Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey From East to West and Back by Janice P. Nimura Page B
Authors: Janice P. Nimura
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surprised by the quiet group, unable to communicate with the Americans and largely ignored by their male compatriots. They looked lonely.
Carriages were waiting at the depot when the train reached Chicago on February 26. The vast station roared with freight and passenger cars trundling ceaselessly over an intricate web of track. “Most of the stations up to now had been rather insignificant places,” Kume noted. Chicago was a metropolis.
The girls were wrapped against the cold in heavy red woolen shawls, as yet their only item of Western clothing. This was about to change, though; Mrs. DeLong’s intransigence had at last driven the girls to appeal directly to Iwakura, who ordered the necessary purchases to be made during this stop.
Mayor Joseph Medill was on hand to receive the visitors when they reached their next hotel, Tremont House. His city was not at its best; just four months earlier, the Great Chicago Fire had left much of it a smoking ruin. Devastating fire was commonplace in the dense wood-and-paper streetscapes of Japanese towns. Iwakura expressed his sympathy and complimented “the wonderful recuperative powers of the American people after suffering severe injuries.” Before he left Chicago, he surprised his hosts with a donation of five thousand dollars for fire relief: a princely sum, and “the first money contribution ever made by heathen or pagan donors for the relief of Christian recipients,” noted the Tribune . One more gratifying sign that the Japanese were ready to lay aside their ancient ways and join the ranks of modern civilization.
Iwakura’s three sons, who had left their studies in New Jersey and arrived in Chicago weeks earlier, now joined their father’s embassy. The “little almond-eyed gentlemen” had already succeeded in charming their hosts in Chicago: no “American boys of the same age, taken at randomfrom our schools, would have passed through the ordeal of an interview with a ‘foreign’ journalist with half so much credit,” wrote the Tribune admiringly. That evening, Iwakura’s sons joined the girls for a walk, strolling through the burned-out blocks of the South Side. The boys had already spent a couple of years in American classrooms: here at last were a few sympathetic souls—teenagers, rather than ambassadors—who could tell the girls something of what awaited them.
The train carrying the embassy pulled out of Chicago’s East Station the following evening. As the delegates rolled through Indiana and Ohio, the novelty of travel by rail wore thin. The girls were tired of sitting, but taking a stroll to the end of the car and back carried its own risks: a bump in the track could hurl an unwary passenger against the exposed stove, or send her toppling into the drinking-water tank. Opening the window meant a faceful of cinders and dust, and there was no venturing into the cars ahead or behind; the vestibule car, allowing passengers to pass from one car to the next in a moving train, had not yet been invented. There was no separate car for females either, so the girls, having nowhere to undress discreetly for bed, remained mostly clothed. The thin curtains did nothing to block the sound of the delegates’ snores. The tiny washroom contained a basin, a roller towel, a piece of soap, and very little privacy. On to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where the tracks ran through the center of town, and the cars were uncoupled and pulled by horses, with drivers on each car blowing horns to warn pedestrians. And finally, Washington.
S NOW WAS FALLING in the District of Columbia on leap day, February 29, when the five Pullman cars at last rolled to a stop. Waiting on the platform was a lithe young Japanese man with a mane of black hair swept back from his brow, wise eyes and full lips framed by a strong brow and full beard. In contrast to his recently arrived compatriots, he seemed very much at home, his suit well cut, his linen freshly starched. Arinori Mori,
Carriages were waiting at the depot when the train reached Chicago on February 26. The vast station roared with freight and passenger cars trundling ceaselessly over an intricate web of track. “Most of the stations up to now had been rather insignificant places,” Kume noted. Chicago was a metropolis.
The girls were wrapped against the cold in heavy red woolen shawls, as yet their only item of Western clothing. This was about to change, though; Mrs. DeLong’s intransigence had at last driven the girls to appeal directly to Iwakura, who ordered the necessary purchases to be made during this stop.
Mayor Joseph Medill was on hand to receive the visitors when they reached their next hotel, Tremont House. His city was not at its best; just four months earlier, the Great Chicago Fire had left much of it a smoking ruin. Devastating fire was commonplace in the dense wood-and-paper streetscapes of Japanese towns. Iwakura expressed his sympathy and complimented “the wonderful recuperative powers of the American people after suffering severe injuries.” Before he left Chicago, he surprised his hosts with a donation of five thousand dollars for fire relief: a princely sum, and “the first money contribution ever made by heathen or pagan donors for the relief of Christian recipients,” noted the Tribune . One more gratifying sign that the Japanese were ready to lay aside their ancient ways and join the ranks of modern civilization.
Iwakura’s three sons, who had left their studies in New Jersey and arrived in Chicago weeks earlier, now joined their father’s embassy. The “little almond-eyed gentlemen” had already succeeded in charming their hosts in Chicago: no “American boys of the same age, taken at randomfrom our schools, would have passed through the ordeal of an interview with a ‘foreign’ journalist with half so much credit,” wrote the Tribune admiringly. That evening, Iwakura’s sons joined the girls for a walk, strolling through the burned-out blocks of the South Side. The boys had already spent a couple of years in American classrooms: here at last were a few sympathetic souls—teenagers, rather than ambassadors—who could tell the girls something of what awaited them.
The train carrying the embassy pulled out of Chicago’s East Station the following evening. As the delegates rolled through Indiana and Ohio, the novelty of travel by rail wore thin. The girls were tired of sitting, but taking a stroll to the end of the car and back carried its own risks: a bump in the track could hurl an unwary passenger against the exposed stove, or send her toppling into the drinking-water tank. Opening the window meant a faceful of cinders and dust, and there was no venturing into the cars ahead or behind; the vestibule car, allowing passengers to pass from one car to the next in a moving train, had not yet been invented. There was no separate car for females either, so the girls, having nowhere to undress discreetly for bed, remained mostly clothed. The thin curtains did nothing to block the sound of the delegates’ snores. The tiny washroom contained a basin, a roller towel, a piece of soap, and very little privacy. On to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, where the tracks ran through the center of town, and the cars were uncoupled and pulled by horses, with drivers on each car blowing horns to warn pedestrians. And finally, Washington.
S NOW WAS FALLING in the District of Columbia on leap day, February 29, when the five Pullman cars at last rolled to a stop. Waiting on the platform was a lithe young Japanese man with a mane of black hair swept back from his brow, wise eyes and full lips framed by a strong brow and full beard. In contrast to his recently arrived compatriots, he seemed very much at home, his suit well cut, his linen freshly starched. Arinori Mori,
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