. Then
tea cups taken away and cups of rich choco
late placed on the tables. These tables were
high enough for the ordinary chairs. All
the foreign houses are very -ugly in style but'
very comfortable and mid- Victorian. The
Baroness urged us to eat special cakes and
we left stuffed. One kind is in«the form of
a beautiful pink leaf wrapped in a cherry
leaf which has been preserved from last year.
The leaf gives 'the cake a delicious flavor

42 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
and also a cover to protect the fingers from
its stickiness. Then three little round brown
cakes looking some like chocolate — on a
skewer. You bite off the first one whole,
then sUp the other two as you eat them.
Those alone are enough for a meal and very
nourishing. AU cakes are made from bean
paste or like our richest pastries. When
that second meal was finished, we said good
bye. The Baroness and her three pretty
daughters and her sister all followd us to
the outer door and when our auto drove off
the last thing we saw were the bows of the
butlers and these pretty ladies, aU saying
one more harmonious good-bye. The
young girls dress in kimonos of wool muslin
of the brightest colors and designs which are
conceivable even to the Japanese imagina
tion. They look Uke a very profusely bloom
ing garden of old fashioned perennials.
The garden is indescribable. I had some
fancy of what a Japanese garden would look
like, but find it is nothing at all beside the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 43
reaUty. This place is big and the grass is
now brown. Most of the grass is covered
with a thick carpet of pine needles and at
the edge of the pine needle carpet a rope of
twisted straw outlines graceful curves. The
use of the big stones is the most surprising
part of the whole. They are very old and
weather-stained, of many shades of gray and
blue-gray, with the short shrubs for a back
ground, and the severity and simplicity of
the result has a classic beauty which we may
attain in centuries, and only after we have
consumed our abundance of things material.
Then we went to dinner at the house of
Prof ssor M  . There are six children in
his family, the oldest a man of about twenty-
five, a graduate of the Imperial University,
now a factory inspector for the government;
he speaks eight languages. One of these is
Esperanto, which is his hobby. The French
Professors were there also, two of them, a
clever and amusing pair, who did their duty
in talking, and the young man spoke better

44 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
than any of us and with an excellent pronun
ciation. He has never been out of Japan.
Two little girls and a young boy appeared
after dinner and made their pretty bows to
the floor, and then went to a low table and
squatted and played Go the rest of the
evening. Go is the famous shell game. Go
means five and it is a game of fives, but ask
me no more, except that the men are 364 in
number and you play it on an expanded
checker board. There was an endless suc
cession of food and drinks and we did not
leave tiU nearly eleven. Japanese famUies
have many nice drinks which we do not.
Theirs are perhaps no better than our best
ones, but they add to the pleasant variety of
non-alcoholic drinks. Besides those we had
two wines.
This was the dinner as near as I can re
member. A menu card was at each plate
and I fancy they were intended as souvenirs
for the foreign guests, but I forgot to take
mine, if that was their purpose. We had

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 45
soup, bread of two kinds, and butter. Then
fish patties, then little birds, boned, on toast
with a vegetable, then ramekins of Japan
ese macaroni, which is not like ours. Next
roast beef, very tender fillet, with potato
baUs, peas, gravy, another vegetable forgot,
and salad, white and red wine, coming after
the orange cider. Then a delicious pudding,
liien cake and strawberries. Those berries
are raised out of doors. They are planted
between rows of stones which are heated ar-
tificiaUy, I did not quite understand how,
the vines being kept from touching the
stones by low bamboo trellises. Whipped
cream served with the berries. Then deU
cious coffee in foreign style.
After dinner we leave the reception room
in foreign style and go upstairs to the big
Japanese room, sit by the hibashi or the
grate, and here the children come. At once
tea is served. Then just as we were start
ing for home we were urged to stay for a
drink, which was more orange cider, very

46 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
sweet, and bottled waters, whieh are so good
and come from the many natural springs.
One of the amusements of the Japanese is
seeing the foreign visitors try to sit, and you
can't wonder they are amused. I can man
age it, in awkward fashion, but your father
can't even bend for the pose. On Sunday
we sat for two hours in the presence of the
greatest Buddhist priest in Japan, and you
can guess whether we wriggled and if my
feet were asleep if you try the pose for a
few minutes yourself, even on a nice soft
cushion as we were. Getting up properly
is the hardest part of it.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 47

Tokyo, Tuesday, March 4.
Our friends took us to Kamakura; it isn't
interesting reading these things in advance
in guide books, so I don't think a description
wiU be interesting, but something over seven
hundred years ago, the first Shogun rulers
settled there and made it their capital, of
which nothing is now left save the Buddhist
temples. We met on the train going down
the professor of Japanese literature in the
University, who was going there because it
was the seventh hundred anniversary of a
Shogun who wrote poetry, and the pro
fessor was going over to lecture on his
poems. Also we ran across several hun
dred school children, boys and girls with
their teachers, who were spending Sunday
seeing the historic sights. One of the big
temples to the god of war was a kind

48 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
of museum, with old swords and masks
and things in it. They took us to call on
the Reverend Shaku, who is the head of the
Zen sect of Buddhists in Japan, and who
talked — ^including the interpreter — about
two hours, in answer to questions about
Buddliism, especially his variety. It was
very interesting. We were ushered into a
Japanese room, beautiful proportions, a
lovely kakemono in the alcove — ^it's a scroU,
not a kimono — and a five-legged Uttle table
made of metal with mother-of-pearl inlay.
Otherwise nothing but the room with gor
geous blue and gold chrysanthemums alter
nating on the paneled ceiUng and five silk
cushions scattered around for us to sit on,
and a single one at the end of the room for
him. In about five minutes another screen
door opened and he appeared in a gorgeous
but simple flowing robe, copper colored.
Then tea and sponge cake — ^meantime the
talk fest had begun. Incidentally I should
remark that the bowing and kneeling of the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 49
servants looks much more natural and less
servile when you see people seated on the
floor, and the servants have to kneel to hand
them anything. His personaUty is that of a
scholarly type, rather ascetic, not over re
fined, but not in the least sleek like some of
our Hindu swamis, and very charming.
When we left he thanked us for coming and
expressed his great satisfaction that he had
made some friends. His talk was largely
moral but with a high metaphysical flavor,
somewhat elusive, and reminding one of
Royce. Well it was an experience worth
having, as he is reputed the most learned
and representative Buddhist in Japan, and
as I have remarked before, seeing is quite
different from reading. He was more mod- ,
ern than Royce in one respect; he said God
is the moral ideal in man and as man de
velops the divine principle does also. We
saw the big fifty-foot bronze statue of
Buddha, in some respects the most cele
brated single thing in Japan and again one

50 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
you have to see. It is as impressive as a
cathedral. We have been to a dinner party since I
began this. Our host seems to be a universal
genius — a member of the house of peers, an
authority on education, an orchid fancier, a
painter and I don't know what. There were
over twenty at table, and our health was
drunk in champagne with a Uttle speech,
and two members of the cabinet were there.
The Countess is the mother of eight chU
dren, and looks about thirty and very pretty
for thirty. Three or four of the Uttle girls
were about before and after dinner, and,
like several of the Uttle girls of the new
generation, are as spontaneous and natural
as you would wish. Acquired characteris
tics are certainly hereditary in Japan, for
even the most lively and spontaneous chil
dren are civUized. Whatever else you think
about the Japanese they are about the most
highly civiUzed people on earth, perhaps
overcultivated. I asked Mamma when these

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 51
girls would undergo the clammifying proc
ess and have all their life taken out of them,
and she said never for these girls.
President Naruse died this morning; as
he had cancer, it was fortunate he did not
linger longer. He was one of the most re
markable men in Japan. Two days before
he died the Empress sent him a present of
five thousand dollars for his school — a very
great tribute and one which will help the
cause of woman's education. Speaking of
this family where we dined, you can judge
of the high aristocracy of our hosts of the
evening by the fact that when they showed
us the dolls' festival, there were some fine
ones which had been sent the Countess by
the Imperial Princesses. The dolls by the
way are never played with — ^they are works
of art and history to look at. These chUdren
got out their American doUs, of which they
had ten, to show Mamma.

52 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
March 5,
I have now given three lectures. They
are a patient race; there is stUl a good-sized
audience, probably five hundred. We are
graduaUy getting a superficial acquaintance
with a good many people, and if I could get
two or three weeks free from lectures to pre
pare I could make a business of finding
things out, but as it is I only accumulate cer
tain impressions. There is no doubt a great
change is going on; how permanent it will
; be depends a good deal upon how the rest
of the world behaves. If it doesn't Uve up
to its peaceful and democratic professions,
the conservative bureaucrats and mUitarists,
who of course are still very strong, wiU say
we told you so and there will be a backset.
But if other countries, and especiaUy our
own, behave decently, the democratizing
here wiU go on as steadily and as rapidly as
is desirable.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 53
Tokyo, Monday, March 10.
Yesterday we had our first taste of the
Noh drama. We got there before nine in
the moming, and I left before two to go to
Mr. Naruse's funeral, but Mamma stayed
tiU nearly three when she had to go to speak
at a school. Mamma can give you a much
more intelligent idea of it than I can, but
the buUding is a kind of barnlike structure
— the Elizabethan theater with a vengeance,
and no stage properties except some little
live pines and a big painted one, and except
costumes which are rich and expensive and
the masks which are likewise. It is an
acquired taste, but one which can be
acquired very rapidly. If they weren't done
with such extraordinary art and technique
they would probably be stupid, to a for
eigner anyway, but as it is they are fasci
nating, though it is hard to say what the
source of the fascination is aside from the

54 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
perfection of technique. Conscious control
was certainly born and bred in Japan.
Mr. Naruse had a very strong hold on
people, and his funeral was an event — ^all
the autos and most of the 'rickshas in Tokyo
must have been there, and some eight or ten
speakers, and even to me who could under
stand nothing it was very impressive. One
of the civiUzed things is that before the
speaker bowed to the audience — and they
aU bowed back — 'he bowed to the remains,
which were in a coffin on the platform with
flowers, and more flowers than at an Amer
ican funeral.
We were to have gone to Baron Shi-
busawa's for tea and dinner this aftemoon,
but his influenza has gone into pneumonia.
To go back to Saturday. The reception
was pleasant. We met the Americans who
are educators and in the missionary schools
and colleges ; intelligent and well disposed, so
far as I have seen. The criticism of the mis
sionaries seems to be rather cooked up. Just

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 55
now there is a fuss ovei them in Korea, be
cause there is some agitation going on there
for independence, and it seems to have
started with Koreans who had been in mis
sionary schools. The missionaries here seem
much divided, some of them blaming the
missionaries over there, saying they wUl
bring Christianity into disrepute every
where in Japan, and some saying that it
proves Christian teaching amounts to some
thing and that it wiU have a good effect in
improving conditions, leading to foreign
criticism and pubUcity, and causing the Jap
anese to modify their colonial policy, which
seems to be under military rather than civil
control. There is a rumor that the ex-
Emperor of Korea didn't die a natural
death, but committed suicide, with the hope
of putting off or preventing the marriage of
his oldest son to a Japanese princess — ^they
were to have been married very soon. No
one seems to know whether the story was in-
Eented to encourage the revolutionaries in

56 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Korea or has truth in it. Meanwhile they
say the wedding is going to take place, and
the Japanese are sorry for their poor prin
cess, who is sacrified to marry a foreigner.
Thursday evening Mamma invited the
X  's and some others, eight including
ourselves, to supper in a Japanese restaurant,
a beef restaurant — they are aU specialized —
where we not only sat on the floor and ate
with chop sticks, but where the little shces
of thin beefsteak were brought in raw with
vegetables to flavor, and cooked over a little
pan on a charcoal hibashi, one fire to each
two persons. Naturally it was lots of fun,
a kind of inside picnic.
Oh, yes, something happened Friday.
We went to the Imperial Museum in the
morning and the curator showed us about —
I won't describe a museum — ^but on the way
home we were taken into a pipe store and
Mamma purchased three little Japanese
pipes, ladies' pipes, to take home. Quite
cunning, and the dealer said this was the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 67
first time he had ever sold anything to a
foreigner, so he presented her with a little
ladies' pouch and a pipe holder, both made
from Holland cloth, not anything very
precious, but probably worth as much as her
entire purchase, certainly more than the
profit on his sales. These things are quite
touching and an offset to the stories about
their bad business methods, because it is
really a matter of hospitable courtesy to the
foreigner, though he said himself they gen
erally put the price up for the foreigner on
antiques.

68 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tokyo, Thursday, March 14.
We have just had a mUd picnic. Mamma
has a slight cold, so the maids brought her
supper up to her and for sociabiUty brought
mine up too. Mamma got out a Japanese
phrase book and pronounced various
phrases to them; to see them giggle and
bend double, no theater was ever so funny.
When I got to my last bite, I inquired the
name of the food, and said it and "Sayo-
nara" — ^good night. This old gag was a
triumph of humor. They are certainly a
good-natured people. I have watched the
children come out from a pubUc school near
here, and never yet have I seen a case of
buUying or even of teasing, except of a very
good-natured kind, no quarreUng and next
to no disputing. Yet they are sturdy Uttle
things and no moUycoddles. To see a boy
pf ten or twelve playing tag and jumping

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 59
ditches with a boy strapped to his back is a
sight. There are no pubUc rebukes or scold
ings of the children or even cross words, to
isay nothing of slappings, no nagging, at
least not in pubUc. Some would say that
the chUdren are not scolded because they
are good, but it is a fair guess that it is
the other way. But it must be admitted
that so far as amiable exterior and cheerful
ness and courtesy is concerned, they have
no bad examples set them. Some foreign
ers say aU this is only skin deep, but the
manners of the foreigners who say these
things aren't any too good even from our
standards. Anyway, skin deep is better
than nothing and good as far as it goes.
However, the Japanese say that their cour
tesy is reserved for their friends and people
they know, not that they have bad manners
to strangers, but that they pay no attention
to them, and won't go out of their way to
do anything for them.
I told about the man who made Mamma

60 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
a present when she bought the pipes.
Yesterday we were in that region and
Mamma went in again and bought another,
and paid him a compUment on what peo
ple said about the present. Whereupon
he gets up and fishes out another more val
uable pouch, somewhat ragged and old, the
kind the actors now use on the stage, and
offers it. Mamma naturally tries to avoid
it, but can't. He informs her through the
friend with us that he likes Americans very
much. An international matter having
been made of it, the pouch is accepted, and
now we have to think up some present to
give him. However, we have told this story
to several Americans here, and they say
they have never heard anything Uke it.
We were to have gone to the Peeress's
School this morning, an appointment hav
ing been made to show us about. Mamma's
cold preventing her going, we had somebody
'phone to see if the time could be changed.
And this afternoon appear for her some

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 61
lovely UUes and amaryllis — these being from
people we bad never seen. A Freudian
would readUy infer how bad my own man
ners are from the amount I talk about this.
We went to a Japanese restaurant for
supper. This was a fish restaurant, and we
cooked the fish and vegetables ourselves, but
over gas, not charcoal this time. Then we
had side dishes, fish, lobster, etc., innumer
able. Instead of bringing you in a biU of
fare to order from, the coolie brings a big
tray with samples of everything on it, and
you help yourself. One thing was abalones
on the half sheU, these being babies, about
Uke our clams, but not so tough, to say noth
ing of as tough as the big ones. I didn't
try the fried devU fish and other luxuries,
but wandered pretty far afield. When you
have leisure, try eating lobster in the shell
with chop sticks. You will resort to some
thing more ancient than chop sticks, as I
did. This restaurant is quite plebeian,
though it has a great reputation for its

62 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
secret recipe for the sauce the fish is cooked
in, but it was considerably more expensive
than the other — probably because we sam
pled so many side dishes ; the other one cost
less than five dollars for eight people — ^good
food and aU anybody could eat.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 63

Tokyo, March 14th.
Tfie ceremony of breakfast is ovei\ and
I am sorry again you cannot aU share in
these daUy festivals which add so much .to
the dignity of Uving. We are now study
ing Japanese with the aid of the maids. I
missed going to the Dolls' Festival at a
private kindergarten and the result — this
moming by maU a postcard fnom the chU
dren with numerous presents made by them,
aU dolls, and those I wUl send home, as they
are interesting. With the presents they
say: "We made cakes and prepared for
your coming and we were in the depths of
despair when you did not come. Please
come another time." I am sure there is no
other country in the world like this. The
language is an impossible one. The way
given in the phrases of the guide book is the
way the man speaks. So when I stammer

64 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
off those phrases the girls are literaUy
tickled to death. When they tell me what
I ought to say in the more elaborated
poUte way of the women, then I am floored.
It is aU an amusing game and reUeves the
watch they keep on each bite we take so as
to be ready to supply more. Everything
they do is marked with the kindliest attitude
and every act or move is one of friendship.
This is the program for to-day: Go to
lunch at the house of some missionaries,
then to father's lecture at 3:30, then to
dinner for University of Chicago students.
To-morrow wUl be an open day for me and
the little secretary wiU take me shopping.
The big department store is the fashionable
place where all the noble and rich buy their
kimonos, and I may supplement my second
hand attempts with a new one. When I
get to Kyoto I hope to find a real old one,
as the new style of weave are infected with
foreign influence. The other evening with
Y  we found a little shop for antiques

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 65
which is a gem to look at. An old man and
his wife, Y  says he bets they are Samu
rai, with the poUteness of real nobles, and
their Uttle place as carefully arranged for
beauty as if it Avere their home — which it is. I
broke an old Kutani plate and I inquired for
one there. They had none, but we looked at
their things, they with many bows, and when
we left said we were sorry to have troubled
them for nothing. They replied, "Please
excuse us for not having the thing you
wanted." To-morrow we go to lunch here in the
neighborhood with a very clever and inter
esting family (of a professor) . None of the
women call, at least none of the married
ones, aU being afraid of their EngUsh for
one reason, but I am learning to just take
things as they come and not to bother over
formalities, never knowing whether that is
the best way or not. The wedding of last
Tuesday was the most interesting function
I have seen. The marriage ceremony was

66 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the Christian one. The company repre
sented the rich and fashionable of the city.
The ladies aU wear black crepe kimonos,
that splendid crepe which is so heavy, next
under the black is an all white of soft china
silk, then the third of bright color. K  's
was that bright vermUion red. Her
sleeves were not very long, as she is a
mother, but the young girls wear bright
colored kimonos and long sleeves that
almost touch the floor. The bride wears
black, too. AU these dress-up kimonos
have decorations in color, sometimes em
broidered and sometimes dyed on the lower
points of the front. The bride's was spread
out on the floor around her just like the
old pictures, embroidered in heavy rose
peonies, her undergarment and the lining of
the black, in rose color. Her hair was done
in the old conventional way shown in the
prints with the long pins of light tortoise
shell with bouquets of tiny flowers carved
at the ends, which stuck out about three

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 67
inches, making a crown over her head. The
receiving party is as follows : First, father
of groom; second, mother of bride; third,
groom; fourth, bride; fifth, father of bride;
sixth, mother of groom. The line is straight
and the bride is perfectly arranged like an
old print, she and the groom with their eyes
cast down. As each person passes, they
make bows all along the Une at once, but
they do not move hand or eyes or a fold of
these perfect clothes. I forgot to say the
men, unfortunately, wear European dress.
Then we moved on to two large rooms, the
men aU seated and smoking in one, and the
women in the other. Those who knew me
were very kind. Countess H  introduced
me to the bridesmaids; at least they would
be the maids at home. They were the sisters
and young relatives all dressed in the most
brUliant kimonos and embroidered and dec
orated to the limit; they looked Uke all the
parrots and peacocks and paradise and blue
birds and every lovely color imaginable,^

68 LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN
while the uniform black of the guests,
decorated with the pure white of their crests
which stand out in such a group, formed
the perfect background, free from all the
messiness which is so apparent in a diversi
fied gathering of aU sorts of color and shape
and materials in our land. At tea, which
was very elaborate and taken sitting at
the tables, the family of the two filled one
table, a long one at the end of the room.
The bride now wore a green kimono, equally
briUiant; about two feet away from her sat
the groom, both in the middle of the long
table.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 69

Tokyo. Thursday, Marcfi 20.
We have had a number of social events
this week. Tuesday evening General H  ,
who speaks no EngUsh but who came over
on the Shinyo with us, gave a party for
us in the gardens of the Arsenal Grounds.
We could not have entered the Arsenal
Grounds in any other way. There were
about twenty-five people there, mostly
Christian Association people, and the
clergyman of the Japanese church where I
had spoken the night before. He is keen
about introducing more democracy in
Japan, and I spoke on the moral meaning ;
of democracy. WeU, the garden isn't a
garden at aU in our sense, but a park, and
the finest in Tokyo outside of the Imperial
ones. It is quite different from the minia
ture ones we know as Japanese gardens,,
being of fair size, with none of those cun-

70 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
ning Uttle imitations in it; big imitations
there are in plenty, as it was a fad of the
old landscapists, as you might know, to re
produce on a smaU scale celebrated scenes
elsewhere. The old Daimyo, who built this
one two hundred years ago, was a great ad
mirer of the Chinese and reproduced several
famous Chinese landscapes as well as one
from Kyoto. The extraordinary thing is
the amount of variety they get in a smaU
space; they could reproduce the earth, in
cluding the Alps and a storm in the Irish
Channel, if they had Central Park. Every
detaU counts; it is aU so artisticaUy figured
out and every Uttle rock has a meaning of
its own so that a barbarian can only get a
surface view. It would have to be studied
like an artist's masterpiece to take it aU in.
The arsenal factory fumes have kiUed many
of the old trees and much of the glory has
departed. Probably Mamma has written you that
she has one young woman, Japanese, com-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 71
ing on the ship with us under her care, to
New York to study; and to-day another
young lady called, and said she wanted to
go back to Ajnerica. About the young
women going home with us, Y  said we
would have to be careful, as one time his
mother was offered seventeen damsels to
escort when she was going over, of whom
she took three. You may not appreciate
the fact that going to America to study
means practically giving up marriage; they
wUl be old maids and out of it by the time
they return — also those who have been in
America do not take kindly to having a
marriage arranged for them. At a lecture
I listened to yesterday, a Japanese woman,
close to thirty, was pointed out to me as
about to get married to an American archi
tect here. There are exceptions, but this
case is evidently a famous romance. The
lecture was on Social Aspects of Shinto;
Shinto is the official cult though not the
estabUshed religion of Japan. Although

72 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
nothing is said that wasn't scientificaUy a
matter of course to be said — I mean sup
posing it was scientificaUy correct — one of
the most interesting things was the caution
that was taken to avoid publication of any
thing said. On one side the Imperial
• Govemment is theocratic, and this is the
most sensitive side, so that historical criti
cism or analysis of old documents is not
indulged in, the Ancestors being Gods or
the Gods being Ancestors. One bureau
cratic gentleman felt sure that the divine
ancestors must have left traces of their own
language somewhere, so he investigated the
old shrines, and sure enough he found on
some of the beams characters different from
Chinese or Japanese. These he copied and
showed for the original language — ^till some
carpenters saw them and explained that
they were the regular guild marks.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 73

Kamakuea, Thursday, March 27.
This weather beats Chicago for change-
ableness. Monday, at midnight, il was
storming rain; when we got up the next
day it was the brightest, warmest day we
have had. We spent it sightseeing and went
out without an overcoat. The magnolia
trees are in fuU bloom. Yesterday and to
day are as raw March days as I ever saw
anywhere; there would have been frost last
night but for the wind. Tuberculosis is rife
here and no wonder.
Three of the University professors have
caUed on me this moming. They wish to
arrange in every detaU for our movements
when we leave here. I suppose I was asked
twenty times how long we are to stay in
Kamakura. When I said I didn't know, it
depended on weather and other things, they
said, "Oh, yes," and in five minutes asked

