Matsuo was very fond of Mother, and often, when he had received a new assignment of goods from Japan, he would select something especially pretty or appropriate and bring to her. Once he gave her a small lacquer box which looked something like an old-fashioned medicine case hung from the sash by people of ancient time. The outside was marked with lines corresponding to the partitions in a medicine case, but when I opened it, I saw that instead of being a succession of layers, it was an open box divided into two upright partitions to hold playing cards. The lacquer was poor and the work roughly done, but it was an ingenious idea to make a box to hold a means of pleasure in imitation of a case to hold a cure for pain.
“What original people Americans are!” I said. “But I didn’t know that lacquer was made here.”
Matsuo turned the little box over, and, on the bottom, I saw a label, “Made in Japan.”
A few days after, I went down to Matsuo’s store and he showed me whole shelves of articles called Japanese, the sight of which would have filled any inhabitant of Japan with a puzzled wonder as to what the strange European articles could be. They were all marked, “Made in Japan.” Matsuo said that they had been designed by Americans, in shapes suitable for use in this country, then made to order in Japanese factories and shipped direct to America, without having been seen in Japan outside the factory. That troubled me, but Matsuo shrugged his shoulders.
“As long as Americans want them, design them, order them, and are satisfied, there will be merchants to supply,” he said.
“But they are not Japanese things.”
“No,” he replied. “But genuine things do not sell. People think they are too frail and not gay enough.” Then he added slowly, “The only remedy is in education; and that will have to begin here.”
That night I lay awake a long time, thinking. Of course, artistic, appreciative persons are few in comparison to the masses who like heavy vases of green and gold, boxes of cheap lacquer, and gay fans with pictures of a laughing girl with flower hairpins. “But if Japan lowers her artistic standards,” I sighed, “what can she hope for from the world? All that she has, or is, comes from her art ideals and her pride. Ambition, workmanship, courtesy—all are folded within those two words.”
I once knew a workman—one who was paid by the job, not the hour—to voluntarily undo half a day’s work, at the cost of much heavy lifting, just to alter, by a few inches, the position of a stepping-stone in a garden. After it was placed to his satisfaction, he wiped the perspiration from his face, then took out his tiny pipe and squatted down, near by, to waste still more unpaid-for-time in gazing at the reset stone, with pleasure and satisfaction in every line of his kindly old face.
As I thought of the old man, I wondered if it was worth while to exchange the delight of heart-pride in one’s work for—anything. My mind mounted from the gardener to workman, teacher, statesman. It is the same with all. To degrade one’s pride—to loose one’s hold on the best, after having had it—is death to the soul growth of man or nation.
XX
Neighbours
When I came to America I expected to learn many things, but I had no thought that I was going to learn anything about Japan. Yet our neighbours, by their questions and remarks, were teaching me every day new ways of looking at my own country.
My closest friend was the daughter of a retired statesman, the General, we called him, who lived just across the steep little ravine which divided our grounds from his. Our side was bordered by a hedge of purple lilacs, broken, opposite the path to the well, by a rustic drawbridge. One autumn afternoon I was sitting on the shady step of the bridge with a many-stamped package in my lap, watching for the postman. Just about that hour his funny little wagon, looking, with its open side-doors, like a high, stiff kago, would be passing on its return trip down the hill, and I was anxious to hurry off my package of white cotton brocade and ribbons of various patterns and colours—the most prized gifts I could send to Japan.
Suddenly I heard a gay voice behind me reciting in a high singsong:
“Open your mouth and shut your eyes
And I’ll give you something to make you wise.”
I looked up at a charming picture. My bright-eyed friend, in a white dress and big lacy hat, was standing on the bridge, holding in her cupped hands three or four grape leaves pinned together with thorns. On this rustic plate were piled some bunches of luscious purple grapes.
“Oh, how pretty!” I exclaimed. “That is just the way Japanese serve fruit.”
“And this is the way they carry flowers,” she said, putting down the grapes on the step and releasing a big bunch of long-stemmed tiger lilies from under her arm. “Why do Japanese always carry flowers upside-down?”
I laughed and said, “It looked very odd to me, when I first came, to see everybody carrying flowers with the tops up. Why do you?”
“Why—why—they look prettier so; and that’s the way they grow.”
That was true, and yet I had never before thought of anyone’s caring for the appearance of flowers that were being carried. We Japanese have a way of considering a thing invisible until it is settled in its proper place.
“Japanese seldom carry flowers,” I said, “except to the temple or to graves. We get flowers for the house from flower-venders who go from door to door with baskets swung from shoulder poles, but we do not send flowers as gifts; and we never wear them.”
“Why?” asked Miss Helen.
“Because
