It was the morning of our last sleep inseiyo-jinbeds. I dreamed that I was still dreaming in Lindaroxa’s Court. O-Owre-san shook my four-poster and begged me to consider the matter-of-factness of rolling out from my mosquito netting and taking a bite of cold breakfast. The sensuous breeze of the East, which comes for a brief hour with the first light of the sun, was blowing the curtains back from the window. I was willing to consider the getting up and the eating of the breakfast and I was willing to call both endeavours matter-of-fact, but the imagination that it was to be the first day on the highroad belonged to no such mere negativity of living.
I began packing and was inspired to improvise a wonderful ballad. It was concerned with the beginning of trails. O-Owre-san was busy and was uninterested in my stanzas. He might very well have served genius by taking them down. The all-inclusiveness embraced, I remember, a master picture of cold dawn in the Rockies, withpack ponies snorting, biting, and bucking; and I sang blithely of every other sort of first morning start, embroidering the memories of their roaring language and their unpackable dunnage. But in Japan one does not roar—or one roars alone—and I had known just what was going into my rucksack for weeks.
Our route was to be the famed Tokaido, that ancient road running between the great capitals of the West and the East, from Kyoto to Tokyo. We were to find its first stretch at the turn to the left when we should cross the bridge over the Kamo-Gawa. This river cuts Kyoto between two long rows of houses built on piles and overhanging its waters. In summer the stream is most domesticated and gives, charitably, a large area of its dry bed as a pleasure ground forfêtes, but when the snows are melting back in the hills in the days of spring and blossoms, it becomes temperamental and the peasants say that it has drunk unwisely ofsaké. It is then that the water winks rakishly and splashes the tips of its waves at prettygeishas, who come to scatter cherry petals on the current. But we saw only the summer domesticity on our June morning. A school of children were wading in the shallow current, fishing with nets. Theirkimonoswere tied high abovetheir sturdy fat legs. We leaned over the rail and they squinted back into the sun at us and called out good-morning. Then we stepped off the bridge and our boots were on the long road that leads to Tokyo.
KYOTO BACK STREETS
KYOTO BACK STREETS
KYOTO BACK STREETS
Hokusai has pictured the Tokaido in his prints—the villages and the mountains, the plains and the sea, the peasants and the pilgrims, theroninsand the priests. He did add his immortal overlay to the tradition of the highway’s immortality, but even the great Hokusai could only be an incident in the spread of its renown. The Tokaido’s personality was no less haughty and arrogant long centuries before the artist. It was built by the gods, as everyone knows, and not by man. This may be the reason why it has fallen upon hard days in these modern times, now that the race of man has assumed the task of relieving the weary gods of so many of their duties. Axes have cut down the cryptomerias for miles because the trees interfered with telegraph wires; and furthermore, a new highway has now been built between the capitals, a road of steel. For most of the way this new road follows alongside the old, although sometimes departing in a straighter line. The vaulting arrogance of all was when man took the name “The Tokaido” for a railway.The trains pass by the ancient shrines of the wayside with no tarrying for moments of contemplation. To-day asamurai, with a newspaper under one arm and a lunch box under the other—his two swords have been thus displaced—goes from Kyoto to Tokyo in as few hours as were the days of his father’s journeying.
When the feudal emperors made this pilgrimage they were carried in silk-hung, lacquered palanquins, and fierce-eyed, two-sworded retainers cleared the streets and sealed the houses so that no prying eyes might violate sancrosanctity. As for our pilgrimage we appreciated that we were not sacred emperors and that we were coming along without announcement. The inhabitants kept the sides of their houses open and stared out upon us. We felt free, discreetly, to return their glances from under the brims of our pith helmets, but occasionally this freedom felt a panicky restraint within itself to keep eyes on the road.
In the legend of her famous ride, Lady Godiva, I believe, had the houses sealed before her approach as did those deified Nipponese emperors. We doubted, that early morning, whether the dwellers along the Tokaido, if they had been told Lady Godiva’s tale, would have had appreciation for her chastely wishing not to be seen, exceptas a mystifying and whimsical eccentricity. To preserve a deity from mortal eyes—yes, that might have been conceded as a conventional necessity; but our surety grew after a short advance that if the fulfilling of a similar vow by a Nipponese Lady Godiva should have its penance depending merely upon the absence of attire, she could ride her palfrey in the environs of Kyoto inconspicuously and without exciting comment. At least such costuming would be in local fashion the first one or two hours after sunrise.