74 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the same question again. Whether they ar
range everything in minute detail for them
selves in advance or whether they think we
are helpless foreigners I can't make out;
some of both, I think. But they can't un
derstand that we can't give an exact date
for everything we are going to do tUl we
go to China. At the same time I never
knew anybody to change their own plans,
especially socially, as much as they do.
There is a great anti- American drive on
now; seems to be largely confined to news
papers, but also stimulated artificially some
what, presumably by the militaristic faction,
which has lost more prestige in the last few
months than in years, with a corresponding
gain in liberal sentiment. They have con
sequently found it necessary to do some^
thing to come back. Criticism of the
United States is the easiest way to arrest
the spread of liberal sentiments and
strengthen the arguments for a big miU-
taristic party, like twisting the lion's tail

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 75
with us. Discussion about race discrimina
tion is very active and largely directed
against the United States in spite of Aus
tralia and Canada, and also in spite of the
fact that Chinese and Korean immigration
here is practically forbidden, and they dis
criminate more against the Chinese than we
do against them. But consistency is not
the strong point of politics in any country.
Excepting on the subject of race discrimina
tion, foreigners in contact with Japanese
do not find the anti- American feeling which
is expressed in papers. If the Anglo-
Japanese treaty of alliance should lapse be
cause of the League of Nations or anything
else, America will be held responsible, even
if the British are the cause. Two years
ago there was a similar anti-British drive
here, and pretty hard bargains were driven
with the British ally in aU war matters.
Now that Germany and Russia are out of
it, England has no apparent reason for
snuggling up much and the shoe is on the

76 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
other foot. Which makes the attack on the
U. S. all the more stupid, as they are in
ternationally quite lonely, even if they tie
up with France on account of simUar Rus
sian interests, financial and otherwise.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 77

Tokyo, Wednesday, March 28.
To-morrow we are going to Kamakura
again; it is only an hour and a half from
here. We are going to take a little trip into
the mountain and hot-spring district also,
but the cherry blossom season is much ad
vanced, ten days earlier than usual, and we
are afraid it wiU spring itself in our ab
sence if we go far, so probably we shall be
back here in a few days for about a week.
Then we shaU take a five-day trip on our
way to Kyoto, going to the shrine at Ise.
This is the oldest and most sacred Shinto
shrine in Japan, which means that it is the
central spot for imperial ancestor worship.
Speaking of ancestors, you remember our
references to the Count. The father of his
first wife has recently been made a Baron.
Parliament being over, the Count has left
for the southern Island to inform the an-

78 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
cestors of his first wife, who are buried there,
of the important item of f amUy gossip. The
oldest Uberal statesman of aristocratic de
scent, who was quite intimate with the late
Emperor, won't go to the annual meeting
to celebrate the granting of the Constitu
tion by the late Emperor because he is so
disgusted that no more progress has been
made in constitutionalism, and says he can
not meet his late master untU he can report
progress to him. Otherwise he would be
ashamed to meet him as he feels responsible
to the Emperor. This would not be any
place for a spiritualist to eam his Uving.
They are clear past mediums.
We have chiefly been eating lately. I
had two Japanese meals, a la chop sticks,
yesterday and one to-day. Luncheon yes
terday at a restaurant, where we had lots
of things you never heard of, to say nothing
of eating them, and a dinner at a friend's.
There were twelve courses at table and two
or three afterwards — ^not counting tea, and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 79
much the same at another dinner to-night.
We have a bill of fare written on fans, only
in Japanese, and little silver salt cellars as
souvenirs besides. One feature of both
dinners was soup three times, at the begin
ning, about the middle and again at closing,
at these functions rice is not served till
near the last course. Then there were one
or two semi-soupy courses thrown in. I
can eat raw fish and ask no questions; and
in a bird restaurant, Sunday for luncheon,
I ate raw chicken wrapped in seaweed;
abalone is my middle name, and some of
the shell fish we eat is probably devil fish.
We have been here over six weeks now,
and in taking an inventory it can be said
that while we have not done as much sight
seeing as some six-day tourists, I think we
have seen more Japanese under normal
home conditions than most Americans in six
months, and have seen an unusually large
number of people to talk to, not the official
crowd but the representative intellectual

80 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
liberals. I have seen less but found out
more than I ever expected about Japanese
conditions, which is quite the opposite of
European experience in traveling. When I
come back I shaU try to see a few of the
official people, since I now know enough
to judge what they may say. On the whole,
America ought to feel sorry for Japan, or
at least sympathetic with it, and not afraid.
When we have so many problems it seems
absurd to say they have more, but they cer
tainly have fewer resources, material and
human, in dealing with theirs than we have,
and they have still to take almost the first
step in dealing with many of them. It is
very unfortunate for them that they have
become a first-class power so rapidly and
with so little preparation in many ways; it
is a terrible task for them to live up to their
position and reputation and they may crack
under the strain.

LETTERS FRCHM CHINA AND JAPAN 81

Tokyo, Tuesday, April 1.
The Japanese do one thing that we
should do well to imitate. They teach the
chUdren in school a very nice lesson about
the beauty and the responsibility of being
poUte and kind to the foreigner, like being
so to the guests of your own house. This
adds to the national dignity.
Yesterday the Emperor got out and I
caught him at it. Quite an amazing and
lucky experience for me and no harm to
him, as I had not known he ever went out
before I picked him up in the street. I went
down our hUl as usual with a friend to take
the car. At this side of the street where the
car passes, we walk across the bridge on
the canal and then tum and walk one block
to the car stop. When we got to the other
side of the bridge all the people on both
sides of the street were massed in a nice

82 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Uttle quiet line and three poUcemen were
carefuUy and gently placing each one ac
cording to his height so he could see as weU
as possible. So we lined in with the rest
whUe the policeman looked on in an en
couraging fashion. Nobody spoke out loud,
and after I had noticed the friend with me
having a conversation with the officer, I
ventured to ask why we were left standing
there. With the same quiet, she said: "The
Emperor is passing on his way to the
commencement exercises of Waseda Uni-
vesity." Well, you could have knocked me
over with a feather. I don't suppose I
should have known what was happening at
all unless I could have figured it out from
the Chrysanthemums on the carriage
doors. I said to her: "How is he coming,
in an automobUe? How long are we to
stand here?" I had visions of the
stories about the streets being cleared,
and the doors shut for some hours whUe
white sand was sprinkled over the car

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 83
tracks, and aU the rest. "No," she said,
"just a Uttle time." I saw by now that I
was not likely to have much gossip poured
out to me about the Emperor, so I just
fixed a nice Uttle thing about three years
old in front of me and then we waited with
the rest of the school children. Soon the
procession came, first a body of horse in
plain khaki uniforms, then one very Japa
nese-looking man alone on the back seat
in one of the light victorias, very clean and
shiny, with the Chrysanthemums on the
door. He was dressed in a khaki wool uni
form just Uke the rest of the army with a cap
on his head. Then came some other shiny,
Ught little victorias with two horses, all just
aUke. I rubbered my best and I had a very
good look at the one Uttle man alone in the
middle of the seat, and sitting up and look
ing straight ahead of him pleasantly. In
the midst of the passing I asked the com
panion with me, "Which is the Emperor?"
and she answered "The one in the first car-

84 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
riage," and stiU there was that quiet of
perfect breeding; and by and by aU the nice
little soldiers on horseback passed, and after
I had stood a little longer on the edge of
my bridge I started our little procession
moving towards the car. The Emperor had
gone the opposite way. After a little I
said: "I did not know the Emperor went
to commencements and things like that,"
and I chattered on, and then my companion
said in her slow, proper, cahn tone: "That
is my first experience to see the Emperor,
too." And I said "Is that so?" and asked
some more questions, stiU wondermg that
no one had caUed out a Banzai nor made a
sound, and it is not tUl to-day that I learned
that aU the people were standing with their
eyes cast down to the ground, and that I
was the only one who looked at the Em
peror, and their reverence was so great that
that was the reason I had not heard them
breathe. For another thing, Waseda is the
liberal university and private, so I won-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 85
dered stiU tiU I learned then that the
Emperor was going to the Peers' School
commencement, and that is the one com
mencement he goes to every year. So you
see I had luck, and my conscience was clear
for having rubbered, and I have seen the
Emperor. The Imperial Garden party comes off
the week after we leave Tokyo. To this
party aU the nobles of the third rank and
above, and all the professors in the Im
perial University, and all the foreigners of
latest arrival, are asked. So a foreigner
can go just once and no more unless a Pro
fessor. We put our names down in the
Ambassador's book for an invitation before
we knew all the niceties of the case. So
now that we have learned that we can go
once and no more, and that we are expected
to go if we are invited, we wUl take back
our request for an invitation as the party
is on the 17th of April, and we are to be
in Kyoto on the Idth. So in our good luck„

86 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
a daughter of a Baron, who is a member of
the Imperial household, has asked us to go
with her to-morrow to see the Imperial
Garden where the party is to be and we
may see the gardens all the better. This
Imperial Garden is one of the prince's
gardens and not the one behind the moat
where the Emperor lives. It seems the fall
chrysanthemum party is in that garden,
though never inside the inner moat where
no one goes unless he has an audience. The
moat and the surroundings of the palace
are lovely, but as you can read the guide
book if you want a description, I will not
bore you with an attempt. The walls of
the moat were built by labor of the feudal
dependencies, and like all such labor it
spared no pains to be splendid. Some of
the moats have been fiUed up long ago, but
there are stUl three around the palace. In
side the outer one you may walk part of the
time and see the grand gates with their
solemn guards. In these gardens the air is

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 87
fresh and the birds sing in the trees, and
the dust of the city never gets there.
To-night I am wearing tabi, those nice
Uttle toe socks which will not fit my feet,
but which are so much nicer than the felt
toe sUppers that fall off your feet every
time you go upstairs. As a matter of fact,
I wear ordinary house slippers in this house,
but it is nicer not to and we always take
them off when we come in from outdoors.
Truly, the Japanese are a cleaner people
than we are. Have I told you we bathe in
a Japanese tub? Every night a hot, very
hot wooden box over three feet deep is filled
for us. This one has water tumed in from
a faucet, but in Kamakura the little char
coal stove is in the end of the tub and the
water is carried in by buckets, and is re
heated each night. It seems aU right and
I regret all the years our country went
without bath tubs, and all the fuss we made
to get them when this little, simple device
was all there and as old as the hills. But

88 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
we can catch up with the heating and cook
ing with charcoal hibashi.
We have learned to eat with chop sticks
very well, and it is not a bad way. The
main objection I see to it is that one eats
too fast, and Fletcherizing is not known in
this country. The nice little way of doing
your own cooking is something to introduce
for cuteness in New York. These last few
days we have just been sight-seeing in the
real European sense, running about town
and buying small things all day and then
having the wonderful advantage of coming
back to this delightful home of perfect com
fort at night, which is quite unlike Europe,
and spoils us for the common lot of knock
ing about.
The greatest actor of the country is here.
He belongs in Osaka, his name is Ganjiro,
and we have a box for Thursday. The play
is the one that was given in New York
called "Bushido," It is much longer than
as given there. It is called by another

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 89
name and is acted quite differently. On
Sunday we are going again to the Noh
Dance, or if no good tickets are to be had
for that, we are going to a theater where
women act all the parts to offset the usual
way here of having only men in the com
pany. The men who act women's parts
here do make up very weU. They live and
dress and act as women all the time so as
not to lose the art. Only when they stand
in pose they cannot conceal the fact that
they are men. The play begins at one in
the afternoon and lasts until ten at night.
Tea and dinner is brought into your box
in those nice little lacquer lunch boxes.
Ganjiro is on the stage in every scene for
eight hours, so you can see the actors work
for their art here. The costumes are
superb, but the actors do not simply strut
to show off. Their speech being very af
fected in manner they have had to depend
upon expression to get results, and as a
consequence their acting is done with their

90 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
entire body more than any other school in
the world. The best ones, like the ones we
are to see, can express any emotion, so 'tis
said, with their backs and the calves of their
legs when you can't see their faces.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 91

Tokyo, April 1.
Our activities of late have been miscel
laneous; we spent three days, counting com
ing and going four days, at Kamakura last
week. It is on the seaside and is a great
resort, summer and winter, for the Japanese,
and at the hotel for Europeans over week
ends. For summers the foreigners go to
the mountains, while the Japanese take to
the seaside, largely because there is more
for the chUdren to do on the seashore, but
partly because mountains seem to be an
acquired taste. Kamakura is about ten de
grees warmer than Tokyo, as it is sheltered
by the hUls. Peas were in blossom and the
cherry trees all out. It was cold and rainy
whUe we were there, however, except one
day, when we crowded in so much sight
seeing we got rather tired. Mamma and I
are now catching up on calls, prior to leav-

92 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
ing and doing some sightseeing. To-day
we went to a shop where they publish very
fine reproductions of the old art of Japan,
including Chinese paintings owned in
Japan, much better worth buying than the
color print reproductions to my mind,
though we have laid in some reproductions
of the latter. There are so many mUlion
aires made by the war in Japan, that lots
of the old lords are seUing out part of their
treasures now; prices I think are too high
even for Americans. The old Daimyo
families evidently have enough business
sense to take advantage of the market,
though some are hard up and sell more for
that reason. A week ago we went to an
auction room where there was a big collec
tion of genuine old stuff, much finer than
appears in the curio shops, and this week
end there is another big sale by a Marquis.
However, it is said they keep the best
things and unload on the nouveau riche; not
but what a lot of it is mighty good as it is.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 93
My other experience that I have not
written about is seeing Judo. The great
Judo expert is president of a normal school,
and he arranged a special exhibition by
experts for my benefit, he explaining the
theory of each part of it in advance. It
took place Sunday moming in a big Judo
hall, and there were lots of couples doing
"free" work, too ; they are too quick for my
eye in that to see anything but persons sud
denly thrown over somebody's back and
flopped down on the ground. It is really
an art. The Professor took the old prac
tices and studied them, worked out their
mechanical principles, and then devised a
graded scientific set of exercises. The sys
tem is reaUy not a lot of tricks, but is based
on the elementary laws of mechanics, a
study of the equilibrium of the human body,
the ways in which it is disturbed, how to re
cover your own and take advantage of the
shiftings of the center of gravity of the
other person. The first thing that is taught

94 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
is how to fall down without being hurt, that
alone is worth the price of admission and
ought to be taught in all our gyms. It isn't
a good substitute for out-of-door games,
but I think it is much better than most of
our inside formal gymnastics. The mental
element is much stronger. In short, I think
a study ought to be made here from the
standpoint of conscious control. TeU Mr.
Alexander to get a book by Harrison — a
compatriot of his — out of the Ubrary, called
"The Fighting Spirit of Japan." It is a
journalist's book, not meant to be deep, but
is interesting and said to be reliable as far
as it goes. I noticed at the Judo the small
waists of all these people; they breathe al
ways from the abdomen. Their biceps are
not specially large, but their forearms are
larger than any I have ever seen. I have
yet to see a Japanese throw his head back
when he rises. In the army they have an
indirect method of getting deep breathing
which really goes back to the Buddhist Zen

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 95
teaching of the old Samurai. However,
they have adopted a lot of the modem
physical exercises from other armies.
The gardens round here are full of cherry
trees in blossom — and the streets are full of
people too fuU of sake. The Japanese take
their drunkenness apparently seasonly, as
we hadn't seen drunken people till now.

96 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Tokyo, April 2.
We have had another great day to-day.
This morning rose early and wrote letters,
which were not sent in spite of the haste, as
we decided the slow boat was slower than
waiting for a later and faster one. So you
ought to get many letters at once. The day
has been sunshiny and bright, but not at aU
sultry, so perfect for getting about. We
went to the art store to get some prints
which we had selected the day before and
then on to caU on a Professor of PoUtical
Economy, who is also a member of ParUa
ment, radical and very wide awake and in
teresting, quite Uke an American in his
energy^ and curiosity and interest. We
visited and learned a lot about things here
and there and then he took us to lunch at
his mother-in-law's house. They have a
beautiful house in Japanese style, with a

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 97
foreign style addition, Uke most of the
houses of the rich, the Japanese part
having no resemblance whatever to the
foreign, which is so much less beautiful.
In carpets and table covers and tapestries
imitated from the German, the Japanese
have no taste, while in their own line they
remain exquisite. This house is one of the
most absolute cleanliness. No floor in it but
shines Uke a mirror and has not a fleck of
dust, never had one. Let me see if I can
describe accurately this entertainment. We
took three 'rickshas and rode through the
cherry Uned narrow streets over hills where
are the lovely gardens of the rich showing
through the gateways and showing over the
top of the bamboo waUs, which are built of
poles about six feet long upright and tied
together with cords. They are very pretty
with the green. When we reached the house
Mr. U  took us in to the foreign drawing
room, which is very mid- Victorian and Ger
man in its general effect. This one has in

98 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
it a beautififl lacquer cabinet, very large and
quite overpowering every other thing in the
room. There the ladies of the house came
in and made their bows, very amiable and
smiling at our thanks for their hospitahty.
The sister-in-law, a young girl of sixteen,
who wants to go to America, and afterwards
the grandmother, very much the command
ing character that a grandmother ought to
be. The chUdren hovered round them aU
much like our chUdren. The ladies brought
us tea with their own hands in lovely blue
and white cups with Uttle lacquer stands and
covers. Candy with the tea, which was
green. I forgot to say that we had already,
during the hour with Mr. U  had tea three
different times and of three different kinds,
besides Uttle refreshments therewith. After
a little we were summoned to lunch. Three
places set on a low table and a beautiful blue
brocade cushion to sit upon. The two
younger ladies on their knees ready to serve
us. They poured out wine for us, or Ver-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 99
mouth, and we took the latter. We had
before us, each, one lacquer bowl, covered,
that contained the usual fish soup with Uttle
pieces of fish and green things cut up in it.
This we drink, putting the solid bits into
our paouths with the chop sticks. The
grandmother thought she ought to have pre
pared foreign food, but the clever girl of
sixteen had spoken for home food, and so
we thanked them for giving that to us, as
we seldom get a real genuine Japanese
meal. And this is the first we have had
where we were served by the ladies of the
house, except the doUs' food at the festival.
It seems this is the highest compUment that
we have had, as the real Japanese home is
open to the foreigner only when the for
eigner is asked to sit on the floor and is
served by the ladies of the household. They
kneel near the table and the maid brings the
dishes and hands them to the ladies, who in
tum serve the dishes to the guests. It is
yery pretty, I have reached the stage where

100 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
I can sit on my heels for the length of a
meal, but I rise very awkwardly, as my
feet are asleep clear up to my knees at
the end. We ate soup, cold fried lobster
and shrimps, which are dipped in sauce
besides; and cold vegetables in another
bowl, and then hot fried fish; then some
little pickles, then rice, of which the
Japanese eat several bowls, then the des
sert, which has been beside you all the
time, and is a cold omelette, which tastes
very good, and then they give you tea, For
mosa oolong. We had toast, too, but that
is foreign. Then we left the table and were
shown the rooms upstairs, which contain
many pieces of lacquer and bronze and
woodwork, and then we went down and
there was tea and a dish of fruit ready for
us. We had not much time for this, as they
were going to send us in a motor to the
Imperial Gardens. But as the last kind of
tea had to be brought we were at the door
putting on our shoes when it arrived. This

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 101
tea is strong oolong and has milk in it, with
two lumps of sugar for you to put in your
self. Thus we had been served with tea six
times within three hours.
It is hard to describe the Imperial Gar
dens. Read the guide book and you wiU
see that it is. Ten thousand orchid plants
were the beginning of the sight. We saw
the lettuce and the string beans and the to
matoes and potatoes and eggplant and
melons, and all growing under glass, for the
Emperor to eat. Never saw such perfect
lettuce, aU the heads in one frame of exactly
the same size and arrangement, as if they
were artificial, and all the others just right.
Why potatoes under glass? Don't ask me.
Grapes in pots looked as if the raising of
grapes under glass was in its beginning, but
maybe not, as I was not famUiar enough
with those Uttle vines to know whether they
would bear or not. The flowers in the
frames were perfection. Masses of Mig
nonette daisies, and some other bright

102 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
flowers I did not know were ready to
put out in the beds which were pre
pared for the garden party. We cannot go
on the 17th. A very large pavUion with
shingle roof under which the Emperor and
Empress are to sit at the party is being
built and wiU be taken down the next day,
or rather week, as it wiU take more than
one day. Then if it rains there wiU be no
party. To-night it looks as if rain might
spoU the blossoms. But to-day was perfect.
It is a Uttle surprising when one sees this
famous garden after reading about Japan
ese gardens for all one's Ufe. There is such
a large expanse of grass with no flowers and
the grass does not get green here so soon as
with us, and it is now aU brown, though big
masses of daffodils are superb. These under
the cherry trees with the sunshine shining
through slantways made one of the briUiant
sights of a Ufetime. The artificial lakes
and rivers and waterfaU and the bridges and
islands and hills with big birds walking and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 103
swimming make enough to have come for to
Japan. The groups of trees are as fine as
anything can be and across the long ex
panses the view of them is like a succession
of pictures. There are a hundred and sixty-
five acres in the park, no buildings. In the
beginning it was pretty weU to one side of
the city, but now it is on a car track of much
travel, though stiU on the outskirts on its
outer edge.
On Monday we have arranged to go to
the theater again at the Imperial. To-day
it is the great actor Ganjiro at a small the
ater. It is said the jealousy of the Tokyo
actors and managers keeps Ganjiro from get
ting a fair chance when he comes here. Mr.
T  1 formerly of Chicago, has just been
here to try to arrange a dinner for us before
we leave, the dinner to be at a restaurant
with aU the old students present. The res
taurants are always amusing and we agreed,
of course. This may keep us in Tokyo one
day longer, though that is not decided yet.

104 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
For the rest of the time we are to make
up on calls as far as we can and ride about
to see the cherry blossoms, and I hope we
may see some of the famous tea houses.
Thus far we have seen no tea house at aU,
and there is not one afternoon tea house
where ladies go in this city excepting the
new-fashioned department stores, and they
do not stand for anything different than
they do with us. This shows how little the
real ladies of Tokyo go out of their houses.
The Sumida river is a big river gathering
up all the small streams from one side of
the mountains. It is full of junks and other
craft and is the center of much history, both
for Tokyo as a city and for the whole
country.

