“What, Zura?”

“Oh, my future—­and a few other things.”

* * * * *

Kishimoto San had never honored me with a visit since his granddaughter had been an inmate of my house.  Whenever a business conference was necessary, I was requested, by mail, to “assemble” in the audience chamber of the Normal School.

The man was beginning to look old and broken but he still faithfully carried out his many duties of office and religion.

He never retreated one inch in his fight against all innovations that would make the country the less Japanese or his faith less Buddhistic.  More often than not he stood alone and faced the bitter opposition of the progressives.  In no one thing did he so prove his unconquerable spirit and his great ideals for his country as the patience with which he endured the ridicule of his opponents.  For to a man of the proud and sensitive East, shot and shell are far easier to face than ridicule.

On a certain afternoon I had gone to meet with a committee to discuss a question pertaining to a school regulation, by which the girl students of the city schools would be granted liberty in dress and conduct more equal with the boys.  Of course Kishimoto San stood firm against so radical a measure.  Another member of the committee asked him if he did not believe in progress.  The unbending old man answered sternly: 

“Progress—­yes.  But a progress based on the traditions of our august ancestors, not a progress founded on Western principle, which, if adopted by us unmodified, means that we, with our legions of years behind us, our forefathers descended from the gods, as they were, will be neither wholly East nor West but a something as distorted as a dragon’s body with the heads and wings of an eagle.  Progress!  Have not our misconceptions of progress cost us countless lives and sickening humiliations?  Has not the breaking of traditions threatened the very foundations of our homes?  Small wonder the foreign nations offer careless insult when we stoop to make monkeys of ourselves and adopt customs and assume a civilization that can no more be grafted on to our nation than cabbage can be grown on plum trees.  Take what is needful to strengthen and uplift.  Make the highest and best of any land your own standard and live thereby.  But remember, in long years ago the divine gods created you Japanese, and to the end of eternity, struggle as you may, as such you cannot escape your destiny!”

As he finished his impassioned speech, a ray of sun fell upon his face, lifted in stern warning to his opponents.  He was like a figure of the Past demanding reverence and a hearing from the Present.

For the time he won his point and I was glad, for it was Kishimoto San’s last public speech.  Soon after he was stricken with a lingering illness.

In previous talks he had neither asked after his granddaughter nor referred to her.  But this afternoon, taking advantage of his look of half-pleasure caused by the victory he had won single handed, I took occasion, when offering congratulations, to give him every opportunity to inquire as to Zura and her progress.  I was very proud of what I had done with the girl, of the change her affection for Jane and me had accomplished.