Chapter I: Part 1

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THE AMERICAN DIARY OF
A JAPANESE GIRL

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Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
THE GUEST OF HONOR
]

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The American Diary
of a Japanese Girl

BY MISS MORNING GLORY

Illustrated in colour and
in black-and-white

Genjiro Yeto

❦

NEW YORK
_Frederick A. Stokes Company_
PUBLISHERS

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PUBLISHED IN SEPTEMBER, 1902.

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To Her Majesty

HARUKO

Empress of Japan

_January, 1902_

_Ever since my childhood, thy sovereign beauty has been all to me in benevolence and inspiration._

_How often I watched thy august presence in happy amazement when thou didst pass along our Tokio streets! What a sad sensation I had all through me when thou wert just out of sight! If thou only knewest, I prayed, that I was one of thy daughters! I set it in my mind, a long time ago, that anything I did should be offered to our mother. =How I wish I could say my own mother!= Mother art thou, heavenly lady!_

_I am now going to publish my simple diary of my American journey._

_And I humbly dedicate it unto thee, our beloved Empress, craving that thou wilt condescend to acknowledge that one of thy daughters had some charming hours even in a foreign land._

_Morning Glory_

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_List of Illustrations._

“The guest of honour.” _Frontispiece._

“A new delight to catch the peeping tips 18
of my shoes.”

“Good night—Native land!” 20

“In Amerikey.” 32

“Such disobedient tools!” 50

“O ho, Japanese kimono!” 58

“So you like the Oriental woman?” 128

“How dare I swallow raw fishes!” 152

“Uncle, please count how many stories in 248
that building.”

Tail-piece 262

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BEFORE I SAILED

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BEFORE I SAILED

TOKIO, Sept. 23rd

My new page of life is dawning.

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!

24th—The song of gay children scattered over the street had subsided. The harvest moon shone like a yellow halo of “Nono Sama.” All things in blessed Mitsuho No Kuni—the smallest ant also—bathed in sweet inspiring beams of beauty. The soft song that is not to be heard but to be felt, was in the air.

’Twas a crime, I judged, to squander lazily such a gracious graceful hour within doors.

I and my maid strolled to the Konpira shrine.

Her red stout fingers—like sweet potatoes—didn’t appear so bad tonight, for the moon beautified every ugliness.

Our Emperor should proclaim forbidding woman to be out at any time except under the moonlight.

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.

I kneeled to the Konpira god.

I didn’t exactly see how to address him, being ignorant what sort of god he was.

I felt thirsty when I reached home. Before I pulled a bucket from the well, I peeped down into it. The moonbeams were beautifully stealing into the waters.

My tortoise-shell comb from my head dropped into the well.

The waters from far down smiled, heartily congratulating me on going to Amerikey.

25th—I thought all day long how I’ll look in ’Merican dress.

26th—My shoes and six pairs of silk stockings arrived.

How I hoped they were Nippon silk!

One pair’s value is 4 yens.

Extravagance! How dear!

I hardly see any bit of reason against bare feet.

Well, of course, it depends on how they are shaped.

A Japanese girl’s feet are a sweet little piece. Their flatness and archlessness manifest their pathetic womanliness.

Feet tell as much as palms.

I have taken the same laborious care with my feet as with my hands. Now they have to retire into the heavy constrained shoes of America.

It’s not so bad, however, to slip one’s feet into gorgeous silk like that.

My shoes are of superior shape. They have a small high heel.

I’m glad they make me much taller.

A bamboo I set some three Summers ago cast its unusually melancholy shadow on the round paper window of my room, and whispered, “Sara! Sara! Sara!”

It sounded to me like a pallid voice of sayonara.

(By the way, the profuse tips of my bamboo are like the ostrich plumes of my new American hat.)

“Sayonara” never sounded before more sad, more thrilling.

My good-bye to “home sweet home” amid the camellias and white chrysanthemums is within ten days. The steamer “Belgic” leaves Yokohama on the sixth of next month. My beloved uncle is chaperon during my American journey.

27th—I scissored out the pictures from the ’Merican magazines.

(The magazines were all tired-looking back numbers. New ones are serviceable in their own home. Forgotten old actors stray into the villages for an inglorious tour. So it is with the magazines. Only the useless numbers come to Japan, I presume.)

The pictures—Meriken is a country of woman; that’s why, I fancy, the pictures are chiefly of woman—showed me how to pick up the long skirt. That one act is the whole “business” of looking charming on the street. I apprehend that the grace of American ladies is in the serpentine curves of the figure, in the narrow waist.

Woman is the slave of beauty.

I applied my new corset to my body. I pulled it so hard.

It pained me.

28th—My heart was a lark.

I sang, but not in a trembling voice like a lark, some slices of school song.

I skipped around my garden.

Because it occurred to me finally that I’ll appear beautiful in my new costume.

I smiled happily to the sunlight whose autumnal yellow flakes—how yellow they were!—fell upon my arm stretched to pluck a chrysanthemum.

I admit that my arm is brown.

But it’s shapely.

29th—English of America—sir, it is light, unreserved and accessible—grew dear again. My love of it returned like the glow in a brazier that I had watched passionately, then left all the Summer days, and to which I turned my apologetic face with Winter’s approaching steps.

Oya, oya, my book of Longfellow under the heavy coat of dust!

I dusted the book with care and veneration as I did a wee image of the Lord a month ago.

