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LIBRARY
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA BARBARA
PRESENTED BY
MRS. THOMAS A. DRISCOLL
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OLD COURT COSTUME
JiNRiKiSHA Days in Japan
BY
ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE
" Waga kuni no Yamato shima ne ni idzuru hi wa ;
Morokoshi hito mo, awoga zarameya."
" In the ancient Yamato island, my native land, the sun rises;
Must not even the Western foreigner reverence?"
Ancitnt Jafanese Foent.
" I cannot cease from praising these Japanese. They
are truly the delight of my heart."
St. Franos Xavier.
REVISED EDITION
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
Z902
^%
Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
PREFACE
This book has only attempted to present some
of the phases of the new Japan as they appeared
to one who was both a tourist and a foreign resi-
dent in that country. No one person can see it all,
nor comprehend it, as the jinrikisha speeds through
city streets and over country roads, nor do any two
people enjoy just the same experiences, see things
in the same light, or draw the same conclusions as
to this remarkable people. Japan is so inexhaust-
ible and so full of surprises that to the last day of
his stay the tourist and the resident alike are con-
fronted by some novelty that is yet wholly common
and usual in the life of the Japanese.
The scientists, scholars, and specialists, the poetic
and the political writers, who have written so fully
of Japan, have omitted many little things which
leave the pleasantest impressions on lighter minds.
Each decade presents a new Japan, as the wonder-
ful empire approaches nearer to modern and Eu-
ropean standards in living, and, in becoming one of
the eight great civilized world-powers, Japan has
put aside much of its mediaeval and Oriental pict-
uresqueness.
Preface
Bewildered by its novelty and strangeness, too
many tourists come and go with little knowledge
of the Japan of the Japanese, and, beholding only
the modernized seaports and the capital, miss many
unique and distinctly national sights and experi-
ences that lie close at hand. The book will have
attained its object if it helps the tourist to see bet-
ter the Japan that is unchanging, and if it gives
the stay-at-home reader a greater interest in those
fascinating people and their lovely home.
Unfortunately, it is impossible, in acknowledging
the kindness of the many Japanese friends and ac-
quaintances, who secured me so much enjoyment
and so many delightful experiences, to begin to
give the long list of their names. Each foreign
visitor must equally feel himself indebted to the
whole race for being Japanese, and, therefore, the
most interesting population in the world, and his
obligation is to the whole people as much as to
particular individuals.
Since the first edition of this book was published,
the treaties have been revised, extra-territoriality
and the passport system have been abolished, and
a protective tariff adopted ; the railway has been
extended to Nikko, to Nara, from end to end, and
twice across, the main island ; foreign hotels have
multiplied in seaports and mountain resorts; the
guide-book has been modernized, made more com-
panionable and interesting, and a vast literature
has been added to the subject — Japan. The fall in
the price of silver, the adoption of the gold stand-
Preface
ard, and the increasing army of tourists have more
than doubled the cost of Hving and of all the prod-
ucts of art industry. Japan has twice sent victori-
ous military expeditions to the mainland, and in
the relief of the legations and the occupation of
Peking has proved her soldiers first in valor, dis-
cipline, equipment, and in humanity to the con-
quered, and there was abundantly displayed that
high passion of patriotism which the Japanese pos-
sess in greater degree than any other people.
Japan, six times revisited, is as full of charm and
novelty as when I first went ashore from the wreck
of the Tokio.
E. R. S.
Washington, D. C, March, i8go.
" •• March, 1902.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGB
I. THE NORTH PACIFIC AND YOKOHAMA ... I
II. YOKOHAMA lO
III. YOKOHAMA— CONTINUED 20
IV. THE ENVIRONS OF YOKOHAMA 28
V. KAMAKURA AND ENOSHIMA 38
VI. TOKIO 43
VII. TOKIO— CONTINUED 53
VIII. TOKIO FLOWER FESTIVALS 65
IX. JAPANESE HOSPITALITIES 86
X. THE JAPANESE THEATRE 96
XI. THE IMPERIAL FAMILY Ill
XII. TOKIO PALACES AND COURT I25
XIII. THE SUBURBS OF TOKIO I34
XIV. A TRIP TO NIKKO I40
XV. NIKKO 147
XVI. CHIUZENJI AND YUMOTO 162
XVII. THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA . 175
XVIII. THE DESCENT OF FUJIYAMA 183
XIX. THE TOKAIDO — I 1 89
XX. THE TOKAIDO — II I97
XXI. NAGOYA 206
XXII. LAKE BIWA AND KIOTO 2l6
XXIII. KIOTO TEMPLES 226
XXIV. THE MONTO TEMPLES AND THE DAIMONJI , 236
XXV. THE PALACES AND CASTLE 244
XXVI. KIOTO SILK INDUSTRY 255
XXVII. EMBROIDERIES AND CURIOS 267
vii
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
XXVIII. POTTERIES AND PAPER WARES 277
XXIX. GOLDEN DAYS 285
XXX. SENK£ and the MERCHANTS' DINNER . . 296
XXXI. THROUGH UJI TO NARA 304
XXXII. NARA 320
XXXIII. OSAKA . .• 331
■ XXXIV. KOBE AND ARIMA 340
XXXV. THE TEA TRADE . . . , 350
XXXVI. THE INLAND SEA AND NAGASAKI .... 358
XXXVII. IN THE END 368
INDEX 377
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGB
OLD COURT COSTUME Frontispiece
FUJIYAMA 5
JAPANESE CHILDREN \^
AT KAWAWA 30
THE semi's cage 55
POETS BENEATH THE PLUM-TREES 67
A UY^NO TEA-HOUSE 71
IRIS GARDENS AT HORI KIRI 75
AT KAMEIDO 79
IN DANGO-ZAKA STREET 82
TEA BLOSSOMS 83
CHOPSTICKS— FIGS. I AND 2 88
CHOPSTICKS— FIG. 3 89
THE NESANS AT THE HOISHIGAOKA 93
MATSUDA, THE MASTER OF CHA NO YU 94
DANJIRO, THE GREAT ACTOR I07
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 115
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 117
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 121
PLAN OF EMPEROR'S PRIVATE APARt'mENTS . . . . I27
IMPERIAL SAK^-CUP I29
INTERIOR OF THE lYEMITSU TEMPLE 1 51
GATE-WAY OF THE lYEYASU TEMPLE 155
FARM LABORERS AND PACK-HORSE 163
PUBLIC BATH-HOUSE AT YUMOTO I7»
Illustrations
PAGE
THE SHOJO 213
THE GREAT PINE-TREE AT KARASAKI 219
THE true-lover's SHRINE AT KIOMIDZU . . . .231
THE THRONE OF 1868 248
KABE HABUTAI 262
CHIRIMEN 263
EBISU CHIRIMEN 264
KINU CHIRIMEN 265
FUKUSA 270
MANJI 272
MITSU T0M0y£ 273
IN nammikawa's work-room 288
PICKING TEA 305
IN THE KASUGA TEMPLE GROUNDS 317
PRIESTESSES AT NARA 324
FARM LABORERS 347
JINRIKISHA DAYS IN JAPAN
CHAPTER I
THE NORTH PACIFIC AND YOKOHAMA
All the Orient is a surprise to the Occidental. Every-
thing is strange, with a certain unreality that makes one
doubt half his sensations. To appreciate Japan one
should come to it from the main-land of Asia. From
Suez to Nagasaki the Asiatic sits dumb and contented
in his dirt, rags, ignorance, and wretchedness. After
the muddy rivers, dreary flats, and brown hills of China,
after the desolate shores of Korea, with their unlovely
and unwashed peoples, Japan is a dream of Paradise,
beautiful from the first green island off the coast to the
last picturesque hill-top. The houses seem toys, their
inhabitants dolls, whose manner of life is clean, pretty,
artistic, and distinctive.
There is a greater difference between the people of
these idyllic islands and of the two countries to west-
ward, than between the physical characteristics of the
three kingdoms ; and one recognizes the Japanese as
the fine flower of the Orient, the most polite, refined,
and aesthetic of races, happy, light-hearted, friendly, and
attractive.
The bold and irregular coast is rich in color, the per-
ennial green of the hill-side is deep and soft, and the
perfect cone of Fujiyama against the sky completes the
landscape, grown so familiar on fan, lantern, box, and
yinrikisha Days in Japan
plate. Every-day life looks too theatrical, too full of
artistic and decorative effects, to be actual and serious,
and streets and shops seem set with deliberately studied
scenes and carefully posed groups. Half consciously
the spectator waits for the bell to ring and the curtain
to drop.
The voyage across the North Pacific is lonely and
rtionotonous. Between San Francisco and Yokohama
hardly a passing sail is seen. When the Pacific Mail
Steamship Company established the China line their
steamers sailed on prescribed routes, and outward and
homeward-bound ships met regularly in mid -ocean.
Now, when not obliged to touch at Honolulu, the cap-
tains choose their route for each voyage, either sailing
straight across from San Francisco, in 37° 47'', to Yoko-
hama, in 35° 26' N., or, following one of the great cir-
cles farther north, thus lessen time and distance. On
these northern meridians the weather is often cold,
threatening, or stormy, and the sea rough; but the stead-
iness of the winds favors this course, and persuades the
ship's officers to shorten the long course and more cer-
tainly reach Japan on schedule time. Dwellers in hot
climates dislike the sudden transition to cooler waters,
and some voyagers enjoy it. Fortunately, icebergs can-
not float down the shallow reaches of Bering Strait,
but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in
the Aleutian Islands.
Canadian Pacific steamers, starting on the 49th par-
allel, often pass near the shores of Attn, the last little
fragment of earth swinging at the end of the great Aleu-
tian chain. The shelter which those capable navigators,
Mrs. Leeks and Mrs. Aleshine, had the luck to find in
their memorable journey, mariners declare to be Mid-
way Island, a circular dot of land in the great waste,
with a long, narrow, outlying sand-bar, where schooners
have been wrecked, and castaways rescued after months
The North Pacific and Yokohama
of imprisonment. The steamer's course from San Fran-
cisco to Yokohama varies from 4500 to 5500 miles, and
the journey takes from twelve to eighteen days. From
Vancouver to Yokohama it is but eleven days.
When the ship's course turns perceptibly southward
the mild weather of the Japan Stream is felt. In winter
the first sign of land is a distant silver dot on the hori-
zon, which in summer turns to blue or violet, and grad
ually enlarges into the tapering cone of Fuji, sloping up-
ward in faultless lines from the water's edge. One may
approach land many times and never see Fuji, and dur-
ing my first six months in Japan the matchless mountain
refused to show herself from any point of view. Cape
King, terminating the long peninsula that shelters Yeddo
Bay, shows first a line of purple cliffs, and then a front
of terraced hills, green with rice and wheat, or golden
with grain or stubble. Fleets of square-sailed fishing-
boats drift by, their crews, in the loose, flapping gowns
and universal blue cotton head-towels of the Japanese
coolies, easily working the broad oar at the stern. At
night Cape King's welcome beacon is succeeded by Ka-
nonsaki's lantern across the Bay, Sagami's bright light,
then the myriad flashes of the Yokosuka navy-yard, and
last the red ball of the light-ship, marking the edge of
the shoal a mile outside the Bund, or sea-wall, of Yoko-
hama. When this craft runs up its signal-flag a United
States man-of-war, if there be one in port, fires two
guns, as a signal that the American mail has arrived.
Daylight reveals a succession of terraced hills, cleft
by narrow green valleys and narrower ravines ; little vil-
lages, their clusters of thatched roofs shaded by pine,
palm, or bamboo ; fishing-boats always in the foreground,
and sometimes Fuji clear-cut against the sky, its base
lost now and then behind the overlapping hills. In
summer Fuji's purple cone shows only ribbon stripes of
white near its apex. For the rest of the year it is a
yinrikisha Days in Japan
silvery, shining vision, rivalled only by Mount Rainier,
which, pale with eternal snows, rises from the dense
forests of Puget Sound to glass itself in those green wa-
ters.
Yokohama disappoints the traveller, after the splen-
did panorama of the Bay. The Bund, or sea-road, with
its club-houses, hotels, and residences fronting the wa-
ter, is not Oriental enough to be very picturesque. It
is too European to be Japanese, and too Japanese to be
European, The water front, which suffers by compari-
son with the massive stone buildings of Chinese ports,
is, however, a creditable contrast to our untidy Ameri-
can docks and quays, notwithstanding the low -tiled
roofs, blank fences, and hedges. The water life is vivid
and spectacular. The fleet of black merchant steamers
and white men-of-war, the ugly pink and red canal-steam-
ers, and the crowding brigs and barks, are far outnum-
bered by the fleet of sampans that instantly surround
the arriving mail. Steam-launches, serving as mail-wag-
on and hotel omnibus, snort, puff, and whistle at the
gang-ways before the buoy is reached ; and voluble boat-
men keep up a steady bzz, bzz, whizz, whizz, to the strokes
of their crooked, wobbling oars as they scull in and out.
Four or five thousand people live on the shipping in the
harbor, and in ferrying this population to and fro and
purveying to it the boatmen make their livelihood. Strict
police regulations keep them safe and peaceable, and the
harbor impositions of other countries are unknown. On
many of these sampans the whole family abides, the
women cooking over a handful of charcoal in a small
box or bowl, the children playing in corners not occu-
pied by passengers or freight. On gala days, when the
shipping is decorated, the harbor is a beautiful sight ; or
when the salutes of the foreign fleets assembled at Yoko-
hama are returned by the guns of the fort on Kanagawa
Heights, and the air tingles with excitement. Since
^
The North Pacific and Yokohama
the annexation of the Philippines the American Asiatic
fleet has been fully occupied in that archipelago, and
the vessels seldom visit Yokohama, or remain for any
time. The acquisition of Wei-hai-Wei gave the British
fleet a northern station, and that, with the perpetual
break-up and crisis in China, keeps those ships and the
fleets of all nations closely to that coast. Nagasaki's
coal mines make it the great port of naval call and sup-
ply in Japan.
A mole and protected harbor with stone docks has
been built with the money finally returned to Japan
by the United States, after being shamefully withheld
for a quarter of a century, as our share of the Shimono-
seki Indemnity Fund. The outer harbor lies so open
to the prevailing south-east winds that loading and un-
loading is often delayed for days, and landing by launch-
es or sampans is a wet process. The Bay is so shallow
that a stiff wind quickly sends its waves breaking over
the sea-wall, to subside again in a few hours into a mir-
ror-like calm. The harbor has had its great typhoons,
but does not lie in the centre of those dreaded circular
storms that whirl up from the China seas. Deflected to
eastward, the typhoon sends its syphoon, or wet end, to
fill the air with vapor and drizzle, and a smothering, mil-
dewy, exhausting atmosphere. A film of mist covers
everything, wall-paper loosens, glued things fall apart,
and humanity wilts.
Yokohama has its divisions — the Settlement, the BluflF,
and Japanese Town — each of which is a considerable
place by itself. The Settlement, or region originally set
apart by the Japanese in 1858 for foreign merchants,
was made by filling in a swampy valley opening to the
Bay. This Settlement, at first separated from the To-
kaido and the Japanese town of Kanagawa, has become
the centre of a surrounding Japanese population of over
eighty thousand. It is built up continuously to Kana-
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
gawa Bridge, two miles farther north, on the edge of a
bold bluff, where the Tokaido— the East Sea Road —
leading up from Kioto, reaches the Bay. In diplomatic
papers Kanagawa is still recognized as the name of the
great port on Yeddo Bay, although the consulates, banks,
hotels, clubs, and business streets are miles away.
At the hatoba, or landing-place, the traveller is confront-
ed by the Jinrikisha, that big, two-wheeled baby-carriage
of the country, which, invented by an American, has been
adopted all over the East. The jinrikisha (or kuruma,
as the linguist and the upper class more politely call it)
ranges in price from seventeen to forty dollars, twenty
being the average cost of those on the public stands.
Some thrifty coolies own their vehicles, but the greater
number either rent them from, or work for, companies,
and each jinrikisha pays a small annual tax to the Gov-
ernment. An unwritten rule of the road compels these
carriages to follow one another in regulated single file.
The oldest or most honored person rides at the head of
the line, and only a boor would attempt to change the
order of arrangement. Spinning down the Bund, at a
tariff so moderate that the American can ride for a week
for what he must pay in a day at home, one finds the jin-
rikisha to be a comfortable, flying arm-chair — a little pri-
vate, portable throne. The coolie wears a loose coat
and waistcoat, and tights of dark-blue cotton, with straw
sandals on his bare feet, and an inverted washbowl of
straw covered with cotton on his head. When it rains
he is converted into a prickly porcupine by his straw
rain-coat, or he dons a queer apron and cloak of oiled
paper, and, pulling up the hood of the little carriage,
ties a second apron of oiled paper across the knees of
his fare. At night the shafts are ornamented with a pa-
per lantern bearing his name and his license number;
and these glowworm lights, flitting through the streets
and country roads in the darkness, seem only another
The North Pacific and Yokohama
expression of the Japanese love of the picturesque. In
the country, after dark, they call warnings of ruts, holes,
breaks in the road, or coming crossways; and their cries,
running from one to another down the line, are not un-
musical. To this smiling, polite, and amiable little pony
one says Hayaku ! for '■''\i\xxxy ,^^ Abunayo ! for " take care,"
Sukoshitnate ! for " stop a little," and Soro! for "slowly."
The last command is often needed when the coolie, lean-
ing back at an acute angle to the shaft, dashes down-
hill at a rapid gait. Jinrikisha coolies are said even to
have asked extra pay for walking slowly through the fas-
cinating streets of open shops. If you experiment with
the jinrikisha on a level road, you find that it is only the
first pull that is hard ; once started, the little carriage
seems to run by itself. The gait of the man in the shafts,
and his height, determine the comfort of the ride. A
tall coolie holds the shafts too high, and tilts one at an
uncomfortable angle ; a very short man makes the best
runner, and, with big toe curling upward, will trot along
as regularly as a horse. As one looks down upon the
bobbing creature below a hat and two feet seem to con-
stitute the whole motor.
The waraji, or sandals, worn by these coolies are
woven of rice straw, and cost less than five cents a
pair. In the good old days they were much cheaper.
Every village and farm-house make them, and every shop
sells them. In their manufacture the big toe is a great
assistance, as this highly trained member catches and
holds the strings while the hands weave. On country
roads wrecks of old waraji lie scattered where the wear-
er stepped out of them and ran on, while ruts and mud-
holes are filled with them. For long tramps the for-
eigner finds the waraji and the tabi, or digitated stocking,
much better than his own clumsy boots, and he ties them
on as overshoes when he has rocky paths to climb. Coo-
lies often dispense with waraji and wear heavy tabi, with
9
'Jinrikisha Days in Japan
a strip of the almost indestructible hechima fibre for the
soles. The hechima is the gourd which furnishes the
vegetable washrag, or looffa sponge of commerce. The
snow-white cotton tabis of the better classes are made an
important part of their costume.
Those coolies who pull and push heavily loaded carts
or drays keep up a hoarse chant, which corresponds to
the chorus of sailors when hauling ropes. ^'^ Hilda !
HoidaP' they seem to be crying, as they brace their feet
for a hard pull, and the very sound of it exhausts the lis-
tener. In the old days people were nearly deafened with
these street choruses, but their use is another of the he-
reditary customs that is fast dying out. In mountain
districts one's chair - bearers wheeze out "ZT/ rikisha)
Ho rikishaf" or "lio shaf Ito shaf" as they climb the
steepest paths, and they cannot keep step nor work vig-
orously without their chant.
CHAPTER II
YOKOHAMA
The Settlement is bounded by the creek, from whose
opposite side many steep hill-roads wind up to the Bluff,
where most of the foreigners have their houses. These
bluff- roads pass between the hedges surrounding trim
villas with their beautifully set gardens, the irregular
numbering of whose gates soon catches the stranger's
eye. The first one built being number one, the others
were numbered in the order of their erection, so that
high and low numerals are often side by side. To coo-
lies, servants, peddlers, and purveyors, foreign residents
are best known by their street-door numeration, and
'* Number four Gentleman" and "Number five Lady"
Yokohama
are recurrent and adequate descriptions. So well used
are the subjects of it to this convict system of identifica-
tion that they recognize their friends by their alias as
readily as the natives do.
Upon the Bluff stand a public hall, United States and
British marine hospitals, a French and a German hos-
pital, several missionary establishments, and the houses
of the large American missionary community. At the ex-
treme west end a colony of Japanese florists has planted
toy-gardens filled with vegetable miracles; burlesques
and fantasies of horticulture; dwarf-trees, a hundred
years old, that could be put in the pocket ; huge single
flowers, and marvellous masses of smaller blossoms ;
cherry-trees that bear no cherries ; plum-trees that bloom
in midwinter, but have neither leaves nor fruit ; and roses
— that favorite flower which the foreigner brought with
him — flowering in Californian profusion. A large busi-
ness is done in the exportation of Japanese plants and
bulbs, encased in a thick coating of mud, which makes
an air-tight case to protect them during the sea-voyage.
Ingenious fern pieces are preserved in the same way.
These grotesque things are produced by wrapping in
moist earth the long, woody roots of a fine-leafed variety
of fern. They are made to imitate dragons, junks, tem-
ples, boats, lanterns, pagodas, bells, balls, circles, and
every familiar object. When bought they look dead. If
hung for a few days in the warm sun, and occasionally
dipped in water, they change into feathery, green objects
that grow more and more beautiful, and are far more
artistic than our one conventional hanging-basket. The
dwarf -trees do not stand transportation well, as they
either die or begin to grow rapidly.
The Japanese are the foremost landscape gardeners
in the world, as we Occidentals, who are still in that
barbaric period where carpet gardening seems beautiful
and desirable, shall in time discover. Their genius has
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
equal play in an area of a yard or a thousand feet, and
a Japanese gardener will doubtless come to be consid-
ered as necessary a part of a great American establish-
ment as a French maid or an English coachman. From
generations of nature-loving and flower-worshipping an-
cestors these gentle followers of Adam's profession have
inherited an intimacy with growing things, and a power
over them that we cannot even understand. Their very
farming is artistic gardening, and their gardening half
necromancy.
On high ground, beyond the Bluff proper, stretches
the race-course, where spring and fall there are running
races by short-legged, shock-headed ponies, brought from
the Hokkaido, the northern island, or from China. Gen-
tlemen jockeys frequently ride their own horses in flat
races, hurdle-races, or steeple-chases. The banks close,
a general holiday reigns throughout the town, and often
the Emperor comes down from Tokio. This race-course
affords one of the best views of Fuji, and from it curves
the road made in early days for the sole use of foreign-
ers to keep them off the Tokaido, where they had more
than once come in conflict with trains of travelling no-
bles. This road leads down to the water's edge, and,
following the shore of Mississippi Bay, where Commo-
dore Perry's ships anchored in 1858, strikes across a rice
valley and climbs to the Bluff again.
The farm-houses it passes are so picturesque that one
cannot believe them to have a utilitarian purpose. They
seem more like stage pictures about to be rolled away
than like actual dwellings. The new thatches are bright-
ly yellow, and the old thatches are toned and mellowed,
set with weeds, and dotted with little gray-green bunches
of " hen and chickens," while along the ridge-poles is a
bed of growing lilies. There is an old wife's tale to the
effect that the women's face-powder was formerly made
of lily-root, and that a ruler who wished to stamp out
Yokohama
such vanities, decreed that the plant should not be grown
on the face of the earth, whereupon the people promptly
dug it up from their gardens and planted it in boxes on
the roof.
The Japanese section of Yokohama is naturally less
Japanese than places more remote from foreign influ-
ence, but the stranger discovers much that is odd, unique,
and Oriental. That delight of the shopper, Honchodori,
with its fine curio and silk shops, was once without a
shop-window, the entire front of the cheaper shops be-
ing open to the streets, and only the old lacquer and
bronzes, ivory, porcelains, enamels, silver, and silks con-
cealed by high wooden screens and walls. Now glass
windows flaunt all that the shops can offer. The silk
shops are filled with goods distracting to the foreign
buyer, among which are the wadded silk wrappers, made
and sold by the hundreds, which, being the contrivance
of some ingenious missionary, were long known as mis-
sionary coats.
Benten Dori, the bargain -hunter's Paradise, is a de-
lightful quarter of a mile of open-fronted shops. In the
silk shops, crapes woven in every variety of cockle and
wrinkle and rippling surface, as thin as gauze, or as thick
and heavy as brocade, painted in endless, exquisite de-
signs, are brought you by the basketful. Each length is
rolled on a stick, and finally wrapped in a bit of the
coarse yellow cotton cloth that envelopes every choice
thing in Japan, though for what reason, no native or for-
eigner, dealer or connoisseur can tell.
Nozawaya has a godown or fire-proof storehouse full
of cotton crapes, those charmingly artistic fabrics that
the Western world has just begun to appreciate. The
pock-marked and agile proprietor will keep his small
boys running for half an hour to bring in basketfuls of
cotton crape rolls, each roll measuring a little over eleven,
yards, which will make one straight, narrow kimono with
»3
yinrikisha Days in Japan
a pair of big sleeves. These goods are woven in the
usual thirteen-inch Japanese width, although occasionally
made wider for the foreign market. A Japanese kimono
is a simple thing, and one may put on the finished gar-
ment an hour after choosing the cloth to make it. The
cut never varies, and it is still sewn with basters' stitches,
although the use of foreign flat-irons obviates the neces-
sity of ripping the kimono apart to wash and iron it.
The Japanese flat-iron is a copper bowl filled with burn-
ing charcoal, which, with its long handle, is really a small
warming-pan. Besides this contrivance, there is a flat
arrow point of iron with a shorter handle, whicn does
smaller and quite as ineffectual service.
To an American, nothing is simpler than Japanese
money. T\\^ yen corresponds to our dollar, and is made
up of one hundred seti^ while ten rin make one sen. The
yen is about equal in value to the Mexican dollar, and is
roughly reckoned at fifty cents gold United States
money. One says dollars or yens indiscriminately, al-
ways meaning the Mexican, which is the current coin of
the East. The old copper coins, the rin and the oval
tempo, each with a hole in the middle, are disappearing
from circulation, and at the Osaka mint they are melted
and made into round sens. Old gold and silver coins
may be bought in the curio shops. If they have not little
oblong silver bu, or a long oval gold ko ban, the silversmith
will offer to make some, which will answer every purpose !
When you ask for your bill, a merchant takes up his
frame of sliding buttons — the soroban, or abacus — and
plays a clattering measure before he can tell its amount.
The soroban is infallible, though slow, and in the head of
the educated Japanese, crowded with thousands of arbi-
trary characters and words, there is no room for mental
arithmetic. You buy two toys at ten cents apiece. Clat-
ter, clatter goes the soroban, and the calculator asks you
for twenty cents. Depending entirely on the soroban,
>4
Yokohama
they seem unable to reckon the smallest sums without
it, and any peddler who forgets to bring his frame may
be puzzled. The dealer in old embroideries will twist
and work his face, scratch his head, and move his fingers
in the air upon an imaginary soroban over the simplest
addition, division, and subtraction. At the bank, the
shroff has a soroban a yard long ; and merchants say
that in book-keeping the soroban is invaluable, as by its
use whole columns of figures can be added and proved
in less time than by our mental methods.
By an iron bridge, the broad street at the top of Ben-
ten Dori crosses one of the many canals extending from
the creek in every direction, and forming a net-work of
water passages from Mississippi Bay to Kanagawa. Be-
yond the bridge is Isezakicho, a half mile of theatres,
side-shows, merry-go-rounds, catchpenny games, candy
shops, restaurants, second-hand clothes bazaars, laby-
rinths of curio, toy, china, and wooden - ware shops.
Hundreds of perambulating restaurateurs trundle their
little kitchens along, or swing them on a pole over their
shoulders. Dealers in ice-cream, so called, abound, who
will shave you a glass of ice, sprinkle it with sugar, and
furnish a minute teaspoon with which to eat it. There
are men who sell soba, a native vermicelli, eaten with
pungent soy; and men who, for a penny, heat a big grid-
iron, and give a small boy a cup of batter and a cup of
soy, with which he may cook and eat his own griddle
cakes. There the people, the middle and lower classes,
present themselves for study and admiration, and the
spectator never wearies of the outside dramas and pano-
ramas to be seen in this merry fair.
Pretty as she is on a pictured fan, the living Japanese
woman is far more satisfying to the aesthetic soul as she
patters along on her wooden clogs or straw sandals.
The very poorest, in her single cheap cotton gown, oi
Jinrtkisha Days in Japan
kimono, is as picturesque as her richer sister in silk and
crape. With heads elaborately dressed, and folds of gay
crape, or a glittering hair-pin thrust in the smooth loops
of blue-black hair, they seem always in gala array ; and,
rain or shine, never protect those elaborate coiffures with
anything less ornamental than a paper umbrella, except
in winter, when the zukin, a yard of dark crape lined
with a contrasting color, is thrown over the head, con-
cealing the whole face save the eyes. A single hair-pin
of tortoise-shell, sometimes tipped with coral or gold, is
all that respectable women of any class wear at one time.
The heavily hair-pinned women on cheap fans are not
members of good society, and only children and dancing-
girls are seen in the fantastic flowers and trifles sold at
a hundred shops and booths in this and every street.
The little children are the most characteristically Jap-
anese of all Japanese sights. Babies are carried about
tied to the mothers' back, or to that of their small sisters.
They sleep with their heads rolling helplessly round,
watch all that goes on with their black beads of eyes, and
never cry. Their shaven crovms and gay little kimonos,
their wise, serene countenances, make them look like
cabinet curios. As soon as she can walk, the Japanese
girl has her doll tied on her back, until she learns to
carry it steadily and carefully ; after that the baby broth-
er or sister succeeds the doll, and flocks of these comical
little people, with lesser people on their backs, wander
late at night in the streets with their parents, and their
funny double set of eyes shine in every audience along
Isezakicho.
These out-of-door attractions are constantly changing.
Native inventions and adaptations of foreign ideas con-
tinually appear. " Pigs in clover " and pot-hook puzzles
followed only a few weeks behind their New York sea-
son, and street fakirs offer perpetual novelties. Of jug-
glers the line is endless, their performances filling inter-
Yokohama
ludes at theatres, coming between the courses of great
dinners, and supplying entertainment to any garden par-
ty or flower f^te in the homes of rich hosts. More cun-
ning than these gorgeously clad jugglers is an old man,
who roams the vicinity of Yokohama, wearing poor cot-
ton garments, and carrying two baskets of properties by
a pole across his shoulders. On a street corner, a lawn,
a piazza, or a ship's deck, he sets up his baskets for a
table, and performs amazing feats with the audience en-
tirely encircling him. A hatful of coppers sufficiently re-
wards him, and he swallows fire, spits out eggs, needles,
lanterns, and yards of paper-ribbon, which he twirls into
a bowl, converts into actual soba, and eats, and by a
magic sentence changes the remaining vermicelli into
the lance-like leaves of the iris plant. This magician
has a shrewd, foxy old face, whose grimaces, as well as
his pantomime, his capers, and poses, are tricks in them-
selves. His chuckling, rippling stream of talk keeps his
Japanese auditors convulsed. Sword walkers and knife
swallowers are plenty as blackberries, and the phono-
graph is conspicuous in Isezakicho's tents and booths.
The sceptic and investigator wastes his time in the effort
to penetrate the Japanese jugglers' mysteries. Once, at
a dinner given by Governor Tateno at Osaka, the foreign
guest of honor determined to be cheated by no optical
delusions. He hardly winked, so close was his scrutiny,
and the juggler played directly to him. An immense
porcelain vase having been brought in and set in the
middle of the room, the juggler, crawling up, let himself
down into it slowly. For half an hour the sceptic did
not raise his eyes from the vase, that he had first proved
to be sound and empty, and to stand on no trap-door.
After this prolonged watch the rest of the company as-
sailed him with laughter and jeers, and pointed to his
side, where the old juggler had been seated for some
minutes fanning himself.
«9
Jinrikisha Days in 'Japan
CHAPTER III
YOKOHAMA — CONTINUED
In the Settlement, back of the main street, the Chi-
nese have an ill-smelling corner to themselves. Their
greasy walls and dirty floors affront the dainty doll dwell-
ings across the creek, and the airy little box of a tea-
house, whose lanterns swing at the top of the perpen-
dicular bluff behind them. Vermilion paper, baggy
clothes, pigtails, harsh voices, and vile odors reign in
this Chinatown. The names on the signs are curiosities
in themselves, and Cock Eye, tailor, Ah Nie and Wong
Fai, ladies' tailors, are the Poole, Worth, and Felix of the
foreign community. Only one Japanese has a great rep-
utation as dress-maker, but the whole guild is moderately
successful, and prices are so low that the British and
French houses of Yokohama cannot compete with them.
There is a large joss-house near the Chinese consulate,
and at their midsummer, autumn, and New-year's festi-
vals the Celestials hold a carnival of lanterns, fire-crackers,
incense, paper-flowers, varnished pigs, and cakes. The
Japanese do not love these canny neighbors, and half
the strictures of the passport laws are designed to lim-
it their hold on the business of the country. The Chi-
nese are the stronger and more aggressive people, the
hard-headed financiers of the East, handling all the
money that circulates this side of India. In every bank
Chinese shroffs, or experts, test the coins and make the
actual payments over the counters. The money-changers
are Chinese, and every business house has its Chinese
Yokohama
compradore or superintendent, through whom all con-
tracts and payments are made. The Chinaman has the
methodical, systematic brain, and no convulsion of nat-
ure or commerce makes him lose his head, as the charm-
ingly erratic, artistic, and polite Japanese does. In many
foreign households in Japan a Chinese butler, or head
boy, rules the establishment; but while his silent, unvary-
ing, clock-like service leaves nothing undone, the attend-
ance of the bright-faced, amiable, and exuberant little
natives with their smiles, their matchless courtesy, and ■
their graceful and everlasting bowing is far more agree-
able.
Homura temple, whose stone embankments and soaring
roof rise just across the creek, is generally the first Budd-
hist sanctuary seen by the tourist coming from American
shores. Every month it has its matsuri, or festival, but
sparrows are always twittering in the eaves, children play-
ing about the steps, and devout ones tossing their coppers
in on the mats, clapping their hands and pressing their
palms together while they pray. One of the most impress-
ive scenes ever witnessed there was the funeral of its high-
priest, when more than a hundred bonzes, or priests, came
from neighboring temples to assist in the long ceremonies,
and sat rigid in their precious brocade vestments, chant-
ing the ritual and the sacred verse. The son, who suc-
ceeded to the father's office by inheritance, had prepared
for the rites by days of fasting, and, pale, hollow-eyed,
but ecstatic, burned incense, chanted, and in the white
robes of a mourner bore the mortuary tablets from the
temple to the tomb. Homura's commercial hum was
silenced when the train of priests in glittering robes,
shaded by enormous red umbrellas, wound down the
long terrace steps and out between the rows of tiny
shops to the distant graveyard. Yet after it the crowd
closed in, barter and sale went on, jinrikishas whirled
up and down, and pattering women and toddling children
yinrikisha Days in "yapan
fell into their places in the tableaux which turn Homu-
ra's chief street into one endless panorama of Japanese
lower-class life.
Half-way up one of the steep roads, climbing from
Homura to the Blufif, is the famous silk store of Tenabe
Gengoro, with its dependent tea-house of Segiyama, best
known of all tea-houses in Japan, and rendezvous for the
wardroom officers of the fleets of all nations, since Te-
nabe's uncle gave official welcome to Commodore Perry.
When a war-ship is in port, the airy little lantern-hung
houses continuously send out the music of the koto and
the samisen, the banjo, bones, and zither, choruses of
song and laughter, and the measured hand-clapping that
proclaims good cheer in Japan. Tenabe herself has now
lost the perfect bloom and beauty of her younger days,
but with her low, silver-sweet voice and fascinating man-
ner, she remains the most charming woman in all Japan.
In these days Tenabe presides over the silk store only,
leaving her sisters to manage the fortunes of the tea-
house. Tenabe speaks English, French, and Russian ;
never forgets a face, a name, or an incident ; and if you
enter, after an absence of many years, she will surely
recognize you, serve you sweets and thimble-cups of pale
yellow tea, and say dozo, dozo, "please, please," with grace
incomparable and in accents unapproachable.
Both living and trammelling are delightfully easy in
Japan, and no hardships are encountered in the ports
or on the great routes of travel. Yokohama has excel-
lent hotels ; the home of the foreign resident may be
Queen Anne, or Colonial, if he like, and the markets
abound in meats, fishy game, fruits, and vegetables at
very low prices. Imported supplies are dear because of
the cost of transportation. Besides the fruits of our cli-
mates, there are the biwa^ or loquat, and the delicious kakS,
or Japanese persimmon. Natural ice is brought from
Hakodate ; artificial ice is made in all the ports, the
Yokohama
Japanese being as fond of iced drinks as Americans.
Three daily English newspapers, weekly mails to Lon-
don and New York, three great cable routes, electric
lights, breweries, gas, and water -works add utilitarian
comfort to ideal picturesqueness. The summers are hot,
but instead of our eccentric variations of temperature,
the mercury stands at 80°, 85°, and go'' from July to Sep-
tember. With the fresh monsoon blowing steadily, that
heat is endurable, however, and the nights are comfort-
able. June and September are the two nyubai, or rainy
seasons, when everything is damp, clammy, sticky, and
miserable. In May, heavy clothing is put away in sealed
receptacles, even gloves being placed in air-tight glass
or tin, to preserve them from the ruinous mildew. While
earthquakes are frequent, Japan enjoys the same immu-
nity from thunder-storms as our Pacific Coast.
There is no servant problem, and house keeping is a
delight. Both Chinese and Japanese, though unfamiliar
with western ways, can be trained to surpass the best
European domestics. Service so swift, noiseless, and
perfect is elsewhere unknown. Indeed, cooks as well as
butlers are adjusted to so grand a scale of living that
their employers are served with almost too much formal-
ity and elaboration. The art of foreign cookery has
been handed down from those exiled c/iefs who came
out with the first envoys, to insure them the one attain-
able solace of existence before the days of cables and
regular steamships. There is a native cuisine of great
excellence, and each legation or club chef has pupils, who
pay for the privilege of studying under him, while the
ordinary kitchener of the treaty ports is a more skilful
functionary than the professional cook of American cit-
ies. Such cooks do their own marketing, furnish without
complaint elaborate menus three times a day, serve a
dinner party every night, and out of their monthly p.iy,
ranging from ten to twenty Mexican dollars, supply iheir
»3
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
own board and lodging. The brotherhood of cooks help
each other in emergencies, and if suddenly called upon
to feed twice the expected number of guests, any one of
them will work miracles. He runs to one fellow-crafts-
man to borrow an extra fish, to another to beg an entree,
a salad, or a sweet, and helps himself to table ware as
well. A bachelor host is often amazed at the fine linen,
the array of silver, and the many courses set before him
on the shortest notice, and learns afterwards that every-
thing was gathered in from neighboring establishments.
Elsewhere he may meet his own monogram or crest at
the table. Bachelors keep house and entertain with less
trouble and more comfort than anywhere else in the
world. To these sybarites, the " boy," with his rustling
kimono, is more than a second self, and the soft-voiced
amahs, or maids, are the delight of woman's existence.
The musical language contributes not a little to the
charm of these people, and the chattering servants seem
often to be speaking Italian.
After the Restoration many samurai, or warriors, were
obliged to adopt household service. One of these at my
hotel had the face of a Roman senator, with a Roman
dignity of manner quite out of keeping with his broom
and dust-pan, or livery of dark-blue tights, smooth vest,
and short blouse worn by all his class in Yokohama.
When a card for an imperial garden party arrived, I
asked Tatsu, my imperial Roman, to read it for me. He
took it, bowed low, sucked in his breath many times, and,
muttering the lines to himself, thus translated them : " Mi-
kado want to see Missy, Tuesday, three o'clock." When a
curio-dealer left a piece of porcelain, Tatsu, always crit-
ical of purchases, went about his duties slowly, waiting
for the favorable moment to give me, in his broken Eng-
lish, a dissertation on the old wares, their marks and
qualities, and his opinion of that particular specimen
of blue and white. He knew embroideries, understood
Yokohama
pictures, and was a living dictionary of Japanese phrase
and fable. A pair of Korean shoes procured me a lect-
ure on the ancient relations between Japan and Korea,
and an epitome of their contemporary history.
