“Your honourable father has ordered his household to eat flesh,” she said very slowly. “The wise physician who follows the path of the Western barbarians has told him that the flesh of animals will bring strength to his weak body, and also will make the children robust and clever like the people of the Western sea. The ox flesh is to be brought into the house in another hour and our duty is to protect the holy shrine from pollution.”
That evening we ate a solemn dinner with meat in our soup; but no friendly spirits were with us, for both shrines were sealed. Grandmother did not join us. She always occupied the seat of honour, and the vacant place looked strange and lonely. That night I asked her why she had not come.
“I would rather not grow as strong as a Westerner—nor as clever,” she answered sadly. “It is more becoming for me to follow the path of our ancestors.”
My sister and I confided to each other that we liked the taste of meat. But neither of us mentioned this to anyone else; for we both loved Grandmother, and we knew our disloyalty would sadden her heart.
The introduction of foreign food helped greatly to break down the wall of tradition which shut our people away from the world of the West, but sometimes the change was made at a great cost. This could not be otherwise; for after the Restoration many samurai suddenly found themselves not only poor and at the same time separated entirely from the system that had given them support; but also, bound as firmly as ever by the code of ethics that for centuries had taught them utter contempt for money. The land was flooded, during those first years, with business failures; for many of these men were young, ambitious, and eager to experiment with new customs.
Such a one was Mr. Toda, a friend and neighbour, who often came to shoot on our archery grounds with my father, or to take horseback rides with him in the mountains. I liked Mr. Toda very much, and could not understand why Grandmother seemed to feel that his ideas were too progressive and informal.
One day when he and Father were having a game of archery, they stopped to argue about some business plan. I was near by, trying to ride on the back of my father’s big white dog, Shiro. After I had had a more severe tumble than usual, Mr. Toda picked me up and stood me very near the grassy bank against which was placed the large round target with its broad rings of black and white. Putting the big bow in front of me, he held my arms while I shot. The arrow struck the target.
“Best done!” he shouted. “You will make a great warrior, Little Mistress! You are your father’s son, after all!”
My father laughed as he told the story that night. I felt very proud, but Mother looked thoughtful and Grandmother shook her head sadly.
“Your honourable father trains you in so boy-like a manner,” she said turning to me, “that I fear fate must search long for your unfound husband. No genteel family wants an ungentle bride.”
And so, even in our pleasant family, there was a continual hidden battle between the old and the new.
Mr. Toda was a man of independent thought, and after several vain attempts to adjust himself to new conditions and at the same time retain his dignity, he decided to throw dignity aside and engage in some business that would bring material results. This was just at the beginning of the talk about the strength-giving properties of foreign food. Since Mr. Toda owned a good-sized estate which at that time nobody would accept even as a gift, he converted it into a grass farm and sent to a faraway coast for some cattle. Then, with a few experienced men as assistants, he once more ventured into the business world; this time as a dairy man and a butcher.
The aristocratic family of Mr. Toda did not approve at all of this new occupation; for in the old days, only eta (the outcast class) ever handled bodies from which life had gone. For a while almost everyone looked upon him with a sort of curious horror, but gradually faith in meat as a strengthening food gained ground, and the families who used it on their tables grew steadily in number. So the business prospered.
The simpler part of his work—the selling of milk—was also successful, but it also had serious drawbacks. Most of the common people believed that cow’s milk would influence the nature of those who drank it, and on this subject they gossiped much. We children heard from servants that Mrs. Toda’s newborn baby had a tiny horn on its forehead and that its fingers were clubbed together like cows’ hoofs. These tales were not true, of course. But fear has a strong influence on our lives for happiness or misery, and in the Toda household there was real and desperate anxiety about many trifling things.
The majority of intellectual men of that day, though broad thinkers themselves, allowed the women of their families to remain narrow and ignorant; and so it was that the constant friction between the old and new ideas ended finally in a tragedy. The proud old grandmother of the Toda house, feeling keenly what in her eyes was disgrace to the family name, chose the only way to right a wrong that a helpless Japanese knows—sacrifice. If one must die for a principle, it is not hard to find a way; so one day the grandmother was laid to rest with the ancestors whose honour she had died to uphold.
Mr. Toda was an unflinching man, who honestly believed that he was right in carrying out his progressive ideas, but to his mother’s silent protest he yielded. He sold his business to a wealthy fish dealer, who steadily became wealthier, for the use
