The Old Type of Competitive Examination

I PASSED MY examination and was appointed to the Japan Service on 28 October 1903. Little of the true Japan was known to the outside world. Numerous books had already been written on the subject but few read the serious works and it was books such as Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysanthème that captured the public imagination. To me, as I think to most, Japan was a land of cherry blossoms and charming geisha clad in gorgeous kimonos. As a background there was the two-sworded samurai, the chivalrous warrior who had served his country in more troubled times and whose spirit had survived in the modern Japanese. That the Japanese were a fighting nation must have been known to me as I remember hearing as a school-boy of the China-Japan war. None the less, for some reason I insisted on associating Japan with a mental picture of flowers, temples, fans and tea ceremonies. All these things are there of course but that it is not a complete or true impression of Japan is well-known now to the whole world.

I knew nothing of Japan in fact. There was no harm in that. I had a lifetime to study Japan before me. But, truth to tell, I was not well equipped for service anywhere. At the age of six teen my future career was settled by chance. Coales, a former student at my school had just passed into the Consular Service in China and my head-master suggested that I should do the same. At that time, competitive examinations were held at irregular intervals to fill vacancies that had occurred in China, Japan and Siam. The idea appealed to me and, since my father was not in a financial position to do more than give me a good education, I set to work with might and main to qualify for the examination. In those days it was possible to take it at the early age of eighteen so I took the first examination after I had reached that age and, to my great surprise and delight, passed when I had just turned nineteen.