Tokyo. May 23 Honoured Madam. (This is the most disgusting paper, as you'll presently find when you read the first sheet through on the second.) We are pining to know how the matinée went - what a long time it is before we shall hear! I wonder which of the plays were done. Today we got quite unexpectedly some letters from Father about our American plans. We think we are barely going to stay in Amerikee at all, but I've written to Justice Holmes to say I should like to catch a glimpse of him, and if things turn up, why we might stay on, but I feel rather disposed to return to my poky home - holme, I nearly wrote by a natural opposition of ideas. I was glad to hear the details of the Hustler business - what a provoking man! I'm so sorry Father has all that additional bother. On the other hand he seems to be having sport out of the N.E.R - (At this moment came in a gnome with a most exquisite grey alpaca gown he has just made me, an exact copy of one of Denise's, but that cost £6 and this £3! I am glad to have it, for Peking [Beijing] dust put a final touch to my dilapidated toilette.) I was delighted to have Lord Lovelace's enchanting letter. I wish you had read it before sending it. He writes like someone in the beginning of last century, touches of politics, social anecdotes, all with a perfect style and in an exquisite hand. Dear old thing! Our doings have not been very exciting. On Thursday we spent a rainy day at Yokohama, lunching with the Hanburys whom we found there on the point of leaving Japan. We were mainly engaged with shipping plans. On Friday we went in the morning to a place which is half temple and half fair, Asakusa is its name, and wandered round all the peep shows and bought fascinating penny toys. We lunched with Mr Herbert and met Mr Hohler, second secretary. It was very pleasant. In the afternoon we went to see Dunjiro play - he is the greatest of Japanese actors and wonderful. We came in rather too late and the best of the play was over. We saw him in one act in which he sat in the same position all the time, just moving his expressive old head to listen to a long speech or to answer. Perhaps one could scarcely have seen a better test bit of acting though it was pitched in so very low a key. Every minute of it was vivid, indescribably vital - I can't find other words to express the sense of his being immensely there, the whole thing turning on him though he did so little. I shall go and see him again in an earlier part of the play when he's a young woman. He does two feats in the same play, the heroine and the respectable old Shogun. Today we were taken over the University by our friend, Mr Yokoi, most charming of men. It was extremely interesting. The Laboratories were wonderful - they give themselves chiefly to science in all its forms, and law and medicine. The govt. trains its engineers to a great extent at the university. What hampers education here is the Chinese alphabet. They don't know how to do without it, and it's an enormous study in itself which the poor gnomes have to add on to all their other work. The result is that, slaving all they know, they have to be 2 years longer than we have over their education. And yet if they don't learn it they are cut off from all their own literature which you can't transliterate into a phonetic alphabet. It's a dreadfully horny dilemma. Mr Herbert turned up to lunch and carried us off after to an exhibition of Japanese fencing with swords and lances which was being held in the palace, at least in a sort of shed just inside the palace gates. We were received by the Lord Chamberlain, Baron Sanomiya, who was most kind to us and sat and explained. It was a very interesting show, more of the nature of single stick than fencing and drefful [sic] savage. They sprang about with their bare feet and rushed at one another in furious onslaughts and with horrible shouts. The rapidity of the attacks was most surprising and the agility of their movements admirable. We got in Yokohama, and I have read, Lady Rose's Daughter, the first half of which I think is the best thing Mrs W. [Ward[?]] has done. It tails off towards the end. I do like the people of this country. It's a pleasure to go out in a rickshaw because every rickshaw man is your personal friend before you get home. And he takes the most sympathetic interest in all you do and smilingly explains in broken English where he thinks you had better go next. When you go out of a shop, all the gnomes assemble to bow you goodbye, murmuring: "Prease come again!" (They can't say ls you know.) The Macdonalds are away so we haven't seen them yet.

Sunday 24th. [24 May 1903] I spent a delicious morning wandering about temples and gardens under the charge of my rickshaw man. In one of the temples, a wonderful place all gold lacquer and carving set in a little peaceful garden, a priest came up to me and asked me if I were American. I said no, I was English. He bowed and smiled: "So deska[?]? is that how it is? the English are very good!" I replied in Japanese - in which tongue the conversation was being conducted - "English and Japanese are one." This was greeted with great satisfaction to judge by the expression of my friends the priests, what they said I could not understand. Aubrey Herbert came to lunch and we all went sightseeing together afterwards, but we were so busy talking about the French Revolution and the Russells (there was no connection between the two subjects) that we didn't pay much attention to the sights. Tomorrow we are off the Nikko, where, the gods of the weather being favourable, we mean to walk for a day or two through the hills. The Old Things have just arrived (the Miss Wanchopes you understand) and we fell into each others' arms. Ever your affectionate daughter Gertrude