oman, just
past her twentieth year, and only recently married to an army officer.
She had belonged by birth to a military family, and, as befitted the
wife and daughter of a soldier, she resolved, on hearing of the death of
her husband, that she would not survive him, but would follow him to the
great unknown. Sending away her servant on some excuse, she remained
alone in her home, which she put into perfect order. Then she arranged
all her papers, wrote a number of letters, and made her last
preparations for death. She dressed herself in full ceremonial dress as
she had been dressed for her bridal, and seated herself before a large
portrait of her husband. Then, with a short dirk, such as is owned by
every samurai woman, she stabbed herself. In her last letters she gives
as the reason for her death that, having no ties in the world, she would
not survive her husband, but wished to remain faithful to him in death
as she had been in life.

"Many such stories might be cited, but enough has been given to show the
spirit that exists in Japan. With such women and such teachings in
their homes, can it be wondered at that Japan is a brave nation, and
that her soldiers are winning battles? Certainly some of the honor and
credit must be given to these wives and mothers scattered throughout
Japan, who are surely, in some cases, the inspirers of that courage and
spirit which is just now surprising the world."

_Page 239._

Much surprise is evinced by foreigners visiting Japan at the lack of
taste shown by the Japanese in the imitation of foreign styles. And yet,
for these same foreigners, who condemn so patronizingly the Japanese
lack of taste in foreign things, the Japanese manufacture pottery, fans,
scrolls, screens, etc., that are most excruciating to their sense of
beauty, and export them to markets in which they find a ready sale,
their manufacturers wondering, the while, why foreigners want such ugly
things. The fact is that neither civilization has as yet come into any
understanding of the other's aesthetic side, and the sense of beauty of
the one is a sealed book to the other. The Japanese nation, in its
efforts to adopt foreign ways, has been, up to the present time, blindly
imitating, with little or no comprehension of underlying principles. As
a result there is an absolute crudeness in foreign things as attempted
in Japan that grates on the nerves of travelers fresh from the best to
be found in Europe or America.