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 105

ToKYO^ April 4.
Ganjiro, the greatest actor from Osaka,
is acting here now, and the show was great.
He did the scene among other things they
did in New York under the name of "Bush
ido." A dance by a fox who had taken the
form of a man was a wonderful thing.
There is no use in trying to describe it^ It
was not just slow posturings, Uke the
other Japanese dances we have seen, nor
was it as wUd as the Russian dancers;
he did it alone, no companion, male or
female. But it was as free as the Rus
sian and much more classic at the
same time. You wiU never realize what the
human hand and arm can do untU you see
this. He put on a number of masks and
then acted or danced according to the type
of mask he had on. He can do an animal's
motions without any clawing — as graceful

106 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
and Uthe as a cat. He is a son of an old
man Ganjiro.
Our last days here are rather crowded
and we aren't going to get the things done
that should be done. Cherry blossoms are
at their height — another thing indescribable,
but if dogwood trees were bigger and the
blossoms were tinged with pink without
being pink it would give the effect more
than anything else I know. The indescrib
able part is the tree f uU of blossoms without
leaves; of course you get that in the mag-
noUas, but they are coarse where the cherry
is delicate. We went to a museum to-day,
which is finer in some respects than the Im
perial; gods till you can't rest, and wonder
ful Chinese things, everything except paint
ings.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 107

Tokyo, April 8.
We are actuaUy packing up and get away
to-morrow moming at 8:30-^we travel all
day, the first part tUl four o'clock on the
fastest train in Japan. The ordinary trains
make about fifteen miles an hour, Japan
having unfortunately adopted narrow gauge
in early days and going on the well-known
principle of safety first. We haye had vari
ous and sundry experiences since writing, the
most interesting being on Sunday, when we
were taken into the country Hoth to see the
cherry blossoms and the merry-jpakers; the
time is a kind of a carnival and nuld satur-
naUa based on bright clothes, and wigs,
and sake, about ninety per cent sake.
There were a few besides ourselves not in
toxicated, but not many. Everybody prac
ticed whatever English he knew on us, one
dressed-up fellow informing us "I ChralUe

108 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Chaplin," and he was as good an imitation
as most. Aside from one fight we saw no
rudeness and not much boisterousness, the
mental effect being apparently to make
them confidential and demonstrative.
Usually they are very reserved with one
another, but Sunday it looked as if they
were telUng each other all their deepest
secrets and Ufe ambitions. Our host of the
day laughed most benevolently all the time,
not excluding when a fellow dressed in
bright red woman's clothes insisted on rid
ing on the running board. They get drunk
so seldom that it didn't appeal to him so
much as a drunk as it did as a popular fes
tival; the people really were happy.
There were miles of trees planted each
side of a canal that suppUes Tokyo with
water, aU kinds of trees and in all stages of
development, from no blossoms to fuU, no
leaf and beautiful little pink leaves. The
blossoms are dropping, it is almost a mUd
snowfall, and yet the trees seem full.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 109
Yesterday we went to the theater again,
the Imperial, a party of ten filUng two
boxes. We were taken behind the scenes
and shown the green rooms, etc, and intro
duced to an actor and to his son, about
eleven, who appeared on the stage later and
did a very pretty dance. He had a teacher
in the room and was doing his Chinese writ
ing lesson, never looked up tiU he was
spoken to, about the handsomest and most
inteUigent looking lad I have seen in Japan.
Acting is practicaUy an hereditary profes
sion here. I doubt if an outsider not trained
from early chUdhood could possibly do the
acting anyway, and I don't think the guUd
would let him break in if he could, though
one man of British extraction has been quite
successful on the Japanese stage. We saw
some very interesting things yesterday, in
cluding dances, and learned that they are
very anxious to come to Anlerica, but they
want a patron. If the scenes were selected
with great care to take those that have lots

110 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
of action and not so much talking, and the
Ubrettp was carefuUy explained, they could
make a hit in New York at least.
Our other blowout was the other evening
at a Japanese classic tea house, a part of a
Noh dance for entertainment and a twelve-
course meal or so. The most interesting
thing though is talking to people. On the
whole I think we have a chance to see people
who know Japan much better than most.
We haven't been officialized and putting the
different things together I think we have as
good an acquaintance with the social con
ditions as anybody would be likely to get
in eight weeks. An experienced journalist
could get it, so far as information is con
cerned, in a few days, but I think things
have to be soaked in by cumulative impres
sions to get the feel of the thing and the
background. When they told me first that
this was a great psychological pioment, that
everything was critical and crucial, I didn't
know what they meant, and I could hardly

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 111
put it in words now, any jnore than they
did, but I know inside of me. There are
few extemal signs of a change, but Japan
is nearly in the condition she was in during
the first years of contact and opening up of
things fifty or so years ago, so far as the
mental readiness for change is concerned,
and the next few years may see rapid social
changes.

112 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Nara, April 12.
WeU, we have started on our joumey and
have seen Japan for the first time, scenicaUy
speaking, that is to say. The first day's
ride from Tokyo to Nagoya was interesting,
but not particularly so except for Fuji,
which we saw off and on for several hours,
and on three sides. As sometimes it isn't
visible, and we had a fine warm day, we had
good luck. Nagoya is where the best old
castle in Japan is, you may even in your be
nighted country and estate have heard of
the two golden dolphins on top. The castle
is an imperial palace and it tumed out that
you have to have a permit from Tokyo, but
we set out to try to get in, and as we had
met a nice young man at the X  's in
Tokyo who came from Nara, we telephoned
him, and while we didn't get in through him
(he said he could never get in himself under

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 113
any circumstances) he promptly asked us to
dinner. Then we were taken to the swellest
tea house in Nara and had another of those
elaborate dinners, on what he caUed the tea-
istic plan. We began with the tea ceremony
without the ceremony but with the pow
dered tea, the bowl being prepared for each
one separately in succession. The Nara
cooking is better, we all thought, than the
Tokyo, the food being more savory and the
variety of flavors greater, an opinion which
pleased our host. Expressing some curi
osity about some four-inch trout which
seemed to have a sugar caramel coating, we
found that they were cooked in a kind of
liquor which deposited the sweetness, and
then we were presented with a bottle of the
drink known as Mirin, so now we are lug
ging glassware. Then after the dinner he
said that he hoped that we would not think
him guilty of improper action, but that he
had invited the best samisen player and
singer in Nagoya, and also some dancers.

114 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
In other words, some geishas were intro
duced and sang, played and danced before
King David. There are all grades from
those comparable to chorus girls at Jack's to
high grade actresses, and these were of the
upper kind. He said he wished us to see
something pf tme Japan which few for
eigners saw, this referring to the restaurant
as weU as the dancing. They won't receive
anybody who isn't an old cUent or friend
of one of these high toned places. But the
la^es of the party thought he was especiaUy
interested in one of the girls. PersonaUy I
think the dancing and music are much more
interesting than they are reported to be in
the guide books.
The next day we went to the primitive
Ise shrines, arriving cross and hungry at
about two, but bound to get the pilgrimage
over, especiaUy as it wasn't good weather.
Yamada^ where the sacred shrines are, is a
very beautiful place,^ with wooded hUls and
Uttle streams. The trees are largely cryp-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN IU
tomerias, which are evidently some relative
of the Cahfomia redwoods, and while not
nearly as taU, make much the same effect.
It is a darling spot, filled with the usual
thousands of carpet bagger (UteraUy the old
Brussel carpet bags) pUgrims. As pre
viously reported I toted a borrowed frock
coat and stovepipe hat. Our guide said
special clothing was not needed for the
ladies. I put on my war paint, and the chief
priest having been written from Toyko of
our impending arrival, an hour had been
set. At the outermost gate, the Torii, the
ceremony of purification, took place. We
had water poured out on our hands out of
a Uttle cerepionial cup and basin and then
the priest sprinkled salt on us; nobody else
had this but us. Then when we got to the
fence gate, we were told that the ladies not
baring "visiting dresses," whatever they are,
couldn't go inside, but that I should be
treated as of the same rank as an Imperial
professor and allowed to go. I forgot to

116 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
say that we had a gendarme in front of us
to shoo the vulgar herd out of our way.
Then we marched slowly in behind the
priest, on stones brought from the seaside,
through a picket fence to designated spots
near the next fence, I being allowed nearer
to the gate than our Japanese guide;
and we worshiped, that is bowed. I got
my bow over disgracefuUy quick, but I
think our Japanese conductor stood at least
fifteen minutes.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 117

Kyoto, April 15.
Here we are in the Florence of Japan,
and even more to see if possible than in
Italy. We have had a rainy day to-day,
which is perhaps a good beginning for a
week of constant sightseeing. This mom
ing we spent in Yamanaka's — the most
beautiful shop I ever saw, composed of the
finest Japanese rooms of the finest propor
tions and fiUed with the most beautiful art
specimens of aU kinds. But the kinds are
properly assorted in true Japanese fashion.
I bought a red brocade. It is a panel, old
red with figures of gold and some dark blue,
peonies and birds. It is what the Buddhist
priests wear over the left arm in procession.
We have the certificate that it is over a hun
dred years old. The panel is about five feet
long and one wide, the strips which compose
it are four in number, sewed in seams, which

118 LETTERS FROM CfilNA AND JAPAN
turn the comers in mortise fashion, and yet
they aU match perfectly. Most of these
strips are woven in these ribbons and sewed
together. I got a second one which is pur
ple with splendid big birds and peonies
again. I like the peony in brocade much
better than the chrysanthemum or the
smaUer flowers. Some fine ones with pome
granates are tempting, but I did not buy the
most beautiful on account pf the prospects
of spending money better in China. I also
bought a pretty tea set which I have here
in my room — ^it cost 30 sen, which means
fifteen cents for teapot and five cups, gray
pottery with blue decorations. There are
many cheaper ones that are pretty too. To-
piorrow we go to the original temple where
the tea ceremony originated and are to par
ticipate in the tea ceremony, which the high
priest wiU perform for us. You better get
a guide book and read about the temples of
Kyoto, as they are too numerous to teU
aliput in letters. We have the municipal car

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 119
for aU these occasions. Good thing we do,
for Kyoto has shrunk Uke a nut in its shell
since the days of its ancient capital size and
the distances between temples are enormous.
Next day we go to the Imperial Palaces,
and so go on and on getting fatter and
fatter. The weather and the spring time are
superb. Cherry blossoms were gone when
we got here, but the yoimg leaves of the
maples are lovely green or red and the whole
earth is paradise now. The hills are nearer
than in Florence, the mountains higher, so
that Kyoto has every natural beauty. We
shaU only have a week here and then go to
Osaka, where the puppet theater is and
where there is a school of drama, of which
Ganjiro is the leader. It is the doU theater
we want to see, because that is the origin of
aU acting in Japan. Many of the conven
tions of the theater are based on the move
ments of the puppets.
Kyoto in many respects is the most lovely

120 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
thing the world has to show, such a combi
nation of nature and art as one dreams of.
These wonderful temples of enormous size,
of natural wood filled with paintings and
sculpture of an ancient and unknown kind,
fascinate one .to the point of feeling there
must be many more worlds when sudi mul-
tipUcity of ideas and feelings can exist on
a single planet, and we Uve unconscious of
the whole of it or even of any part of its
extent. The gardens we have seen to-day
are the old Japan unchanged since they
were made a thousand years ago, when they
took the ancient ideas of China and India
for models. The temples of Tokyo seem
like shabby reUcs of a worn-out era, but
here the perfection of their art remains and
is kept intact. The landscape of the first
Buddhist monastery, where the tea cere
mony originated, has tiie same rivers and
islands and little piles of sand whidi were
placed in the beginning, all in miniature,
and planted with miniature trees, all imita-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 121
tions of real scenes in China when China was
the land of culture. Now they say even the
originals are destroyed in China, which is
so out of repair that it depresses every one
who sees it. Fifty years ago they advertised
for sale here in Nara, a lovely pagoda five
stories high for fifty yen. It is obviously
necessary for some American milUonaire to
buy up the massive gates and pagodas and
temples of China in order to redeem them
from complete ruin. The Japanese are the
one people who have waked up in time to
the value of these historic things, and several
of the temples have been rebuUt before the
old material was so rotted as to make them
hopeless. Wood is a magnificent material
when it is used in such massive structures
as it is here. The biggest beU in the world,
twelve feet high, is hung on a great tree
trunk in a belfry with a curled-up roof of
flower-Uke proportions, first having been
hauled to the top of the high hill. We shall
hear it boom next Saturday. We heard the

122 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
one in Nara, the deepest thing I ever
thought to hear, nine feet high. They are
beautiful bronze and they are very mellow
and melodious and reach to the center of
whatever the center of your being may be
and leave you to hope the greater unknown
of the judgment day may be a caU like Ihat
sound. We had lunch with Miss D  . She teUs
stories about the efforts of the Japanese
girls to get an education that make you
want to sell your earrings, even if you have
none, in order to give the money to these
idealists. They are as much pioneers as our
forebears who chopped down the trees, but
they can't get at a tree to chop. She says
she wants me to go back to America and to
go to every Congregational church there
and tell them they must send money here to
give education to the people.
One day we haye the mayor's car to go
about in and the next day the University
hires a car for us and we indulge ourselves

; LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 123
in aU kinds of doings we do not deserve and
sometimes wonder if we shall have to com
mit suicide after it ends in order to condone
the point of honor. Certainly these people
have a nobiUty of character which entitles
them to race equaUty.
I want to find a nice quiet place to stay
and come back and see the sights at greater
length. The paintings on the walls are
mostly ruined, but the kakemonas and the
screens and the makemonas, those are won
derful and I am glad to say that we have
got over seeing them as grotesque, and we
feel their beauty. When once you see that
the trees in the ground are real and that
they look just as the trees in the pictures
have always looked, then you begin to ap
preciate both nature and human nature as
depicted.

124 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Kyoto, AprU 15.
To-day is rainy and we haven't done
much. We got here yesterday noon. The
hotel is on the side of a hUl with wonderful
views, and is pretty good, though the one
at Nara which is run by the Imperial Rail
way System is the only first-class one we
have seen so far. In the afternoon the Uni
versity sent a car and we took an auto ride
into the suburbs to a famous cherry place —
it was too late for blossoms, but the river
and hills and woods were beautiful, and we
saw the usual large crowd enjoying life. It
is reaUy wonderful the way the people go
out, all classes, and the amount of pleasure
they get out of doors and in the tea houses.
I have never been anywhere where every
day seemed so much of a holiday as in Japan
— there is stUl sake in evidence but not so
much. This month a special geisha dance is
given here at a theater connected with a

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 12s
training school; the dance lasts an hour and
is repeated four or five consecutive hours.
We went last night; the dancing is much
more mechanical posturing than the theater
dancing, or than the little geisha dance we
saw at Nara, but the color cbmbinations and
the way they handled the scenery were won
derful. There were eight very different
scenes and it didn't take more than a minute
to make any change. Once a curtain was
simply drawn down through a trap door,
another time what had looked like a canvas
mat in front of the curtain was pulled up
and it tumed out to be painted on one side.
But they had a different method every time.
The mayor has invited me to speak to the
teachers Saturday afternoon, and after
wards we are invited by the municipality to
a Japanese dinner. They are also putting
the city auto — the only one apparently — at
our disposal, when they aren't using it, and
have arranged to take us to a porcelain and
a weaving factory next Monday. This town

126 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
is the headquarters of Japan for artistic
production, ancient and modern. The Uni
versity authorities also telephoned to Tokyo
and got permission for us to visit the palaces
here, but they are said not to be equal to
the Nagoya ones which we missed. WhUe
at Nara we spent most of our time at the
Horiuji temples, some mUes out, I won't
do the encyclopedia act except to say that
they are the headquarters of the introduc
tion of Buddhism into Japan thirteen hun
dred years ago, which meant civilization,
especially art, and have the waU frescoes,
unfortunately faint, of that period, and lots
of sculpture ; this means wood carving, as of
course there is no marble here, WeU, it
happened that it was the birthday of Prince
Shotoku, who was the gentleman respon
sible for the aforesaid introduction, and of
whom there are many statues, age of two,
twelve and sixteen being favorites; his piety
was precocious. Consequently, everything
was wide open. Every kind of peep show

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 127
and stall, and more than the usual hundreds
of pUgrims who combine pleasure with piety
in a way that beats even the Italian peasants ;
when they have money here they spend it;
tightwadism is not a Japanese vice. Well,
we were taken into the garden of the chief
priest to eat our luncheon; of course, he
was very busy, but greeted us in gorgeous
robes and then sent out tea and rice cakes.
The contrast between this lovely little
garden and the drums and barkers just be
yond the waUs and the wonderful old artistic
shrines beyond the barkers and ham and
egg row was as interesting as anything in
Japan. You may remember Miss E  is rather
taU for an American woman, even. Mamma
is something of an object to the country peo
ple, but Miss E  is a spectacle. Curiosity
is the only emotion the Japanese are not
taught to conceal apparently. They gather
around in scores, literaUy. I don't know
how many times I have seen parents make

128 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
sure the chUdren didn't miss the show.
Several times I have seen people walk
slowly and solemnly all the way around us
to make sure they missed nothing. No
rudeness ever, just plain curiosity. As we
were going to the museum after breakfast,
a few of those children, girls, appeared and
bowed. First I knew one of them had hold
of each of my hands, and went with us as far
as the museum — ^girls of nine or ten. It was
touching to see their friendliness, especially
one evidently rather poor, who would look
up at me and laugh, and then squeeze my
hand and press it against herself, and then
laugh with delight again. I haven't been
able to discover when it ceases to be proper
for children to be natural. Sunday morning
some soldiers were going off to Manchuria
— or Korea — ^and before eight we heard the
patter of the clogs down the street and swne
hundred of boys and girls were mardung
down to the station with their teachers; the
same thing next moming, for the soldiers.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 129

Kyoto, AprU 19.
We have just come from another Geisha
party, given by the mayor and about fifteen
of the other officers of the city. Papa is
quite stuck up because they say it is the
first time the city of Kyoto ever entertained
a scholar in that fashion. But if he is stuck
up what should I be when a woman appears
for the first time in history at a men's ca
rouse in Japan? The Geisha girls are all
the way from eleven years old to something
like fifty. One of the older ones is the best
dancer in the city, and she gave us one of
the wonderful pantomime dances that so
fascinate one here. She has been in jaU for
her poUtical activities, said activities con
sisting in the active distribution of funds in
order to elect someone she favored. It is
against the law for a woman to take any
part in politics here. Like all the older
women of that class that I have seen she has

130 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
a sad look when her face is at rest. But
they all talk and entertain so busUy that the
sadness is not seen by the men. They are a
very cultivated lot of women so far as we
have seen them; of course we see only the
best. They talk with the composure of a
duchess and the good nature of a chUd. It
is a rare combination. They are very curi
ous about us and ask aU sorts of questions.
One girl of seventeen said she loved babies
and how many did I have? When I told
her five she was delighted. She had a rose
bud mouth just like the old points and
danced with the old print postures. The
girls pass the drinks and the rice which al
ways comes at the end of such feasts. The
little eleven-year-old gave a dance caUed
"Climbing Fuji." Wonderful flat-footed
movements that make you feel exactly as if
you were climbing with her. In the middle
part she puts on a mask which is puffy in
the cheeks, and then she wipes the perspira
tion and washes her little face and fans her-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 131
self and goes on again, flatfooted. AU the
motions are most elegant and graceful and
subtle and serpentine, never an abrupt or
sudden gesture, and never quite literal in
any sense. After the dance was finished
she came and sat by me and her skin was
hot as if she had a fever. All the men were
older and I must say they treated her very
nicely. This is the way those feasts go. We
enter the restaurant in stocking feet, and
are usuaUy shown to a small room where
we kneel on the cushions and take tea while
waiting for aU the guests to assemble.
About six this time, we were shown to the
large room, which is always surrounded by
gold screens and shoji, which slide back be
fore the windows. Cushions are placed
about three feet apart on three sides of the
long and beautifully shaped room. In the
middle of one side they are piled up so the
foreign guests of honor may sit instead of
ImeeUng Japanese fashion. We place our-

132 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
selves after having aU the guests one after
another brought up. We shake hands be
cause their bows are rather impossible and
they have adapted themselves to our way.
Then we aU squat again. Then the pretty
waitresses come slithering across the floor,
each with a tiny table in her hands. The
first is for Papa, the second for me, then
the mayor, and so on. The mayor is down
at the end of the line. After each one has
his table before him the mayor comes to the
center of the hollow square and makes a
Uttle speech of welcome. He always tells
you how sorry he is he has such a poor en
tertainment and that he could not do better
for these distinguished guests who do him
so much honor by coming, and how this is
the first time the city has ever honored a
foreign scholar by this kind of entertain
ment. Then Papa does his best to make a
reply, and after he sits down we lift the
cover of a lovely lacquer soup bowl and lift
the chop sticks. You take a drink of soup.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 133
lift a thin slippery slice of raw fish from its
little dish, dip it in the sauce and put it in
your mouth. To-night this first soup is a
rich and rare green turtle, delicious. So
you drink it aU and take a little fish, but
our guide warns us not to take too much
raw fish as we are not accustomed it. By
this time another tray of pretty lacquer is
put beside you on the floor and on it is a
tiny tray or platter of lacquer on which are
placed two little fish browned to perfection,
and trimmed with two little cakes of egg
and powdered fish, very nicely rolled in
cherry leaves. Every dish is a work of art
in its arrangement. These two fish are the
favorite of the last emperor, and you do not
blame him. They are cooked in mirin, a
kind of sweet liquor made from sake, and
you eat aU you can pick off the bones with
your hashi. As soon as this tray is in place
you see a lovely little girl with her long,
bright-colored kimona on the floor around
her, and she has in her hand a blue and

134 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
white china bottle placed in a tiny lacquer
coaster, and you know the feast is reaUy
under way. She is followed by the older
girls, and little by little one at a time and
quite gradually the dancing girls come in
and bow to the floor whUe they pour out the
sake. They laugh at the ways of the for
eigners who always forget it is the part of
the guest to hold out his tiny cup for the
poison. Everybody drinks to the health of
everybody else and there stops my sake, but
the Japanese drink on and on, one cup at
a sip and the hand reaching out for more.
Talk gets livelier, the girls take more part
in it. They are said by some to be the only
interesting women in Japan. At any rate,
no wives are ever there but me, and the girls
are beautifully cultured, moving at the
slightest suggestion of voice or gesture and
always seeing quickly and very pleasantly
what each one wants. As soon as they see
we do not drink sake they bring many
bottles of mineral water for us. Then they

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 135
do their beautiful dances. Two, about seven
teen years old, did one called "Twilight
on the east hill of Kyoto." In Nagoya,
in Tokyo, or wherever you are, the theme
is always some natural event connected with
the nature near by. Always simple and
classic. Then the famous old dancer did a
subtle thing called "The nurse putting the
child to sleep." That is another favorite
theme. This was lovely, but sometimes too
subtle for us to grasp all the movements.
These girls all dress in dark colors like the
ladies, only with the difference prescribed
by the profession, such as the low neck in
the back and the full length of the kimona
on the floor like a wave around her. With
the young ones the obi is different, being
tied to drop down on the floor in a long bow.
The young ones also have the bright hair
omaments and the very long sleeves. But
so do other young girls wear the long sleeves
for company dress.
There are other courses of fish; one of

138 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
four strawberries, two slices of orange, some
mint jelly cut in cubes, and sweetened
bamboo slices in the middle of the list. Then
more fish courses, many of them bright-
colored shell fish which are always rather
tough. Then a very nice mixture of sour
cucumber salad and little pieces of lobster
or crab, very nice and any sour thing is
good with these many courses of fish. At
the end bowls of rice, which is brought in
in a big lacquer dish with a cover looking
some like a small barrel. This is put into
bowls by one of the older dancers and
handed about by the younger ones who get
up and down from their kneeling posture
by just lifting themselves as if they had no
M'cight, on their toes. Many of the Japanese
take the regulation three bowls fuU of rice,
and eat it very fast, I must say their rice
is delicious, but I cannot get away with
more than one bowl, partly because I can
not gobble. Then, for the last, your bowl
is filled with tea.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 137
All this time the gentlemen from the
other parts of the room are kneeling one
at a time before you asking you if you like
the cherry dance and what your first im
pressions of Japan were, and all such talk,
and you have become intimate friends with
the dancers as weU, maybe with no common
language except "thank you" and "very
nice" and "good-bye," and constant smiles
and interpretations now and then from
others who know a very little English. One
thing no one expects is for a foreigner to
know a word of Japanese. Therefore, when
you pop out an awkward word or two, you
are applauded by laughter and compliments
on your good pronunciation. To-night we
had the very tiniest of green peppers cooked
as a vegetable with one of the dishes. That
was good as it had flavor; three of them
about as big as a hairpin were served in the
dish. You always get tiny portions and are
usually warned not to eat too much at the
first part of the meal. In the tea-dinner the

138 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
rice comes along at the beginning so it can
be eaten with the fish, and that is an agree
able variety though you are told not to eat
too much of it as there are other courses to
foUow. I forgot to say there is always a
course in the middle which is a hot custard
made with broth instead of milk and sea
soned with vegetables. That is good, too.
In fact, I have become quite fond of this
fish food.
When we got in the motor car at the gate
of the restaurant, all the gay little dancers
were standing there in the rain waving their
hands in American fashion till we went out
of sight. Then I suppose the tired little
things went back and danced for more men.
We were home at 8:80. AU the dinners
seem to be early here in Japan, except what
are called the foreign ones and they follow
our hours as well as our style.
I must tell you the best tea in Japan
grows here at a place nearby called Uji.
We had that tea after a lecture in the city

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 139
fiaU. It is strong to the danger point, and
has a fiavor unlike anything else. An acid
Uke lemon and no bitter at all; leaves a
smooth pleasant taste something like dry
sherry, and is generally delicious. It costs
at least ten yen a pound here, but I shall
get some to take home. Very good ordi
nary tea here costs fifteen sen a pound, seven
and a half cents.