The same old gentle face of ’Merican poet—a poet need not always to sing, I assure you, of tragic lamentation and of “far-beyond”—stared at me from its frontispiece. I wondered if he ever dreamed his volume would be opened on the tiny brown palms of a Japan girl. A sudden fancy came to me as if he—the spirit of his picture—flung his critical impressive eyes at my elaborate cue with coral-headed pin, or upon my face.

Am I not a lovely young lady?

I had thrown Longfellow, many months ago, on the top shelf where a grave spider was encamping, and given every liberty to that reticent, studious, silver-haired gentleman Mr. Moth to tramp around the “Arcadie.”

Mr. Moth ran out without giving his own “honourable” impression of the popular poet, when I let the pages flutter.

Large fatherly poet he is, but not unique. Uniqueness, however, has become commonplace.

Poet of “plain” plainness is he—plainness in thought and colour. Even his elegance is plain enough.

I must read Mr. Longfellow again as I used a year ago reclining in the Spring breeze,—“A Psalm of Life,” “The Village Blacksmith,” and half a dozen snatches from “Evangeline” or “The Song of Hiawatha” at the least. That is not because I am his devotee—I confess the poet of my taste isn’t he—but only because he is a great idol of American ladies, as I am often told, and I may suffer the accusation of idiocy in America, if I be not charming enough to quote lines from his work.

30th—Many a year I have prayed for something more decent than a marriage offer.

I wonder if the generous destiny that will convey me to the illustrious country of “woman first” isn’t the “something.”

I am pleased to sail for Amerikey, being a woman.

Shall I have to become “naturalized” in America?

The Jap “gentleman”—who desires the old barbarity—persists still in fancying that girls are trading wares.

When he shall come to understand what is Love!

Fie on him!

I never felt more insulted than when I was asked in marriage by one unknown to me.

No Oriental man is qualified for civilisation, I declare.

Educate man, but—beg your pardon—not the woman!

Modern gyurls born in the enlightened period of Meiji are endowed with quite a remarkable soul.

I act as I choose. I haven’t to wait for my mamma’s approval to laugh when I incline to.

Oct. 1st—I stole into the looking-glass—woman loses almost her delight in life if without it—for the last glimpse of my hair in Japan style.

Butterfly mode!

I’ll miss it adorning my small head, while I’m away from home.

I have often thought that Japanese display Oriental rhetoric—only oppressive rhetoric that palsies the spirit—in hair dressing. Its beauty isn’t animation.

I longed for another new attraction on my head.

I felt sad, however, when I cut off all the paper cords from my hair.

I dreaded that the American method of dressing the hair might change my head into an absurd little thing.

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.

2nd—Occasional forgetfulness, I venture to say, is one of woman’s charms.

But I fear too many lapses in my case fill the background.

I amuse myself sometimes fancying whether I shall forget my husband’s name (if I ever have one).

How shall I manage “shall” and “will”? My memory of it is faded.

I searched for a printed slip, “How to use Shall and Will.” I pressed to explore even the pantry after it.

Afterward I recalled that Professor asserted that Americans were not precise in grammar. The affirmation of any professor isn’t weighty enough. But my restlessness was cured somehow.

* * * * *

“This must be the age of Jap girls!” I ejaculated.

I was reading a paper on our bamboo land, penned by Mr. Somebody.

The style was inferior to Irving’s.

I have read his gratifying “Sketch Book.” I used to sleep holding it under my wooden pillow.

Woman feels happy to stretch her hand even in dream, and touch something that belongs to herself. “Sketch Book” was my child for many, many months.

Mr. Somebody has lavished adoring words over my sisters.

Arigato! Thank heavens!

If he didn’t declare, however, that “no sensible musume will prefer a foreign raiment to her kimono!”

He failed to make of me a completely happy nightingale.

Shall I meet the Americans in our flapping gown?

I imagined myself hitting off a tune of “Karan Coron” with clogs, in circumspect steps, along Fifth Avenue of somewhere. The throng swarmed around me. They tugged my silken sleeves, which almost swept the ground, and inquired, “How much a yard?” Then they implored me to sing some Japanese ditty.

I’ll not play any sensational rôle for any price.

Let me remain a homely lass, though I express no craft in Meriken dress.

Do I look shocking in a corset?

“In Pekin you have to speak Makey Hey Rah” is my belief.

3rd—My hand has seldom lifted anything weightier than a comb to adjust my hair flowing down my neck.

The “silver” knife (large and sharp enough to fight the Russians) dropped and cracked a bit of the rim of the big plate.

My hand tired.

My uncle and I were seated at a round table in a celebrated American restaurant, the “Western Sea House.”

It was my first occasion to face an orderly heavy Meriken table d’hote.

Its fertile taste was oily, the oppressive smell emetic.

Must I make friends with it?

I am afraid my small stomach is only fitted for a bowl of rice and a few cuts of raw fish.

There is nothing more light, more inviting, than Japanese fare. It is like a sweet Summer villa with many a sliding shoji from which you smile into the breeze and sing to the stars.

Lightness is my choice.

When, I wondered, could I feel at home with American food!

My uncle is a Meriken “toow.” He promised to show me a heap of things in America.

He is an 1884 Yale graduate. He occupies the marked seat of the chief secretary of the “Nippon Mining Company.” He has procured leave for one year.

* * * * *

What were the questionable-looking fragments on the plate?

Pieces with pock-marks!

Cheese was their honourable name.

My uncle scared me by saying that some “charming” worms resided in them.

Pooh, pooh!

They emitted an annoying smell. You have to empty the choicest box of tooth powder after even the slightest intercourse with them.

