CHAPTER XII: TRAVEL EDUCATION
While I was standing there, one of the daughters, about my age, came out carrying a straw mat of silkworm waste to throw on a pile in the yard for the mulberry stems and rice hulls of silkworm waste make the best fertilizer in the world—and she stopped to bow good-morning. Then she stood there in the June sunshine with her sleeves looped back and her bare feet in straw sandals, and I squatted on the edge of the porch in my home-dyed night kimono, and we got acquainted.
She told me that she took care of six trays of silkworms all by herself. She seemed to know everything about them, and she loved them.
“They’re clean,” she said, “and dainty about food, and intelligent about their own affairs—just like people.”
I was so interested in all the surprising things I heard that I was still listening when a girl came to fold away my bed cushions, and I had to hurry to get dressed.
“Well,” said Brother, after my room had been cleaned, and breakfast brought in, “how do you like living in a boarding house?”
“The boarders are very noisy,” I replied; “and, from what our hostess’s daughter told me, they are very particular. She says they cannot endure one particle of dust. Even a withered leaf will sometimes cause one to ‘tie on his blue neckerchief’ and creep to the outer edge of the tray.”
“Have you seen our host’s grandmother?” asked Brother.
“No, I didn’t know there was a grandmother.”
“She went early to her cushions last night; probably to escape the bustle and annoyance of our abrupt arrival. We will pay our respects to her before we leave.”
When breakfast was over, our host took us to the grandmother’s room. She was a very old lady with a reserved manner and a face of more than usual intelligence. As soon as she bowed I knew that she had been trained in a samurai house, and when I saw the crest of a naginata on the wall-rest above the shoji, I knew why Brother had wanted me to come to this room.
A naginata is a long, light spear with curved blade, which samurai women were taught to use, partly for exercise and partly for defence in case of necessity. This one bore the crest of one of our northern heroes. He was a traitor, but nevertheless he was a hero. When he was killed, his daughter was one of the group—three of them women—who defended the sorely pressed castle during the last desperate hours of hopeless struggle. The old lady told us, with modest pride, that she had been a humble attendant of the daughter and was with her at that dreadful time. The naginata was a memory gift from her honourable and beloved mistress.
Seeing that we were deeply interested, she brought out her other treasure—a slender, blunt knife called a kogai, which, with the throwing-dagger, forms part of the hilt of a samurai’s long sword. In very ancient days Japanese warfare was a science. Artistic skill was always displayed in the use of weapons, and no soldier was proud of having wounded an enemy in any other manner than the one established by stri