In my opinion, this great self-control is an evidence of the very high standard of civilisation of the Japanese. If one is at all observant and really in sympathy with the people, one is continually catching glimpses of their real natures and instances of their magnificent self-command. Once I was talking to a little Japanese merchant, along with some friends whom I had taken round to his store to buy curios. I had made quite a friend of this man, and knew him well. We were all chaffing him about getting married, and one of my friends said to him, "Well, why don't you get married? But perhaps you have already got a wife!" The little man looked up quickly with a smile on his face, and said--"Me married already; me wife die two years past; two children die two years past; all die, I think." The voice was perfectly steady, and the face smiling, as he uttered this amazingly sad statement; but some one chanced to look up and saw two great tears standing in his little monkey-like eyes. Of course he was "no class," and, not being an actual workman, but only a merchant, he was considered to be of rather a low grade. Still, for this slight show of emotion, he had utterly disgraced himself in his own eyes, and would afterwards, no doubt, atone for it by torturing himself in private.
I saw many remarkable instances of the self-control of the Japanese people when I visited the scenes of desolation caused from that great tidal wave which destroyed nearly three thousand people. Village after village I visited, some of them with only three or four living inhabitants left; but in no case, with men, women, or children, did I see the slightest trace of emotion. Here and there, indeed, you passed a woman huddled up in a corner muttering and screaming, but only because her mind had become unhinged by the loss of her home, or probably village, and every relation she possessed. No Japanese in his senses would amid the same circumstances be guilty of so much as a murmur or a tear.
The Japanese are a brave people--not only the men, but the women too. In fact, the women more especially are brave. Many women destroyed themselves during the China-Japanese war, because their husbands had been killed in battle. There was one Japanese woman in Tokio who felt so deeply the disgrace placed upon her country by the attempt on the life of the present Emperor of Russia some years ago by a common coolie, that she committed suicide. She felt that this great European prince had visited her country as a guest, and that before Japan could raise its head once more the nation must make some great sacrifice. Day after day she visited the Legation, and begged to be allowed admission to some of the high officials--in vain: they were too busy to see her. At last, after some weeks of fruitless effort, she went home in despair and killed herself, leaving a pathetic little letter to the Minister stating that she hoped that the sacrifice of her life might in some way help to cleanse her country from its disgrace.