140 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Kyoto, AprU 22.
To-day we were taken visiting sdiools —
first a Boys' High school, then an elemen
tary school whidi had an American flag
along with the Japanese over the door in
our honor, and which was awfully nice.
The children did lots of cunning stunts for
us, one little kid beating the Japanese
drum for their rhythmic mardiing, which
they are good at. Then a textile school for
textUe design, weaving and dyeing, whidi
for some unexplained reason was bad and
poorly attended. The machines were old,
German and out of date. In fact, it aU
looked as if it had been worked off on them
second hand by some Germans who didn't
want them ever to amount to anything. AU
of the best work here is still done by hand,
although they have good electric power de
veloped from the water they have. Then we

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 141
went to a Girls' High School, combined
with a college for girls, preparing teachers
for the regular high schools. The elite of
Kyoto go there, and it, like the other schools,
was very nice and good. They specialize in
domestic science and we ate a fine Japanese
lunch they had prepared. AU this, like most
our other trips, in the mayor's car.
This is really a country where the scholar
is looked up to and not down upon. In
virtue of having lectured at the Imperial
University I am "Your Excellency" offii
ciaUy. Osaka city does not wish to be out
done by Kyoto, so I am to lecture to the
teachers there, and the city is to provide
for us at the hotel, and the mayor to give
us a banquet there. Of course. Mamma is
the only woman present, as it would not
occur to them to invite their own wives.
Foreign women are expected, however, to
do strange things, and they are very polite
to them. The geisha women seem to be
about the only ones who have an all-around

142 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
education — ^not of the book type, but in the
sense of knowing about things and being
able and willing to talk — ^and I think the
men go to these banquets and talk to them
because they are tired of their too obeyful
wives and their overdociUty. One woman
at the banquet we went to was known as
the Singing Butterfly, and has the name
Constitution as a nickname, because of her
supposed interest in politics, especiaUy on
the liberal side. When we heard that she
had been in prison because of her interest in
politics, we sat up and took notice, but it
tumed out that it was for bribing voters
to vote for a man she was interested in. But
she is a local celebrity all right, and her stay
in prison, had evidently added to her interest
and prestige*

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 143

April 28, on the Kvmano Maru.
En Route to China.
The lecture yesterday was a success, go-\
ing off rather better than the others. It was
in a school haU and they are always beauti
ful rooms. I was entertained during its
two hours of duration by watching a splen
did pink azalea and a pine on either side
of the desk. They are each about five feet
high and of the most lovely shape, and there
were about a thousand blossoms on this
azalea. We know but very little about
dwarfed trees and shrubs in our country as
the specimens we see are very small ones
and inferior in shape and interest to those
we see here. They are everywhere, each
Uttle shop has in the midst of its mess of
second hand or cheap new things a charm
ing Uttle peach or plum, pine, azalea, or
redberry. In a hot house we saw a tree

144 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
that had two plums on it, and we frequently
see tiny orange trees covered with fruit.
The white peach is one of the loveliest
things in the world, double blossoms like
roses, and is entirely artificially produced.
The smoke has lifted and we are seeing
the hills of the shore very well. On the
other side of the ship we see the Island
of Awaji, so we are now between the two
islands and it is much like the Thousand
Islands in the St. Lawrence River. I sup
pose this is the entrance to the Inland Sea.
It is partly clear and the land is so close it
is easy to see. There are many Japanese
ladies on board with their husbands and
they seem to enjoy it. With their faces
white with rice powder and their purple
color in their haoris they are pretty, and
especiaUy here where they do not feel the
necessity of covering the obi with haori so
they look less humpbacked than in fashion
able Tokyo. Their footwear I love, only,
of course, it holds them still more to the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 145
conventional position as it leaves the legs
bare above the ankle, and they must walk
so as not to show that as weU as not to dis
turb the lap of the kimona down the front.
But the tabi feel like bare feet on account
of the division of the big toe from the other
toes, and as soon as you put them on you
feel as if the toes were really made to use,
and the foot clings as you walk. I am tak
ing a set of cotton kimonas to China so as
to have them to wear in my room with the
tabi on hot days. Without the obi the dress
becomes quite cool if made of thin mate
rial. The thin silk, which is practicaUy
transparent, is one of the most beautiful
things in Japanese weaving, as it is stUl firm
enough to keep its shape and wear for years.
The dress of the geisha is very like the
ceremonial dress of the lady, especiaUy
when black with decorations at the bottom.
The little girls are very touching, many of
them are not over eight or nine, and they
wear the elaborate dress and coiffure which

146 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
is theirs for the part. In cherry season it
is bright peacock blue. In Osaka the deco
rations were butterflies in colors and gold.
The samisen players are older and they
dress more plainly in black or plain blue,
the drum players are young and gay colored.
The teeth of the little girls are so bad that
I asked if they blackened them. The dances
are lovely poetical things with themes of the
most delicate subjects. There is never any
thing coarse either in the thought or the
execution. They say the geisha is the most
unselfish person in the world. Perhaps that
might be said for all the women. They do
their hard work and keep themselves out
of sight to a degree that shows the pain
there must be in it. When I was asked what
I thought of them I answered that I thought
Japanese women were not appreciated for
what they did. They said, "No, that is not
so, we do not show it but we appreciate them
in our hearts."

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 147

Shanghai, May 1.
We have slept one night in China, but
we haven't any first impressions, because
China hasn't revealed itself to our eyes as
yet. We compared Shanghai to Detroit,
Michigan, and except that there is less coal
smoke, the description hits it off. This is
said to be UteraUy an international city, but
I haven't learned yet just what the tech
nique is; every country seems to have its
own post office though, and its own front
door yard, and when we were given a little
auto ride yesterday, we found that the car
couldn't go into Chinatown because it had
no license for that district.
I shall be interested to find out whether
in this really old country they talk about
"ages etemal" as freely as they do in Japan;
the authentic history of the latter begins
about 500 A.D., their mythical history 500

148 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
B.C, but still it is a country which has en
dured during myriads of ages. In spite of
the fact that they kept the emperors shut
up for a thousand years, and killed them
off and changed them about with great ease
and complacency, the children are all
taught, and they repeat in books for for
eigners, that the rule of Japan has been
absolutely unbroken. Of course, they get
to believing these things themselves, not
exactly intellectually but emotionaUy and
practically, and it would be worth any
teacher's position for him to question any
of their patriotic legends in print. How
ever, they say that in their oral lectures, the
professors of history of the universities
criticise these legends. In the higher ele
mentary school we visited in Osaka, we saw
five classes in history and ethics, in each of
which the Emperor was under discussion —
sometimes the Emperor and what he had
done for the country, and sometimes an
Emperor in particular. Apparently this

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 149
religion has been somewhat of a necessity,
as the country was so divided and split up,
they had practicaUy nothing else to imite
on — the Emperor became a kind of symbol
of united and modern Japan. But this wor
ship is going to be an Old Man of the Sea
on their backs. They say the elementary
school teachers are about the most fanatical
patriots of the country. More than one has
been burned or allowed the children to be
bumed while he rescued the portrait of the
Emperor when there was a fire. They must
take it out in patriotism in lieu of salary;
they don't get a living wage, now that the
cost of Uving has gone up.

150 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Shanghai, May 2.
We have been taken in hand by a recep
tion committee of several Chinese gentle
men, mostly returned American students.
The "retumed student" is a definite cate-
gory here, and if and when China gets on
its feet, the American university will have
a fair share of the glory to its credit. They
took us to see a Chinese cotton spinning and
weaving factory. There is not even the
pretense at labor laws here that there is in
Japan. Children six years of age are em
ployed, not many though, and the wages of
the operatives in the spinning department,
mainly women, is thirty cents a day, at the
highest thirty-two cents Mex. In the weav
ing department they have piece work and
get up to forty cents.
I vrill tell you something of what we had
to eat in one small afternoon. First, lunch
of all courses here at the hotel. Then we

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 151
went to the newspaper where we had tea
and cake at about four. From there to the
house of the daughter of a leading states
man of the Manchus, she being a lady of
small feet and ten chUdren, who has offered
a prize for the best essay on the ways to
stop concubinage, which they call the whole
system of plural marriage. They say it is
quite unchanged among the rich. There we
were given a tea of a rare sort, unknown in
our experience. Two kinds of meat pies
which are made in the form of Uttle cakes
and quite peculiar in taste, deUcious; also
cake. Then after we went to the restaurant
where we were to have dinner. First we
got into the wrong hotel and there, while
we were waiting, they gave us tea. We
were stmck by the fact that they asked for
nothing when we left, and thanked us for
coming to the wrong place. Then we went
to the right hotel across the street from the
first. They called it the comer of Broad
way and 42nd Street, and it is that. There

152 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
is a big roof garden besides the hotels, and
they are both run by the Department stores
which have their places underneath. It may
be a sad commentary on the human char
acter that one can eat more than one can
remember, but that is what we did last
night. First of all we went into the room
which was all Chinese furniture; very small
round table in the middle and the rows of
stools along one side for the singing girls,
who do not dance here. Those stools were
not used, as all the young Chinese are
ashamed of that institution and want to
get rid of it. On a side table were almonds
shelled, nice little ones, different from ours
and very sweet. Beside them were dried
watermelon seeds which were hard to crack
and so I did not taste them. All the
Chinese nibbled them with relish. Two
ladies came, both of them had been in New
York to study. All these people speak and
understand English in earnest. On the
table were little pieces of sliced ham, the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 153
famous preserved eggs which taste like hard-
boUed eggs and look like dark-colored
jeUy, and little dishes of sweets, shrimps,
etc. To these we helped ourselves with the
chop sticks, though they insisted on giving
us little plates on which they spooned out
some of each. Then followed such a feast
as we had never experienced, the boys tak
ing off one dish after another and replacing
them with others in the center of the table,
to which we helped ourselves. There was
no special attempt at display of fine dishes
such as you might have expected with such
cooking and such expense, and such as
would have happened in Japan. We had
chicken and duck and pigeon and veal and
pigeon eggs and soup and fish and little
oysters that grow in the ground (very de
Ucious and delicate) and nice little vege
tables and bamboo sprouts mixed in with
the others, and we had shrimps cooked, and
shark's fin and bird's nest (this has no taste
at all and is a sort of very deUcate soup.

154 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
but costs a fortune and that is its real reason
for being) . It is gelatine which almost all
dissolves in the cooking. We had many
more things than these, and the boy in a
dirty white coat and an old cap on his head
passing round the hot perfumed wet towels
every few courses, and for dessert we had
little cakes made of bean paste fiUed up
with almond paste and other sweets, aU very
elaborately made, and works of art to look
at, but with too little taste to appeal much
to us; then we had fruits, bananas and
apples and pears, cut up in pieces, each with
a toothpick in it so it can be eaten easily.
Then we had a soup made of fish's stomach,
or air sac. Then we had a pudding of the
most delicious sort imaginable, made of a
mold of rice filled in with eight different
symbolic things that I don't know anything
about, but they don't cut much part in the
taste. In serving this dish we were first
given a little bowl half full of a sauce thick
ened and looking like a milk sauce. It was

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 155
reaUy made of powdered almonds. Into
this you put the pudding, and it is so good
that I regretted all that had gone before,
and lam^oingjto learn how to make it.

156 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

^>

Shanghai, May 3.

Some one told us when we were on the
boat that the Japanese cared everything for
what people thought of them, and the
Chinese cared nothing. Making compari
sons is a favorite, if dangerous, indoor sport.
The Chinese are noisy, not to say boister
ous, easy-going and dirty — ^and quite human
in general effect. They are much bigger
than the Japanese, and frequently very
handsome from any point of view. The
most surprising thing is the number of those
who look not merely intelligent but intel
lectual among the laborers, such as some of
the hotel waiters and attendants. Our
waiter is a rather feminine, ultra refined
type, and might be a poet. I noticed quite
a number of the same Latin quarter Paris
type of artists among the teachers whom I
addressed to-day. The Japanese impres-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 157
sions are gradually sinking into perspective
with distance, and it is easy to see that the
same qualities that make them admirable
are also the ones that irritate you. That
they should have made what they have out
of that little and mountainous island is one
of the wonders of the world, but everything
in themselves is a little overmade, there
seems to be a rule for everything, and ad
miring their artistic effects one also sees how
near art and the artificial are together. So
it is something of a relaxation to get among
the easy-going once more. Their slouchi-
ness, however, wUl in the end get on one's
nerves quite as much as the "etemal" at
tention of the Japanese. One more general
ization borrowed from one of our Chinese
friends here, and I'm done. "The East
economizes space and the West time" — that
also is much truer than most epigrams.

158 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Shanghai, May 4.
I have seen a Chinese lady, small feet and
aU. We took dinner with her. She did not
come into the room until after dinner was
over, having been in the kitchen cooking it
whUe the servant brought things in. She
has one of those placid faces which are
round and plump and quite beautiful in a
way, a pretty complexion, and of course a
slow, rocking, hobbling way of walking.
Yesterday after the lecture we went there
again and she showed us all over her flat.
It is well kept, with not many conveniences
from our point of view, but I think it is
regarded as quite modern here. It has a
staircase, and a little roof where they dry
clothes or sit. The bath is a tin tub, warmed
by carrying water from the little stove like
our little laundry stoves. It has an outlet
pipe to the ground, no sewers as usual in

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 159
the Orient. The kitchen has a little stove
of iron set up on boxes and they burn small
pieces of wood. It has three compartments,
two big shallow iron pots for roasting and
boiling and a deep one in the middle for
keeping the hot water for tea. Only two
fires are needed as the heat from the two
end fires does for the water in the middle.
There is no doubt that the Chinese are a
sociable people if given a chance. Of course,
men like the husband of our hostess are the
extreme of abUity and advanced ideas here.
But it is remarkable that he shows us things
as they are. When we visited schools he
did not arrange in advance because he did
not want us to sec a fixed up program.
When we went out to lunch he took us to
a Chinese place where no foreigners ever go.
Yesterday we went to a department store
to buy some gloves and garters. Gloves
were Keyser's, imported, so were the
stockings, so were the garters and sus
penders, etc. The gloves were from $1 to

160 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
$1.60 and the suspenders were a dollar. I
bought some silk, sixteen inches wide, for
fifty cents a yard. The store was messy
and the floors dirty, but it is a popular place
for the Chinese. We paid three dollars for
a book marked Ish. 6p. in England, and
everything here is like that. Gloves and
stockings are made in Japan, and good
and cheap there; fine silken stockings $1,60
a pair. But still the Chinese do not buy
of them, but from America. We have
visited a cotton miU. The Chinese cotton
and silk are now inferior, owing to lack of
scientific production and of proper care of
seed. In weaving, they sometimes mix their
cotton with ours.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 161

Shanghai, Monday, May 12.
The Peking tempest seems to have sub
sided for the present, the Chancellor still
holding the fort, and the students being re
leased. The subsidized press said this was
due in part to the request of the Japanese
that the school-boy pranks be looked upon
indulgently. According to the papers, the
Japanese boycott is spreading, but the ones
we see doubt if the people wUl hold out long
enough — ^meanwhUe Japanese money is re
fused here.
The East is an example of what mascu
line dviUzation can be and do. The trouble
I should say is that the discussions have
been confined to the subjection of the
women as if that were a thing affecting the ^
women only. It is my conviction that not !
merely the domestic and educational back-

162 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
wardness of China, but the increasing physi
cal degeneration and the universal poUtical
corruption and lack of pubUc spirit, which
make China such an easy mark, is the result
of the condition of women. There is the
same corruption in Japan only it is organ
ized; there seems to be an alliance between
two groups of big capitalists and the two
leading poUtical "parties." There the very
great pubUc spirit is nationaUstic rather
than social, that is, it is patriotism rather
than public spirit as we understand it. So
while Japan is strong where China is weak,
there are corresponding defects there be
cause of the submission of women — and the
time wiU come when the hidden weakness
will break Japan down. Here are two items
from the Chinese side. A missionary spoke
to Christian Chinese about spending the
time Sunday, making chiefly the point that
it was a good time for family reunions and
family readings, conversation and the Uke.
One of them said that they would be bored

, LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 163
to death if they had to spend the whole day
with their wives. Then we are told that the
rich women — ^who have of course much less
Uberty in getting out than the poorer class
women — spend their time among themselves
gambling. It is universaUy beUeved that
the attempt to support a number of wives
extravagantly is one of the chief sources of
poUtical corruption. On the other hand, at
one of the poUtical protest meetings in
Peking a committee of twelve was ap
pointed to go to the officials and four of
them were women. In Japan women are
forbidden to attend any meetings where
politics are discussed, and the law is strictly
enforced. There are many more Chinese
women studying in America than there are
Japanese — in part, perhaps, because of the
lack of higher schools for girls here, but also
because they don't have to give up marriage
here when they get an education — ^in fact
we are told they are in especial demand not
only among the men who have studied

164 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
abroad, but among the miUionaires. Cer
tainly the educated ones here are much more
advanced on the woman question than in
Japan. "You never can tell" is the coat of arms
of China. The ChanceUor of the University
was forced out on the evening of the eighth
by the cabinet, practicaUy under threat of
assassination; also soldiers (bandits) were
brought into the city and the University sur
rounded, so to save the University rather
than himself, he left — nobody knows where.
The release of the students was sent out by
telegraph, but they refused to aUow this to
become known. It seems this Chancellor
[ was more the intellectual leader of the Ub-
erals than I had reaUzed, and the govern
ment had become really afraid of him. He
has only been there two years, and before
that the students had never demonstrated
politically and now they are the leaders of
the new movement. So of course the gov
ernment wiU put in a reactionary, and the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 165
students wiU leave and aU the honest teach
ers resign. Perhaps the students wiU go
on strike aU over China. But you never
can tell.

166 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

J Tuesday a.m.

Ex-President Sun Yat Sen is a philoso
pher, as I found out last night during dinner
with him. He has written a book, to be
pubUshed soon, saying that the weakness of
the Chinese is due to their acceptance of the
statement of an old phUosopher, "To know
is easy, to act is difficult." Consequently
they did not Uke to act and thought it was
possible to get a complete theoretical un
derstanding, while the strength of the Jap
anese was that they acted even in ignorance
and went ahead and learned by their mis
takes; the Chinese were paralyzed by fear
of making a mistake in action. So he has
written a book to prove to his people that
action is really easier than knowledge.
The American sentiment here hopes that
ithe Senate will reject the treaty because it
virtuaUy completes the turning over of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 167
China to Japan. I wUl only mention two
things said in the conversation. Japan
already has more troops, namely twenty-
three divisions, under arms in China than
she has in Japan, Japanese officered Chi
nese, and her possession of Manchurian
China is already complete. They have lent
China two hundred millions to be used in
developing this army and extending it.
They offered China, according to the con
versation at dinner, to lend her two milUon
a month for twenty years for military pur
poses. Japan figured the war would last tUl
'21 or '22, and had proposed an offensive
and defensive aUiance to Germany, Japan
to supply its trained Chinese army, and
Germany to tum over to Japan the AlUes'
concessions and colonies in China. As an
evidence of good faith, Germany had
already offered to Japan its own Chinese
territory, and it was the communication of
this fact to Great Britain which induced the
latter to sign the secret pact agreeing to

168 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
turn over German possessions to Japan,
when the peace was made. These men are
not jingoists; they think they know what
they are talking about, and they have good
sources of knowledge. Some of these state
ments are known facts — ^like the size of the
army and the two hundred million loan —
but of course I can't guarantee them. But
I'm coming to the opinion that it might be
well worth while to reject the treaty on the
ground that it involved the recognition of
secret treaties and secret diplomacy. On tKi
other hand, a genuine League of Nations]
•^— one with some vigor — is the only salvation
I can see of the whole Eastem situation, and
it is infinitely more serious than we realize
at home. If things drift on five or ten years
more, the world will have a China under
Japanese militarj' domination — ^barring two
things — Japan wiU collapse in the meantime
under the strain, or Asia will be completely
Bolshevikized, which I think is about fifty-
fifty with a Japanized-Militarized China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 169
European jiiplomacy here, which of course
dominates America, is completely futile.
England does everything with reference to
India, and they aU temporize and drift and
take what are called optimistic long-run
views and quarrel among themselves, and
Japan alone knows what it wants and comes
after it.
I still beUeve in the genuineness of the
Japanese liberal movement there, but they
lack moral courage. They, the inteUectual
liberals, are almost as ignorant of the tme
facts as we are, and enough aware of them
to wish to keep themselves in ignorance.
Then there is the great patriotism, which of
course easily justifies, by the predatory ex
ample of the Europeans, the idea that this is
all in self-defense.

