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JAPAN SOCIETY LECTURE

Myoken Bosatsu: The Adoption and Adaptation of the Pole Star Deity by Samurai and Townspeople in Pre-modern Japan

May 8th 2007
BY Peter Pagnamenta & Momoko Williams

////(1 green blanking)
We aren't going to give you the whole story of this book tonight . But as well as being a rather tragic tale of two individuals who wanted to make a life together, we think it raises some general questions, about the perceptions Britain and Japan had of each other, and issues of race and class.
I am going to talk about the political and social background, the Englishman involved, how he got to Japan, his character, and the woman he met there.
And Momoko is going to talk about the ////(2 - letters) cache of his letters, found in Tokyo in the late 1980s, that has been our principle source.
There were over 800, in their original envelopes, crammed into storage boxes. They were seen first by a Japanese writer, and then we were able to get access to them, and follow up the leads and clues they contained. /////(3 - green blanking) Momoko had the huge task of translating this extraordinary collection, and she will be talking about some of the difficulties she had in deciphering them, and showing some photographs.

These are the two people whose story this is:
/////(4 - standing two-shot)
The man on the left, Captain Arthur Hart Synnot, educated at a British public school and Sandhurst, was nearly 39 when this picture was taken.
Masa Suzuki, the daughter of Kakujiro Suzuki, a Tokyo barber, was 30. This probably dates from 1908, when they'd already known each other for four years and she was visiting him in Hong Kong.
///// (5 - green blanking)

When you write a book these days you are expected to go out and talk about it - but its been quite difficult to put this encounter in its context, and get people to understand how it came about, because, as we all know, the study of Britain and Japan's intersecting interests a hundred years ago is not a part of school history here. And so with other audiences it takes a little time - passing quickly through the rise of Meiji Japan - to get to Stage One, the point at which we can really start.

So one of the first things I would like to say is how pleasant it is to speak to the Japan Society, because our task is immediately much easier.

Tonight we don't have to spend any time setting the background and getting to stage one, because for this audience, above all others, the diplomatic announcement that was made in London and Tokyo in early 1902 is very familiar, almost meat and drink. Indeed it launched the high period of the Japan Society itself.

And of course this starting point is the Anglo Japanese Alliance, the military treaty that took both populations by surprise when it was revealed that February, and under which each country agreed to come to the other's aid if they found themselves at war with more than one power. And, when, for a while Japan was Britain's only formal ally.

/////(6 - sea goddesses) In Japan, artists drew the marine goddess Yamatohime arm in arm with Britannia. The same two characters featured in cartoons in "Punch". There was much talk about the natural similarities of the two island peoples, /////(7 green blanking) and British papers referred to Japan as the "England of the East", and the Japanese as "honorary anglo Saxons".

******
////// (8 Arthur and Masa ovals) These two would never have met, and their lives would never have become entwined, if it weren't for the Anglo Japanese Alliance. Because one of the consequences was that the War Office in London realized ///// (9 green blanking) it would need a cadre of officers who spoke Japanese - so that if the new allies ever had to fight alongside, they'd at least to be able to talk to each other.

Captain Arthur Hart-Synnot was one of the small number picked to learn Japanese, by the British Army.

/////(10 Arthur with medals) He was a remarkable man, clever, and in the fast stream. He had passed through staff college and he had just won the DSO for bravery in the Boer War, and he had all the Imperial self-confidence of his time. /////(11 green blanking) He came from a long line of soldiers, going back at least four generations. His grandfather and father had both been Generals -
//////(12 Sir Fitzroy wins VC) this is the sort of stuff the family were made of That is Arthur's Uncle Reginald winning the Victoria Cross as a young Lieutenant in Afghanistan in 1879. He went on to become a Major General and Arthur's mentor.
//////(13 - green blanking)

The family had married into the Irish ascendancy, and owned 5000 acres in Armagh, at Ballymoyer.

/////(14 - Ballymoyer) The house was a rambling old mansion with a Georgian frontage, with military portraits on the walls, set in a damp valley surrounded by beechwoods. Arthur had a great feeling for the Ballymoyer estate and would inherit it while he was still in the Far East. /////(15 - green blanking)

Captain Hart-Synnott had been brought up to the sound of bugles and parade ground drill. But despite this tough military upbringing he was a thoughtful and rather introspective soul. He was unmarried, at 33, with no female attachments. He didn't like big social occasions. He was interested in drawing, and botany. He wrote his own poetry.

