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I have checked with Google maps, and found the major landmarks that concern me, and thereby verified that what is/was called 'The Bluff' is indeed this area.
I have found:
Christ Church,
The French School of Saint Maur, and,
A cemetery which seems to match the description I have of the Foreigners' Cemetery.
The account I have is one written by my late father's late sister. She wrote:
Yokohama and the Bluff
The first memories I have are of Yokohama, where we arrived in 1906 and the Settlement which was partly surrounded by the Bluff and facing the sea. The Settlement was an area of shops, businesses, entertainments where the Japanese lived, and the China Town. The Europeans lived on the Bluff.
We lived in many houses - I don't know why - and all of them were wooden. Our longest stay was in 52 B the Bluff, half way up the hill. The Gaiety Theatre, Christ Church and three or four schools were on the Bluff, including le Couvent de St Maur which Mamie & I went to and College of St Joseph where Dick went.
At the bottom of the Bluff was a street which ran to a temple, and fairs were held there twice a month. There was lots of excitement with coloured lights and stalls where they spun sugar into candy-floss and others where they steamed hot sweet potatoes and many more. We were allowed to go down to the fairs with Amah, it was a great treat.
We seemed to have a good many earthquakes and though no damage seemed to be done they were still terrifying and the noise was horrible.
There was a lovely camelia in the garden of 52 B - a double flat pink flower - I've never seen one like it since. The almond and cherry blossom was lovely in the Settlement, and chrysanthamum shows were held there featuring tableaux made in square cubicles depicting samurai and the like, all formed with the flower heads.
They went to Japan with my grandfather, Talbot Richard Smith, and his wife, Annie May. They stayed there until Grandfather died. He was ill with angina when they went out there looking for a better climate, and indeed, though he died in 1915, it is dubious that he would have lived that long in England.
Norah also wrote:
Daddy (TRS) went on one occasion to Formosa and later to Korea. He wrote to Mother every day, letters which made her laugh. Mamie (FMS) went to Korea with him as interpreter (aged ten!). She was in tears one morning because she could not comb out her long hair. He took the comb and did it for her gently and painlessly.
Daddy also went to Kyushu with Mother and Dick, to a gold mine this time. Mamie and I joined them there for school holidays. Again we were the only Europeans but we had learned to speak Japanese very early on.
Back in Yokohama, Laura Elizabeth was born in 1912. In the next year or so, Daddy, Mother and 'Baby Betty' went back to Hokkaido where the paper mill had broken down. It was not a very happy return as the Japanese felt they had 'lost face' by having to get him back. He was also being troubled by worsening Angina.
They returned to Yokohama in the spring of 1915 and Daddy had to go into hospital. Mother and Betty stayed with the Hendersons, Bob and Carrie, who had been our neighbours and very good friends. Carrie was Betty's godmother.
It was decided to return to England, but Daddy became very ill and died. He was buried in the Cemetery on the Bluff, near the convent. Because of the earthquakes, so common there, Mother chose a flat grave stone with a cross also laid flat across it. So Mother brought us home in the first year of the 14 - 18 War.
My wife and I would love to go on a family pilgrimage to retrace my grandfather's steps, and maybe, even after this long stretch of time, get a feel of this wonderful land which all the tellers of this tale were happy to express.
Norah recounts how Grandfather set up a paper mill in Hokkaido, she talks of Ibetsu, and the river Ishibari, which I am convinced is Ebetsu and the river Ishikary. Here is what she writes:
In Ibetsu, Hokkaido
We were there at the beginning of our Japan visit, and at the end, Mother, Daddy & Betty were there. We were the only Europeans there and the Japanese children used to follow us around and stare at us. There was a muddy salmon river there called the Ishibari and plenty of wild country around. The field opposite where we lived was full of clover, including, four, five and seven leaved varieties. When we were first there, the snow came and the road grew higher than the house, (and Daddy had a bad heart!).
We saw our first cinematograph there - an English, (or American), film - a house fire involving a child. Other modern signs were electricity in the house which was a contrast to our experiences when we returned to England and Scotland some ten years later. Back home, for many years we still had to use oil lamps! (In Killearn, that was).
