Yone Noguchi

“ Dear old Grandma!
“Do you know what this is, Miss Morning Glory?” the poet said, plucking a leaf from a tree by his door.
“Fig-leaf! Isn’t it?”
My Sayonara Poem in Japanese Autograph.
“Yes, my child! It is a fig-leaf. Do you know the fig tree? It is the shyest tree in the world. Classical tree, indeed! It has no blossom, being so modest of display, but it has the fruits. Remember, my young lady, its teaching of ‘Modesty! Modesty!’”
“Sayonara, Mr. Poet!”
“One minute, Uncle!” I said.
I ran into the Willow Cottage to get a cupful of water. I watered my friend Miss Poppy with love. ”

“ Los Angeles, 5th—No one bangs the door at Schuyler’s.
The servants drop their eyes meekly before they speak.
A well-bred atmosphere circulates.
A woman over forty-five is nothing if she isn’t motherly enough to let one feel at home. Mrs. Schuyler’s silence is a smile. I loved her from my first glance. I thought I could ask her to wash my hair some sunny day. I could fancy how pleasant it would be to immerse myself in her chat—such sort of talk as an old-bonneted “how to keep house”—while I was drying my hair in the indolence of a sea-nymph. ”

“ How gracefully the time used to pass in Dai Nippon, while I sat looking at the flowers on a tokonoma.
Every place is a strange gray waste to me without the intimate faces of flowers.
Flowers have no price in Japan, just as a poet is nothing, for everybody there is poet. But they have a big value in this city—although I am not positive that an American poet creates wealth. ”

“ My uncle picked out our destination from the speckles in the distance.
The breeze (how heavenly is a country breeze!) enticed my soul—a Jap girl also is provided with some soul—into “Far-Beyond.”
“I feel myself another girl, Uncle.”
“How?”
“I’m a poet already. The poet without poem is greater, don’t you know?”
We climbed the hill slowly. Every step enlarged the spectacle.
When we attained to one wildly well-kept garden, the whole bay of the Golden Gate stretched before us. A thousand villages knelt humbly like vassals.
I saw a tiny gate with the sign:
“Fruit Grower.” ”

“ Without beauty woman is nothing. Face is the whole soul. I prefer death if I am not given a pair of dark velvety eyes.
What a shame even woman must grow old!
One stupid wrinkle on my face would be enough to stun me.
My pride is in my slim fingers of satin skin.
I’ll carefully clean my roseate finger-nails before I’ll land in America.
Our wooden clogs sounded melodious, like a rhythmic prayer unto the sky. Japs fit themselves to play music even with footgear. Every house with a lantern at its entrance looked a shrine cherishing a thousand idols within. ”

“ My lengthy hair languished over my shoulders.
I laid me down on the bamboo porch in the pensive shape of a mermaid fresh from the sea.
The sportive breezes frolicked with my hair. They must be mischievous boys of the air.
I thought the reason why Meriken coiffure seemed savage and without art was mainly because it prized more of natural beauty.
Naturalness is the highest of all beauties.
Sayo shikaraba!
Let me learn the beauty of American freedom, starting with my hair!
Are you sure it’s not slovenliness?
Woman’s slovenliness is only forgiven where no gentleman is born. ”

“ I recalled the first American I met in Tokio, who seriously questioned whether it was a fact that Japs butcher a blue-eyed baby.
Bakabakashii wa!
Japan has no blue eye.
And Japanese are worshippers of any sort of baby.
If American babies were like Chinese girls!
I would pile up all my coins to buy one.
Meriken baby understood how to smile before how to cry. It is a lady or gentleman already.
I will serve as baby’s nurse if I must support myself.
It’s a high task to be useful to the baby, and watch its growth as a silent astronomer watches the stars. ”

“ Every inch of Schuyler’s parlour means a heap of money.
But is there anything more displeasing than tasteless luxury? Sufficiency is grateful, but superfluity is nothing but offence.
I thought that Americans buy things because they love to buy, not because they have to buy.
Meriken jin has to study the high art of concealing.
The brown people look upon the scattering of things (however costly they be) as lower than barbarity. Japs believe in the sublimity of space.
Isn’t it delightful to sit on the new matting of a Japanese guest-room? Its fresh whiteness used to cure my headache. ”

“ I have observed the Japanese fad in America for years, and it has not yet reached its culmination. Each month the books on Japan are placed before the public. It is verily sad even to cut their edges. (The practical Americans prove themselves unpractical in leaving the leaves of books uncut.) I say that our Japan is entitled to regard for worthier things than geisha girls or a fashion in bowing. We should decline your love, Americans, if it is rooted merely in your fancy for our paper lanterns. I have frequently come to conclude that Americans are eminently the freakish nation. ”

“ A bureau, a bed, and one easy chair—everything in the poet’s abode inspires repose—occupy every bit of space in Mr. Heine’s cottage. The wooden roof is sound enough against a storm. A fountain is close by his door. Whenever you desire, you may turn its screw and hear the soft melody of rain.
That’s plenty. What else do you covet?
The closetlessness of his cottage is a symbol of his secretlessness. How enviable is an open-hearted gentleman! Woman can never tarry a day in a house without a closet. ”

“ A trip beyond the seas—Meriken Kenbutsu—it’s not an ordinary event.
It is verily the first event in our family history that I could trace back for six centuries.
My to-day’s dream of America—dream of a butterfly sipping on golden dews—was rudely broken by the artless chirrup of a hundred sparrows in my garden.
“Chui, chui! Chui, chui, chui!”
Bad sparrows!
My dream was silly but splendid.
Dream is no dream without silliness which is akin to poetry.
If my dream ever comes true! ”

