A Diplomat in Japan. Ernest Mason Satow

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СКАЧАТЬ answer to the blow struck at Hodogaya, a joint expedition would have been sent out by England, France and Holland to fight many a bloody battle and perhaps dismember the realm of the Mikados. In the meantime the commerce for whose sake we had come to Japan would have been killed. And how many lives of Europeans and Japanese would have been sacrificed in return for that of Shimadzu Saburô?

      I was standing outside the hotel that afternoon, and on seeing the bustle of men riding past, inquired what was the cause. The reply, "A couple of Englishmen have been cut down in Kanagawa," did not shock me in the least. The accounts of such occurrences that had appeared in the English press and the recent attack on the Legation of which I had heard on my way from Peking had prepared me to look on the murder of a foreigner as an ordinary, every-day affair, and the horror of bleeding wounds was not sufficiently familiar to me to excite the feelings of indignation that seemed to animate every one else. I was secretly ashamed of my want of sympathy. And yet, if it had been otherwise, such a sudden introduction to the danger of a horrid death might have rendered me quite unfit for the career I had adopted. This habit of looking upon assassination as part of the day's work enabled me later on to face with equanimity what most men whose sensations had not been deadened by a moral anæsthetic would perhaps have considered serious dangers. And while everyone in my immediate surroundings was in a state of excitement, defending Vyse or abusing Colonel Neale, I quietly settled down to my studies.

      In those days the helps to the acquisition of the Japanese language were very few. A thin pamphlet by the Rev. J. Liggins, containing a few phrases in the Nagasaki dialect, a vocabulary compiled by Wm. Medhurst, senior, and published at Batavia many years before; Rodriguez' Japanese Grammar, by Landresse; a grammar by MM. Donker Curtius and Hoffmann in Dutch, and a French translation of it by Léon Pagès; a translation by the latter of part of the Japanese-Portuguese Dictionary of 1603; Hoffmann's dialogues in Japanese, Dutch and English; Rosny's Introduction à la langue Japonaise, were about all. And but few of these were procurable in Japan. I had left London without any books on the language. Luckily for me, Dr. S. R. Brown was just then printing his Colloquial Japanese, and generously allowed me to have the first few sheets as they came over at intervals from the printing office in Shanghai. A Japanese reprint of Medhurst's vocabulary, which could be bought in a Japanese bookshop that stood at the corner of Benten-Dôri and Honchô Itchôme, speedily proved useless. But I had a slight acquaintance with the Chinese written characters and was the fortunate possessor of Medhurst's Chinese-English Dictionary, by whose help I could manage to come at the meaning of a Japanese word if I got it written down. It was very uphill work at first, for I had no teacher, and living in a single room at the hotel, abutting too on the bowling alley, could not secure quiet. The colonel ordered us, Robertson and myself, to attend every day at the "office" (we did not call it the chancery then) to ask if our services were required, and what work we had consisted chiefly of copying despatches and interminable accounts. My handwriting was, unfortunately for me, considered to be rather better than the average, and I began to foresee that a larger share of clerical work would be given to me than I liked. My theory of the duty of a student-interpreter was then, and still is, to learn the language first of all. I considered that this order would be a great interruption to serious work if he insisted upon it, and would take away all chances of our learning the language thoroughly. At last I summoned up courage to protest, and I rather think my friend Willis encouraged me to do this; but I did not gain anything by remonstrating. The colonel evidently thought I was frightfully lazy, for when I said that the office work would interfere with my studies, he replied that it would be much worse for both to be neglected than for one to be hindered. At first there was some idea of renting a house for Robertson and myself, but finally the Colonel decided to give us rooms at one end of the rambling two-storied building that was then occupied as a Legation. It stood at the corner of the bund and the creek, where the Grand Hotel now is, and belonged to a man named Hoey, who took advantage of my inexperience and the love of books he had discovered to be one of my weaknesses to sell me an imperfect copy of the Penny Cyclopædia for more than a complete one would have cost at home. I used to play bowls sometimes with Albert Markham (of Arctic fame), who was then a lieutenant on board H.M.S. Centaur, and Charles Wirgman, the artist-correspondent of the Illustrated London News. Towards the end of October we induced the colonel to consent to our getting two lessons a week from the Rev. S. R. Brown, and to allow us to engage a native "teacher," at the public expense. So we had to get a second, and pay for him out of our own pockets. He also agreed to leave us the mornings free for study up to one o'clock. A "teacher," it must be understood, does not mean a man who can "teach." In those days, at Peking and in Japan also, we worked with natives who did not understand a word of English, and the process by which one made out the meaning of a sentence was closely akin to that which Poe describes in the Gold Beetle for the decyphering of a cryptograph. Through my "boy," who was equally ignorant of English, I got hold of a man who explained that he had once been a doctor, and having nothing to do at the moment would teach me Japanese without any pay. We used to communicate at first by writing down Chinese characters. One of his first sentences was literally "Prince loves men, I also venerate the prince as a master"; prince, as I afterwards divined, being merely a polite way of saying you. He said he had lots of dollars and ichibus and would take nothing for his services, so I agreed with him that he should come to my room every day from ten to one. However, he never presented himself again after the first interview.

      Sir Ernest Satow 1869

      Sir Ernest Satow 1903

      My "boy" turned out to be what I considered a great villain. I had at an early date wanted one of the native dictionaries of Chinese characters with the Japanese equivalents in Katakana. I sent him out to buy one, but he shortly returned and said that there were none in the place, and he must go over to Kanagawa, where he would be sure to find what I wanted. After being out the whole day, he brought me a copy which he said was the only one to be found and for which he charged me four ichibus, or nearly two dollars. This was just after my arrival, when I was new to the place and ignorant of prices. Six weeks afterwards, being in the bookseller's shop, I asked him what was the price of the book, when he replied that he had asked only 1–½ ichibu. My boy had taken it away and returned next day to say that I had refused to give more than one, which he consequently accepted. Unconscionable rascal this, not content with less than 300 per cent. of a squeeze! I found out also that he had kept back a large slice out of money I had paid to a carpenter for some chairs and a table. He had to refund his illicit gains, or else to find another place.

      After a time I got my rooms at the Legation and was able to study to my heart's content. The lessons which Mr. Brown gave me were of the greatest value. Besides hearing us repeat the sentences out of his book of Colloquial Japanese and explaining the grammar, he also read with us part of the first sermon in the collection entitled Kiu-ô Dôwa, so that I began to get some insight into the construction of the written language. Our two teachers were Takaoka Kanamé, a physician from Wakayama in Ki-shiû, and another man, whose name I forget. He was stupid and of little assistance. Early in 1863 Robertson went home on sick leave, and I had Takaoka Kanamé to myself. In those days the correspondence with the Japanese Government was carried on by means of Dutch, the only European tongue of which anything was known. An absurd idea existed at one time that Dutch was the Court language of Japan. Nothing was farther from the truth. It was studied solely by a corps of interpreters attached to the Dutch settlement at Nagasaki, and when Kanagawa and Hakodaté were opened to foreign trade, some of these interpreters were transferred to those ports. On our side we had collected with some difficulty a body of Dutch interpreters. They included three Englishmen, one Cape Dutchman, one Swiss, and one real Dutchman from Holland, and they received very good pay. Of course it was my ambition to learn to read, write, and speak Japanese, and so to displace these middlemen.

      So Takaoka began to give me lessons in the epistolary style. He used to write a short letter in the СКАЧАТЬ