I dare not make their acquaintance—no, not for a thousand yens.

I took a few of them in my pocket papers merely as a curiosity.

Shall I hang them on the door, so that the pest may not come near to our house?

(Even the pest-devils stay away from it, you see.)

4th—The “Belgic” makes one day’s delay. She will leave on the seventh.

“Why not one week?” I cried.

I pray that I may sleep a few nights longer in my home. I grow sadder, thinking of my departure.

My mother shouldn’t come to the Meriken wharf. Her tears may easily stop my American adventure.

I and my maid went to our Buddhist monastery.

I offered my good-bye to the graves of my grandparents. I decked them with elegant bunches of chrysanthemums.

When we turned our steps homeward the snowy-eyebrowed monk—how unearthly he appeared!—begged me not to forget my family’s church while I am in America.

“Christians are barbarians. They eat beef at funerals,” he said.

His voice was like a chant.

The winds brought a gush of melancholy evening prayer from the temple.

The tolling of the monastery bell was tragic.

“Goun! Goun! Goun!”

5th—A “chin koro” barked after me.

The Japanese little doggie doesn’t know better. He has to encounter many a strange thing.

The tap of my shoes was a thrill to him. The rustling of my silk skirt—such a volatile sound—sounded an alarm to him.

I was hurrying along the road home from uncle’s in Meriken dress.

What a new delight I felt to catch the peeping tips of my shoes from under my trailing koshi goromo.

I forced my skirt to wave, coveting a more satisfactory glance.

Did I look a suspicious character?

I was glad, it amused me to think the dog regarded me as a foreign girl.

Oh, how I wished to change me into a different style! Change is so pleasing.

My imitation was clever. It succeeded.

When I entered my house my maid was dismayed and said:

“Bikkuri shita! You terrified me. I took you for an ijin from Meriken country.”

“Ho, ho! O ho, ho, ho!”

I passed gracefully (like a princess making her triumphant exit in the fifth act) into my chamber, leaving behind my happiest laughter and shut myself up.

Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“A NEW DELIGHT TO CATCH THE PEEPING TIPS OF MY SHOES”
]

I confess that I earned the most delicious moment I have had for a long time.

I cannot surrender under the accusation that Japs are _only_ imitators, but I admit that we Nippon daughters are suited to be mimics.

Am I not gifted in the adroit art?

Where’s Mr. Somebody who made himself useful to warn the musumes?

Then I began to rehearse the scene of my first interview with a white lady at San Francisco.

I opened Bartlett’s English Conversation Book, and examined it to see if what I spoke was correct.

I sat on the writing table. Japanese houses set no chairs.

(Goodness, mottainai! I sat on the great book of Confucius.)

The mirror opposite me showed that I was a “little dear.”

6th—It rained.

Soft, woolen Autumn rain like a gossamer!

Its suggestive sound is a far-away song which is half sob, half odor. The October rain is sweet sad poetry.

I slid open a paper door.

My house sits on the hill commanding a view over half Tokio and the Bay of Yedo.

My darling city—with an eternal tea and cake, with lanterns of festival—looked up to me through the gray veil of rain.

I felt as if Tokio were bidding me farewell.

Sayonara! My dear city!

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GOOD NIGHT—NATIVE LAND!
]

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ON THE OCEAN

“BELGIC,” 7th

Good night—native land!
Farewell, beloved Empress of Dai Nippon!

12th—The tossing spectacle of the waters (also the hostile smell of the ship) put my head in a whirl before the “Belgic” left the wharf.

The last five days have been a continuous nightmare. How many a time would I have preferred death!

My little self wholly exhausted by sea-sickness. Have I to drift to America in skin and bone?

I felt like a paper flag thrown in a tempest.

The human being is a ridiculously small piece. Nature plays with it and kills it when she pleases.

I cannot blame Balboa for his fancy, because he caught his first view from the peak in Darien.

It’s not the “Pacific Ocean.” The breaker of the world!

“Do you feel any better?” inquired my fellow passenger.

He is the new minister to the City of Mexico on his way to his post. My uncle is one of his closest friends.

What if Meriken ladies should mistake me for the “sweet” wife of such a shabby pock-marked gentleman?

It will be all right, I thought, for we shall part at San Francisco.

(The pock-mark is rare in America, Uncle said. No country has a special demand for it, I suppose.)

His boyish carelessness and samurai-fashioned courtesy are characteristic. His great laugh, “Ha, ha, ha!” echoes on half a mile.

He never leaves his wine glass alone. My uncle complains of his empty stomach.

The more the minister repeats his cup the more his eloquence rises on the Chinese question. He does not forget to keep up his honourable standard of diplomatist even in drinking, I fancy.

I see charm in the eloquence of a drunkard.

* * * * *

I exposed myself on deck for the first time.

I wasn’t strong enough, alas! to face the threatening grandeur of the ocean. Its divineness struck and wounded me.

O such an expanse of oily-looking waters! O such a menacing largeness!

One star, just one sad star, shone above.

I thought that the little star was trembling alone on a deck of some ship in the sky.

Star and I cried.

13th—My first laughter on the ocean burst out while I was peeping at a label, “7 yens,” inside the chimney-pot hat of our respected minister, when he was brushing it.

He must have bought that great headgear just on the eve of his appointment.

How stupid to leave such a bit of paper!

I laughed.

He asked what was so irresistibly funny.

I laughed more. I hardly repressed “My dear old man.”

The “helpless me” clinging on the bed for many a day feels splendid to-day.