A mile is a mile the first day, and we had had three or four miles in the silence which comes from the feeling that one is really off.
“It’s a good morning for boiling out,” remarked O-Owre-san, by way of breaking the spell.
We were in a narrow valley walking head on into the sun. It was an excellent morning for boiling out.
I suggested that it was a good time to take the first rest. We found a spot in a temple garden up a flight of exceedingly steep stone steps. Usually to throw off one’s pack is to achieve the supreme emotional satisfaction of laziness, but on this first essay we failed to relax. It was perhaps partly that we had not yet boiled out our Western restlessness among other poisons, butalso there was to be counted in as opposed to the quietude of the garden a most unrestful suggestion contributed by a conspicuous sign written in English and nailed to a post. It read:
“Foreigners Visiting Must Dismount Horses and Not Ride Into Temple.”
There are visitors in the East whose idea of sightseeing the heathen gods might not preclude their riding their horses up onto the lap of the bronze Buddha of Kamakura; but how the priest imagined that horses were to be urged up those stone steps was a mystery veiled from our understanding. It even created a pride in our alien blood that we were a race thought to be capable of such magic.
The Tokaido winds through the city of Otsu. It enters proudly as the chief street but escapes between rows of mean houses, becoming as nearly a characterless lane as the Tokaido can anywhere be. The town is the chief port of Lake Biwa of the famed eight views, and it is just beyond this town that the upstart railway takes itself off, together with its cindery smoke, on a straighter line than the Tokaido. The highway bends to the south in a swinging circle and wanders along for many a quiet mile before the two meet again. At the angle of the parting of the old and the new westopped at a rest house for a bottle oframune. This beverage is a carbonated, chemically compounded lemonade. Its wide distribution does possess one merit. The bottles may often be used as a sort of guide book. Almost every little shop along the road has a few bottles cooling in a wooden bucket of water. Thus, if a stranger is walking from one town to another and if, as is inevitable, he has been unable to learn anything about distances along the way, he may at least judge that he is approximately half through his journey when the labels on the bottles change the address of their origin to that of the town which he is seeking.
Theramunewhich we had at Otsu was warm and the shop was stifling and the flies were sticky. My clinging flannel shirt was unbuttoned, my sleeves were rolled up, and I had tied a handkerchief about my head. We carried our bottles out to a low bench to escape the baked odours of the shop, and while we were sitting and sipping two Japanese gentlemen came down the road, looking very cool under their sun umbrellas and in their immaculatekimonos. Orthodox ambition in the temperate zone aims for respectability, power, and property, but in the tropics any temporary struggle, whether in war or trade, has as its lure thereward of a long, aristocratic, cooling calm. Our Japanese gentlemen, superiorly aloof to the perspiring world, appeared to be amusedly observing the habits and customs of the foreigner as exhibited by us. Their staring rankled. Until then I had been happy in the exact condition of my perspiration. Their observance now chilled the beads on my back. Any number of coolies could have come and stared, and called us brother—for all of that—but we were being made to realize suddenly that in the Orient the lower the blood temperature the higher the caste mark. The parent germ of all convention in the world is “not to lose face.” It has been most highly developed by the Chinese and the Anglo-Saxon. For the Chinese it is personal, but it makes the renegade Anglo-Saxon, despite himself, keep on trying to hold up his chin in a blind call of blood loyalty to his own mob when facing the Asiatic.
We picked up our packs and started off. It was either to retire or nihilistically to hurl the packs at their immaculateness. Just as we began to move one of them said: “Do you speak English?”
The truth must be told that we recanted much of our wrath after the friendliness of a half-hour’s roadside palaver. The meeting, however, had auniqueness of experience far beyond anything merely casual. It allowed us the extraordinary record that we once did acquire local information from a Japanese whose conception of daily time and highroad space had some coincidence with our Western science of absolute fact. Mr. Yoshida, he who had called after us, knew that corner of Japan and he told us about it.