Daddy had to go there to set up a paper mill, and six years later, he had to return to repair it as the Japanese technicians were then not yet experienced enough to maintain it properly.
She goes on to tell about work in Kyushu, at a gold mine, she writes:
In Kyushu
To get there, we had to travel, (From Yokohama and School), by train, ferry boat and jinrickshaw. We were again the only Europeans. It was a warm hilly country. We had kimonos made for us children but the Japanese jeered when we went out in them. We always wore 'getta', the wooden sandal/clogs Amah is wearing at 52B and had great fun when we had to get new straps for them. The open fronted shops had bunches of these gorgeously coloured straps hanging up and it was an agony trying to choose.
Daddy was there at a goldmine and there was an overhead cableway which carried the ore from the mine to the smelting works. This cableway ran right over the house where we stayed, and its noise made us feel as if we were still in the train. I can still hear it today!
She continues to give a brief account of the French convent school of Saint Maur on the Bluff:
The Convent on the Bluff
The Convent was run by the Sisters of the Sacré Coeur, who were nearly all French, but there were two Irish Sisters who taught English and an English Sister who taught the lower form. She was Mme St Wilfred, and she had a fearsome temper. The two Irish Sisters were Mme St Mary and Mme St Dunstan, and they were both dears.
The Convent was in three parts:-
For the European expatriates, mainly Eurasians, but a few Russian refugees and some English,
For the paying Japanese and Chinese, and
For the Japanese Orphans, who were the raison d'être of the convent.
The non European parts of the Convent were taught by Japanese nuns and we had no contact with them except that they all attended chapel every morning, (at 7:30), with us. The nuns were very good to us, for though we were boarders there when our parents were away in Hokkaido and Kyushu, they never tried to proselytise.
She closes the tales of their life in Japan with an account of their final stay in a place she calls 'Hachiojiyama' about a 20 minute tram ride from The Bluff, where she was still attending school, which I estimate to be about 8km, (5 miles), and the only place I can find which remotely fits is Hakkeijima, which does sound similar, she writes:
Hachiojiyama
Hachiojiyama was the name of the hill where we all lived together for the last time in Japan. It is a few miles out of Yokohama, a sea-side village where a 'Society Beach' attracted people from Yokohama. Our hill was at one end of the beach, and they were lovely sands, and the house had been built next to the site of an old temple which had been pulled down because the government had said there were too many temples there. The way up to the house was by the old temple steps, and people used to leave offerings to the gods on the top steps, and our bantams greatly appreciated them!
We had a lovely life there, surrounded by wild country, and overlooking the sea. We had a boat on the beach and the sea was safe so we were allowed to use it anytime. Bathing was lovely, but in the Summer we had to wear something on the feet as the sand became too hot to walk on. We also bathed in the evenings, when the sand was cooler.
We did have to go to school, so we used to walk to the tram terminus, then it took, I think, about twenty minutes into Yokohama, then we had to climb up the Bluff from the landward side. I can remember the unpleasantness of the trip during the rains which were called the 'Nyubai', and although we had oilskins, we always got soaked.
There were large trees around the house and we had a hammock strung up which gave us enormous fun. There were many eucalyptus there and the air was heavy with their scent.
As Daddy had been in the Merchant Navy before he married, he must have had a fellow feeling for the officers of the ships that called in at Yokohama, so we often used to have evenings of jollification, when we had ships' officers singing round the piano which Mother played, while Daddy joined in with his banjo. I think 'Alexander's Ragtime Band' was new then, and 'Hitchikoo' was another that I remember, but mostly we had Harry Lauder favourites.
No servant would live in the house as they said it was haunted by the 'Khitsune', a fox, but we never saw any. As children, we liked the Japanese women, but not the men. There was a China Town in Yokohama where the smells were dreadful.
There now, here is some ancient history, and tales of a time before things turned sour.
The sourness now has passed. It is time to look again at the good times.
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