Page:Eliza Scidmore--Jinrikisha days in Japan.djvu/149

 the higher Japanese circles as it is possible to be with such subjects at any capital, and the round of tiffins, dinners, garden-parties, and small dances makes Tokio very gay during the greater part of the year.

The first formal visiting of the season begins in October, and by May social life is at an end until hot weather is over. Lent makes little break in the social chain. Great seriousness and exactness in social usage is inherent in this high-bred people. Visits of ceremony are scrupulously paid within the allotted time, and a newly-arrived official in Tokio finds no diminution of the card-leaving and visiting which awaits him in any other capital. At the houses of the imperial princes cards are not left, the visitor inscribing his name in a book in the hall. After each state ball, a guest must call at once upon the princess, or minister’s wife, who presided, and any remissness strikes his name from her list.

Garden-parties are the favorite expression of Tokio hospitality. All official residences in the city have fine grounds, and many ministers of state own suburban villas. A few of the legations are able to entertain in the same way, and many military officers make the garden of the old Mito yashiki, now the Arsenal grounds, the scene of their courtesies.

There is a stately court journal, which is the official bulletin, but Tokio has not yet set up a paper of society gossip and scandal for the rigorous censorship of the Japanese press to expunge; nor are there books of court memoirs. Yet what memoirs could be more interesting than those that might be written by the men and women who were born in feudal times, who have lived through the exciting days of the Restoration, and have watched the birth and growth of New Japan. 133