The first four officers to be chosen to go and learn Japanese were taken from the different wings of the army - the cavalry, the infantry, the artillery and the engineers. The scheme ran on into the 1930's, and more than 100 British officers eventually passed through it. And there was a navy scheme too. And some acknowledged that it brought benefits over and above the simple acquisition of another language. In 1904 one enlightened British General suggested the scheme helped rebalance the British feeling of racial superiority:
"In India British officers are always busy imposing their views on an Eastern race. in Japan they learn to seek for what the East has got to give to the west".

Arthur was one of the second group, selected in the summer of 1903, and recruited at the same time as his friend and fellow Irishman Captain Woulfe-Flanagan, Captain Charles Yate, and Captain Everard Calthrop, a serious and high minded Artillery officer. They had to take a preliminary course in London first.

I think we can take it that this rather conservative officer, who'd been out of the country in India, or South Africa, living in dusty cantonments, for 12 years, came rather late to the enormous interest in Japan that had built up in Europe and North Amertica since the 1870's - in the arcadian fantasy of "old Japan" , in Japanese culture, in the minutiae of Japanese domestic life.

It was a fascination that extended to Japanese women, about whose charms writers like Sir Edwin Arnold continued to trill. And lightly tripping, winsome Japanese girls were portrayed in a flush of light operas and plays, like Sidney Jones's and Owen Hall's "The Geisha", which ran with huge success in London for several years, tapping the same vein as "The Mikado".

As part of his preparation, Arthur joined the Japan Society - in its heyday just after the signing of the alliance, with a high profile in London, and 1200 members.
//////( 16 - typed list of names) Here is a list of the candidates applying for membership at the same time, from the Society's archives. Calthrop, Woulfe-Flanagan and Hart-Synnot all joined, with J.H.Longford, the first Professor of Japanese at Kings College, London, as their sponsor.
//////(17 - green blanking)

We don't know which of the Society's lectures Arthur attended that year, but there was a catholic mix on offer, dealing with the language, myths and religion, and the international situation. And of course the nature of Japanese society itself, and the place of women. A Mr Kadono gave a talk on the upbringing of Japanese girls. They were, he said, "��taught to be loyal to those they hold dear and superior to them. Thus taught, the Japanese girls and women have developed that resignation and disinterestedness which sometimes takes the form of serenity and dignity" .

Arthur undoubtedly read and heard a lot about Japan, in this period of preparation. He started to learn his characters, passed a test, and by the end of 1903 was ready to leave. And by that time, something else was happening, as you know. The whole world's attention was focused on the Far East, with a war between Russia and Japan, over their competing interests in China and Korea, increasingly likely.

Hart Synnott and Calthrop sailed from the London docks in the 5,500 ton NYK ship "Wakasa Maru", on January 19th 1904, for what was then an eight week journey to Yokohama via Suez. By that time it seemed the war might start at any moment. We don't have Arthur's account of the voyage but we do have letters Everard Calthrop wrote home to his mother - his papers are at the Royal Artillery museum. He and Arthur were clearly different types.
On January 25th, when they were nearing Port Said, he wrote
"I find Synnot, that is the other fellow, not so bad. He spends a great deal of time talking to a Miss Barber, a young Australian girl. And she listens to his interminable Indian recollections�"
A couple of weeks later he was writing
"Synnot is very pleasant, but somehow or other I don't care for him. It is very petty of me, but I can't help feeling grateful to Miss Barber, for taking up so much of his time".
When they reached Colombo they heard the war had started, with the surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur. *****
Once in Tokyo, another of Calthrop's letters suggests how isolated these young officers felt. They had to make do for themselves. "The day I arrived I proceeded immediately to the legation. I was not surprised to find that no arrangements had been made, that they barely knew we were coming, that the extent of what we were required to know at the end of the year, as laid down by the War Office has since been shown to be entirely excessive�etc etc.
In brief they were very pleasant �.. but our people are no help. No-one has sat down ��.. and seriously considered what we had best do, and how he had best do it. ��We are awful muddlers. How different from the Japanese. I have noticed that already. They have the organizing powers of the Germans without their loud and impolite rigidity."

And that organizing capacity was being demonstrated all around them, as full Japanese mobilization continued, bands played at the stations, troops left for the embarkation ports in special trains, and flags hung on the front of every house which had sent off a soldier.