O-Owre-san says: “Certain Japanese inexplicabilities are extremely ubiquitous.” He thus confines himself to six words. I cannot. I require a paragraph. Despite the ubiquitous mystery, there is always one certainty: Whatever may be the thought processes of the Japanese concerning hours, distances, and direction, the inquirer may be sure of this: the answer will not be concerned with answering the question. The courteous answerer earnestly uses his judgment to determine what reply is likely to be most pleasing. If you appear weary, or in a hurry, then the distance to go is never very long. If you appear to be enjoying your walk, then the distance is a long way. The village which has been declared just around the bend of the road may be tworioff. This is the desire to please, inculcated by theBushidocreed of honourable conduct. It may be thought that such paradoxical solicitude becomesextremely irritating, but rarely does it. The wish to help is real, at least, and is not merely the carelessness of superficiality. The peasant may tell you that you have but a step to go, but if you are lost he will turn aside from his own path and show you the way, though it be for miles.
We noted down Mr. Yoshida’s details concerning the inns and villages which we should find along the way to distant Nagoya. Experience soon told us to hold fast to his information, no matter the contradictions that were agreeably offered in its stead.
We shouldered our packs and again were off. After a time O-Owre-san said: “I met Mr. Yoshida once at a dinner in America.”
“Why didn’t you tell him so?” I gasped.
O-Owre-san seemed surprised at my amazement. As nearly as I could determine he must have completely disassociated the metabolic Owre sitting on the bench in front of the rest house, drinking warmramune, and the Owre of practical America. Perhaps the Japanese believe in the “unfathomable mystery of the American mind.”
We had six hours through the hills ahead of us if we were to keep on that night to Minakuchi.Our mentor had told us that one of the most luxurious of all the country inns in Japan was sequestered there. To hurry to any particular place was against our code, but this time it seemed reasonable to make an honourable exception.
The sun went down behind the paddy fields. The muddy waters of the terraces caught the gleaming yellows and reds, but our backs were against this suffusion of colour. Into the darkness ahead the narrow road led on and on. Says the essayist: “The artist should know hunger and want.” But surely not the art patron. He cannot perform his function of appreciation unless comfortably removed from immediate pangs. If I were to be an enthusiast over that wonderful sunset—as O-Owre-san persisted in suggesting—I needed food. It had been fifteen hours since our cold breakfast and I thought of the inn with an ardency of vision.
When we did see the town it sprang up abruptly out of the fields. All along the streets the lights were shining through the paper walls. We made inquiry for theyado-yaand in a moment were surrounded by volunteer guides. They are always diverting, the Japanese children, running along on their wooden clogs and looking up into your face.
Maids without number came running to the entrance of that aristocratic inn, and dropped to their knees. They bowed until their glossy black hair touched the ground. The auguries all appeared auspicious. Then came the mistress. There were many polite words, but no one took our rucksacks and no one invited us in. Every second’s waiting for the bath and dinner was very, very long.
My Japanese of twelve years before had been but a few words. Days on the Trans-Siberian of grammar and dictionary study had not even brought back that little, but now suddenly I began to understand what the mistress of that inn was saying. I had no vanity in my understanding. The understanding was that we were not wanted. I had been tired and I had been hungry when we reached the door, but now I knew the unutterable weariness of smelling a dinner which may not be eaten.
The crowd was amused, but it showed its amusement considerately and with restraint. Nevertheless twoseiyo-jinshad lost face. Apparently the mistress did not wish such suspicious-looking foreigners, grimy, dustless, and coatless, to remain even in the same town. She called two ’rickshas. She named the next village. She hadthis much magnanimity that she purposed giving us the chance of orderly retreat.
I tried to continue smiling with dignity and affability. It is somewhat of a strain on diplomatic smiles when the subject of discussion is vitally concerned with one’s own starvation. Nevertheless I did smile. I explained that whatever we did we were not going on to the next town. I knew the word for “another,” and the word for “inn,” and how to say, “Is it?” And thus I asked: “Another inn here, is it?” There was little incitement to believe that she understood except that her mouth pouted ever so slightly as if in surprise that I should imply that the mistress of such a superior inn could have any knowledge concerning mere bourgeois caravansaries.