Social life in these foreign ports presents a delightful
fusion of English, continental, and Oriental customs.
The infallible Briton, representing the largest foreign
contingency, has transferred his household order un-
changed from the home island, yielding as little as pos-
sible to the exigencies of climate and environment. The
etiquette and hours of society are those of England, and
most of the American residents are more English in
these matters than the English. John Bull takes his
beef and beer with him to the tropics or the poles indif-
ferently, and in his presence Jonathan abjures his pie,
and outlaws the words "guess," "cracker," "trunk,"
" baggage," " car," and " canned." His East Indian ex-
periences of a century have taught the Briton the best
system of living and care-taking in hot or malarial coun-
tries, and he thrives in Japan.
In the small foreign communities at Yokohama, Kobe,
and Nagasaki the contents of the mail - bags, social
events, and the perfection of physical comfort comprise
the interests of most of the residents. The friction of a
large community, with its daily excitements and affairs, the
delights of western art, music, and the drama, are absent,
and society naturally narrows into cliques, sets, rivalries,
and small aims. If most residents did not affect indif-
ference to things Japanese, life would be much more in-
teresting. As it is, the old settler listens with an air of
superiority, amusement, and fatigue to the enthusiasm
of the new-comer. Not every foreign resident is famil-
iar with the art of Japan, nor with its history, religion,
or political conditions. If the missionaries, of whom
hundreds reside in Yokohama and Tokio, mingled more
with the foreign residents, each class would benefit ; but
as
yinrikisha Days hi yapan
the two sets seldom touch, the missionaries keep to
themselves, and the lives of the other extra-territorial
people continually shock and offend them. Each set
holds extreme, unfair, and prejudiced views of the other,
and affords the natives arguments against both.
Socially, Tokio and Yokohama are one community,
and the eighteen miles of railroad between the two do
not hinder the exchange of visits or acceptance of invi-
tations. When the Ministers of State give balls in To-
kio, special midnight trains carry the Yokohama guests
home, as they do when the clubs or the naval officers
entertain at the seaport town. With the coming and go-
ing of the fleets of all nations great activity and variety
pervades the social life. In the increasing swarm of
tourists some prince, duke, or celebrity is ever arriving,
visitors of lesser note are countless, and the European
dwellers in all Asiatic ports east of Singapore make
Japan their pleasure-ground, summer resort, and sanita-
rium. That order of tourist known as the "globe-trotter,"
is not a welcome apparition to the permanent foreign
resident. His generous and refined hospitality has been
so often abused, and its recipients so often show a half-
contemptuous condescension to their remote and uncom-
prehended hosts, that letters of introduction are looked
upon with dread. Now that it has become common for
parents to send dissipated young sons around the " Horn "
and out to Japan on sailing vessels, that they may reform
on the voyage, a new-comer must prove himself an in-
valid, if he would not be avoided after he confesses hav-
ing come by brig or bark. Balls, with the music of naval
bands, and decorations of bamboo and bunting, are as
beautiful as balls can be ; picnics and country excursions
enliven the whole year; and there are perennial dinners
and dances on board the men-of-war.
Those East-Indian contrivances, the chit and the c/nf-
book, furnish a partial check on native servants. The
36
Yokohama
average resident carries little ready money, but writes a
memorandum of whatever he buys, and hands it to the
seller instead of cash. These chits are presented month-
ly ; but the system tempts people to sign more chits than
they can pay. This kind of account-keeping is more gen-
eral in Chinese ports, where one may well object to re-
ceive the leaden-looking Mexicans and ragged and dirty
notes of the local banks. When one sends a note to an
acquaintance he enters it in his chit-book, where the per-
son addressed adds his initials as a receipt, or even
writes his answer. The whole social machinery is regu-
lated by the chit-book, which may be a source of discord
when its incautious entries and answers lie open to any
Paul Pry.
Summer does not greatly disturb the life of society.
Tennis, riding, boating, and bathing are in form, while
balls and small dances occur even in July and August.
At niany places in the mountains and along the coast
one may find a cooler air, with good hotels and tea-
houses. Some families rent country temples near Yo-
kohama for summer occupation, and enjoy something
between the habitual Japanese life and Adirondack camp-
ing. The sacred emblems and temple accessories are
put in the central shrine room, screens are drawn, and
the sanctuary becomes a spacious house, open to the air
on all sides, and capable of being divided into as many
separate rooms as the family may require. Often the
priests set the images and altar-pieces on a high shelf
concealed by a curtain, and give up the whole place to
the heretical tenants. In one instance the broad altar-
shelf became a recessed sideboard, whereon the gilded
Buddhas and Kwannons were succeeded by bottles, de-
canters, and glasses. At another temple it was stipu-
lated that the tenants should give up the room in front
of the altar on a certain anniversary day, to allow the
worshippers to come and pray.
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
CHAPTER IV
THE ENVIRONS OF YOKOHAMA
The environs of Yokohama are more interesting and
beautiful than those of any other foreign settlement, af-
fording an inexhaustible variety of tramps, rides, drives,
railroad excursions, and sampan trips.
At Kanagawa proper the Tokaido comes to the bay's
edge, which it follows for some distance through double
rows of houses and splendid old shade-trees. Back of
Kanagawa's bluff lie the old and half-deserted Bukenji
temples, crowded on rare fete days with worshippers,
merrymakers, and keepers of booths, and at quieter times
serving as favorite picnic grounds for foreigners.
On the Tokaido, just beyond Kanagawa, is the grave
of Richardson, who was killed by the train of the Prince
of Satsuma, September 14, 1862. Although foreigners
had been warned to keep off the Tokaido on that day,
the foolhardy Briton and his friends deliberately rode
into the daimio's train, an affront for which they were
attacked by his retainers and severely wounded, Rich-
ardson himself being left for dead on the road-side, while
the rest escaped. When the train had passed by, a
young girl ran out from one of the houses and covered
the body with a piece of matting, moving it in the night
to her house, and keeping it concealed until his friends
claimed it. A memorial stone, inscribed with Japanese
characters, marks the spot where Richardson fell. Since
that time the kindly black-eyed Susan's tea-house has
been the favorite resort for foreigners on their afternoon
rides and drives. Susan is a tall woman, with round
The Environs of Yokohama
eyes, aquiline nose, and a Roman countenance — quite
fit for a heroine. Riders call at her tea-house for tea,
rice, and eels, prawns, clams, pea-nuts, sponge-cake, or
beer, and insist upon seeing her. This Richardson affair
cost the Japanese the bombardment of Kagoshima, and
an indemnity of ;^i 25,000; but Susan did not share in
the division of that sum.
According to one version Susan's strand is the spot
where Taro of Urashima, the Rip Van Winkle of Japan,
left his boat and nets, and, mounting a tortoise, rode
away to the home of the sea-king, returning by the same
tortoise to the same spot. On its sands he opened the
box the sea-king had given him, and found himself veiled
in a thin smoke, out of which he stepped an old, old man,
whose parents had been dead a hundred years. The
fishermen listened to his strange tale, and carried him
to their daimio, and on fans, boxes, plates, vases, and
fukusas Taro sits relating his wonderful tale to this
day.
Ten miles inland from Bukenji's temples is the little
village of Kawawa, whose headman has a famous col-
lection of chrysanthemums, the goal of many autumnal
pilgrimages. This Kawawa collection has enjoyed its
fame for many years, the owner devoting himself to it
heart and soul, and knowing no cooling of ardor nor
change of fancy. His great thatched house in a court-
yard is reached through a black gate-way at the top of a
little hill, and the group of buildings within his black
walls gives the place quite a feudal air. Facing the front
of the house are rows of mat sheds, covering the precious
flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, the tops
soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petalled, wide-spread
ing blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, rus-
set, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow, and snow white. It
was there that we ate a salad made of yellow chrysanthe-
mum petals, most aesthetic of dishes. The trays of golden
yinriktsha Days in Japan
leaves in the kitchen of the house indicated that the
master enjoyed this ambrosial feast habitually, and per-
haps dropped the yellow shreds in his sakk cup to pro-
long his life and avert calamities, as they are warranted
iWy
AT KAWAWA
to do. Beyond Kawawa lies a rich silk district, and all
the region is marked by thrift and comfort, signs of the
prosperity that attends silk-raising communities.
From Negishi, where Yokohama's creek debouches
The Environs of Yokohama
into Mississippi Bay, one looks across to Sugita, a fish-
ing village with an ancient temple set in the midst of
plum-trees and cherry-trees that make it a place of f^tes
in February and April, when those two great flower fes-
tivals of the empire, the blossoming of the plum and the
cherry, are observed. From the bluff above Sugita, at
the end of the watery cresent, is a superb view of the
Bay and its countless sharp, green headlands. Wherever
the view is fine some Japanese family has encamped in
a tateba, the least little mat shed of a house, furnished
with a charcoal brazier, half a dozen tea-pots and cups,
and a few low benches covered with the all-pervading
red blanket. Their national passion for landscape and
scenery draws the Japanese to places having fine pros-
pects, and a thrifty woman, with her family of children,
turns many a penny by means of her comfortable seat
and good cheer for the wayfarer. Japan is the picnicker's
own country, whether he be native or foreign. Every-
where, climbing the mountain-tops, or crouching in the
valleys, hidden in the innermost folds of the hills, or
perched on the narrowest and remotest ledges overhang-
ing the water, one finds the tea-house, or its summer com-
panion, the tateba, with its open sides and simmering
kettle. Everywhere hot water, tea, rice, fruits, eggs, cups,
plates, glasses, and corkscrews may be had. These
things become so much a matter of course after a time,
that the tourist must banish himself to China, to value,
as they deserve, the clean Japanese tea-house, and the
view-commanding tateba with its simple comforts.
Sugita's plum-trees bud in January, and blossom as
mild days and warm suns encourage, so that the last
week of February finds the dead-looking branches clothed
with clouds of starry white flowers. The blossoming
plum-tree is often seen when snow is on the ground, and
the hawthorn pattern of old porcelains is only a conven-
tional representation of pale blooms fallen on the seamed
yinrikisha Days in yapan
ice of ponds or garden lakelets. The plum is the poet's
tree, and symbolic of long life, the snowy blossoms upon
the gnarled, mossy, and unresponsive branches showing
that a vital current still animates it, and the heart lives.
At New-years a dwarf-plum is the ornament of every
home, and to give one is to wish your friend length of
days. U?ne, the plum blossom, has a fresh, delicate, elu-
sive, and peculiar fragrance, which in the warm sun and
open air is almost intoxicating, but in a closed room be-
comes heavy and cloying. The blossoming of the plum-
tree is the first harbinger of spring, and to Sugita regu-
larly every year go the court ladies, many princes, and
great officials to see those billows of bloom that lie
under the Bluff, and the pink and crimson clouds of trees
before the old temple.
During the rest of the year little heed is paid to Sugi-
ta's existence, and the small fishing village in the curve
of the Bay, with its green wall of bluffs, is as quiet as in
ihe days when Commodore Perry's fleet anchored off it
and Treaty Point acquired its name. With the blossoms
Sugita puts on its holiday air, tea-houses open, tateba
spring from the earth, and scores of low, red-blanketed
benches are scattered through the grove, signals of tea
and good cheer, equivalent to the iron tables and chairs
of Parisian boulevards. Strings of sampans float in to
shore, lines of jinrikishas file over the hills, zealous pil-
grims come on foot, and horsemen trot down the long,
hard beach. The tiny hamlet often has a thousand vis-
itors in a day, and the pretty little nesans, or tea-house
maids, patter busily about with their trays of tea and solid
food, welcoming and speeding the guests, and looking
— quaint, odd, and charming maidens that they are —
like so many tableaux vivants with their scant kimonos,
voluminous sleeves, ornate coiffures, and pigeon-toes.
Notwithstanding the crowds, everything is decorous,
quiet, and orderly, and no more refined pleasure exists
The Environs of Yokohama
than this Japanese beatitude of sitting lost in revery and
rapturous contemplation of a blossoming tree, or inditing
a verse to ume no hana, and fastening the bit of paper to
the branches. In this Utopia the spring poem is never
rejected, nor made the subject of cruel jokes. The winds
fan it gently, it hangs conspicuous, it is read by him who
runs, but it is not immortal, and the first heavy rain
leaves it a wet and withered wreck, soon to fall to the
ground and disappear.
Just outside the temple door is a plum-tree whose age
is lost in legend. Its bent and crooked limbs and propped-
up branches sustain^ a thick-massed pyramid of pale rose-
pink. The outer boughs droop like a weeping-willow,
and their flowers seem to be slipping down them like
rosy rain-drops. Poets and peers, dreamers and plod-
ders, coolies, fishermen, and the unspiritual foreigner, all
admire this lovely tree, and its wide arms flutter with
poems in its praise. All around the thatched roof of the
old temple stand plum-trees covered with fragant blos-
soms — snow white, palest yellow, rose, or deep carna-
tion-red. The sheltering hill back of the temple is crowd-
ed with gravestones, tombs, tablets, and mossy Buddhas,
sitting calm and impassive in tangles of grasses and
vines under the shadow of ancient trees. A wide-spread-
ing pine on the crest of the hill is a famous landmark,
whence one looks down on the flower-wreathed village,
the golden bow of the beach curving from headland to
headland, and the blue bay flashing with hundreds of
square white sails. It is a place for poesy and day-
dreams, but the foreign visitor dedicates it to luncheon,
table-talk, and material satisfactions, and, perhaps, the
warm sun and air, and the mild fragrance of the plum-
blossoms aid and abet the insatiable picnic appetite.
All this part of Japan is old, and rich in temples,
shrines, and picturesque villages, with a net-work of nar-
row roads and shady by-paths leading through perpetual
Jtnrikisha Days in yapan
scenes of sylvan beauty. Thatched roofs, whose ridge
poles are beds of lilies, shaded by glorified green plumes
of bamboo-trees, tall, red-barked cryptomerias, crooked
pines, and gnarled camphor-trees, everywhere charm the
eye. Little red temples, approached through a line of
picturesque torii — that skeleton gate-way that makes a
part of every Japanese view or picture — red shrines no
larger than marten boxes ; stone Buddhas, sitting cross-
legged, chipped, broken-nosed, headless, and moss-grown ;
odd stone tablets and lanterns crowd the hedges and
banks of the road-side, snuggle at the edges of groves,
or stand in the corners of rice fields.
Fair as the spring days are, when the universal green
mantle of the earth is adorned with airy drifts of plum
and cherry-blossoms, the warm, mellow sunshine, glori-
ous tints and clear bright air of autumn are even fairer.
One may forget and forgive the Japanese summer for
the sake of the weeks that follow, an Indian summer
which often lasts without break for four months after
the equinoctial storm. Except that Fujiyama gleams
whiter and whiter, there is no suggestion of winter's ter-
rors, and only a pleasant crispness in the bracing and
intoxicating air. When the maple leaves begin to turn,
and a second rose-blossoming surpasses that of June in
color, prodigality, and fragrance, autumnal Japan is the
typical earthly Paradise. Every valley is a floor of gold-
en rice stubble, every hill-side a tangle of gorgeous foli-
age. The persimmon-trees hang full of big golden kake,
sea and sky wear their intensest blue, and Fujiyama's
loveliness shines out against the western sky. In among
the yellowing stubble move blue-clad farmers with white
mushroom hats. Before the farm-houses men and wom-
en swing their flails, beating the grain spread out on
straw matting. The rice straw, whether bunched in
pretty sheaves, tied across poles, like a New-year's fringe,
or stacked in collars around the tree-trunks, is always
3*
The Environs of Yokohama
decorative. Meditative oxen, drawing a primitive plough
made of a pointed stick, loosen the soil for the new plant-
ing, and tiny green wheat-shoots, first of the three regu-
lar crops of the year, wait for the warm winter sun that
opens the plum-blossoms.
Above and beyond Sugita is Mine, a temple on a
mountain-top, with a background of dense pine forest,
a foreground of bamboos, and an old priest, whose suc-
cessful use of the moxa brings sufferers from long dis-
tances for treatment. A bridle-path follows for several
miles the knife-edge of a ridge commanding noble views
of sea and shore, of the blue Hakone range, its great
sentinel Oyama, and Fuji beyond. The high ridge of
Mine is the backbone of a great promontory running
out into the sea, the Bay of Yeddo on one side and
Odawara Bay on the other. Square sails of unnum-
bered fishing-boats fleck the blue horizon, and the view
seaward is unbroken. Over an old race -course and
archery - range of feudal days the path leads, till at a
sudden turn it strikes into a pine forest, where the
horses' hoofs fall noiseless on thick carpets of dry pine-
needles, and the cave -like twilight, coolness, and still-
ness seem as solemn as in that wood where Virgil and
Dante walked, before they visited the circles of the other
world.
A steep plunge down a slippery, clayey trail takes the
rider from the melancholy darkness to a solitary forest
clearing, with low temple buildings on one side. Here,
massed against feathery fronds of giant bamboos, blaze
boughs of fine -leafed maples, all vivid crimson to the
tips. While the priests bring sakd tubs, and the antado,
or outside shutters of their house, to make a table, and
improvise benches with various temple and domestic
properties, visitors may wander through the forest to
open spaces, whence all the coasts of the two bays and
every valley of the province lie visible, and a column of
yinrtkisha Days in "Japan
smoke proclaims the living volcano on Oshima's island,
far down the coast.
Groups of cheery pilgrims come chattering down from
the forest, untie their sandals, wash their feet, and dis-
appear within the temple ; where the old priest writes
sacred characters on their bared backs to indicate where
his attendant shall place the lumps of sticky moxa dough.
Another attendant goes down the line of victims and
touches a light to these cones, which burn with a slow,
red glow, and hiss and smoke upon the flesh for agoniz-
ing seconds. The priest reads pious books and casts up
accounts, while the patients endure without a groan tor-
tures compared with which the searing with the white-
hot irons of Parisian moxa treatment is comfortable.
The Mine priest has some secret of composition for his
moxa dough which has kept it in favor for many years,
and almost the only revenue of the temple is derived
from this source. Rheumatism, lumbago, and paralysis
yield to the moxa treatment, and the Japanese resort to
it for all their aches and ills, the coolies' backs and legs
being often finely patterned with its scars.
The prospect from Mine's promontory is rivalled by
that at Kanozan, directly across the Bay, one of the
highest points on the long tongue of separating land.
Here are splendid old temples, almost unvisited by for-
eigners, but the glory of the place is the view of the
ninety-nine valleys, of Yeddo Bay, the ocean, and the
ever -dominant Fujiyama. Every Japanese knows the
famous landscapes of his country, and the mention of
these ninety-nine valleys and the thousand pine -clad
islands of Matsuyama brings a light to his eyes.
At Yokosuka, fifteen miles below Yokohama, are the
Government arsenal, navy - yard, and dry docks, with
their fleets of war-ships that put to shame the American
squadron in Asiatic waters. The Japanese Government
has both cdfistructed and bought a navy ; some vessels
36
The Environs of Yokohavia
coming from Glasgow yards, and others having been
built at these docks.
Uraga, reached from Yokosuka by a winding, Cornice-
like road along the coast, is doubly notable as being the
port off which Commodore Perry's ships first anchored,
and the place where midzti amc, or millet honey, is made.
The whole picturesque, clean little town is given up to
the production of the amber sweet, and there are certain
families whose midzu ame has not varied in excellence
for more than three hundred years. The rice, or millet,
is soaked, steamed, mixed with warm water and barley
malt, and left to stand a few hours, when a clear yellow
liquid is drawn off and boiled down to a thick syrup or
paste, or cooked until it can be moulded into hard balls.
Unaffected by weather, it is the best of Japanese sweets,
and in its semiliquid stage is twisted out on chopsticks
at all seasons of the year. The older and browner the
midzu ame is, the better. It may be called the apotheo-
sis of butter-scotch, a glorified Oriental taffy, constantly
urged upon one for one's own good, and conceded by for-
eign physicians in Japan to be of great value for dyspep-
tics and consumptives. Though prepared all over the
empire, this curative sweet is the specialty of Uraga;
and the secrets and formulas held in the old families
make for Uraga midzu ame, as compared with other pro-
ductions, a reputation akin to that of the Grande Char-
treuse, or Schloss Johannisberger, among other cordials
or wines. Street artists mould midzu ame paste, and
blow it with a pipe into myriad fantastic shapes for their
small patrons; while at the greatest banquets, and even
on the Emperor's table, it appears in the farciful flowers
that decorate every feast.
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
CHAPTER V
KAMAKURA AND ENOSHIMA
The contemporary Yankee might anticipate the sage
reflections of the future New Zealander on London
Bridge were there left enough ruins of the once great
city of Kamakura to sit upon ; but the military capital
of the Middle Ages has melted away into rice fields and
millet patches. One must wrestle seriously with the
polysyllabic guide-book stories of the shoguns, regents,
and heroes who made the glory of Kamakura, and at-
tracted to it a population of five hundred thousand, to
repeople these lonely tracts with the splendid military
pageants of which they were the scene.
The plain of Kamakura is a semicircle, bounded by
hills and facing the open Pacific, the surf pounding on
its long yellow beach between two noble promontories.
The Dai Butsu, the great bronze image of Buddha,
which has kept Kamakura from sinking entirely into
obscurity during the centuries of its decay, stands in a
tiny valley a half-mile back from the shore. The Light
of Asia is seated on the lotus flower, his head bent for-
ward in meditation, his thumbs joined, and his face wear-
ing an expression of the most benignant calm. This is
one of the few great show-pieces in Japan that is badly
placed and lacks a proper approach. Seen, like the tem-
ple gate-ways and pagodas of Nikko, at the end of a long
avenue of trees, or on some height silhouetted against
the sky, Dai Butsu (Great Buddha) would be far more
imposing. Within the image is a temple forty-nine feet
38
Kamakura and Enoshima
in height; and through an atmosphere thick with incense
may be read the chalked names of ambitious tourists,
who have evaded the priests and left their signatures
on the irregular bronze walls. An alloy of tin and a lit-
tle gold is mingled with the copper, and on the joined
thumbs and hands, over which visitors climb to sit for
their photographs, the bronze is polished enough to show
its fine dark tint. The rest of the statue is dull and
weather-stained, its rich incrustation disclosing the seams
where the huge sections were welded together.
A pretty landscape-garden, banks of blossoming plum-
trees, and the usual leper at the gate-way furnish the ac-
customed temple accessories, and Buddha broods and
meditates serene in his quiet sanctuary. The photo-
graphic skill of the priest brings a good revenue to the
temple, and a fund is being slowly raised for building a
huge pavilion above the great deity, like that which stood
there three hundred years ago. During his six centuries
of holy contemplation at Kamakura, Dai Butsu has en-
dured many disasters. Earthquakes have made him nod
and sway on the lotus pedestal, and tidal waves have
twice swept over and destroyed the sheltering temple,
the great weight and thickness of the bronze keeping the
statue itself unharmed.
Kamakura is historic ground, and each shrine has its
legends. The great temple of Hachiman, the God of
War, remains but as a fragment of its former self, the
buildings standing at the head of a high sjtone-embanked
terrace, from which a broad avenue of trees runs straight
to the sea, a mile and a half away. Here are the tomb
of Yoritomo and the cave tombs of his faithful Satsuma
and Chosen Daimios; and the priests guard sacredly the
sword of Yoritomo, that of Hachiman himself, the hel-
met of lyeyasu, and the bow of lyemitsu.
In the spring, Kamakura is a delightful resort, on
whose dazzling beach climate and weather are altogether
39
'Jinrikiska Days in Japan
different from those of Yokohama or Tokio. In summer-
time, the steady south wind, or monsoon, blows straight
from the ocean, and the pine grove between the hotel
and shore is musical all day long with the pensive sough
of its branches. In winter it is open and sunny, and the
hot sea-water baths, the charming walks and sails, the
old temples and odd little villages, attract hosts of vis-
itors.
On bright spring mornings men, women, and children
gather sea-weed and spread it to dry on the sand, after
which it is converted into food as delicate as our Iceland
moss. Both farmers and fishermen glean this salty har-
vest, and after a storm, whole families collect the flotsam
and jetsam of kelp and sea-fronds. Barelegged fisher-
maidens, with blue cotton kerchiefs tied over their heads,
and baskets on their backs, roam along the shore \ chil-
dren dash in and out of the frothing waves, and babies
roll contentedly in the sand ; men and boys wade knee-
deep in the water, and are drenched by the breakers all
day long, with the mercury below 50°, in spite of the
warm, bright sun. Women separate the heaps of sea-
weed, and at intervals regale their dripping lords with
cups of hot tea, bowls of rice, and shredded fish. It is
all so gay and beautiful, every one is so merry and hap-
py, that Kamakura life seems made up of rejoicing and
abundance, with no darker side.
The poor in Japan are very poor, getting comparative
comfort out of smaller means than any other civilized
people in the world. A few cotton garments serve for
all seasons alike. The cold winds of winter nip their
bare limbs and pierce their few thicknesses of cloth, and
the fierce heat of summer torments them ; but they en-
dure these extremes with stoical good-nature, and enjoy
their lovely spring and autumn the more. A thatched
roof, a straw mat, and a few cotton wadded futons, or
comforters, afford the Japanese laborer shelter, furniture,
40
Kamakura and Enoshima
and bedding, while rice, millet, fish, and sea-weed consti-
tute his food. With three crops a year growing in his
fields, the poor farmer supports his family on a patch of
land forty feet square ; and with three hundred and sixty
varieties of food fish swimming in Japanese waters, the
fisherman need not starve. Perfect cleanliness of person
and surroundings is as much an accompaniment of pov-
erty as of riches.
Beyond Kamakura's golden bow lies another beach —
the strand of Katase, at the end of which rises Enoshi-
ma, the Mont St. Michel of the Japanese coast. Eno-
shima is an island at high tide, rising precipitously from
the sea on all sides save to the landward, where the preci-
pice front is cleft with a deep wooded ravine, that runs
out into the long tongue of sand connecting with the
shore at low tide.
Like every other island of legendary fame, Enoshima
rose from the sea in a single night. Its tutelary genius
is the goddess Benten, one of the seven household dei-
ties of good-fortune. She is worshipped in temples and
shrines all over the woody summit of the island, and in
a deep cave opening from the sea. Shady paths, moss-
grown terraces, and staircases abound, and little tea-
houses and tateba offer seats, cheering cups of tea, and
enchanting views. The near shores, the limitless waters
of the Pacific, and the grand sweep of Odavvara Bay afford
the finest setting for Fujiyama anywhere to be enjoyed.
Enoshima's crest is a very Forest of Arden, an en-
chanted place of lovely shade. The sloping ravine which
gives access to it holds only the one street, or foot-path,
lined with tea-houses and shell-shops, all a-flutter with
pilgrim flags and banners. The shells are cut into whis-
tles, spoons, toys, ornaments, and hair-pins; and tiny
pink ones of a certain variety form the petals of most
perfect cherry blossoms, which are fastened to natural
branches and twigs.
y/nriktsha Days in yapan
The fish dinners of Enoshima are famous, and the
Japanese, who have the genius of cookery, provide more
delicious fish dishes than can be named. At the many
tateba set up in temple yards or balanced on the edges
of precipices, conch-shells, filled with a black stew like
terrapin, simmer over charcoal fires. This concoction
has a tempting smell, and the pilgrims, who pick at the
inky morsels with their chopsticks, seem to enjoy it ; but
in the estimation of the foreigner it adds one more to
the list of glutinous, insipid preparations with which the
Japanese cuisine abounds. The great marine curiosity
of Enoshima is the giant crab, with its body as large as
a turtle, and claws measuring ten, and even twelve, feet
from tip to tip. These crustaceans are said to prom-
enade the beach at night, and glare with phosphorescent
eyes. Another interesting Japanese crab, the Doryppe
yaponica., comes more often from the Inland Sea. A
man's face is distinctly marked on the back of the shell,
and, as the legend avers, these creatures incarnate the
souls of the faithful samurai, who, following the fortunes
of the Tairo clan, were driven into the sea by the victo-
rious Minamoto. At certain anniversary seasons, well
known to true believers, the spirits of these dead war-
riors come up from the sea by thousands and meet to-
gether on a moonlit beach.
Enoshima must have become the favorite summer
resort of the region, had not the whole island been re-
served as an imperial demesne and site for a sea-shore
palace. When typhoons rage or storms sweep in from the
ocean, billows ring the island round with foam, spray
dashes up to the drooping foliage on the summit, the air
is full of the wild breath and wilder roar of the breakers,
while the very ground seems to tremble. The under-
ground shrine of Benten is then closed to worshippers,
and looking down the sheer two hundred feet of rock,
one sees only the whirl and rage of waters that hide the
Tokto
entrance. When these storms rage, visitors are some-
times imprisoned for days upon the island. At low tide
and in ordinary seas Benten's shrine is easily entered by
a ledge of rocks, the hard thing being the climb up the
long stone stair-ways to the top of the island again.
Guides are numerous, and an old man or a small boy
generally attaches himself to a company of strangers,
and is so friendly, polite, and amiable, that, after escort-
ing it unbidden round the island, he generally wins his
cause, and is bidden to maru maru (go sight-seeing) as
escort and interpreter.
CHAPTER VI
TOKIO
The first view of Tokio, like the first view of Yoko-
hama, disappoints the traveller. The Ginza, or main
business street, starting from the bridge opposite the
station, goes straight to Nihombashi, the northern end
of the Tokaido, and the recognized centre of the city,
from which all distances are measured. Most of the
roadway is lined with conventional houses of foreign
pattern, with their curb-stones and shade-trees, while the
tooting tram-car and the rattling basha, or light omnibus,
emphasize the incongruities of the scene. This is not
the Yeddo of one's dreams, nor yet is it an Occidental
city. Its stucco walls, wooden columns, glaring shop-
windows, and general air of tawdry imitation fairly de-
press one. In so large a city there are many corners,
however, which the march of improvement has not reach-
ed, odd, unexpected, and Japanese enough to atone for
the rest.
43
yinrikisha Days in Japan
Through the heart of Tokio winds a broad spiral moat,
encircling the palace in its innermost ring, and reaching,
by canal branches, to the river on its outer lines. In
feudal days the Shogun's castle occupied the inner ring,
and within the outer rings were the yashikis, or spread-
out houses, of his daimios. Each gate-way and angle of
the moat was defended by towers, and the whole region
was an impregnable camp. Every daimio in the empire
had his yashiki in Tokio, where he was obliged to spend
six months of each year, and in case of war to send his
family as pledges of his loyalty to the Shogun. The
Tokaido and the other great highways of the empire
were always alive with the trains of these nobles, and
from this migratory habit was developed the passion for
travel and excursion that animates every class of the
Japanese people. When the Emperor came up from
Kioto and made Tokio his capital, the Shogun's palace be-
came his home, and all the Shogun's property reverted to
the crown, the yashikis of the daimios being confiscated
for government use. In the old days the barrack build-
ings surrounding the great rectangle of the yashiki were
the outer walls, protected by a small moat, and furnished
with ponderous, gable -roofed gate-ways, drawbridges,
sally-ports, and projecting windows for outlooks. These
barracks accommodated the samurai, or soldiers, attached
to each daimio, and within their lines were the parade
ground and archery range, the residence of the noble
family, and the homes of the artisans in his employ.
With the new occupation many yashiki buildings were
razed to the ground, and imposing edifices in foreign
style erected for government offices. A few of the old
yashiki remain as barracks, and their white walls, resting
on black foundations, suggest the monotonous street
views of feudal days. Other yashiki have fallen to baser
uses, and sign-boards swing from their walls.
Modern sanitary science has plucked up the miles of
Tokio
lotus beds that hid the triple moats in midsummer.
From the bridges the lounger used to overlook acres of
pink and white blossoms rising above the solid floors of
bluish-green leaves ; but the Philistines could not uproot
the moats, which remain the one perfect feudal relic of
Japanese Yeddo. The many-angled gate-ways, the mass-
ive stone walls, and escarpments, all moss and lichen-
grown, and sloping from the water with an inward curve,
are noble monuments of the past. Every wall and em-
bankment is crowned with crooked, twisted, creeping,
century-old pines, that fling their gaunt arms wildly out,
or seem to grope along the stones. Here and there on
the innermost rings of the moat still rise picturesque,
many -gabled towers, with white walls and black roofs,
survivors from that earlier day when they guarded the
shiro, or citadel, and home of the Shogun.
The army is always in evidence in Tokio, and the Ut-
ile soldiers in winter dress of dark-blue cloth, or sum-
mer suits of white duck, swarm in the neighborhood of
the moats. In their splendid uniforms, the dazzling offi-
cers, rising well in the saddle, trot by on showy horses.
On pleasant mornings, shining companies of cavalry file
down the line of the inner moat and through the deep
bays of the now dismantled Cherry-Tree gate to the Hi-
biya parade-ground, where they charge and manoeuvre.
When it rains, the files of mounted men look like so many
cowled monks, with the peaked hoods of their great
coats drawn over their heads, and they charge, gallop,
and countermarch through mud and drizzle, as if in a
real campaign. Taking the best of the German, French,
Italian", and British military systems, with instructors of
all these nationalities, the Japanese army stands well
among modern fighting forces. There is a military gen-
ius in the people, and the spirit of the old samurai has
leavened the nation, making the natty soldiers of to-day
worthy the traditions of the past.
Jmrtkisha Days in Japan
A large foreign colony is resident in Tokio, the diplo-
matic corps, the great numbers of missionaries, and
those employed by the Government in the university,
schools, and departments constituting a large commu-
nity. The missionary settlement now holds the Tsukiji
district near the railway station ; that piece of made
ground along the shore first ceded for the exclusive oc-
cupation of foreigners. Besides being malarial, Tsukiji
was formerly the rag-pickers' district, and its selection
was not complimentary to the great powers, all of whose
legations have now left it. To reside outside of Tsukiji
was permitted to non-officials in extra-territorial times
only when in Japanese employ. Any who chose to live
in Tokio were claimed as teachers by some kindly Jap-
anese friend, who became responsible for the stranger's
conduct. Before the revision of the treaties with foreign
powers, which compacts became operative July 17, 1899,
a foreigner could not go twenty -five miles beyond a
treaty-port without a passport from the Japanese foreign
office issued after a personal application to his legation
in Tokio. Each place which he wished tcJ visit had to
be named, and immediately upon his arrival at a tea-
house, the district policeman called for the passport and
registered the stranger. Any one attempting to travel
without a passport was promptly escorted to the nearest
treaty-port. European tourists had a formidable list of
rules of conduct which their ministers exhorted them to
observe — that they should not quarrel, deface monu-
ments, destroy trees or shrubs, break windows, or go to
fires on horseback. Th^ American tourist was trusted
to behave without such minute instructions, and at Kobe
could visit the Kencho and ask a permit to visit Kioto
without the intervention of his consul — a recognition of
the freedom and independence of the American citizen,
and a tribute to the individual sovereignty of his nation,
concerning which a Japanese poet wrote :
46
Tokio
"What are those strangely-clad beings
Who move quickly from one spot of interest to another
Like butterflies flitting from flower to fiower ?
These are Amsricans,
They are as restless as the ocean,
In one day they will learn more of a city
Than an inhabitant will in a year.
Are they not extraordinary persons ?"
All the legations are now on the high ground in the
western part of the city near the castle moats. All lega-
tion buildings are owned and kept up by their respective
governments. The Japanese Government, having offered
to give the land if the United States would erect a per-
manent legation, finally built and rented the present
structure to the great republic before it was purchased.
The English possess a whole colony of buildings in
the midst of a large walled park, affording offices and
residences for all the staff. Germany, Russia, France,
and the Netherlands own handsome houses with grounds.
The Chinese legation occupied part of an old yashiki
until a beautiful modern structure replaced the " spread-
out-house " of such picturesqueness, and iron grilles suc-
ceeded the quaint, old pea-green and vermilion gateway.
The show places of Tokio are the many government
museums at Uyeno Park, the many mortuary temples of
the Tokugawa Shoguns at Shiba and Uyeno, the popular
temple of Asakusa, and the Shinto temple at the Kudan,
with its race-course and view of the city ; but the Kanda,
the Kameido, the Hachiman temples, many by -streets
and queer corners, the out-door fairs, the peddlers, and
shops give the explorer a better understanding of the
life of the people than do the great monuments. Here
and there he comes upon queer old nameless temples
with ancient trees, stones, lanterns, tanks, and urns that
recall a forgotten day of religious influence, when they
possessed priests, revenues, and costly altars.
47
yinrikisha Days in Japan
An army of jinrikisha coolies waits for passengers at
the station, and among them is that Japanese Mercury,
the winged-heeled Sanjiro, he of the shaven crown and
gun-hammer topknot of samurai days. His biography
includes a tour of Europe as the servant of a Japanese
official. On returning to Tokio he took up the shafts of
his kuruma again, and is the fountain-head of local news
and gossip. He knows what stranger arrived yesterday,
who gave dinner parties, in which tea-house the " man-of-
war gentlemen " had a geisha dinner, where your friends
paid visits, even what they bought, and for whom court
or legation carriages were sent. He tells you whose
house you are passing, what great man is in view, where
the next matsuri will be, when the cherry blossoms will
unfold, and what plays are coming out at the Shintomiza.
Sanjiro is cyclopaedic at the theatre, and as a temple
guide he exhales ecclesiastical lore. To take a passen-
ger on a round of official calls, to and from state balls or
a palace garden party, he finds bliss unalloyed, and his
explanations pluck out the heart of the mystery of Tokio.
" Mikado's mamma," prattles Sanjiro in his baby-Eng-
lish, as he trots past the green hedge and quiet gate of
the Empress Dowager's palace, and " Tenno Sa?/;" he
murmurs, in awed tones, as the lancers and outriders of
the Emperor appear.
First, he carries the tourist to Shiba, the old monas-
tery grounds that are now a public park. Under the
shadow of century-old pines and cryptomeria stand the
mortuary temples of the later Shoguns, superb edifices
ablaze with red and gold lacquer, and set with panels of
carved wood, splendid in color and gilding, the gold tre-
foil of the Tokugawas shining on every ridge-pole and
gable. These temples and tombs are lesser copies of
the magnificent shrines at Nikko, and but for those orig-
inals would be unique. On a rainy day, the green shad-
ow and gloom, the cawing of the ravens that live in the
48
Tokto
old pine-trees, and their slow flight, are solemn as death
itself; and the solitude of the dripping avenues and court-
yards, broken only by the droning priests at prayer, and
the musical vibrations of some bell or sweet-voiced gong,
invite a gentle melancholy. On such a day, the priests,
interrupted in their statuesque repose, or their pensive
occupation of sipping tea and whiffing tiny pipes in silent
groups around a brazier, display to visitors the altars and
ceilings and jewelled walls with painstaking minuteness,
glad of one ripple of excitement and one legitimate fee.
Led by a lean, one-toothed priest, you follow, stocking-
footed, over lacquer floors to behold gold and bronze,
lacquer and inlaying, carving and color, golden images
sitting in golden shadows, enshrined among golden lotus
flowers, and sacred emblems. In one temple the clear,
soft tones of the bronze gong, a bowl eighteen inches in
diameter and a little less in depth, vibrate on the air for
three full minutes before they die away.
Up mossy stair-ways, between massive embankments,
and through a shady grove, the priest's clogs scrape
noisily to the hexagonal temple, where the ashes of
Hidetada, the Ni Dai Shogun, lyeyasu's son, lie in a
great gold lacquer cylinder, the finest existing specimen
of the lacquer of that great art age. The quiet of Shiba,
the solemn background of giant trees, the deep shadows
and green twilight of the groves, the hundreds of stone
lanterns, the ponds jf sacred lotus, the succession of
dragon-guarded gate-ways, and carved and gorgeously-
colored walls, crowd the memory with lovely pictures.