Arthur Hart Synnot stayed /////(18 - Imperial hotel) at the Imperial Hotel for a few days, getting his bearings. He and Calthrop both wanted to put their studies to one side, get out of Tokyo as soon as they could, /////(19 green blanking), and cross to Manchuria to see the fighting. But they weren't allowed to, because London had decided to send out a party of Colonels and Generals - who of course were senior in rank but spoke no Japanese -who were on their way. One of them was the society General, Sir Ian Hamilton, who was already keeping the record he would publish the following year, "A Staff Officer's Scrapbook". He had to mark time for several weeks, also in the Imperial Hotel, before the Japanese government would let them cross to the war. An entry in his diary, written while he was waiting, conveys the appeal young Japanese women had for men of his class and time.
"Looks may be a matter of taste, but charm is not. The smile of the Japanese girl is an enchantment. She looks exquisitely good�.there is something childlike about her, and yet she is so thoughtful and, they say, so brave. There is something else. She is intensely, essentially, feminine."

So Arthur and Calthrop had to find teachers, and somewhere to live in a bewildering city of two million which at that time had less than 200 British residents. Calthrop got a house first, close to the army headquarters, west of the Imperial Palace, and hired a young male student to help him with Japanese conversation, as well as a teacher to come to the house each day, which was the usual way of doing things.

Though Calthrop and Hart Synnot adopted very different approaches to their life in Tokyo, they shared some experiences together. The Japanese army invited them to see the staff college and watch exercises on the parade ground at Aoyama. They were asked to a Prince's garden party.

We find Arthur /////(20 - cricket) playing cricket for a team of diplomats and soldiers against Yokohama that June. He scored 8 runs, and Tokyo won. Otherwise there werent too many distractions, although ///// (21 - green blanking) Arthur makes a brief appearance in the diary of Mary d'Anethan, (dannayton) the English wife of the Belgian minister. In her entry for November 13th 1904 she says: "�.Captain Hart Synnott, who was all through the South African War and who was twice dangerously wounded, came and had tea with me. He is a nice fellow and is one of the language officers sent by the War Office to learn the Japanese language"

He did finally get to the Russo-Japanese war, replacing another officer who had gone sick. Calthrop didn't, to his disappointment. Captain Hart-Synnot left in late December 1904, crossing the Japan Sea in a snow storm.

/////(22 Hart Synnott in furs) He joined the other observers attached to the Japanese Second Army in a small Chinese village where they were billeted, in the extreme cold of the north China winter. ////(23 - green blanking) So he was there for the final, major battle in which the Russians were defeated at Mukden. He had to write up his own account of the action he had watched, and his report for the War Office showed his respect for Japanese staffwork, and his sympathy for the Japanese peasant soldier. It is a humane and vivid narrative, running to thirty pages.

He concluded - and these are his words -
"By far the most remarkable feature in the Japanese army is the wonderful feeling of devotion to the Emperor and their country that pervades all ranks and arms. From this feeling springs the marvellous bravery of the incomparable infantry and the many soldierly virtues that are so marked in this wonderful army" .

And Hart-Synnot's unqualified admiration for Japanese values shows another difference from Calthrop, who remained more detached. After the same battle Calthrop wrote home to his mother
"�. the Japanese successes in battle are extraordinary, due to the devotion of their soldiers and officers who have but one idea, their profession and a fanatical wish to die for their country, and to whom wife, children, parents, art and a thousand other things that interest us and probably distract our minds from soldiering, are nothing. But to me the army is not everything".

By this time another young soldier had come out to learn Japanese, Captain F.S.G. Piggott, (known as Roy Piggott), who would become military attach� in Tokyo, and later a Major-General, and a Chairman of the Japan Society. He was considerably younger, and moved on a loftier social plane. In his autobiography he talks about the other language officers he came across. He seems to have realized that Arthur Hart Synnott was different, more personally identified with Japan than the rest of them. Piggott says: "Except for Calthrop, (Hart Synnot) was probably more in touch with Japanese ideals and thought than most of his contemporaries or successors"

So that was Arthur's professional trajectory, between 1903 when he was chosen to go out to Japan, and May 1905 when he came back from the Russo-Japanese war.
His Japanese was getting better all the time. He had done good work as an observer and he was still seen as a high flyer, with a career likely to match his father and uncle ahead of him. In the meantime he was given another year to resume his language study. And now we will track back, to see the effect Japan had on his private and emotional life over the same period. Which was to almost derail his military career.

