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A Journal from Japan A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist
The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Journal from Japan, by Marie Carmichael Stopes
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Title: A Journal from Japan
A Daily Record of Life as Seen by a Scientist
Author: Marie Carmichael Stopes
Release Date: December 20, 2013 [eBook #44475]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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A JOURNAL FROM JAPAN
A JOURNAL FROM
JAPAN
A DAILY RECORD OF LIFE
AS SEEN BY A SCIENTIST
BY
MARIE C. STOPES
D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S.
LONDON
BLACKIE & SON, Limited, 50 OLD BAILEY, E.C.
GLASGOW AND BOMBAY
1910
TO JAPAN
Land that dreamed while the nations fought!
Truth with thy dreamers had forgathered,
Peace, in thine isles enclosed, had taught
Her secret laws of Beauty to thy sons.
Then men spent hours beneath the cherry trees,
Or watched the pointed Iris pierce the ground.
They cultivated Wisdom on their knees
And regulated life in ways profound.
Then thy fair daughters ministered to men,
Subduing and subdued their graceful form.
Dreamland of Beauty, girt by glowing seas!
Thou didst appear unfitted for the storm
That broke upon thee from the lowering West.
Yet thou hast risen and conquered.
Thou dost stand, armed as a modern People
In the front rank—and yet I say, alas!
Who could have wished, in waking thou shouldst spurn
The wondrous rightness of thy sheltered past?
To be as others are thou seem’st to yearn,
And for mere useful ugliness dost cast
For ever from thee beauties unsurpassed.
True, thou hast beaten them on their own ground,
The Goths and Vandals whom as foes were found,
Yet I would rather see thee still apart
Than soiling thy traditions in the mart.
Wouldst thou not weep if thy sweet cherry tree
Dropped its light blooms to bear the hard rice grains?
O cherry flower of lands! I weep to see
Thy falling blooms. The whole World’s loss, thy “gains.”
PREFACE
This daily journal was written primarily because I well knew that time would force the swiftly passing incidents and impressions to blur each other in my memory. Then want of leisure tempted me to send the journal home to friends in place of letters, and the two or three for whom I originally intended it widened the circle by handing it on to many others, until it has, in a way, become public property. Several of those who have read it have asked me to publish it in book form, and although I vowed that I would not add to the already excessive number of books written on Japan, I have decided to publish this just because it was not written with a view to publication. It is this which gives it any claim to attention, and guarantees its veracity. To preserve its character I have stayed my hand where it has often been tempted to change or revise statements which may sometimes seem too hard in the softening light of distance.
Days about which there is no entry were filled with work on my fossils at the University. Many evenings were spent with friends at dinners or dances. Reference to these things has been deleted, for neither the solid work nor the social gaiety is likely to interest any one now.
Personalities (alas, not always irrelevant!) have been eliminated of necessity, but I have not attempted to give the text any literary form which it did not originally possess. The words are exactly those jotted down at the time and place that they profess to be, and therefore mirror, as no rewritten phrases could, the direct impression that that time and place made on me. Japan is changing swiftly, and I saw things from a point of view that differs somewhat from any recorded, so that perhaps these daily impressions may have an interest for those who cannot visit Japan, and in the future for those who prefer facts to fair sounding generalisations and beautifully elaborated theories.
MARIE C. STOPES.
Hampstead, July 1909.
LIST OF PLATES
| PAGE | |
| Portrait of the Author | Frontispiece |
| My Policeman in his Private Dress |