Letters from China and Japan

								

see the dolls, woolly dogs, and pinwheels at the shrines of the
children's gods, besides their straw slippers, straw sandals and an
occasional child's kimono is quite touching, also sometimes a mother has
cut off her hair and pinned it up as an offering. Other things are as
humorous as these are pathetic, such as making spitballs of written
prayers and pasting the god with them. Some of the gods are now
protected by wire netting on this account. I have got fairly well used
to the street scenes now and can tell most of the kinds of shops, such
as an undertaker's from a cooper's. What makes the street so interesting
is that you can look in and see everything going on. I forgot to mention
the most interesting street thing I've seen, a bird catcher with a long
limed pole like a bamboo fishing rod, a basket with a valve door to put
them in and some other utensils. I didn't see him catch any, though.

Sunday Morning, March 2.

I am writing early because we are going to-day to Kamakura. You have
probably heard of the big bronze Buddha--fifty feet high--well, that is
there. A friend has arranged an interview for us with the most
distinguished or most learned of the Buddhist priests in Japan--who
belongs to the most philosophical of all the sects, the Zen, which
believes in the simple life and is more or less Stoical; this is the
sect that had the greatest influence on the warrior class in the good
old days. Kamakura is on the other side of Yokohama, an old Shogun
capital; has lots of historic shrines, etc.
Yesterday I made my first speech with an interpreter to a teachers'
association, some five hundred in all, mostly elementary school teachers
conspicuous for the fact that only about twenty-five were women. In the
evening we went to a supper and reception of the English-Speaking
Society, Americans and Japanese, mostly the latter; both men and women
and the most generally sociable thing we have seen yet. We have heard
said it was the only place in Tokyo where Japanese men and women really
met in a free sociable way, and the president said that when Japanese
met for sociable purposes they were reserved and stiff--at least till
the wine went round--as long as they spoke Japanese, but speaking
English brought back the habits they got in America and thawed them
out--an interesting psychological observation on the effect of language.

TOKYO, Tuesday, March 4.

You would be surprised to see how free from all affectations this
country has remained, at least so far as we see it. There is a social
democracy here that we do not know. All Japan is talking democracy now,
which is to be taken in the sense of representative government rather
than in the sense of tearing down the present form of government. The
representation in elections here now does not seem to extend much
further, if any, than to include those large taxpayers who would under
any system be a force in forming policy. The extension of the suffrage