The ocean grew placid.

On the land my eyes meet with a thousand temptations. They are here opened for nothing but the waters or the sun-rays.

I don’t gain any lesson, but I have learned to appreciate the demonstrations of light.

They were white. O what a heavenly whiteness!

The billows sang a grand slow song in blessing of the sun, sparkling their ivory teeth.

The voyage isn’t bad, is it?

I planted myself on the open deck, facing Japan.

I am a mountain-worshipper.

Alas! I could not see that imperial dome of snow, Mount Fuji.

* * * * *

One dozen fairies—two dozen—roved down from the sky to the ocean.

I dreamed.

I was so very happy.

14th—What a confusion my hair has suffered! I haven’t put it in order since I left the Orient. Such negligence of toilet would be fined by the police in Japan.

I was busy with my hair all the morning.

15th—The Sunday service was held.

There’s nothing more natural on a voyage than to pray.

We have abandoned the land. The ocean has no bottom.

We die any moment “with bubbling groan, without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.”

Only prayer makes us firm.

I addressed myself to the Great Invisible whose shadow lies across my heart.

He may not be the God of Christianity. He is not the Hotoke Sama of Buddhism.

Why don’t those red-faced sailors hum heavenly-voiced hymns instead of—“swear?”

16th—Amerikey is away beyond.

Not even a speck of San Francisco in sight yet!

I amused myself thinking what would happen if I never returned home.

Marriage with a ’Merican, wealthy and comely?

I had well-nigh decided that I would not cross such an ocean again by ship. I would wait patiently until a trans-Pacific railroad is erected.

I was basking in the sun.

I fancied the “Belgic” navigating a wrong track.

What then?

Was I approaching lantern-eyed demons or howling cannibals?

“Iya, iya, no! I will proudly land on the historical island of Lotos Eaters.” I said.

Why didn’t I take Homer with me? The ocean is just the place for his majestic simplicity and lofty swing.

I recalled a few passages of “The Lotos Eaters” by Lord Tennyson—it sounds better than “the poet Tennyson.” I love titles, but they are thought as common as millionaires nowadays.

A Jap poet has a different mode of speech.

Shall I pose as poet?

’Tis no great crime to do so.

I began my “Lotos Eaters” with the following mighty lines:

“O dreamy land of stealing shadows!
O peace-breathing land of calm afternoon!
O languid land of smile and lullaby!
O land of fragrant bliss and flower!
O eternal land of whispering Lotos Eaters!”

Then I feared that some impertinent poet might have said the same thing many a year before.

Poem manufacture is a slow job.

Modern people slight it, calling it an old fashion. Shall I give it up for some more brilliant up-to-date pose?

17th—I began to knit a gentleman’s stockings in wool.

They will be a souvenir of this voyage.

(I cannot keep a secret.)

I tell you frankly that I designed them to be given to the gentleman who will be my future “beloved.”

The wool is red, a symbol of my sanguine attachment.

The stockings cannot be much larger than my own feet. I dislike large-footed gentlemen.

18th—My uncle asked if my great work of poetical inspiration was completed.

“Uncle, I haven’t written a dozen lines yet. My ‘Lotos Eaters’ is to be equal in length to ‘The Lady of the Lake.’ Now, see, Oji San, mine has to be far superior to the laureate’s, not merely in quality, but in quantity as well. But I thought it was not the way of a sweet Japanese girl to plunder a garland from the old poet by writing in rivalry. Such a nice man Tennyson was!” I said.

I smiled and gazed on him slyly.

“So! You are very kind!” he jerked.

19th—I don’t think San Francisco is very far off now. Shall I step out of the ship and walk?

Has the “Belgic” coal enough? I wonder how the sensible steamer can be so slow!

Let the blank pages pass quickly! Let me come face to face with the new chapter—“America!”

The gray monotone of life makes me insane.

Such an eternal absence of variety on the ocean!

20th—The moon—how large is the ocean moon!—sat above my head.

When I thought that that moon must have been visiting in my dearest home of Tokio, the tragic scene of my “Sayonara, mother!” instantly returned.

Tears on my cheeks!

Morning, 21st—Three P.M. of to-day!

At last!

Beautiful Miss Morning Glory shall land on her dream-land, Amerikey.

That’s my humble name, sir.

18 years old.

(Why does the ’Merican lady regard it as an insult to be asked her own age?)

My knitting work wasn’t half done. I look upon it as an omen that I shall have no luck in meeting with my husband.

Tsumaranai! What a barren life!

* * * * *

Our great minister was placing a button on his shirt. His trembling fingers were uncertain.

I snatched the shirt from his hand and exhibited my craft with the needle.

“I fancied that you modern girls were perfect strangers to the needle,” he said.

He is not blockish, I thought, since he permits himself to employ irony.

My uncle was lamenting that he had not even one cigar left.

Both those gentlemen offered to help me in my dressing at the landing.

I declined gracefully.

Where is my looking-glass?

I must present myself very—very pretty.

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IN AMERIKEY
]

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IN AMERIKEY

SAN FRANCISCO, night, 21st

“Good-bye, Mr. Belgic!”

I delight in personifying everything as a gentleman.

What does it mean under the sun! Kitsune ni tsukamareta wa! Evil fox, I suppose, got hold of me. “Gentlemen, is this real Amerikey?” I exclaimed.

Oya, ma, my Meriken dream was a complete failure.

Did I ever fancy any sky-invading dragon of smoke in my own America?

The smoke stifled me.

