Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back (10 page)

Language was only the most obvious of the barriers the girls faced. None of them having ever encountered a black person, they were terrified of the hotel’s waiters. When Mrs. DeLong took all five of them to see Emerson’s Minstrels perform at the Alhambra Theatre one evening, the
spectacle only confused them further: the white performers in blackface, thought Ume, “could not be creatures of this world.”

The girls were perplexed as well by the women they saw: the chambermaids and laundresses who worked in the hotel seemed to be made straight, like themselves, but the female hotel guests all sprouted odd humps from their backsides. Was there some sort of magic that deformed the bodies of the wealthy? Mrs. DeLong soon explained the strange mechanics of the bustle—and dined out on the anecdote for days. “The simplicity of these daughters of the Orient is really touching,” the
Chronicle
chuckled fondly.

S
AN FRANCISCO WAS
now seized with enthusiasm for things Japanese. The firm of Haynes & Lawton, specializing in silver plate, was quick to publicize its stock of Japanese bronzes and porcelain “to impart a classic inspiration to the drawing-room and boudoir.” “Japonisme,” a term first used that very year, need not be limited to the salons of Paris, promised these advertisements. Those who had made their fortunes on the American frontier could now grace their parlors with antique
objets
by reaching across the Pacific instead of the Atlantic—and how fortuitous that Haynes & Lawton was so conveniently located on the ground floor of the Grand Hotel. “Lovers of the quaint and curious in art, and who are interested in this ingenious and progressive people,” should hasten to Market Street, instructed the
Chronicle
.

Within a few weeks the leading photographic studio of Bradley & Rulofson, just a stone’s throw from the hotel, was advertising an exhibition of portraits of the embassy, including “a splendidly executed group representing the ‘high Japs.’” This photo, along with one of Mrs. DeLong and the girls, was later published as an etching in
Harper’s Weekly
, providing the rest of the country with a glimpse of “our Japanese visitors.”

Crowds dogged them everywhere. Four days after their arrival the city honored the embassy with a parade and military review. A grandstand for the dignitaries rose in front of the hotel, but ordinary bystanders had to risk the sidewalks; there were reports of women and children badly hurt
in the crush. The crowd, estimated at fifty thousand, somewhat marred the martial spectacle, as onlookers spilling into the street prevented the Second Brigade of the National Guard from marching in straight lines. “The streets were so densely packed with hat-covered heads that there was no room to insert even a needle,” Kume wrote. Iwakura, perhaps wisely, pleaded indisposition and kept to his room.

The whirl of excursions only intensified as the days passed. In every situation, however unforeseen, the Japanese proved themselves to be good sports. For dessert at one official luncheon, a huge cake in the shape of a woman—representing “America”—was set down in front of Iwakura. Baffled, he turned to his host, who advised him to cut it and distribute the pieces to the lunch guests. Inspired, Iwakura cut off the two hands of the figure and presented them to two ladies nearby, explaining as he did so that likewise “Japan extends the hand of friendship to her American friends.”

A week after arrival Iwakura made his way to the offices of Western Union, where a private office had been equipped with telegraphic equipment linked directly to the East Coast. He exchanged greetings with Secretary of State Hamilton Fish in Washington, and then sent a message to Samuel Morse himself. “The Embassy from Japan desires to inform the inventor of the Electric Telegraph that his fame is well known in Japan, and that within a few months one thousand miles of telegraph wire will be opened for business in their country,” the telegraph read. In reply, the eighty-year-old Morse welcomed the Japanese “to the sphere of telegraphic intercourse.” The moment was one of mutual—though perhaps not mutually understood—satisfaction: Japan striding with determination toward a future on equal footing with the West, America proudly and paternally bestowing its technological advancements on a nation still entangled with its benighted feudal past. But Iwakura’s mission was to gather ideas in the service of Japanese sovereignty. His men were studying the West in order to resist Western incursions in the future.

Before leaving the telegraph office, Iwakura sent a personal message to his three young sons, who, having preceded him across the Pacific, were
now studying in New Jersey, at Rutgers Grammar School. Among the very first Japanese students to come to America under the auspices of the new Meiji leadership, they were planning to meet him in Chicago as the embassy traversed the continent. “Affectionate Father,” they responded immediately, “we rejoice to hear from you.”