170 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Shanghai, May 13.
I closed up abruptly because there seemed
a possibiUty of mail going out and now it
is a day after and more to teU, with a pros
pect of little time to tell it. China is full
of unused resources and there are too many
people. The factories begin to work at six
or earUer in the morning, with not enough
for the poor to do, and they have the habit
of not wanting to work much. Two shifts
work in factories for the twenty-four hours.
They get about twenty to thirty cents a day
and the Uttle children get from nothing up
to nine cents, or even eleven cents after they
get older. Iron mines are idle, coal and oil
undeveloped, and they cannot get raUroads.
They bum their wood everywhere and the
country is withering away because it is de
forested. They made the porcelain industry

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 171
for the world and they buy thdr table dishes
from Japan. They raise a deteriorated cot
ton and buy cotton cloth from Japan, They
buy any quantity of smaU useful articles
from Japan. Japanese are in every town
across China Uke a network closing in on
fishes. AU the mineral resources of China are the
prey of the Japanese, and they have secured
80 per cent of them by bribery of the Pe
king government. Talk to a Chinese and
he will teU you that China cannot develop
because she has no transportation fadlities.
Talk to him about building raUroads and he
teUs you China ought to have railroads but
she cannot buUd them because she cannot
get the material. Talk to him about fuel
when you see aU the weeds being gathered
from the roadsides for burning in the cook
stoves, and he tells you China cannot use
her mines because of the government's in
terference. There are large coal mines
within ten miles of this dty with the coal

172 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
lying near the surface and only the Japan
ese are using them, though they are right on
the bank of the Yangste River. The iron
mines referred to are near the river, a whole
mountain of iron being worked by the
Japanese, who bring the ocean ships up the
river, load them directly from the mines, the
ore being carried down the hiU, and take
these ships directly to Japan, and they pay
four doUars a ton to the Chinese company
which carries on aU the work.
The last hope of China for an effective
government passed away with the closing
of the Peace Conference, which has been
working hard here for weeks. It seems the
delegates from the south could act with
plenary power. The delegates from the
north had to refer everything to the military
ministers from Peking, and so at last they
gave up. Despair is deeper than ever, and
they all say that nothing can be done. We
¦have gone round recommending many ways
of getting at the wrong impressions that

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 173
prevaU in our country about them, such as
propaganda, an insistence upon the explan
ation of the differences between the people
and the govemment. But the reply is, "We
can do nothing, we have no money," Cer
tainly the Chinese pride has been grounded
now. An American official here says there
is no hope for China except through the pro
tection of the great powers, in which Japan
must join. Without that she is the prey of
Japan. Japanese are buying best bits of
land in this city for business, and in other
cities. Japan borrows money from other
nations and then loans it to China on bleed
ing terms. The cession of Shantung has, oT
course, precipitated the whole mess and
some Chinese think that is their last hope
to so reduce them to the last extremity that
rage wUl bring them to act. The boycott of
Japanese goods and money has begun, but
many say it will not be persistently carried
out. The need for food and clothes in China
keeps everybody bound by the struggle for

174 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
a UveUhood, and everything else has to be
forgotten in the long run.
The protests of the Faculty on behalf df
the students seem to have been received by
the government in good part. Students
here are in trouble also to some extent and
there is a probabiUty of a strike of students
in all the colleges and middle schools of the
country. The story at St. John's here is
very interesting. It is the Episcopalian
mission school, and one of the best. Stu
dents walked to Shanghai, ten mUes, on the
hottest day to parade, then ten mUes back.
Some of them feU by the way with sun
stroke. On their return in the evening they
found some of the younger students going
in to a concert. The day was a holiday,
called the Day of Humiliation. It is the
anniversary of the date of the twenty-one
demands of Japan, and is observed by all
the schools. It is a day of general meetings
and speechmaking for China. These stu
dents stood outside of the door where the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 175
concert was to be held and their principal
came out and told them they must go to the
concert. They repUed that they were pray
ing there, as it was not a time for celebrat
ing by a concert on the Day of Humiliation.
Then they were ordered to go in first by this
principal and afterwards by the President
of the whole coUege. Considerable excite
ment was the result. Students said they
were watching there for the sake of China as
the apostles prayed at the death of Christ
and this anniversary was Uke the anniver
sary of the death of Christ. The President
told them if they did not go in then he
would shut them out of the coUege. This
he did. They stood there till morning and
then one of them who lived nearby took
them into his house. Therefore St. John's
CoUege is closed and the President has not
given in.
I fancy the Chinese would be almost
ready to treat the Japanese as they did the
treacherous minister if it were not for the

176 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
reaction it would have on the world at large.
They do hate them and the Americans we
have met aU seem to feel with them. Cer^
tainly the apparent lie of the Japanese when
they made their splurge in proriiising Before
the sitting of the Peace Conference to give
back the German concessions to China is
"something America ought not to forget, All
ithese, and the extreme poverty of China-is
^what I had no idea of before coming.here.
A wonderfuUy solemn and intent old
pedlar has made his appearance most every
day, and much the same ceremonies are gone
through. For instance, there was a bead
necklace — the Ught hoUowed sUver enamel
— ^he wanted fourteen doUars for; he seemed
rather glad finally to sell it for four, though
you can't say he seemed glad; on the con
trary, he seemed preternaturally gloomy
and remarked that he and not we would eat
bitterness because of this purchase. The
funniest thing was once when, after getting
sick of bargaining, we put the whole thing

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 177
down and started to walk away. His move
ments and gestures would have made an
actor celebrated — they are indescribable^
but they said in effect, "Rather than have
any misunderstanding come between me
and my close personal friends I would give
you free anything in my possession." The
blood rushed to his face and a smUe of
heavenly benignity came over it as he
handed us the things at the price we had
offered him.
The students' committees met yesterday
and voted to inform the govemment by tele
graph that they would strike next Monday
if their four famous demands were not
granted — or else five — including of course re
fusal to sign the peace treaty, punishment of
traitors who made the secret treaties with
Japan because they were bribed, etc. But
the committee seemed to me more conserva
tive than the students, for the rumor this
A.M. is that they are going to strike to-day
anyway. They are especiaUy angered be-

178 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
cause the poUce have forbidden them to hold
open-air meetings — that's now the subject
of one of their demands — ^and because the
provincial legislature, after promising to
help on education, raised their own salaries
and took the money to do it with out of the
smaU educational fund. In another district
the students rioted and rough-housed the
legislative haU when this happened. Here
there was a protest committee, but the stu
dents are mad and want action. Some of
the teachers, so far as I can judge, quite
sympathize with the boys, not only in their
ends but in thdr methods; some think it
their moral duty to urge dehberate action
and try to make the students as organized
and systematic as possible, and some take
the good old Chinese ground that there is
no certainty that any good wUl come of it.
To the outsider it looks as if the babes and
suckUngs who have no experience and no
precedents would have to save China — if.
And it's an awful if. It's not surprising

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 179
that tfie Japanese with their energy and
positiveness feel that they are predestined to
govern China.
I didn't ever expect to be a jingo, but
either the United States ought to wash its
hands entirely of the Eastern question, and
say "it's none of our business, fix it up your
self any way you Uke," or else it ought to be
as positive and aggressive in caUing Japan
to account for every aggressive move she
makes, as Japan is in doing them. It is
sickening that we aUow Japan to keep us
on the defensive and the explanatory, and
talk about the open door, when Japan has
locked most of the doors in China already
and got the keys in her pocket. I under
stand and beUeve what aU Americans say
here — the miUtary party that controls
Japan's foreign poUcy in China regards
Cyerything biit positive action, prepared to
back itself by force, as fear and weakness,
and is only emboldened to go still further.
Met by force, she would back down. I don't

180 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
mean miUtary force, but definite positive
statements about what she couldn't do that
she knew meant business. At the present
time the Japanese are trying to stir up anti-
foreign feeUng and make the Chinese be
glieve the Americans and EngUsh are respon
sible for China not getting Shantung back,
and also talking race discrimination for the
same purpose. I don't know what effect
their emissaries are having among the igno
rant, but the merchant class has about got
to the point of asking foreign intervention
to straighten things out — ^first to loosen the
clutch of Japan, and then, or at the same
time, for it's the two sides of the same thing,
overthrow the cormpt military clique that
now governs China and seUs it out. It's
'^a wonderful job for a League of Nations —
if only by any chance there is a league, which
looks most dubious at this distance.
The question which is asked oftenest by
the students is in effect this: "AU of our
hopes of permanent peace and international-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 181
ism having been disappointed at Paris,
which has shown that might stiU makes
right, and that the strong nations get what
they want at the expense of the weak, should
not China_adgpt miUtarism as part of her
educational system?"

182 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Nanking, May 18.
There is no doubt we are in China.
Hangchow, we are told, was one of the most
prosperous of the strictly Chinese cities, and
after seeing this town we can believe it. It
has a big waU around it, said to be 21 mUes
and also 33 — ^my guess is the latter; none
theless there are hundreds of acres of farm
within it. This aftemoon we were taken up
on the wall; it varies from 15 to 79 feet in
height,^ according to the lay of the ground,
and from 12 to 30 feet or so wide; hard
baked brick, about as large as three of ours.
They always had a smaUer waUed dty inside
the big one, variously called the Imperial
and Manchu city. But since the revolution
they are tearing down these inner walls,
partly I suppose to show their contempt for
the Manchus, and partly to use the brick.
These are sold for three or four cents apiece

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 183
and carted aU around on the big Chinese
wheelbarrow, by man power, of course. The
compound waU of this house is made of
them, and they have several thousand of
them stored at the University grounds. They
scrape them off by hand; you can get some
idea of the relative value of material and
human beings. I started out to speak of
the view — ^typical China, deforested hUls
close by, aU pockmarked at the bottom with
graves, like animal burrows and golf bunk
ers; peasants' stone houses with thatched
roofs, looking like Ireland or France;
orchards of pomegranates with lovely scar
let blossoms and other friuts; some rice fields
already growing, others being set out, ten
or a dozen people at work in one patch; gar
den patches, largely melons; in the distance
the wall stretching out for miles, a hUl with
a pagoda, a lotus lake, and in the far dis
tance the blue mountains — ^also the city, not
so much of which was visible, however.
One of the interesting things in moving

184 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
about is the fact that only once in a while
do I see a face typically Chinese. I forget
they are Chinese a great deal of the time.
They just seem like dirty, poor misefablr
people anywhere. They_are jffieepfuWbut
not playful. ^ I should like to give a few
nuUions for playgrounds and toys and play
leaders. I can't but think that a great deal
of the lack of initiative and the let-George-
do-it, which is the curse of China, is con
nected with the fact that the chUdren are
grown up so soon. There are less than a
hundred schools for children in this city of
a third of a mUUon, and the schools only
have a few hundred — ^two or three at most.
The children on the street are always just
looking and watching, wise, human looking,
and reasonably cheerful, but old and serious
beyond bearing. Of course many are work
ing at the loom, or when they are younger
at reeUng. This is a good deal of a silk
place, and we visited one government fac
tory with several hundred people at work;

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 185
this one at least makes out to be self-sup
porting. There isn't a power reeler or loom
in the town, nor yet a loom of the Jacquard
type. Sometimes a boy sits up top and
shifts things, sometimes they have six or
eight foot treadles. A lot of the reeling isn't
even foot power — just hand, though their
hand reeler is much more ingenious than the
Japanese one. There seem so many places
to take hold and improve things and yet aU
of these are so tied together, and change is
so hard that it isn't much wonder everybody
who stays here gets more or less ChUiafied
and takes it out in liking the Chinese per^
sonaUy for their amiable quaUties.
Just now the students are forming a
patriotic league because of the present po-i
litical situation, Japanese boycott, etc. But
the teachers of the NanMng^Uniyersity here
say that instead of contenting themselves
with the two or three things they might well
do, they are laying out an ambitious scheme
covering everything, and their energy will

186 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
be exhausted when they get their elaborate
constitution formed, or they wiU meet so
many difficulties that they wiU get discour
aged even with the things they might do. I
don't know whether I told you about the
clerk in the t^lpr shop in Shanghai; after
taking the usual fataUstic attitude that
nothing could be done with the present sit
uation, he said the boycott was a good thing
but "Chinaman he got weak mind; pretty
soon he forget."
In various places there are lots of straw
hats hung up painted in Chinese characters
where they have stopped passersby and
taken their hats away because they were
Japanese made. It is all good natured and
nobody objects. There are poUcemen in
front of Japanese stores, and they aUow no
one to enter; they are "protecting" the
Japanese. This is characteristic of China.
The poUcemen aU carry guns with bayonets
attached; they are very numerous and
slouch around looking bored to death. The

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 187
only other class as bored looking is the dogs,
which are even more numerous, and lie
stretched out at full length, never curled up,;
and never by any chance doing anything.
We visited the old examination halls
which are now being torn down. These
are the ceUs, about 25,000 in number, where
the candidates for degrees used to be shut
up during the examination period. Said
cells are buUt in long rows, under a lean-to
roof, mostly opening face to face on an open
corridor, which is uncovered. Some of them
face against a wall which is the back of
the next row of cells. Cells are two and
one-half feet wide by four long. In them
are two ridges along the wall on each side,
one at the height of a seat, the other at the
height of a table. On these they laid two
boards, two and a half feet long, and this
was their furniture. They sat and wrote
and cooked and ate and slept in these cells.
In case it did not rain, their feet could stick
out into the corridor so they might stretch

188 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
out on the hard floor. The exams lasted
eight days, divided into three divisions.
They went in on the eighth day of the
eighth moon in the evening. They wrote the
first subject untU the aftemoon of the tenth.
Then they left for the night. On the after
noon of the eleventh they came in for the
second subject and wrote till the afternoon
of the thirteenth, when there was another day
off. On the evening of the fourteenth they
re-entered the ceU for the third period and
that ended on the evening of the sixteenth.
They had free communication with each
other in the corridors, which were closed and
locked. No one could approach them from
the outside for any reason. Often they died.
But if they coiUd only get put into a cor
ridor with a friend who knew, the biggest
fool in China could get his paper written
for him, and he could pass and become an
M. A., or something corresponding to that
degree. Thus were the famous literati of
' China produced. Preparation for the exam

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 189
was not the affair of the government, and'
might be acquired in any possible way.
The houses of the examiners are still in
good condition and might be made into a
school very easUy. But do you think they
wiU do that? Not at all. The government
has not ordered a school there, and so they
wUl be torn down or else used for some offi
cial work. ^You can have no conception of
how far the officialism goes till_yQU see -it.
We also Visited aT Confucian Temple, big
and used twice each year. It is like all
temples in that it is covered with the dust
of many years' accumulation. If you were
to be dropped in any Chinese temple you
would think you had landed in a deserted
and forgotten ruin out of reach of man.
We went to the Temple of Hell on Sun
day, and the gentleman who accompanied
us suggested to the priest that the images
ought to be dusted off. "Yes," said the
priest, "it would be better if they were."

190 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

'^ Nanking, Thursday, May 22.
The retumed students from Japan hate
Japan, but they are all at loggers with the
returned students from America, and their
separate organizations cannot get together.
Many returned students have no jobs, ap
parently because they will not go into busi
ness or begin at the bottom anywhere, and
there is strong hostility against them on the
part of the officials.
As a sample of the way business is done
here, we have just had an express letter
from Shanghai which took four days to
arrive. It should arrive in twelve hours.
People use express letters rather than the
telegraph because they are quicker. You
may spend as much time as you like or
don't like, wondering why your express
letter did not reach you on time; you do it
at your own risk and expense. The- Chinese

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 191
do not juggle with fOTeigners as the Japa-
nese'd^in the conscious sense, they simply
drift, they juggle with themselves and with
each other all the time.
This house is four mUes from the railroad
station. There is no street car here; there
are many 'rickshas, a few carriages, still
fewer autos. There are no sedan chairs, at
least I don't remember seeing any, but at
Chienkiang, where we went the other day,
the streets are so narrow that chairs are the
main means of conveyance. The 'ricksha
men here pay forty cents a day to the city
for their vehicles, which are all alike and
very poor ones. They make a little more
than that sum for themselves. In Shanghai
they pay ninety cents a day for their right
to work, and eam from one dollar to a pos
sible dollar and a half for themselves.
I said to a young professor, the other
day, that China was still supporting three
idle classes of people. He looked surprised,
though a student and critic of social condi-

192 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
tions, and asked me who they were. When
I asked him if that couldn't be said of the
i^officials, the priests, and the army, he said
Ves, it could. Thus far and no furthe^
seems to be their motto, both in thinking
and acting, especiaUy in actuig.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 193

Nanking, May 23.
I don't believe anybody knows what the
political prospects are ; this students' move
ment has introduced a new and uncalcul-^
able factor — and all in the three weeks we
have been here. You heard nothing but
gloom about political China at first, corrupt
and traitorous officials, soldiers only paid
banditti, the officers getting the money from
Japan to pay them with, no organizing
power or cohesion among the Chinese; .and
thOT the students take things into their
hands, and there is animation and a sudden
buzz. There are a hundred students being
coached here to go out and make speeches,
they wUl have a hundred different stations
scattered through the city. It is also said
the soldiers are responding to the patriotic
propaganda; a man told us that the soldiers

194 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
wept when some students talked to them
about the troubles of China, and the soldiers
of Shantung, the province turned over to
Japan, have taken the lead in telegraphing
the soldiers in the other provinces to resist
the corrupt traitors. Of course, what they
all are afraid of is that this is a flash in the
pan, but they are already planning to make
the student movement permanent and to
find something for them to do after this is
settled. Their idea here is to reorganize
I them for popular propaganda for education,
'more schools, teaching adults, social service,
etc. It is very interesting to compare the men 1
who have been abroad with those who
haven't — I mean students and teachers.
Those who haven't are sort of helpless,
practicaUy; the height of literary and
academic minds. Those who have studied
abroad, even in Japan, have much more go
to them. Certainly the classiciiSts in educa
tion have a noble example here in China of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 19d
what their style of education can do if only
kept up long enough. On the other hand,
there must be something estheticaUy very
fine in the old Chinese literature; even
many of the modern young men have a
sentimental attachment to it, precisely like
that which they have to the fine writing of
their characters. They talk about them
with all the art jargon: "Notice the
strength of this down stroke, and the
spirituality of the cross stroke and elegant
rhythm of the composition." When we
visited a temple the other day, one of the
chief Buddhist shrines in China, we were
presented with a rubbing of the writing of
the man who is said to be the finest writer
ever known in China — these characters were
engraved in the rock from his writing some
centuries ago — I don't know how many. It
is very easy to see how cultivated people
take refiige in art and spirituality when
politics are corrupt and the general state of
social life is discouraging; you see it here.

196 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
and how in the end it increases the de
cadence.— " _,— ——
I think we wrote you from Shanghai that
we had been introduced to aU the mys
teries of China, ancient eggs, sharks' fins,
birds' nests, pigeon eggs, the eight pre
cious treasures, rice pudding, and so on.
We continue to have Chinese meals; yes
terday lunch in the home of an adviser to
a miUtary official. He is very outspoken,
doesn't trim in politics, and gives you a
more hopeful feeling about China. The
most depressing thing is hearing it said,
"When we get a stable government, we can
do so and so, but there is no use at present."
But this man's attitude is rather, "Damn
the govemment and go ahead and do some
thing." He is very proud of having a
"happy, Christian home" and doesn't cover
up his Christianity as most of the official
and wealthy class seem to do. He expects
to have his daughters educated in America,
one in medicine and one in home affairs, and

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 197
to have help in a campaign for changing
the character of the Chinese home — from
these big aggregates of fifty people or so
Uving together, married children, servants,
etc., where he says the waste is enormous,
to say nothing of bickerings and jealousies.
In the old type of well-to-do home, break
fast would begin for someone about seven,
and someone would have cooking done for
him to eat till noon; then about two, visitors
would come, and the servants would be
ordered to cook something for each caller —
absolutely no organization or planning ui
anything, according to him,

198 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

'Nanking, Monday, May 26.

The trouble among the students is daUy
getting worse, and even the most sympa
thetic among the faculties are getting more
and more anxious. The govemor of this
province, capital here, is thought most
liberal, and he has promised to support these
advanced measures in education. Last
Friday the assembly passed a bill cutting
down the educational appropriation and
raising their own salaries. Therefore the
students here are now all stirred up and the
faculties are afraid they cannot be kept in
control until they are well enough organ
ized to make a strike effective. At the same
time our friends are kept busy running up
to the assembly and the govemor. The
latter has promised to veto the bill when it
is sent to him from the senate. But the
students are getting anxious to go to the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 199
senate themselves. Our friends say it costs
so much for these men to get elected that
they have to get it all back after they get
into office. A missionary says: "Let's go
out and shoot them all, they are just as
bad as Peking, and if they had the same
chance they would sell out the whole coun
try to Japan or to anyone else." Certainly
China needs education all along the line,
but they never will get it as long as they
try in Uttle bits. So maybe they will have
to be pushed to the very bottom before they
wUl be ready to go the whole hog or none.
Yesterday a Chinese lady had a tea for
me and asked the Taitai, as the wives of the
officials are called, corresponding to the
court ladies of previous times. As a func
tion this was interesting, for every woman
brought her servant and most of her chil
dren. Some appeared to have two servants,
one big-footed maid for herself and one
bound-footed as a nurse for the children.
Her own servant hands her the cup of tea.

200 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
All the children are fed at the same time as
the grown-ups, and after their superiors the
servants get something in the kitchen. I
don't know yet what that something is, but
probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank
is that famous jasmine tea from Hang
chow. It costs something like fifteen dol
lars a pound here. It is very good, with a
peculiar spicy flavor, almost musky and
smoky, from the jasmine combined with the
tea flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious
brown tea, but I do not like to drink it so
well as I like the best green tea.
Well, I wish you could see the Taitai.
The wife of the govemor is about twenty-
five, or may be a little more. She is a sub
stantial young person, with full-grown feet,
a pale blue dress of skirt and coat scaUoped
on the edges and bound with black satin,
her nice hair parted to one side on the right
and pinned above her left ear with a white
artificial rose. Her maid had black coat
and trousers. She had some bracelets on,

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 201
but her jewels were less beautiful than those
of the other women. One very pretty
woman had buttons on her coat of emeralds
surrounded with pearls, and on her arm a
lovely bracelet of pearls. After tea, the
great ladies went into an inner room, with
the exception of two. One of these two had
a very sad face. I watched her and finally
had a chance to ask her how many children
she had. She said she had none, but she
would like to have a daughter. I was told
after that her husband was a Christian
pastor and she was trying to be Christian.
The other one who stayed was the pretty
one with the emerald buttons. I finally de
cided the ladies had left us to play their
cards and asked if I might go and see them.
They were not playing cards, but had just
gone off to gossip among themselves, prob
ably about the foreigners. One of the ladies
said she would take me some day to see their
card games. It is said they play in the
morning and in the afternoon and all the

202 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
night till the next morning when they go to
bed. It is commonly said this is all they
do, and the losses are very disastrous some
times. But they were not playing then and came
back, some of them with their children, and
sat in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them,
and some amahs around the room, while I
talked to them. I told stories about what
the American women did in the war and
they stared with amazement. I had to ex
plain what a gas mask is, but they knew
what killing is and what high class is. Their
giggles were quite encouraging to inter
course. A nice young lady from the codege
interpreted, and when I stopped I asked
them to tell me something about their Uves,
So the governor's wife was at last persuaded
to give an account of how she brought up
her chUdren. They are all free from self-
consciousness, and though they have Uttle
manners in our sense of the word, they have
a self-possession and gentleness combined

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 203
which gives a very graceful appearance.
The governor's wife says she has two little
boys, the eldest six years of age. In the
morning he has a Chinese tutor. After din
ner, she teaches him music, of which she is
very fond. After that he plays till five-
thirty, has supper, plays again a Uttle while
before going to bed, and then bed. At thir
teen the boy wiU be sent away to school, I
asked her what about girls, and she said that
her little niece was the first one in her family
to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one
is in Tientsin at a boarding school.

