"If you want to know anything about their politics, I'm afraid I can't help you much. They are, so to speak, drunk with Western liquor, and are sucking it up by the hogshead. In a few years they will see how much of what we call civilisation they really want, and how much they can discard. 'Tisn't as if they had to learn the arts of life or how to make themselves comfortable. They knew all that long ago. When their railway system is completed, and they begin to understand their new Constitution, they will have learned as much as we can teach 'em. That's my opinion; but it needs time to understand this country. I've been a matter of eight or ten years in it, and my views aren't worth much. I've come to know some of the old families that used to be of the feudal nobility. They keep themselves to themselves and live very quietly. I don't think you'll find many of them in the official classes. Their one fault is that they entertain far beyond their means. They won't receive you informally and take you into their houses. They raise dancing–girls, or take you to their club and have a big feed. They don't introduce you to their wives, and they haven't yet given up the rule of making the wife eat after the husband. Like the native of India you say? Well, I am very fond of the Jap; but I suppose he is a native any way you look at him. You wouldn't think that he is careless in his workmanship and dishonest. A Chinaman, on an average, is out and away a bigger rogue than a Jap; but he has sense enough to see that honesty is the best policy, and to act by that light. A Jap will be dishonest just to save himself trouble. He's like a child that way."
How many times have I had to record such an opinion as the foregoing? Everywhere the foreigner says the same thing of the neat–handed, polite little people that live among flowers and babies, and smoke tobacco as mild as their own manners. I am sorry; but when you come to think of it, a race without a flaw would be perfect. And then all the other nations of the earth would rise up and hammer it to pieces. And then there would be no Japan.
"I'll give you a day to think over things generally," said the Professor. "After that we'll go to Nikko and Tokio. Who has not seen Nikko does not know how to pronounce the world 'beautiful.'"
Yokohama is not the proper place to arrange impressions in. The Pacific Ocean knocks at your door, asking to be looked at; the Japanese and American men–of–war demand serious attention through a telescope; and if you wander about the corridors of the Grand Hotel, you stop to play with Spanish Generals, all gold lace and spurs, or are captured by touts for curio–shops. It is not a nice experience to find a Sahib in a Panama hat handing you the card of his firm for all the world like a Delhi silk–merchant. You are inclined to pity that man, until he sits down, gives you a cigar, and tells you all about his diseases, his past career in California, where he was always making money and always losing it, and his hopes for the future. You see then that you are entering upon a new world. Talk to every one you meet, if they show the least disposition to talk to you, and you will gather, as I have done, a host of stories that will be of use to you hereafter. Unfortunately, they are not all fit for publication. When I tore myself away from the distractions of the outer world, and was just sitting down to write seriously on the Future of Japan, there entered a fascinating man, with heaps of money, who had collected Indian and Japanese curios all his life, and was now come to this country to get some old books which his collection lacked. Can you imagine a more pleasant life than his wanderings over the earth, with untold special knowledge to back each signature of his cheque–book?
In five minutes he had carried me far away from the clattering, fidgetty folk around, to a quiet world where men meditated for three weeks over a bronze, and scoured all Japan for a sword–guard designed by a great artist and—were horribly cheated in the end.
"Who is the best artist in Japan now?" I asked.
"He died in Tokio, last Friday, poor fellow, and there is no one to take his place. His name was K―, and as a general rule he could never be persuaded to work unless he was drunk. He did his best pictures when he was drunk."
"Ému. Artists are never drunk."
"Quite right. I'll show you a sword–guard that he designed. All the best artists out here do a lot of designing. K― used to fritter away his time on designs for old friends. Had he stuck to pictures he could have made twice as much. But he never turned out potboilers. When you go to Tokio, make it your business to get two little books of his called Drunken Sketches—pictures that he did, when he was—ému. There is enough dash and go in them to fill half a dozen studios. An English artist studied under him for some time. But K―'s touch was not communicable, though he might have taught his pupil something about technique. Have you ever come across one of K―'s crows? You could tell it anywhere. He could put all the wicked thoughts that ever came into the mind of a crow—and a crow is first cousin to the Devil—on a piece of paper six inches square, with a brush of Indian ink and two turns of his wrist. Look at the sword–guard I spoke of. How is that for feeling?"
On a circular piece of iron four inches in diameter and pierced by the pole for the tang of the blade, poor K―, who died last Friday, had sketched the figure of a coolie trying to fold up a cloth which was bellying to a merry breeze—not a cold wind, but a sportive summer gust. The coolie was enjoying the performance, and so was the cloth. It would all be folded up in another minute and the coolie would go on his way with a grin.
This thing had K― conceived, and the faithful workman executed, with the lightest touches of the graver, to the end that it might lie in a collector's cabinet in London.
"Wah! Wah!" I said, and returned it reverently. "It would kill a man who could do that to live after his touch had gone. Well for him he died—but I wish I had seen him. Show me some more."
"I've got a painting by Hokusai—the great artist who lived at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. Even you have heard of Hokusai, haven't you?"