The climax of the embassy’s stay in San Francisco was a lavish banquet. Dinner for two hundred was served at eight o’clock in the flag-bedecked, flower-strewn dining room of the Grand Hotel. The menu, printed in gold, silver, crimson, blue, and mauve, was dizzying: oysters, soups, fish, cold appetizers (including the intriguing “Westphalia Ham, décoré à la Japonaise”), four boiled offerings, eight entrées, and seven kinds of roasted meat. There were a dozen vegetable dishes, and twice that number of desserts. The champagne was courtesy of Krug and Roederer, and the tables were crowned with edible ornaments including a Temple of Fame, an Arc de Triomphe, a Treble Horn of Plenty, and a “Gothic Pyramid.”

When all appetites had been sated, the speeches began. Newton Booth, the newly installed governor of California, declared that Japan was “the Great Britain of the Pacific—the England of the Orient,” thus banishing Japan’s foreignness with a single rhetorical flourish. “It is something new in history for a nation to apply for matriculation as a student in the university of the world, where the modern professors are the telegraph, the steam-engine and the printing press, and where the course taught is what we call Christian civilization,” he continued, deftly defining Japan as a sort of visiting scholar, gratifyingly clever, somewhat awestruck, and completely unthreatening.

Iwakura thanked him but quickly ceded the floor to his charismatic vice-envoy, Hirobumi Ito. Extended sojourns in England and America had taught the younger man an ease and comfort among foreigners that many of his colleagues lacked. Now in charge of modernizing Japan’s infrastructure, Ito spoke—in English—of dazzling progress in the construction of railroads, lighthouses, and oceangoing vessels, skipping nimbly over the turmoil that had recently convulsed Japan. “Our Daimios magnanimously surrendered their principalities, and their voluntary action was accepted
by a General Government,” he declared. Japan’s progress included social as well as technological advancement, Ito insisted. “By educating our women, we hope to ensure greater intelligence in future generations. With this end in view, our maidens have already commenced to come to you for their education.” Though not, perhaps, for their entertainment. The girls were not among the invited guests that evening.

Speech after speech followed, but no one placed Ito’s vision of Japan ascendant in clearer context than the Reverend Horatio Stebbins, of San Francisco’s First Unitarian Church. The arrival of the embassy, he said, “seems a repetition of the old story where the magii [
sic
] of the East was led to where the Child lay. That star still lives and stands where it is most cherished. Welcome, most illustrious descendants of the old stock. Your presence is more welcome than the incense of frankincense and myrrh.” Stebbins’s hyperbole may have been champagne fueled, but it captured the Americans’ mood: the guests from the East were welcome, their tribute graciously received, but the star they followed was American. The assembled guests roared their approval.

A
FEW DAYS
before the embassy was to leave San Francisco, Mrs. DeLong received a letter from the State Central Woman Suffrage Committee of California, to be translated for the girls. “Your visit to this country has an especial significance to those women of America who have been and are laboring for the rights and privileges belonging to a broader field of action than has before been open to them; and they rejoice that this movement is simultaneous in Japan and other enlightened nations, marking, as it does, a new era in the history of the world.” The encounter may have been good publicity for the suffrage committee, but it is doubtful the girls had the faintest idea what they were talking about. Nothing resembling representative government yet existed in Japan. It would be nearly two decades before even the wealthiest Japanese men had the right to vote. (As for woman suffrage, Japanese women would not win the right to vote until 1945, when the American Occupation enforced it.)

But as baffling and overwhelming as these two weeks of hectic welcome in San Francisco had been, they were only a prelude. Early on the morning of January 31, the Iwakura embassy boarded a special train to begin a journey that was still a novelty even for most Americans: crossing the continent by rail. It was not yet three years since the pounding of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, at the edge of the Great Salt Lake in Utah Territory. By the time they reached Washington, DC, their final destination, the girls would see more of their new country than most of their American hosts ever had, or would.