Why did I lock up my perfume bottle in my trunk?

I hardly endured the smell from the wagons at the wharf. Their rattling noise thrust itself into my head. A squad of Chinamen there puffed incessantly the menacing smell of cigars.

Were I the mayor of San Francisco—how romantic “the Mayor, Miss Morning Glory” sounds!—I would not pause a moment before erecting free bath-houses around the wharf.

I never dreamed that human beings could cast such an insulting smell.

The smell of honourable wagon drivers is the smell of a M-O-N-K-E-Y.

Their wild faces also prove their likeness to it.

They must have furnished all the evidence to Mr. Darwin. “The better part lies some distance from here,” said my uncle.

I exclaimed how inhospitable the Americans were to receive visitors from the back door of the city.

We are not empty-stomached tramps rapping the kitchen door for a crust of bread.

* * * * *

We refused hotel carriage.

We walked from the Oriental wharf for the sake of the street sight-seeing.

Tamageta wa! A house was whirling along the street. Look at the horseless car! How could it be possible to pull it with a rope under ground!

Everything reveals a huge scale of measurement.

The continental spectacle is different from that of our islands.

We 40,000,000 Japs must raise our heads from wee bits of land. There’s no room to stretch elbows. We have to stay like dwarf trees.

I shouldn’t be surprised if the Americans exclaim in Japan, “What a petty show!”

Such a riotous rush! What a deafening uproar!

The lazy halt of a moment on the street must have been regarded, I fancied, as a violation of the law.

I wondered whether one dozen were not slain each hour on Market Street by the cars.

Cars! Cars! And cars!

It was no use to look beautiful in such a cyclone city. Not even one gentleman moved his admiring eyes to my face.

How sad!

I thought it must be some festival.

“No, the usual Saturday throng!” my uncle said.

Then I asked myself whether Tokio streets were only like a midnight of this city.

My beloved minister kept his mouth open—what heavy lips he had!—amazed at the high edifices.

“O ho, that’s astonishing!” he cried, throwing his sottish eyes on the clock of the _Chronicle_ building.

“Boys are commenting on you,” I whispered.

I beseeched him not to act so droll.

He tossed out in his careless fashion his everlasting heroic laughter, “Ha, ha, ha——”

A hawkish lad—I have not seen one sleepy fellow yet—drew near the minister shortly after we left the wharf, and begged to carry his bag.

He was only too glad to be assisted. The brown diplomatist thought it a loving deed toward a foreigner.

He bowed after some blocks, thanking the boy with a hearty “arigato.”

“Sir, you have to pay me two bits!”

His hand went to his pocket, when my uncle tapped his stooping back, speaking: “This is the country of eternal ‘pay, pay, pay,’ old man!”

* * * * *

“What does a genuine American beggar look like?” was my old question.

The Meriken beggar my friend saw at Yokohama park was dressed up in a swallow-tail coat. Emerson’s essays were in his hand. He was such a genteel Mr. Beggar, she said.

I often heard that everybody is a millionaire in America. I thought it likely that I should see a swell Mr. Beggar among the Americans.

How many a time had I planned to make a special trip to Yokohama for acquaintance with the honourable Emerson scholar!

Alas, it was merely a fancy!

I have seen Mr. Beggar on the street.

He didn’t appear in the formal dignity of a dress coat.

Where was his Emerson?

He was not unlike his Oriental brothers, after all.

He stood, because he wasn’t used to kneeling like the Japs.

The only difference was that he carried pencils instead of a musical instrument.

He is a merchant,—this is a business country,—while the Japanese Mr. Beggar is an artist, I suppose.

* * * * *

My little gold watch pointed eleven.

I have been writing for some hours about my first impression of the city from the wharf, and my journey from there to this Palace Hotel.

The number of my room is 489.

I fear I may not return if I once go out. It’s so hard to remember the number.

The large mirror reflected me as being so very small in the big room.

Such a great room with high ceiling!

I don’t feel at home at all.

Not a petal of flower. No inviting picture on the wall!

I was tired of hearing the artificial greeting, “Irasshai mashi,” or “Honourable welcome,” of the eternally bowing Japanese hotel attendants.

But the too simple treatment of ’Merican hotel is hardly to my taste.

Not even one girl to wait on me here!

No “honourable tea and cake.”

22nd—I need repose. The last few weeks have stirred me dreadfully. I will slumber just comfortably day after day, I decided.

But the same feeling as on the ocean returned.

My American bed acted like water, waving at even my slightest motion.

I fancied I was exercising even in sleep.

It is too soft.

Nothing can put me at complete ease like my hereditary lying on the floor.

I was restless all the night long.

I got up, since the bed was no joy.

Oh, the blue sky!

I thought I should never again see a sapphire sky while I am here. I was wrong.

This is church day.

The bells of the street-cars sounded musical.

The sky appeared in best Sunday dress.

I felt happy thinking that I should see the stars from my hotel window to-night.

* * * * *

I made many useless trips up and down the elevator for fun.

What a tickling dizziness I tasted!

I close my eyes when it goes.

It’s an awfully new thing, I reckon.

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.

It puzzles me to solve how women can be deserving of such honour.

What a goody-goody act!

But I wonder how they behave themselves before God!

23rd—It is delightful to sit opposite the whitest of linen and—to portray on it the face of an imaginary Mr. Sweetheart while eating.

Whiteness is appetising.

And the boldly-marked creases of the linen are so dear. Without them the linen is not half so inviting.