*****
There seems no doubt that the very different culture and ambience of Japan had an immediate and heady impact on this rather repressed, intelligent, sensitive man. As we have heard he admired the patriotism and national discipline of a country on a war footing. When he traveled out of Tokyo he was entranced by what remained of the old pre-industrial countryside. He admired Japanese manners and the Japanese aesthetic. And he was also attracted by Japanese women, as so many western men visitors were. And by one woman in particular.

The language officers were allowed to make use of /////(24 - officer's club building) the Japanese Imperial Army Officer's Club, the Kaikosha, which was at the foot of the slope that runs up to Yasukuni shrine, and it was in the garden of the Kaikosha /////(25 - green blanking) that he was smitten. He said later that he had first seen her at the time of the peachblossom, which would make it very soon after he arrived. She was a tradesman's daughter who came from the eastern, Shitamachi section of Tokyo.

Masa Suzuki was 26, and had already learnt about the inequalities of Japanese family life. After a marriage arranged through a go-between she had been dumped by her husband after a few years. So she now carried the stigma of divorce, was past the usual age for marriage, and faced an uncertain future.
Arthur thought she was very beautiful, and proposed she come and keep house for him. He must have offered to pay her more than she was earning at the Kaikosha, probably as a clerk. There would be no male student - Masa would also provide him with his Japanese practice. And one thing led to another as both presumably knew it would.

//////(26 map 1 - Asakusa) They must have wanted to live somewhere discreet, and found a house in Asakusa, on the Sumida river, in a working class neighbourhood where few Europeans would come. (pointer?) It was just here, so very much on the edge of things. On the other side of the river there were villages and then countryside, where they used to go for long walks.

/////(27 - Matsuchiyama hill) The house was next to the Matsuchiyama temple, on a bluff of high ground, and looked out over the busy river, with a ferry crossing just below them. This picture was taken a couple of years after they lived there so it was almost certainly one of these. So quite different from Ballymoyer, with its eighteen bedrooms.
//// (28 - green blanking )

Arthur was clearly besotted with Masa. He would tell her that she wasn't brash, like English women. She presumably appreciated the way he talked to her as no man had before, with a respect for her views and feelings she wasn't used to. And she appears to have been as happy with him as he was with her.

Now there was nothing unusual about foreigners having Japanese girl friends - particularly in Yokohama and Kobe, where many expatriates were on short postings to trading companies or banks. Some of the other British officers had girls, with different levels of commitment.
A sense of the social life of this little group of single western men and Japanese girls comes from the diaries of another officer, Major Roundel Toke, who had been an acting military attach� in this period, and then stayed as a language officer. One gets the impression the young officers were on the fringe of diplomatic and society life, and very much left to their own company. And the girls were untypical themselves, on the margins of Japanese society for one reason or another, as Masa was.

Toke describes their picnics, outings to the sumo, and dinners together. Captain Geoffrey Salmond was going out with Otsuru san, Colin Davidson, a diplomatic language student was having an affair with Otomi San. There were occasional pregnancies - Otomi San had to go off to Kyoto for several months and Arthur Hart Synnott was rather disgusted at the way Davidson treated her. Toke himself had a girl friend, Oharu San, but was also fascinated by geisha, and his diaries (which are owned by a private collector in Boston, Fred Sharf, whose help we want to acknowledge) show a rather unhealthy interest in very young geisha, the hankyoku, who he photographed and whose names he lists.

But actually setting up house with a Japanese, as Arthur had done was taking things a step further and none of the others did this. And while an eye might have been blinked to it by commercial circles in Yokohama, it was not acceptable behaviour for a British officer.

The fact is that Arthur had taken the spirit of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance a little too far. Whatever the public proclamations of closeness to Britain's new found ally, there were limits. On the British side there was still an underlying assumption that the white races were superior to the so called "yellow" races. And he had to conceal his cross-racial affair from the War Office back in London, or risk his career.

There was also the issue of class. If he had developed a chaste friendship with an aristocrat's daughter, always assuming they had found a way of meeting, there would have been problems, but they would have been different. As it was he couldn't be seen with Masa because of the gap in their backgrounds, as much as anything else.

Those in the little circle who did know about the affair must have assumed it would be like many others before it - something that would finish when Arthur's posting came to an end. Expatriates referred to these women as "temporary wives".