204 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, Sunday, June 1.
We met a young man here from an in
terior province who is trying to get money
for teachers who haven't received their pay
for a long time. Meantime„o.Yfir--Sixty_.£er
cent of the entire national expenses is_gmng
to the mUitary, and the aimyjs^ worse than
useless. . In many provinces it is composed
of brigands and everywhere is practically
under the control of the tuchuns or miUtary
governors, who are corrupt and use the pay
roll to increase their graft and the army to
increase their power of local oppression,
whUe the head miUtary man is openly pro-
Japanese. There is a lull in our affairs just now.
We agreed yesterday that never in our lives
had we begun to learn as much as in the
last four months. And the last month par
ticularly, there has been almost too much

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 205
food to be digestible. Talk about the secre
tive and wily East. Compared, say, with
Europe, they hand information out to you
here on a platter (though it must be ad
mitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and
sandbag you with it.
Yesterday we went to the Westem Hills
where are the things you see in the pictures,
including the stone boat, the base of which
is really marble and as fine as the pictures.
But all the rest of it is just theatrical
fake, more or less peeling off at that. How
ever, it is as wonderful as it is cracked up
to be, and in some ways more systematic
than VersaiUes, which is what you naturally
compare it to. The finest thing architec
turally is a Buddhist temple with big tUes,
each of which has a Buddha on — for fur
ther detaUs see movie or something. We
walked somewhat higher than Russian Hill,
induding a joumey through the caves in an
artificial mountain such as the Chinese de
Ught in, clear up to this temple. The

206 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Manchu f amUy seems to own the thing yet,
and charge a big sum, or rather several
sums, a la Niagara Falls, to get about —
another evidence that China needs another
revolution, or rather a revolution, the first
one having got rid of a dynasty and left,
as per my previous letters, a lot of corrupt
governors in charge of chaos* The only
thing that I can see that keeps things to
gether at aU is that whUe a lot of these gen
erals and governors would Uke to grab more
for their individual selves, they are all afraid
the whole thing would come down round
their ears if anyone made a definite move.
Status quo is China^ middle name,_mostly
status and a little quo. I have one more
¦national motto to add tcr"You Never Can^
Teir and-i'Let Gei)rge Do It.""" It if
"That is very bad." Instead of concealing
"things, they expose all their"weak and bad"
points very freely, and after setting tUSn'
¦forth most calmly and -objectively, say
"That is very bad." I don't know whether

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 207
it is possible for a people to be too reason
able, but it is certainly "too possible to take
it out in bdng reasonable-7-ahd that's them.
However, it makes them wonderful com
panions. You can hardly blame the Japan
ese for wanting to run them and supply the
necessary pep when they decUne to run
themselves. You certainly see the other
side of the famous one-track mind of Japan
over here, as weU as of other things. If you
keep doing something aU the time, I don't
know whether you need even a single track
mind. AU you have to do is to keep going
where you started for, while others keep
wobbling or never get started.
WeU, this moming we went to the famous
museum, and there is one thing where China
is stiU ahead. It is housed in some of the
old palaces and audience halls of the inner,
or purple, forbidden City. With the yeUow
porcelain roofs, and the blue and green and
gold, and the red walls, it is reaUy the bar
baric splendor you read about, and about

208 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the first thing that comes up to the conven
tional idea of what is Oriental. The Hindoo
influence is much stronger here than any
where else we have been, or else reaUy Thi
betan, I suppose, and many things remind
one of the Moorish. The city of Peking
was a thousand years building, and was laid
out on a plan when the capitals of Europe
were purely haphazard, so there is no doubt
they have organizing power all right if they
care to use it. The museum is UteraUy one
of treasures, porcelains, bronzes, jade, etc.,
not an historic or antiquated museum. It
costs ten cents to get into the park here and
much more into the museum, a doUar or
more, I guess, and we got the impression
that it was fear of the crowd and the popu
lace rather than the money which controls;
the rate is too high for revenue purposes.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 209

Peking, June 1,
We have just seen a few hundred girls
march away from the American Board Mis
sion school to go to see the President to
ask him to release the boy students who are
in prison for making speeches on the street.
To say that Ufe in China is exciting is to put
it fairly. We are witnessing the birth of a
nation, and birth always comes hard. I may
as weU begin at the right end and tell you
what has happened whUe things have been
moving so fast I could not get time to write.
Yesterday we went to see the temples of
Western HiUs, conducted by one of the
members of the Ministry of Education. As
we were running along the big street that
passes the dty wall we saw students speak
ing to groups of people. This was the first
time the students had appeared for several
days. We asked the official if they would

210 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
not be arrested, and he said, "No, not if they
keep within the law and do not make any
trouble among the people." This morning
when we got the paper it was f uU of nothing
else. The worst thing is that the University
has been turned into a prison with miUtary
tents all around it and a notice on the out
side that this is a prison for students who
disturb the peace by making speeches. As
this is all iUegal, it amounts to a miUtary
seizure of the University and therefore aU
the faculty will have to resign. They are
to have a meeting this afternoon to discuss
the matter. After that is over, we will
probably know what has happened again.
The other thing we heard was that in addi
tion to the two hundred students locked up
in the Law BuUding, two students were
taken to the PoUce rooms and flogged on the
back. Those two students were making a
speech and were arrested and taken before
the officers of the gendarmerie. Instead of
shutting up as they were expected to do, the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 211
boys asked some questions of these officers
that were embarrassing to answer. The
officers then had them flogged on the back.
Thus far no one has been able to see any of
the officers. If the officers denied the accu
sation then the reporters would ask to see
the two prisoners on the principle that the
officers could have no reason for refusing
that request unless the story were true. We
saw students making speeches this morning
about eleven, when we started to look for
houses, and heard later that they had been
arrested, that they carried tooth brushes and
towels in their pockets. Some stories say
that not two hundred but a thousand have
been arrested. There are about ten thou
sand striking in Peking alone. The march
ing out of those girls was evidently a shock
to their teachers and many mothers were
there to see them off. The girls were going
to walk to the palace of the President, which
is some long distance from the school. If he
does not see them, they wiU remain standing

218 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
outside aU night and they wUl stay there
tUl he does see them. I fancy people will
take them food. We heard the imprisoned
students got bedding at four this morning
but no food tiU after that time. There is
water in the building and there is room for
them to lie on the floor. They are cleaner
than they would be in jail, and of course
much happier for being together.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 213

Peking, June 2.
Maybe you would Uke to know a Uttle
about how we look this morning and how we
are Uving. In the first place, this is a big
hotel with a bath in each room. On a big
street opposite to us is the wall of the lega
tion quarter, which has trees in it and big
roofs which represent aU that China ought '
to have and has not. The weather is Uke
our hot July, except that it is drier than the
August drought on Long Island, The
streets of Peking are the widest in the world,
I guess, and ours leads by the red walls of
the Chinese city with the wonderful gates
of which you see pictures. It is macadam
ized in the middle, but on each side of it
run wider roads, which are used for the
traffic. Thank your stars there are good
horses in Peking; men do not puU all the
heavy loads. The two side roads are worn

214 LETTERS FROM CHmA AND JAPAN
down in deep ruts and these ruts are filled
with dust like finest ashes, and aU thrown up
into the air whenever a man steps on it or
a cart moves through. Our room faces the
south on this road. All day long the sun
pours through the bamboo shades and the
hot air brings in that gray dust, and every
thing you touch, including your own skin,
is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that
makes you think you ought to mn for water.
I am learning to shut the windows and inner
blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in
the latitude of New York this drought
should be expected every spring? In spite
of aU this the fields have crops growing,
thinly, tp be sure, on the hard gray fields.
There are very few trees, and they are not
of the biggest. The grain is already about
fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After
a while it wiU rain and rain much and then
new crops wiU be put in. The flowers are
almost gone and I am sorry that we did not
see the famous peonies. You wiU be inter-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 215
ested to know that they keep the peonies
smaU; even the tree kind are cut down tUl
they are the size of those little ones of mine.
The tuber peonies are transplanted each
year or in some way kept smaU and the blos
soms are lovely and little. I have seen white
rose peonies and at first thought they were
roses. The buds look ahnost like the buds
of our big white roses and they are very
fragrant. The peony beds are laid out in
terraces held in place by brick waUs, usUaUy
oblong or oval, something Uke a huge pud
ding mold on a table. Other times they
are planted on the flat and surrounded by
bamboo fences of fancy design and geomet
rical pattern, usually with a square form to
include each division. The inner city has
many peony beds of that sort, both the tree
and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to
show now.
Yesterday we went to the summer palace
and to-day we are going to the museum.
That is really inside the Forbidden City, so

216 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
at last we shall set foot on the sacred
ground. The summer palace is reaUy won
derful, but sad now, like aU things made on
too ambitious a scale to fit into the uses of
life. There is a mUe of loggia ornamented
with the green and blue and red paintings
which you see imitated. Through a window
we had a peek at the famous portrait of old
Tsu Hsu and she looks just as she did when
I saw it exhibited in New York. The
strange thing about it is that it is stUl owned
by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly
rugs and curtains Ue in pUes round the room
and everything is covered with this fine dust
so thick that it is not possible to teU the color
of a table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather
images of the famous blue ware stand
under the old lady's portrait, and everything
is going to rack and ruin. Meantime we
wandered around, planning how it could be
made over into use when the revolution
comes. Get rid of the idea that ChinaLhjl
had a revolution and is a republic; that point

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 217
is just where we have been deceived in the
United States. China is at present the
rotten crumbling renmant of the old bu-'
reaucracy that^rroiirided the-cormpttpii of
the Manchus and that made them possible.
The" Uttle Emperor is living here in his palace
surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors
and his two mothers. He is fourteen and it
is really funny to think that they haye just
left him Emperor, but as he has not money
except what the repubUc votes him from
year to year, nobody worries about him,
unless it is the Japanese, who want the im
perial govemment restored until they get
ready to take it themselves. It looks as if
they might be ready now except for the
nudge which has just been given to the
peace conference. You had better read a
book about this situation, for it is the most
surprising affair in a lifetime.
Yesterday we went to see a friend's house.
It is interesting and I should Uke to live in
one Uke it. There is no water except what

218 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the water man brings every day. This Uttle
house has eighteen rooms around a court.
It means four separate roofs and going out
doors to get from one to another. When
the mercury is at twenty below zero it would
mean that just the same. All the ground
floors have stone floors. We did not see all
the rooms ; there are paper windows in some
and glass windows in some. In summer
they put on a temporary roof of mats over
the court. It is higher than the roofs and
so allows ventUation and gives good shade.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 219

June 5.
This is Thursday morning, and last night
We heard that about one thousand students
were arrested the day before. Yesterday
aftemoon a friend got a pass which per
mitted him to enter the buUding where the
students were confined. They have fiUed up
the building of Law, and have begun on the
Science buUding, in consequence of which the
faculty have to go to the Missionary build
ings to-day to hold their faculty meeting.
At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners
who had been put in that day at ten had
had no food. One of our friends went out
and got the University to appropriate some
money and they ordered a carload of bread
sent in. This bread means some Uttle bis
cuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home.
I think carload means one of the carts in
which they are delivered. At any rate, the

220 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
boys had some food, though not at the ex
pense of the poUce. On the whole, the
checkmate of the police seems surely im
pending. They wiU soon have the buUdings
fuU, as the students are getting more and
more in earnest, and the most incredible
part of it is that the police are surprised.
They reaUy thought the arrests would
frighten the others from going on. So
everybody is getting an education. This
morning one of our friends here is going to
take us up to the University to see the miU
tary encampment, and I hope he wUl take
us inside also,, though I hardly think he wiU
do the latter.
As near as I can find out, the Chinese
have reached that interesting stage of de
velopment when they must do something for
women and do as little as they can, but in
case they must have a girls' school they find
that a convenient place to unload an anti
quated official who reaUy can't be endured
any longer by real folks.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 221
No one can teU to-day what the students'
strike wUl bring next; it may bring a revo
lution, it may do anything surprising to the
poUce, who seem to be as lacking in imagina
tion as poUce are famous for being. Every
one here is getting ready to flee for the
summer, which is very hot during July. On
the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to
endure than the heat of New York, as it
is so dry. But the dryness has its own effect
and when those hard winds blojv up the dust
storms it gets on the nerves. Dust heaps
up inside the house, and cuts the skin both
inside and outside of the body. This is a
lucky day, being cloudy and a Uttle damp
as if it might rain.
The Western HiU was an experience to
remember. Stepping from a Ford limou
sine to a chair carried by four men and an
outwalker alongside, we were thus taken by
fifteen men to the temples, your father, an
officer from the Department of Education,
and I. The men walked over the paths in

222 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
the dust and on stones which no one thinks
of picking up. It was so astounding to call
it a pleasure resort that we could only stare
and remain dumb. We saw three temples
and one royal garden. Five hundred Bud
dhas in one building, and all the buildings
tumble-down and dirty. On top of one hiU
is a huge building which cost a mUlion or
more to buUd about four hundred years ago
by someone for his tomb. Then he did
something wrong, probably stole from the
wrong person, and was not aUowed to be
buried there. Round the temple places the
trees remain and give a refreshing oasis, and
there are some beautiful springs. All the
time we kept saying, "Trees ought to be
planted." "Yes, but they take so long to
grow," or, "Yes, but they wiU not grow, it
is so dry," etc. Sometimes they would say,
"Yes, we must plant some trees," or more
likely, "Yes, I think we may plant some
trees sometime, but we have an Arbor
Day and the people cut down the trees or

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 223
else they did." We would show that the
trees would grow because they were there
round the temples, and besides grass was
growing and trees would grow where grass
would grow in such dry weather, and they
would say the same things over. It made
the little forestry station in Nanking seem
Uke a monumental advance, whUe that fear
ful sun was beating up the dust under the
stones as the men gave us the Swedish mas
sage in the motion of the chairs. Fifty men
and more stood around as we got in and out
of the car and five men apiece stood and
waited for us as we walked round the temple
and ate our lunch and spent the time sip
ping tea, and yet they cannot plant trees,
and that is China.
The whole country is_covered_every inch
with stOT[esr" Nature has supplied them, and
falling waUs are everywhere. We saw one
great thing, however. They are buUding a
new school house and orphanage for the
children of that village. Many of the chil-

224 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
dren are naked everywhere hereabouts and
they stand with sunburned heads, their
backs covered only with coats of dirt, eating
their bean food in the street. Everywhere
the food is laid out on tables by the road
side ready to eat. In one temple, a certain
official here has promised to rebuild a smaU
shrine which houses the laughing Buddha,
who is made of bronze and was once covered
with lacquer, which is now mostiy split off.
At present the only shade the god has is a
roof of mats which they have braced up on
the pUe of ruins that once made a roof. The
President of the RepubUc has built a lovely
big gate Uke the old ones, because it is pro
pitious and would bring him good fortune.
But he has decided it was not propitious,
something went wrong with the gods, I did
not leam what it was; anyway, he is now
tearing down one of the big buttresses on
one side of it to see if fate wiU treat him
more kindly then. Just what he wants of
fate I did not learn either, but perhaps it

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 225
is that fate should make him Emperor, as
that seems to be their idea of curing poverty
and poUtical evUs. I forgot to say that they
never remove ruins; everything is left to lie
as it falls or is falling, so one gets a good
idea of how gods are constructed. Most of
them were of clay, a sort of concrete buUt
up on a wood frame, and badly as they need
wood I have never seen a sign of piling up
the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of
that, you risk your Ufe by walking under
these faUing roofs unless you have the sense
to look after your own safety. In most of
these Peking temples they do sweep the
fioors and even some of the statues look as
if they had some time been dusted, though
this last I am not certain about.

226 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Peking, June 5.
As has been remarked before, you never
' can teU. The students were stirred up by
orders dissolving thdr associations, and by
the "mandates" criticising the Japanese
boycott and telling what valuable services
the two men whose dismissal was demanded
had rendered the country. So they got busy
— ^the students. They were also angered
because the industrial departments of two
schools were ordered closed by the poUce.
In these departments the students had set
about seeing what things of Japanese im
portation could be replaced by hand labor
without waiting for capital. After they
worked it out in the school they went out
to the shops and taught the people how to
make them, and then peddled them about,
making speeches at the same time. WeU,
yesterday when we went about we noticed

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 227
that the students were speaking more than
usual, and whUe the streets were fuU of sol
diers the students were not interfered with;
in the aftemoon a procession of about a
thousand students was even escorted by the
police. Then in the evening a telephone
came from the University that the tents
around the University buildings where the
students were imprisoned had been struck
and the soldiers were aU leaving. Then the
students inside held a meeting and passed a
resolution asking the government whether
they were guaranteed freedom of speech,
because if they were not, they would not
leave the building merely to be arrested
again, as they planned to go on speaking.
So they embarrassed the government by re
maining in "jail" all night. We haven't
heard to-day what has happened, but the
streets are free of soldiers, and there were no
students talking anywhere we went, so I
fancy a truce has been arranged while they
try and fix things up. The government's

228 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
ignominious surrender was partly due to the
fact that the places of detention were get
ting fuU and about twice as many students
spoke yesterday as the day before, when
they arrested a thousand, and the govern
ment for the first time reaUzed that they
couldn't buUdoze the students; it was also
partly due to the fact that the merchants
in Shanghai struck the day before yester
day, and there is talk that the Peking mer
chants are organizing for the same purpose.
This is, once more, a strange countey; the
so-caUed repubUc is a joke; aU it has meant
so far is that instead of the Emperor having
a steady job, the job of ruling and looting
is passed around to the cUque that grabs
power. One of the leading militarist party
"generals invited his dearest enemy to break
fast a whUe ago — ^within the last few months
— ^in Peking, and then lined his guest
against the waU and had him shot. Did this
affect his status? He is still doing business
at the old stand. But in some ways there

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 229
is more democracy than we have; leaving.
out the women, there is complete social
equality, and while the legislature is a per
fect farce, public opinion, when it does, ex
press itself, as" af the present time, has re-.
markable influence. Some think the worst
officials wiU now resign and get out, others
that the miUtarists wiU attempt a coup
d'etat and sdze still more power rather than
back down. Fortunately, the latter seem
to be divided at the present time. But all
of the student (and teacher) crowd are
much afraid that even if the present gang
is thrown out, it wiU be only to replace them
by another set just as bad, so they are re
fraining from appeaUng to the army for
help. Later. — The students have now asked
that the chief of poUce come personaUy to
escort them out and make an apology. In
many ways, it seems Uke an opera bouffe,
but there is no doubt that up to date they
have shown more shrewdness and policy

230 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
than the government, and are getting the
latter where it is a laughing stock, which is
fatal in China. But the government isn't
inactive; they have appointed a new Min
ister of Education and a new ChanceUor of
the University, both respectable men, with
no records and colorless characters. It is
Ukely the Faculty wiU decline to receive the
new ChanceUor unless he makes a satisfac
tory declaration — ^which he obviously can't,
and thus the row wUl begin all over again,
with the Faculty involved. If the govem
ment dared, it would dissolve the University,
but the scholar has a sacred reputation in
China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 231

June 7.
The whole story of the students is funny
and not the least funny part is that last Fri
day the students were speaking and parad
ing with banners and cheers and the police
standing near them Uke guardian angels, no
one being arrested or molested. We heard
that one student pouring out hot eloquence
was respectfuUy requested to move his audi
ence along a Uttle for the reason that they
were so numerous in statu quo as to impede
traffic, and the policeman would not like to
be held responsible for interfering with the
traffic. Meantime, Saturday the govem
ment sent an apology to the students who
were still in prison of thdr own free will
waiting for the government to apologize and
to give them the assurance of free speech,
etc. The students are said to have left the
building yesterday moming, though we

232 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
have no accurate information. The Faculty
of the University met and refused to recog
nize or accept the new ChanceUor. They
sent a committee to the government to tell
them that, and one to the ChanceUor to teU
him also and to ask him to resign. It seems
,the newly-appointed ChanceUor used to be
at the head of the engineering school of the
University, but he was kicked out in the
poUtical struggle. He is an official of the
Yuan Shi Kai school and has become a rich
rubber merchant in Malay, and anyway
they do not want a mere rubber merchant
as President of the University, and they
think they may so explain that to the new
ChanceUor that he wUl not look upon the
office as so attractive as he thought it was.
There is complete _seg^gation in this city
in all pubUc gatherings, the women at the
theaters are put off in one "ofttesejeal^l-
leries such as we think used to be and are
not now. The place for the Womeii 'm the
haU of the Board of Education is good

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 233
enough and on one side facing the haU so
that all the men can look at them freely and
so protect that famous modesty which I
have heard more of in China than for many
years previously.
Gasoline is one doUar a gallon here and
a Ford car costs $1900. Ivory soap five for
one dollar. Clean your dress for $2.50.
Tooth paste one dollar a tube, vaseUne 50
cents a smaU bottle. Washing three cents
each, including dresses and men's coats and
shirts; fine cook ten doUars a month. They
have a very good one here, and I am going
right on getting fat on deUcious Chinese
food. The new Rockefeller Institute, called ,
the Union Medical College, is very near
here, and they are making beautiful build
ings in the old Chinese style, to say nothing
of their Hygiene. They have just decided
to open it to women, but I am rather sus
picious the requirements wiU prevent the
women's using it at first.
. Peking is stUl much of a capital city and

234 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
is divided into the diplomats and the mis-
sionaries;"T!tTeeriis there is not much lack-
^-,__ „_  -»•
mg except the old Dowager Empress to
make up the old Peking.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 235

Peking, June 10.
The students have taken the trick and
won the game at the present moment — I de
cline to predict the morrow when it comes
to China. Sunday moming 1 lecturgd, at ,
the auditorium of the Board of Education
and at that time the officials there didn't
know what had happened. But the govem
ment sent what is caUed a pacification dele
gate to the self -imprisoned students to say
that the government recognized that it had
made a mistake and apologized. Conse
quently the students marched triumphantly
out, and yesterday their street meetings
were bigger and more enthusiastic than ever.
The day before they had hooted at four un
official delegates who had asked them to
please come out of jaU, but who hadn't
apologized. But the biggest victory is that

236 LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN
it is now reported that the government wiU
to-day issue a mandate dismissing the three
men who are always caUed traitors — ^yester
day they had got to the point of offering
to disnaiss one, the one whose house was at
tacked by the students on the fourth of
May, but they were told that that wouldn't
be enough, so now they have surrendered
stUl more. Whether this wiU satisfy the
striking merchants or whether they wUl
make further demands, having won the first
round, doesn't yet appear. There are lots
of rumors, of course. One is that the back
down is not only due to the strike of mer
chants, but to a fear that the soldiers could
no longer be counted upon. There was even
a rumor that a regiment at Westem HiUs
was going to start for Peking to side with
the students. Rumors are one^of-China's-
strong suits. When you reaUze that we
"have been here less than six weeks, you will
have to admit that we have been seeing Ufe.
For a country that is regarded at home as

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 237
stagnant and unchanging, there is certainly
something doing.
This is the world's greatest kaleidoscope.
WUson's Decoration Day Address has
just been pubUshed; perhaps it sounds aca
demic at home, but over here Chinese at
least regard it as very practical — as, in fact,
a definite threat. On the other hand, we
continue to get tales of how the Washing
ton State Department has declined to take
the reports sent from here as authentic.
Lately they have had a number of special
agents over here, more or less secret, to get
independent information.
In talking about democratic develop
ments in America, whenever I make a re
mark such as the Americans do not depend
upon the govemment to do things for them,
but go ahead and do things for themselves,
the response is immediate and emphatic.
The Chinese are sociaUy a very democratic.
people and thdr centralized government
bores them.