I was taught the beauty of single line in drawing class some years ago.

But now for the first time I fully comprehended it from the Meriken tablecloth.

I wished I could ever stay gazing at it.

If I start my housekeeping in this country—do I ever dream of it?—I shall not hesitate to invest all my money in linen.

I laughed when I fancied that I sat with my husband—where’s he in the world?—spreading a skilfully ironed linen cloth on the Spring grasses (what a gratifying white and green!), and I upset a teapot over the linen, while he ran after water;—then I picked all the buttercups and covered the dark red stain.

The minister makes a ridiculous show of himself in the dining-room.

His laughter draws the attention of every lady.

This morning he exclaimed: “Americans have no courtesy for strangers, except meaning money.”

And he finished his speech with his boisterous “Ha, ha, ha!”

A pale impatient lady, like a trembling winter leaf, sitting at the table next to us, shrugged her shoulders and muttered, “Oh, my!”

I hoped I could invent any scheme to make him hasten to his post—Kara or Tenjiku, whatever place it be.

He is good-natured like a rubber stamp.

But I am sorry to say that he does not fit Amerikey.

I was relieved when he announced that his departure would occur to-morrow.

My dignity was saved.

I cut a square piece of paper. I pencilled on it as follows:

To the Japanese Legation.
The City of Mexico.
Handle Carefully, Easily Broken.

I put it on the large palm of the minister. I warned him that he should never forget to pin it on his breast.

“Mean little thing you are!” he said.

And his great happy “Ha, ha, ha!” followed as usual.

Bye-bye!

* * * * *

The negroes are horrid. I scanned them on the first chance of my life.

What is the standard of beauty of their tribe, I am eager to be informed!

I searched for “coon” in my dictionary. The explanation was unsatisfactory.

The ever-so-kind Americans don’t consider them, I am certain, as “animals allied to the bear.”

Tell me what it means.

24th—Spittoon!

The American spittoon is famous, Uncle says.

From every corner in this nine-story hotel—think of its eight hundred and fifty-one rooms!—you are met by the greeting of the spittoon.

How many thousand are there?

It must be a tremendous task to keep them clean as they are.

I wonder why the proprietor doesn’t give the city the benefit of some of them.

San Francisco ought to place spittoons along the sidewalk.

The ladies wear such a long gaudy skirt.

And it is quite a fashion of modern gents, it appears, to spit on the pavements.

This Palace Hotel is a palace.

You drop into the toilet room, for instance.

You cannot help exclaiming: “Iya, haya, Japan is three centuries behind!”

Everything presents to you a silent lecture of scientific modernism.

Whenever I am bothered too much by my uncle I lock myself up in the toilet room. There I feel the whole world is mine.

I can take off my shoes. I can play acrobat if I prefer.

Nobody can spy me.

It is the place where you can pray or cry all you desire without one interruption.

My room is great, equipped with every new invention. Numbers of electric globes dazzle with kingly light above my head.

If I enter my room at dusk, I push a button of electricity.

What a satisfaction I earn seeing every light appear to my honourable service!

I look upon my finger wondering how such an Oriental little thing can make itself potent like the mighty thumb of Mr. Edison.

25th—What a novel sensation I felt in writing “San Francisco, U.S.A.,” at the head of my tablet!

(What agitation I shall feel when I write my first “Mrs.” before my name! Woman must grow tired of being addressed “Miss,” sooner or later.)

I have often said that I hardly saw any necessity for corresponding when one lives on such a small island as Japan.

I could see my friends in a day or two, at whatever place I was.

I have now the ocean between me and my home.

Letter writing is worth while.

I did not know it was such a sweet piece of work.

I should declare it to be as legitimate and inexpensive a game as ever woman could indulge in.

* * * * *

I was stepping along the courtyard of this hotel.

I have seen a gentleman kissing a woman.

I felt my face catching fire.

Is it not a shame in a public place?

I returned to my apartment. The mirror showed my cheeks still blushing.

* * * * *

The Japanese consul and his Meriken wife—she is some inches higher than her darling—paid us a call.

I said to myself that they did not match well. It was like a hired haori with a different coat of arms.

The Consul looked proud, as if he carried a crocodile.

Mrs. Consul invited us for luncheon next Sunday.

“Quite a family party—O ho, ho!”

Her voice was unceremonious.

I noticed that one of her hairpins was about to drop. I thought that Meriken woman was as careless as I.

How many hairpins do you suppose I lost yesterday?

Four! Isn’t that awful?

My uncle innocently stated to her I was a great belle of Tokio.

I secretly pinched his arm through his coat-sleeve. My little signal did not influence him at all. He kept on his hyperbolical advertisement of me.

She promised a beautiful girl to meet me on Sunday.

I fancied how she looked.

I thought my performance of the first interview with Meriken woman was excellent. But my rehearsal at home was useless.

26th—I lost my little charm.

It worried me awfully.

It was given me by my old-fashioned mother. She got it after a holy journey of one month to the shrine of Tenno Sama.

I should be safe, Mother said, from water, fire and highwayman (what else, God only knows) as long as I should carry it.

I sought after it everywhere. I begged my uncle to let me examine his trunk.

“Cast off an ancient superstition!” Uncle scorned.

I sat languidly on the large armchair which almost swallowed my small body.

I imagined many a punishment already inflicted on me.

The tick-tack of my watch from my waist encouraged my nervousness.

There is nothing more irritating than a tick-tack.

I locked up my watch in the drawer of the dresser.

I still felt its tick-tack pursuing my ears.