O-Owre-san, during this parleying, had put on his coat and in other subtle ways had transformed himself into a conventional foreigner. After that he had settled into repose and silence. I looked at him. I searched for a flaw. I declared by the great Tokaido itself that with such a fright-producing handicap as his ultra-Occidental beard we should never find resting spots outside the local jails.
“Humph!” said he. “Stop talking for a minute and put on your coat.”
I succumbed. “All right, then,” I said. “Here’s for the magic of that vestment of respectability.”
I sat down on the ground and untied the bag. The prophecy of magic was too feeble by far for the prestidigitation which followed. I shook out the folds of the garment which is called a coat, a mere two sleeves, a back and a front and a few buttons. The circle came closer. But it was not the coat after all which caused our audience so graciously to begin giving back our lost faces to us—it was the supermagic of one leg of a pair of silk pajamas. A black-eyed jackdaw, a trifle more daring in her curiosity than the others, discovered the hem of that garment tipping out from a corner of my pack. She gave it a jerk, and then another. Next she looked up with coaxing persuasion, suggesting encouragement to tug again.
O-Owre-san had insisted that I have those pajamas made in Kyoto. He has theories about the necessity of silk pajamas. I never, even remotely, followed the dialectics of his reasons, but I must add to the credit side of such theorizings that pajamas are a most intriguing garment to pass around for the benefit of an inn courtyard crowd. The maid gave the next tug and outthey came. Everybody reached forward a finger and a thumb to feel.
Between the time of the discovery of the silk pajamas and their repacking—I cold-heartedly refused to exhibit a putting of them on—we rose from nobodies to persons of importance in Minakuchi. Even the mistress hinted that she had mentally recounted her space for guests and had thought of a luxurious corner of amply sufficient dimensions to spread two beds. There was, of course, no sane reason why we should not, then and there, have taken advantage of this altered atmosphere, but for me the inn had lost its savour. Anyone who has ever had some similar twist of psychology will appreciate the inside of my irrationalism. Others will not or cannot. I moved over to the ’rickshas. O-Owre-san remained lingering. He, too, had noted the change in the mistress’s attitude.
“How about making one more overture?” he suggested.
“Perhaps so,” I answered, “but don’t you feel that any experience which this inn might now hold for us would be an anti-climax after our present dramatic triumph?”
O-Owre-san regretfully sniffed the fragrant steam drifting from the kitchen braziers.
“No, I decidedly don’t feel so,” said he, “but of course, if I have to save your dilettante soul from anti-climaxes, I suppose I can sleep in a rice field—but whatever you do, do it!”
I threw our bags into the ’rickshas and we climbed in after them, and were off to the other inn.
We made our impact against this objective much more catapultic. There was nothing tentative in our kicking off our shoes and getting well under the lintel before any mistress of authority could appear. Our onslaught paralysed the advance line of receiving maidens, and we settled down on the interior mats and assumed a contemplative calm. We continued to sit thus oblivious to the excitement heaped upon excitement. We were islands of fact in the midst of an ocean of conversation. After the ocean had dried up because none had words left, we were still obviously remaining, and there was nothing left to do but to make the best of us. A maid picked up our bags and bowed very low. She retreated toward the inner darkness and we followed, first along a corridor and then up a flight of railless stairs to a room open on two sides against a courtyard garden.
To have been in harmony at all with the ancienttraditions of the Tokaido, coolies should have been carrying our luggage in huge red and gold lacquered chests. The room to which we were taken would have been a room of dignity even for adaimyo. The maid placed our two dusty Occidental rucksacks on the shelf under thekakemona. Their very presence piped a chanty that our possessing that room was ironic comedy. We began to laugh. Ane-sanis as ever ready to laugh as water is to flow, and with no other grand cause than just the doing. Our maid began laughing with us, and up the stairs came all the other maids in curiosity. Ensconced, their interest seemed permanent. Our vocabulary was very far from being sufficient to protect our Western prudery. As a last resort we took them by their shoulders and turned them around and urged them in this unsubtle manner from the door.