They traveled in style. George M. Pullman had introduced his revolutionary sleeper cars just in time to capitalize on transcontinental travel, and five of them had been ordered to accommodate the embassy. During the day, long plush-upholstered seats faced each other across a central table in each compartment; at night, porters reclined the seats to form lower berths and released overhead latches to drop the upper berths down. There were curtains for privacy, ornate floral paintings on the ceiling, mirrored panels, carpets on the floor, and glass wall-sconces to make the gilt accents sparkle. “It is all quite opulent,” wrote Kume in awe. At a breathtaking average speed of twenty miles per hour, the train seemed to soar above the ground. On straightaways it could go nearly thirty.

Their first stop was Sacramento, California’s capital. The schedule included a tour of the insane asylum at Stockton, and then it was on to the chambers of the state legislature. (Wags insisted that the delegates wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.) As usual, the girls stayed in their rooms at the Orleans Hotel, which afforded privacy but continued to hinder their education in American manners. They ate what was placed before them without much understanding of what it was or how it should taste, and because they usually dined alone, they remained unenlightened. When a pot of butter appeared on the table that evening, each girl took her spoon and scooped up a mouthful, there being no one to demonstrate its use as a condiment. At least their isolation allowed them to grimace and gag unobserved.

Though the legislature had spent the previous few days bickering about who should be responsible for the entertainment expenses of the embassy
(breaking off their arguments only when the delegates themselves entered the chambers for a visit), Sacramento saw the Japanese off with yet another banquet on their final evening, complete with miniature statues of President Grant gracing each table. The festivities ended with rousing choruses of “America,” “Auld Lang Syne,” and “Home, Sweet Home,” sung with more spirit than harmony. In the wee hours of the morning on February 2, the delegates began their transcontinental trip in earnest.

T
HE SUN WAS
high and the passengers still groggy when the train reached Cape Horn, a particularly stunning stretch of track high above the American River. “Far below, at the foot of the valley, was a tiny village near the river, which meandered like a winding sash,” marveled Kume. “We could see people the size of peas and inch-high horses moving along a thread-like road.” Two more locomotives were added for the climb above the snow line and across the Sierra Nevada. Flurries whipped past the double-hung windows, which began to fog over, obscuring tier upon tier of jagged peaks. Snowsheds covered the tracks for miles at a time, with shafts of sunlight reflecting off the snow and slashing into the darkened cars through gaps in the boards. At Summit, seven thousand feet above sea level, the train was coupled to a snowplow for the long descent.

From there it was on to the Great Basin, with endless sagebrush desert replacing the dramatic Sierra. From the train the travelers could see Indians in the dome-shaped thatched dugouts of their winter camps—a long way from the cupolas of the Grand Hotel. “Having journeyed through a realm of civilization and enlightenment, we were now crossing a very ancient, uncivilized wilderness,” Kume wrote. He found no romance in the scene: “Their features display the bone structure often seen among our own base people and outcasts.”

The next stop was Ogden, Utah Territory, which they reached on February 4—and were then unable to leave. Snow had blockaded the Union Pacific Railroad. They could consider themselves lucky: passengers trapped for days aboard snowbound trains farther east were surviving on
salt fish and crackers, and piling out to help railroad workers shovel snow that had drifted as high as the smokestacks of the engines. Resigned, the delegates transferred to a branch line to wait out the delay in Salt Lake City, thirty-five miles to the south.

In 1872, Salt Lake City was a handful of muddy streets with board sidewalks, frequented by ranchers, miners, soldiers, and new Mormon converts attracted from as far east as England. The Japanese travelers put up at the Townsend House, Salt Lake City’s leading hotel: a wood-frame building with a long veranda and a corral out back for cattle. Though there was a spacious “ball-room” upstairs, the bedrooms were tiny and the partitions between them thin.

Within hours of arrival, Iwakura received an invitation from Brigham Young, patriarch of the Mormon Church, requesting the pleasure of his company. As diplomatic etiquette dictated that Young should be the caller and not the called-upon, the ambassador politely declined. The messenger insisted that Young was eager to meet the Japanese visitors but found it impossible to present himself at the Townsend House. Why?, the ambassador inquired. Well, said the messenger, the prophet Brigham unfortunately found himself detained at home in the custody of a federal officer. The first target of President Grant’s antipolygamy campaign, Young had been arrested for “lascivious cohabitation” several months earlier and was awaiting trial. He had sixteen wives and forty-eight children.