Near a hill-top pagoda commanding views of the Bay and
of Fuji, stands the tateba of a cheerful family, who bring
the visitor a telescope and cups of cherry-blossom tea.
A colony of florists show gardens full of wonderful
plants and dwarf-trees, and then Sanjiro minces, "I think
more better we go see more temples ;" and we go, spin-
ning past the giant Shiba gate and up the road to Atago
O 49
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Yaiha, a tiny temple on the edge of a precipitous hill-
top, approached by men's stairs, an air-line flight of broad
steps, and women's stairs, curving by broken flights of
easier slope. A leper, with scaly, white skin and hideous
ulcers, extends his miserable hand for alms, and pict-
uresque, white-clad pilgrims, with staff and bell, go up
and down those breathless flights. The tateba, with their
rows of lanterns, where the nesans^ offer tea of salted
cherry blossoms, that unfold again into perfect flowers
in the bottom of the cup, overhang the precipice wall,
and look down upon the Shiba quarter as upon a relief
map.
A breathless rush of two miles or more straight across
the city, past flying shops, beside the tooting tram-way
and over bridges, and Sanjiro runs into Uyeno Park, with
its wide avenues, enormous trees, and half -hidden tem-
ple roofs. The ground slopes away steeply at the left,
and at the foot of the hill lies a lotus lake of many acres
that is a pool of blossoms in midsummer. A temple and
a tiny tea-house are on an island in the centre, and
around the lake the race-course is overarched with cher-
ry-trees. Great torii mark the paths and stairs leading
from the shore to the temples above.
At Uydno are more tombs and more sanctuaries, av-
enues of lanterns, bells, and drinking -fountains, and a
black, bullet-marked gate-way, where the Yeddo troops
made their last stand before the Restoration. Near this
gate-way is the sturdy young tree planted by General
Grant. Far back in the park stand the mortuary tem-
ples, splendid monuments of Tokugawa riches and pow-
er, though the most splendid, here as at Shiba, have been
destroyed by fire.
When the Tokio Fine Arts Club holds one of its loan
exhibitions in its Uyeno Park house, Sanjiro is inexora-
ble, deposits his fare at the door-way, shows the way to
the ticket - ofiice, and insists upon his seeing the best
50
Tokto
work of the great artists. The noble club-men contrib-
ute specimens from their collections of lacquer, porcelain,
ivories, bronzes, and kakemonos. Behind glass doors
hang kakemonos by the great artists, and Japanese visit-
ors gaze with reverence on the masterpieces of the Kano
and Tosa schools. The great art treasures of the empire
are sequestrated in private houses and godowns, and to
acquire familiarity with them, to undertake an art educa-
tion in semiannual instalments by grace of the Fine Arts
Club, is a discouraging endeavor. It would be more
hopeful to seek the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the
British Museum, or Mr. Walters's Baltimore galleries,
which contain an epitome of all Japanese art. At the
Tokio Club, however, works of Sosen and Hokusai, the
two masters of the last century, are often exhibited.
Sosen painted inimitable monkeys, and connoisseurs of
to-day award him the tardy fame which his contempora-
ries failed to give. As a rule, foreigners prefer Hokusai
to all other masters, and they search old book-shops in
the hope of stumbling upon one of the innumerable
books illustrated and sometimes engraved by this pro-
lific genius. His genius never lacked recognition, and a
century ago all feudal Yeddo went wild over his New-
year's cards, each one a characteristic and unique bit of
landscape, caricature, or fantasy. His fourteen volumes
of Mang7va, or rough sketches, and his One Hundred
Views of Fuji are most celebrated ; but wonderfully clev-
er are his jokes, his giants, dwarfs, demons, goblins, and
ghosts ; and when he died, at the age of ninety, he sighed
that he could not live long enough to paint something
which he should himself esteem. After the visit to the
club Sanjiro takes his patron to the tomb of Hokusai, in
a near-by temple yard, and shows the brushes hung up
by despairing and prayerful artists, who would follow his
immortal methods.
East of Uyeno stands the great Asakusa temple, shrine
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
of one of the most famous of the thirty -three famous
Kwannons of the empire, the great place of worship for
the masses, and the centre of a Vanity Fair unequalled
elsewhere. Every street leading to the temple grounds
is a bazaar and merry fair, and theatres, side shows,
booths, and tents, and all the devices to entrap the idle
and the pleasure-seeking, beset the pilgrim on his way
to the sanctuary. In florists' gardens are shown marvels
of floriculture, in their ponds swim gold-fish with won-
derfully fluted tails, and in tall bamboo cages perch
Tosa chickens with tail feathers ten and twelve feet
long. Menageries draw the wondering rustics, and they
pay their coppers for the privilege of toiling up a wood,
canvas, and pasteboard Fujiyama to view the vast plain
of the city lying all around it, and on timbered slopes
enjoy tobogganing in midsummer. Penetrating to the
real gate-way, it is found guarded by giant Nio, whose
gratings are spotted with the paper prayers that the wor-
shipful have chewed into balls and reverently thrown
there. If the paper wad sticks to the grating, it is a fa-
vorable omen, and the believer may then turn the vener-
able old prayer-wheel, and farther on put his shoulder
to the bar, and by one full turn of the revolving library
of Buddhist scriptures endow himself with all its intel-
lectual treasure.
The soaring roof of the great temple is fitly shadowed
by camphor-trees and cryptomeria that look their centu-
ries of age, and up the broad flagging there passes the
ceaseless train of believers. One buys corn and feeds
the hundreds of pigeons, messengers of the gods, who
live secure and petted by all the crowds in the great en-
closure, or pays his penny to secure the release of a cap-
tive swallow, that flies back every night to its owner.
At the foot of the steps the pilgrim begins to pray, and,
ascending, mumbles his way to the altar. The colossal
money-box, which is said to gather in over a thousand
Tokio
dollars on great holidays, rings and echoes well to the
fall of the smallest coin. The sides of the temple are
open to the air, and the visitor may retain shoes and
clogs, so that the clatter of these wooden soles, the pil-
grims' clapping and mumbling, mingle in one distracting
roar.
Tame pigeons fly in and out through the open walls,
and children chase each other across the floor ; but be-
hind the grating candles burn, bells tinkle, priests chant,
and rows of absorbed worshippers clap, toss their cop-
pers, and pray, oblivious of all their surroundings.
CHAPTER VII
TOKIO — CONTINUED
There are no such holiday-makers as the Japanese.
The whole twelvemonth is fete - time, and the old year
held three hundred and sixty-five festivals and anniver-
saries. All the great days of the Chinese calendar are
observed, and the death-day of past sovereigns, instead
of the birthday ; while each religion, each sect, each tem-
ple, and each neighborhood has its own fete or matsuri,
feligious in its origin. Every night different temple
grounds and different streets glow with lanterns and
torches, an out-door fair is in full progress, and happy,
laughing, chattering men, women, and children enjoy it
all. The evening flower -fairs are as characteristic and
picturesque as anything in Japan. The smoke of blazing
flambeaux, the smell of the women's camellia seed hair-
oil, and the mingled odors from booths and portable
restaurants, are not enticing on a hot night, but at least
they offend in an " artless Japanese way."
The booths along the whole length of the Ginza oflFer
yifirikisha Days m yapan
innumerable odd notions, queer toys, pretty hair-pins,
curios, and indescribable trifles, every night in the year.
The Japanese hair-pin, by-the-bye, is a dangerous vanity,
the babies often twisting themselves into the range of its
point, and the mothers impaling them on it in shaking
them up higher on their backs and tightening the bands
that hold them. The comic and ingenious toys, em-
bodying the simplest principles of mechanics, and by the
aid of a little running water, or the heat of a candle, per-
forming wonderful feats, are such trifles of bamboo, thin
pme, paper, or straw, as American children would destroy
at a touch. Yet the more truly civilized Japanese little
people play with them for weeks ; and they toddle home
with minute wicker cages of semi, or cicada, on one finger,
content to hang them up and listen peaceably to the
strident captives' chirping mi-mi-mi all day long.
The first week of March is gala time for the small
girls of Japan, when their Hina Matsuri, or Feast of Dolls,
is celebrated. Then do toy shops and doll shops double
in number and take on dazzling features, while children
in gay holiday clothes animate the streets. Little girls
with hair elaborately dressed, tied with gold cords and
bright crape, and gowns and girdles of the brightest
colors, look like walking dolls themselves. The tiniest
toddler is a quaint and comical figure in the same long
gown and long sleeves as its mother, the gay-patterned
kimono, the bright inner garments showing their edges
here and there, and obis shot with gold threads, mak-
ing them irresistible. Nothing could be gentler or sweet-
er than these Japanese children, and no place a more
charming play-ground for them. In the houses of the
rich the Dolls' Festival is second only to the New Year
in its importance. The family don their richest clothing,
and keep open house for the week. The choicest pict-
ures and art treasures are displayed, and with these the
hina or images that have been preserved from grand-
54
Tokio
THE SEMIS CAGK
mothers' and great- grandmothers' time, handed down
and added to with the arrival of each baby daughter.
These dolls, representing the Emperor, Empress, nobles,
and ladies of the old Kioto court, are sometimes num-
bered by dozens, and are dressed in correct and expen-
sive clothing. During the holiday the dolls are ranged
Jt'nrtkisha Days in Japan
in a row on a shelf like an altar or dais, and food and
gifts are placed before them. The tiny lacquer tables,
with their rice -bowls, teapots, cups, plates, and trays,
are miniature and exquisite likenesses of the family fur-
nishings. Each doll has at least its own table and dish-
es, and often a full set of tableware, with which to enter-
tain other dolls, and amazing prices have been paid for
sets of gold and carved red lacquer dishes, or these
Lilliputian sets in wonderful metal-work. After the fes-
tival is over, the host of dolls and their belongings are
put away until the next March , and when the beautiful
images emerge from the storehouses after their long hid-
ing they are as enchanting as if new. Nothing better
illustrates inherent Japanese ideas of life and enjoyment,
and gentleness of manners, than this bringing out of all
the dolls for one long fete week in the year, and the
handing them down from generation to generation.
On the fifth day of the fifth month comes the boys'
holiday. The outward sign is a tall pole surmounted
with a ball of open basket-work, from which hang the
most natural-looking fish made of cloth or paper. Such
a pole is set before every house in which a boy has been
born during the year, or where there are young boys,
and some patriarchal households display a group of poles
and a school of carp flying in the air. These nobori, as
the paper carp are called, are of course symbolic, the
carp being one of the strongest fish, stemming currents,
mounting water-falls, and attaining a great age. Many
of these nobori are four or five feet in length, and a hoop
holding the mouth open lets them fill and float with as
life-like a motion as if they were flapping their fins in
their own element. In-doors, images and toys are set out
in state array — miniature warriors and wrestlers, spears,
banners, and pennants, and all the decorative parapher-
nalia that once enriched a warrior's train. In all classes
children's parties and picnics prevail. The schools arQ
Tokio
given up to out-door exercises, and every sunny morning
processions of youngsters file by, with banners and col-
ored caps to distinguish them, and go to some park ov
parade-ground for exercises, drills, and athletic games.
Besides the public schools maintained by Government,
there are scores of private schools and mission schools.
With its higher institutions reaching up to the Imperial
University, with its special schools of law, medicine, en-
gineering, science, and the arts, Tokio offers the best
education to the youth of Japan. The public-school sys-
tem is the equal of that of the United States, and the
Government employs foreign teachers in even the re-
motest provincial schools. At a kindergarten the aris-
tocratic pupils, with a repose of manner inherited from
generations of courtly and dignified ancestors, trot in, in
their little long-sleeved kimonos, like a Mikado opera
company seen through the wrong end of an opera-glass,
sit down demurely around low tables, and fold their
hands like so many old men and women of the kingdom
of Lilliput. There is no tittering, no embarrassment, nor
self-consciousness ; and these grave and serious mites
will take the blocks from the teachers with a reverent
bow and present them to other children with another
formal salute, quite as their grandfathers might have
done at court. In some of the girls' schools the old
Japanese methods are followed, and they are taught the
traditional etiquette and the cha 7io yu, to embroider, to
write poems, to arrange flowers, and to play the samisen.
The koto, once almost obsolete, is restored to favor, and
girls delight to touch this sweet-toned, horizontal harp.
The great summer festival is the opening of the river.
This is the beginning of the nightly water fetes on the
Sumidagawa, and in the innumerable tea-houses that
line its banks. This fete, appointed for the last week of
June, is often postponed to the more settled season of
July. Flat-bottomed house-boats, with open sides, awn-
57
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
ings hung round with lanterns, and sturdy boatmen at
either end of the craft, go up the river by hundreds and
thousands at sunset, gliding out -from the creeks and ca-
nals that everywhere intersect the city. The glittering
fleet gathers in the broad stretch of stream lying between
the Asakusa bashi and the Ryogoku bashi, and these two
bridges are black with spectators. The rows of tea-
houses lining both shores spread red blankets over the
balcony railings, and hang row upon row of lanterns
along balustrades and eaves. With their rooms thrown
wide open to the water, they themselves look like great
lanterns. Every room of every house has its dinner par-
ty, the tea-house of the Thousand Mats being engaged
months before hand, and every maiko and geisha bespo-
ken. Boats command double prices, and nearly every
boat has its family group ; little children in holiday dress,
their elders in fresh silk, crape, gauze, or cotton kimonos,
sitting on the red floor-cloth, each with a tray of dolls'
dishes, filled with the morsels of dainty things that make
up a Japanese feast, and sake bottles circulating freely.
The lines of lanterns shed a rose-colored light over all ;
and at one end a pretty maiko goes through her graceful
poses, the company keeping time with her in rhythmical
hand - clappings. Peddlers of fruit, candies, fireworks,
and sake ; performing jugglers, acrobats, and story-tell-
ers ; floating restaurants, theatres, side-shows, and boat-
loads of musicians row in and out among the rest. Talk,
laughter, and the wailing notes of samisens fill the air
with a hum that swells to cheers and roars as the swift
rockets fill the air with balls, fountains, sheaves, sprays,
jets, and trails of light ; or fiery dragons, wriggling mon-
sters, rainbows, and waterfalls shine out on the dark
night sky. Although sake flows everywhere, there is no
drunkenness or disorder to degrade these gentle, cheer-
ful merry-makers.
Fires are among the thrilling but picturesque experi-
58
Tokio
ences of city life, confined chiefly to the winter months.
The annual losses of Japan through conflagrations are
very great, and Tokio has been destroyed many times.
The flimsy little straw-matted, wooden houses are always
ready to blaze ; and if a lamp explodes, a brazier upsets,
or a spark flies, the whole place is in flames, which leap
from roof to roof until the quarter is kindled. Each time
a burned district is rebuilt the streets are widened, a
measure which preserves property but ruins picturesque-
ness, for the broad thoroughfares, lined with low, un-
painted buildings, make the modern Japanese city mo-
notonous and uninteresting.
The diminutive Japanese dwellings, of toy-like con-
struction, rest on corner posts set on large rocks, and
made stable by their heavy roofs of mud and tiles. Fires
are stemmed only by tearing down all buildings in the
path of the flames, which is done as easily as a house of
cards is overturned. A rope, fastened to one of the up-
right corner posts, brings the structure down with a crash,
while the heavy roof covers it like an extinguisher. The
ordinary city house or shop may have twelve feet of
frontage, and even a second story seldom raises the roof
more than fifteen feet from the ground. To hear of a
thousand houses being burned in a night is appalling,
but a thousand of these Lilliputian dwellings and their
microscopic landscape gardens would not cover more
area than two or three blocks of a foreign city.
Each section or ward has a high tower or ladder, with
a long bell, and from this lookout the watchman gives
the alarm or the near policeman sounds the fire-bell.
Pandemonium follows, for a more excitable being than
the Japanese does not exist, and the fire-bell's clang is
suggestive of many sad and terrible experiences. Besides
the municipal fire brigade with their ladders and hand-
pumps, each ward maintains private watchmen and fire-
men. These watchmen roam their beats from dusk to
Jinrtkisha Days in Japan
daylight, jingling the loose iron rings on the tops of their
long staffs. Throughout the night the watchman's clink-
ing rings are heard at half-hour intervals or oftener. The
policemen, on the contrary, go about quietly, lurking in
shadow to pounce upon malefactors ; and foreigners, mis-
taking the fire-guardian for the constable, have pointed
many jokes at his noisy progress.
When the alarm-bell clangs, friends rush to help
friends in saving their effects, and thieves make the
most of the opportunity. Blocks away from the fire
agitated people gather up mats, screens, bedding, cloth-
ing, and cooking utensils, and hurry from the neighbor-
hood. Then does the simplicity of Japanese life justify
itself. No cumbrous furniture is rolled out, to be broken
in the transit ; no tables, chairs, or clumsy beds are
ruined in the saving. One small hand-cart holds the
roll of wadded comforters and gowns that compose the
bedding of the family, their clothing, and their few other
effects. The sliding paper-screens are slipped from their
grooves, the thick straw-mats are taken from the floor,
and the household departs, leaving but the roof, corner
posts, and rough floor behind them. Processions of these
refugees stream away from the burning quarter, and the
heart of the spectator goes out to the poor people, who,
with so little, live so cheerfully and suffer so bravely.
The emblems or rallying banners always carried by
native fire-companies astonish foreign eyes. Glorified
drum -majors' sticks, gigantic clubs, spades, hearts, dia-
monds, balls, crescents, stars, or puzzles, are borne aloft
by the color-bearer of the detachment, who stands in the
midst of smoke, sparks, and the thickest of the hurly-
burly, to show where his company is at work. Thrilling
tales are told of these Casabiancas remaining on. roofs
or among flames until engulfed in the blazing ruins.
Sometimes carpenters begin to build new habitations
on the still smoking ground, stepping gingerly among
Tokio
hot stones and tiles. The amazing quickness with which
Japanese houses rise from their ashes defies comparison.
In twelve hours after a conflagration the little shop-
keepers will resume business at the old stand. Fire in-
surance is not suited to this country of wood and straw
dwellings ; but thatched roofs are giving way to tiles in
the cities, and brick is more and more used for walls.
Stone is too expensive, and, in this earthquake country,
open to greater objections than brick. The stone walls
sometimes seen are a sham, the stones being thin slabs
nailed on the wooden framework of a house, like tiles or
shingles, to rattle down in a harmless shower when the
earth heaves and rocks. Steam fire-engines are un-
known, and hand-grenades are inevitably forgotten in
the excitement of a conflagration.
Earthquakes, though frequent, are fortunately not se-
vere, and only one catastrophe has been suffered since
the convulsions of 1854 and 1855, which the malcontents
attributed to the wrath of the gods at the spectacle of
foreign barbarians entering the country. The old myth,
that the earth — meaning the islands of Japan — rests
upon the back of a huge fish, whose writhings cause
these disturbances, places the head of the leviathan be-
neath Yezo, its tail under the southern island, and its
vital and active body below Yokohama and Tokio. Now
the Government has a seismologist on its university
staff, and each tremor or palpitation is accurately record-
ed, the average number reaching four hundred annually.
Kobe and Kioto seldom experience even the slightest
motion, but in the vicinity of the capital one becomes
fairly accustomed to the unpleasant visitation. A slight
disturbance sets lamps and chandeliers vibrating; with
a heavier rock all bric-k-brac not wired fast to cabinets,
mantels, or tables, slides to the floor ; and a harder shock
loosens tiles, wrenches timbers, and sends brick chim-
neys, not boxed in wood or sheet-iron, crashing through
6»
'Jinrikisha Days in Japan
the roofs. A small house rattles as if the earthquake
fish had come out of the sea and seized it as a terrier
does a rat. Pebbles grate in garden paths, tall ever-
greens snap their tops like switches, bells ring, clocks
stop, and people rush frantically to open spaces or
streets.
The Japanese seldom drink water, although they
splash, dabble, or soak in it half the time ; yet men
who are working m moats or lotus-ponds, grubbing out
the old roots or stalks, and dripping wet to their waists
and shoulders, will quit work on rainy days. In Yoko-
hama harbor, coolies who load and unload lighters, and
are in and out of water continually, often refuse to work
wlien a shower begins ; but a wet day brings a new as-
pect to the streets, and fair weather has no monopoly of
picturesqueness. The unoccupied women with babies
tied on their backs, an apparently large leisure class, are
always gadding about the town with the aimless uncon-
cern of hens, taking no account of the weather, and en-
joying the open air regardless of the barometer. Children
are equally indifferent, and jinrikisha coolies, although
they draw the hoods and tie their passengers in snug and
dry with oil-paper or rubber aprons, trot along cheerfully,
with their too scanty cotton garments more abbreviated
than ever. They substitute for an umbrella a huge flat
straw plate of a hat, and instead of putting on galoches,
they take off even their straw sandals and run barefoot-
ed, tying up the big toe with a bit of rag or wisp of straw,
apparently by way of decoration. Those pedestrians who
wish to be stately and dry-shod thrust their bare feet
into a half -slipper arrangement of wood and oil-paper,
perched on two wooden rests three inches high, adding
this cubit to their stature.
When the rain-drops patter the shops are a delight,
and the great silk bazaars of Echigoya and Dai Maru,
the Louvre and Bon Marche of Tokio, are as entertain-
62
Tokto
ing as a theatre. Both occupy corners on great thor-
oughfares, and have waving curtains of black cloth, with
crest and name in white, as the only wall or screen from
the street. The one vast open room of the first story
is revealed at a glance. The floor proper of this great
apartment, raised a foot and a half from the stone walk
surrounding it, is covered with the usual straw -mats,
the uniform glistening surface extending more than sixty
feet either way. Here and there salesmen and account-
ants, the book-keepers being also cashiers, sit at low
desks, where they keep their sorobans, money, and cu-
rious ledgers. There are no shelves nor counters, and
in groups on the mats sit women with beautifully-dressed
hair, and men in sober silk garments, inspecting the
heaps of rainbow fabrics strewn about them. Small
boys bring out arm-loads and baskets of silks from the
godowns, for no stock is ever in sight until the purchaser
asks for it. It is etiquette for these small boys to hail
and cheer the arriving and departing customer, and they
drone out some nasal chorus. We once lifted the street
curtain at Dai Maru's on a rainy day to find the whole
matted area deserted of customers. Immediately the
battalion of small boys sprang to their feet, and, deafen-
ing us with a chanted canticle, hurried to the corner
where a steaming bronze urn, various tea-caddies, and a
shelved box full of tea-sets provide patrons with cups of
amber- tinted nectar. For an hour these myrmidons ran
to and fro, baskets were carried back and forth, and gold
brocades supplied sunlight and rainbows for a gloomy
day. All these precious brocades come in lengths of four
and a half yards for the broad obis or sashes that are
one secret of her looks in the toilet of a Japanese woman.
Those woven of silk alone are as thick as leather and
soft as crape, and the massed gold threads, while glis-
tening like plates of chased metal, give stiffness but not
hardness to the fabrics. When the woof threads are left
63
yinrikzsha Days in yapan
in thick, shaggy loops on the under side, not cut away
in any economical fashion, these are yesso nishikis, the
choicest of all Japanese stuffs, and valued from sixty to
one hundred and twenty dollars for the single obi length.
The Nakadori is a half-mile-long street of curio and
second-hand shops, which just before the New Year con-
tain their best bargains, and no one can hold to the safe-
ty of his jinrikisha through that straight and narrow path,
beset by every temptation of old porcelains, lacquer, and
embroideries. Peddlers will gather from these shops and
carry packs twice their own size, to spread their con-
tents out in the room of a customer. Their wares are so
tempting and cheap that the beholder cannot resist them,
after a reformation of prices, and that peddler who comes
twice has marked his victim for his own. On certai*n
days of the week a rag fair is held on the Yanagiwara,
Vendors in rows half a mile long sit under the willow-
trees on the canal bank, with neat piles of old clothing,
scraps of cloth, and ornaments for sale. Between Shiba
and the railway station is a rag alley, a Petticoat Lane of
old clothing, but most of it is foreign and unpicturesque,
even in the flying glimpses to be caught from a jinrikisha.
In' curio-hunting the experienced buyer invariably re-
plies takai, "too much," to whatever price the dealer
names. If intent on the bargain he may add takusan
iakai, "altogether too much." Osoroshi takai, or toho-
moni takai, "inexpressibly, unspeakably dear," some-
times serves to abate the price by reason of the dealer's
amazement at hearing those classic and grandiloquent
words brought down to common usage.
Once I visited the most charming of old-clothes shops,
one where theatrical wardrobes were kept ; but Sanjiro
could not, or would not remember it, and I never re-
turned. The shopmen were sober and serious automata,
whose countenances were stolid and imperturbable, and
one might as well have bargained with the high-priest
64
Tokio Flower Festivals
for the veil of the temple, as have offered them less
than they asked. They sat, smoked, and cast indifferent
glances at us while baskets of gorgeous raiment were
borne in, and affected to look up the prices in a book of
records. After baiting me long enough, and bringing
me to raise my offer, the trio of partners would sudden-
ly clap their hands, say something in concert, and de-
liver me the article. It was all as precisely ordered and
acted as a set scene on the stage, and I longed in vain
to assist at other acts in the unique drama.
CHAPTER VIII
TOKIO FLOWER FESTIVALS
With all its foreign sophistications, flower worship
has not died out in the Japanese capital. The calendar
is divided into the time of the camellia, the plum, the
cherry, the wistaria, the lotus, the chrysanthemum, and
the maple. Orange blossoms and tea blossoms alone
are omitted among the special flower festivals, and the
Japanese as naturally refer to the time of the cherry
blooming or of maple-leaves, as we to spring or autumn.
They infuse into these festivals a sentiment and feeling,
a spirit and gayety, inherited from generations of flower-
loving ancestors, who made their aesthetic pilgrimages
year after year to see the acres of wonderful flowers in
the different suburbs of each city. By the old calendar,
the first unfolding of the plum-trees, the true awakening
of the seasons, marked the new year. In the change
from the Chinese method of reckoning to the Gregorian,
the Japanese January fell to a churlish mood of nature,
when only late chrysanthemums, camellias, and in-door
dwarf -trees can bloom. But every door -way is then
- ■ 65
yinrzkzsha Days in japan
arched with evergreens and flowers ; pine and bamboo,
bound with braided straw ropes, are set before the
house; tassels of rice straw are festooned across the
eaves, and lanterns hang in rows. The emblematic rice-
cake, prawn, orange, and fern- leaf are fastened above
the lintel, the handsomest screen is brought forward,
and more emblems and a large bowl for cards are set
out at the entrance. This is the season when all debts
are paid, while general visiting and feasting occupy three
days. Everybody says to everybody else, Shinen ome
deto, "I wish you a happy New -year;" or, Man zai
raku, " Good - luck for ten thousand years." Every-
body sends his friend a present — a basket of fruit, or
a dumpling of red beans or rice dough, wrapped in cer-
emonial paper. The streets of Tokio, crowded with
merrymakers and lighted at night by thousands of lan-
terns and torches, hold out-of-door fairs without number,
and from palace to hovel run sounds of rejoicing; yet
this joyous homage to the spirit of life is paid in mid-
winter, when snow-flakes may shroud the blooming ca-
mellia-trees, though the clear, bright Indian -summer
weather often lasts until after the new year. Winter, a
long calamity elsewhere in the same latitude, is only the
disagreeable incident of a few weeks in Central Japan.
A fortnight, a month, of melting snows, cold rains, and
dull skies, and lo ! the branches of the withered, old
black plum - trees are starred with fragrant white flow-
ers. For a few days a hazy calm hushes the air, sounds
are veiled, light is softened, and spring has really come,
no matter how many sullen relapses it may suffer before
the glorious April cloud-burst of cherry blossoms decks
the empire in wreaths of white and pink, and fills the
people with joy. And this linked sweetness long drawn
out, this gentle season' of delight, lasts from the bursting
of the plum blossoms in February to the end of the
nyubai, or rainy season of June.
Tokto Flower Festivals
Beyond Kameido's wistaria-bordered lake are ancient
plum groves, whose trees — old, gnarled, twisted, black,
and lichen-covered, propped with poles and stone posts —
writhe and twist over the ground in contortions which
explain their name — the Gwariobai, or the couchant
dragon-trees. This Ume Yashiki was once the villa of
a Shogun's favorite. Its buildings, fences, and hedges
are gray with age, its stone tablets, moss-grown and
something in the hoary antiquity of the place subdues
one's pulses. The long cry of a hidden boatman in the
creek beyond the high camellia hedge is the only sound
that breaks the silence. People sit on the red-covered
benches, women in soft - toned crapes walk under the
strange skeleton shadows like moving figures of a dream,
and children flash among the black trunks brilliant in
their gay garb. Often one sees visionary old men sit-
ting lost in reverie, and murmuring to themselves of
ume no hana the, plum blossom. They sip tea, they rap
out the ashes from tiny pipes, and slipping a writing-case
from the girdle, unroll a scroll of paper and indite an ode
or sonnet. Then, with radiant face and cheerful mutter-
ing, the ancient poet will slip his toes into his clogs and
tie the little slip to the branches of the most charming
tree. The well - bred spectators do not push upon the
fluttering scroll, as my impetuous fellow - countrymen
would do, but with a decent dignity read and criticise
the praises of the blossoms and the solemn stillness of
the old yashiki.
The veriest Gradgrind could not be indifferent to the
poetic charm of the Japanese spring-time, wherein the
setting of the buds, their swelling, and the gradual un-
folding of sakura, the cherry blossoms, are matters of
great public concern, the native newspapers daily print-
ing advance despatches from the trees. Even more beau-
tiful than the plum-tree festival is the Tokio celebration
of the blossoming of the cherry, and gayer than the brill-
69
yinrtkisha Days in yapan
iant throngs are the marvellous trees. From the wild,
indigenous dwarf seedling of the mountains have been
developed countless varieties, culminating in that which
bears the pink-tinged double blossoms as large as a hun-
dred-leafed rose, covering every branch and twig with
thick rosettes. A faint fragrance arises from these sheets
of bloom, but the strange glare of pinkish light from their
fair canopy dazzles and dizzies the beholder. The cher-
ry-blossom Sunday of Uyeno Park is a holiday of the
upper middle class. One week later, the double avenue
of blossoming trees, lining the Mukojima for a mile along
the river bank, invites the lower classes to a very differ-
ent celebration from that of the decorous, well-dressed
throng driving, walking, picnicking, and tea drinking un-
der the famous trees. No warning to keep off the grass
forbids their wandering at will over the great park, every
foot of whose ground is historic, whose trees are ancient,
whose avenues are broad and winding, and whose woods
are as dark as the forest primeval. Temple bells softly
boom, ravens croak, and happy voices fill the air.
Not the Bois, the Cascine, or the Thier Garten can
vie with Uyeno on this blossom Sunday. Down every
path and avenue are vistas of flowery trees, lofty and
wide-spreading as vast oaks and elms, and through their
snowy branches shine thousands of other snowy branch-
es, or countless solitary trees gleaming against green
backgrounds. The wide lotus lake below Uyeno reflects
the white wonder that encircles the race-course, and the
temple roofs on the tiny islands are smothered in pink
branches. Under the great grove of cherry- trees tea-
house benches are set close, and there the people lunch
and dine and sup ; and though sake flows freely, the
most confirmed drinker is only a little redder, a little
happier, a little more loquacious than the rest. Czars
and kaisers may well envy this Oriental ruler, whose
subjects gather by thousands, not to throw bombs and
Tokio Flower Festivals
riot for bread or the division of property, but to fall in
love with cherry-trees, and write poems in their praise.
At the cherry-blossom season especially his inborn pas-
sion for flowers and landscapes shows itself in prince,
poet, peasant, merchant, and coolie. Tattered beggars
gaze entranced at the fairy trees, and princes and min-
isters of state go to visit the famous groves. Bulletins
announce, quite as a matter of course, that Prince Sanjo
or Count Ito has gone to Nara or Kioto, a three days'
journey, to see the blossoming trees ; which is as if Bis-
marck or Gladstone should interrupt his cares of state
to undertake a pilgrimage to a distant rose show.
Later in the season the carefully tended trees in the
palace grounds put forth their blossoms, and sovereign
and courtiers hang poems on their branches, while the
spring garden party gathers the whole court circle under
the aisles of bloom in the palace grounds of Hama Rikiu.
Every citizen who has a garden gives an out-door fete,
and flower-bordered cards invite guests to see the native
sakura, or the cerisiers of the diplomatic set.
The celebration of the Mukojima, an avenue along
the east bank of the Sumidagawa, lined for more than
two miles v;ith double rows of cherry-trees, belongs to
the lower ten thousand. On Sunday, which is officially
a day of rest, the water is dotted with hundreds of boats,
and solemn little policemen keep the holiday-makers
moving along the shore. Friends recognize each other
in the crowd by some distinctive article of clothing.
One procession of jinrikishas will land a group with
heads tied up in gayly-figured towels all alike, or bits of
figured cotton folded as collars around the necks of their
kimonos. Boat-loads of men, partly disguised by their
queer head-dresses, are sculled and poled along the
banks, shouting and singing, clapping and strumming
the samisen, with an entire abandon that is the wonder
and envy of the Anglo-Saxon. Every reveller has his
yinrikisha Days in yapan
sake gourd, or tiny tub slung over his shoulder, which he
empties and refills, as long as his money and conscious-
ness last. Every man offers friend, neighbor, and stran-
ger a cup of the cheering spirit. One booth in three is
a sake stand, and pyramids of straw-covered sake tubs
stand before every tea-house. This sake, or rice brandy,
tastes and looks like the weakest sherry, although it
scents the air with alcoholic fumes. Made everywhere
in Japan, the sake distilled from the rice of the broad
Osaka plain is most esteemed by connoisseurs for a pe-
culiarly delicate flavor. As it is the one liquor that does
not improve with age, the newest is the best, and is kept
in wooden tubs closed with spigots, and drawn off into
open-mouthed porcelain bottles, which are set in hot wa-
ter if warm sake is desired. The Japanese drink it from
little shallow porcelain or lacquer cups that hold barely a
tablespoonful, but by repetition they imbibe pints. Its
first effect is to loosen the tongue and limber the joints ;
its second to turn the whole body a flaming red.
Mukojima's carnival rivals the saturnalia of the an-
cients. This spring revel affords another resemblance
between this aesthetic people and the old Romans, and
one half expects to find a flower-crowned statue of Bac-
chus in some lovely little landscape garden beside the
Mukojima. Men dance like satyrs, cup and gourd in
hand, or, extending a hand, make orations to the crowd —
natural actors, orators, and pantomimists every one of
them. But, with all this intoxication, only glee and affec-
tion manifest themselves. No fighting, no rowdyism, no
rough words accompany the spring saturnalia ; and the
laughter is so infectious, the antics and figures so com-
ical, that even sober people seem to have tasted of the
insane cup. At night lanterns swing from all the rows
of tea-houses, booths, and fairy branches, and intermina-
ble Japanese dinners are eaten, with beautiful maiko and
geisha posing and gliding, twanging the samisen and
74
i • >'ll
HHSr 1IWI '^ttPPVIW?
if,' '
J 1
iT
f
* . ■ •<
*
Tokio Flower Festivals
tsuziimi drums, their kimonos embroidered with cherry
blossoms, hair-pins, and coronals of blossoms set in the
butterfly loops of blue black hair. Then the rain comes,
the petals fall, and those snow storms not from the skies
whiten the ground.
For a week in June, jinrikishas spin up this leafy tun-
nel to the iris fetes at Hori Kiri, where in ponds and
trenches grow acres of such fleur-de-lis as no Bourbon
ever knew. Compared with the cherry-blossom carnival,
this festival is a quiet and decorous garden party, where
summer-houses, hills, lakes, armies of royal flowers, and
groups of visitors seem to be consciously arranging them-
selves for decorative effects.
After the season opens, flower festivals crowd one an-
other, and the miracles of Japanese floriculture present-
ly exhaust the capacity of wonder. One of the most
superb of their productions is the botan, or tree peony,
whose fringed and silken flowers, as large as dinner-
plates, show all delicate rose and lilac shades, a red that
is almost black, and cream, pale yellow, straw color,
and salmon hues of marvellous beauty. At the Ikegami
temples, the Nichiren priests display with pride their
botan, now three hundred years old, whose solid trunk
and wrinkled bark uphold a multitude of stately blos-
soms. Azaleas, fire- red, snow-white, salmon -pink, and
lilac, crowd every garden, and the mountains and wild
river-banks are all ablaze with them in May.
Then, also, the wistaria, the fitji, is in bloom, and at
the Kameido temple makes an eighth wonder of the
world. Every householder has his wistaria trellis, gen-
erally reaching out as a canopy over some inlet, or, as
at Kameido, forming the roofs of the open-air tea-houses
edging the lake. The mat of leaves and blossoms over-
head casts thick, cool shadows, and the long, pendent
purple and white flowers are reflected in the water.
Blossoms two and even three feet long are common, and
77
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
only a great swaying tassel four feet in length draws a
^^ Naruhodo r (wonderful) from the connoisseurs. Whole
families come to spend the day on the borders of the
little lake, sipping amber tea, tossing mochi to the lazy
goldfish, or sitting in picturesque groups on the low
platforms under the canopies of flowers fluttering with
poems and lanterns. The temple is ancient, and the
grounds are full of tiny shrines, stone lanterns, tablets,
and images, and dwarfed and curiously trained pine trees,
with a high, hump-backed little bridge, over which, in the
old days, only priests and grandees might walk. Golden
carp, venerable old fellows, three or four feet in length,
show an orange nose now and then above the surface of
the pond. The people call these pets by clapping their
hands, and the golden gourmands swim from one horn
of plenty, filled with mochi, or rice-cakes, with which they
are fed, to another. At Kasukabe, on the Oshukaido,
north-east of Tokio, is the most famous wistaria in the
empire. The vine is five hundred years old, with pen-
dent blossoms over fifty inches long, and trellises cov-
ering a space of four thousand feet, and thither poets
and pilgrims reverently go.
In August occurs the one great lotus show now seen
in Tokio, when the lake below Uyeno Park shows acres
of bluish -green plates of leaves starred with pink and
white blossoms, and the enchanted beholder looks down
from the bridges and tea-houses of the little islands
straight into the heart of the great flowers. The castle
moats no longer show their acres of lotus, and the mimic
salutes no longer ring around the citadel, as when those
myriad blossoms of Buddha opened with a gentle noise
under the first warm rays of the sun. There is a lovely
lotus-pond back of the Shiba pagoda, just seen as the
jinrikisha whirls along the shady avenue skirting it, but
the lotus of the moats was the summer glory of Tokio.
The flower was not alone to blame for malarial exha-
78
Tokio Flotuer Festivals
lations, as the contest still rages between the two sides
of the city, as to whether the vapors from the moats, or
those from the exposed mud flats and made ground of
the Tsukiji section, are most pernicious.
The festival of the kiktt, or chrysanthemum, in autumn,
decks the whole empire with red, white, and yellow flow-
ers. The sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum is the imperial
or government crest ; and the Emperor's birthday, the
third of November, coming in the height of the season,
is made a gala-day in every province, and the occasion-
of gorgeous flower shows. The Western mind is filled
with envy to discover that the wide - spreading, spicy
flowers selling here for a few coppers each, cost as many
dollars under new names across the water. Dango-zaka,
dismissed with a line in the guide-book, is more pictu-
resquely Japanese in autumn than any other suburb of
Tokio. A community of florists tend, prune, dwarf, and
cultivate their chrysanthemum plants in obscurity until
the blossoming time makes Dango-zaka a gay fair. The
unique productions of their gardens are set pieces of
flowers on a gigantic scale. Under matted sheds, which
are so many temporary stages without footlights, groups
with life-sized figures are arranged, whose faces and hands
are of wax or composition, but whose clothes, the ac-
cessories, and scenery are made of living flowers, trained
so closely over a framework that the mechanism is not
even suspected. The plants forming the flower-pieces
are taken up with all their roots, wrapped in straw and
cloths, propped up inside the skeleton framework, and
watered every day. The flowers, drawn to the outside
and woven into place, produce a solid surface of color,
and are shaded with the most natural effects. The
tableaux represent scenes from history and legend, and
from the latest plays, or even illustrate the last emo-
tional crime of the. day. Here are seen whole mountain-
sides of flowers, with water -falls of white blossoms
spreading into floral streams ;
and chrysanthemum women
leading chrysanthemum
horses, ridden by chrysanthemum men across chrysan-
themum bridges. Gigantic flowers, microscopic flowers,
plants of a single blossom, and single plants of two hun-
dred blossoms, have bamboo tents to themselves. Tout-
ers invite one to enter, proprietors chant the story of
their pictures, and the side-show, the juggler, the fakir,
and the peddler make the bannered and lanterned lanes
a gay and innocent Babel. All classes visit Dango-zaka,
TbA-BLOSSOMS
Tokto Flower Festivals
and wander together up and down its one steep street,
and in and out of the maze of gardens, paying a copper
or two at each gate-way. Giants and saintly images forty
and fifty feet high are enshrined in mat pavilions as lofty
as temples, and to these marvellous chrysanthemum creat-
ures the phonograph has lately added its wonders.