I began undressing at one end of the room, leaving my garments in my wake as I rolled over the soft matting. When I reached thekakemonashelf, I slipped into my silk pajamas. When we went below to find the honourable bath we at least left the room looking not so bare as our meagre luggage had predicted.
We returned from the bath and banked our cushions on the narrow balcony overhanging thegarden. A slight breeze stirred the branches of the trees and started swinging the paper lanterns which hung over a stone fountain. Other guests of the inn had finished their dinners and it was their toothbrush hour. Dressed in their cottonkimonosthey stood bending over shining brass basins filled from the well fountain. It would probably be useless to ask any Occidental to imagine that the function of teeth cleansing with long, flexible handled brushes may be a social and picturesque addendum to garden life; we have too long looked upon ablutions as being merely necessitous.
Dinner came. Whether strict philosophical truth lies in the belief that every sensation is unique, or whether in the contrary that no experience can be other than a repetition of some situation which has been staged over and over again in the turning of the cosmic wheel, I shall continue to maintain that a wanderer who has gone from half after four in the morning, fortified only by a mouthful of cold breakfast, until nine at night, and has walked something more than twenty-five miles under a hot sun, and has had one dinner snatched away from him, and then finds himself risen from a bath and sitting in the slow, warm, evening air in a room of simple harmony,and then a small lacquer table is placed before him with the alluring odours of five steaming dishes ascending to his nose—yes, I shall continue to maintain that such a wanderer has a human right to protest that such a situation is an event.
They replenished the tables with second supplies of the first dishes and with first and second dishes of new courses. We had two kinds of soup and three varieties of fish; we had chicken and we had vegetables and boiled seaweed; and we finished with innumerable bowls of rice. At the end they brought iced water and tea and renewed the charcoal in the braziers for our smoking. The tobacco clouds drifted from our lips. Only one possible thought was worth putting into words and that was the request to have the beds laid. However, the evening was destined not for such sensuous oblivion.
Breaking in upon this godly languor came a visitation by the entire family of the inn. The family particularly embraced in its intimacy also the maid-servants and the men-servants. Even the baby had been wakened to come. In the beginning O-Owre-san offered cigarettes in lieu of conversation and I thumbed the dictionary for compliments for the baby. The blue-bound bookof phrases proved to be rich in fitting adjectives, and my efforts were rewarded with sufficient approval to encourage us to go on with a search for compliments for mother and father and all the others. The baby crawled forward inch by inch until one of the strange foreign giants courageously picked it up. Our guests had first sat in a very formal half-circle, but under the expansiveness of growing goodwill the line was breaking.
It was a night, however, of many visitations. Hardly had we, as hosts, with the aid of the baby, carried the attack with some success against rigid self-consciousness when there came the sound of a step on the stair. Immediately the mood of laughter changed to one of marked quietness and expectancy. The circle readjusted itself. The mother snatched back the baby and by some technic ended its expressions of curiosity and reduced it, as only a Japanese baby can be reduced, to a pair of staring eyes. We sat waiting the coming of the intruder. Thene-sansbowed their heads to the floor.
The awaited one was a tall young man, with round, pinkish, glistening limbs, and a round face. He dropped heavily to his knees and bent over until his forehead touched the mat, continuing this salutation for some time. Then he sat up smilingand satisfied. He had brought with him three or four foreign books and he was, without need of introduction, the village scholar, Minakuchi’s representative of modernity, a precious and honoured cabinet of wisdom newly come home from the University. After his smiling expansion he next composed his features to solemnity. He adjusted hiskimonotaut over his knees. Then he waited until the last quiver in his audience succumbed into the extreme quietude of painful tension. Even the breeze lulled. He spoke:
“I—am—in—this—room!”
The heads of the circle nodded and renodded to each other. What had the foreigners to answer to that?
We tried to express a proper appreciation.
“It—is—cold—to-day—but—it—was—raining—yesterday.”
An opinion about temperature is more or less a personal judgment, but the falling of raindrops is a material fact. On the yesterday it had not rained.
