Letters from China and Japan

								

quality being much better than the average of ours. The children were
under no visible discipline, but were good as well as happy; they paid
no attention to visitors, which I think is ultramodern, as I expected to
see them all rise and bow. If you will think of doing all the regular
school work--including in this school a good deal of hand work, drawing,
etc.--and then learning by the end of the sixth grade a thousand or more
Chinese characters, to make as well as to read, you will have some idea
of how industrious the kids have to be, and of course they have to learn
Japanese characters, too. Then we had a luncheon, ten of us altogether,
cooked and served by the girls in the Domestic Department; some
luncheon!--and garnished in a way to beat the Ritz--European food and
service. Then the real show began. First we had flower arrangement,
ancient and modern styles, then examples of the ancient etiquette in
serving tea and cakes to guests, and then of inferiors calling on
superiors; then Koto playing--a thirteen-stringed harp that lies on the
floor--first two girls and the teacher, and then a solo by the teacher.
He is blind and said to be the best player in Japan; he gave "Cotton
Bleaching in the Brook," and said he rarely played it, only once a year.
Well, you could hear the water ripple and fall, and hit the stones, and
the women singing and beating the cotton. I could hear it better than I
can hear spring in our music, so I think perhaps my ears are made to fit
the Japanese scale, or lack of it. Then we were taken into the tea house
and shown the tea ceremony, being served with tea. Mamma sat tatami, on
her heels, but I basely took a chair. Then we went to the gymnasium and
saw the old Samurai women's sword and spear exercises, etc. The teacher
was an old woman of seventy-five and as lithe and nimble as a cat--more
graceful than any of the girls. I have an enormous respect now for the
old etiquette and ceremonies regarded as physical culture. Every
movement has to be made perfectly, and it cannot be done without
conscious control. The modernized gym exercises by the children were
simply pitiful compared with all these ceremonies. Then we were taken to
the dormitories, which are in a garden, simple wooden Japanese
buildings, like barns our girls would think, but everything so clean you
could eat on the floor anywhere, with the south side all glass and sun,
and the girls sitting on the floor to study on a table about a foot and
a half high; no beds or chairs to litter up the rooms. Then after we
were taken over some of the other rooms, we went back to the dining-room
and had a most exquisite Japanese vegetarian Buddhist lunch served--just
a sample, all on a little plate, but including the sweets for dessert,
five or six things all quite different and elegantly cooked. Also three
kinds of tea.
Politeness is so universal here that when we get back we shall either be
so civil that you won't know us, or else we shall be so irritated that