Letters from China and Japan

								

is the great question under discussion at present. That and the
expansion of special education for men are the turning points for the
coming legislators. Japan has acquired many new millionaires during the
war and those men are already founding new schools for vocational
purposes for men. Four hundred and forty students are to be sent abroad
with a very generous allowance for living in the different foreign
countries, none of them women, and no women are mentioned in any of the
new appropriation bills. Not even a mention of the needs for women.
Yesterday, to begin, was spent thus: It was the famous festival of
dolls. In the morning I made a dress for a poor sort of foreign doll I
had hunted out for a little girl. It was all American. Another
ridiculous imitation of American baby, looking half caste Japanese, has
still to be dressed when I can find the material for long clothes, but I
presented it as is. They invited me in to see their exhibition. Some of
their dolls are two hundred years old from their mothers' family. I
shall try to find some literature on this festival as it is too long to
write about. But it is true that one begins immediately to get the
passion for dolls; they are not dead things like ours, but works of art
symbolic of all the different phases of national life. The little girls
were delighted with their possessions. If I had only known about this I
should have known what to bring to Japan for gifts, instead of feeling
as helpless as I did. If you come, bring dolls.
In the afternoon I was invited to go to the best or one of the best
collections in the country and that was a great experience. It began
very painfully for me because I got lost and was three-quarters of an
hour late at the Imperial Hotel from which we started. The family that
owns this famous collection is very old and the wife is the daughter of
a Daimyo, hence the dolls are very old. And they are wonderful, and more
wonderful still their housekeeping equipment of old lacquer and
porcelain and glass. The doll refreshments are served in tiny dishes on
tiny tables while the guests sit on the floor, the hostess and her
family doing all the serving. We had the thick white wine made from rice
poured out of wonderful little decanters into tiny glasses. We drank to
the health of the family and the stuff is delicious, with an aroma such
as no honey can excel. After these refreshments we were shown the room
for the tea ceremony and then taken back into the foreign part of the
house for real refreshments, which consisted of many and wonderful
varieties of cakes. The tea was served in cups with saucers decorated
with plum blossoms, this being the time of plum blossoms. Then tea cups
taken away and cups of rich chocolate placed on the tables. These tables
were high enough for the ordinary chairs. All the foreign houses are
very ugly in style but very comfortable and mid-Victorian. The Baroness