PLAYFELLOWS
PLAYFELLOWS
The last I ever saw of poor little Inchie was when he came on board the P. and O. steamer at Yokohama to see me off on my journey to England. The authorities would not allow him to lunch with me in the saloon, and the poor little fellow, who was far more refined and certainly had far more intelligence than any one on board, captain and officers included, was compelled to eat his luncheon standing up in the steward’s pantry, which hurt his feelings terribly. The only figure that I seemed to see in the mist that enwrapped Yokohama wharf was poor little Inchie standing there in his blue kimono and quaint bowler hat, watching me with eager blinking eyes that had a suspicion of moisture about them, and lips that twitched slightly; and the last thing I heard was, “I think when you go to England you send me berry many letters—often you send me.” And I felt as the steamer moved away that I had lost a good and a true friend.
When the decorations for my house arrived in London, the next and all important question to be considered was how to put them up. Everything was finished and ready to fix in its place without nails, and the only thing left to be completed by the British workmen was the slight wooden beams and square framework in which the carved panels were to be fixed. I secured five or six good workmen, and literally taught them how to handle this material, but it took them two years to put up what my Japanese craftsmen had produced in one year. It was all straightforward clean design, and there was no artistic effort needed for it; but the obstacle was that they always struggled to make the woodwork a little thicker than necessary. Their inclinations were always to strengthen things, and it took a great deal of perseverance and patience to uproot their fixed ideas. Then I had a great deal of trouble with the painters. At first they almost refused to put distemper on my walls. Strings upon strings of painters I was compelled to dismiss because they would persist in putting what they called “body” into the paint. Sometimes they would slip it in behind my back; but I always detected it and dismissed the men on the instant. It was the only way. “Well, I’ve been in the trade for thirty years and I’ve always used body”—they all said that, and every workman I have ever employed, or is yet to be employed, always says the same. No matter how young or how old they may be, they have always been in the trade for thirty years. One painter I educated sufficiently to allow of him going so far against his principles as to leave out “body,” but when I ordered him to mix oil and water by beating them together in a tub he declined and left. The only men whom I was able to persuade to do this for me were my foreman and one of the carpenters. The foreman was a very intelligent little man, whom I had educated to such an extent that his views of life and of workmen in general were entirely changed. He sneered at them, and was altogether so won over to my ideas that I am afraid I totally destroyed him for any other work. The painter, on the other hand, had no intelligence at all, but was equally devoted, and I feel quite sure that those two poor operatives are drifting about now doing anything but their respective trades of carpentry and painting. They undertook the beating of the oil and water very energetically, and kept it up for days, relieved occasionally by the caretaker. Eventually the oil did mix, and the experiment was a great success. Towards the end of their training these men became so accustomed to looking at things, if not feeling them, from the decorative standpoint, that it was no unusual occurrence to overhear such remarks as the following. The foreman would say to his pal as he caught sight of the reflection of his grimy face in a mirror: “I say, Bill, my flesh tone looks well against this lemon yellow, don’t it?” or “I suppose I must start and wash off this toney”—toney meaning dirt, but to call it dirt would be to their enlightened minds vulgar in the extreme. Everything with them was “tone.”
A few days before they left for good I overheard a conversation between Bill and his mate, who had begun to feel the hopelessness of attempting work of a different nature. “What shall we do, Bill, when this blooming job’s over?” said the foreman. “I suppose we shall go a-’opping!” replied Bill. It was then just about the hopping season.
CHARACTERISTICS
Perhaps one of the most admirable features in the character of the Japanese is their great power of self-control. The superficial observer on his first visit to Japan, because of this very quality of theirs, is at first liable to imagine that the Japanese have no emotion. This is a mistake. I have lived with them; I know them through and through; and I know that they are a people of great emotions, emotions that are perhaps all the deeper and stronger because they are unexpressed. Self-control is almost a religion with the Japanese. In their opinion it is wrong and selfish to the last degree to inflict one’s sorrows and one’s cares upon other people. The world is sad enough, they argue, without being made sadder by the petty emotions of one’s neighbour: so the people of Japan all contrive to present a gay and happy appearance to the outside world. You may express your feelings in the solitude of your own room, and there is no doubt that the Japanese suffer terribly among themselves, although a stranger, and especially a European, will never detect a trace of it.
I once went to call, with a resident of Japan, on an old Japanese lady, to condole with her on the loss of her husband and her only son, who had both been swept away, with thousands of others, in a great tidal wave only a few days previously. As we neared the house we saw, through the partially-opened sliding door, the old woman rocking herself to and fro in an agony of sorrow, literally contending with emotion, and suffering as I have never seen a human being suffer before. I was terribly shocked, and we naturally hesitated for some time before announcing ourselves; but by the time the mourner appeared at the door to greet us, she was all smiles. It was difficult to believe that she was the same woman. Her face shone with radiant happiness, and all traces of sorrow had disappeared. In the course of the conversation she did not avoid the sore subject, but rather chose it, and talked of the death of her husband and her son with a smiling face and an expression by which one might very pardonably have judged that she had no feelings whatever. This was self-control indeed, and it is only in Japan that one encounters such striking illustrations of superb pluck and endurance.