The Japanese listen politely when foreigners tell that
they have seen chrysanthemums just as large in Ameri-
ca. Mere size is not all that they attempt, since these
wizard gardeners can easily spread the petals to any di-
ameter they fancy; grow the chrysanthemum on a stem
six feet or nine feet high as easily as dwarf it to a
blooming mite two inches tall, growing in a thimble-pot.
Every season, some new fantasy in petals is presented,
and the foliage of the chrysanthemum is as carefully con-
sidered as the blossom in Japan. With one question
about the green leaves adorning the stem of the foreign
chrysanthemum, Dangozaka people can silence the brag-
gart barbarian, who usually has to admit that no one
thinks of the foliage in the West, and that he himself
never noticed it before. The unkempt, foliage of Chinese
and Occidental chrysanthemums would not be tolerated
in a Japanese flower show, where the leaves of the plant
must be distributed, the composition balanced according
to the rules of flower arrangement — that art beyond all
arts, the last to be expounded to the Philistines, who con-
sider the biggest bunch the best bouquet, and for a last
barbaric touch introduce milliners' bows of aniline-dyed
ribbons to their monstrosities in floral arrangement.
The touch of Western vulgarization is complete when the
poetic and descriptive names of Japanese chrysanthe-
mums are changed to suit the Western taste. The love-
ly white " Frozen Moonlight," " Fuji's Snows," " Dashing
Spray," " Moonlit Waves," and " Hoar Frost " become
•'the Mrs. John Smith" or "the Mrs. Peter Brown."
The coolie, who draws the visitor's jinrikisha, is as» voluble
«5
yihrtkisha Days in yapan
over the flowers as any of his patrons, and quite as dis-
criminating an admirer. Instead of stopping to rest
after his long pull to that hilly suburb, he follows his
passenger, pointing out beauties and marvels, approving
and exclaiming with contagious enthusiasm.
In November, with the brilliant maple-leaves, the floral
year ends. The coquette sends her lover a leaf or branch
of maple to signify that, like it, her love has changed.
Both the tea-plant and camellia are in bloom, but there
is no rejoicing in their honor, and flower -worshippers
count the weeks until the plum shall bloom again.
CHAPTER IX
JAPANESE HOSPITALITIES
Among Japanese virtues stands hospitality, but, until
the adoption of foreign dress and customs by the court
nobles, no Japanese allowed his wife to receive general
visitors, or entertain mixed companies. The Japanese
is, consequently, a born club-man, and makes the club-
house a home. The Rokumeikwan, or Tokio Nobles'
Club, is the most distinguished of these corporations.
Its president is an imperial prince, and its members
are diplomats, nobles, officials, rich citizens, and resi-
dent foreigners. The exquisite houses and gardens of
the smaller, purely Japanese clubs, are perfect specimens
of native architecture, decoration, and landscape garden-
ing. By an arrangement of sliding screens, the houses
themselves may afford one large room or be divided
into many small ones, besides the tiny boxes in which
are celebrated the rites of cha no yu, or ceremonial tea.
Their elaborate dinners, lasting for hours, with jug-
Japanese Hospitalities
glers, dancers, and musicians between the courses, are
very costly. Rich men display a Russian prodigality in
entertaining, which was even greater in feudal times.
A day or two after arriving in Japan it was my good-
fortune to be a guest at one of these unique entertain-
ments, given at the Koyokwan, or Maple Leaf Club-
house, on the hill-side above the Shiba temples. We
arrived at three o'clock, and were met at the door by a
group of pretty nesans, or maids of the house, who, tak-
ing off our hats and shoes, led us, stocking-footed, down
a shining corridor and up-stairs to a long, low room,
usually divided into three by screens of dull gold paper.
One whole side of this beautiful apartment was open to
the garden beyond a railed balcony of polished cedar,
and the view, across the maple-trees and dense groves
of Shiba, to the waters of the Bay was enchanting. The
decorations of the club-house repeat the maples that fill
the grounds. The wall screens are painted with deli-
cate branches, the ramma, or panels above the screens,
are carved with them, and in the outer wall and balcony-
rail are leaf-shaped openings. The dresses of the pret-
ty nesans, the crape cushions on the floor, the porcelain
and lacquer dishes, the sake bottles and their carved
stands, the fans and bon-bons, all display the maple-leaf.
In the tokonoma, or raised recess where the flower-vase
and kakemono, or scroll picture, are displayed, and that
small dais upon which the Emperor would sit if he ever
came to the house, hung a shadowy painting, with a sin-
gle flower in a bronze vase.
Before each guest were set the tabako ban, a tray hold-
ing a tiny hibachi W\ih live coals lying in a cone of ashes,
and a section of bamboo stem for an ash-receiver. Then
came the tea and sweetmeats, inevitable prelude to all
good cheer. Next the nesans set in front of each guest
an ozm, or table, not four inches in height, on which
stood a covered lacquered bowl containing the first
87
Jtnrt'kisha Days in Japan
course, a tiny cup of soy, or piquant bean sauce, in
which to dip morsels of food, and a long envelope con-
taining a pair of white pine chopsticks. The master of
the feast broke apart his chopsticks, which were whittled
in one piece and split apart for only half their length, to
show that they were unused, and began a nimble play
with them. In his fingers they were enchanted wands,
and did his bidding promptly ; in ours they wobbled,
made x's in the air, and deposited morsels in our laps
and upon the mats alternately. The nesans giggled, and
the host almost forgot his Japanese decorum, but the
company patiently taught us how to brace one chop-
Japanese Hospitalities
stick firmly in the angle of the thumb and against the
third finger. That stick is immovable, and the other,
held like a pen with the thumb and first and second fin-
gers, plays upon it, holding and letting go with a sure-
ness and lightness hardly attained with any other im-
plements. The supreme test of one's skill is to lift and
hold an egg, the round surface making a perfect balance
and firm hold necessary, while too much force applied
would cause disasters.
Innumerable courses of dainty dishes followed, accom-
panied by cups of hot sakd, which our host taught us to
drink as healths, offered by each one of the company to
the others in turn, rinsing, offering, filling, and raising
the cup to the forehead in salutation, and emptying it
in three prescribed sips. Custom even requires one to
offer a health to the nesans, which they receive with a
modest and charming grace.
Midway in the feast three charming girls in dark
crape kimonos, strewn with bright maple-leaves, slipped
the screens aside and knelt on the mats with the koto,
samisen, and tsuzumi drum, on which they played a pre-
lude of sad, slow airs. Then the gilded panels disclosed
a troop of dazzling maiko in soft blue kimonos brocaded
89
Jinriktsha Days in Japan
with brilliant maple-leaves and broad obis of gold bro-
cade, the loops of their blue -black hair thrust full of
golden flowers, and waving gold fans painted with gay
maples. To the melancholy accompaniment of the geisha,
they danced the song of the maple-leaf in measures that
were only a slow gliding and changing from one perfect
pose to another. Watching these radiant creatures in
their graceful movements, we were even deaf to the soft
booming of the temple bells at the sunset hour, and the
answering croak of the mighty ravens.
These maiko and geisha, professional dancers and
singers, are necessary to any entertainment, and are
trained to amuse and charm the guests with their ac-
complishments, their wit, and sparkling conversation ;
lending that attraction, brightness, and charm to social
life, which wives and daughters are permitted to do in
the Occident. The maiko dances as soon as she is old
enough to be taught the figures and to chant the poems
which explain them ; and when she begins to fade, she
dons the soberer attire of the geisha, and, sitting on the
mats, plays the accompaniments for her successors and
pupils. Until this modern era, the geisha were the most
highly educated of Japanese women, and many of them
made brilliant marriages.
Long before the beautiful band had finished their
poem and dance of the four seasons, twilight had fallen.
Andons, or saucers of oil, burning on high stands inside
square paper lantern frames, made Rembrandtesque ef-
fects. Everything was lost in shadow but the figures of
the maiko moving over the shining mats. One tiny girl
of thirteen, belonging to the house, slipped in and out
with a bronze box and snuffers, and, kneeling before the
andons, opened the paper doors to nip off bits of the
wicks. The child, a miniature beauty, was grace itself,
gentle and shy as a kitten, blushing and quaintly bowing
when addressed.
9°
yapanese Hospitalities
It was six hours after the entrance of the tabako bons
before the guests rose to depart. All the troop of maid-
ens escorted us to the door, and after endless bows and
farewells, sat on the mats in matchless tableaux, their
sweet sayonaras ringing after us as our jinrikishas whirl-
ed us down the dark avenues of Shiba.
Cha no yu might well be a religious rite, from the rev-
erence with which it is regarded by the Japanese, and a
knowledge of its forms is part of the education of a
member of the highest classes. Masters teach its mi-
nute and tedious forms, and schools of cha no yu, like
the sects of a great faith, divide and differ. The cha no
yu ceremony is hedged round with the most awesome,
elaborate, and exalted etiquette of any custom in polite
Japanese life. Weddings or funerals are simple affairs
by comparison. The cha no yu is a complication of all
social usages, and was perfected in the sixteenth centu-
ry, when it was given its vogue by the Saogun Hideyoshi.
Before that it had been the diversion of imperial abbots,
monarchs retired from business, and other idle and se-
cluded occupants of the charming villas and monasteries
around Kioto. Hideyoshi, the Taiko, saw in its precise
forms, endless rules, minutiae, and stilted conventionali-
ties a means of keeping his daimios from conspiracies
and quarrels when they came together. It was an age
of buckram and behavior, when solemnity constituted
the first rule of politeness. Tea drinking was no trivial
incident, and time evidently had no value. The daimios
soon invested the ceremony with so much luxury and
extravagance that Hideyoshi issued sumptuary laws, and
the greatest simplicity in accessories was enjoined. The
bowls in which the tea was made had to be of the plain-
est earthen-ware, but the votaries evaded the edict by
seeking out the oldest Chinese or Korean bowls, or those
made by some celebrated potter. Tea-rooms were re-
9«
yinrikisha Days in yapan
stricted to a certain size — six feet square ; the entrance
became a mere trap not three feet high ; no servants
were permitted to assist the host, and only four guests
might take part in the six-hour or all-day-long ceremony.
The places of the guests on the mats, with relation to the
host, the door, and the tokonoma, or recess, were strictly
defined. Even the conversation was ordered, the objects
in the tokonoma were to be asked about at certain times,
and at certain other times the tea -bowl and its accom-
paniments were gravely discussed. Not to speak of them
at all would be as great an evidence of ill - breeding as
to refer to them at the wrong time.
The masters of cha no yu were revered above scholars
and poets. They became the friends and intimates of
Emperors and Shoguns, were enriched and ennobled, and
their descendants receive honors to this day. Of the
great schools and methods those of Senke, Yabunouchi,
and Musanokoji adhere most closely to the original
forms. Their first great difference is in the use of the
inward or the outward sweep of the hand in touching or
lifting the utensils. Upon this distinction the dilettanti
separated, and the variations of the many schools of to-
day arose from the- original disagreement. To get some
insight into a curious phase of Japanese social life, I took
lessons in cha no yu of Matsuda, an eminent master of
the art, presiding over the ceremonial tea-rooms of the
Hoishigaoka club-house in Tokio.
There could be no more charming place in which to
study the etiquette of tea drinking, and the master was
one of those mellow, gentle, gracious men of old Japan,
who are the perfect flower of generations of culture and
refinement in that most aesthetic country of the world.
In the afternoon and evening the Hoishigaoka, on the
apex of Sanno hill, is the resort of the nobles, scholars,
and literary men, who compose its membership, but in
the morning hours, it is all dappled shadow and quiet.
THE NESANS AT THE HOISHIGAOKA
The master was much pleased at having four foreign pu-
pils, and all the hill-side took an interest in our visits.
We followed the etiquette strictly, first taking off our
shoes — for one would as soon think of walking hob-
nailed across a piano -top, as of marring the polished
woods of Japanese corridors, or the fine, soft mats of
their rooms with heel-marks — and sitting on our heels,
as long as our unaccustomed and protesting muscles
and tendons permitted.
First, bringing in the basket of selected charcoal, with
its pretty twigs of charred azalea coated with lime, Mat-
93
Jinrikisha Days in ^apan
suda replenished the fire in the square hearth in the
floor, dusted the edges with an eagle's feather, and
dropped incense on the coals. -Then he placed the iron
kettle, filled with fresh water from a porcelain jar, over
the coals, and showed us how to fold the square of pur-
ple silk and wipe each article of the tea-service, how to
scald the bowl, and to rinse the bamboo whisk. For
cha no yu, tea-leaves are pounded to a fine powder, one,
two, or three spoonfuls of this green flour being put in
the bowl, as the guests may prefer a weak or a strong
MATSUDA. THE MASTER OF CHA NO VU
94
yapanese Hospitalities
decoction. Boiling water is poured on the powder, and
the mixture beaten to a froth with the bamboo whisk.
This thick, green gruel, a real puree of tea, is drank as a
loving-cup in the usu cha ceremony, each one taking
three sips, wiping the edge of the bowl, and passing it
to his neighbor. The measures and sips are so exact
that the last one drains the bowl. Made from the finest
leaves, this beverage is so strong that a prolonged course
of it would shatter any but Japanese nerves.
It is in the precise management of each implement, in
each position of the fingers, in the deliberation and cer-
tainty of each movement, that the art of cha no yu lies,
and its practice must be kept up throughout the lifetime
of a devotee. Even with all the foreign fashions, the old
ceremonial rites are as much in vogue with the upper
classes as ever, and the youth of both sexes are carefully
trained in their forms.
Much less pretentious and formal are the eel dinners
with which Japanese hosts sometimes delight their for-
eign friends, as well as those of their own nationality.
Even Sir Edwin Arnold has celebrated the delights of
eels and rice at the Golden Koi, and there are other
houses where the delicious dish may be enjoyed. When
one enters such a tea-house, he is led to a tank of squirm-
ing fresh-water eels, and in all seriousness bidden to
point out the object of his preference. Uncertain as
the lottery seems, the cook, who stands by with a long
knife in hand, quickly understands the choice made, and
seizing the wriggling victim, carries it off to some sacri-
ficial block in the kitchen. An eel dinner begins with
eel-soup, and black eels and white eels succeed one an-
other in as many relays as one may demand. The fish
are cut in short sections, split and flattened, and broiled
over charcoal fires. Black eels, so called, are a rich
dark brown in reality, and the color is given them by
9S
yinrtkiska Days in yapan
dipping them in soy before broiling ; and white eels are
the bits broiled without sauces. Laid across bowls of
snowy rice, the eels make as pretty a dish as can be
served one, and many foreigners besides the appreciative
English poet have paid tribute to their excellence. An
eel dinner in a river-bank tea-house, with a juggler or a
few maiko to enliven the waits between the courses, is
most delightful of Tokio feasts.
CHAPTER X
THE JAPANESE THEATRE
" Saturated with the refinements of an old civiliza-
tion," as Dr. Dresser says, and possessing all other arts
in perfection, it is not surprising that the Japanese
drama should be so well worthy of its people. The
theatre has reached its present development slowly and
with difficulty. Caste distinctions hindered its rise,
actors ranking next the eta, or outcast class in feudal
days, and the play-houses of such degraded beings lying
under ban. Only the middle and lower classes patron-
ized them, nobles never attending any public exhibitions,
and all women being excluded.
In the golden age of the Tokugawas the drama began
to win recognition ; theatres were built by the Shogun ;
the marionette shows, the first departure from the No
Kagura, gave way to living actors and realism succeeded.
In the great social upheaval and rearrangement of classes
following the Restoration, actors rose a little in social
esteem and gained some rights of citizenship. But an-
other quarter of a century will hardly rank the dramatic
with the other arts and honor its interpreters. Noble-
men now attend the theatre, but actors never receive
an invitation to their clubs. A few years since, Tokio
96
The Japanese Theatre
founded an association for the improvement of the the-
atre, and the development of the histrionic art of the
country in its own distinctive way. Viscount Hijikata
and Viscount Kawawa were elected president and vice-
president of this Engei Kyokai, but little is known of its
actual work.
Instead of farce or recitative prologue preceding the
play, come one or two acts of classic pantomime or char-
acter dance, or an interlude of this kind in the middle
of the drama. These classic pantomimes resemble the
No Kagura simplified.
This No dance, or lyric drama, is the dramatic form cur-
rent before the seventeenth century. Bordering on the
religious, it suggests the Greek drama, and the passion
and miracle plays of mediaeval Europe. Originally, the
No was the pantomime festival dance of the Shinto tem-
ples, fabled to have been first performed by Suzume be-
fore the cave of the Sun Goddess. The sacred dance is
still a temple ceremonial, and the dances of the Shinto
priestesses at Nikko and Nara are famous. In time the
No became the entertainment of honor in the yashikis
of the great, and princes and nobles took part in the
solemn measures when greater princes were their guests.
To the slow and stately movements of the dancers, and
their play with fan and bells, dialogue was added, and an
exaggeration of detail and etiquette.
The No is wholly artificial, the movements of the act-
ors being as stiff, stilted, and measured as the classic
idiom in which the dialogue is spoken, and the ancient
and obsolete ideographs which set forth the synopsis of
the action. Confined to the yashikis and monasteries,
the No was the entertainment of the upper classes, who
alone could understand its involved and lofty diction
and intricate symbolism. While the bare arguments of
plays and dances are as familiar as fairy tales or folk-
lore, only scholars of great attainments can read their
• 97
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
actual lines, and the full translation of a No programme
for the Duke of Edinburgh, on his visit to Japan, busied
the interpreters of the British Legation for days, with
the aid of all the old native poets and scholars in Tokio.
The No is a trilogy, occupying four or five hours of
three successive days. The first set of scenes is to pro-
pitiate the gods ; the second to terrify evil spirits and
punish the wicked; and the third to glorify the good,
beautiful, and pleasant. The dramatis personce are gods,
goddesses, demons, priests, warriors, and heroes of ear-
ly legend and history, and much of the action is alle-
gorical. By a long gallery at the left the actors ap-
proach the elevated pavilion or platform of the stage,
which is without curtain or scenery, and almost without
properties. The audience sits upon the matted area
surrounding the three sides of the stage. Flute, drum,
and pipes play continuously, and a row of men in old
ceremonial dress sit statuesque at one side of the stage,
chanting and wailing the explanatory chorus throughout
the performance. In the great scenes the actors wear
masks of thin lacquered or gilded wood, and valuable
collections of such ancient dance masks are preserved
in temples and yashikis. The costuming is superb, the
old brocade and cloth - of - gold garments showing the
court costumes of centuries ago, and the great families
and monasteries hold their ancient No costumes as chief-
est treasures.
The actors enter at a gait that out-struts the most
exaggerated stage stride ever seen, the body held rigid
as a statue, and the foot, never wholly lifted, sliding slow-
ly along the polished floor. These buckram figures, mov-
ing with the solemnity of condemned men, utter their
lines like automata, not a muscle nor an eyelash moving,
nor a flicker of expression crossing the unmasked coun-
tenance. Their tones are unspeakably distressing, nasal,
high-pitched, falsetto sounds, and many performers have
The Japanese Theatre
ruined and lost their voices, and even burst blood-ves-
sels, in the long-continued, unnatural strain of their reci-
tatives. The children who take part equal the oldest
members in their gravity and woodenness. In some
delightful scenes the demons, with hideous masks and
abundant wigs of long, red-silk hair, spread deliberate and
conventional terror among the buckram grandees, and,
stamping the stage wildly, leaping and whirling, relieve
the long-drawn seriousness of the trilogy. It is only
when the performers are without masks that the scene
is recognized as intentionally a light and amusing farce,
while the roars of the audience are elicited by stately,
ponderous^ and time-honored puns, and plays upon words
that a foreigner cannot appreciate.
Fine representations of the. No may be seen at the
Koyokwan club-house in Tokio, and in the audiences
one beholds all the bureaucracy, the court circles, and a
gathering of aristocratic families not elsewhere to be en-
countered.
The existing theatre and the legitimate drama are not
yet three centuries old, and the name shibai, meaning
turf places, or grass plot, implies the same evolution
from out-door representations that the occidental drama
had. There is no Shakespeare, nor Corneille, nor, in-
deed, any famous dramatist, whose works survive from
an earlier day, to align the stage with literature and
make its history. Authorship is rarely connected with
the plays, and authors' royalties are unknown. Many
of the novels of Baku have been dramatized, but most
often anonymously. Plays are usually written in the
simpler hirakana, or running characters, in which light
romances and books for women are written, and this fact
alone shows the esteem in which dramatic literature
is held. Incidents in history, lives of warriors, heroes,
and saints furnish themes for the drama, and all the
common legends and fairy tales are put upon the stage.
Jtnriktsha Days in Japan
That great classic, the affecting history of the " Forty-
seven Ronins," is always popular, and the crack-brained
heroisms of the days of chivalry fire the Japanese heart
notwithstanding its passion for the foreign and modern.
The trials, tortures, and miracles of the early days of
Buddhism, and the warlike histories of the great feudal
houses, furnish tragedies and sensational and spectacu-
lar plays without end. There are, also, romantic melo-
dramas, emotional dramas, and comedies of delicious hu-
mor and satire.
New plays, while rare, are not theatrical events, and
first nights by no means indicate success or failure.
The play is tried on the audience, changed, cut, and al-
tered as actors, manager, scene-painter, carpenter, and
patrons desire, without consideration of the author's
rights or feelings.
I once asked a great star who had written his play.
'* I do not understand," said the tragedian ; and a by-
stander explained that the manager had cut reports of a
theft, a murder, and a shipwreck from a newspaper, and,
discussing them with the star, evolved the outlines of a
connected play and decided on the principal scenes and
effects. A hack writer was then called in, who, under
dictation, shaped the plot and divided it into scenes.
The managerial council elaborated it further, allotting
the parts, and the star then composed his lines to suit
himself. In rehearsal the play was rounded, the diction
altered, and each actor directed to write out his own
part, after which a full transcript was made for the
prompter.
As to the authorship of the play of the " Forty-seven
Ronins," he said : " That is our country's history. We
all know the story of their lives and glorious deaths, and
many novelists and poets have written of them."
" But who made it into a drama ?"
"Oh, every theatre has its own way of representing
The 'Japanese Theatre
the different scenes, although the great facts are histori-
cal and cannot be misrepresented, now that the Toku-
gawa's ban against the play is removed. Danjiro plays
it in one way, and other actors have their versions, but
none of them play it the same at every engagement, nor
repeat just the same acts on every day of an engage-
ment."
With dramatic authorship so vague and uncertain, the
origin or author of any play is far to seek. Revivals
and rotations of the old favorites constitute a manager's
idea of attractions, a new scene or two, a novel feature,
and some local picture or allusion being enough to sat-
isfy the most blasi patron. No accurate libretto nor
printed book of the play can thus exist, but the illus-
trated programmes give a pictorial outline of it — a veri-
table impressionist .sketch, noting its salient features,
and leaving all details to time and imagination. There
are no dramatic unities, no three-act or five act limita-
tions, and no hampering laws of verse and rhythm. An
orchestra and half -concealed chorus explains, heralds,
and lauds the action, a survival of the No gradually dis-
appearing with other things before the demand for
shorter hours and briefer plays.
Women do not appear on the Japanese stage, female
parts being played by men, who often make these roles
their specialty, cultivating and using their voices always
in a thin, high falsetto. The make-up, the voices, gait,
action, and manner of some of these actors are wonder-
ful, and Genoske, the greatest impersonator of female
characters, when dressed for the part of some noble her-
oine, is an ideal beauty of the delicate, aristocratic type.
Outside the great theatres, in plays and side-show enter-
tainments, that may be compared with our dime muse-
ums, a woman is occasionally found on the stage ; and, a
few years ago, a Tokio manager amazed the town with
the performances of a company made up entirely of
Jtnrzkt'sha Days in Japan
women. In the interludes, where jugglers and acrobats
entertain the audience, women are sometimes seen, and,
in time, plays will be cast for both sexes, and female stars
will shine. The infant prodigy is known to the Japan-
ese stage, and in some wonderfully pretty and affecting
scenes in the " Renins " little children utter their lines
and go through their parts with great naturalness.
The great theatre of Tokio is the Shintomiza, a long,
gabled building, ornamented above the row of entrance
doors by pictures of scenes from the play. The street
is lined with tea-houses, or restaurants, for a play is not
a hap-hazard two-hour after-dinner incident. A man
goes for the day, carefully making up his theatre party
beforehand, the plays generally beginning at eleven
o'clock in the morning, and ending at eight or nine in
the evening. After a short run the hours during which
the great actors appear and the great stage efifects are
made become known, and the spectator may time his
visit accordingly. It is bad form for a Japanese of posi-
tion to go to the theatre door, pay for a box, and enter
it. He must send a servant, at least a day beforehand,
to one of the tea-houses near the theatre to engage its
attentions for the day, and through its agency secure a
box. The tea-house people are the ticket speculators in
league with the box-office. At the proper hour, the party
assemble at the tea-house, and give orders for the lunch,
dinner, and frequent teas to be served during the day.
The tea-house attendants conduct them to their box, and
at each intermission come to see what is wanted, bring-
ing in at the dinner-hour the large lacquer chow boxes
with their courses of viands, that their patrons may dine
comfortably where they sit. Everybody smokes, and
each box has its little tabako bon, with its cone of glow-
ing coals to light the tiny pipes, the rat-tat of the pipes,
as the ashes are knocked out, often making a chorus to
the action.
The yapanese Theatre
Theatre buildings are light and flimsy wooden struct-
ures, with straw -mats and matting everywhere. They
are all alike — a square auditorium with a sloping floor,
a single low gallery, and a stage the full width of the
house. The floor space is divided into so-called boxes
by low railings, that serve as bridges for the occupants
to pass in and out. Visitors always sit on the floor, each
box being six feet square and designed for four people.
The gallery has one row of boxes at either side, several
rows facing the stage, and behind them a pen, where the
multitude stand and listen, paying one or two coppers
for each act. This gallery of the gods is called the "deaf
seat," but the deaf hear well enough to be vociferous.
The theatre-goer takes a check for his shoes, and racks
hanging full of wooden clogs are the ornaments of the
foyer. Within the building are booths for the sale of
fruits, tea, sweets, tobacco, toys, hair-pins, photographs
of the stars, and other notions, so that a box-party need
not leave the house in pursuit of any creature comforts.
The ventilation is too good, and the light and open con-
struction invites wintry draughts.
Charges are made in detail, and the following is one
bill presented for a party of seven at a Yokohama the-
atre. No charge was made for the two family servants,
who came and went at will.
Admission (seven persons) % g8
Box I 60
Carpeting, chairs, etc 50
Messenger hire 10
Tea and confectionery 30
Persimmons, figs, and grapes 30
Eels and rice, etc. (seven persons) 3 50
Teahouse i 00
Presents to servants 30
I858
Received payment,
Fukkuya.
«03
yinriktsha Days in yapatt
There is always a drop-curtain, generally ornamented
with a gigantic character or solitary symbol, and often
nowadays covered with picturesque advertisements. For-
merly, so much of the play was given by day that no foot-
lights and few lamps were used. In those good old days
a black-shrouded mute hovered about each actor after
dark, holding out a candle at the end of a long stick to
illuminate his features, that the audience might see the
fine play of expression. With the adoption of kerosene
the stage was sufficiently lighted, and the Shintomiza
has a full row of footlights, while the use of electricity
will soon be general. The black mutes act as " supers "
throughout all plays where changes are made or proper-
ties manoeuvred while the curtain is up.
The actors enter the stage by two long, raised walks
through the auditorium, so that they seem to come from
without. These raised walks, on a level with the stage
and the heads of the spectators in the floor boxes, are
called the hana michi, or flower-walks, and as a popular
actor advances his way is strewn with flowers. The exits
are sometimes by the hana michi and sometimes by the
wings, according to the scene.
The miniature scale of things Japanese makes it pos-
sible to fill a real scene with life-like details. The stage
is always large enough for three or four actual houses to
be set as a front. The hana michi is sufficiently broad
for jinrikishas, kagos, and pack-horses, and with the il-
lumination of daylight the unreality of the picture van-
ishes, and the spectator seems to be looking from some
tea-house balcony on an every-day street scene. Garden,
forest, and landscape effects are made by using potted
trees, and shrubs uprooted for transplanting. The ever-
ready bamboo is at hand and the tall dragon-grass, and
the scene-painters produce extraordinary illusions in the
backgrounds and wings. Some of the finest stage pict-
ures I have seen were in Japan, and its stage ghosts,
I04
The Japanese Theatre
demons, and goblins would be impossible elsewhere. In
the play of " Honest Sebi " there was a murder scene
in a bamboo grove in a rainy twilight that neither Henry
Irving nor Jules Claretie could have surpassed ; and in
"The Vampire Cat of the Nabeshima," or "The En-
chanted Cat of the Tokaido," a beautiful young woman
changed, before the eyes of the audience, to a hideous
monster, with a celerity more ghastly than that which
transforms Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde.
Japanese theatres use the revolving stage, which has
been their original and unique possession for two centu-
ries. A section of the stage flooring, twenty or thirty
feet in diameter, revolves like a railway turn-table, on
lignum-vitas wheels, moved by coolies below stairs, who
put their shoulders to projecting bars, as with the silk-
press. The wings come to the edge of this circle, and
at a signal a whole house whirls around and shows its
other rooms or its garden. Sometimes the coolies turn
too quickly, and the actors are rolled out of sight gestic-
ulating and shouting. The scenery is painted on wings
that draw aside, or on flies hoisted overhead. Curiously
enough, the signal for opening the curtain is the same as
that used at the Com^die Fran^aise— -three blows on the
floor with a big stick.
The Japanese theatre of to-day is given over to real-
ism and the natural school, and Jefferson and Coquelin
are not more quietly, easily, and entirely the characters
they assume than Danjiro, their Japanese fellow-Thes-
pian. The play is a transcript of actual life, and ev-
erything moves in an every- day way, though Japanese
manners and customs often seem stilted, artificial, and
unnatural to the brusque Occidental, with his direct and
brutally practical etiquette. Pathos is always deep and
long drawn out, and the last tear is extracted from the
eyes of audiences quick to respond to emotional appeals.
Tragedies are very tragic and murders very sanguinary.
yinrikisha Days in Japan
Death is generally accomplished by edged tools, and the
antics of the fencers, the wonderful endurance of the
hacked victims, and the streams of red paint and red silk
ravellings that ooze forth delight the audiences, who
shout and shriek their " Ya! YaT and " Yeh! Yehl"
The swordsmen are often acrobats and jugglers in dis-
guise, who enliven the extended slaughters with thrilling
tottrs deforce. Seppuku the honorable death, or hara-kiri
as it is most commonly known, is always received with
breathless interest and wild applause, and the self-dis-
embowelling of the hero, with a long last oration, still
seems to the Japanese something fine and heroic and
the most complete revenge upon an insulting foe.
The detail and minuteness with which everything is
explained, and the endless etiquette and circumlocution,
are thoroughly Japanese. Little is left to the imagina-
tion in their dramatic art, and an ordinary play has more
sub-plots and characters than one of Dickens's novels.
With the rapid adoption of new customs, the theatre is
becoming the only conserver of the old life and manners.
If the Japanese stage has its blood-and-thunder and
its tank drama, it has also its millinery play. The cos-
tumes alone are often worth going to see, and the man-
agers announce the appearance of historic brocades and
armor worthy of museums. Danjiro owns and wears a
sacred coat of mail that belonged to one of the Renins,
and his appearance in it is the signal for the maddest
applause. Such treasures of costume and of armor are
bequeathed from father to son, and from retiring star to
favorite pupil. As tokens of high approval rich and no-
ble patrons send to actors rare costumes, swords, pipes,
and articles of personal use. Excited spectators even
throw such tributes upon the stage. One approving for-
eigner, seeing the rain of hats, coats, obis, and tobacco-
pouches, once tossed his hat down. Later the manager
and the actor's valet returned the hat and asked for ten
106
UA.NJlkO, IHE UKKAT ACIOR
The Japanese Theatre
dollars, as those seeming gifts from the audience were
merely pledges or forfeits, to be afterwards redeemed by
money under the star's regular schedule of prices. As
protests availed nothing, and the whole house only roar-
ed in derision when he said that he had wished Danjiro
to keep the battered derby as a souvenir, the enthusiast
paid his forfeit.
The audience is as interesting a study as the players,
each little square box being another stage, whereon the
picturesque drama of Japanese life is enacted. Trays
of tea and sweetmeats and single teapots are constant-
ly supplied to the spectators by attendants, who tread
the narrow partition rails between the boxes like acro-
bats. Whenever the curtain closes there is a swift scur-
rying of these Ganymedes to the boxes, while the chil-
dren climb upon the partition rails and the hana michi,
or run about the theatre, even romping upon the stage
itself, and peeping under the curtain to see what the
carpenters are hammering; all with perfect ease and
unconsciousness.
Visiting the star in his dressing-room is a simple com-
mercial transaction. The actors make a fixed charge
for receiving such visits, deriving a regular income from
this source. Danjiro's dressing-room is high up among
the flies back of the Shintomiza stage, with a window
looking down upon it, so that he needs no call-boy. He
often shouts down to the stage himself, and has the ac-
tion of the play delayed or hastened, according to his
toilet or his humors. Nothing could be more scornful
and indifferent than Danjiro's treatment of the high-
priced visitors to his dressing-room. Fulsome flattery,
if offered with the florid and elaborate Japanese forms,
will mollify him, and the old fellow — eighth idolized
Danjiro in succession — will finally offer tea, present a
hair-pin to a lady, or write an autograph on a fan in his
most captivating stage daimio manner. When making up
yinrikisha Days in Japan
for a part, the great actor sits on the mat before a large
swinging mirror. Except for a character face little dis-
guise is used, as daylight spoils its effect. Three or four
meek valets wait upon this spoiled and whimsical old
autocrat, and the whole theatre staff attends. The value
of his wardrobe, kept in immense covered bamboo bas-
kets, is very great, and its care a serious matter. Part of
it was once stolen, and when the whole Tokio police force
succeeded in restoring it Danjiro announced that he could
never again wear what the touch of a thief had defiled.
Genoske, fourth of his name and line, and Sodanje, a
cousin of Danjiro, equally prove the heredity of Japan-
ese genius, and are favorites of the Tokio public. Young
actors pay the great stars for the privilege of joining
their companies, and studying their methods. Danjiro
is said to receive three thousand dollars from the Shin-
tomiza theatre for the year or season, which lasts from
early fall until after the cherry blossoms. His connec-
tion with the Shintomiza is like that of a societaire with
the Comedie Frangaise. Yet he plays in other Tokio
theatres, has filled engagements in other cities, and ev-
erywhere receives from perquisites, fees, and gifts more
than the amount of his salary.
The Japanese artist is fully aware of the aid ingenious
advertising may lend to genius. Drawing-room engage-
ments do not yet contribute a part of the income of a
great actor ; but such a one was once brought to drink
tea at a foreign house, and obligingly recited from his
great roles, and through the interpreter, talked most in-
terestingly to us of his art and stage business. In a few
days the native newspapers, the vernacular press, as
the British dailies term it, contained accounts of a great
entertainment offered this favorite actor by some foreign
residents, and the simple afternoon tea of six people was
lost to view in the description of the elaborate banquet
and attending crowd.
The Imperial Family
The Government exercises a certain censorship of the
stage, as of the press, suppressing an obnoxious play, and
arresting manager and company if necessary. No allu-
sions to present political events are allowed, and the au-
thorities permit the expression of no disturbing ideas.
The Tokugawas exercised this censorship towards the
play of the " Forty-seven Ronins," because its main ar-
gument and many of its scenes reflected too clearly the
corrupt practises of the Shogun's court. Even its name
was changed, and, until the Restoration, it was presented
as the C/iius/iingura (Loyal League), and the scenes
strayed far from historic fact. Since the new era, mana-
gers advertise their representations as most closely fol-
lowing the actual records, and every fresh contribution
from historian or antiquarian is availed of.
CHAPTER XI
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY
European sovereigns and reigning families are par-
venus compared to the ruler and the imperial house of
Japan, which shows an unbroken line from the accession
of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor in 660 B.C., down to
the present son of Heaven, Mutsu Hito, one hundred
and twenty-first Emperor of his line.
During the feudal period, the Emperors, virtually pris-
oners of their vassals, the Shoguns, lived and died within
the yellow palace walls of Kioto, knowing nothing of
their subjects, and unknown by them. After death, each
was deified under a posthumous appellation, and there
his history ceased. Too sacred a being to be spoken of
by his personal name, at the mention of his title all Jap>-
anese make an unconscious reverence even now. When
yinrikisha Days in yapan
his patronymic was written, it was purposely left incom-
plete by the omission of one stroke of the writing-brush.
In the spoken language, the ruler is the Shujo, the Hei-
ka, or the Tenno, while in the written language he is the
Tenno, the Kotei, or the Mikado. The Empress is the
Kogo in both the spoken and the written language, and
the honorific sama follows all of these imperial appella-
tions.
Mutsu Hito, the most significant figure in Japanese
history, was born in the Kioto palace, November 3, 1852,
and, taught and trained as imperial princes had been be-
fore him, succeeded to the throne after the death of his
father, February 13, 1867. In the following autumn the
Shogun sent in his formal resignation, gave back the su-
preme power to the rightful ruler, and retired to Osaka.
In February, 1868, the Emperor, not yet sixteen years of
age, received the foreign envoys in the Kioto palace with
uncovered face; then, defeating the rebellious Shogun at
Osaka, removed his capital to Yeddo, and chose the name
Meiji (enlightenment), to designate the era of his reign.
As seen at the rare court functions, at military reviews,
and races, the Emperor is easily the central figure. Tall-
er than the average of his race, and possessing great dig-
nity and majesty, his slow, military step and trailing
sword effectually conceal the unequal gait rheumatism
sometimes obliges. He wears a trimmed beard, and his
features, more decided and strongly marked than is usual
with the aristocratic type of Japanese countenance, wear
a calm and composure as truly Oriental as imperial. In
public he wears the uniform of generalissimo of the army,
a heavily-frogged and braided one of dark-blue broad-
cloth in winter, and of white duck in summer, with a
gold-mounted sword and many decorations. In recog-
nition of the honors and orders conferred upon him by
other royalties, the Emperor bestows the cordon and
jewel of the princely Order of the Chrysanthemum. The
The Imperial Family
Order of the Rising Sun is given for merit and distin-
guished services, and its red button is worn by many for-
eigners as well as natives.
Of late, the Emperor has abandoned his attempts to
learn English and German, and relies upon interpreters,
but he reads translations of foreign literature with great
interest. When he passes through the streets, he is re-
ceived with silent reverence, an advance guard of police
and a body-guard of lancers escorting him. While his
own people never shout or cheer, he accepts very gra-
ciously the foreign custom, and bows an acknowledg-
ment to the hurrahs that sometimes greet him at Yoko-
hama. While the Emperor has been absorbed in the
changing affairs of state during the two decades of his
reign, he still seems, in comparison with European sov-
ereigns, to dwell in absolute quiet and seclusion. Often,
for weeks together, he remains within the palace grounds,
where he has riding courts, archery, and rifle ranges, well-
stocked fish-ponds, and every means of amusing himself.
