Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/129

 Order of the Rising Sun is given for merit and distinguished services, and its red button is worn by many foreigners as well as natives.

Of late, the Emperor has abandoned his attempts to learn English and German, and relies upon interpreters, but he reads translations of foreign literature with great interest. When he passes through the streets, he is received with silent reverence, an advance guard of police and a body-guard of lancers escorting him. While his own people never shout or cheer, he accepts very graciously the foreign custom, and bows an acknowledgment to the hurrahs that sometimes greet him at Yokohama. While the Emperor has been absorbed in the changing affairs of state during the two decades of his reign, he still seems, in comparison with European sovereigns, to dwell in absolute quiet and seclusion. Often, for weeks together, he remains within the palace grounds, where he has riding courts, archery, and rifle ranges, well- stocked fish-ponds, and every means of amusing himself. Disliking the sea, he has no yacht, a chartered mail-steamer or man-of-war carrying him to naval stations or new fortifications, when the railroad is impracticable. His mountain palaces and remote game preserves he never visits.

Immediately after establishing his court at Yeddo, the boy-Emperor returned to Kioto to wed Haruko, daughter of Ichijo Takada, a kago, or court noble of the highest rank. The marriage was solemnized by some Shinto ceremony within the temple of the palace, a ceremony so sacred and private that no Japanese even conjectures its form.

The Empress Haruko, born May 29, 1850, was educated in the strictest conventions of old Japan, and taught only the Chinese classics, her own literature and poetic composition, the use of the koto, the forms of cha no yu, needle-work, and the arrangement of 113