This time the circle could not restrain itself but sighed with positive and audible contentment. Minakuchi had been vindicated. If the audience showed content with its spokesman, it was as nothing compared to his own contentment. The artistin tongues now opened his books with a business-like air and put on his spectacles. His visit was not, then, purely social. The sentences which followed were, as nearly as we could determine, questions to us. They came, a word at a time, out of his dictionary. The conventions of speech which the Japanese employ in polite inquiry have been moulded by symbolism, mysticism, and analogy into phrases most remote from the original rudiment. A word by word translation into English carries no meaning whatsoever. We answered by: “Oh, yes, yes,—of course.”
The baby was growing restless. The scholar took in this sign from the corner of his eye. His dramatic sense was keen. He had no intention that his audience should become bored and he snapped shut the books with the pronounced meaning that everything had been settled as far as he was concerned. Then he clapped his hands loudly. Instantly from below came more footsteps and a clank-clanking of metal on wood, and in a moment into the room walked an officer of the police. His heavy dress uniform was white, with gold braid twisting round and about the sleeves and shoulders. His sword, the secret of the rhythmic clanking, was almost as tall as himself. He faced us rigidly and without a smile, then slowlysank to his knees and dropped his head to the mat. I have faith that that man, without an extra heart-beat, would have joined a sure death charge across a battlefield, but his present duty brought the red blush of painful embarrassment to his olive skin from the edge of his tight collar to the fringe of his black hair. He was silently and perspiringly suffering in the cause of duty—but what was his duty?
I do not know just how we gained the idea, if it were not through telepathy, but we decided that he was discounting the abilities of the interpreter down to an extreme minimum, although he listened attentively enough to some long statement. After the explanation, which seemingly concerned us, the youth arose and with much dignity withdrew from the room followed by many expressions of appreciation from the inn family. Every one of us who had been left behind, except the baby who had gone to sleep, now waited for some continuance of the drama, but nothing proceeded to materialize. I grew so sleepy that if the policeman had suddenly said that we were to be executed at sunrise the most interesting part of the information would have been the finding out whether we could sleep until that hour. As I did not know how polite it might be to say thatwewere tired, I found a phrase, “Youmust be very tired,” to which I linked, “thereforeweshall go to bed.”
This veiled ultimatum was as graciously accepted as if they had been waiting those exact words to free them to go their way. Thene-sansran for mattresses and prepared the beds. Then they hung the great mosquito netting. After that we all said our good-nights, all except the police official who, image like, remained sitting against the wall.
By earnest beseeching we had persuaded the maids not to close the woodenshogiaround the balcony. Thus, when we turned out the lamp and stretched out on our beds, the starlight came in. It shone on the white uniform. I had never happened to have the experience of going to sleep under the eye of a policeman but realism proved that practice was unnecessary. Sinking to oblivion was as positive as a plunge. The vast embracing fluid of rest closed in over my head.
I was dreamless until I awoke under a sudden, crushing nightmare. I thought that an army of white and gold uniforms had mobilized and was tramping over my chest, taking care that every heel should fall pitilessly. The one policeman who existed in reality had been trying to wake me upand he had evidently had a task, but as soon as he was sure that my eyes were open to stay he forwent further assault. He had lighted the lamp and I could see back of him a naked coolie, convulsively gasping for breath. The man was carrying an envelope. The officer took the envelope and then sent him off. He reeled to the stairs holding his panting sides. The officer then took out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. The page was written in modified English but was quite intelligible. While the sentences were nothing more than a series of questions, at the same time they gave a clue to the mystery of the evening.
Our inn-keeper had had the inspiration to call upon the scholar-interpreter to ask us the questions which all travellers must answer for the police record in every town where a stop is made for the night. We had been correct about there being one doubter in Minakuchi of the ability of the interpreter. In a plot for his own amusement the police officer had sent a runner to a neighbouring town to have the conventional list of questions translated into English, and thus to compare our written answers with the answers given him by the youth. There they were, the questions: who were we—how old—profession—antecedents whence and whither. If one is tempted into waywardrebellion against such minuteness of interrogation, it is wise to remember that the claim of a sense of humour may be considered very poor testimony in a Japanese court perchance misunderstandings at any time arise and the answers in the police records have to be looked up.
I wrote out the answers. With no one in the room as a witness except ourselves, the officer allowed a twinkle to come into his eye. He even winked and pointed to where the youth had sat. Then he shut up the paper in his register and blew out the light and clanked off down the stairs. Again we slept.