Disliking the sea, he has no yacht, a chartered mail-
steamer or man-of-war carrying him to naval stations or
new fortifications, when the railroad is impracticable.
His mountain palaces and remote game preserves he
never visits.
Immediately after establishing his court at Yeddo,
the boy -Emperor returned to Kioto to wed Haruko,
daughter of Ichijo Takada, a kuge, or court noble of the
highest rank. The marriage was solemnized by some
Shinto ceremony within the temple of the palace, a cer-
emony so sacred and private that no Japanese even con-
jectures its form.
The Empress Haruko, bom May 29, 1850, was edu-
cated in the strictest conventions of old Japan, and
taught only the Chinese classics, her own literature and
poetic composition, the use of the koto, the forms of
cha no yu, needle-work, and the arrangement of flowers
'yinrikisha Days in Japan
— a broad and most liberal education for a maiden even
of high degree.
Upon her marriage, an extraordinary life opened be-
fore the little Empress, demanding a very unusual ac-
tivity and study, courage, adaptiveness, and comprehen-
sion. She is poetic as well as practical, and her poems
are not only traced on imperial screens and kakemono
in autograph characters, but several of them have been
set to music as well.
Even now, her Majesty is more delicately pretty than
her younger sisters, although for years an invalid. She
is short in stature, slender, and small, with the long, oval
face and refined features of the ideal aristocratic type of
Japanese beauty. At her marriage, she shaved her eye-
brows, painted two shadowy suggestions of them high
up on her forehead, and blackened her teeth, in accord-
ance with Japanese custom ; but after a few years, she
ceased to disfigure herself in this way. It was an event,
in 1873, when she gave her first audience to the envoys'
wives. It cost the court chamberlains months of study
to arrange for the appearance of the Emperor and Em-
press together, to reconcile the pretensions of their suites
as to rank and precedence, and to harmonize the Occi-
dental, chivalrous ideas of deference to women with the
unflattering estimate of the Orient. When, on the day
of the declaration of the new constitution (February 1 1,
1890), the Emperor and Empress rode side by side in
the same state carriage through the streets of Tokio,
and when, that night, he offered his arm to lead her to
a twin arm-chair in the state dining-hall, a new era was
begun in Japanese history.
The Empress has her secretaries and readers, and
gives a part of each day to informal audiences. She
visits her schools and hospitals, and makes liberal pur-
chases at charity bazaars. She exercises in the saddle
within the palace grounds, and drives in a brougham
The Imperial Family
with half-drawn curtains, her men on the box wearing a
dark-blue livery with red cords and facings, silver but-
tons, and cocked hats.
Mr*^-
!
: \
j
Hij
-^=^^
mxi ^'
m
k '\
IN THE PALACE GARDENS
\
One of the two
annual imperial gar-
den-parties is given
when the chrysan-
themums are in
bloom, and the oth-
er at the time of
the cherry blossoms.
The etiquette of these is quite simple, although an ap-
pearance at one is still equivalent to a presentation at
>«5
yinrikisha Days in Japan
court. A few days before the festivity each guest re-
ceives a large chrysanthemum-bordered card :
November — , .
By order of their Majesties, the Emperor and Empress, the Min-
ister of State for the Household Department presents his compli-
ments to , and asks their company at the "Chrysanthemum
Party " at the garden of the Imperial Temporary Palace on the 8th
inst., at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
On an accompanying slip are these instructions :
Frock-coat required.
To alight at the " Kurumayose " after entering the palace gate.
This card to be shown to officers in attendance on arrival.
No party to be held if the day happens rainy.
The guests having assembled in the gardens at the
hour indicated, the Kimigayo, or national anthem, an-
nounces the approach of the imperial personages. The
Emperor, the Empress, and their suite, passing between
the rows of guests and the flower-tents, lead the way to
marquees on the lawn, where a collation is served, the
Emperor addressing a few remarks to the ministers and
envoys as he greets them. Sometimes special presenta-
tions are made to him and the Empress, and often the
Empress summons an envoy's wife or a peeress to her,
while she sits at table. After another tour of the flower-
tents, the company, following the imperial lead, desert
the gardens. Calls of ceremony must be made upon the
wife of the premier within one week after these parties.
When the Empress and her ladies wore the old dress
the garden-parties at the palace were wonderfully pictu-
resque and distinctly Japanese. It was my good fortune
to attend the chrysanthemum fete of 1885, when the
Empress and her suite made their last appearance in
the red hakatna and loose brocade kimonos of the old
regime. The day was warm, with the brilliant autumnal
tints peculiar to Japan, clear and sunny. There were
rows of chrysanthemum beds in the Asakasa gardens,
116
The Itnpcrial Family
shielded from sun and wind by matted awnings, screens,
and silk hangings, and all the myriad flowers were at one
even and perfect period of unfolding. Under silk tents
by themselves stood single plants bearing from two hun-
dred to four hundred blossoms each, every blossom full
and symmetrical.
The peeresses waiting in that sunny garden were
most brilliant figures, rivalling the glow of the flowers
in their splendid old brocade robes. At last came the
Empress and the whole gorgeous train of her attend-
ants, following the shore of the mirror -like lake, past
camellia hedges to the esplanade of the upper garden of
the great Asakasa park. As the Emperor was housed-
by illness, the Empress, for the first time, conducted a
general court ceremony alone. Her costume consisted
of the loose hakama, or divided skirt, of the heaviest
scarlet silk, under a long loose kimono of dull helio-
trope, brocaded with conventional wistarias and the
imperial crests in white. No outer obi, or sash, was
worn, and the neck was closed high with surplice folds
of rainbow- tinted silks. Many under-kimonos of fine
white and scarlet silk showed beneath the long, square
sleeves of the heavy brocade kimono. The imperial
hair was stiffened into a thin halo behind the face, fall-
ing thence to the waist, but tied here and there with bits
of silky white rice-paper, like that of a Shinto priestess.
Above her forehead shone a little golden ornament in
the shape of the ho-o, or phoenix, and she carried a para-
sol and an old court fan of painted sticks of wood, wound
with long cords of many-colored silks. The dignity and
majesty of the little woman were most impressive. Every
head bowed low, and when she had passed eyes were
lifted to her reverently and admiringly. All the princess-
es and peeresses following her wore a similar costume,
many of their brocade kimonos being stiffened with em-
broidery and gold thread, and making dazzling effects
yinrikisha Days in Japan
of color. When, in the brilliant sunset flush, the impe-
rial train retraced its steps, its kaleidoscopic flashes of
white and gold and color reflected in the still lake, and
showing vividly as the ladies formed in a semicircle on
the lawn, while the Empress withdrew to her apart-
ments, there ended a series of pictures so beautiful that
they seemed an illusion of the imagination.
Before the following April Paris fashions had set in
with great rigor, and all the soft, pink reflections from
the clouds of cherry blossoms in the Hama Rikiu palace
garden could not give the groups of little women in
dark, ugly, close-fitting gowns any likeness to the beau-
tiful assemblages of other years. Gone were poetry and
picturesqueness. Progress and Philistia were come.
Except for the costumes of the Chinese and Korean
legations, and that of the Chinese Minister's wife, with
its cap-like ornaments of filigree and pearls, and tiny
jewelled slippers, nothing Oriental or Asiatic in aspect
remained to that court gathering.
The Empress ordained and defended this change of
dress in a famous court circular, whose chief argument
seemed to be that the alteration from the sitting and
kneeling etiquette of the Orient to the standing eti-
quette of the Occident required western fashions for
women as well as men. Every lover of the picturesque
protested, but it was suspected that this manifesto was
a shrewd political move of Count Ito's to convince the
treaty powers that the Japanese do not differ from other
civilized people. Should the sacrifice of the old life
and the beautiful national dress help to secure for
Japan a revision of the shameful and unjust treaties
forced upon her from 1854 to 1858, and promote the
political liberty and commercial prosperity of the coun-
try, the Empress's patriotic iconoclasm may be justified.
The sacredness of the imperial person long postponed
her Majesty's change of fashion, as no ignoble dres§-
(29
The Imperial Family
maker could be allowed to touch her. Countess Ito, the
clever wife of the premier, and leader of foreign fashions
at court, was finally chosen as lay figure, to be fitted un-
til a model could be made. The Empress now wears
European dress altogether, conduct little short of heroic
for one accustomed only to the loose, simple, and com-
fortable garments of her country. Her gowns are made
of Japanese fabrics, and a lace school under her patron-
age supplies her with flounces and trimmings. At in-
door state ceremonies, low bodices and court trains are
prescribed, and the Empress wears a tiara, riviere^ and
innumerable ornaments of diamonds. The court ladies,
who formerly wore no ornaments but the single long
hair-pin and the gold balls and trifles on the obi cord,
have been seized by a truly American craze for diamonds,
and greatly covet the new Order with cordon and jew-
elled star lately established by the Empress.
In adopting the expensive foreign dress court ladies
ruthlessly sacrificed irreplaceable heirlooms of rich old
brocades and embroideries. For a long time their coun-
tenances and mien betrayed the discomfort of the new
dress, but they soon acquired ease with familiarity, and
no Japanese woman, in her first Parisian gown, was ever
such a burlesque and caricature as are the foreign visit-
ors who essay the kimono, and, blind to the ridiculous,
are photographed with its folds and fulness all awry.
Only two foreign women have I ever seen who could
wear Japanese dress gracefully in the Japanese way, with
full regard to the meaning which each color, fold, pucker,
and cord implies.
Asahiko, the Empress Dowager, one of the Kujo fam-
ily of kuges, and of Fujiwara descent, maintained the old
order and etiquette and made few concessions to the
new ways. She never appeared at state functions, but
the ladies of her suite, in beautiful ceremonial dresses,
were sometimes seen at Koyokwan No performances,
«»3
yinrikisha Days in yapan
when given for one of her state charities. She spent
half the year at her summer palace at Hayama, and at
her death in January, 1897, was buried beside the Em-
peror Komei at the Senyuji temple in Kioto with a mid-
night Shinto service. The most rigorous court mourn-
ing was observed for one year, even military bands being
forbidden to play.
The Empress Dowager had nominal charge of the im-
perial nurseries in the Nakayama Yashiki, where the chil-
dren of the Emperor and his inferior wives remain until
their fourth or fifth years. These wives are all of kuge
birth, and have establishments within the palace enclos-
ure. They are an Oriental survival, of which little is said
or definitely known, although they still have a fixed rank.
The Empress Haruko has no children, and Prince
Haru, the Crown Prince, is the son of the Emperor and
Madame Yanagiwara. Five imperial princesses are liv-
ing, but ten imperial children have died. Prince Haru
was born "September 6, 1879, proclaimed heir apparent
August 31, 1887, and elected Crown Prince November 3,
1889, dispossessing as heir to the throne Prince Arisu-
gawa Takehito, a young cousin, who had been adopted by
the Emperor in the absence of any direct heirs. Prince
Haru attended the Nobles' school, recited in classes with
other boys, and enjoyed a more democratic life than his
ancestors could have dreamed of. He is quick, energetic,
and ambitious, progressive in all his views, enthusiastic
and tireless in his occupations. With a naturally deli-
cate constitution, his good health has been the unceasing
object of the devoted German and Japanese court phy-
sicians, and he has always been exempt from court func-
tions and the wearisome public duties of the heir apparent
in other empires. His marriage to the Princess Sada,
daughter of Prince Kujo, took place at the Imperial Pal-
ace in Tokio in May, 1900, and the birth of Prince Michi
in April, 1901, was cause of rejoicing to the empire.
124
Tokio Palaces and Court
CHAPTER XII
TOKIO PALACES AND COURT
Thirty different places have been the capital and
home of the Emperors of Japan, and Omi, Settsu, and
Yamashiro were imperial provinces before the Tokuga-
wa's city of Yeddo (bay's gate) became Tokio, the east-
ern capital and seat of imperial power. The Shogun's
old castle, the Honmaru, or the Shiro, was the imperial
palace until destroyed by fire in May, 1873, and its in-
terior is said to have been far more splendid than the
Nijo castle in Kioto. The yashiki of the Tokugawa
daimio of Kiushiu, on the high ground of the Akasaka
quarter, next sheltered the imperial household, though
ill adapted to its changing and growing needs.
At the end of 1888 the Emperor took possession of
the new imperial palace, which had been six years in
building, and which stands upon the ruins of the Sho-
gun's castle, protected by all the rings of moats. Two
drawbridges and two ponderous old towered gate-ways
defend the entrance to the front wing of the building, a
long yellow brick edifice, with the conical towers and
steep r6of of a French chateau. The offices of the Impe-
rial Household Department are assigned to this foreign
wing, except for which the new structure is such a laby-
rinthine collection of temple-like buildings, as the old
palace at Kioto, Built on sloping and uneven ground,
there is a constant change of level in the innumerable
roofs and floors. Before it was completed a tour of the
palace occupied a full hour, and attendants and work-
men were often lost in the maze. Combining Japanese
"'J
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
and European architecture, decorations, furnishings, and
ideas, the palace is a jumble of unsatisfactory incongru-
ities, nobody being found to admire thatched roofs and
electric lights, partition walls of sliding paper screens
and steam-heating apparatus, a modern ball-room, and a
No dance pavilion all side by side.
Each lofty state apartment is a building by itself, the
outer galleries on the four sides being the corridors that
touch other corridors at their angles. Plate-glass doors
in maroon lacquer frames, with superb metal mountings,
take the place of the usual paper shoji ; but with the low
eaves and the light entering from the level of the floor,
the rooms need all their Edison lamps. Unfortunately,
the best examples of national decorative art are not pre-
served in this national palace. Only the richly panelled
ceilings are at all Japanese or worthy their place. The
famous embroidered ceiling and embroidered wainscot-
ing in the great drawing-room, and some makimonos in
the private rooms, exhibit the best Kioto needle-work.
This wonderful ceiling, costing ten thousand dollars, is
panelled with yard^squares of gold-thread tapestry, upon
which are embroidered crest-like circles of various flow-
ers. The wainscoting is green damask wrought with
fruits, and the walls of the drawing-room are hung with
a neutral-tinted damask.
The beautiful Japanese woods and the marvellous
Japanese carvers were set aside, that the steam factories
of Hamburg might supply the cheap and ugly oak furni-
ture of the banquet-hall. The state table, seating one
hundred people, surrounds three sides of a square. The
imperial arm-chairs are at the middle of the board,
facing elaborate buffets, framing painted tapestry-panels
of the most tawdry German design. The ball-room has
a costly inlaid floor, and is decorated in white and gold.
The throne-room has nothing Japanese but the crests in
the panelled ceiling. A large gilded arm-chair stands
ij6
Tokto Palaces and Court
on a red-carpeted dais, with canopy and curtains of red
plush, the sacred sword and seal resting on lacquer ta-
bles beside it. At court functions the Empress, stands
on a dais below and to the right of the throne, with the
imperial princes and princesses grouped about her. The
members of the diplomatic corps are placed at the Em-
peror's left, the ministers and higher officials fill the
space facing the throne, and the imperial guard line the
gallery corridors that surround the throne-room.
In the private apartments of the Emperor and Em-
press moquette carpets, plush furniture, and easy-chairs
confess foreign influence and etiquette. The old rules
of the simplicity of a Shinto shrine in the sovereign's
dwelling are observed in leaving all the wood-work un-
painted, while wax-candles and open grates replace the
electric bulbs and gilded radiators of the official parts of
the palace. Some of the private rooms display exquisite
panelled and coffered ceilings of pure white pine, or the
beautiful gray bog-wood. Each suite has one room in
pure Japanese style, and a tiny box for celebrating the
rites of cha no yu with a
favored four. The Em-
peror's sleeping-room is
the same unlighted, un-
ventilated dark closet
which his ancestors used.
This sleeping-room is E
in the accompanying di-
agram, surrounded by
rooms occupied at night
by his attendants and
guards.
Above this floor is a
suite of studies, libraries,
and secretaries' rooms, all finished in the same exquisite
woods, that show their natural grain and color. There
jinnkisha Days in yapan
is a separate suite of rooms for the Emperor's toilet and
wardrobe, a robing and disrobing room, and an exquisite
Japanese bath-room with inlaid floor and walls. The
sovereign uses the regular oval wooden tub of his peo-
ple, which is filled from a well in the adjoining court by
means of the primitive bucket and rope. The screens
in these private rooms are undecorated, or at the most
only flecked with gold-leaf. From time to time, by spe-
cial command, artists will decorate these, and squares of
colored paper put here and there upon them invite the
autograph poems of the tea-drinking improvisators.
Somewhere in the recesses of the palace is a chapel
or Shinto shrine, but the officials are very reticent con-
cerning it. It is known that the mortuary tablets of the
Emperor's ancestors are there, simple /'//«/, or pieces of
pine wood, upon which are written the posthumous
names of the deceased rulers. Official bulletins often
announce that a newly appointed minister of the cabinet,
or a diplomatic officer about departing for his post is
"ordered to worship the cenotaphs in the imperial chap-
el," before an audience with the Emperor. Presumably,
such devotions are a form equivalent to the oath of alle-
giance in other countries. Upon the anniversaries of
the death of certain of his ancestors, on the days of the
spring and autumn festival, when the first rice is sown
and harvested, as well as before any great ceremonial,
it is announced that the Emperor will worship in the im-
perial chapel. The aged Prince Kuni Asahiko is con-
ductor of divine services to the imperial family ; but
everything about that simple, formal state religion is
baffling and incomprehensible, and no one knows what
form the Shinto services in the palace assume.
The Emperor used to give a Japanese banquet on the
morning of his birthday to princes, ministers, and en-
voys. Chopsticks were used, and the imperial health
was drunk from sake-cups of fine egg-shell porcelain,
128
Tokio Palaces and Court
decorated with chrysanthemums and broken diaper pat-
terns in gold, which the guests carried away with them
as souvenirs. That celebration and the New-year break-
fast are now state banquets,
served in foreign fashion, with
sovereign and consort seated at
the head of the room. Indeed,
the entire service of the palace
and of the Emperor's table is
European ; silver, porcelain, and
glass being marked with the im-
perial crest of the sixteen-petal- imperial s;u<£-cup
led chrysanthemum, and the kiri
mon of the Paulownia imperialis appearing in the deco-
rative design woven in the white silk napery and traced
on the delicate porcelain service. The palace lackeys
are uniformed in dress-coats with many cords and aiguil-
lettes, striped vests, knee-breeches, white silk stockings,
and buckled shoes. Their costume resembles that of
the Vienna palace, colored sketches of which Prince Ko-
matsu sent home during his winter stay on the Danube.
The palace tiring women wear the garb of Kioto days,
purple hakama and russet silk kimonos, and are the
most fascinating and almost the only Japanese specta-
cle in the imperial precincts. In all modifications the
usages of the Berlin court have been followed, and no
Prussian military martinet or court chamberlain could
be more punctilious in matters of etiquette than the Jap-
anese court officials.
Of the Empress Dowager's palace only its gate-way is
known. The Hama Rikiu palace is a sea-shore villa,
owing its beautiful garden to the Shoguns, but it is occu-
pied only when the ministers of state give balls, or for-
eign guests of the Emperor are domiciled there, as was
General Grant. An imperial garden-party is held in its
confines each spring, and, with the Fukiage gardens ad-
1 IS9
yinrikisha Days in yapan
joining the new palace, is a supreme example of the Jap-
anese landscape gardener's art.
For the support of these palaces and the expenses of
the imperial family the Imperial Household Department's
expenditures were 3,000,000 yens in 1889 and 1899.
Tokio court circles have, of course, their factions and
cliques, their wars and triumphs, and the favor of the
sovereign is the object of perpetual scheming and in-
triguing.
The peerage of Japan numbers eleven princes, thirty-
four marquises, eighty-nine counts, three hundred and
sixty-three viscounts, and two hundred and twenty-one
barons. All kuge families are in this new peerage, and
such daimios of the Shogun's court as give aid and allegi-
ance to the Emperor, or made honorable surrender in the
conflict of 1868. Rank and title were conferred upon
ma try of the samurai also, the leaders in the work of the
Restoration, and the statesmen, who have advised and
led in the wonderful progress of these last twenty years;
but the old kug^s have never brought themselves to
accept the pardoned daimios and ennobled samurai of
other days. It is the Oriental version of the relations
between the Faubourg St. Germain, the aristocracy of
the empire, and the bureaucracy of the present French
republic.
The imperial princes of the blood, all nearly related
to the Emperor, rank above the ten created princes, who
head the list of the nobility. Five of these ten princely
houses are the old Gosekke, the first five of the one
hundred and fifty-five kuge families comprising the old
Kioto court. With the Gosekke, which includes the
Ichijo, Kujo, Takatsukasa, Nijo, and Konoye families,
rank, since 1883, the houses of San jo, Iwakura, Shimad-
zu, Mori, and Tokugawa, sharing with them the privilege
of offering the bride to the heir-apparent.
The Emperor visits personally at the houses of these
Tokio Palaces and Court
ten princes, and recently the Tokugawas entertained
him with a fencing-match and a No dance in old style,
the costumes and masks for which had been used at
Tokugawa fetes for centuries. In accordance with other
old customs, a sword by a famous maker was presented
to the guest of honor, and a commemorative poem of-
fered in a gold lacquer box. Yet the head of the Toku-
gawa house is a grandson of the Shogun who first re-
fused to treat with Commodore Perry, and son of Keiki,
the arch rebel and last of the Shoguns, who for so long
lived forgotten as a private citizen on a small estate
near Shidzuoka, keeping alive no faction, awaking no
interest— attaining, in fact, a political Nirvana.
Under new titles the old fiefs are lost sight of and
old associations broken up. The marquises, counts, and
barons of to-day are slender, dapper little men, wearing
the smartest and most irreproachable London clothes,
able to converse in one or two foreign languages on the
subjects that interest cosmopolitans of their rank in
other empires, and are with difficulty identified with
their feudal titles. The Daimio of Kaga has become
the Marquis Maeda, his sister married the Emperor's
cousin, and the great yashiki of their ancestors has
given way to the buildings of the Imperial University.
The Daimio of Satsuma is now Prince Shimadzu. It is
not easy to associate these modern men-about-town, who
dance at state balls, who play billiards and read the files
of foreign newspapers at the Rokumeikwan, who pay
afternoon calls, attend teas, garden-parties, dinners, con-
certs, and races ; who have taken up poker and tennis
with equal ardor, and are victimized at charity fairs and
bazaars, with their pompous, stately, two-sworded, bro-
cade and buckram bound ancestors.
There are great beauties, favorites, and social leaders
among the ladies of the court circle, and the change in
their social position and personal importance is incred-
Jtnriktsha Days in Japan
ibie. Japanese matrons, who, a few years ago, led the
most quiet and secluded existence, now preside with
ease and grace over large establishments, built and
maintained like the official residences of London or
Berlin. Their struggles with the difficulties of a new
language, dress, and etiquette were heroic. Mothers
and daughters studied together with the same English
governess, and princesses and diplomats' wives, return-
ing from abroad, gave new ideas to their friends at
home. Two Japanese ladies, now foremost at court,
are graduates of Vassar College, and many high officials
are happily married to foreign wives ; American, Eng-
lish, and German women having assumed Japanese
names with their wedding vows. The court has its
reigning beauty in the wife of the grand master of cere-
monies, the richest peer of his day, and representative
of that family which gave its name to the finest porce-
lain known to the ceramic art of the empire.
Tokio society delights in dancing, and every one at
court dances well. Leaders of fashion go through the
quadrille d'hontieiir, with which state balls open, and
follow the changes of the lancers with the exactness of
soldiers on drill, every step and movement as precise
and finished as the bending of the fingers in cha no yu.
The careless foreigner who attempts to dance an unfa-
miliar figure repents him of his folly. Japanese polite-
ness is incomparable, but the sedateness, the precision,
and exactness of the other dancers in the set will re-
proach the blunderer until he feels himself a criminal.
The ball is the more usual form of state entertainments.
The prime-minister gives a ball on the night of the
Emperor's birthday, and the governor of Tokio gives a
ball each winter. From time to time the imperial princes
and the ministers of state offer similar entertainments,
and every legation has its ball-room. The members of
the diplomatic corps are as much in social unison with
13a
Tokio Palaces and Court
the higher Japanese circles as it is possible to be with
such subjects at any capital, and the round of tiffins,
dinners, garden-parties, and small dances makes Tokio
very gay during the greater part of the year.
The first formal visiting of the season begins in Oc-
tober, and by May social life is at an end until hot
weather is over. Lent makes little break in the social
chain. Great seriousness and exactness in social usage
is inherent in this high-bred people. Visits of ceremony
are scrupulously paid within the allotted time, and a
newly-arrived official in Tokio finds no diminution of
the card-leaving and visiting which awaits him in any
other capital. At the houses of the imperial princes
cards are not left, the visitor inscribing his name in a
book in the hall. After each state ball, a guest must
call at once upon the princess, or minister's wife, who pre-
sided, and any remissness strikes his name from her list.
Garden-parties are the favorite expression of Tokio
hospitality. All official residences in the city have fine
grounds, and many ministers of state own suburban
villas. A few of the legations are able to entertain in
the same way, and many military officers make the gar-
den of the old Mito yashiki, now the Arsenal grounds,
the scene of their courtesies.
There is a stately court journal, which is the official
bulletin, but Tokio has not yet set up a paper of society
gossip and scandal for the rigorous censorship of the
Japanese press to expunge ; nor are there books of
court memoirs. Yet what memoirs could be more inter-
esting than those that might be written by the men and
women who were born in feudal times, who have lived
through the exciting days of the Restoration, and have
watched the birth and growth of New Japan.
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
CHAPTER XIII
THE SUBURBS OF TOKIO
The suburbs of Tokio are full of holiday resorts for
the people and the beautiful villas of nobles. To the
north-east, in Oji, are the Government chemical works
and paper mills, where rough bits of mulberry-wood are
turned into papers of a dozen kinds, the silkiest tissue-
paper, smooth, creamy writing-paper, thick parchment,
bristol-board, and the thin paper for artists and etchers.
On a sheet of the heaviest parchment paper I once stood
and was lifted from the floor, the fabric showing no mark
of rent or strain, and it is wellnigh impossible to tear
even a transparent Oji letter sheet. The Oji tea-house
has a famous garden, and in autumn Oji's hill-sides blaze
with colored maples, and then the holiday makers mark
the place for their own.
Waseda, the northern suburb, contains an old temple,
a vast, gloomy bamboo-grove, and the villa of Countess
Okuma, to whose genius for landscape-gardening is also
due the French Legation's paradise of a garden, in the
heart of the city, that place having been Count Okuma's
town residence before he sold it to the French Govern-
ment. From Waseda's rice fields a greater marvel grew.
Meguro, south of Tokio, is a place of sentimental pil-
grimage to the lovers of Gompachi and Komurasaki, the
Abelard and Heloise of the East, around whose tomb the
trees flutter with paper poems, and prayers. In the tem-
ple grounds are falling streams of water, beneath which,
summer and winter, praying pilgrims stand, to be thus
pumped on for their sins. Similar penitents may be seen
134
The Suburbs of Tokt'o
at a little temple niched in the bluff of Mississippi Bay.
Meguro has an annual azalea fete and a celebration of
the maple-leaf, and its resident nobles, among whom is
General Saigo,give feasts in honor of the season's blooms.
The Sengakuji temple, near Shinagawa, is a sacred
spot and shrine of chivalry, the burial-place of the Forty-
seven Ronins ; and here come pious pilgrims to say a
prayer and leave a stick of burning incense, and view the
images and relics in the little temple.
Near Omori, half-way between Yokohama and Tokio,
Professor Morse discovered the shell -heaps of prehis-
toric man. The neighborhood is made beautiful by old
groves, old temples and shrines, tiny villages, picturesque
farm-houses, and hedge-lined roads, while Ikegami's tem-
ples shine upon the hill that stands an evergreen island
in the lake of greener rice fields or golden stubble. Here
died Nichiren, founder of the Buddhist sect bearing his
name. For six centuries these splendid temples have
resounded with the chantings of his priesthood, who still
expound his teachings to the letter. The Nichiren sect
is the largest, richest, most influential, and aggressive in
Japan. They are the Protestants and Presbyterians of
the Buddhist religion ; firm, hard, and unrelenting in
their faith, rejecting all other creeds as false, and zeal-
ously proselyting. Nichiren was a great scholar, who,
poring over Chinese and Sanscrit sutras, believed him-
self to have discovered the true and hidden meaning of
the sacred books. His labors were colossal, and though
exiled, imprisoned, tortured, and condemned to death,
he lived to see his followers increasing to a great body
of true believers, and himself established as high-priest
over the temples of Ikegami. In the popular play " Ni-
chiren," one has thrilling evidence of what the pious
founder and his disciples endured.
On the twelfth and thirteenth of each October special
services are held in memory of Nichiren, which thou-
Jtnrikisha Days in yapan
sands of people attend. On the first day of this matsuri
the railway is crowded with passengers. Bonfires and
strings of lanterns mark the Omori station by night, and
by day the neighboring matsuri is announced by tall
bamboo poles, from which spring whorls of reeds covered
with huge paper flowers. These giant flower-stalks are
the conventional sign for festivities, and when a row of
them is planted by the road-side, or paraded up and
down with an accompaniment of gongs, the holiday spirit
responds at once. The quiet country road is blockaded
with hundreds of jinrikishas going to and returning from
Ikegami's terraced gate-ways. Men, women, and chil-
dren, priests, beggars, and peddlers pack the highway.
The crowd is amazing — as though these thousands of
people had been suddenly conjured from the ground, or
grown from some magician's powder — for nothing could
be quieter than Omori lanes on all the other days of the
year.
Along the foot-paths of the fields women in tightly-
wrapped kimonos with big umbrellas over their beauti-
fully-dressed heads; young girls with the scarlet petti-
coats and gay hair-pins indicative of maidenhood ; little
girls and boys with smaller brothers and sisters strapped
on their backs, trudge along in single files, high above
the stubble patches, to the great matsuri. In farm-house
yards persimmon-trees hang full of mellow, golden fruit,
and the road is literally lined with these apples of the
Hesperides. Peddlers sit on their heels behind their
heaped persimmons and busily tie straw to the short
stems of the fruit, that the buyer may carry his purchase
like a bunch of giant golden grapes. Fries, stews, bakes,
and grills scent the air with savors, and all sorts of little
balls and cubes, pats and cakes, lumps and rolls of eat-
ables are set out along the country road. A queer sort
of sea-weed scales, stained bright red, is the chewing-
gum of the East, and finds a ready market.
136
The Suburbs of Tokio
On the days of the matsuri the village street is impas-
sable, and the whole broad walk of the temple grounds
leading from the pagoda is lined with booths, jugglers,
acrobats, side shows, and catch-penny tricksters. The
" sand-man," with bags of different colored sands, makes
beautiful pictures on a cleared space of ground, rattling
and gabbling without cessation while he works. First
he dredges the surface with a sieve full of clean white
sand, and then sifts a little thin stream of black or red
sand through his closed hand, painting warriors, maid-
ens, dragons, flowers, and landscapes in the swiftest,
easiest way. It is a fine example of the trained hand
and eye, and of excellent free-hand drawing. A juggler
tosses rings, balls, and knives in the air, and spins plates
on top of a twenty-foot pole. His colleague balances
a big bamboo on one shoulder, and a small boy climbs
it and goes through wonderful feats on the cross-piece
at the top. A ring of gaping admirers surrounds a mas-
ter of the black art, who swallows a lighted pipe, drinks,
whistles, produces the pipe for a puff or two, swallows it
again, and complacently emits fanciful rings and wreaths
of smpke. Hair-pins, rosaries, toys, and sweets are
everywhere for sale.
A huge, towering, heavy-roofed red gate-way admits
streams of people to the great court-yard, surrounded
on three sides by temples large and small, where the
priests chant and pound and the faithful pray, rubbing
their rosaries and tossing in their coins. At one shrine
greasy locks of hair tied to the lattices are votive offer-
ings from those who have appealed to the deity within.
There is a little temple to the North Star, where seamen
and fisher-folk pray, and one to Daikoku, the god of
riches and abundance, the latter a fat little man sitting
on bags of rice, and always beset by applicants.
In the great temple pyramids of candles burn, incense
rises, bells sound, and money rains into the big cash-box
>37
Jinrikt'sha Days in Japan
at the head of the steps. The splendid interior is a
mass of lacquer, gilding, and color, the panelled ceiling
has an immense filigree brass baldaquin hanging like a
frosted canopy over the heads of the priests, and a su-
perb altar, all images, lotus - leaves, lights, and gilded
doors, dazzles the eye. Under the baldaquin sits the
high-priest of the temple, who is a bishop of the largest
diocese in Japan, while at either side of him more than
two hundred celebrants face each other in rows. The
priestly heads are shaven, the smooth faces wear the ec-
static, exalted expression of devotees purified by vigil
and fasting, and over their white or yellow gauze kimo-
nos are tied kesas, or cloaks of rich brocade. The
lesser hierarchy appear in subdued colors — gray, pur-
ple, russet — but the head priest is arrayed in gorgeous
scarlet and gold, and sits before a reading-desk, whose
books are covered with squares of similar brocade. He
leads the chanted service from a parchment roll spread
before him, at certain places touching a silver- toned
gong, when all the priests bow low and chant a response,
sitting for hours immovable upon the mats, intoning and
reading from the sacred books in concert. At intervals
each raps the low lacquer table before him and bends
low, while the big temple drum sounds, the high-priest
touches his gong, and slowly, behind the lights and in-
cense clouds of the altar, the gilded doors of the shrine
swing open to disclose the precious image of sainted
Nichiren. On all sides stand the faithful, extending
their rosary -wrapped hands and muttering the Nichi-
rene's special form of prayer : " JVamti mio ho ren ge
kio " (Glory to the salvation-bringing book, the blossom
of doctrine).
After seven hours of worship a last litany is uttered,
and the procession of priests files through the grounds
to the monastery, stopping to select from the two hun-
dred and odd pairs of wooden clogs, waiting at the edge
14S
The Suburbs of Tokio
of the temple mats, each his proper pair. The high-
priest walks near the middle of the line underneath an
immense red umbrella. He carries an elaborate red lacq-
uer staff, not unlike a crozier, and even his clogs are
of red lacquered wood. The service in the temple sug-
gests the forms of the Roman Church, and this Buddhist
cardinal, in his red robes and umbrella, is much like his
fellow-dignitary of the West.
To citizens of the United States Ikegami has a pecul-
iar interest. When the American man-of-war Oneida was
run down and sunk with her officers and crew by the
P. and O. steamer Bombay, near the mouth of Yeddo
Bay, January 23, 1870, our Government made no effort
to raise the wreck or search it, and finally sold it to a
Japanese wrecking company for fifteen hundred dollars.
The wreckers found many bones of the lost men among
the ship's timbers, and when the work was entirely com-
pleted, with their voluntary contributions they erected a
tablet in the Ikegami grounds to the memory of the dead,
and celebrated there the impressive Buddhist segakt
(feast of hungry souls), in May, 1889. The great tem-
ple was in ceremonial array; seventy -five priests in
their richest robes assisted at the mass, and among
the . congregation were the American admiral and his
officers, one hundred men from the fleet, and one sur-
vivor of the solitary boat's crew that escaped from the
Oneida.
The Scriptures were read, a service was chanted, the
Sutra repeated, incense burned, the symbolic lotus-leaves
cast before the altar, and after an address in English by
Mr. Amenomori explaining the segaki, the procession
of priests walked to the tablet in the grounds to chant
prayers and burn incense again.
No other country, no other religion, offers a parallel to
this experience ; and Americans may well take to heart
•39
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
the example of piety, charity, magnanimity, and liberal-
ity that this company of hard-working Japanese fisher-
men and wreckers have set them.
CHAPTER XIV
A TRIP TO NIKKO
The Nikko mountains, one hundred miles north of
Tokio, are the favorite summer resort of foreign resi-
dents and Tokio officials. The railway now reaches
Nikko, and one no longer travels for the last twenty-five
miles in jinrikisha over the most beautiful highway, lead-
ing through an unbroken avenue of over-arching trees
to the village of Hachi-ishi, or Nikko.
On the very hottest day of the hottest week of Au-
gust we pacl^ed our koris, the telescope baskets which
constitute the Japanese trunk, and fled to the hills.
Smoke and dust poured in at the car windows, the roof
crackled in the sun, the green groves and luxuriant
fields that we whirled through quivered with heat, and
a chorus of grasshoppers and scissors-grinders deafened
us at every halt. At Utsonomiya it was a felicity to sit
in the upper room of a tea-house and dip our faces and
hold our hands in basins of cool spring-water, held for
us by the sympathetic nesans. They looked perfectly
cool, fresh, and unruffled in their clean blue-and-white cot-
ton kimonos, for the Japanese, like the Creoles, appear
never to feel the heat of summer, and, indeed, to be
wholly indifferent to any weather. The same placid
Utsonomiya babies, whose little shaved heads bobbed
around helplessly in the blaze of that midsummer sun,
I have seen equally serene with their bare skulls red-
dening, uncovered, on the frostiest winter mornings.
140
A Trip to Nikko
Once out of the streets of this little provincial capital,
the way to Nikko leads up a straight broad avenue,
lined on both sides for twenty-seven miles with tall and
ancient cryptomerias, whose branches meet in a Gothic
arch overhead. The blue outlines of the Nikko mount-
ains showed in the distance as we entered the grand
avenue. The road is a fine piece of engineering, with
its ascent so slow and even as to seem level ; but at
times the highway, with its superb walls of cryptomeria,
is above the level of the fields, then even with them, and
then below them, as it follows its appointed lines. Before
the railway reached Utsonomiya, travellers from Tokio
had a boat journey, and then a jinrikisha ride of seventy
miles through the shaded avenue. This road was made
two centuries ago, when the Shoguns chose Nikko as
their burial place, and these venerable trees have shaded
the magnificent funeral trains of the old warriors, and the
splendid processions of their successors, who made pil-
grimages to the tombs of lyeyasu and lyemitsu. In our
day, alas, instead of mighty daimios and men-at-arms in
coats of mail, or brocaded grandees in gilded palanquins,
telegraph-poles, slim, ugly, and utilitarian, impertinently
thrust themselves forward before the grand old tree-
trunks, and the jinrikisha and the rattle-trap basha take
their plebeian way.
The cryptomeria has the reddish bark and long,
smooth bole of the California sequoia, and through the
mat of leaves and branches, high overhead, the light
filters down in a soft twilight that casts a spell over the
place. After sunset the silence and stillness of the
shaded avenue were solemn, and its coolness and the
fragrance of moist earth most grateful. Two men ran
tandem with each jinrikisha, and they went racing up
the avenue for ten miles, halting only once for a sip of
cold water before they stopped at the hamlet of Osawa.
The villages, a row of low houses on either side of the
yinrikisha Days in "Japan
way, make the only break in the long avenue. With its
dividing screens drawn back, the Osawa tea-house was
one long room, with only side walls and a roof, the front
open to the street, and the back facing a garden where
a stream dashed through a liliputian landscape, fell in a
liliputian fall, and ran under liliputian bridges. At the
street end was a square fireplace, sunk in the floor, with
a big teakettle swinging by an iron chain from a beam
of the roof, teapots sitting in the warm ashes, and bits
of fowl and fish skewered on chopsticks and set up in
the ashes to broil before the coals. The coolies, sitting
around this kitchen, fortified their muscle and brawn
with thimble cups of green tea, bowls of rice, and a few
shreds of pickled fish. We, as their masters and supe-
riors, were placed as far as possible from them, and pic-
nicked at a table in the pretty garden. After the severe
exertion of sitting still and letting the coolies draw us,
we restored our wasting tissues by rich soup, meats, and
all the stimulating food that might be thought more
necessary to the laboring jinrikisha men.
When we started again, with all the tea-house staff
singing sweet sayonaras, a glow in the east foretold the
rising moon, and a huge stone torii at the end of the vil-
lage loomed ghostly against the blackness of the forest.