“ My uncle and I hurried to the Japanese Consulate to celebrate this grand day.
4th—The gentlemen of San Francisco are gallant.
They never permit the ladies—even a black servant is in the honourable list of “ladies”—to stand in the car.
If Oriental gentlemen could demean themselves like that for just one day!
I should not mind a bit if one proposed to me even.
I love a handsome face.
They part their hair in the middle. They have inherited no bad habit of biting their finger-nails. I suppose they offer a grace before each meal. Their smile isn’t sardonic, and their laughter is open. ”

“ Is Mrs. Willis a lady worthy of respect?
It is nothing but an insulting stroke to an Oriental lady—yes sir, I’m a lady—to expose such an obscenity.
I brought down one of my crape haoris, raven-black in hue, with blushing maple leaves dispersed on the sleeves, and cloaked the honourable picture.
My haori wasn’t long enough.
The feet of the nude woman were all seen.
I have not the least objection to the undraped feet. They were faultless in shape.
I myself am free to bestow a glimpse of my beautiful feet.
I turned the key of my door.
I stripped off my shoes and my stockings also. ”

“ When Mr. Tramp left me with an overcoat in his hand, looking like a proud Mayor of Tokio, my uncle was coming from Mrs. Heine’s.
“Uncle, you do want to be good to a poor man, don’t you? You have made yourself a great philanthropist with your overcoat.”
“What have you done?”
“I presented it to a tramp.”
“Morning Glory!”
“Never mind, Uncle! I will buy a swell coat in New York. You have some more, haven’t you?”
“It cost me forty yens at ’Hama. You really are a foolish girl, Asagao!”
(Asagao is my humble name in Japanese.) ”

“ Something on the same plan, I imagine, as a “seriage” of the Japanese stage for a footless ghost rising to vanish.
It is astonishing to notice what a condescending manner the white gentlemen display toward ladies.
They take off their hats in the elevator—some showing such a great bald head, like a funny O Binzuru, that is as common as spectacled children—if any woman is present. They stand humbly as Japs to the august “Son of Heaven.” They crawl out like lambs after the woman steps away. ”

“ Even the Frisco smoke hindered my breath at my opening moment in Amerikey. I should have died, if it had been Chicago.
Bodily cleanliness is the first chapter in the whitening of the soul. How many mortals are there here with a clear soul?
“Chicago is Mr. Nobody without the smoke, like Japan without a fan. The prosperity of a modern city is measured by the bulk of its smoke, Morning Glory. But I don’t approve of their using a cheap coal. Health has to be guarded,” my uncle said. ”

“ She is the aged mother of our poet. She is within the rim of ninety. I suspected her of having discovered the “Elixir for Preserving Eternal Girlhood.” You cannot help esteeming her a philosopher when you are told that she has visited San Francisco only twice in ten years. I have no bit of doubt that she would die if you were to rob her of the sight of her flower garden and one stout scrap-book about her son’s poems. They work a miracle. What a mystery is human life! ”

“ I announce that I am tired of their faces. I have never met one progressive-seeming Oriental since I landed. They are like a dry tree. Are their souls dying?
“Well, that’s why, they have no girl,” my uncle conclusioned.
He is so bright once in a while.
Why not make love with Meriken musume?
I said I would petition the Tokio government to transplant her women.
It may ruin the Japanese girl’s name, was my afterthought, if they ship only the homely gang.
Lovely girl has no longing to sail over the ocean. She has plenty of chance to grow a flower bride at home. ”

“ Schuyler’s reception sent me a mass of distinguished roses.
Loving American!
I said I would arrange them in Japanese cult.
My style is the enshin.
Amerikey is destitute of flowers.
Nippon is known as a paradise of botanists. The “scientists” of flower decoration (if I may call them so) are given a great advantage in their craft of delineating beauty.
The rose is not much of a flower to the Jap mind.
They never employ it in their work. It has no grace of line. Its perfume cannot indemnify for its being thorny. Things not qualified to convey charm are declined from the tokonama. ”

“ I couldn’t sustain myself against a bore. Church? It’s too sleepy, don’t you know? I have remarked that God is with me without any sort of prayer, if I trace the path of righteousness. A minister is only a meddling grandmamma to my mind. If I ever build my ideal city, two things shall not be tolerated. One is a lawyer’s office and the other is a church. Church, sir! May I present you with one rose?”
I raised me to place it in his coat.
“Here’s a letter for you, Morning Glory!”
I was rescued by my uncle. ”

“ She was about to join in it, when I brought her into my great dining-room.
(Beg pardon, it was a paltry kitchen!)
Everything was seen on the table.
Japanese dinner has no strict order of courses. You are a frolicsome butterfly among the dishes set like flowers before you. You may flit straight to any one which catches your whim. ”

“ Is there anything sweeter to muse upon than personal knick-nacks?
O such a dust!
I swept it.
But I thought philosophically afterward, why should people be so fussy with the dust, when things are but another form of dust. What a far-away smell the dust had! What an ancient colour!
I observed on the wall an odd coat and boots that dear old Santa Claus might have lost.
“Klondyke costume!” I exclaimed.
I undressed myself, and tried them on.
When I was ready to put on a fur cap, Mrs. Heine wandered down, calling me.
“Morning Glory! Morning Glory!” ”

“ When I observe a man’s eye pursuing his smoke, I say to myself that his soul must be stepping nearer to his ideal. The road of smoke is the road of poesy.
A noble trade is tobacco.
Man’s hermitage is situated only in smoking, I should say.
I divested my uncle of his coat. I begged him to hold a bucket and a piece of cloth for a moment.
“Are you ready to wash the windows, Uncle?” I said.
“Traitor, Morning Glory!” He flashed his accusing glare.
Docile old man!
He cleaned four windows of the kitchen, which was also the dining-room and the parlour. ”