But what was different about Arthur and Masa Suzuki was that after a few months he was assuring her that his commitment was total and for life. If at first she doubted him, his word was put to the test when he had to leave for Manchuria in December 1904. But he promised he would come back to her, he continued to pay her rent, and five months later he returned to her in Tokyo as he had promised.

And for a year, between May 1905 and May 1906 the two of them lived together happily while he continued to improve his Japanese.

/////(29 - map 2 Juniso ) (pointer ?) They found a new house to rent, this time right on the other side of Tokyo near the road out of the city through Shinjuku, a long tram ride from the centre and off the European beaten track, //////(30 - Juniso pond). It was by the Juniso pond, a beauty spot from the Edo times, where tea houses were built on stilts out over the water, and close to the Kumano shrine./////(31 -green blanking)

If you want to locate where they lived in today's Tokyo it is almost at the foot of the 48 story Tokyo metropolitan government skyscraper, in Shinjuku. And if you look down from the observation tower, you can see the copper roof of the Kumano shrine. In those days it would still have been surrounded by woods and rice paddies - now the urban sprawl runs to the horizon.

That summer, of 1905, Arthur and Masa took a long journey by train to the mountains and coasts of northern Japan, which must have been as exotic for Masa as it was for him because she had never traveled in her own country.

But they were living on borrowed time. Arthur knew his posting would end, and must have been all too aware of the reputation western men had for exploiting and then abandoning Japanese women. Though "Madam Butterfly" had opened at La Scala just as he was arriving in Japan, the same basic story was familiar from novels and the stage. And there was a widely known popular song, with a rum-ti-tum tune, that came from the musical play "The Geisha", in which the chorus sing about a girl called Mimosa, who has been kissed by a British naval officer, and teases him.

"For she was the jewel of Asia - of Asia - of Asia
The beautiful Queen of the Geisha - the Geisha - the Geisha
And she laughed. "It is just as they say sir,
You love for as long as you can
A month, or a week or a day sir,
Will do for a girl of Japan"

In May 1906 - almost exactly 101 years ago years ago this week, Captain Hart-Synnot's posting ended and he was due to return to England. //////(32 - two shot Arthur and masa) Before he left they had their photograph taken together, for each other to keep. He told her that he would return to London, and be away for a few months, but expected to be sent back to Tokyo as the next military attach� - a post which had just become vacant. Meanwhile he would continue to support her financially. ////(33 - blank screen - switch off)

From the moment his ship left Yokohama, he started writing to her, in Japanese because she didn't speak English, sending letters from every port. As he was crossing the Indian ocean, he wrote "I am sleeping on the upper deck every night, and think about you watching the stars. It is 17 days since I parted from you but it can't be helped. I will return to Japan as soon as possible". He was always pledging that he would be with her for the long haul. "Let us be close until we die".

When the boat reached Marseilles there was a letter waiting from her, which had come by the faster, overland route. In which she told him she was pregnant with his child.

So they were caught, on different sides of the world, at a time when staying in touch was extraordinarily difficult. There was no international telephone of course, and their letters took six weeks to pass in each direction. And Arthur would now have to support and reassure her in a language in which, however proficient he had become, he still found it hard to express complex feelings.
What neither of them knew was that this correspondence was going to carry on over a period of thirty years. Now Momoko is going to say more about those letters:

Arthur Hart-Synott letters
Note: The * marks indicate the photos are not included.
Before I start, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Japan Society for the use of the library which provided us with valuable sources for our research. My talk will focus mainly on the letters written by Arthur Hart-Synnot. Sadly Masa's letters did not survive.
(Photo 1/Letter)Here is one of his letters written beautifully. We were very fortunate to have had so many wonderful photos which we could not use in publication so I am delighted to show you some of the unpublished photos today. The majority of Arthur's letters were written on long makigami papers. They were very thin flimsy rice papers and some had beautiful designs printed on them. Some are as long as 1m -2m long as you have seen.
(Photo 2/Envelopes) The envelopes were small narrow rectangular shape and many of them were sealed with red wax in the Hart-Synott family crest. Sometime he put silk threads around the envelopes and put wax upon them.
This is* the first letter he wrote to Masa when he left for Manchuria during the Russo Japanese war dated 14th December 1904 and this told us the exact address in Asakusa where they lived together. As you can see, his Japanese writing is still poor. (Photo 3/Letter 1905.1.13): But after a month, he was writing a pretty competent letter from army camps and it shows the remarkable speed with which his writing ability was progressing. By the following year, after leaving Japan, his Japanese was in the best for, writing * many long letters from Ireland.
One of my first difficulties was to get familiar with Hentai kana style as I did not know it at all. Hentai style kana was widely used at the time but has since been replaced by the much simpler modern kana. It took some time to read each letter at the beginning but as time passed, my speed increased. His Japanese writing was remarkably good but was not always quite right and I will show you some examples of words and phrases I found rather sweet and sometime baffling.
*The 1st one says "There is no newspaper" He uses a word "Shinbun" meaning newspaper, but obviously he meant news and not newspaper. *In the other letter, he writes "kori suberi" which translates as "ice slip" but which must have meant "an Ice skate".
Arthur and Masa often used private phrases which only they could understand. *Here Arthur told Masa that he has not told anyone about her being "Sapporo". I only worked out that "Sapporo" meant "pregnant" (goodness knows why) after coming across it a few more times in particular contexts. *The other letter talks about something Masa gave to Arthur and how he is keeping it in a secret place but I have never found out what it was�could it have been her hair or her heart? Arthur always referred to Masa as "dare". This was a puzzle for some time. I initially thought this was his way of making sounds like Japanese from the word "darling".
(Photo 4/Letter No.18 1907.12): The puzzle was solved when I come across this letter of 1907 which he wrote in English and put the Japanese translation along the side. So "dare" was actually "dolly". Whether she liked being called "dolly" is another matter.
I should talk about Masa a little. Clearly Masa was not well educated but she was intelligent and ready to absorb whatever Arthur could teach her. This formal portrait was taken, I think, to send to Arthur when he requested a photo from France during the 1st W.W.
But I want to show you * this informal picture in her everyday kimono. She was quiet and modest but she must have had some quality which drew Arthur to such a deep love for her. I will call it "Fatal attraction"!
(Photo 5/Masa &Kiyoshi): One other photo I would like to show you is this one with their son Kiyoshi wearing a student hat by the Tamagawa River in Tokyo in 1925. Through the relationship with Arthur, Masa has left her working class past and became an educating mother with a very bright intelligent son. Doesn't she look a happy and a proud mother?
Arthur and Masa's most settled life together was when he was serving in Hong Kong from 1907 to 1911. During this period, she spent half of the year with him and he started to teach Masa English. Here are *some letters he wrote in English with Japanese translation. As I said at the beginning, there are no surviving letters from Masa except for * this one which she wrote in English.
Hong Kong 1. January 1909.
My dear Arthur
A Happy New Year
Many thanks for your nice letter very mach. I am very happy.
Wishing you also a Happy Year.
Masa
By the way, I can show you *this letter written by Oharu-san to Captain Toke. I have no doubt this letter was written with Masa's help. My guess is that the reason for using Katakana was that Toke only leaned katakana. But from this, one can just about imagine what Masa's Japanese letters might have been like.
Another great difficulty I had was working out the correct spelling of various foreign names appearing in his letters. They were usually written in katakana and are not always easy to decipher. For example I did not know how to spell in English the name Toke.
(Photo 6/Letter): Once he left Japan in May 1906, his Japanese study was based on books and on Masa's letters. So it was inevitable that his Japanese became feminised. For example, he uses the expression "ne" which men do not use. (Photo 7/Pressed flower): One of the common interests they shared was gardening. They sent flowers and plants from wherever they could to each other and some of them survived so well after nearly 100 years. The sweetest example is this Forget Me Not from the battle field of the 1st W.W.
I was intrigued to see the letters written from the battle fields of Flanders. I was imagining they might have been soiled with mud from the western front. But they were written on clean makigami papers and sometime on a small western paper depending where he was writing. *Here are some of the letters he wrote from the bunker. One describes how exhausted he was after 6 to 7 nights of hell and it is amazing to think of Arthur writing these letters in the middle of fierce battles and that these letters actually got to Japan. These are surely the only letters written privately from Ypres to Japan.
He wrote almost once a week during the separation even from the battle and *this is the 1st letter from the war front dated 5th Jan. 1917. Here I must explain the numbering of the letters. They started to number each letter when he left for Japan the first time in May 1906. A new number started after every parting. The 1st separation lasted 87 letters before they met again. The last time he left Masa was 6th September 1913 and the last letter dated 29th September 1919, *No. 339 shown here (339 letters in 6 years.) when finally their long correspondence had ended when Arthur dropped his bomb shell telling her he was to marry.
(Photo 8/Arthur in wheelchair): Those who have read the book will know of the disaster which occurred to Arthur. For me this is the most iconic photo of all and tells his suffering more than words can express. I often wonder how Masa must have felt when she saw this photo. * This is the nurse whom Arthur married in July 1919. Her name was Violet Drower. She must have been a kind and charming nurse with her bright blue eyes. She was known as "Chai" by Arthur and other nurses because of her china blue eyes.
This is their *wedding photo from the Daily Mirror. They look happy enough but how cruel to call him a "Legless Bridegroom"! But by January 1920, Masa initiated the exchange of letter again. It was only a few letters to begin with but by 1924 he was writing once a fortnight regularly till 1939 when finally the start of the 2nd WW ended their over 30 years of correspondence. For unknown reasons all of the 1929 and 1930 letters are missing and also from 1932 onward. Maybe Masa might have destroyed most of the 1930's letters for fear of suspicion from the military.
*This is a lovely photo of Violet. I think it was extraordinary of her to accept her situation in the manner she did. It could not be easy part to play in this triple relationship. *This is the villa in the south of France where they lived till the 2nd W.W started. * Here they are dressed up for the court appearance at Buckingham Palace.* Arthur and Violet with their friends. Most of the time he was in a wheelchair.
*Here is a thank you letter to Masa from Violette when she received a shawl which was originally given to Masa by Arthur some years before and * here is Arthur's translation which Violet copied in Romanji.
(Photo 9/Kiyoshi with teddy bear): This is Kiyoshi with a teddy bear. I like this photo. There was no mention of the teddy bear in Arthur's letters but this must have been one of the presents he brought to Japan when Kiyoshi was a little boy. Kiyoshi took *this photo when he visited them in 1938. In their marriage, they seemed to have found a comfortable life and aged together nicely.
It is extraordinary for the letters to be discovered in such an intact way but for them to survive fires, floods, earthquakes and bombing during the war time of Tokyo was the most remarkable fortune for us all.
Finally I would like to end my talk with this poem which Arthur wrote in the 1920's. This reveals his true feeling towards the two women in his life and the 5th verse particularly indicates his agonising dilemma. I find it so moving every time I read it. MAYONE
Almost I laugh:
Though fitter' t were to cry
To think that I,
In my extremity
Of misery,
Should turn to you, to look
For sympathy.