238 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

June 16.
Chinesewise speaking, we are now having
another luU. The three 'traitors" have had
their resignations accepted, the cabinet is
undergoing reconstruction, the strike has
been caUed off, both of students and mer
chants (the raUwa3maen striking was the
last straw), and the mystery is what wUl
happen next. There are evidences that the
extreme mUitarists are spitting on their
hands to take hold in spite of their defeat,
and also that the President, who is said to
be a moderate and skiUf ul poUtician, is nurs
ing things along to get matters more and
more into his own hands. Although he
issued a mandate against the students and
commending the traitors, the students' vic
tory seems to have strengthened him. I
can't figure it out, but it is part of the gen
eral beginning to read at the back of the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 239
book. The idea seems to be that he has
demonstrated the weakness of the militarists
in the country, while in sticking in form by
them he has given them no excuse for at
tacking hun. They are attacking most
everybody else in anonymous circulars. One
was got out signed "Thirteen hundred and
fifty-eight students," but giving no names,
saying that the sole object of the strike was
to regain Tsingtao, but that a few men had
tried to turn the movement to their own
ends, one wishing to be ChanceUor of the
University,

240 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, June 20.
Some time ago I had decided to tell ypu
that here I had found the human duplica-
?jtion of the bee colony in actual working
order. China is it, and in all particulars
lives up to the perfect sociaUzation of the
race. Nobody can do anything alone, no-~
body can do anything in a hurry. The hunt
of the bee for her cell goes on before one's
eyes aU the time. When found, lo, the dis
covery that the ceU was there aU the time.
Let me give you an example.
We go to the art school for lectures, enter
by a door at the end of a long hall. Behind
that hall is another large room and in back
of the second room somewhere is a place
where the men make the tea. Near the front
door where we enter is the table where we
are always asked to sit down before and
after the lecture, whereat we sit down to

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 241
partake of tea and other beverages, such
as soda. Well, the teacups are kept in a
cabinet at the front end of the first room
right near the entrance door. Comes a
grown man from the rear somewhere; si
lently and with stately tread he walks across
the long room to the cabinet, takes one tea
cup in each hand and retreads the space
towards the back. After sufficient time he
returns bearing in his two hands these cups
fiUed with hot tea. He puts these down on
the table for us and then he takes two more
cups from the cabinet, and retires once more,
returning later as before. When bottles
are opened they are brought near the table,
because otherwise the soda would be spoiled
in carrying open, never to save steps.
The Chinese kitchen is always several
feet from the dining room, under a separate
roof. Often you must cross a court in the
open to get from one to another. As it has
not rained since we have been here, I do not
know what happens to the soup under the

242 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
umbrella. But remember, the beehive is the
thing in China, and it is the old-fashioned
beehivein the barrel. When you look at the
men who are doing it all they have the air
6f strong, quiet beings who might do almost
anything, but when you get acquainted w^h
them, how they do almost nothing is a mar
velous achievement. At Ching Hua Col
lege, said being the famous Boxer Indem
nity CoUege, the houses are new and buUt
by American initiative, and the kitchen is
forty feet from the dining room door in
those. I wUl not describe the kitchens, but
when you see the clay stoves crumbUng in
places, no sink, and one window on one side
of the rather dark room, a Uttle room where
the cook sleeps on a board and where both
the men eat their own frugal meals, it is aU
the Middle Ages undisturbed.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 243

Peking, June 20.
Last weekend we went out about ten
mUes to ChingJEIua College; this is the in
stitution started with the returned Hoxer
Indemnity Fund; it's a high school with
about two years college work; they have
just graduated sixty or seventy who are
going to America next year to finish up.
They go aU around, largely to smaU colleges
and the Middle West state institutions, a
good many to Tech and a number to
Stevens, though none go to Columbia, be
cause it is in a big city; just what improve
ment Hoboken is I don't know. China is
full of Columbia men, but they went there
for graduate work. No doubt it is wise
keeping them away from a big city at first.
Except for the instruction in Chinese, the
teaching is 'all done in English, and the boys
seem to speak English quite well already.

244 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
It's a shame the way they wiU be treated,
the insults they will have to put up with in
America before they get reaUy adjusted.
And then when they get back here they Uave
even a worse time getting readjusted. They
have been idealizing their native land at the
same time that they have got Americanized
without knowing it, and they have a hard
time to gei a job to make a living. They
have been told that they are the future
saviors of their country and then their coun
try doesn't want them for anything at aU —
and they can't help making comparisons
and realizing the backwardness of China
arid its awful problems. At the same time
at the bottom of his heart probably eveiy
'Chinese is convinced of the superiority of
Chinese civilization — ^and maybe they are_
Tight — ^three thousand years is quite a spell
to hold on.
You may come over here some time in
your life, so it wiU do no harm to leam
about the money — ahout it, nobody but the

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 245
Chinese bankers ever learn it. There are
eleven dimes in a doUar and six twenty-cent
pieces, and while there are only eleven cop
pers in a dime, there are one hundred and
thirty-eight in a doUar, Consequently the
thrifty always carry a pound or two of big
coppers with them to pay 'ricksha men with.
Then there are various kinds of paper
money. We are going to Western Hills to
morrow night, and under instructions I
bought some dollars at sixty-five cents
apiece which are good for a whole doUar on
this railway and apparently nowhere else.
On the contrary, the foreigners are done all
the time at the hotels ; there they only give
you five twenty-cent pieces in change for a
doUar, and so on — ^but they are run by for
eigners, and not by the wily Chinese. One
thing you wUl be glad to know is that
Peking is Americanized to the extent that
we have ice cream at least once a day, two
big helpings. This helps.
A word to the wise. Never ask a Chinese

246 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
whether it is going to rain, or any other
question about the coming weather. The
turtle is supposed to be a weather prophet,
and as the turtle is regarded as the vilest
creature on earth, you can see what an insult
such a question is. One of their subtle
compliments to the Japanese during the
late campaign was to take a straw hat, of
Japanese make, which they had removed
from a passerby's head, and cut it into the
likeness of a turtle and then naU it up on
a telephone post.
I find, by the way, that I didn't do the
students justice when I compared their first
demonstration here to a coUege boys' rough-
house; the whole thing was planned care
fully, it seems, and was even pulled off
earlier than would otherwise have been the
case, because one of the poUtical parties was
going to demonstrate soon, and they were
afraid their movement (coming at the same
time) would make it look as if they were an
agency of the poUtical faction, and they

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 247
wanted to act independently as students.
To thinkj3£.Jdds^ in-our jcountry fronLiour-
teen on, taking the lead in starting a big
cleanup reform "* politics movement and
shaming merchants and professional men
into joining them. This is sure some
country.

248 LETTERS FEOM CHINA AND JAPAN

**'" Peking, June 28.
Last night we had a lovely dinner at the
house of a Chinese official. AU the guests
were men except me and the fourteen-year-
olddau^iter of the house. She was educated
in an English school here and speaks beauti
ful English, besides being a talented and
interesting girl. Chinese girls at her age
seem older than ours. The family consists
of five chUdren and two wives. I found the
reason the daughter was hostess was that it
was embarrassing to choose between the two
wives for hostess and they didn't want to
give us a bad impression, so ho wife ap
peared. We were given to understand that
the reason for the non-appearance was that
mother was sick. There is a new Uttle baby
six weeks old. The father is a deUcate, re
fined little man, very proud of his children
and fond of them, and they were aU brought

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 249
out to see us, even the six weeks older, who
was very hot in a Uttle red dress. Our host
is the leader of a party of liberal progress
ives, and also an art coUector. We had
hopes he would show us his collection of
things. He did not, except for the lovely
porcelain that was on the table. The house
is big and behind the wall of the Purple City,
as they call the old Forbidden City, and it
looks on the famous old pagoda, so it was
interesting. We sat in the court for coffee
and there seemed to be many more courts
leading on one behind another as they do
here, sometimes fourteen or more, with
chains of houses around each one.
As for the dinner, I forgot to say that the
cook is a remarkable man, Fukien, who gave
us the most deUcious Chinese cookery with
French names attached on the menu. Cook
ing is apt to be named geographically here.
Most everyone in Peking came from some
where else, just as should be in a capital
dty. But they seem to keep the cooks and

250 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
cook in accordance with the predelictions of
the old home province. They have adopted
ice cream, showing the natural sense of the
race, but the daughter of our host told me
that they do not give it to the sick, as they
stiU have the idea that the sick should have
nothing cold.
They are now thrashing the wheat in this
locality. That consists of cutting it with
the sickle and having the women and chU
dren glean. The main crop is scattered on
the floor, as it is caUed, being a hard piece
of ground near the house, and then the
wheat is treaded out by a pair of don
keys attached to a roUer about as big as
our garden roller. After it is out of the
husk, it is winnowed by being tossed in the
breeze, which takes the time of a number
of people and leaves in a share of the mother
earth. The crops are very thin round this
region and they say that they are thinner
than usual, as this is a drier year than usual.
Corn is small, but there is some growing be-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 251
tween here and the hills where we went,
always in the little pieces of ground, of
course. Peanuts and sweet potatoes are
planted now, and they seem to be growing
well in the dust, which has been wet by the
recent day of rain.

252 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, June 25.
Simple facts for home consumption. AU
boards in China are sawed by hand — ^two
men and a saw, Uke a cross-cut buck-saw.
At the new Hotel de Peking, a big build
ing, instead of carrying window casings
ready to put in, they are carrying big logs
cut the proper length for a casing. Spitting
is a common accomplishment. When a
school girl wants excuse to leave her seat she
walks across the room and spits vigorously
in the spittoon. Little melons are now
ready to eat. They come Uke ripe cucum
bers, small, rather sweet. CooUes and boys
eat them^ skins and all, on the street. ChU
dren eat smaU green apples. Peaches are
expensive, but those who can get the green
hard ones eat them raw. The potted pome
granates are now in bloom and also in fruit
Jn the pots. The color is a wonderful scar-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 253
let, The lotus ponds are in bloom — ^wonder
ful color in a deep rose. When the buds are
nearly ready to open they look as if they
were about to explode and fiU the air with
their intense color. The huge leaves are
briUiant and lovely— light green and deli
cately veined. But the lotus was never
made for art, and only reUgion could have
made it acceptable to art. The sacred ponds
are weU kept and are in the old moats of
the Purple City — Forbidden. There are
twice as many men in Peking as women,
Sunday we went to a Chinese wedding.
It was at the Naval Club — ^no difference in
appearance from our ceremony. Bride and
groom both in the conventional foreign
dress. They had a ring. At the supper
there were six tables full of men, and three
partly f uU of women and children. Women
take their chUdren and their amahs every
where in China — I mean wherever they go
and provided they want to ; it is the custom.
None of the men spoke to the women at the

254 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
wedding — except rare returned students.
Eggs cost $1,00 for 120 — we get aU we
want in our boarding house. Men take
birds out for walks — either in cages or with
one leg tied to a string attached to a stick
on which the bird perches.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 255

Peking, June 27.
It's a wonder we were ever let out of
Japan at all. It's fatal; I could now tell
after reading ten lines of the writings of any
traveler whether he ever journeyed beyond
a certain point. You have to hand it to the
Japanese. Their country is beautiful, their
treatment of visitors is beautiful, and they
have the most artistic knack of making the
visible side of everything beautiful, or at
least attractive. Dehberate deceit couldn't
be one-tenth as effective; it's a real gift of
art. They are the greatest manipulators of
the outside of things that ever Uved. I real
ized when I was there that they were a na
tion of speciaUsts, but I didn't realize that
foreign affairs and diplomacy were also such
a speciaUzed art.
The new acting Minister of Education has
invited us to dinner soon. This man doesn't
appear to have any past educational record.

256 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
but he has pursued a concUiatory course; the
other one resigned and disappeared when he
found he couldn't control things. The
reaUy Uberal element does not appear to be
strong enough at present to influence poU
tics practically. The stmggle is between
the extreme mUitarists, who are said to be
under Japanese influence, and the group of
somewhat colorless moderates headed by the
President. As he gets a chance he appears
to be putting his men in. The immediate
gain seems to be negative in keeping the
other crowd out instead of positive, but they
are at least honest and wiU probably re
spond when there is enough organized lib
eral pressure brought to bear upon them.
It cannot be denied that it is hot here.
Yesterday we went out in 'rickshas about the
middle of the day and I don't beUeve I ever
felt such heat. It is Uke the Yosemite, only
considerably more intense as weU as for
longer periods of time. The only consola
tion one gets from noting that it isn't humid

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 257
is that if it were, one couldn't Uve at aU.
But the desert sands aren't moist either.
Your mother as^ed the cooUe why he didn't
wear a hat, and he said because it was too
hot. Think of puUing a person at the rate
of five or six mUes an hour in the sun of a
hundred and twenty or thirty with your
head exposed. Most of the coolies who
work in the sun have nothing on their heads.
It's either survival pf the fittest pr inheri
tance of acquired characteristics. Their
adaptation to every kind of physical discom
fort is certainly one of the wonders of the
world. You pught to see the places where
they lie down to go to sleep. They have it
aU over Napoleon. This is also the country
of itinerant domestidty. I doubt if lots of
the 'ricksha men have any places to sleep
except in their carts. And a large part of
the population must buy their food of the
street pedlars, who sell every conceivable
cooked thing; then there are lots of cooked
food stores besides the street men.

258 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, July 2.
The rainy season has set in, and now we
have floods and also coolness,; the tempera
ture having f aUen from the late nineties to
the early seventies, and Ufe seems more
worth Kving again.
This is a great country for pictures, and
I am most anxious for one of a middle-aged
Chinese, inclining to be fat, with a broad-
brimmed straw hat, sitting on the back of a
yery small and placid cream, colored donkey.
He is fanning himself as the donkey moves
imperceptibly along the highway, is satis
fied with himself and at ease with the world,
and everything in the world, whatever hap
pens. This would be a good frontispiece
for a book on China — and the joke wouldn't
aU be on the Chinese dther.
To-day the report is that the Chinese
delegates refused to sign the Paris treaty;

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 259
the news seems too good to be true, but no-'
body can learn the facts. There are also
rumors that the governmental mUitary
party, having got everything almost out of
Japan that is coming to them and finding
themselves on the unpopular side, are about
to forget that they ever knew the Japanese
and to come out very patriotic. This is also
unconfirmed, but I suppose the only reason
they would stay bought in any case is that
there are no other bidders in the market.

260 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, Wednesday, July 2.
The anxiety here is tense. The report is
that the delegates did not sign, but so
vaguely worded as to leave conjectures and
no confirmation. MeanwhUe the students'
organizations, etc., have begun another at
tack against the govemment by demanding
the dissolution of Parliament. Meantime
there is no cabinet and the President can get
no one to form one, and half those inside
seem to be also on the strike because the
other half are there.

LETTERS FROM CHINA .*JS[D JAPAN 261

Peking, July 4.
We are going out to the Higher Normal
this morning. The head of the industrial
department is going to take us. The stu
dents are erecting three new school buUd
ings this summer — ^they made the plans, de
signs, detaUs, and are supervising the erec
tion as weU as doing the routine carpenter
work. The head of the industrial depart
ment, who acted as our guide and host, has
been organizing the "national industry"
activity in connection with the students' agi
tation. He is now, among other things, try
ing to organize apprentice schools under
guUd control. The idea is to take the bright
est apprentice avaUable in each "factory"
— -reaUy, of course, just a household group
— ^and give them two hours' schooling a day
with a view to introducing new methods and
new products into the industry. They are

262 LETTERS I^OM CL J^A AND JAPAN
going to tal met-l workuig here. Then he
hopes it 7 jJ spreLd all over China. You
cannot ix_j_£,i/i( the industrial backwardness
Bere, o ; >., Jy as compared with us but with.
Japs _/^^Consequently their markets here
^re liooded with cheap flimsy Japan-made
stuff, which they buy because it's cheap, the
line of least resistance. But perhaps the
Shantung business wUl be worth its cost.
The cotton guUd is very anxious to co-oper
ate and they wiU supply capital if the
schools can guarantee skiUed workingmen,
especiaUy superintendents. Now they seU
four million worth of cotton to Japan,
where it is spun, and then buy back the same
cotton in thread for fourteen miUion —
which they weave. This is beside the large
amount of woven cotton goods they import.
I find in reading books that the Awaken
ing of China has been announced a dozen or
more times by foreign travelers in the last
ten years, so I hesitate to announce it again,
but I think this is the first time the mer-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 263
chants and guUds have reaUy been actively
stirred to try to improve industrial methods.
And if so, it is a real awakening — ^that and
the combination with the students. I read
the translations from Japanese every few
days, and it would be very interesting to
know whether their ignorance is real or as
sumed. Probably some of both — it is in
conceivable that they should be as poor
judges of Chinese psychology as the articles
indicate. But at the same time they have
to keep up a certain torie of belief among
the people af home — ^namely, that the Chi
nese really prefer the Japanese to aU other
foreigners; for they realize their depend-'
ence upon them, and if they do not make
common cause with them it is because for-
eigners, chiefly Americans, instigate it all
from mercenary and political motives. As
a matter of fact, I doubt if history knows
of any such complete case of national dislike
and distrust ; it sometimes seems as if there
hadn't been a single thing that the Japanese

264 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
might have done to alienate the Chinese that
they haven't tried. The Chinese would feel
pretty sore at America for inviting them
into the war and then leaving them in the
lurch, if the Japanese papers and poUticians
hadn't spent all their time the last three
months abusing America — then their sweet
speeches in America. It wiU be interesting
to watch and see just what particular string
they trip on finaUy.
It's getting to the end of an Imperfect
Day. We saw the school as per program
and I find I made a mistake. The boys
made the plans of the three buUdimgs and
are supervising their erection, but not doing
the buUding. They are staying in school all
summer, however — those in the woodwork
ing class — and have taken a contract for
making all the desks for the new buildings —
the school gives them room and board (food
and its preparation costs about five dollars
per month) , and they practically give their
time. All the metal-worldng boys are stay-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 265
ing in Peking and working in the shops to
improve and diversify the products. Re
member these are boys, eighteen to twenty,
and that they are carrying on their propa
ganda for their country; that the summer
averages one hundred in the shade in Pe
king, and you'U admit there is some stuff
here. This P.M. we went to a piece of the cele
bration. The piece we saw wasn't so very
Fourth of Julyish, but it was interesting —
Chinese sleight of hand. Their long robe
is an advantage, but none the less it can't be
so very easy to move about with a very large
sized punch bowl filled to the brim with
water, or with five glass bowls each with a
gold fish in it, ready to bring out. It seems
that sometimes the artist tums a somersault
just as he brings out the big bowl of water,
but we didn't get that. None of the tricks
were complicated, but they were the neatest
I ever saw. There is a home-made minstrel
show to-night, but it rained, and as the show

266 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
(and dance later) are in the open, we aren't
going, as we intended.
You can't imagine what it means here for
China not to have signed. The entire gov
ernment has been for it — the President up
to ten days before the signing said it was
necessary. It was a victory for pubUc
opinion, and aU set going by these little
schoolboys and girls. Certainly the United
States ought to be ashamed when China can
do a thing of this sort.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 267

Sunday, July 7.
We had quite another ride yesterday,
sixty or seventy miles altogether. The rea
son for the macadam road is worth telling.
When Yuan Shi Kai was planning to be
Emperor his son broke his leg, and he heard
the hot springs would be good for him. So
one of the officials made a road to it. Some
of the present day officials, induding an ex-
official who was recently forced to resign
after being beaten up, now own the springs
and hotel, so the road will continue to be
taken care of. On the way we went through
the viUage of the White Snake and also of
the One Hundred Virtues.
Y. M. C. A.'s and Red Crossers are still
coming from Siberia on their way home. I
don't know whether they wiU talk freely
when they get home. It is one mess, and
the stories they will teU won't improve our

268 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
foreign relations any. The Bolsheviki
aren't the only ones that shoot up viUages
and take the loot — so far the Americans
haven't done it.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 269

Peking, July 8.
This moming the papers here reported
the denial of Japan that she had made a
secret treaty with Germany. The opinion
here seems to be that they did not, but
merely that preliminaries had begun with
reference to such a treaty. We heard at
dinner the other day from responsible
American officials here that, after America
had completed the last of the arrangements
for China to go into the war, the Japanese
arranged to get a concession from Russia
for the delivery on the part of the Japanese
of China into the war on the side of the
AUies. Well, the Japanese are stiU at it with the
cat out of the bag. It looks now as if they
are getting ready to break up the present
govemment in Japan. This is interpreted
to mean that that breakup will be made to

270 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
look as if it were in disapproval of the pres
ent mistakes in diplomacy and of the price
of rice; and then they can put in a worse
one there and the world wiU not know the
difference, but wiU be made to think that
Japan is reforming. Speaking of constitu-^
tionality in Japan, I ceased to worry about
that as soon as I learned the older states
men never troubled at all about who was
elected, but just let the elections go through,
as their business was so assured in other
ways that the elections made no difference
anyway, and that the same principle worked
equaUy well in the matter of passing bUls. No
bill can ever come up vrithout the approval
of the powers that be and they know how
it is coining out in spite of aU discussions.
No wonder change comes slowly and maybe
it will have to come all at once in the form
of a revolution if it comes in reaUty. It is
>now reported that Tsai, the ChanceUor of
the University here, has said he wiU come
back on condition that the students do not

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 271
move in future in any political matter with
out his consent, and I am not able to guess
whether that is a concession or a clever way
of seenoing to agree with both sides at once.
The announcement of Tsai's return means
that things wiU soon be back in normal
shape and ready for another upheaval.
We seem to be utterly stumped by the
house situation. AU the members of the
Rockefeller Foundation get nice new houses
built for them, and the houses are nice new
Chinese ones but free from the poor quali
ties of those to be rented here. All the
houses in Peking are built like our wood
sheds, directly on the ground, raised a few
inches from actual contact with the earth
by a stone floor. The courts fiU with water
when the rains are hard and then they are
moist for days, maybe weeks, and about two
feet of wet seeps up the side of the walls.
Yesterday we called on one of our Chinese
friends here, and the whole place was in that
state, but he did not seem to notice it. If

272 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
he wants baths in the house it doubles the
cost he pays the water wagon, and then after
aU the trouble of heating and carrying the
water there is no way to dispose of the
waste, except to get a man to come and
carry it away in buckets. You would have
endless occupation here just looking on to
see how this bee colony can find so many
ways of making life hard for itself, A gen
tleman at the Foundation has just been teU
ing us how the coolies steal every Uttle piece
of metal, leftovers or screwed on, that they
can get at. The privation of life sets up an
entirely new set of standards for morals.
No one, it ^pears,- can be- convicted .for
stealirig food in China.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 273

Peking, July 8.
The RockefeUer buUdings are lovely sam
ples of what money can do. In the midst
of this worn and weak city tbey stand out
Uke Uluminating monuments of the splen
dor of the past in proper combination with
the modern idea. They are in the finest old
style of Chinese architecture; green roofs
instead of yeUow, with three stories instead
of one. One wonders how long it will take
China to catch up and know what they are
doing. It is said the Chinese are not at aU
incUned to go to their hospital for fear of
the ultra foreign methods which they do not
yet understand. On the other hand, there
is no disposition on the part of the Institu
tion to meet them half way as the mission
aries have always done. There are a num
ber of Chinese among the doctors and they
have now opened aU the work to the women.

274 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
There is a great need for women doctors
now in China, but evidentiy it wiU take a
generation yet before this work wiU begin
to be understood and wUl take its natural
place in Chinese affairs. It is rather amus
ing that this splendid set of buUdings quite
surrounds and overshadows the biggest
Japanese hospital and school that is in Pe
king, and they say the fact has quite humiU-
ated the Japanese, At present the buUd
ings are nearing completion, but all the old
rubbishy structures of former times wiU
have to be puUed down before these new
ones can be seen in aU their beauty. Among
other things, they have buUt thirty-five
houses also in Chinese style but with aU the
modern comforts, in which to house their
faculty, and in addition to those there are
a good many buildings which were taken
over from the old medical missionary Col
lege, besides, perhaps, some that wiU be left
from the palace of the Prince whose prop
erty they bought. Two fine old lions are an

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 275
addition from the Prince, but no foreign
family would stand the inconveniences and
discomforts of the ancient Prince, in spite
of aU his wives.

276 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, July 11.
They have the best melons here you ever
saw. Their watermelons, which are sold on
the street in such quantities as to put even
the southern negroes to shame, are just Uke
yeUow ice cream in color, but they aren't as
juicy as ours. Their musk melons aren't
spicy like the ones at home at all, but are
shaped Uke pears, only bigger and have an
add taste; in fact they are more Uke a cu
cumber with a little acid pep in them, only
the seeds are all in the center Uke our
melons. When you get macaroons and little
cakes here in straight Chinese houses you
reaUze that neither we nor the Europeans
were the first to begin eating. They either
boil or steam their bread — ^they eat wheat
instead of rice in this part of the country —
or fry it, and I have no doubt that dough
nuts were brought home to grandma by

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 277
some old seafaring captain. These things
are aU the stranger because, except for
sponge cake, no such things are indigenous
to Japan. So when you first get here you
can hardly resist the impression that these
things have been brought to China from
America or Europe. Read a book caUed
"Two Heroes of Cathay," by LueUa Miner,
and see how our country has treated some of
these people in the past, and then you see
them so fond of America and of Americans
"and you reaUze that in some ways they are
ahead of us in what used to be known as
Christianity before the war. I guess we
"wrote you from Hangchow about seeing the
monument and shrine to two Chinese offi
cials who were torn in pieces at the time of
the Boxer rebeUion because they changed a
telegram to the provincial officers "Kill all
foreigners" to read "Protect all foreign
ers," The shrine is kept up, of course, by
the Chinese, and very few foreigners in
China even know of the incident.

