Letters from China and Japan

								

over them in Korea, because there is some agitation going on there for
independence, and it seems to have started with Koreans who had been in
missionary schools. The missionaries here seem much divided, some of
them blaming the missionaries over there, saying they will bring
Christianity into disrepute everywhere in Japan, and some saying that it
proves Christian teaching amounts to something and that it will have a
good effect in improving conditions, leading to foreign criticism and
publicity, and causing the Japanese to modify their colonial policy,
which seems to be under military rather than civil control. There is a
rumor that the ex-Emperor of Korea didn't die a natural death, but
committed suicide, with the hope of putting off or preventing the
marriage of his oldest son to a Japanese princess--they were to have
been married very soon. No one seems to know whether the story was
invented to encourage the revolutionaries in Korea or has truth in it.
Meanwhile they say the wedding is going to take place, and the Japanese
are sorry for their poor princess, who is sacrificed to marry a
foreigner.
Thursday evening Mamma invited the X----'s and some others, eight
including ourselves, to supper in a Japanese restaurant, a beef
restaurant--they are all specialized--where we not only sat on the floor
and ate with chop sticks, but where the little slices of thin beefsteak
were brought in raw with vegetables to flavor, and cooked over a little
pan on a charcoal hibashi, one fire to each two persons. Naturally it
was lots of fun, a kind of inside picnic.
Oh, yes, something happened Friday. We went to the Imperial Museum in
the morning and the curator showed us about--I won't describe a
museum--but on the way home we were taken into a pipe store and Mamma
purchased three little Japanese pipes, ladies' pipes, to take home.
Quite cunning, and the dealer said this was the first time he had ever
sold anything to a foreigner, so he presented her with a little ladies'
pouch and a pipe holder, both made from Holland cloth, not anything very
precious, but probably worth as much as her entire purchase, certainly
more than the profit on his sales. These things are quite touching and
an offset to the stories about their bad business methods, because it is
really a matter of hospitable courtesy to the foreigner, though he said
himself they generally put the price up for the foreigner on antiques.

TOKYO, Thursday, March 14.

We have just had a mild picnic. Mamma has a slight cold, so the maids
brought her supper up to her and for sociability brought mine up too.
Mamma got out a Japanese phrase book and pronounced various phrases to
them; to see them giggle and bend double, no theater was ever so funny.
When I got to my last bite, I inquired the name of the food, and said it
and "Sayonara"--good night. This old gag was a triumph of humor. They
are certainly a good-natured people. I have watched the children come