Marie Carmichael Stopes

“ September 22.—The roads of Tokio are a never-ending source of delight when their muddiness does not force itself home. A hundred times in a walk, even in the heart of the city, one comes upon a bend of the road where groves of bamboo or pine trees are seen, as though one were far away in the country; or a rivulet will cross the lane (so many of the city roads are like nothing but our country lanes) , and its mossy banks hanging with ferns are luxuriant, as only our Lake District streams are luxuriant, in their glorious greenery of delicate fronds. ”

“ All the thousands of cobwebs were like fairy banners on the trees, and the rocky sides of the mountains rose from the rivers to be lost in the alluring distances. It was a sight well worth the shivering and the jolting, and directly the sun shone on one it gave a comforting heat. The nights are extremely cold, almost wintry, but the days are as hot as midsummer, hence the thick mists.
We entered the mine, which, unfortunately, though Triassic, is of no interest to me. A kind of dinner was given at the hotel at 2 o’clock, and I saw many rather crude native customs. ”

“ Perhaps one reason that the missionary finds the Japanese irreligious is that they take religion so happily, and make of it so much a part of their daily life, laughing in the temples, playing round the temple grounds, lighting the light of their little shrines in their homes when their household lamps are lit. One of the commonest sights in Japan is a band of peasant pilgrims on their way to some shrine, and it is the ambition of innumerable poor folk, who could never afford ordinary travel and holidays, to visit every temple of importance in the country. ”

“ Twisted pines and moss-grown paths around it, and behind a silent grove of pine and bamboo. Complete silence in the heart of the city, and though I remained in the garden some time no person came to disturb its peace. Greyness and greenness—and one brilliant golden butterfly dancing above the great green copper lotus, one shrub with scarlet flowers flung against a grey sky—and in the heart of it all the silence of Buddha, whose heart does not seem to beat as he contemplates the universe. ”

“ One day there was snow, and it covers these little Japanese houses so picturesquely, picking out the detail and making them more like picture-book-land than ever. The sky is brilliantly blue, and the hot sun melts the snow on the little pine trees, so that they are like fountains of glittering drops, while from the grassy banks beneath them soft wreathing clouds of white steam curl up and are lost in the blue, and I long to be a poet. ”

“ In this garden also was a wonderful collection of landscape stones, arranged as islands on flat porcelain trays filled with water. It was indeed a case of bringing the mountain to Mahomet—perfect rocky scenes, with gleaming waterfalls made by streaks of white quartz. The innumerable lovely stones—from an inch to a foot high—represented perfectly, enchantingly, all types of grand, beautiful, natural scenery. The one I liked best was (even in Japanese things my fancy usually hits on the most expensive) just a thousand yen in price! ”

“ And when one sees it arranged rightly, one realises the true rightness of it, and the beauty seems to stand out clearly, with the outline of the tree against the background of white. I love more and more the simple culture of the old style Japanese when in harmonious surroundings. Though they have quite lovely and valuable dwarf trees in Kew, they are lost in the greenhouse with all the other things; the rays and suggestions from the other plants around them intermingle and conflict, till they produce a grey haze of mist in which the spirit of beauty envelops herself and is invisible ”

“ Immensely more impressive than when seen from Tokio.
What a peaceful day! I stop in the midst of my examination of the cycads to fall into an aimless reverie, and am waked up by a frog croaking from a porcelain-green throat at my side. Big black butterflies come lumbering along, and one thinks they are stupid birds till they settle on a crimson azalea flower, and coming up from the rice fields is a low-toned rattling chorus of frogs and semi. Just before supper I went up the next little hill to see the temple of Kwannon on its top. ”

“ In the main streets of Tokio, the streets where the West has penetrated, even there I have seen little shrines, perhaps like dolls’ houses, only a couple of feet high, reverently tended by passing labourers, or coolies who set down a long pole with its swinging burdens to present some little offering to the spirit of the shrine. It may be that all they have to offer are the worn sandals which they take off their feet, or a wisp of straw. ”

“ December 22.—The fascination of Tokio streets is upon me. How often does one come out into a lonely country lane, or turn into a gem of a little temple garden so near a busy street!
Coming home down a steep hill at sunset I saw the great Fuji Mountain standing out in all its calm magnificence, black and grey against a crimson sky. The huge single cone, with sweeping curves, was like a silhouette, and below rolled a tumbled wave of smaller hills, while high above the one clear evening star shone over the great peak. ”

“ It is a charmingly situated temple, and the gardens are very sweet, so decked with the beauties of age. It lies on the slope of a hill, just midway between the top and the flat rice fields below us, and is one of the most peaceful habitations it is possible to imagine. The priest seems to spend all his time, clad like one of the poorest peasants, working in the gardens, which are very well kept, and which, like all true old Japanese gardens, suggest that the little details had been planned to please a child. ”

“ At two o’clock I went to see the Marquis and Marchioness N——, who have a fine house and garden in the centre of the town near the palace. They were very kind, and showed me over the houses and garden, the former in European style, rich, but not quite aesthetic, the latter in Japanese style, with dwarf trees and quaint cut bushes, placed with an eye to effect, and where the outlook is over the tops of the town (where, I grieve to say, smoky chimneys of factories are rising up to curse and kill the beauty of the town) to the bay, with its ships on the blue water. ”

“ One could imagine it an ocean, and cool fresh breezes made me forget the stifling heat of Tokio.
July 30.—We are living in the clouds; below, above, and around us they swirl and writhe in the wind, sometimes breaking a little to show us the edge of the lake, but then directly driving together again and shutting us out from all but our own garden. Below us in the plain the sun will be shining and the people sweltering, but we are cool—and damp. ”