The glancing moonlight shot strange shadows across the
path, and we went whirling through this lattice of light
and darkness in stillness and solitude. The moon rose
higher and was hidden in the leafy arch overhead, and
before we realized that its faint light was fading, came
flashes of lightning, the rumble of approaching thunder,
and a sudden crash, as the flood of rain struck the tree-
tops and poured through. The hoods of the jinrikishas
were drawn up, the oil-papers fastened across us, and
through pitch darkness the coolies raced along. Vivid
flashes of lightning showed the thick, white sheet of rain,
which gusts of wind blew into our faces, while insidious
A Trip to Nikko
streams slipped down our shoulders and glided into our
laps. Putting their heads down, the coolies beat their way
against the rain for two more soaking miles to Imaichi,
the last village on the road, only five miles from Nikko.
The tea-house into which we turned for shelter was
crowded with belated and storm-bound pilgrims coming
down from the sacred places of Nikko and Chiuzenji.
All Japanese are talkative, the lower in station the more
loquacious, and the whole coolie company was chatter-
ing at once. As the place was too comfortless to stay in,
we turned out again in the rain, and the coolies splashed
away at a walk, through a darkness so dense as to be felt.
At midnight our seven jinrikishas rattling into the hotel
court, and fourteen coolies shouting to one another as
they unharnessed and unpacked, roused the house and
the whole neighborhood of Nikko. Awakened sleepers
up-stairs looked out at us and banged the screens angri-
ly, but no sounds can be deadened in a tea-house.
To the traveller the tea-house presents many phases
of comfort, interest, and amusement altogether wanting
in the conventional hotel, which is, unfortunately, becom-
ing common on the great routes of travel. The dimen-
sions of every house in the empire conform to certain
unvarying rules. The verandas, or outer galleries of the
house, are always exactly three feet wide. A foreigner,
who insisted on a nine-feet-wide veranda, entailed upon
his Nikko carpenter many days of painful thought, pipe-
smoking, and conference with his fellows. These me-
chanics were utterly upset in their calculations. They
sawed the boards and beams too long or too short, and
finally produced a very bad, un-Japanese piece of work.
The floors of these galleries are polished to a wonderful
smoothness and surface. They are not varnished, nor
oiled, nor waxed, but every morning rubbed with a cloth
wrung out of hot bath-water which contains oily matter
enough to give, in time, this peculiar lustre. Three years
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
of daily rubbing with a hot cloth are required to give a
satisfactory result, and every subsequent year adds to
the richness of tone and polish, until old tea-houses and
temples disclose floors of common pine looking like rose-
wood, or six-century-old oak.
The area of every room is some multiple of three
feet, because the soft tatami, or floor-mats, measure
six feet in length by three in width. These are woven
of common straw and rushes, faced with a closely-
wrought mat of rice-straw. It is to save these tatami
and the polished floors that shoes are left outside the
house.
The thick screens, ornamented with sketches or poems,
that separate one room from another, are the fusuma;
the screens shutting off the veranda, pretty lattice frames
covered with rice-paper that admit a peculiarly soft light
to the rooms, are the shoji, and in their management is
involved an elaborate etiquette. In opening or closing
them, well-bred persons and trained servants kneel and
use each thumb and finger with ordered precision, while
it is possible to convey slight, contempt, and mortal in-
sult in the manner of handling these sliding doors. The
outer veranda is closed at night and in bad weather by
amados, solid wooden screens or shutters, that rumble
and bang their way back and forth in their grooves.
These amados are without windows or air-holes, and the
servants will not willingly leave a gap for ventilation.
" But thieves may get in, or the kappa r they cry, the
kappa being a mythical animal always ready to fly away
with them. In every room is placed an andon, or night-
lamp. If one clap his hands at any hour of the twenty-
four, he hears a chorus of answering Hei! hei ! hefs f and
the thump of the nesans bare feet, as they run to attend
him. While he talks to them, they keep ducking and
saying Heh ! heh ! which politely signifies that they are
giving their whole attention.
A Trip to Nikko
The Japanese bed is the floor, with a wooden box un-
der the neck for a pillow and a futon for a covering. To
the foreigner the Japanese landlord allows five or six
futons, or cotton-wadded comforters, and they make a
tolerable mattress, although not springy, and rather apt
to be damp and musty. The traveller carries his own
sheets, woolen blankets, feather or air pillows, and flea-
powder, the latter the most necessary provision of all.
The straw mats and the futons swarm with fleas, and
without a liberal powdering, or, better, an anointing with
oil of pennyroyal, it is impossible to sleep. These sleep-
ing arrangements are not really comfortable, and, after
the fatigue of walking and mountain - climbing, stiffen
the joints. By day the futons are placed in closets out
of sight, or hung over the balconies to air, coming back
damper than ever, if the servants forget to bring them in
before sunset. The bedroom walls are the sliding pa-
per screens ; and if one's next neighbor be curious, he
may slip the screen a little or poke a hole through the
paper. A whisper or a pin-drop travels from room to
room, and an Anglo-Saxon snorer would rock the whole
structure.
At ordinary Japanese inns the charge for a day's ac-
commodation ranges from a half-yen upward. A Jap-
anese can get his lodgings and all his meals for about
thirty cents, but foreigners are so clumsy, untidy, and
destructive, and they demand so many unusual things,
that they are charged the highest price, which includes
lodging, bedding, and all the tea, rice, and hot water
they may wish. All other things are extra. In the beat-
en tracks bread and fresh beef may always be found, and
each year there is less need of carrying the supplies for-
merly so essential. Chairs and tables, cots, knives and
forks, and corkscrews have gradually penetrated to the
remotest mountain hamlets. At the so-called foreign
hotels at Nikko and other resorts, charges are usually
K MS
yinrikisha Days in Japan
made at a fixed price for each day, with everything in-
cluded, as at an American hotel.
Foreigners travelling away from the ports take with
them a guide, who acts as courier, cooks and serves the
meals, and asks two and a half yens a day with expenses.
Thus accompanied, everything goes smoothly and easily;
rooms are found ready, meals are served promptly, show-
places open their doors, the best conveyances await the
traveller's wish, and an encyclopaedic interpreter is al-
ways at his elbow. Without a guide or an experienced
servant, even a resident who speaks the language fares
hardly. Like all Orientals, the Japanese are impressed
by a retinue and the appearances of wealth. They wear
their best clothes when travelling, make a great show,
and give liberal tips. The foreigner who goes to the
Nakasendo or to remote provinces alone, trusting to the
phrase-book, finds but little consideration or comfort.
He ranks with the class of pilgrims, and the guest-room
and the choicest dishes are not for him. The guide may
swindle his master a little, but the comforts and advan-
tages he secures are well worth the cost. All the guides
are well-to-do men with tidy fortunes. They exact com-
missions wherever they bring custom, and can make or
break landlords or merchants if they choose to combine.
Some travellers, who, thinking it sharp to deprive the
guides of these percentages, have been left by them in
distant provinces and forced to make their way alone,
have found the rest of the journey a succession of impo-
sitions, difficulties, and even of real hardships. After
engaging a guide and handing him the passport, the
traveller has only to enjoy Japan and pay his bill
at the end of the journey. The guides know more
than the guide-book; and with Ito, made famous by
Miss Bird, Nikko and Kioto yielded to us many pleas-
ures which we should otherwise have missed. An ac-
quaintance with Miyashta and his sweet -potato hash
146
Nikko
made the Tokaido a straight and pleasant way; and
Moto's judicial countenance caused Nikko, Chiuzenji,
and Yumoto to disclose unimagined beauties and lux-
uries ; and Utaki always marshalled the impossible and
the unexpected.
CHAPTER XV
NIKKO
Of all Japan's sacred places, Nikko, or Sun's Bright-
ness, is dearest to the Japanese heart. Art, architecture,
and landscape-gardening add to Nature's opulence, his-
tory and legend people it with ancient splendors, and all
the land is full of memories. "He who has not seen
Nikko cannot say Kekko T (beautiful, splendid, superb),
runs the Japanese saying.
With its forest shades, its vast groves, and lofty ave-
nues, its hush, its calm religious air, Nikko is an ideal
and dream-like place, where rulers and prelates may well
long to be buried, and where priests, poets, scholars, ar-
tists, and pilgrims love to abide. Each day of a whole
summer has new charms, and Nikko's strange fascina-
tion but deepens with acquaintance.
The one long street of Hachi-ishi, or lower Nikko vil-
lage, ends at the banks of the Dayagawa, a roaring
stream that courses down a narrow valley, walled at its
upper end by the bold, blue bar of Nantaisan, the sacred
mountain. Legend has peopled this valley of the Daya-
gawa with impossible beings — giants, fairies, demons,
and monsters. Most of the national fairy stories begin
with, "Once upon a time in the Nikko mountains," and
one half expects to meet imp or fay in the green shad-
ows. Mound builder and prehistoric man had lived their
squalid lives here ; the crudest and earliest forms of re-
ligion had been observed in these forest sanctuaries long
yinrikisha Days in yapan
before Kobo Daishi induced the Shinto priests to believe
that their god of the mountain was but a manifestation
of Buddha. Everything proclaims a hoary past — trees,
moss-grown stones, battered images, crumbling tombs,
overgrown and forgotten graveyards.
Each summer half the Tokio legations move bodily to
Nikko, and temples, monastery wings, priests' houses,
and the homes of the dwellers in the upper village are
rented to foreigners in ever-increasing numbers. Nikko
habitations do not yet bring the prices of Newport cot-
tages, but the extravagant rate of three and even five
hundred yens for a season of three months is a Japan-
ese equivalent. Besides the foreigners, there are many
Japanese residents ; and, while the Crown-Prince occu-
pies his summer palace, he is daily to be met in the
streets, the forest paths, or temple grounds. The white-
clad pilgrims throng hither by thousands during July
and early August, march picturesquely to the jingle of
their staffs and bells round the great temples, and
trudge on to the sanctuary on Chiuzenji's shores within
the shadow of holy Nan-taisan.
Two bridges cross the Daiyagawa, and lead to the
groves and temples that make Nikko's fame. One bridge
is an every-day affair of plain, unpainted timbers, across
which jinrikishas rumble noisily, and figures pass and re-
pass. The other is the sacred bridge, over which only
the Emperor may pass, in lieu of the Shoguns of old, for
whom it was reserved. It is built of wood, covered with
red lacquer, with many brass plates and tips, and rests
on foundation piles of Titanic stone columns, joined by
cross-pieces of stone, carefully fitted and mortised in.
Tradition maintains that the gods sent down this rain-
bow bridge from the clouds in answer to saintly prayer.
Its sanctity is so carefully preserved, that when the Em-
peror wished to pay the highest conceivable honor to
General Grant, he ordered the barrier to the bridge to
Nikko
be opened that his guest might walk across. Greatly to
his credit, that modest soldier refused to accept this
honor, lest it should seem a desecration to the humble
believers in the sanctity of the red bridge.
Shaded avenues, broad staircases, and climbing slopes
lead to the gate-ways of the two great sanctuaries — the
mortuary temples and tombs of the Shogun lyeyasu and
his worthy grandson, the Shogun lyemitsu. The hill-
side is shaded by magnificent old cryptomerias ; and
these sacred groves, with the soft cathedral light under
the high canopy of leaves, are as wonderful as the sacred
buildings. Each splendid gate-way, as well as the soar-
ing pagoda, can be seen in fine perspective at the end of
long avenues of trees, and bronze or stone torii form
lofty portals to the holy places. The torii is a distinct-
ively national structure, and these grand skeleton gates
of two columns and an upward curving cross-piece are
hnpressive and characteristic features of every Japanese
landscape, standing before even the tiniest shrines in the
Liliputian gardens of Japanese homes, as well as forming
the approach to every temple. The stone torii and the
rows of stone lanterns are mossy and lichen-covered, and
every foot of terrace or embankment is spread with fine
velvety moss of the freshest green. Although two hun-
dred years old, the temples themselves are in as perfect
condition and color as when built ; and nothing is finer,
perhaps, than the five -storied pagoda with its red lac-
quered walls, the brass trimmings of roofs and rails, the
discolored bells pendent from every angle, and a queer,
corkscrew spiral atop, the whole showing like a great
piece of jeweller's work in a deep, green grove.
lyeyasu, founder of Yeddo, successor of the Taiko, and
military ruler in the golden age of the arts in Japan, was
the first Shogun buried on Nikko's sacred hill-side, and
it was intended to make the mortuary temple before his
tomb as splendid as the crafts of the day permitted.
«49
y/nriktsha Days in yapan
His grandson, lyemitsu, was the next and only other
Shogun interred at Nikko, and his temple fairly rivals
that of his ancestor.
At each shrine rise broad stone steps leading to the
first and outer court-yards, where stand the magnificent
gates, exquisitely carved, set with superb metal plates.
and all ablaze with color and gilding. The eye is con-
fused in the infinite detail of structure and ornament,
and the intricacy of beams and brackets upholding the
heavy roofs of these gate-ways. Walls of red lacquer
and gold, with carved and colored panels topped with
black tiles, surround each enclosure, and through inner
and outer courts and gate -ways, growing ever more
and more splendid, the visitor approaches the temples
proper, their soaring roofs, curved gables, and ridge-poles
set with the Tokugawa crest in gold, sharp cut against
the forest background. At the lowest step his shoes
are taken off, and he is permitted to wander slowly
through the magnificent buildings on the soft, silk-bor-
dered mats. Richly panelled ceilings, lacquered pillars,
carved walls, and curtains of the finest split bamboo be-
long to both alike, and in the gloom of inner rooms are
marvels of carving and decoration, only half visible.
Both temples were once splendid with all the em-
blems and trappings of Buddhism, redolent with in-
cense, musical with bells and gongs, and resounding all
day with chanted services. But after the Restoration,
when the Shinto became the state religion and the Em-
peror made a pilgrimage to Nikko, lyeyasu's temple was
stripped of its splendid altar ornaments, banners, and
symbols, and the simple mirror and bits of paper of the
empty Shinto creed were substituted. In the dark chapel
behind the first room there remains a large gong, whose
dark bowl rests on a silken pad, and when softly struck
fills the place with rising and falling, recurring and wav-
ering, tones of sweetness for five whole minutes, while
Nikko
Ito stands with open watch and warning finger, and the
priest bends low and drinks in the music with ecstatic
countenance. lyemitsu's temple was spared, and there
stand the rows of superb lacquered boxes containing
the sacred writings. Ihere, too, are the gilded images,
golden lotus-leaves, massive candlesticks, drums, gongs,
banners and pendent ornaments, besides the giant ko-
ros, breathing forth pale clouds of incense, that accom-
panied the rites of the grand old Buddhist faith.
Each temple has a fine water-tank in its outer court ;
an open pavilion, with solid corner posts supporting the
heavy and ornate roof above the granite trough. Each
basin is a single, huge block of stone, hollowed out and
cut with such exactness that the water, welling up from
the bottom, pours over the smooth edges so evenly as
to give it the look of a cube of polished glass. The
fountain at the lyemitsu temple was the gift of the
princes of Nabeshima, and its eaves flutter with the
myriad flags left there by pilgrims who come to pray at
the great shrine. All about the temple grounds is heard
the noise of rushing water, and the music and gurgle of
these tiny streams, the rustle of the high branches, and
the cawing of huge solitary rooks are the only sounds
that break the stillness of the enchanted groves between
the soft boomings of the morning and evening bells.
The noise of voices is lost in the great leafy spaces, and
the sacredness of the place subdues even the unbeliev-
ing foreigner, while native tourists and pilgrims move
silently, or speak only in undertones, and make no sound,
save as their clogs clatter on stones and gravel.
It is impossible to carry away more than a general and
bewildered impression of the splendid walled and lan-
terned courts, the superb gate -ways, and the temples
themselves, but certain details, upon which the guides in-
sist, remain strangely clear in memory. Over the doors
of the stable where the sacred white pony is kept are
K— 153
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
colored carvings representing groups of monkeys with
eyes, or ears, or mouth covered with their paws — the sig-
nification being that one should neither see, hear, nor
speak any evil. In one superbly- carved gate-way is a
little medallion of two tigers, so cunningly studied and
worked out that the curving grain and knots of the wood
give all the softly -shaded stripes of their velvet coats and
an effect of thick fur. One section of a carved column
in this gate is purposely placed upsidedown, the builder
fearing to complete so perfect and marvellous a -piece of
workmanship. Above another gate-way curls a comfort-
able sleeping cat, which is declared to wink when rain is
coming, and this white cat has as great a fame as any-
thing along the Daiyagawa.
The strangest hierophant in Nikko is the priestess
who dances at the temple of lyeyasu. She looks her three-
score years of age, and is allowed a small temple to her-
self, where she sits, posed like an altar image, with a big
money-box on the sacred red steps before her, into which
the pious and the curious toss their offerings. Then the
priestess rises and solemnly walks a few steps this way,
a few steps that way, poses before each change, shakes
an elaborate sort of baby's rattle with the right-hand, and
gesticulates with an open fan in the left-hand. The se-
date walk to and fro, the movements of the rattle and
fan constitute the dance, after which this aged Miriam
sits down, bows her head to the mats, and resumes her
statuesque pose. She wears a nun-like head-dress of
white miislin, and a loose white garment without obi,
over a red petticoat, the regular costume of the Shinto
priestesses. She seems always amiable and ready to
respond to a conciliatory coin, but the visitor wonders
that the cool and shaded sanctuary in which she sits,
with nearly the whole front wall making an open door,
does not stiffen her aged joints with rheumatism and end
her dancing days.
'54
Nikko
A green and mossy staircase, a greener and mossier
balustraded walk, leads up and along the crest of the hill
to the final knoll, atop of which stands the simple bronze
urn containing the great Shogun's body. A more still
and solemn, a more peaceful and beautiful resting-place
could not be imagined, and the peculiar green twilight
reigning under the closely-set cryptomerias, with those
long stretches of stone balustrades and embankments,
which the forest has claimed for its own and clothed in a
concealing mantle of the greenest moss, subdue the most
frivolous beholder to silence and seriousness.
On that velvety-green stair-way leading to lyeyasu's
tomb I met, one day, a scholar of fine taste and great
culture, a man of distinction in his native West. " I am
overwhelmed with the beauty and magnificence of all
this," he said. " I must concede the greatness of any
religion that could provide and preserve this, and teach
its followers to appreciate it."
Afterwards, almost on the same step, a dear mission-
ary friend stopped me, with eyes full of tears. " Oh !"
she sighed, "this fills me with sadness and. sorrow.
These emblems and monuments of heathenism ! I see
nothing beautiful or admirable in those wicked temples.
They show me how hard it will be to uproot such hea-
then creeds. I wish I had not come."
A woodland path leads around the foot of the great
hill on which the Shoguns' tombs are built, a path laid
with large flat stones and set with a rough curbing of
loose rocks and bowlders, covered — by the drip and damp
and shade of centuries — with a thick green moss. This
silent footway leads past many small temples, stone-
fenced enclosures, moss-covered tombs and tablets, tiny
shrines behind tiny torii, and battered, broken-nosed,
and headless Buddhas. Half- hidden tracks, in that
gloomy and silent cryptomeria forest, rough -set stair-
cases, roads plunging into the deep shadow of the woods
«S7
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
entice the explorer to ever-new surprises. At deserted
and silent shrines heaps of pebbles, bits of paper, oi
strips of wood painted with a sacred character attest
the presence of prayerful pilgrims, who have sought
them out to register a vow or petition. Tiny red shrines
gleam jewel-like in the far shadows, and fallen cryptome-
rias make mounds and ridges of entangled vines among
the red-barked giants still standing. Above a water-fall,
all thin ribbons and jets of foam, are more old temples,
where pilgrims come to pray and tourists to admire, but
where no one ever despoils the unguarded sanctuaries.
In one of these buildings are life-size images of the
gods of thunder and the winds. Raiden, the thunder-
god, is a bright -red divinity with a circle of drums
surrounding his head like a halo, a fierce countenance,
and two goaty horns on his forehead. Futen, the god of
winds, has a grass-green skin, two horny toes to each
foot, and a big bag over his shoulders. A fine heavy-
roofed red gate-way and bell-tower distinguish another
cluster of temples in this still forest nook, their altars
covered .with gilded images. One open shrine, which
should be the resort of jinrikisha men, is dedicated to a
muscular red deity, to whom votaries offer up a pair of
sandals, beseeching him for vigorous legs. The whole
place is hung over with wooden, straw, and tin sandals,
minute or colossal. Then down through the wood, past
a hoary graveyard, where abbots and monks of Nikko
monasteries were buried for centuries before the Sho-
guns came, one returns to the Futa-ara temple and lye-
mitsu's first gate-way.
In our wanderings we once happened upon an old
and crowded graveyard, with splendid trees shading the
mossy tombs and monuments. The stone lanterns,
Buddhas, and images were past counting, and one gran-
ite deity, under a big sun-hat, had a kerchief of red cot-
ton tied under his chin. His benevolent face and
158
Nikko
flaming robes were stuck all over with tiny bits of
paper, on which the faithful had written their petitions,
and the lanterns beside him were heaped wiih prayer-
stones. A Hindoo -looking deity near by sat with up-
lifted knee, on which he rested one arm and supported
his bent and thoughtful head.
A hundred stone representatives of Buddha sit in
mossy meditation under the shadow of the river bank,
long branches trailing over them and vines clambering
about their ancient brows. Time has rolled some from
their lotus pedestals, beheaded others, and covered
them all with white lichens and green moss, and Gam-
man, as this row of Buddhas is named, is the strangest
sight among the many strange sights of the river bank.
Custom ordains that one should count them, and no two
persons are believed to have ever recorded the same
number of images between the bridge and Kobo Daishi's
open shrine.
There is an eta village just below Nikko, peopled by
these outcasts, who follow their despised calling of hand-
ling the carcasses of animals and dressing leather and
furs. Their degradation seems to result not more from
that Buddhist law which forbids the taking of animal
life, than from the legendary belief that they are the de-
scendants of Korean prisoners, long kept as executioners
and purveyors for the imperial falcons. Colonies of etas
lived for centuries without part or lot in the lives of their
high-caste neighbors. After the Restoration, the power
of the great nobles was curtailed, and with the gradual
freeing of the lower classes from the tyranny of caste
tiie eta became a citizen, protected by law. Prejudice
still confines him to his own villages, but when he leaves
them salt is no longer sprinkled on the spot where he
stands to purify it.
The most harrowing situation of the old romances
was the falling in love of a noble with a beautiful eta
•59
Jinrtkisha Days in yapan
girl. Now the eta children attend the Government
schools on the same terms as their betters. But this
liberality was of slow growth, and in one province, where
the stiff-necked parents withdrew their children because
of the presence of these pariahs, the governor entered
himself as a pupil, sitting side by side with the little out-
casts in the same classes, after which august demonstra-
tion of theoretical equality caste distinctions were al-
lowed to fade.
Nikko becomes a great curio mart each summer, the
curios having, naturally, a religious cast ; and bells,
drums, gongs, incense-burners, images, banners, brocade
draperies, and priestly fans make a part of every ped-
dler's pack, each thing, of course, being certified to have
come from the sacred treasuries near by. The souve-
nirs, which the most hardened tourist cannot resist buy-
ing, are the Nikko specialties of trays, cups, boxes, and
teapots of carved and lacquered wood, and of curious
roots, decorated with chrysanthemums or incised sketches
of the Sacred Bridge. The Japanese eye sees possibili-
ties in the most unpromising knot, and the Japanese
hand hollows it into a casket, or fits it with the spout
and handle that turn it into a teapot. All the village
street is lined with these wooden-ware shops, alternating
with photograph and curio marts.
Visitors to Nikko always buy its yuoki, a candy made
of chestnuts and barley-sugar, which comes in slabs an
inch square and six inches long, wrapped in a dried bam-
boo sheath, and put in the dainty little wooden boxes
which make Japanese purchases so attractive. It is like
a dark-brown fig-paste, and has a flavor of marrons
glaces and of maple-sugar. Flocks of children, with ba-
bies on their backs, hover about the yuoki shop in upper
Nikko, and if the tourist bestows a box on them, their
comical bobs and courtesies, their funny way of touch-
ing the forehead with the gift during all the bowing, and
i6o
Nikko
the rapture with which they attack the bar of sweets
express most eloquent thanks.
When rain or fatigue prevented our making any out-
door excursions, the village street furnished us with an
all-day occupation. A mossy and abandoned rice-mill
faced us across the road, with a tiny cascade dripping
down from the leafy hill behind it, feeding its overshot
wheel, and dropping by dwarf water-falls to the side of
the road, whence it ran down the slope to add its sing-
ing to the water chorus that makes all Nikko musical.
Pack-horses, farmers, pilgrims, and villagers went pict-
uresquely by, each pedestrian tucking his kimono in his
belt to shorten it, and holding a vast golden halo over
his head in the shape of a flat, oil-paper rain umbrella.
A small garden separated our summer home at Nikko
from our landlord's house, and from early morning, when
his amados thundered open, until dark, when they rum-
bled shut, the whole conduct of Japanese household life
lay before us. Our neighbors came out of doors be-
times. A bucket of water from a tiny cascade filled the
broad, shallow copper wash-basin, in which one by one
they washed their faces. Meanwhile the kettle boiled
over the charcoal fire, and some child ran down to a pro-
vision-shop for a square slab of bean-curd, which, with
many cups of tea, a little rice, and shreds of pickled fish,
composed their breakfast. Then the futons were hung
over poles or lines to sun ; the andons, pillows, and
big green tents of musquito-nets put away; the tatami
brushed off, and the little shop put in order for the day.
The women washed and starched their gowns, pasting
them down on flat boards to smooth and dry ; sewed and
mended, scrubbed and scoured in the narrow alcove of
a kitchen all the morning; while the children trotted
back and forth with buckets of water to sprinkle the
garden, wash the stones, fill the bath-tubs, and supply
the kitchen. The rice, after being washed and rubbed
yinrikisha Days in yapan
in the cascade, was soaked for an hour and then poured
into the furiously boiling rice-pot. The brush fire under
the stone frame of the kettle was raked out, and when
the steam came only in interrupted puffs from under the
cover, this was lifted to show a pot full to the brim of
snowy-white grains. A soup had meanwhile been stew-
ing, a fish had been broiled over charcoal, and, with tea,
the noonday dinner was ready. At some hour of the
day offerings of rice and food were mysteriously placed
on the steps of the tiny shrine to the fox-god, chief orna-
ment of the farther garden. Towards sundown came
supper, and then the lighting of the lamps. Shadow
pictures on the shoji repeated the actions and groupings
within, the splash of water betrayed the family bath, and
when all, from grandfather to baby, had been boiled and
scrubbed, the amados banged, and the performance was
over until sunrise.
CHAPTER XVI
CHIUZENJI AND YUMOTO
The Inquisition should have been put in possession
of the Japanese kago as a lesser punishment for heretics,
so exquisite and insidious are its tortures. This kago is
a shallow basket with a high back, slung from a pole car-
ried on the shoulders of two men, and in the mountains
and remote districts is the only means of travel, except
by pack-horses. The Japanese double their knees and
sit on their feet with great dignity and apparent comfort ;
but the greater size of the foreigner, his stiff joints and
higher head, prevent his fitting into the kago; nor is he
much better off when he gets astride, dangling his long
legs over the edges. Moreover, he not only knows that
he looks ridiculous, but suffers the pangs of conscience
Chiuzenji and Yumoto
for imposing his weight on two small coolies no larger
than the ten-year-old boys of his own land. There are
a few arm-chairs on poles, in which one may ride, like
the Pope, or an idol in a procession, but the long poles,
springing with the gait of four bearers, often make the
passenger sea-sick.
The pack-horse, a slow -moving beast, has a keeper
who pulls him along by a cord, his extended head and
reluctant gait making that seem the only motive power.
Horse and leader wear straw shoes, and new pairs are
strung around the high saddle for reshoeing the beast
every few miles. Iron horseshoes are confined to the
capital and the large ports, and the village blacksmith
is unknown. Pack-horses wear a thick straw pad and a
high saddle fashioned like a saw-horse, on which the
rider sits aloft, so well forward that his feet hang over
the creature's neck. This saddle is merely balanced, not
girded on, and the animals are so sleepy, slow-footed, and
stumbling, with a lurching, swinging gait like a camel's,
that riding one is really a feat.
From Nikko to Chiuzenji you must travel eight miles
by kago, pack-horse, or jinrikisha, the road leading past
rich fields of buckwheat, millet, rice, and potatoes, farm-
houses with thatched roofs, wayside shrines and tea-
houses. The ascent of the two thousand feet to the
higher region of the lake is chiefly included in one three-
mile stretch, climbing by easy slopes and broad stair-
cases to the high pass. At every few feet a stone step
was built, or a tree trunk fastened with a forked stick
and set with small stones. This stair-building, done ages
ago, has become a part of the mountain. At short dis-
tances the staircase enters a little clearing with a rustic
tea-house, or the usual tateba, built of poles, a few planks,
branches or mats, and affording sufficient shelter for
summer pilgrims and travellers. The keepers imme-
diately put out cushions for guests on the edge of the
«6j
yinrikisha Days in Japan
platform that constitutes the floor of the one room, and
bring the tray with its tiny tea-pot, thimble cups, and dish
of barley-sugar candies. For the refreshment one leaves
a few coppers on the tray, and in mountain jaunts, where
the traveller walks to escape the kago and spare the coo-
lies, these tiny cups of pale yellow tea are very stimu-
lating. Each tateba commands some particular view,
and even the pilgrim who is tramping the provinces and
living on a few cents a day, will be found inditing poems
to the different water-falls and gorges he looks down upon.
The head of the pass affords a magnificent view of the
valley two thousand feet below, and presently the wood-
land path is following the border of the lake and comes
out into the open of Chiuzenji village. Chiuzenji Lake,
three miles wide and eight miles long, is surrounded by
steep and thickly-wooded mountains, the great Nantaisan
grandly soaring nine thousand feet above the sea, taper-
ing regularly as a pyramid and forested to the summit.
Nantaisan is a sacred mountain, a temple at its foot,
shrines all along the ascent, and at the top an altar on
which repentant murderers offer up their swords. Each
August come hosts of pilgrims in white clothes and huge
straw hats, with pieces of straw matting for rain-coats
bound across their shoulders — devout souls, who, after
purification in the lake, pass under the torii, say a prayer
in the temple, and painfully climb to the summit. Only
at such fixed seasons may visitors ascend the mountain,
each one paying twenty cents for the privilege of toiling
up its endless flight of steps. With these fees the priests
keep the underbrush trimmed and the path well cleared,
and where the holy guardian unbars the gate and mo-
tions one upward, begins the flight of stone stairs that
extend, with few breaks or zigzags, straight to the top.
The whole way is strewn with the cast-off sandals of the
season, and great heaps of the waraji of past years lie
here and there.
Chiuzenji and Yumoto
The pilgrims sleep in Government barracks in the vil-
lage, a few coppers securing a mat on the floor and the
use of the common fireplace. Their vow to Nantaisan
being accomplished, they make the half-circuit of the
lake, to visit the hidden shrines and temples of the forest
shores, and then trudge to Yumoto for its hot sulphur
baths and scenery, or home to their ripening rice-fields.
From across the water Chiuzenji village looks a small,
yellow patch, lying between the unbroken green slope of
Nantaisan and the great lake. Its five tea-houses rise
straight from the water's edge, each with a triple row of
outer galleries overlooking it. The way of life at the
Tsutaya, Idzumiya, Nakamarya, and the rest is much more
Japanese than in the frequented inns of Nikko. Chairs
and tables are conceded to foreigners, but everybody
must sleep on the floor, wash face and hands in the com-
mon wash-basin in the open court, and go about the house
stocking-footed, or wear the stiff, heelless, monkey-skin
slippers furnished by the inn. To call a servant one
claps his palms, and a long-drawA "Hei!" announces
that the rosy-cheeked mountain maid has heard, and the
gentle swaying of the house proclaims that she is run-
ning up the stairs. The washing of rice, vegetables,
fish, kitchen utensils, and family clothing goes on from
the single plank of a pier running from the lowest floor
of the house. Each inn has a similar pier, where socia-
ble maidens chatter as they stir and wash the rice in
bamboo baskets. The servants of the houses take the
whole lake for wash - hand basin and tooth - brush cup,
and the pier is a small stage, upon which these local
companies play their unstudied parts.
As the finest country walk in England is agreed to
be that from Stratford to Warwick, so is the way from
Chiuzenji to Yumoto the finest country walk in Japan,
for its eight miles of infinite variety. First, the broad
foot-path wanders for two miles along the shores of
|6;
yinrikisha Days m yapan
Lake Chiuzenji, which, however, appears only in glimpses
of placid blue through the dense forest, all stillness, cool-
ness, and enchantment. Then it emerges at the head of
the lake in a grove of pine-trees sheltering a rustic tea-
house, which overlooks the bit of low beach known as
the Iris Strand, and all the grand amphitheatre of mount-
ains walling in Chiuzenji. Farther on are Hell's River
and the Dragon Head cascade, where a mountain stream
slides in many a separate ribbon down mossy ledges.
Thence the foot-path climbs to a high plain covered with
tall grasses and groves of lofty pines — the famous Red
Plain, dyed once with the blood of a conquered army,
and tinged with each auttimn's frost to the same deep
hue again. From the border of this plain rise sombre
mountains, Nantaisan a giant among them, with green
and purple veils of shadows and a crown of floating clouds.
No sign of habitation or cultivation marks the high plain,
which, with its loneliness and its scattered pines, is so
much like the valleys of the high Sierras. Everywhere
else in Japan the country is wooded and shaded and cul-
tivated from water's edge to mountain-top ; but in win-
ter all the region above Nikko is deserted, and deep
snows in the passes shut it off from the rest of the world.
Tea-houses close, the people flee to the valley for warmth,
and only the coming of spring and the tourist restores it
again. Even those wizards, the Japanese farmers, do
not attempt to subdue these solitudes, whose wild beau-
ty delights the whole people.
Beyond this lonely plain the way climbs seven hun-
dred feet along the face of a precipitous hill to the level
of Yumoto Lake, which there narrows to a few feet and
sHps down the rocks, a mass of foam, spray, and steam.
The lake — small, uneven, walled by perpendicular mount-
ain-slopes and forests — is a still mirror of these superb
heights, one of which, Shirane-san, is a slumbering vol-
cano. Vaporous sulphur springs bubble through the hot
168
Chtuzenji and Yumoto
ctust of earth at the end of the lake, and boiling sulphur
wells up, even in the bed of the lake itself, and clouds
and heats the whole body of water so that no fish can
live there. The two miles of winding forest -path, be-
tween the fall at one end of Yumoto Lake and the village
of the same name at the opposite end, lead through an en-
chanted forest— a picturesque tangle of roots and rocks,
covered with green moss, wound with vines, shaded with
ferns, and overhung with evergreen branches,
Yumoto has two streets and a dozen tea-houses, whose
galleries are hung with red lanterns, as if in perpetual
f6te, and an atmosphere nearly all sulphuretted hydro-
gen. One of the hot springs bubbles up at the entrance
of the village, filling a tank about ten feet square, cov-
ered by a roof resting on four corner pillars. The sides
are all open to the air, and an Arcadian simplicity of
bathing arrangements prevails. Citizens and sojourners
stroll hither, because the site commands a view of the
thoroughfare, remove and fold up their garments, and
sit down in the pool. When sufficiently boiled, they
cool off occasionally on the edge of the tank, and then
drop into the pool again. If the company prove agree-
able, the bath occupies hours. More open-air pavilions
are at the end of the village, where more bronze figures
boil and cool themselves in the same exoteric fashion.
The public bath - houses, that alternate with the tea-
houses in the village streets, have roofs and sides of
solid wood, except the street front, which is open and
curtainless, and within which men, women, and children
meet in the hot-water tanks, as at the market-place or
street-corners in other countries. To a new-comer this
extraordinary simplicity is startling, but it he stays long
enough, he finds that the childlike innocence and uncon-
cern of the people make a new code of the proprieties.
These infantile views of the Japanese as to bathing
make even the great pay little attention to the seclusion
I/- 169
Jinrikisha Days in yapan
and inviolateness of the bath-room. In a high -class
Japanese house, or at the best tea-houses, this is an
exquisitely artistic nook, with cement walls and floors,
inlaid with fantastic stones and bits of porcelain. The
oval tubs are of pine, bound with withes, and white with
scouring. The doors are generally sliding paper screens
without locks, and the wooden wall, or door, if there be
one, is full of fantastic holes and tiny windows \^ith no
curtain. Often the bath-house is a detached pavilion,
to which you are expected to walk in a special bath
gown, or ukata, meeting, on the way, household and
guests, who are always ready for a friendly chat. Eu-
ropeans can hardly make a Japanese servant under-
stand that in their order of arrangements, the bath and
the bath-room are for the use of one person at a time.
The Japanese wooden tub is vastly better than the zinc
coffins and marble sarcophagi in which we bathe. The
wood keeps the water hotter and is pleasanter to the
touch. One kind of tub has a tiny stove with a long
pipe in one end, and with a mere handful of charcoal
such a tub is filled with boiling water in the briefest
time. Many bathers have lost their lives by the carbonic
acid gas sent off by this ingenious contrivance. A Jap-
anese hot bath is only a point or two from boiling. The
natives bear this temperature without wincing, and will
step from this scalding caldron out-of-doors, smoking
along the highway on a frosty day, like the man whom
Dr. Griffis describes. Our grave and statuesque land-
lord at Yumoto, who sat like a Buddha behind his low
table and held court with his minions, once appeared to
us stalking home in the starlight with all his clothes on
his arm. His stride was as stagey and majestic as ever,
there being no reason, in his consciousness, why he
should lay off his dignity with his garments, they repre-
senting to him the temporary and accidental, not the
real envelope of the pompous old soul.
Chiuzenji and Yumoto
At some of the great mineral springs there are now
separate pools for men and women, in deference to for-
eign prejudice ; but more than one generation will pass
before promiscuous bathing is done away with.
At all medicinal springs the baths are owned and
managed by the Government and are free to the people.
Here at Yumoto, men, women, and children walk into
the one large room containing the pools, undress, lay
their clothing in a little heap on the raised bench or
platform running around the edge of the room, and step
into the water ; and, as has been said, no one sees any
impropriety in this custom. Women sit or kneel on the
edges of the pool, scouring themselves with bags of rice-
bran, and chattering with their friends in or out of the
water. People stop at the open doors, or breast high
windows, to talk to the bathers, and conduct is as deco-
rous, as reserved, and as modest as in a drawing-room.
The approach of ^ foreigner sends all the grown bathers
deep into the water, simply out of respect to his artificial
and incomprehensible way of looking at natural things.
They know, though they cannot understand, that the
European finds something objectionable, and even
wrong, in so insignificant a trifle as being seen without
clothes.
At our tea-house in Yumoto our three rooms in the
upper story were thrown into one during the daytime,
making an apartment open to the gallery on three sides.
Hibachis, or braziers, with mounds of glowing charcoal,
tempered the morning and evening air, and all day we
could sit on piles of futons, and enjoy the superb picture
of mountains and lake before us. We were poled over
the placid water in a queer ark of a boat, and the mount-
ain-paths were always alluring, the roughest trail often
passing under torii, or leading past some shrine, just
when it seemed that no foot had ever preceded ours.
At night, when the chilling air presses the sulphur fumes
»73
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
closer to earth, Yumoto streets resound with the wailing
whistle of the blind shampooer, or amah. These amah
are found everywhere — in the largest cities and in the
smallest mountain villages — and, whether men or women,
are never young, or even middle-aged. Theirs is an in-
definite, unscientific system of massage, and their ma-
nipulations often leave their charges with more lame and
aching muscles than before. But the amah are an insti-
tution of the country, and Yumoto streets would ring
with their dreary music, and our screens would be slipped
aside by many an ill-favored crone, as soon as it was
time for the usual evening baths to be prepared at the
tea-houses.
