Susan Ballard’s Jottings from Japan

This is a collection of Susan Ballard’s [1863-1909] articles previously published in missionary news magazines. It is illustrated for the most part with her own photographs. My thanks to Redcliffe College for providing a copy to scan. This title is in the public domain.

Susan Ballard [1863-1909], Jottings From Japan, 2nd edn. Westminster: The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1918. Hbk. pp.96. [This title is in the public domain]

Contents

• Christian kindness
• In a Japanese village (1)
• In a Japanese village (2)
• In a Japanese village (3)
• A prisoner in Japan
• The ‘bus boy
• Praying for the congregation
• The blind “Ama”
• “As others see us”
• A Japanese Sailor
• Truth
• A Japanese Easter offering
• A meeting in a train
• An aged Christian
• A tea-party in Japan
• Japan in the time of war
• “Give peace in our time, O Lord”
• By a Buddhist temple in Japan
• The land of morning calm
• What I bought with two pounds

Christian Kindness

One day my servant showed in a young man who, she said, was anxious to see me. Instead of making the customary Japanese bow, he advanced with stretched out hand, saying, “How do you do?”

By this I knew that he must have been in England, and I replied in English, but it was soon evident that his knowledge of English was limited to that one sentence.

“Please to excuse my coming to see you,” he said in Japanese. “You do not know me, though we have met once before. Two years ago, when you were visiting your native country of England, you gave an address to a large party of Japanese bluejackets who had been invited to tea at an English Soldiers’ Home. I was one of those sailors. After you spoke, some of us asked where you lived when in Japan, and you wrote down your Tokio number on some pieces of paper and distributed them among us, and I got one of them. [Continue reading]