YOUTH AND AGE
In my opinion, this great self-control is an evidence of the very high standard of civilisation of the Japanese. If one is at all observant and really in sympathy with the people, one is continually catching glimpses of their real natures and instances of their magnificent self-command. Once I was talking to a little Japanese merchant, along with some friends whom I had taken round to his store to buy curios. I had made quite a friend of this man, and knew him well. We were all chaffing him about getting married, and one of my friends said to him, “Well, why don’t you get married? But perhaps you have already got a wife!” The little man looked up quickly with a smile on his face, and said—“Me married already; me wife die two years past; two children die two years past; all die, I think.” The voice was perfectly steady, and the face smiling, as he uttered this amazingly sad statement; but some one chanced to look up and saw two great tears standing in his little monkey-like eyes. Of course he was “no class,” and, not being an actual workman, but only a merchant, he was considered to be of rather a low grade. Still, for this slight show of emotion, he had utterly disgraced himself in his own eyes, and would afterwards, no doubt, atone for it by torturing himself in private.
I saw many remarkable instances of the self-control of the Japanese people when I visited the scenes of desolation caused from that great tidal wave which destroyed nearly three thousand people. Village after village I visited, some of them with only three or four living inhabitants left; but in no case, with men, women, or children, did I see the slightest trace of emotion. Here and there, indeed, you passed a woman huddled up in a corner muttering and screaming, but only because her mind had become unhinged by the loss of her home, or probably village, and every relation she possessed. No Japanese in his senses would amid the same circumstances be guilty of so much as a murmur or a tear.
The Japanese are a brave people—not only the men, but the women too. In fact, the women more especially are brave. Many women destroyed themselves during the China-Japanese war, because their husbands had been killed in battle. There was one Japanese woman in Tokio who felt so deeply the disgrace placed upon her country by the attempt on the life of the present Emperor of Russia some years ago by a common coolie, that she committed suicide. She felt that this great European prince had visited her country as a guest, and that before Japan could raise its head once more the nation must make some great sacrifice. Day after day she visited the Legation, and begged to be allowed admission to some of the high officials—in vain: they were too busy to see her. At last, after some weeks of fruitless effort, she went home in despair and killed herself, leaving a pathetic little letter to the Minister stating that she hoped that the sacrifice of her life might in some way help to cleanse her country from its disgrace.
LOOKERS-ON
Patriotism is a strong trait in the character of the Japanese; but perhaps their imagination and their love of Nature are even stronger, and at all events will cause them to bound forward and become a first-rate power. This universal force of the imagination is a quality that no other nation possesses, and it is a quality that will cause her, not so very many years hence, to dominate the world. All the Japanese possess imagination, from the highest to the lowest; it is shown in every action and detail of their daily life. There is no one of them, even to the poorest coolie, who has not some little collection of exquisite works of the art that he loves. Your jinricksha man, if you were ever allowed the privilege of visiting his house, would in all probability be able to show you one or two choice specimens, either in china or in bronze, of his household gods. And so strongly is the love of Nature impressed within him that he cannot pass a beautiful scene—a hillside of blossom, or a sunset—without stopping his ricksha to allow you also the privilege of enjoying it. Often when taking a drive in the country he will suddenly stop in front of some delightful scene, put down your ricksha, and, taking from his kimono sleeve a little roll of rice, wrapped in a dainty bamboo leaf, will sit down and begin to eat it with his chopsticks, continuing to gaze at the scene, every now and then looking up at you for sympathy. If you are an artist, and will look at the scene intelligently and appreciatively, this little ricksha man will be your slave for life and will do anything for you.
Men are esteemed in Japan in proportion to their artistic capabilities, and not for their banking accounts. It is in this quality of imagination that we Britishers are deficient. Our lack of imagination will be the cause of the decline of our Empire, if it does decline.
Then, the Japanese are a polite people. If you give a present to some little child, a mite strapped to the back of a sister that is scarcely bigger than itself, you are almost sure to find that little child waiting for you on your return to your hotel with some small trifle to offer you; and this little one will bow to you from its rather awkward position with all the grace imaginable. Two coolies sweeping the roads, when meeting for the first time in the day, will lay down their brooms and salute each other before passing on their way to work.
I have had many experiences, when sketching the streets of Japan, of the people’s politeness. A policeman becoming interested in my work would help to keep clear a space in the road, and never dream of overlooking my work or of embarrassing me in any way. In one street of a village he actually had the traffic turned down another way, so as not to interfere with my sketching. Fancy a policeman in England diverting the traffic simply because an artist wanted to sketch a meat shop!
One of the most remarkable illustrations of the native politeness that I have ever witnessed was in Tokio. A man pulling along a cart loaded high up with boughs of trees chanced to catch the roof of a coolie’s house in one of his pieces of timber, tearing away a large portion of it (for a roof is a very slim affair in Japan). The owner of the house rushed out thoroughly upset, and began to expostulate, and to explain how very distressing it was to have one’s roof torn off in this manner. No doubt if he had been a Britisher he would have used quaint language; but there are no “swear words” in the Japanese language—they are too polite a people. The abused one stood calmly, with arms folded, listening to the harangue, and saying nothing. Only, when the enraged man had finished, he pointed to the towel which in his haste the coolie had forgotten to take off his head. At once the coolie realised the enormity of his offence. Both hands flew to the towel, and tore it off in confusion, the coolie bowing to the ground and offering humble apologies for having presumed to appear without uncovering his head. For in Japan one must always uncover, whether to a sweep or to a Mikado. The two parted the best of friends. One had been impolite enough to forget to uncover; the other had torn away a roof. The rudeness of the one balanced the injury of the other. Thus are offences weighed in Japan.
THE END
The illustrations in this impression were engraved and printed by the Carl Hentschel Colourtype Process. The letterpress was printed by Messrs. R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.