Then I put it under the pillow.

27th—How I wished I could exchange a ten-dollar gold-piece for a tassel of curly hair!

American woman is nothing without it.

Its infirm gesticulation is a temptation.

In Japan I regarded it as bad luck to own waving hair.

But my tastes cannot remain unaltered in Amerikey.

I don’t mind being covered with even red hair.

Red hair is vivacity, fit for Summer’s shiny air.

I remember that I trembled at sight of the red hair of an American woman at Tokio. Japanese regard it as the hair of the red demon in Jigoku.

I sat before the looking-glass, with a pair of curling-tongs.

I tried to manage them with surprising patience. I assure you God doesn’t vouchsafe me much patience.

Such disobedient tools!

They didn’t work at all. I threw them on the floor in indignation.

Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“SUCH DISOBEDIENT TOOLS!”
]

My wrists pained.

I sat on the floor, stretching out my legs. My shoe-strings were loosed, but my hand did not hasten to them.

I was exhausted with making my hair curl.

I sent my uncle to fetch a hair-dresser.

28th—How old is she?

I could never suggest the age of a Meriken woman.

That Miss Ada was a beauty.

It’s becoming clearer to me now why California puts so much pride in her own girls.

Ada was a San Franciscan whom Mrs. Consul presented to me.

What was her family name?

Never mind! It is an extra to remember it for girls. We don’t use it.

How envious I was of her long eyelashes lacing around the large eyes of brown hue!

Brown was my preference for the velvet hanao of my wooden clogs.

Long eyelashes are a grace, like the long skirt.

I know that she is a clever young thing.

She was learned in the art of raising and dropping her curtain of eyelashes. That is the art of being enchanting. I had said that nothing could beat the beauty of my black eyes. But I see there are other pretty eyes in this world.

Everything doesn’t grow in Japan. Noses particularly.

My sweet Ada’s nose was an inspiration, like the snow-capped peak of O Fuji San. It rose calmly—how symmetrically!—from between her eyebrows.

I had thought that ’Merican nose was rugged, big of bone.

I see an exception in Ada.

She must be the pattern of Meriken beauty.

I felt that I was so very homely.

I stole a sly glance into the looking-glass, and convinced myself that I was a beauty also, but Oriental.

We had different attractions.

She may be Spring white sunshine, while I am yellow Autumn moonbeams. One is animation, and the other sweetness.

I smiled.

She smiled back promptly.

We promised love in our little smile.

She placed her hand on my shoulder. How her diamond ring flashed! She praised the satin skin of my face.

She was very white, with a few sprinkles of freckles. Their scattering added briskness to the face in her case. (But doesn’t San Francisco produce too many freckles in woman?) The texture of Ada’s skin wasn’t fine. Her face was like a ripe peach with powdery hair.

Is it true that dark skin is gaining popularity in American society?

The Japanese type of beauty is coming to the front then, I am happy.

I repaid her compliment, praising her elegant set of teeth.

Ada is the free-born girl of modern Amerikey.

She need never fear to open her mouth wide.

She must have been using special tooth-powder three times a day.

“We are great friends already, aren’t we?” I said.

And I extended my finger-tips behind her, and pulled some wisps of her chestnut hair.

“Please, don’t!” she said, and raised her sweetly accusing eyes. Then our friendship was confirmed.

Girls don’t take much time to exchange their faith.

I was uneasy at first, thinking that Ada might settle herself in a _tête-à-tête_ with me, in the chit-chat of poetry. I tried to recollect how the first line of the “Psalm of Life” went, for Longfellow would of course be the first one to encounter.

Alas, I had forgotten it all.

I was glad that her query did not roam from the remote corner of poesy.

“Do you play golf?” she asked.

She thinks the same things are going on in Japan.

Ada! Poor Ada!

* * * * *

The honourable consul and my uncle looked stupid at the lunch table.

I thought they were afraid of being given some difficult question by the Meriken ladies.

Mrs. Consul and Ada ate like hungry pigs. (I beg their pardon!)

“You eat like a pussy!” is no adequate compliment to pay to a Meriken woman.

I found out that their English was neither Macaulay’s nor Irving’s.

29th—I ate a tongue and some ox-tail soup.

Think of a suspicious spumy tongue and that dirty bamboo tail!

Isn’t it shocking to even incline to taste them?

My mother would not permit me to step into the holy ground of any shrine in Japan. She would declare me perfectly defiled by such food.

I shall turn into a beast in the jungle by and by, I should say.

My uncle committed a greater indecency. He ate a tripe.

It was cooked in the “western sea egg-plant,” to taste of which brings on the small-pox, as I have been told.

He said that he took a delight in pig’s feet.

Shame on the Nippon gentleman!

Harai tamae! Kiyome tamae!

30th—“Chui, chui, chui!”

A little sparrow was twittering at my hotel window.

I could not believe that the sparrow of large America could be as small as the Nippon-born.

Horses are large here. Woman’s mouth is large, something like that of an alligator. Policeman is too large.

I fancied that little birdie might be one strayed from the bamboo bush of my family’s monastery.

“Sweet vagabond, did you cross the ocean for Meriken Kenbutsu?” I said.

“Chui, chui! Chui, chui, chui!” he chirped.

Is “chui, chui” English, I wonder?

I pushed the window up to receive him.

Oya, ma, he has gone!

I felt so sorry.

I was yearning after my beloved home.

This is the great Chrysanthemum season at home. I missed the show at Dangozaka.

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.

I purchased a select bouquet of violets.