Upon another visit to Nikko and Chiuzenji in late
October there was a more splendid autumnal pageant
than the most gorgeous hill-sides of America had ever
shown me. Frost had done its most wonderful work,
and the air was exhilarating to intoxication. The clear
and brilliant weather moved the coolies to frisk, play,
and chant like children — even that dignified little man,
Ito, relaxing his gravity to frolic like a boy, and to pry
bowlders over the edges of precipices to hear them crash
and fall far below, Chiuzenji looked a vast, flawless
sapphire, and Nantaisan was a mosaic of richest Byzan-
tine coloring. Kegon-no-taki, the fall of three hundred
feet by which the waters of Chiuzenji drop to the valley
in their race to the Daiyagawa, seemed a column of snow
in its little amphitheatre hung with autumn vines and
branches. But we dared not remain, for already Yumo-
to was closed and boarded up for the season, and on
any day the first of the blockading snows of winter
might shut the door of the one tea-house left open at
Chiuzenji, and end the travel from the Ashiwo copper-
mines.
The Ascent of Fujiyama
CHAPTER XVII
THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA
It was in the third week of July that we made our
long-talked-of ascent of Fujiyama. There were nine of
us, all told, four stalwart men, three valiant women, and
two incomparable Japanese boys, or valets. For forty
miles we steamed down the old line of the Tokaido, '
drawing nearer to the sea in its deep indentation of
Odawara Bay, and to the blue bar of the Hakone range
that fronts the ocean. At Kodzu we took wagonettes
and rattled over the plain and up a valley along the To-
kaido, children being snatched from under the heels of
the horses, and coolies, with poles and baskets over their
shoulders, getting entangled with the wheels all the way.
A Japanese driver is a most reckless Jehu, and the
change to jinrikishas, after the wild ten-mile charge up
the valley, was beatific. Ascending a narrow canon, and
rounding curve after curve, we saw at last the many
lights of Miyanoshita twinkling against the sky.
Miyanoshita, the great summer resort, is the delight
alike of Japanese and foreigner. It has excellent hotels
kept in western fashion, clear mountain air, mineral
springs and beautiful scenery, and it is the very centre
of a most interesting region. All the year round its ho-
tels are well patronized, the midwinter climate being a
specific for the malarial poison of the ports of southern
China. Famous, too, is the wooden -ware of Miyano-
shita, where every house is a shop for the sale of Japan-
ese games, household utensils, toys and trifles, all made
of the beautifully-grained native woods, polished on a
Jtnrikisha Days in Japan
wheel with vegetable wax. Exquisite mosaics of a hun-
dred broken patterns amaze one with their nicety of
finish and cheapness, and no one escapes from the vil-
lage without buying.
Guides and coolies had been engaged for us at Miya-
noshita, and at six o'clock, on the morning after our arri-
val, the three kagos of the ladies were carried out, and
the four cavaliers, the two boys, and six baggage coolies
followed. The broad path zigzagged upward to the
narrow, knife-edge ride of the mountain range known
as the O Tomi Toge pass. From its summit we looked
back along the checkered green valley to Miyanoshita
and Hakone Lake, with the Emperor's island palace.
Looking forward across a checkered plain, we saw Fuji-
yama rise straight before us, its obstinate head still
hidden in clouds. Dropping quickly to the level of the
plain, we reached Gotemba, and, changing to jinrikishas,
were whirled away to Subashiri, six miles distant.
Trains of descending pilgrims and farmers, perched
high on the backs of pack-horses, smiled cheerfully at
the procession of foreigners bound for Fuji, and at each
rest-house on the way women and children, petrified
with astonishment, stood staring at us. Black cinders
and blocks of lava announced the nearness of the vol-
cano, and the road became an inky trail of coal-dust
through green fields. Banks of scoriae, like the heaps of
coal-dust around collieries, cropped out by the road-side,
and the wheels ground noisily through the loose, coarse
slag. The whole of Subashiri, crowding the picturesque
street of a typical Japanese village, welcomed us. In
the stream of running water, on either side of the broad
highway danced, whirled, and spouted a legion of me-
chanical toys, some for the children's pleasure, and
others turning the fly-brushes hung over counters of
cakes and sweetmeats. The place looks in perpetual
fete, with the hundreds of pilgrim flags and towels flut-
176
The Ascent of Fujiyama
tering from each tea-house, and at the end of the street
is a torii, leading to an ancient temple in a grove^ where
all Fuji pilgrims pray before beginning the ascent of the
mountain. In the light of the afternoon, the double
row of thatched houses and the street full of bareheaded
villagers looked like a well-painted stage scene. Mean-
while the sun sank, and in the last crimson glow of its
fading the clouds rolled away, and Fuji's stately cone
stood over us, its dark slopes turning to rose and violet
in the changing light.
We rose with the sun at four o'clock, looked at Fuji,
all pink and lilac in the exquisite atmosphere of the
morning, snatched a hasty breakfast and set off, the
women in their kagos and the men on mettlesome steeds
that soon took them out of sight along the broad cin-
dery avenue leading to the base of the slanting mount-
ain. In that clear light Fuji looked twice its twelve
thousand feet above the sea, and the thought of toiling
on foot up the great slope was depressing. Instead of a
fifteen-mile walk, it looked fifty miles at least. All along
the forest avenue moss grown stone posts mark the dis-
tance, and at one place are the remains of a stone wall
and lantern-guarded gate-way setting the limit of the
mountain's holy ground. From that point the soil is
sacred, although horses and kagos are allowed to go a
mile farther to a mat-shed station, known as Umagaye-
shi (Turn Back Horse). Thence the great Fuji sweeps
continuously upward, and a tall torii at the head of the
stone staircase marks the beginning of the actual as-
cent, the holy ground on which only sandaled feet may
tread.
In the mat-shed the kagos were stored for a two days'
rest, luggage was divided and tied on the backs of the
coolies, who were as gayly fringed as Indians on the
war-path, with the many pairs of straw sandals tied at
their waists and hanging from their packs. The coarse
"Jinrikisha Days in Japan
cinders cut through_boot-soles so quickly that foreigners
tie on these waraji to protect their shoes, allowing eight
pairs of the queer galoshes for the ascent and descent
of Fuji. From Umagayeshi, the path goes up through
woods and stunted underbrush and on over bare cin-
der and lava, pursuing the even slope of the mountain
without dip or zigzag to break the steady climb. Three
small Shinto temples in the woods invite pilgrims to
pray, pay tribute, and have their staff and garments
marked with a sacred seal. Beyond these temples, ten
rest-houses, or stations, stand at even distances along
the path, the first, or number one, at the edge of the
woods, and the tenth at the summit. Priests and sta-
tion-keepers open their season late in June, before the
snow is gone, and close in September. In the midsum-
mer weeks the whole mountain-side is musical with the
tinkling bells and staffs of lines of white-clad pilgrims.
Notwithstanding their picturesqueness, these devotees
are objectionable companions, as they fill tea-houses
and mountain stations, devour everything eatable, like
swarms of locusts, and bear about with them certain
smaller pilgrims that make life a burden to him who fol-
lows after. Nearly thirty thousand pilgrims annually
ascend Fujiyama. These pious palmers are chiefly from
the agricultural class, and they form mutual pilgrimage
associations, paying small annual dues, from the sum of
which each member in turn has his expenses defrayed.
They travel in groups, each man furnished with his bit
of straw matting for bed, rain-coat, or shelter. They
carry, also, cotton towels marked with the crest of their
pilgrim society, to be hung, after using, at temple water-
tanks, or as advertisements of their presence at the tea-
houses which they patronize. At each new shrine they
visit the priests stamp their white clothing with the red
seal of the temple.
Fujiyama is invested with legends, which these pil-
178
The Ascent of Fujiyama
grims unquestioningly accept. It is said to have risen
up in a single night two thousand years ago, when a
great depression appeared to the southward, which the
waters of Lake Biwa immediately filled. For a thousand
years pilgrims have toiled up the weary path to pray at
the highest shrine and to supplicate the sun at dawn.
Fuji-san, the goddess of the mountain, hated, it is said,
her own sex, and stories of devils, who seize women and
fly off into the air with them, still deter all but the most
emancipated Japanese women from making the ascent.
It was after Fuji-san had quarrelled with all the other
gods that she set up this lofty mountain of her own,
where she might live alone and in peace. No horse's
foot is allowed to fall on the steep approaches to her
cloudy throne, and even the sand and cinders are so
sacred, that whatever dust is carried down on the pil-
grims' feet by day is miraculously returned by night.
Even to dream of the peerless mountain is a promise of
good-fortune, and Fuji, with the circling storks and the
ascending dragon, symbolizes success in life and tri-
umph over obstacles.
Until the year 1500, Fuji wore a perpetual smoke-
wreath, and every century saw a great eruption. The
last, in 1707, continued for a month, and threw out the
loose cinders, ashes, and lumps of baked red clay that
still cover the mountain. Ashes were carried fifty miles,
damming a river in their path, covering the plain at its
base six feet deep with cinders, and forming an excres-
cence on the north side, which still mars the perfect
symmetry of the cone.
Umagayeshi, or Turn Back Horse, is four thousand
feet above the sea, and the other eight thousand feet
are surmounted in a distance of fifteen miles. We de-
sired to reach Station Eight by four o'clock ; either to
sleep there until three o'clock the next morning, or to
push on to the tenth and last station, rest there, and see
yinrikisha Days in Japan
the sun rise, from the door-way of that summit rest-
house. Our two Colorado mountaineers had faced the
slope like chamois, and were leaping the rocks walling
the first station, before the female contingent had left
the torii. Of the fifteen coolies accompanying us, three
were assigned to each woman, with orders to take her to
the top if they had to carry her pickaback. After an
established Fuji fashion, one coolie went first with a
rope fastened around the climber's waist, while another
pushed her forward. Aided still further by tall bamboo
staffs, we were literally hauled and boosted up the
mountain, with only the personal responsibility of lift-
ing our feet out of the ashes.
For the first three or four miles, the path led through
a dense, green bower, carpeted with vines, and starred
with wild flowers and great patches of wild strawberries.
Scaling moss-covered log steps, we passed through tem-
ples with gohei, or prayer papers, hanging from the gates
and doors, and bare Shinto altars within. At one shrine,
the sound of our approaching footsteps was the signal
for blasts from a conch-shell horn and thumps on the
hanging drum, and the priests, in their purple and white
gowns and black pasteboard hats, gave us a cheerful
welcome, and many cups of hot barley-tea. At our re-
quest, they stamped our clothmg with big red charac-
ters, the sacred seal or crest of that holy station, and
sold us the regulation pilgrim's staff, branded with the
temple mark. The old priest, to dazzle us with his ac-
quirements, and to show his familiarity with foreign
customs, glibly placed the price of the alpenstock at
" Sen tents."
The forest ended as suddenly as if one had stepped
from a door-way, and a sloping dump of bare lava and
cinders stretched upward endlessly; the whole cone vis-
ible, touched with scudding bits of thin white clouds.
Every dike and seam of lava between the forest edge
The Ascent of Fujiyama
and the summit was clearly seen, and the square blocks
of rest-houses, though miles away, stood out on the great
ash-heap as if one could touch them. It was apparent
that the walk would be merely a matter of persever-
ance. There are no dizzy precipices, no dangerous
rocks, no hand-over-hand struggles, nor narrow ledges,
nor patches of slippery stone — only a steadily ascending
cinder path to tread. Above the forest line, nothing in-
terrupts the wide views in every direction, and the goal
is in plain sight.
After we had passed the third station, the scudding
clouds closed in and hid the summit, and we trudged
along, congratulating ourselves on our escape from the
glaring sun while we were out on the open lava slope.
Station Number Four was closed and its roof in partial
ruins, where a rolling stone had crashed in during the
winter, but at the next two huts we rested, in company
with a sturdy mountaineer, his wife and baby, who were
going up to open Station Number Nine for the summer.
The baby was strapped on its father's back, its little
bare toes sticking out from its tight swaddling-gown and
curling up in comical balls as the wind grew colder.
Our two veterans of Pike's Peak were far ahead, merely
white spots on the dark, chocolate-brown slope, but we
all intended to overtake them and come in with them at
the end of the day.
Suddenly the drifting clouds swept down, curling along
the dark lava, like steam, and wrapping us in a gray
mist that blotted out everything. Another gust of wind
brought a dash of rain, and hurried us to the lee wall of
a closed hut for shelter. The shower came harder and
faster, and the baggage - coolies with water -proofs and
umbrellas were far in advance, invisible in the mist. We
pushed on, and after climbing a hundred yards in loose
ashes, found ourselves on the sliding track of the de-
scent. We struck away blindly to the right and mounted
i8i
yinrtkisha Days in Japan
straight upward. A seam of hard lava soon gave us
secure foothold, but presently became a net-work of tiny
cascades. My cheerful little coolie, in his saturated cot-
ton suit, tried to encourage me, and passing the rope
around a horn of lava at one breathing-stop, pointed up-
ward, and assured me that there was clear sunshine
above. Glancing along the sloping lava-track, we saw a
foaming crest of water descending from those sunny up-
lands, and had barely time to cross its path before the
roaring stream came on and cut off retreat.
After two hours of hard climbing in the blinding rain
and driving wind, we reached the shelter of Station Num-
ber Eight, chilled and exhausted. This hut, a log-cabin
faced with huge lava blocks, its low roof held down by
many bowlders, and its walls five feet in thickness, con-
sists of one room about twelve by thirty feet in size.
Two doors looked sheer down the precipitous mountain-
slope, and a deep window, like that of a fortress, was set
in the end wall. The square fireplace, sunken in the
floor, had its big copper kettle swinging from a crane,
and the usual stone frame for the rice-kettle. When the
doors were barred and braced with planks against the
fury of the storm, the smoke, unable to escape, nearly
blinded us. Our dripping garments and the coolies'
wet cotton clothes were hung to dry on the rafters over
the fireplace, where they slowly dripped. The master
of Number Eight had opened his rest-house only five
days before, and with his young son and two servants
found himself called on to provide for us with our ret-
inue of seventeen servants, for four young cadets from
the naval college in Tokio, storm -bound on their way
down the mountain, and a dozen pilgrims — forty -two
people in all.
Warmed, and comforted with a stray sandwich, we
were glad enough to go to bed. Each of us received
two futons, one of which made the mattress and the
182
The Descent of Fujiyatna
other the covering, while basket-lids served for pillows.
The floor was cold as well as hard, and the rows of cot-
ton towels hung on the walls by preceding pilgrims flut-
tered in the draughts from the howling blasts that shook
the solid little hut. The shriek and roar and mad rushes
of wind were terrifying, and we were by no means cer-
tain that the little stone box would hold together until
morning. One hanging-lamp shed a fantastic light on
the rows of heads under the blue futons, and the still-
ness of the Seven Sleepers presently befell the lonely
shelter.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE DESCENT OF FUJIYAMA
From Saturday until Tuesday, three endless days and
as many nights, the whirling storm kept us prisoners in
the dark, smoke filled rest-house. What had been the
amusing incidents of one stormy night became our in-
tolerable routine of life. Escape was impossible, even
for the hardy mountaineers and pilgrims at the other
end of the hut, and to unbar the door for a momentary
outlook threatened the demolition of the shelter. A
tempest at sea was not more awful in its fury, but our
ears became finally accustomed to the roar and hiss of
the wind, and the persistent blows it dealt the structure.
The grave problem of provisioning the place in time
confronted us, and after our one day's luncheon was
exhausted, it became a question how long the master
of the station could provide even fish and rice for forty
people.
The two boys, or valets, brought by their sybarite
masters, like all Japanese servants out of their grooves,
•83
Jmriklsha Days in Japan
were utterly helpless, and lay supine in their corners,
covered, head and all, with futons. The altitude, the cold,
or the dilemma paralyzed their usually nimble faculties,
and our coolies were far more useful. We could not
stand upright under the heavy beams of the roof, and as
the floor planks had been taken up here and there to
brace the doors with, walking was difficult in that dark
abode. While we grew impatient in our cage, the four
little naval cadets sat, or lay, quietly in their futons, hour
after hour, talking as cheerfully as if the sun were shin-
ing, their prospects hopeful, and their summer suits of
white duck designed for the Eighth Station's phenome-
nal climate. Throughout our incarceration the coolies
dozed and waked under their futons, sitting up only long
enough to eat, or play some childish game, and dropping
back to reckon how much per diem would accrue to
them without an equivalent of work. When we found
that the smoky fireplace offered some warmth, we sat
around the sunken box with our feet in the ashes and
handkerchiefs to our eyes to keep out the blinding smoke.
In that intimate circle we learned the cook's secrets,
and watched him shaving off his billets of dried fish with
a plane, stewing them with mushrooms and seasoning
with soy and sake. This compound we found so good
that our flattered landlord brought out hot sake and in-
sisted on an exchange of healths. We noticed that in
the midst of this hospitality he went and made some of-
fering or other at his little household altar, and, writing
something in a book, returned more benign and friendly
than ever. The preparation of red bean and barley soups,
two sweetened messes that only a Japanese could eat,
and the boiling of rice seemed never to stop. Twice a
day the big copper caldron was set on its stone frame
half full of boiling water. When it bubbled most furi-
ously over a brushwood fire, a basketful of freshly washed
and soaked rice was poured in. In a half-houi the cal-
1S4
The Descent of Fujiyama
dron was filled to the top with the full, snowy grains,
ready for the chopsticks of the waiting company.
Each night the master of the hut prophesied clear
weather at five o'clock irt the morning, and each morn-
ing he prophesied clear weather for five o'clock in the
afternoon, but the wind howled, the sleet swept by in
clouds, and hail rattled noisily on roof and walls. 'I'he
second afternoon the master of the summit rest-hut ap-
peared at the window, and, more dead than aiive, was
drawn in by the excited coolies, who helped chafe his
limbs and pour cups of hot sake between his lips. The
story of his battle with the storm on the open, wind-
swept cone satisfied us all to wait for the clearing. An
empty rice-box had forced him" to attempt the journey
to revictual his station, and we wondered how soon
our landlord would be compelled to the same desperate
effort.
On the third morning the visiting boniface and four
wood -choppers decided to attempt the descent, and
when the door was unbarred, the pale daylight and a
changed wind, that entered the dim cave where we had
been imprisoned, foretold a clearing sky. As the clouds
lifted, we could see for miles down the wet and glisten-
ing mountain to a broad, green plain, sparkling with
flashing diamonds of lakes, and gaze down a sheer ten
thousand feet to the level of the sea. It was a view
worth the three days of waiting. The summit loomed
clear and close at hand, and our western mountaineers
made two thousand feet of ascent in thirty minutes, the
rest of us following in a more deliberate procession, as
befitted the altitude. The coolies, in bright yellow oil-
paper capes and hats, trooped after us like a flock of
canaries, gayly decorating the dark lava paths. At the
edge of the summit, on the rim of the crater, we passed
under a torii, climbed steep lava steps and entered the
last station — a low, dark, wretched, little wind-swept
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
cabin, with one small door and a ten -inch fireplace,
where sake was warming for us.
Hardly had we arrived when the wind rose, the clouds
shut down, and again the rain drove in dense and whirl-
ing sheets. The adventurous ones, who liad pushed on
to the edge of the crater to look in, were obliged to
creep back to safety on their hands and knees, for fear
of being swept oyer into that cauldron of boiling clouds
and mist. It was no time to make the circuit of the cra-
ter's rim with its many shrines, or descend the path-way,
guarded by torii, to the crater's bed. We hurried through
the formalities at the temple, where the benumbed priest
branded the alpenstocks, stamped our handkerchiefs
and clothing, and gave us pictured certificates of our
ascent to that point. Then began a wild sliding and
plunging down a shoot of loose cinders to Station Num-
ber Eight, where the landlord produced a book and read
our three-days' board bill from a record of many pages.
Everything was chanted out by items, even to the sake
and mushrooms that had been pressed upon us as a
courtesy, and it was only after many appeals for the sum
total that he instinctively ducked his head and named
fifty-eight dollars for the seven of us. Then ensued a
deafening attack of remonstrances from men and valets,
threats and invectives in Japanese and English, lasting
until the inn-keeping Shylock agreed to take thirty dol-
lars, received this moiety cheerfully, and bade us adieu
with many protestations of esteem.
Rubber and gossamer rain- cloaks were worse than
useless in that whirlwind, and haste was our one neces-
sity. Dress skirts were sodden and leaden masses, and
mine being hung as an offering to Fuji-san, a red Navajo
blanket replaced it, and enveloped me completely. A
yellow -clad coolie securely fastened his rope, and we
slipped, and plunged, and rolled down a shoot of loose
cinders. Sinking ankle-deep, we travelled as if on run-
186
The Descent of Fujiyama
ners through the wet ashes, sliding down in minutes
stretches that it had taken us as many hours to ascend,
and stopping only at one or two rest-houses for cups of
hot tea, while we staggered and stumbled on through
rain that came ever harder and faster.
At Umagayeshi, where the dripping party waited for
more tea, the sun came gayly out and seemed to laugh
at our plight. The sudden warmth, the greenhouse steam
and softness, were most grateful to us after our hard-
ships in the clouds. At Subashiri we put on the few
dry garments we had been fortunate enough to leave be-
hind us. The tea-house windows framed vignettes of
Fuji, a clear blue and purple cone in a radiant, cloud-
dappled sky. With the prospect of a hot day to follow,
it was decided to push on to Miyanoshita, travelling all
night, the kagos being as comfortable as the flea-infested
tea-house, and the men of our party being obliged to
walk on until they reached dry boots and clothes.
Though the coolies grumbled, stormed, and appealed,
they had enjoyed three days of absolute rest and full
pay at Number Eight, and the walk of forty-five miles,
from the summit to Miyanoshita, is not an unusual jaunt
for them to make.
At Gotemba's tea-house we found our companions in
misfortune — the little midshipmen — whom we joined in
feasting on what the house could offer. The old women
in attendance, yellow and wrinkled as the crones of ivory
netsukes, were vastly interested in our Fuji experiences
and dilapidated costumes, and gave us rice, fish, sponge-
cake, tea, and sak^. At midnight we roused the coolies
from their five-hour rest, and prepared for the fifteen-mile
journey over O TomJ Toge pass. The little midshipmen
slid the screens and beclconed us up to the liliputian bal-
cony again. "It is the night Fuji'' said one of them,
softly, pointing to the dark violet cone, striped with
its ghostly snow, and illuminated by a shrunken yel-
187
yinrikisha Days in Japan
low moon that hung fantastic above O Tomi Toge's
wall.
With our conamander-in-chief perched high on a pack-
horse, whose chair-like saddle left his rider's heels rest-
ing on the neck of the animal, and the kago coolies
slipping and floundering through the bottomless mud of
the roads, we once more started on our way. The whole
country was dark, silent, and deserted, and the only au-
dible sound was the chatter of our army of coolies, who
chirped and frolicked like boys out of school. The night
air over the rice-fields was warm and heavy, and seemed
to suffocate us, and fire-flies drifted in and out among
the rushes and bamboos. Deep, roaring streams filled
the channels that had been mere silver threads of wa-
ter a few days before. The coolies could barely keep
their footing as they waded waist-deep in the rush-
ing water, and at every ford we half expected to be
drowned.
At the summit of the pass we dismounted, and the
coolies scattered for a long rest. The sacred mountain
was clear and exquisite in the pale gray of dawn ; and
while we watied to see the sun rise on Fuji, a dirty-
brown fog scudded in from the sea, crossed the high
moon, and instantly the plain faded from view and we
were left, isolated Brocken figures, to eat our four-o'clock
breakfast of dry bread and chocolate, and return to the
kagos. Everywhere we encountered traces of a heavy
storm, the path being gullied and washed into a deep
ditch with high banks, whose heavy-topped, white lilies
brushed into the kagos as we passed. Half asleep, we
watched the green panorama unfolding as we descended,
and at eight o'clock we were set down in Miyanoshita,
Nesans ran hither and thither excitedly, to bring coffee
and toast, to prepare baths, produce the luggage we had
left behind, and mildly rehearse to the other domestics
the astonishing story of our adventures. By noon, when
The Tokaido
we came forth arrayed in the garb of civilization, we
were heroes.
For weeks after we returned to the plain, the treach-
erous Fujiyama stood unusually clear and near at hand.
" The summer Fuji," its dark-brown slopes only touched
with a fine line or two of snow, is less beautiful than
"the winter Fuji," with its glistening crown; and our
Mount Rainier, whose snows are eternal, whose wooded
slopes shadow the dark-green waters of Puget Sound, is
lovelier still. But though we have the more glorious
mountain, the snow, the rocks, the forest, we have not
the people instinct with love of poetry and nature ; we
have not the race-refinement, and the race-traditions,
that would make of it another Fuji, invested with the
light of dream and legend, dear and near to every heart.
CHAPTER XIX
THE TOKAIDO — I
As the kago gave way to the jinrikisha, the jinrikisha
disappears before the steam-engine, which reduces a ri to
a cho, and extends the empire of the commonplace. The
first railroads, built by English engineers and equipped
with English rolling-stock, have been copied by the Jap-
anese engineers, who have directed the later works. The
Tokaido railway line, built from both ends, put Tokio
and Kioto within twenty-four hours of each other. The
forty miles of railroad between Yokohama and Kodzu
were completed in 1887, bringing Miyanoshita, a long
day's journey distant, within three hours of the great sea-
port. The long tunnels and difficult country around Fu-
jiyama, and the expensive engineering work at each river
.89
Jinriktsha Days in Japan
delayed the opening of the whole line until 1889. Before
the iron horse had cleared all picturesqueness from the
region three of us made the jinrikisha journey down the
Tokaido.
The Tokaido having been the great post-road and
highway of the empire for centuries, with daimios and
their trains constantly travelling between the two capi-
tals, its villages and towns were most important, and each
supplied accommodations for every class of travellers.
All the world knew the names of the fifty-three post sta-
tions on the route, and there is a common game, which
consists in quickly repeating them in their order back-
ward or forward. As the railroad touched or left them,
some of the towns grew, others dwindled, and new places
sprang up. Each village used to have its one special oc-
cupation, and to ride down the Tokaido was to behold in
succession the various industries of the empire. In one
place only silk cords were made, in another the finely-
woven straw coverings of sake cups and lacquer bowls;
a third produced basket-work of wistaria fibres, and a
fourth shaped ink-stones for writing-boxes. Increased
trade and steam communication have interfered with
these local monopolies, and one town is fast becoming
like another in its industrial displays.
May is one of the best months for such overland trips
in Japan, as the weather is perfect, pilgrims and fleas
are not yet on the road, and the rainy season is distant.
The whole country is like a garden, with its fresh spring
crops, and the long, shaded avenue of trees is everywhere
touched with flaming azaleas and banks of snowy black-
berry blossoms. The tea-house and the tateba every-
where invite one to rest and watch the unique proces-
sions of the highway, and away from foreign settlements
much of the old Japan is left. Tea is everywhere in evi-
dence in May. It is being picked in the fields, carted
along the roads, sold, sorted, and packed in every town,
190
The Tokaido
while charming nesans with trays of tiny cups fairly line
the road.
From Miyanoshita's comfortable hotel the two foreign
women and the Japanese guide started on the first stage
of the Tokaido trip in pole-chairs, carried by four coolies
each. The danna san, or master of the party, scorning
such effeminate devices, strode ahead with an alpen-
stock, a pith helmet, and russet shoes, while the provi-
sion-box and general luggage, filling a kago, followed
after us. We were soon up the hill in a bamboo-shaded
lane, and then out over the grassy uplands to the lake of
Hakone. The singing coolies strode along, keeping even
step on the breathless ascents, past the sulphur baths of
Ashinoyu and to the Hakone Buddha — a giant bass-relief
of Amida sculptured on the face of a wall of rock niched
among the hills. The lonely Buddha occupies a fit place
for a contemplative deity — summer suns scorching and
winter snows drifting over the stony face unhindered. A
heap of pebbles in Buddha's lap is the register of pil-
grims' prayers.
At Hakone village, a single street of thatched houses
bordering the shore of Hakone lake, the narrow foot-
path over the hills joins the true Tokaido, a stone-paved
highway shaded by double rows of ancient trees, a for-
est aisle recalling, fo*" a brief journey, the avenue to
Nikko. The chrysanthemum-crested gates of the Em-
peror's island palace were fast shut, and Fuji's cone
peeped over the shoulders of encircling mountains, and
reflected its image in the almost bottomless lake — an an-
cient crater, whose fires are forever extinguished. Here
we tied straw sandals over our shoes and tried to walk
along the smooth flat stones of the Tokaido, but soon
submitted to be carried again up the ascent to Hakone
pass, which looks southward over a broad valley to the
ocean. Pack-horses, with their clumsy feet tied in straw
shoes, were led by bluebloused peasants, their heads
yinriktsha Days in yafian
wrapped in the inevitable blue-and-white cotton towel,
along the stony road, that has been worn smooth and
slippery by the straw-covered feet of generations of men
and horses.
From the Fuji no taira (terrace for viewing Fuji), in
the village of Yamanaka, we looked sheer down to the
plain of Mishima and saw, almost beneath us, the town
that would mark the end of our day's journey. The vil-
lages of Sasabara and Mitsuya have each a single row
of houses on either side of the road replacing the shade-
trees of the Tokaido, and, like all Japanese villages, they
overflow with children, to whom Ijin san, the foreigner,
is still a marvel.
Mishima is a busy, prosperous little town, with a gay
main street and shops overflowing with straw hats, bas-
kets, matting, rain-coats, umbrellas, tourist and pilgrim
necessities. Shops for the sale of foreign goods are nu-
merous, and besides the familiar cases of " Devoe's
Brilliant Oil for Japan, 150° test," American trade is
advertised by pictures of the Waterbury watch, and long
hanging signs declaring the merits of the American
time-keepers sold at three yen apiece. Even the chief
of the jinrikisha men, who came to make the bargain
for wheeling us down the Tokaido, pulled out such a
watch to tell us the time of day.
Mishima's best tea-house, where daimios rested in the
olden time, is a most perfect specimen of Japanese
architecture, full of darkly-shining woods, fantastic win-
dows, and tiny courts. In one of our rooms the toko-
noma held a kakemono, with a poem written on it in
giant characters, and three tall pink peonies springing
from an exquisite bronze vase. In another, smiled a
wooden image of old Hokorokojin, one of the household
gods of luck, and on a low lacquer table rested a large
lacquer box containing a roll of writing-paper, the ink-
box, and brushes. These, with the soft mats, a few silk
The Tokaido
cushions, a tea-tray, and tabako bon, were all that the
rooms contained, until our incongruous bags and bun-
dles marred their exquisite simplicity. The landlord,
with many bows and embarrassed chucklings, greeted us
there, and presented a most superb, long-stemmed Jacque-
minot rose, whose fragrance soon filled the whole place.
When we went out for a walk all Mishima joined us;
and with a following of two hundred children and half
as many elders, we turned into the grounds of an old
temple shaded by immense trees and protected by an
ancient moat. The brigade clattered after us across the
stone bridge of a great lotus pond, where the golden
carp are as large and as old as the mossy-backed patri-
archs at Fontainebleau and Potsdam, and snapped and
fought for the rice-cakes we threw them as if it were
their first feast. Farther in the temple grounds gor-
geously-colored cocks with trailing tails, and pretty pig-
eons are kept as messengers of the gods, and a toothless
old man makes a slender living by selling popped beans
to feed them. Prayers for rain offered up at this tem-
ple always prevail, and we had barely returned to the
tea-house before a soaking storm set in and restricted
us to our inn for entertainment.
The large matted room, or space at the front of the
tea-house, was at once ofiice, hall, vestibule, pantry, and
store-room. At one side opened a stone-floored kitchen
with rows of little stone braziers for charcoal fires, on
which something was always steaming and sputtering.
Chief -cook, under -cooks, and gay little maids pattered
around on their clogs, their sleeves tied up, hoisting wa-
ter from the well, and setting out trays with the various
dishes of a Japanese dinner. There is no general dining-
room, nor any fixed hour for meals in a Japanese inn. h\.
any moment, day or night, the guest may clap his hands
and order his food, which is brought to his room on a
tray and set on the floor, or on the ozen, a table about
Jmrikiska Days in Japan
four inches high. Rice is boiled in quantities large
enough to last for one, or even two days. It is heated
over when wanted, or hot tea is poured over the cold
rice after it is served. Our guide cooked all our food,
laid our high table with its proper furnishings, and was
assisted by the nesans in carrying things up and down
the stairs. In a small room opening from the office two
girls were sorting the landlord's new tea just brought in
from the country. They sat before a large table raised
only a few inches from the floor, and, from a heap of the
fragrant leaves at one end, scattered little handfuls thinly
over the lacquer top. With their deft fingers they slid
to one side the smallest and finest leaves from the tips
of the new shoots of the plant, and to the other side the
larger and coarser growth, doing it all so quickly and
surely that it was a pleasure to watch them. In another
corner of the office two other little maids were putting
clean cases on all the pillows of the house. The Japan-
ese pillow is a wooden box, with a little padded roll on
top, which is covered with a fresh bit of soft, white mul-
berry-paper each day. The bath-room was as accessible
as the kitchen, without a door, but with glass screens,
and one large tank in which three or four could sociably
dip together. Here were splashing and talking until
midnight, and steam issued forth continually, as guests
and the household staff took their turn. The landlord
requested the masculine head of our party to use a spe-
cial tub that stood in an alcove of the office, a folding-
screen about three feet high being set up to conceal him
from the populous precincts of office, corridor, garden,
and main street. A too vigorous sweep of his stalwart
arm, however, knocked down his defence, and dropping
to his chin in the water, he called for help ; whereupon
the two maids, who were sorting tea, ran over and set the
barrier up again, as naturally as a foreign servant would
. place the fire-screen before a grate.
194
The Tokaido
In old Tokaido days the home bath-tub was often set
beside the door -step, that bathers might lose nothing
that was going on. Government regulations and stern
policemen have interfered with this primitive innocency,
except in the most remote districts, and these Oriental
Arcadians are obliged to wear certain prescribed fig-
leaves, although they curtail them as much as possible
in warm weather, and dispense with them when beating
out wheat ears in their own farm-yards, and treading the
rice -mill in -doors. Privacy is unknown to the lower
classes, and in warm weather their whole life is lived out-
of-doors. With their open-fronted houses, they are hard-
ly in-doors even when under their own roofs. On pleas-
ant mornings women wash and cook, mend, spin, reel,
and set up the threads for the loom on the open road-
side, and often bring the clumsy wooden loom out-of-
doors, throwing the bobbins back and forth, while keep-
ing an eye on their neighbors' doings and the travelling
public. One runs past miles of such groups along the
Tokaido, and the human interest is never wanting in any
landscape picture.
From Mishima southward the country is most beauti-
ful, Fujiyama standing at the end of the broad valley
with the spurs of its foot-hills running down to the sea.
This Yoshiwara plain is one wide wheat-field, golden in
May -time with its first crop, and the Tokaido's line
marked with rows of picturesque pine-trees rising from
low embankments brilliant with blooming bushes. In
the villages each little thatched house is fenced with
braided reeds, enclosing a few peonies, iris -beds, and
inevitable chrysanthemum plants. The children, with
smaller children on their backs, chase, tumble, and play,
cage fire-flies, and braid cylinders and hexagonal puzzles
of wheat straws ; and in sunshine or in rain, indifferently
stroll along the road in the aimless, uncertain way of
chickens.
yinriktska Days in Ja/>an
Beyond the poor, unfragrant town of Yoshiwara, a
creaking, springing bridge leaped the torrent of a river
fed by Fuji's snows and clouds. In the good old days,
when the traveller sat on a small square platform, car-
ried high above the shoulders of four men, to be ferried
over, these bearers often stopped in the most dangerous
place to extort more pay — which was never refused.
Above the river bank the road climbs a ridge, traverses
the tiniest of rice valleys, and then follows the ocean
cliffs for hours. This Corniche road, overhanging the
sea, presents a succession of pictures framed by the
arching branches of ancient pine-trees, and the long Pa-
cific rollers, pounding on the beach and rocks, fill the
air with their loud song. At sunset we came to the old
monastery of Kiomiidera, high on the terraced front of
a bold cliff. Climbing to a gate-way and bell tower
worthy of a fortress, we roused the priests from their
calm meditations. An active young brother in a white
gown flew to show us the famous garden with its palm-
trees and azaleas reflected in a tiny lake, a small water-
fall descending musically from the high mountain wall
of foliage behind it. Superbly decorated rooms, where
Shoguns and daimios used to rest from their journeys,
look out on this green shade. The main temple is a
lofty chamber with stone flooring and gorgeous altar,
shady, quiet, and cool, and a corner of the temple yard
has been filled by pious givers with hundreds upon hun-
dreds of stone Buddhas, encrusted with moss and lichens,
and pasted bits of paper prayers.
All through those first provinces around Fuji the gar-
den fences, made of bamboo, rushes, twigs, or coarse
straw, are braided, interlaced, woven and tied in ingen-
ious devices, the fashion and pattern often changing
completely in a few hours' ride. This region is the hap-
py hunting-ground of the artist and photographer, where
everything is so beautiful, so picturesque, and so artis-
196
The Tokatdo
tic that even the blades of grass and ears of millet
"compose," and every pine-tree is a kakemono study.
Thatched roofs, and arching, hump-backed bridges made
of branches, twigs, and straw seem only to exist for land-
scape effects ; but, unhappily, the old bridges, like the
lumbering junks with their laced and shirred sails, are
disappearing, and, in a generation or two, will be as un-
familiar to the natives as they now are to foreigners.
CHAPTER XX
THE TOKAIDO— II
Great once was Shidzuoka, which now is only a busy
commercial town of an agricultural province. The old
castle has been razed, its martial quadrangle is a wheat
field ; and the massive walls, the creeping and overhang-
ing pine-trees and deep moats are the only feudal relics.
Keiki, the last of the Tokugawa Shoguns, lived in a
black walled enclosure beyond the outer moat, but the
modern spirit paid no heed to his existence, and his
death, in 1883, was hardly an incident in the routine of
its commercial progress.
The great Shinto temple at the edge of the town is
famous for the dragons in its ceiling. The old priest
welcomed us with smiles, led us in, shoeless, over the
mats, and bade us look up, first at the Dragon of the
Four Quarters, and then at the Dragon of the Eight
Quarters, the eyes of the monster strangely meeting
ours, as we changed our various points of view.
At the archery range behind the temple our danna san
proved himself a new William Tell with the bow and
arrows. The attendant idlers cheered his shots, and a
wrinkled old woman brought us dragon candies on a
'Jinrikisha Days in "Japan
dark-red lacquer tray, under whose transparent surface
lay darker shadows of cherry blossoms. The eye of the
connoisseur was quick to descry the tray, and when the
woman said it had been bought in the town, we took
jinrikishas and hurried to the address she gave. The
guide explained minutely, the shopkeeper brought out
a hundred other kinds and colors of lacquer, and chil-
dren ran in from home workshops with hardly dried
specimens to show us. All the afternoon we searched
through lacquer and curio shops, and finally despatched
a coolie to the temple to buy the old woman's property.
Hours afterwards he returned with a brand-new, bright
red horror, and the message that " the mistress could not
send the honorable foreigner such a poor old tray as that."
The fine Shidzuoka baskets, which are so famed else-
where, were not to be found in Shidzuoka ; our tea-house
was uninteresting, and so we set forth in the rain, unfurl-
ing big flat umbrellas of oil-paper, and whirling away
through a dripping landscape. Rice and wheat alter-
nated with dark -green tea-bushes, and cart-loads of tea-
chests were bearing the first season's crop to market.
The rain did not obscure the lovely landscape, as the
plain we followed turned to a valley, the valley narrowed
to a ravine, and we began climbing upward, while a
mountain - torrent raced down beside us. One pictu-
resque little village in a shady hollow gave us glimpses
of silk-worm trays in the houses as we went whirling
through it. The road, winding by zigzags up Utsono-
miya pass, suddenly entered a tunnel six hundred feet
in length, where the jinrikisha wheels rumbled noisily.
On cloudy days the place is lighted by lamps, but on
sunny days by the sun's reflection from two black lacq-
uer boards at the entrances. The device is an old one
in Japan, but an American patent has recently been is-
sued for the same thing, as a cheap means of lighting
ships' holds while handling cargo.