The etiquette of an inn is that all crude appearance of hurry should be avoided by waiting in one’s room in the morning for one’s bill. The Japanese do not travel hurriedly; if they wish an early start they get up proportionately in time. We had asked for an early breakfast and it had been served at the hour which we had named. We had happened to have good intentions about not rushing. Nevertheless, of course, we fell into an inevitable hurry. After breakfast I had been so interested in sitting on our balcony watching the waking up of the day that I forgot to pack my rucksack. O-Owre-san said that hewould pay the bill downstairs and wait at the door.
When I arrived under the lintel where we had left our shoes I felt as if I were intruding. The bearded foreigner was surrounded by the inn family and each member was handing him a present. There were blue and white Japanese towels folded into decorated envelopes, and there were fans and postcards. The cost of the gift fans may have been little but the maker had taken his designs from models of the best tradition, and the fans to be found for sale are not comparable.
The daughters of the house walked with us until we came to the Tokaido and then they pointed out our direction and stood waving farewells until we could see them no longer. I waited until then before making inquiry about the amount of the bill. This detail was a matter of distinct importance. When we met in Kyoto we pooled our purses and the common fund was entrusted to O-Owre-san’s care. Neither of us had made much effort to acquire theoretical information about what daily expenses might be. We had just so much paint with which to cover the surface of the definite number of days before our steamer would carry us away, and this meantthat we would have to mix thick or thin accordingly. Experience only could teach us what items we could afford and what bargains we should have to make. I thus awaited the answer about the bill with flattering attention.
“The bill, including extras for iced water and cigarettes and getting our special dinner after every one else had finished,” said the treasurer with appropriate solemnity, “was threeyen.” (Ayenis about fifty cents.) “And,” he concluded, “I gave a fullyenfor the tea-money tip.”
We waited until we sat down for the first rest before we attempted a practical financial forecast. We divided the number of remaining days into the sum of the paper notes carried in a linen envelope. The answer quieted our fears and exceeded our hopes. Putting aside a reserve for extra occasions, beyond our inn bills we would be able to afford the luxury of spending along the road twenty-five cents a day for tea, tobacco, and chemical lemonade.
THE FIRST REST SPOT OF THE SECOND DAY
THE FIRST REST SPOT OF THE SECOND DAY
THE FIRST REST SPOT OF THE SECOND DAY
There is something unnatural in such simplicity of finance, as anyone must agree who believes at all in the jealousy of the gods. I should have been forewarned by an old Chinese tale that I had been told only a fortnight before. It was while sitting in a Peking restaurant. The tellerwas a most revolutionary son of a most conservative mandarin. A peasant once entertained a god unawares. In the morning the god told the peasant that any wish which he might name would be granted, be it for riches, or power, or even the most beautiful maid in all the dragon kingdom to be his wife. But the peasant asked that he might only be assured that until the end of his days he need never doubt when hungry that he would have food, and at the fall of night that he would find a pillow on which to lay his head. The god looked at him sorrowfully and said: “Alas! You have asked the impossible. Such favours are reserved for the gods alone.”
We got up from our figuring blithely, indulging ourselves in the idea that we could achieve such evenness of expenditure. Think what an upsetting of ponderous economics and competitive jungle law there would be if the world could and should abruptly take any such consideration of its wealth!
The payer of the bill had also added that he had given a fullyenfor the tea-money tip. In those large areas of Japan where the barbarous foreigner has not yet intruded with his indiscriminate giving, there is to be found the ancient system of tea-money. The tea-money custom isfounded on the belief that the wayfarer is the personal guest of the host. When the guest departs he is not paying a bill, he is making a present, and to this sum he adds from a quarter to a third part extra. This extra payment is the tea-money and is to be divided by the host among the servants. The departing guest is then given a present. All in all, leave taking is a function.
A guest does not ask nor demand. He offers a request and thereby confers a supreme favour upon any servant fortunate enough to be designated. All this pleasant service has not the embarrassment that one must confine a request to any particular maid so as to escape the necessity of widespread tipping at departure. It is all in the tea-money.