I passed by several young gentlemen. Were their eyes set on my flowers or my hands?

I don’t wear gloves. I don’t wish my hands to be touched harshly by them. Truly I am vain of showing my small hands.

I love the violet, because it was the favorite of dear John—Keats, of course.

It may not be a flower. It is decidedly a perfume, anyhow.

31st—I have heard a sad piece of news from Mrs. Consul about Mr. Longfellow.

She says that he has ceased to be an idol of American ladies.

He has retired to a comfortable fireside to take care of school children.

Poor old poet!

Nov. 1st—American chair is too high.

Are my legs too short?

It was uncomfortable to sit erect on a chair all the time as if one were being presented before the judge.

And those corsets and shoes!

They seized me mercilessly.

I said that I would spend a few hours in Japan style, reclining on the floor like an eloped angel.

I brought out a crape kimono and my girdle with the phœnix embroidery, after having locked the entrance of my room.

“Kotsu, kotsu, kotsu!”

Somebody was fisting on my door.

Oya, she was Ada, my “Rose of Frisco” or “Butterfly of Van Ness.”

(She was quartered in Van Ness Avenue, the most elegant street of a whole bunch.)

She was sprightly as a runaway princess. She blew her sunlight and fragrance into my face.

I was grateful that I chanced to be acquainted with such a delightful Meriken lady.

“O ho, Japanese _kimono_! If I might only try it on!” she said.

I told her she could.

“How lovely!” she ejaculated.

We promised to spend a gala day together.

Drawn by Genjiro Yeto
“O HO, JAPANESE KIMONO!”
]

“We will rehearse,” I said, “a one-act Japanese play entitled ‘Two Cherry Blossom Musumes.’”

I assisted her to dress up. She was utterly ignorant of Oriental attire.

What a superb development she had in body! Her chest was abundant, her shoulders gracefully commanding. Her rather large rump, however, did not show to advantage in waving dress. Japs prefer a small one.

My physical state is in poverty.

I was wrong to believe that the beauty of woman is in her face.

It is so, of course, in Japan. The brown woman eternally sits. The face is her complete exhibition.

The beauty of Meriken woman is in her shape.

I pray that my body may grow.

The Japanese theatre never begins without three rappings of time-honoured wooden blocks.

I knocked on the pitcher.

Miss Ada appeared from the dressing room, fluttering an open fan.

How ridiculously she stepped!

It was the way Miss What’s-her-name acted in “The Geisha,” she said.

She was much taller than little me. The kimono scarcely reached to her shoes. I have never seen such an absurd show in my life.

I was tittering.

The charming Ada fanned and giggled incessantly in supposed-to-be Japanese _chic_.

“What have I to say, Morning Glory?” she said, looking up.

“I don’t know, dear girl!” I jerked.

Then we both laughed.

Ada caught my neck by her arm. She squandered her kisses on me.

(It was my first taste of the kiss.)

We two young ladies in wanton garments rolled down happily on the floor.

2nd—If I could be a gentleman for just one day!

I would rest myself on the hospitable chair of a barber shop—barber shop, drug store and candy store are three beauties on the street—like a prince of leisure, and dream something great, while the man is busy with a razor.

I am envious of the gentleman who may bathe in such a purple hour.

I never rest.

American ladies neither!

Each one of them looks worried as if she expected the door-bell any moment.

I suppose it is the penalty of being a woman.

3rd—My little heart was flooded with patriotism.

It is our Mikado’s birthday.

I sang “The Age of Our Sovereign.” I shouted “Ten thousand years! Banzai! Ban banzai!”

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.

I have no dispute with their mustaches and their blue eyes. But I am far from being an admirer of their red faces.

Japs are pygmies. I fear that the Americans are too tall. My future husband is not allowed to be over five feet five inches. His nose should be of the cast of Robert Stevenson’s.

Each one of them carries a high look. He may be the President at the next election, he seems to say. How mean that only one head is in demand!

A directory and a dictionary are kind. The ’Merican husband is like them, I imagine.

I have no gentleman friend yet.

To pace alone on the street is a melancholy discarded sight.

What do you do if your shoe-string comes untied?

I have seen a gentleman fingering the shoestrings of a lady. How glad he was to serve again, when she said, “That’s too tight!”

Shall my uncle fill such a part?

Poor uncle!

Old company, however, isn’t style.

He is forty-five.

Why can I not choose one to hire from among the “bully” young men loitering around a cigar-stand?

5th—My uncle was going out in a black frock-coat and tea-coloured trousers. I insisted that his coat and trousers didn’t match.

How can a man be so ridiculous?

I declared that it was as poor taste as for a darkey to wear a red ribbon in her smoky hair.

Uncle surrendered.

He said, “Hei, hei, hei!”

Goo’ boy!

He dismissed the great tea-colour.

6th—We had a shower.

The city dipped in a bath.

The pedestrians threw their vaguely delicate shadows on the pavements. The ladies voluntarily permitted the gentlemen to review their legs. If I were in command, I would not permit the ladies to raise an umbrella under the “para para” of a shower. Their hastening figures are so fascinating.

The shower stopped. The pavements were glossed like a looking-glass. The windows facing the sun scattered their sparkling laughter.

How beautiful!

I am perfectly delighted by this city.

One thing that disappoints me, however, is that Frisco is eternally snowless,

Without snow the year is incomplete, like a departure without sayonara.

Dear snow! O Yuki San!

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The American Diary of a Japanese GirlChapter I: Part 1

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