Glimpses of Japan and Formosa

All the way across the Pacific we mused on the probability of getting a glimpse of Japanese family life-not of mere inns or wide-open lower-order hovels, but of the unexpurgated interior of a real Nipponese home. The chance came quickly and unexpectedly, on our first day in the country. One of those fires which rival earthquakes in strewing with disasters the history of this flimsily wood-built land had just erased one of the three or four hotels of Tokyo that welcome foreigners-at least foreigners of the table and chair habit. Luckily for us; for, had the mishap been postponed a fortnight, the likelihood of seeing all our worldly goods, lugged thither with much mental and financial effort, ascend in smoke, would have been excellent. It was lucky, too, that the refugees from the chaotic ruin had filled its former rivals to overflowing; for thereby not only did we escape the legal banditry which they have the reputation of practising upon those who fall into their hands as clients, but we realized our pent-up desire.

One of my few letters of introduction to the island empire did the trick. The addressee himself lived far from his office, but one of his subordinates requested-or consented, at a flicker of the superior's eyebrow-to be permitted to offer us temporary asylum in his mean and dishonorable abode. Not that the solution was reached at once, just like that, in an easy, offhand American manner. The Japanese mind does not work that way. To begin with, there was an interminable session with the telephone, actually manipulated by a boyish underling, under the dictation of the seated man of standing. Yet, though fully half the audible end of the conversation consisted of the endless repetition of "Moshy-moshy"-which seems to be an abbreviation of something corresponding to "Pardon your dishonorable servant for presuming to exist, but have the honorable kindness to deign to listen to the miserable noises which I shall now convey to your august ear through this most disreputable and unethical mechanical contraption"-and though the instrument was of as antiquated form, and the telephone system of Japan is as deeply imbedded in the postal and telegraph department of the Government, as in France, it was noticeable that it performed its ends with what would there be considered vertiginous and incredible efficiency.