278 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Their art is reaUy chUdUke and aU the
new kinds of artists in America who think
being queer is being primitive ought to come
over here and study the Chinese in their
native abodes. A great love of bright colors
and a wonderful knowledge of how to com
bine them, a comparatively few patterns
used over and over in all kinds of ways, and
a preference for designs that iUustrate some
story or idea or that appeal to their sense of
the funny — ^it's a good deal more childlike
than what passes in Greenwich ViUage for
the chUdUke in art.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 279

Y. M. C. A., Peking, July 17.
A young Korean arrived here in the even
ing and he was met here on our porch by a
Chinese citizen who is also Korean. The
newly arrived could speak yery little Eng
Ush and by means of a triangle we were able
to arrive at his story. It seems there is quite
a leakage of Korean students over the Chi
nese border all the time. To become a
Chinese student requires six years of resi
dence, or else it was three; anyway enough
to postpone the idea of going to America to
study tiU rather late in case one wants to
resort to that way of escape from Japanese
oppression. The elder and the one who has
become a Chinese citizen seemed a good deal
excited; I fancy they are dramatic by na
ture, and made many gestures. He urged
on me the importance of our going to Korea
and he is going to bring us some pictures to

280 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
look at. WeU, it aU set me thinking, and so
I have been reading the Korean guide book
and reflecting on the wonderful climate
there and wondering if we can get a rea
sonable place to stay. My first discovery
of the real seriousness of the Korean situa
tion came across me in Japan early in
March, when we had a hoUday on account
of the funeral of the Korean prince, for
the reason that after the funeral and grad
uaUy in connection with it the Japanese
Advertiser said it was rumored that the old
Korean prince had committed suicide.
Doubtless you may know the story there,
and then again you may not. However,
the facts have leaked one way and another
and now it is known that the old man did
commit suicide in order to prevent the mar
riage of the young prince, who has been
brought up in Japan, to the Japanese
princess. By etiquette his death, taking
place three days or so before the date set
for the wedding, prevented the marriage

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 281
from taking place for two years, and it is
hoped by the Koreans that before two years
they could weaken the Japanese grip on
Korea. We all know they have made a be
ginning since last March and the suidde did
something to help that along. Now that
Japan is advertising political reforms in
Korea she would probably count on that
reputation again to cover her real activities
and intentions with the world at large for
some time to come. The Japanese are like
the Italian Padrones or other skUlful newly
rich; they have learned the western efficiency
and in that they are at least a generation
ahead of their neighbors. New knowledge
to take advantage of the old experience
which she has moved away from and under
stands so well, to make that experience con
tribute all it has towards building up and
strengthening the new riches of herself.
The excuse is the one of the short and easy
road to success though in the long mn it
is destructive in its bearings. But a certain

282 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
physical efficiency is what Japan surely has
and she has made that go a little further
than it reaUy can go. It is just one more
evidence of the failure of the Peace Con
ference to comprehend the excuses that
Wilson is making for the concessions he has
granted to the practical needs, as he calls
them. We are now getting the first echoes
from his speeches here.
When I reflect on the changed aspect of
our minds and on the facts that we have
become accustomed to gradually since com
ing here I realize we have much to explain
to you which now seems a matter of course
over here. We discovered from reading an
old back number somewhere that an Ameri
can traveler had been given the order of the
Royal Treasure in Japan when he was
there. This order is said to be bestowed on
the Japanese alone. Before he received it
he had made a pubUc speech to the effect
that as China was down and out and needed
some protector it was natural that Japan

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 283
should be that, as by all historical reasons
she was fitted to be. It appears to be true
that the MUitarists here who are causing the
trouble for China and who are able to hold
the govemment on account of foreign sup
port have that idea so far as the "natural"
goes. The great man of China to-day is
Hsu, commonly known as Little Hsu, which
'is- a good nickname in English, Little Shoe.
"He has never been in the westem hemi
sphere and he thinks it is better for China to
give a" part of her territory to the Japanese
who will help them, than to hope for any
thing from the other foreigners, who only
want to exploit them, and if once China can
^geta stable go vernment with the aid of the
"Japanese miUtarists, then after that she can
- buUd herself into a nation. Meantime Lit-
ile Shoe has gained by a sad fluke in the
legislature the appointment of Military
Dictator of Mongolia, and this means he is
given full power to use his army for agri
cultural and any other enterprises he may

284 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
choose. It means, in short, that he is abso
lute dictator of aU Mongolia which is re
tained by China and which is bordered by
Eastern Inner MongoUa which Japan con
trols under the twenty-one Demands by a
ninety-nine-year lease under the same abso
lute conditions. These last few days since
that act was consummated, nothing is hap
pening so far as the public knows, and ac
cording to friends the government can go
on indefinitely here with no cabinet and no
responsibility to react to the pubUc de
mands. The bulk of the nation is against
this state of affairs, but with the support of
foreigners and the lack of organization there
is nothing to do but stand it and see the
nation sold out to Japan and other grabbers.
If you can get at Millard's Review, look
at it and read especiaUy the recent act of the
Foreign Council which licensed the press
— ^I mean they passed an Act to do so. For
tunately the Act is not legal and will not be
ratified by the Chinese Council at Shanghai.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 285
To this house come the officers of the Y.
M. C. A. who are on the way home from
Siberia and other places. The stories one
hears here are full of horror and always the
same. Our men are too few to accompUsh
anything and the whole affair is not any of
our business anyway. Anyway the Cana
dians have a sense of virtue in getting out of
it and going home, and weU they may, say I.
The Japanese have had 70,000 there at least
and they may have shipped many more than
that, for they have such a command of the
raUroads that there is no way of keeping
track of them. I beUeve the conviction is
they are taking in men according to their
own judgment of the case aU the time.
Everybody agrees that the Japanese sol
diers are hated by aU the others and have
generally proved themselves disagreeable,
the Chinese being thoroughly Uked.
Meantime the dissatisfaction in Japan
over rice in particular and food in general
is quite evidently becoming more and more

286 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
acute. And it is interesting to read the in
terviews with Count Ishii which aU end up
in the same way, that the fear of bomb-
throwers in the United States is becoming a
very serious alarm among aU. The Anti-
American agitation was hard for us to un
derstand whUe we were there, but its mean
ing is less obscure now. WiU it be effective ?
Is another world war already preparing?
It is said here that the students were very
successful during the strike in converting
soldiers to their ideas. The boys at the High
Normal said they were disappointed when
they were let out of jaU at the University
because they had not converted more than
half the soldiers. The guards around those
boys were changed every four hours.
It is raining most of the time and it is
typical of the Chinese character that my
teacher did not come because of the rain.
You have to remember he never takes a
'ricksha, though he might have looked at it
that it was better to pay a man than to lose

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 287
the lesson. The mud in the roads here is
much Uke the old days on Long Island
before the gravel was put there, only it is
softer and more slippery here, and the water
stands.

288 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN

Peking, July 17.
We are pleased to learn that the Japan
ese censor hasn't detained aU our letters,
though since you call them incoherent there
must be some gaps. I'm sure we never
write anything incoherent if you get it aU.
The course of events has been a trifle in
coherent if you don't sit up and hold its
hands all tfie time. Since China didn't sign
the peace treaty things have quite settled
down here, however, and the lack of excite
ment after Uving on aerated news for a
couple of months is quite a letdown. How
ever, we Uve in hopes of revolution or a coup
d'etat or some other Uttle incident to liven
up the dog days.
You wiU be pleased lo know that the
University ChanceUor — see letters of early
May — ^has finaUy announced that he wiU re
turn to the University. It is supposed that

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 289
the Government has assented to his condi
tions, among which is that the poUce won't
interfere with the students, but wiU leave
discipline to the University authorities. To
resign and run away in order to be coaxed
back is an art. It's too bad WUson never
studied it. The Chinese peace delegates re
ported back here that Lloyd George in
quired what the twenty-one Demands were,
as he had never heard of them. However,
the Chinese hold Balfour as most respon
sible. In order to avoid any incoherence I
wUl add that a Chinese servant informed a
smaU boy in the household of one of our
friends here that the Chinese are much more
cleanly than the foreigners, for they have
people come to them to clean their ears and
said cleaners go way down in. This is an
unanswerable argument.
I hear your mother downstairs engaged
on the fascinating task of trying to make
Chinese tones. I may teU you that there
are only four hundred spoken words in

290 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
Chinese, aU monosyUables. But each one of
these is spoken in a different tone, there
being four tones in this part of the country
and increasing as you go south tiU in Canton
there are twelve or more. In writing there
are only 214 radicals, which are then com
bined and mixed up in aU sorts of ways.
My last name here is Du, my given name is
Wei. The Du is made up of two characters,
one of which means tree and the other earth.
They are written separately. Then Wei is
made up of some more characters mixed up
together, one character for woman and one
for dart, and I don't know what else. Don't
ask me how they decided that earth and tree
put together made Du, for I can't teU.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 291

Peking, July 19.
I met the tutor, the EngUsh tutor, of the
young Manchu Emperor, the other day — ^he
has three Chinese tutors besides. He teaches
him Math,, Sciences, etc., besides English,
which he has been doing for three months.
It is characteristic of the Chinese that they
not only didn't kUl any of the royal f amUy,
but they left them one of the palaces in the
Imperial City and an income of four miUion
dollars Mex. a year, and within this palace
the kid who is now thirteen is still Emperor,
is caUed that, and is waited upon by the
eunuch attendants who crawl before him on
their hands and knees. At the same time he
is, of course, practically a prisoner, being
aUowed to see his father and his younger
brother once a month. Otherwise he has no
chUdren to play with at aU. There is some
romance left in China after aU if you want

292 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
to let your imagination play about this
scene. The tutors don't kneel, although they
address him as Your Majesty, or whatever
it is in Chinese, and they walk in and he
remains standing untU the tutor is seated.
This is the old custom, which shows the
reverence in which even the old Tartars
must have held education and learning. He
has a Chinese garden in which to walk, but
no place to ride or for sports. The tutor is
trying to get the authorities to send him to
the country, let him have playmates and
sports, and also aboUsh the eunuch — ^but he
seems to think they wiU more likely aboUsh
him. The kid is quite bright, reads aU the
newspapers and is much interested in poli
tics, keeps track of the Paris Conference,
knows about the politicians in aU the coun
tries, and in short knows a good deal more
about world poUtics than most boys of his
age; also he is a good classical Chinese
scholar. The Chinese don't seem to worry
at all about the boy's becoming the center of

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 293
intrigue and plots, but I imagine they sort
of keep him in reserve with the idea that
unless the people want monarchy back he
never can do anything, whUe if they do let
him back it wUl be the wiU of heaven.
I am afraid I haven't sufficiently im
pressed it upon you that this is the rainy
season. It was impressed upon us yester
day afternoon, when the side street upon
which we Uve was a flowing river a foot and
a half deep. The main street on which the
Y. M. C. A. building is situated was a soUd
lake from housewaU to housewall, though
not more than six inches or so. But the
street is considerably wider than Broadway,
so it was something of a sight. Peking has
for many hundred years had sewers big
enough for a man to stand up in, but they
don't carry fast enough. Probably about
this time you wUl be reading cables from
some part of China about floods and the
number of homeless. The Yellow River
is known as the curse of China, so much

294 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
damage is done. We were told that when
the missionaries went down to do flood reUef
work a year or so ago, they were so busy
that they didn't have time to preach, and
they did so much good that when they were
through they had to put up the bars to keep
the Chinese from joining the churches en
masse. We haven't heard, however, that
they took the hint as to the best way of
jdoing business. These floods go back
largely if not whoUy to the policy of the
Chinese in stripping the forests. If you
were to see the big cofiins they are buried
in and realize the large part of China's scant
forests that must go into coffins you would
favor a law that no man could die until he
had planted a tree for his coffin and one
extra. One of our new friends here is quite an
important poUtician, though quite out of it
just now. He told a story last night
which tickled the Chinese greatly. The
Japanese minister here haunted the Presi-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 295
dent and Prime Minister while the peace
negotiations were on, and every day on the
strength of what they told him cabled the
Tokyo government that the Chinese dele
gates were surely going to sign. Now he is
in a somewhat uncomfortable position mak
ing explanations to the home government.
He sent a representative after they didn't
sign to the above-mentioned friend to ask
him whether the government had been fool
ing him all the time. He repUed No, but
that the Japanese should remember that
there was one power greater than the gov
ernment, namely, the people, and that the
delegates had obeyed the people. The Jap
anese wUl never be able to make up their
minds though whether they were being de
liberately deceived or not. The worst of the
whole thing, however, is that even inteUi
gent Chinese are relying upon war between
the United States and Japan, and when
they find out that the United States won't
go to war just on China's account, there

296 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
will be some kind of a revulsion. But if
the United States had used its power ~wfiSr
the war closed to compel disarmament and
get some kind of a just settlement, there
would be no limit to its influence over here.
As it is, they infer that the moral is that
Might Controls, and that adds enormously
to the moral power of Japan as against the
United States. It is even plainer here than
at home that if the United States wasn't
going to see its "ideals" through, it
shouldn't have professed any, but if it did
profess them it ought to have made good on
'em even if we had to fight the whole world.
However, our financial pressure, and the
threat of withholding food and. raw ma
terials would have enabled Wilson to put
anything over.
Another little incident is connected with
the Chancellor of the University. Although
he is not a poUtician at aU, the Militarist
party holds him responsible for their recent
trials and the student outbreaks. So, al-

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 297
though it announced that the Chancellor
is coming back, the Anfu Club, the parlia
mentary organization of the mUitarists, is
stUl trying to keep him out. The other night
they gave a banquet to some University stu
dents and bribed them to start something.
At the end they gave each one doUar extra
for 'ricksha hire the next day, so there would
be no excuse for not going to the meeting
at the University. Fifteen turned up, but
the spies on the other side heard something
was going on and they rang the beU, col
lected about a hundred and locked the
bribees in. Then they kept them in tUl they
confessed the whole story (and put their
names to a written confession) and turned
over their resolutions and mimeographed
papers which had been prepared for them
in which they said they were really the ma
jority of the students and did not want the
ChanceUor back, and that a noisy minority
had imposed on the pubUc, etc. The next
day the Anfu papers told about an awful

298 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
riot at the University, and how a certain
person had instigated and led it, although
he hadn't been at the University at aU that
day.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 299

Peking, July 24.
We expect to go to Manchuria, probably
in September, and in October to Shansi,
which is quite celebrated now because they
have a civU govemor who properly devotes
himself to his job, and they are said to have
sixty per cent or more of the chUdren in
school and to be prepared for compulsory
education in 1927). It is the ease with which
tKXhinesedo these things without any for
eign assistance which makes you feel so
hopeful for China on the one hand, and
so disgusted on the other that they put
up so patiently with ineffidency and graft
most of the time. There seems to be a
general impression that the present situa
tion cannot continue indefinitely, but must
take a turn one way or another. The stu
dent agitation lias died down as an active
political thing but continues inteUectually.

SOO LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
In Tientsin, for example, they pubUsh sev
eral daUy newspapers which seU for a cop
per apiece. A number of students have
been arrested in Shantung lately by the
Japanese, so I suppose the students are
actively busy there. I fancy that when va
cation began there was quite an exodus in
that direction.
I am told that X  , our Japanese
friend, is much disgusted with the Chinese
about the Shantung business — that Japan
has promised to retum Shantung, etc., and
that Japan can't do it until China gets a
stable government to take care of things, be
cause their present governments are so weak
that China would simply give away her terri
tory to some other power, and that the Chi
nese instead of attacking the Japanese ought
to mind their own business and set their own
house in order. There is enough truth in this
so that it isn't surprising that so inteUigent
and Uberal a person as X  is taken in by
it. But what such Japanese as he cannot

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 301
realize, because the truth is never told to
them, is how responsible the Japanese gov
emment is for fostering a weak and unrep
resentative government here, and what a
temptation to it a weak and divided China
wiU continue to be, for it wiU serve indefi
nitely as an excuse for postponing the re
tum of Shantung — as well as for interfer
ing elsewhere. Anyone who knows the least
thing about not only general disturbances
in China but special causes of friction be
tween China and Japan, can foresee that
there wiU continue to be a series of plausible
excuses for postponing the return promised
— ^and anyway, as a matter of fact, what she
has actually promised to return compared
with the rights she would keep in her pos
session amount to little or nothing. Just
this last week there was a clash in Man-
chui-ia and fifteen or twenty Japanese sol
diers are reported kiUed by Chinese — there
wiU always be incidents of that kind which
wiU have to be settled first. If the other

302 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
coimtries would only surrender their spedal
concessions to the keeping of an interna
tional guarantee, they could force the hand
of Japan, but I can't see Great Britain giv
ing up Hong Kong. On the whole, how
ever. Great Britain, next to us, and barring
the opium business, has been the most decent
of all the great powers in dealing with
China. I started out with a prejudice to
the contrary, and have been surprised to
learn how Uttle grabbing England has
actually done here. Of course, India is the
only thing she really cares about and her
whole poUcy here is controUed by that con
sideration, with such incidental trade ad
vantages as she can pick ug.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 303

[(Later) July 27.
I think I wrote a whUe back about a
Uttle kid five years old or so who walked
up the middle aisle at one of my lectures
and stood for about fifteen minutes quite
close to me, gazing at me most seriously and
also whoUy unembarrassed. Night before
last we went to a Chinese restaurant for
dinner, under the guardianship of a friend
here. A Uttle boy came into our coop and
began most eamestly addressing me in Chi
nese. Our friend found out that he was
asking me if I knew his third uncle. He
was the kid of the lecture who had recog
nized me as the lecturer, and whose third
uncle is now studying at Columbia. If you
meet Mr. T  congratulate bim for me on
his third nephew. The boy made us several
caUs during the evening, all equaUy serious
and unconstrained. At one he asked me for

304 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN ;.
my card, which he carefully wrapped up in
ceremonial paper. The restaurant is near
a lotus pond and they are now in their fuU
est bloom. I won't describe them beyond
saying that the lotus is the lotus and advis
ing you to come out next summer and see
them.

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 305

Peking, August 4.
I went to Tientsin to an educational con
ference for two days last week. It was caUed
by the Commissioner of this Province for aU
the principals of the higher schools to dis
cuss the questions connected with the open
ing of the schools in the faU. Most of the
heads of schools are very conservative and
were much opposed to the students' strikes,
and also to the students' participation in
poUtics. They are very nervous and timor
ous about the opening of the schools, for
they think that the students after engagmg
in poUtics aU summer won't lend themselves
readUy to school discipUne — ^their high
schools, etc., are all boarding schools — and
wUl want to run the schools after having run
the government for several months. The
liberal minority, while they want the stu-

306 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
dents to settle down to school work, think
that the students' experiences wiU have been
of great educational value and that they wUl
come back with a new social viewpoint, and
the teaching ought to be changed — and also
the methods of school discipUne^^to meet
the new situation.
I had a wonderful Chinese lunch at a pri
vate high school one day there. The school
was started about fifteen years ago in a pri
vate house with six pupUs; now they have
twenty acres of land, eleven hundred pupils,
and are putting up a first coUege buUding
to open a freshman class of a hundred this
fall — it's of high school grade now, all Chi
nese support and management, and non-
missionary or Christian, although the prin
cipal is an active Christian and thinks
Christ's teachings the only salvation for
China. The chief patron is a non-EngUsh
speaking, non-Christian scholar of tfie old
type — ^but with modem ideas. The princi
pal said that when three of them two years

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 307
ago went around the world on an educa
tional trip, this old scholar among them, the
United States Government gave them a
special secret service detective from New
York to San Francisco, and this man was
so impressed with the old Chinese gentleman
that he said: "What kind of education can
produce such a man as that, the finest gen
tleman I ever saw. You westem educated
gentlemen are spoiled in comparison with
him," They certainly have the world beat
in courtesy of manners — as much poUte
ness as the Japanese but with much less
manner, so it seems more natural. How
ever, this type is not very common. I asked
the principal what the effect of the mission
ary teaching was on the Chinese passivity
and non-resistance. He said it differed very
much as between Americans and EngUsh
and among Americans between the older
and the younger lot. The latter, especiaUy
the Y, M. C. A., Have given up the non-
interventionaUst point of view and take the

308 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
ground that Christianity ought to change
social conditions. The Y. M. C. A. is, he
says, a group of social workers rather than
of missionaries in the old-fashioned sense —
aU of which is quite encouraging. Perhaps
the Chinese will be the ones to rejuvenate
Christianity by dropping its rot, wet and
dry, and changing it into a social reUgion.
Tlig_j9rincipal.is a Teacherg_ CoUege_man
and one of the most influential educators in
China. He speaks largely in picturesque
metaphor, and I'm sorry I can't remember
what he said. Among other_ things, in
speaking of the energy of the Japanese and
the inertia of the Chinese, he said the former^
were mercury, affected by every change
about them, and the latter cotton wool that
the heat didn't warm and cold didn't freeze.
He confirmed my growing idea, however,
that the conservatism of the Chinese was
much more inteUectual and deUberate, and
less mere routine cUnging to custom, than
I used to suppose. Consequently, when

LETTERS PROM CHINA AND JAPAN 309
their ideas do change, the people will change
more thoroughly, more aU tiie way through,'
than the Japanese.
It seeins that the present acting Minister
of Education was aUowed to take office under
three conditions — that he should dissolve the
University, prevent the ChanceUor from re
tuming, and dismiss aU the present heads
of the higher schools here. He hasn't been
able, of course, to accomplish one, and the
Anfu Club is correspondingly sore. He is
said to be a slick politician, and when he has
been at dinner with our Uberal friends he
teUs them how even he is calumniated — ^peo
ple say that he is a member of the Anfu
Club. I struck another side of China on my way
home from Tientsin, I was introduced to
an ex-Minister of Finance as my traveling
companion. He is a Ph,D. in higher math.
from America, and is a most intelligent
man. But his theme of conversation was
the need of a scientific investigation of

310 LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN
spirits and spirit possession and divination,
etc., in order to decide scientificaUy the ex
istence of the soul and an overruling mind.
IncidentaUy he told a fine lot of Chinese
ghost stories. Aside from the coloring of
the tales I don't know that there was any
thing especiaUy Chinese about them. He
certainly is much more intelhgent about it
than some of our American spiritualists.
But the ghosts were certainly Chinese aU
right — ^spirit possession mostly. I suppose
you know that the walls that stand in front
of the better-to-do Chinese houses are there
to keep spirits out — ^the spirits can't tum a
comer, so when the wall is squarely in front
of the location of the front door the house
is safe. Otherwise they come in and take
possession of somebody — if they aren't
comfortable as they a,re. It seems there is
quite a group of ex-politicians in Tientsin
who are much interested in psychical re
search. Considering that China is the
aboriginal home of ghosts, I can't see why

LETTERS FROM CHINA AND JAPAN 311
the western investigators don't start their
research here. These educated Chinese
aren't credulous, so there is nothing crude
about their ghost stories.

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