“ The people in the train are, of course, a little interesting, but far more saddening. Where the train with its Western atmosphere has penetrated, the beautiful and dignified robes, the silken skirts and kimonos of both men and women, though principally of the men, are giving place to a hybrid mixture of all the vulgar and hideous garments of “civilisation.” Only a few of the most cultured Japanese know how to dress in good taste in our things, the others are unspeakable. ”

“ Or perhaps a bend of the road will take one away from a little village of shops into a narrow avenue of straight-growing cryptomerias, leading to a tiny shrine or temple with its garden and moss-grown stepping-stones. Along the line of the electric city railway we all walk freely, and to-day I found corners of woodland and scraps of meadow along its course—little forgotten scraps of land where small bamboos and feathery grasses, and sweet white and blue flowers grow in brilliant, fresh, dustless perfection. ”

“ One of the tests of friendship is time, and only at the end of a lifetime can one say just which men and women had been one’s real friends, but circumstance is almost as good a test as time, and that may give its stamp to a relationship very swiftly. Some Japanese—perhaps, nay certainly, they are exceptional natures—have a genius for friendship. There is in them a sweetness and delicacy, a sensitive comprehension [274] of moods, a depth of feeling and a beauty of feeling which only the exceptional Westerner could match. ”

“ The garden sloped in the double hollow of a shell-shaped valley, and the rich white bloom on the trees surged [116] up it as the thick drifting mists surge up a mountain pass. Standing out from the cloud-sea of blossoms, like peaks from out the mists, were two or three tea-houses, white papered and inhabited by gaily-decked maidens, and men who admired the plums, in grey silk. ”

“ Devastation and ruin lay on every side; great boughs were blown off the cherry trees and lay across the road. The magnolias which yesterday sent up glittering white [135] chalices to heaven, to-day hung limp yellow rags beneath the snow-laden boughs; even the glow of the flaring crimson plum was quenched. In front of a temple I daily pass, a great cryptomeria was shattered across the road, its main shaft broken into three pieces, so that the whole tree shut down like a concertina. ”

“ I sailed among the fairy islands in a dreamland boat—which went so slowly and so smoothly that I thought it did not move—to Shiogama, in which I saw no romance, and took a kuruma for 5 miles off the line of beaten roads, and the railway to a tiny hamlet by the sea. Here I put up in an inn built on a little rocky peninsula, which is just big enough to hold it and a few pine trees. When the tide is in we cannot get into the front door! ”

“ I have the few chairs and the table and cabinet I had for the last house, and with a lovely brilliant blue cloisonné vase on an ebony stand, a dwarf pine tree, and a bunch of white cherry flowers in the tokonomo, my room looks an aesthetic dream, [138] with its cream walls, cream floors, and wooden trellis-work with white paper windows. If I could but carry it as it is to London! Yet here people prefer Brussels carpets and rooms packed with knick-knacks. They are living in the realisation of the dream of our aesthetes and “simple livers,” and they prefer the things we are trying to escape. ”

“ The scenery is lovely, and the sea without a ripple. On every side are hills with range after range of jagged peaks, and in the sea countless pine-decked islands; land lies all round, and it is difficult to believe one is at sea. 2 P.M.—I am certainly seeing life: we have just had tea in picnic fashion, squatting here together—and indeed most picnics are made to far less beautiful places than this island-dotted sea. ”

“ July 5.—There was a luncheon party with some nice neighbours to-day, and while we were there some strolling Japanese singers came to the door, and we gave them a few sen and watched them. There were an old woman and a young woman, both good-looking, and with the quaint huge round hats of their class, the young man wore a battered European-style hat—a jarring note, that was repeated in the little girl’s hat, red stockings, and European shoes. It is always the men and the children who wear the horrors of civilisation. ”

“ Though I have done my best to teach that man how to treat a wife—and he always seemed to be drinking it in quite properly—she herself brought the tea for us two, taking none herself (I know she has a maid) , and sitting in the corner away from us, and not even taking a cushion to sit on, when he had been shamed into giving her one by my remarking that she had none. However, they seem happy, and she looks quite well, and she has not a soul quivering with every touch of the material things of life. She says he loves her very much, and has loved no other woman. ”

“ How many men and women are worried and bored by the never-ending question, “What can we have for dinner?” If you always have the same things this most troublesome of all domestic problems disappears. No one wants anything but water to bathe in, unless they be fairy princesses or Queens of Scots, and yet the delight of [89] a bath never palls: in these months I have had the same things to eat daily and relished them hugely. ”

“ It is very pretty to watch the little side paths, where the moss and lichens and liverworts seem to grow every day; the small paths where O Fuji-san (my maid) does not walk are now quite green—more aged-looking than paths a hundred years old with us. The little stone lantern I bought the day of the paeony flowers, is also green, with a faint haze of centuries over it! It is the lovely greenness of Tokio that marks it out from every city I have seen before. ”

“ Sometimes it would be impossible to go where we have been with boots, the straw sandals give such a clinging grasp that we are able to get a foothold on a steep rock which in boots it would be mad to attempt.
Fortunately the river into which one would be precipitated is seldom deep enough to be dangerous. The day’s scientific results are solid, but not thrilling. Tents are a luxury, but I would rather sleep out under the stars. With all these coolies and people I am not allowed to do my own cooking, but I most fervently wish I might. ”