I called my duty call on Baroness _H----_ after the luncheon party, and the conversation did not flag, though what she thought of my Japanese (the horrors of which I am daily realising more acutely) I don’t know, as she held it under with her fine native politeness.
I have read two interesting books this week--Lieutenant Sakurai’s _Human Bullets_ and _As the Hague Ordains_, the supposed journal of the wife of a Russian prisoner who comes to him in Japan, and is gradually converted to love the Japanese. The first book was rather a shock to all one’s preconceived notions about the unflinching bravery and repression of feelings among the Japanese soldiers! They were either weeping or embracing each other or writing sentimental letters--on every other page. I was quite sick of all their tears and self-adulation, though the writer gave a vivid picture of the ghastly carnage of the siege of Port Arthur. Yet people praise the book and don’t seem to notice the sentimentality as much as I do. I wonder if those who praise it have read it.
I heard from an old resident (thirty years here) that the Japanese are the most sentimental people under the sun. Oh, ye who stop at home and dream your dreams about Japan! Stay there.
=March 9.=--The following happened a few days ago, and I should have put it in then, but I forgot. The day was miserable, wet, cold, and windy, with snow blustering about, and instead of quietly having lunch in the warm Institute I was told we were to go to the big state-rooms at the other side of the gardens. There I found that all the Biology students and the Botanical and garden staff were lunching in Japanese style. There was a special kind of pink rice, with small beans boiled with it, and the various more or less savoury pieces of fish, vegetables, and a kind of pancake that go to make up a _bento_. Afterwards we all had packets of highly ornamental sticky cakes, chiefly made of the stodgy bean-paste I cannot eat, but some were good. This was the feast of the God Inari (the God of Rice), who is very appropriately worshipped by the botanists. After the feast we cowered under our umbrellas and went a pilgrimage through the gardens to his shrine, where we found the hundred-year-old blue cotton banner put up outside. Within the shrine was incense, lit by the Botanical Laboratory attendant, and a great tray of cakes, the same as we had been eating. Led by the Staff, we all rang the bell to call Inari’s attention to our visit, and clapping our hands in prayer we gave him a few sens each, throwing the copper coins in among the cakes. Then we ploughed our way through the bog-like paths to the Institute.