Yet you brought peace
Where had been blank despair.
Made life again seem fair.
You saved me, dear.
Yes, saved a soul slipping
Fast all repair.

What did I seek?
A solace to my mind
In you to find?
Round me your soft arms wind.
Oh; God! What faith!
With eyes tight closed, to say
The world is blind.

Soft arms cling close.
Love's tendrils round me grow.
Dear child I know,
Never would you let go.
Unworthy I
Who take your all, and give
But empty show.

A show of love
You have. Affection true,
Gratitude too:
All these I give to you;
Could I give love
I would, but this one thing
I cannot do.

One sacred thing,
The one thing that is best.
Be it confessed,
Without it, all the rest
Turn ash and dust.
Can I change dust to gold
At your behest?

I would I could,
I cannot; so you must
Accept the dust
For gold. God! How unjust!
Yet you who know
And understand, accept,
With love and trust.

I said we weren't going to tell you the whole story, but Momoko has inevitably referred some of the later developments. So it may help if I give a very compressed version of what happened after 1906:

Arthur never managed to be posted to Tokyo, or become Military Attache - though Everard Calthrop did. He believed the War Office had held his affair against him.

But he was given other postings in Asia, and up until 1913 Arthur, Masa and the children (there were two) managed to see each other during his leaves, for a few weeks at a time. In the First World War he was fighting in France, continuing to write to her from the trenches. He carried on writing even after he was seriously injured by a shell in 1918, and lost both his legs, saying he'd come to Japan once he'd learnt to walk again and the war was over.

But then in 1919 Masa, out of the blue, received a letter in which he broke the shocking news that he'd married an Englishwoman. And the question the book leaves you is whether he'd been misleading her all the time - whether they could in fact have lived together, once he had recovered sufficiently or whether he had no alternative. And following on from this - whether his marriage to his English wife Violet was a marriage of convenience, and it was Masa he really loved all the time, which is where that poem comes in.

Fig. 13

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