198
The Tokaido
On the other side of Utsonomiya pass the road winds
down by steep zigzags to the village of Okabe, noted
for its trays and boxes made of the polished brown stem
of a coarse fern. We bought our specimens from an
oracular woman, who delivered her remarks like the
lines of a part, her husband meekly echoing what she said
in the same dramatic tones, and the whole scene being
as stagey as if it had been well rehearsed beforehand.
From the mountains the road drops to a rich tea
country, where every hill-side is green with the thick-set
little bushes. At harvest-time cart-loads of basket-fired,
or country -dried, tea fill the road to the ports, to be
toasted finally in iron pans, and coated with indigo and
gypsum to satisfy the taste of American tea- drinkers.
In every town farmers may be seen dickering with the
merchants over the tough paper sacks of tea that they
bring in, and within the houses groups sitting at low
tables sort the leaves into grades with swift fingers.
At Fujiyeda, where we took refuge from the increas-
ing rain, the splashing in the large bath-room of the tea-
house was kept up from afternoon to midnight by the
guests, and continued by the family and tea-house maids
until four o'clock, when the early risers began their ab-
lutions. A consumptive priest on the other side of our
thin paper walls had a garrulous shampooer about mid-
night and a refection later, and we were glad to resume
the ride between 'tea fields at the earliest possible hour.
At Kanaya, at the foot of Kanaya mountain, the tea-
house adjoined a school-house. The school-room had
desks and benches but no walls, the screens being all
removed. The teacher called the pupils in by clapping
two sticks together, as in a French theatre. Spying the
foreigners, the children stared, oblivious of teacher and
blackboard, and the teacher, after one good look at the
itinerants, bowed a courteous good-morning, and let the
offenders go unpunished.
«99
yinriktsha Days in yapan
Up over Kanaya pass we toiled slowl)^, reaching at last
a little eyrie of a tea-house, where the landlord pointed
with equal pride to the view and to several pairs of muddy
shoes belonging, he said, to the honorable gentlemen
who were about piercing the mountain under us with a
railway tunnel. Under a shady arbor is a huge, round
bowlder, fenced in carefully and regarded reverently by
humble travellers. According to the legend it used to
cry at night like a child until Kobo Daishi, the inventor
of the Japanese syllabary, wrote an inscription on it and
quieted it forever. No less famous than Kobo Daishi's
rock is the midzu ame of this Kanaya tea-house, and the
dark brown sweet is put in dainty little boxes that are
the souvenirs each pilgrim carries away with him.
Farther along the main road, with its arching shade-
trees, the glossy dark tea-bushes gave way to square miles
of rice and wheat fields. Here and there a patch of in-
tense green verdure showed the young blades of rice al-
most ready to be transplanted to the fields, whence the
wheat had just been garnered, the rice giving way in turn
to some other cereal, all farming land in this fertile re-
gion bearing three annual crops.
A few villages showed the projecting roofs peculiar to
the province of Totomi, and then the pretty tea-house at
Hamamatsu quite enchanted us after our experiences
with the poor accommodations of some of the provincial
towns. A rough curbed well in the court-yard, with a
queer parasol of a roof high over the sweep, a pretty
garden all cool, green shade, a stair-way, steep and high,
and at the top a long, dim corridor, with a floor of shin-
ing, dark keyaki wood. This was the place that made
us welcome ; even stocking-footed we half feared to tread
on those brilliantly-polished boards. Our balcony over-
looked a third charming garden, and each little room had
a distinctive beauty of wooden ceilings, recesses, screens,
and fanciful windows.
The Tokaido
The most enviable possession of Hamamatsu, however,
was O' Tatsu, and on our arrival O'Tatsu helped to carry
our traps up-stairs, falling into raptures over our rings,
pins, hair-pins, watches, and beaded trimmings. She
clapped her hands in ecstasy, her bright eyes sparkled,
and her smile displayed the most dazzling teeth. When
we ate supper, sitting on the floor around an eight-inch
high table, with little O'Tatsu presiding and waiting on
us, not only her beauty but her charming frankness,
simplicity, quickness, and grace made further conquest of
us all. The maiden enjoyed our admiration immensely,
arrayed herself in her freshest blue-and-white cotton ki-
mono, and submitted her head to the best hair-dresser in
town, returning with gorgeous bits of crape and gold cord
tied in with the butterfly loops of her blue-black tresses.
At her suggestion we sent for a small dancing-girl to enter-
tain us, who, with a wand and masks, represented Suzume
and other famous characters in legend and melodramas.
When we left Hamamatsu, aff^ectionate little O'Tatsu
begged me to send her my photograph, and lest I should
not have understood her excited flow of Japanese sen-
tences, illuminated, however, by her great pleading eyes,
she ran off, and, coming back, slipped up to me and
held out a cheap, colored picture of some foreign beauty
in the costume of 1865. When at last we rode away
from the tea-house, O'Tatsu followed my jinrikisha for a
long way, holding my hand, with tears in her lovely eyes,
and her last sayonara broke in a sob.
A hard shell-road winds down to the shores of Hama-
na Lake and across its long viaduct. The jinrikishas
run, as if on rubber tires, for nearly three miles over an
embankment crossing the middle of the great lake, which
at one side admits the curling breakers of the great Pa-
cific. Until a few years ago this mountain-walled pool
was protected from the ocean by a broad sand ridge,
which an earthquake shook down, letting in the salt-
yinrikisha Days in Japan
waters. The Tokaido railroad crosses the lake on a high
embankment, which was sodded and covered with a lat-
tice-work of straw bundles, while seed was sown in the
crevices more than a year before the road could be used.
The whole railroad, as we saw in passing its completed
sections, is solidly built with stone foundations and stone
ballast, and intended to last for centuries. The Japan-
ese seldom hurry the making of public works, and even
a railroad does not inspire them with any feverish activ-
ity. Not until the last detail and station-house was fin-
ished was the line opened for travel, and following so
nearly the route of the old Tokaido, through the most
fertile and picturesque part of Central Japan, it keeps
always in sight Fujiyama or the ocean.
In the course of the afternoon plantations of mulber-
ry-trees came in sight. Loads of mulberry branches and
twigs were being hauled into the villages and sold by
weight, the rearers of silk-worms buying the leaves and
paper-makers the stems for the sake of the inside bark.
Climbing to one high plateau, we rested at a little rustic
shed of a tea-house, commanding a superb view down a
great ragged ravine to the line of foam breaking at its
bowlder strewn entrance, and so on to the limitless
ocean. One of the jinrikisha coolies preceded us to the
benches on the overhanging balcony, and, kindly point-
ing out the special beauties of the scene, took off his
garments and spread them out on the rail in the matter-
of-fact, unconscious way of true Japanese innocence and
simplicity of mind.
The guide-book calls the stretch of country beyond
that high-perched tea-house " a waste region," but noth-
ing could be more beautiful than the long ride through
pine forest and belts of scrub-pine on that uncultivated
plateau, always overlooking the ocean. At one point
a temple to the goddess Kwannon is niched among tow-
ering rocks at the base of a narrow cliff, on whose sum-
309
The Tokaido
mit a colossal statue of the deity stands high against the
sky. For more than a century this bronze goddess of
Mercy has been the object of pious pilgrimages, the pil-
grims clapping their hands and bowing in prayer to all
the thirty-three Kwannons cut in the face of the solid
rock-base on which our lady of pity stands.
We reached the long, dull town of Toyohashi at dusk,
to find the large tea-house crowded with travellers. Two
rooms looking out upon a sultry high-walled garden were
given us, and for dining-room a tiny alcove of a place on
one of the middle courts. This room was so small and
close that we had to leave the screens open, though the
corridor led to the large bath-room, where half a dozen
people splashed and chattered noisily and gentlemen
with their clothes on their arms went back and forth be-
fore our door as if before the life class of an art school.
The noise of the bathers was kept up gayly, until long
after midnight, and no one in the tea-house seemed to
be sleeping. By four o'clock in the morning such a
coughing, blowing, and sputtering began in the court
beside my room that I finally slid the screens and looked
out. At least a dozen lodgers were brushing their teeth
in the picturesque little quadrangle of rocks, bamboos,
and palms, and bathing face and hands in the large
stone and bronze urns that we had supposed to be orna-
mental only. Later, the gravel was covered with scores
of the wooden sticks of tooth-brushes, beaten out into a
tassel of fibres at one end, and with many boxes emptied
of the coarse, gritty tooth-powder which the Japanese
use so freely.
The last day of our long jinrikisha ride was warm, the
sun glared on a white, dusty road, and the country was
flat and uninteresting. Each little town and village
seemed duller than the other. Wheat and rape were
being harvested and spread to dry, and in the farm yards
men and women were hatchelling, beating out the grain
203
yinrtktsha Days in yapan
with flails, and winnowing it in the primitive way by
pouring it down from a flat scoop-basket held high over-
head. Nobody wore any clothes to speak of, and the
whole population turned out to watch the amazing spec-
tacle of foreigners standing spell-bound until our jinrik-
ishas had gone by.
At Arimatsu village we passed through a street of
shops where the curiously dyed cotton goods peculiar to
the place are sold. For several hundred years all Ari-
matsu has been tying knots down the lengths of cotton,
twisting it in skeins, and wrapping it regularly with a
double-dyed indigo thread, and then, by immersion in
boiling water, dyeing the fabric in curious lines and star-
spotted patterns. A more clumsy and primitive way of
dyeing could not be imagined in this day of steam-looms
and roller -printing, but Arimatsu keeps it up and pros-
pers.
At sunset we saw the towers of Nagoya castle in the
distance, and after crossing the broad plain of ripening
rape and wheat, the coolies sped through the town at a
fearful pace and deposited us, dazed, dusted, and weary,
at the door of the Shiurokindo, to enjoy the beautiful
rooms just kindly vacated by Prince Bernard, of Saxe-
Weimar.
The Shiurokindo is one of the handsomest and largest
of the tea-houses a foreigner finds, its interior a labyrinth
of rooms and suites of rooms, each with a balcony and
private outlook on some pretty court. The walls, the
screens, recesses, ceilings, and balcony rails afford stud-
ies and models of the best Japanese interior decorations.
The samisen's wail and a clapping chorus announced that
a great dinner was going on, and in the broader corridors
there was a passing and repassing of people arrayed in
hotel kimonos.
As the wise traveller carries little baggage, the tea-
houses furnish their customers with ukatas, or plain cot-
304
The Tokatdo
ton kimonos, to put on after the bath and wear at night.
These gowns are marked with the crest or name of the
house, painted in some ingenious or artistic design ; and
guests may wander round the town, even, clad in these
garments, that so ingeniously advertise the Maple-leaf,
the Chrysanthemum, or Dragon tea-house. All guides,
and servants particularly, enjoy wearing these hotel robes,
and travellers who dislike to splash their own clothing
march to the bath ungarmented, assuming the house
gowns in the corridor after their dip. These ukatas at
the Shiurokindo were the most startling fabrics of Ari-
matsu, and we looked in them as if we had been throw-
ing ink-bottles at each other. ^ ■
Until the long jinrikisha ride was over we had not felt
weary, as each day beguiled us with some new interest
and excitement; but when we stepped from those baby-
carriages at the door of the Shiurokindo we were dazed
with fatigue, although the coolies who ran all the way
did not appear to be tired in the least. Their headman,
who marshalled the team of ten, was a powerful young
fellow, a very Hercules for muscle, and for speed and
endurance hardly to be matched by that ancient deity.
At the end of each day he seemed fresher and stronger
than at the start, and he has often run sixty and sixty-
five miles a day, for three and four days together. He
led the procession and set the pace, shouting back warn-
ing of ruts, stones, or bad places in the road, and giving
the signals for slowing, stopping, and changing the order
of the teams. On level ground the coolies trotted tan-
dem — one in the shafts, and one running ahead with a
line from the shafts held over his shoulder. Going down-
hill, the leader fell back and helped to hold the shafts ;
going uphill, he pushed the jinrikisha from the back.
'Ihe jinrikisha coolies make better wages than farm
laborers or most mechanics. Our men were paid by the
distance, and for days of detention each man received
yinrikisha Days in Japan
twenty-five cents to cover the expense of his board and
lodging. They earned at an average one dollar and ten
cents for each day, but out of this paid the rent of the
jinrikisha and the Government tax. Where two men and
a jinrikisha cover one hundred and eighty miles in four'
days they receive thirteen dollars in all, which is more
than a farm laborer receives in a year. As a rule, these
coolies are great gamblers and spendthrifts, with a fond-
ness for sake. Our headman was a model coolie, sav-
ing his money, avoiding the sake-bottle, and regarding
his splendid muscle as invested capital. When he walked
in to collect his bill, he was clean and shining in a rus-
tling silk kimono, such-as a well-to-do merchant might
wear. In this well-dressed, distinguished-looking person,
who slid the screens of our sitting-room and bowed to us
so gracefully, we hardly recognized our trotter of the
blue -cotton coat, bare knees, and mushroom hat. He
explained that the other men could not come to thank
us for our gratuities because they had not proper
clothes. In making his final and lowest bows his sub-
stantial American watch fell out of his silk belt with a
thump ; but he replaced it in its chamois case with the
assurance that nothing hurt it, and that it was with the
noon gun of Nagoya castle whenever he came to town.
CHAPTER XXI
NAGOVA
In this day of French uniforms. Catling- guns, and
foreign tactics, it is only in Nagoya that the garrison
occupies the old castle ; the fortress, with its gates and
moats, remains unchanged, and the bugle -calls echo
daily around the quaintly -gabled citadel. In the great
206
Nagoya
parade-grounds outside the deep inner moat rise foreign-
looking barracks and offices, and dumpy little soldiers
in white-duck coats and trousers and visored caps stand
as sentries on the fixed bridges, and in the portals of the
huge, heavy-roofed, iron-clamped gate-ways. Of course
these guards should be men in old armor, with spears
and bows, and the alarms should be given on hoarse-
toned gongs or conch -shell bugles, as in feudal days.
Instead, the commandant of Nagoya has on his staff
young nobles of old feudal families, who speak French,
German, or English, as they have been taught in foreign
military schools. A dapper little lieutenant, in spotless
gloves and an elaborately - frogged white uniform, con-
ducted us along the deep moat, over the bridge, and un-
der the great gate of the citadel, whose stones, timbers,
and iron clampings would defy a dozen mediaeval armies.
Gay chatter about la belle Paris, which the little lieuten-
ant had learned to adore in his student-days, echoed un-
der the yet more ponderous inner gate, and the ghosts
of the old warriors must have groaned at the degeneracy
of their sons.
Below the frowning citadel is an old palace, wherein
the son of lyeyasu, the first Prince of Owari, lived in state
and entertained the Shogun's messengers. The empty
rooms are musty and gloomy from long neglect, but the
beautifully-carved and colored ceilings, and the screens
and recess walls, decorated by famous artists with paint-
ings on a ground of thinnest gold-leaf, remain the sole
relics of his splendor.
The great donjon tower of the citadel, rising in five
gabled stories, is surmounted by two golden dolphins,
the pride of Nagoya. Made over two hundred years
ago, each solid goldfish is valued at eighty thousand dol-
lars, and many legends are attached to them. A covet-
ous citizen once made an enormous kite wherewith to fly
up and steal the city's treasures, but he was caught and
ao7
Jtnrtkzsha Days in Japan
put to death in boiling oil. The golden pets were never
disturbed until one of them was taken down and sent
with the Government exhibits to the Vienna Exposition
in 1873. On the return voyage it sank to the bottom
of the sea with the wrecked steamer Nil. Like the old
lacquers and porcelain, the golden dolphin suffered no
sea change, and, after a few months' immersion, was
brought up and returned to its high perch on the tower,
while all Nagoya rejoiced to see it flashing in the sun
once more.
The donjon tower is a fine example of the old archi-
tecture, and the massive joists of keyaki would build
barracks for twenty regiments. Inside the tower is an
inexhaustible well, called the " Golden Water," which,
in time of siege, would enable a rice-provisioned garri-
son to hold out for years. Up a stair-way of massive
timbers one climb.s, half in darkness to the top, to look
down upon the broad Nagoya plain, the blue bay, and
the busy port of Yokkaichi opposite, in the sacred prov-
ince of Ise.
Commercially, Nagoya is best known as the centre of
a great pottery and porcelain district, Seto in Owari be-
ing as famous as Staffordshire in England. In the Seto
suburb porcelain clay is found, and silica exists in large
quantities a few miles away. From the castle tower one
sees the smoke of continuous lines of kilns surrounding
the valley, and all the ware is sent in from these vil-
lages to Nagoya for distribution. Here the finest egg-
shell porcelain, rivalling the French ware, is made, much
of it going to Yokohama to be decorated for the foreign
market. Seto itself has given its name to all porcelain,
and especially to the pale, gray-green ware so commonly
used in Japanese households. Old green Seto ware is
highly esteemed, both for its soft tinting and its peculiar
glaze, suggesting jade or lacquer to the touch more than
hard, kiln-burnt porcelain. The bulk of the commoner
Nagoya
heavy porcelain is decorated here for the foreign mar-
ket — men, women, and small boys mechanically repeating
the monstrous designs in hideous colors, which they ig-
norantly suppose to represent western taste, and which
the western world accepts as "so Japanese." Modern
Owari is least desirable and least Japanese of all the
wares of Japan, but as thousands of dollars pour annu-
ally into Nagoya for these travesties of national art,
their manufacture and export will still go on. Recently
the Seto potteries have been turning out large tea-cad-
dies, with double or pierced covers, by tens of thousands,
daubing them with the discordant colors of cheap for-
eign mineral paints. Across the ocean they are called
Japanese rose-jars, although the rose was unknown in
Japan until the entrance of foreigners, and the rose-jar
and the pot-pourri it contains would greatly astonish a
Japanese. But as Nagoya and Seto are made rich and
happy by badly decorated porcelain tea-caddies, indus-
try gains if art loses.
Thirty thousand Nagoyans are engaged in the manu-
facture of a cheap cloisonne enamel, ship-loads of plaques
and vases with one unvarying hard, pale-blue ground be-
ing exported annually. The powdered porcelain from
Seto's imperfect pieces forms the base of the enamel
used, and the two industries work together economically.
In Nagoya town are shops filled with the charming
Banko ware, made across the bay at Yokkaichi, which
still retains all its old merits, unaltered by the demands
of foreign markets. Banko teapots worked out of sheets
of thin clay, pressed, folded, cut, and patterned in white
mosaic or glazed designs in low relief, resemble nothing
so much as bits of soft painted crapes stretched over
hidden frames, and these fragile, unglazed pieces are ail
the more pleasing in the midst of Nagoya's keramic
nightmares.
Nagoya being a little off the line of tourist travel, its
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
curio shops are not entirely stripped of their best things,
As Owari's princes exchanged porcelains liberally with
the daimios of Hizen and Kaga, some rare pieces of old
Imari and Kutani are often chanced upon, as the impov-
erishment of great families, and the rage for foreign
dress and fashions, tempts the better class to part with
heirlooms. Whole afternoons wore on as we made our
way into the graces of certain curio dealers, that they
might disclose their jealously-guarded treasures. These
old men of Nagoya have a real affection for the beauti-
ful things of the past, made before any foreign demands
had corrupted and debased the native art. Once con-
vinced of the intelligent interest of their customer, the
owners proudly open the go-down, and the swords, the
lacquer, and the porcelains appear, and, lifted from their
boxes, stripped of cotton and silk wrappings, are set forth.
These old dealers are men wholly of the past, who medi-
tate and smoke long over an offer, and if they agree to
the price solemnly and slowly clap their hands as a rati-
fication of the terms. Four times we passed by the largest
curio shop in Nagoya, led by the tea-jars and boxes in
the front to suppose that it was only the abode of a tea-
merchant. When we had accidentally bought some choice
tea there, we were invited back to a court, where two go-
downs were crowded with old porcelains and lacquer.
Near by was another shop where arms, armor, Buddhas,
altar-pieces, saints, images, carvings, candlesticks, koros,
robes, trappings, and all the paraphernalia of priests, tem-
ples, warriors, and yashikis were heaped up on the floor
and hung overhead.
The coolies had been anxious about our rate of prog-
ress on the last Tokaido days, fearing to miss the great
matsuri of the Nagoya year, which, celebrating the deeds
of the founder and patron saints of the city, has been
maintained with great pomp and splendor for centuries.
The procession was to take four hours in passing, and
Nagoya
our landlord engaged places for us in the house of a shoe-
dealer in the main street. The dealer in geta and dzori
dealt only in those national foot coverings, but, yielding
to foreign fashions, had set up a sign of
** Shoes the Shop."
The sliding screens of the front wall of the room over
the shop were removed, and bright-red blankets thrown
over the ledge and spread out on the eaves of the lower
story. All the houses were open and decorated in this
same way, and lanterns hung in rows from the eaves and
from upright posts at the door-way.
The worthy shoe-dealer's blankets and lanterns were
just like his neighbors', but when three foreigners ap-
peared at the low balcony, then the multitude stopped
and stared open-mouthed at that unusual spectacle, and
we divided popular interest with the procession as long
as we remained there. Policemen were perplexed be-
tween their duty of making the crowds move on and their
own pleasure of having a look at the strangers. Soldiers
from the garrison stared by hundreds, and the police-
men requested them to depart, as well as the rustics and
townspeople. Policemen rank much higher, in a way,
than the soldiers, the guardians of the peace being near-
ly all descendants of the old samurai, the two-sworded,
privileged retainers of feudal days, while the common
soldier is enlisted from the farm laborers ; and one quick-
ly sees how much more regard the lower classes have for
the gunsa than for the soldier.
The procession began with high ornamental wooden
cars, or dasha, set on wheels hewn from single blocks
of wood, and drawn by ropes, to which every pious per-
son was supposed to lend a hand. Regular coolies were
engaged for the steady wheel-horse work, and sang a
wild chorus as men with stout sticks pried the clumsy
yinrikisha Days in yapan
wheels up for the first turn. The corner posts and up-
per railings of the dasha are lacquered in black or red,
and finished with plates of open-work brass, or elabo-
rately-gilded carvings. The sides are hung with cur-
tains of rich old brocade or painted cloth, and the railed
top is a stage, on which puppet-shows and tableaux repre-
sent scenes from mythology and legend. On one car
Raiden, the red Thunder God, mounted on a rearing
charger, shook his circle of drums, and Suzume, the
priestess, repeated her sacred dance before the cave.
Comic scenes took best with the audience, however, and
the jolly old shojo, men who come up from the bottom
of the sea for a revel on shore, wearing mats of bright'
red hair and gowns of gorgeous brocade, were received
with greatest favor. They ladled out sake from a deep
jar, and finally stood on their heads on the rim of the
jar and drank from the depths. There were only twelve
dasha in line, but they stopped every fifty feet while the
puppets were put through their performances.
Succeeding the cars came a daimio's train, preceded
by heralds in quaint, mediaeval costume, and presenting
every phase of the old-time parade. Chinese sages and
instructors, Korean prisoners, falconers and priests walk-
ed in line after the daimios, who were mounted on horses
half hidden in clumsy but beautiful old trappings. The
men in white silk gowns and lacquer hats, who took the
daimios' places at the head of the line, are descendants
of those great families of the province, whose members
have ridden in Nagoya's matsuri parades for centuries.
After them came an endless line of men in armor, the
suits of mail being either heirlooms of the wearers or
provided from the rich stores of such things owned by
the temple. The armor surpassed the treasures of curio
shops, and the dents and cuts in the cuirasses and hel-
mets attested their antiquity. Having sat from eleven
o'clock until three in the upper room with the family of
Nagoya
the shoeman, we parted with elaborate expressions of
esteem on both sides, and with such bows and prostra-
tions from them that we wondered how our guide would
contrive to slip a gift into their hands.
Nagoya maiko and geisha are celebrated throughout
Japan for their beauty, grace, and taste in dress, and a
geisha dinner is as much a property of Nagoya as the
golden dolphins of the old castle. At ours we engaged
two geisha to sing and play, and four maikos to dance
yinrikt'sha Days tn yapan
in their richest costumes. As the guests were Japanese
the feast was made a foreign dinner of as many courses
as our guide and magician, Miyashta, could conjure from
Nagoya's markets and the Shiurokindo's kitchen. Our
three friends rustled in early, clad in ceremonial silk
gowns, each with his family crest marked in tiny white
circles on the backs and sleeves of his haori, or coat.
At every praise of Nagoya, which the interpreter repeat-
ed to them on our behalf, they rose from their high
chairs and bowed profoundly. At table the play of the
knife and fork was as difficult to them as the chopsticks
had once been for us, but they carried themselves
through the ordeal with dignity and grace, and heroic-
ally ate of all the dishes passed them.
Towards the end of the dinner a gorgeous paroquet
of a child appeared on our open balcony. Her kimono
was pale blue crape, painted and embroidered with a
wealth of chrysanthemums of different colors. Her obi,
of the heaviest crinkled red crape, had flights of gray
and white storks all over its drooping loops, and the
neck-fold was red crape woven with a shimmer of gold
thread. Her face was white with rice powder, and her
hair, dressed in fantastic loops and puffs, was tied with
bits of red crape and gold cord, and set with a whole dia-
dem of silver chrysanthemums. She came forward smil-
ing with the most charming mixture of childlike shyness
and maidenly self-possession, becoming as much inter-
ested in our curious foreign dresses as we in her splen-
did attire.
Presently, against the background of the night, ap-
peared another dazzling figure — Oikoto, the most be-
witching and popular maiko of the day in Nagoya. She,
too, was radiant in gorgeously-painted crape, a red and
gold striped obi, and a crown of silver flowers. Oikoto
had the long, narrow eyes, the deeply-fringed lids, the
nose and contour of face of Egyptian women. Her hand
Nagoya
and arm were exquisite, but it was her soft voice, her
dreamy smile, and slowly lifted eyelids that led us cap-
tive. Oikoto san and the tiny maiko fluttered about
the table, filling glasses, nibbling sweetmeats, answering
questions, and accepting our frank admiration with grace
incomparable. Two more brilliantly- dressed beauties
entered, and with them the two geisha and their instru-
ments. One of the geisha, O Suwo san, was still a beau-
ty, who entered with a quiet, languid grace and dignity,
and whose marvellous black eyes had magic in them.
The geisha struck the samisens with the ivory sticks,
the wailing chorus began, and there succeeded a fan-
dance, a cherry blossom- dance, and an autumn -dance,
the four brilliant figures posing, gliding, moving, turning,
rising, and sinking slowly before our enchanted eyes.
One dance demanded quicker time, and the dancers
sang with the chorus, clapping their hands softly and
tossing their lovely arms and swinging sleeves. The
three gentlemen of Nagoya joined in that paean to the
cherry blossoms and the blue sky, accenting the verse
with their measured chanting ; and one of them, taking
part in a musical dialogue, danced a few measures in
line with the maiko very well and gracefully.
The closing dance — a veritable jig, with whirls and
jumps, rapid hand-clapping, and chanting by the maiko
— ertded in the dancers suddenly throwing themselves
forward on their hands and standing on their heads,
their feet against the screens.
" That is what we call the foreign dance : it is in for-
eign style, you know. You like it ?" asked the interpret-
er on behalf of our guests ; and our danna san had the
temerity to answer that it was very well-done, but that it
was now going out of fashion in America.
After the seven dances the maiko stood in a pictu-
resque row against the balcony rail and fanned them-
selves until supper was brought in for them and set on
»«$
yinrikisha Days in Japatt
low tables, whereon were placed many cups and bowls
and tiny plates, with the absurd bits and dolls' portions
that constitute a Japanese feast.
The incongruous and commercial part of the geisha
and maiko performance came in the shape of a yard-long
bill, on which were traced charges of seventy-five cents
an hour for each maiko, which included the two accom-
panists, and the jinrikisha fares to and from the enter-
tainment. Unwritten custom required of us the supper
for the performers, and a little gratuity or souvenir to
each one.
When we begged the lovely Oikoto for her photograph,
she proudly brought us one which showed that exquisite
creature transformed into a dowdy horror by a foreign
gown and bonnet, which the Nagoya photographer keeps
on hand for the use of his customers.
CHAPTER XXII
LAKE BIWA AND KIOTO
After the pace of the jinrikisha the slow train from
Nagoya to Nagahama, on Lake Biwa, seemed to attain a
dizzy speed. Rising continually, we reached a hilly re-
gion where the road-bed crossed a chain of tiny valleys,
penetrated mountain-tunnels, and cut through pine for-
ests and bamboo groves.
At Nagahama we rested in a lake-side tateba, content
with the glorious view, and in no way eager to search
for its famous kabe crapes. Lake Biwa, with long, wood-
ed slopes running down to tiie shore, and mountains bar-
ring all the horizon, with smooth water and a blue sky,
offers sixty miles of charming sail. Little thatched-roof
villages, and the wide sweeping gables of temples show
316
Lake Biwa and Kioto
here and there in the solitude of pines, and the crest of
one high promontory is girt with the white walls of Hi-
kone castle. Many legends belong to this mediaeval for-
tress, the scene of so many famous events, whose last
daimio was murdered in Tokio by disaffected followers,
soon after he negotiated, as prime-minister, the treaties
of 1858.
At Otsu, at the lower end of the lake, the splendid old
temple of Miidera and its monastery on the heights com-
mand the town and lake, and the soldiers' memorial col-
umn overlooks the eight great sights of Lake Biwa which
are painted on half the fans, kakemonos, and screens of
Japan. One of these eight wonders is Miidera, with its
long and lofty avenues, the green twilight of its primeval
groves, its yellow, moated walls and frowning gate-ways
that hide in the enchanted forest; its ancient shrines, its
terraces, and lichen-covered bell-tower, home of the le-
gend of Benkei and his bell. Benkei was a muscular
priest who lived on Mount Hiyeizan overlooking the lake.
The other priests coveted the splendid bell of Miidera,
which had been presented by the ruler of the kingdom
of women living at the bottom of Lake Biwa to Hidesato
for valiantly slaying a giant centipede that had frightened
these ladies of the lake by its forays. The priests in-
duced Benkei to steal the bell by promising him as much
soup as he could eat, and he threw it over his shoulder
and carried it to the top of the mountain. But its silvery
tongue kept crying " I want to return," and the priests
threw it down the mountain-side, over which it rolled, re-
ceiving many dents and scratches, to its old bell-tower.
Near by it is the giant soup-kettle, in which the priests
cooked lienkei's mess of pottage, and touching both
relics of course verifies the legends. At the end of the
monastery groves are large barracks, and troops of the
chubby-faced, boyish-looking soldiers are always stroll-
ing through the arching avenues of the still old forestr
»«7
yinrtkisha Days in Japan
The greatest sight of Biwa, and one of the wonders of
Japan, is the old pine-tree of Karasaki, which has stood
for three hundred years on a little headland a couple of
miles above Otsu, with a tiny village and a Shinto tem-
ple all its own. Its trunk is over four feet in diameter,
and, at a height of fifteen feet, its boughs are trained lat-
erally and supported by posts, so that it looks like a
banyan-tree. The branches, twisted, bent, and looped
like writhing dragons, cover more than an acre of ground
with their canopy. The tips of the boughs reach far
out over the water, and the sensitive Japanese hear a
peculiar music in the sifting of the rain-drops through
the foliage into the lake. High up in the tree is a tiny
shrine, and the pilgrims clap their hands and stand with
clasped palms, turning their faces upward as they pray.
A heavy stone wall protects this sylvan patriarch from
the washing of storms and floods.
Under the branches a legion of small villagers, inti-
mating by pantomime their desire to dive for pennies,
untied their belts and dropped their solitary cotton gar-
ments as unconcernedly as one might take off hat or
gloves. They frolicked and capered in the water as much
at home as fishes and as loath to leave it. Fleeing from
this body of too attached followers, we were whirled
down the road to Otsu to eat the famous Biwa trout,
passing on the way a woman, who sat at ease in her bath-
tub by her own door-step, calmly scrubbing herself with a
bag of rice bran, and contemplating her neighbors, the
road, and the lake scenery the while.
On Mount Hiyeizan, by the ruined Buddhist temples
and monasteries, the American missionaries of different
denominations have a long- established summer camp,
where they enjoy a sort of Japanese Chautauqua circle,
their tents and buildings the only signs of habitation
where once stood hundreds of temples with their thou-
sands of priests.
318
Lake Biwa and Kioto
From the old temple of Ishiyama, east of Otsu, is seen
the famous Seta bridge and Awatsu, where the lake takes
on a wondrous silvery sheen when the sun shines and
the wind blows, these being three more of the famous
sights of Biwa. The grounds of Ishiyama contain what
is known as a dry garden, where blackened rocks and
rocks free from every green thing are piled fantastically
with strange landscape resemblances. In the temple is
a prayer-wheel, which is turned by thousands of pilgrims
every summer, and in a small room off the temple a
priest showed us the writing-box and ink-stone of Mu-
rusaki Shikibu, a poetess and novelist of the tenth cen-
tury, whose work, the Genji Moiwgatari, is the great
classic of its age. The remaining wonders of Lake Biwa
are the flights of the wild geese, the return of the fishing-
boats to Yabashi, and Mount Hira with the winter snows
on its summit.
From Otsu over to the Kioto side of the mountains we
went by train, rushing down the long grade and through
tunnels to the great plain, where sits the sacred city, the
capital and heart of old Japan, incomparable Kioto, Sa-
ikio, or Miako. We saw it in the sunset light, the" west-
ern hills throwing purple shadows on their own slopes,
and the long stretch of wheat-fields at their base turned
to a lake of pure gold. The white walls of the Shogun's
castle, the broad roof of the old palace, and the ridges
of temples rose above the low, gray plain of house roofs
and held the sun's last level beams.
After the imitations and tawdriness of modern Tokio,
the unchanged aspect of the old capital is full of dignity.
After many long stays in spring-time, midsummer, and
midwinter, Kioto has always remained to me foremost
of Japanese cities. Yaamis, the foreigner's Kioto home,
with its steep terraced garden, its dwarf-pine and bloom-
ing monkey-tree, its many buildings at different levels,
its flitting figures on the outer galleries, is like no other
yinrikisha Days in Japan
hostlery. Yaami, proprietor of this picturesque hotel,
is a personage indeed. He and his brother were pro-
fessional guides until they made their fortunes. Their
shrewd eyes saw further fortunes in a Kioto inn, where
foreigners might find beds, chairs, tables, knives, forks,
and foreign food, and they secured the old Ichiriki tea-
house, midway on the slope of Maruyama, the mountain
walling in Kioto on the east. The Ichiriki tea-house
was the place where Oishi Kura no Suke, the leader of
the Forty- seven Ronins, played the drunkard during
the two years that he lived near Kioto, before he avenged
the death of his lord. With it was bought an adjoining
monastery, belonging to one of the temples on Mount
Hiyeizan, and these two original buildings have expand-
ed and risen story upon story, with detached wings here
and there, until the group of tall white buildings, with
the white flag floating high up in the midst of Maru-
yama's foliage, is quite castle -like. While the obnox-
ious foreign treaties were in force, no foreigners except
those in Japanese employ were allowed to live in Kioto,
or even to visit it without a passport, and this secured
Yaami in his monopoly. As a matter of fact, Yaami is
not the family name of the two pleasant and prosper-
ous-looking men who walk about in silk kimonos, with
heavy gold watch-chains wound about their broad silk
belts, and who have the innocent faces of young chil-
dren, save for the shrewdness of their eyes. Yaami is the
corruption- of Yama Amida (Hill of Buddha), which is
the name of the hotel, and the two men belong to the
Inowye family, a clan not less numerous in Japan than
the Smiths of English-speaking countries. In parts of
the house one finds relics of monastery days in dim old
screens of fine workmanship, and there is a stone-floored
kitchen, vast as a temple, with cooks serious as priests,
wielding strange sacrificial knives, and who, in midsum-
mer, wear an apron only, apparently as a professional
Lake Biwa and Kioto
badge rather than as a garment. The momban, or gate-
keeper, sits, spider-like, in a web of his own, a mere
doll's house by the gate-way. In olden times, and even
to-day, in large establishments, the momban announces
an arrival with strokes upon his gong, but this particu-
lar functionary corresponds more nearly to the Parisian
octroi. All who enter the gates answer for themselves
and pay tribute, or they are forever barred out. Even
coolies disgorge their black-mail to the colony of fleet-
footed brethren who hold a valuable monopoly at Ya-
ami's gate, and in guilds and labor organizations the
Orient is ages older and wiser than the Occident.
All of Maruyama's slope is holy ground and pleasure-
ground. Tea-houses and bath-houses are scattered in
between the great temples, and prayer-gongs and pious
hand -clapping are heard in unison with samisens and
revellers' songs. Praying and pleasuring go together,
and the court-yard of the Gion temple at the foot of the
hill is lined with monkey-shows and archery ranges, and
in the riding-schools the adventurous may, for a few co|>
pers, mount a jerky horse and be jolted around a shady
ring. There, too, are many rows of images of fierce,
red -cloaked Daruma, the Buddhist saint, who sailed
^oss from Korea on a rush - leaf. He sat facing a
walKfor nine years, and wore off his lower limbs, and
rtow his image, weighted with lead, is the target for
merry ball-throwers, and is seen in every quarter of the
empire.
From the airy galleries on Maruyama the city lies be-
low one like a relief map. The river, the Kamogawa,
crossed at intervals by long bridges, cuts the city in two.
From each bridge a street runs straight on to the west-
ward. By day these thoroughfares look like furrows
ploughed through the solid plain ff gray-tiled roofs; but
at night they shine with thousaiiB of lamps and lanterns,
and their narrow^ wavering linqffof fire look like so many
yinrikisha Days in yapan
torchlight processions, and the river is one broad belt of
light.
I first saw Kioto on the last day of the Gion matsuri,
a festival which lasts for a month and brings all the
population out-of-doors into one quarter during the even-
ing. By dusk a babel of music and voices had arisen,
which finally drew us down the steep and shady road,
and through the great stone torii, to the Gion's precincts.
The court-yard was almost deserted, and looking through
the great gate-way to Shijo Street the view was dazzling
and the shouts and chatter deafening. The narrow street
was lined with rows of large white paper lanterns hang-
ing above the house doors, and rows hanging from the
eaves. Lanterned booths lined the curb, while humbler
venders spread their wares on the ground in the light of
riaring torches. Crowds surged up and down, every man
carrying a paper lantern on the end of a short bamboo
stick — the literal lamp for the feet — women bearing small-
er lanterns, and children delighting themselves with gay-
ly-colored paper shells for tiny candles. Boys marched
and ran in long single files, shouting a measured chant
as they cut their way through the crowd and whirled
giant lanterns and blazing torches at the end of long
poles.
From Gion gate to Shijo bridge the street was one
wavering, glittering line of light, and crowded solidly
with people. Where the street narrows near the bridge
there is a region of theatres and side-shows, and there
banners and pictures, drums and shouting ticket-sellers,
and a denser crowd of people gathered. A loud shout
and a measured chorus heralded a group of men carry-
ing a Brobdingnagian torch, a giant bamboo pole blaz-
ing fiercely at its lofty tip. The crowd surged back to
the walls as the torch-bearers ran by and on to the mid-
dle of Shijo bridge, where they waved the burning wand
in fiery signals to the other bridges that the real proces-
224
Lake Biwa and Kioto
sion was starting. More torches and lanterns, lines of
priests in garments of silk and gauze, wearing strange
hats, beating and blowing strange instruments ; and a
sacred red chair, reason for all this ceremony, was borne
on from the Gion to a distant Shinto sanctuary to remain
until the matsuri of the following year.
From Shijo bridge to Sanjo bridge Kioto's river-bed
is like a scene from fairy-land throughout the summer,
and during the Gion matsuri the vision is enhanced. The
tea-houses that line the river-bank with picturesquely
galleried fronts set out acres of low platform tables in
the clear, shallow stream. The water ripples pleasantly
around them, giving a grateful sense of coolness to these
a;sthetic Japanese, who sit in groups on the open plat-
forms, smoking their pipes and feasting under the light
of their rows of lanterns. All the broad river-bed is
ablaze with lights and torches, and on the dry, gravelly
stretches a multitude of small peddlers, venders, and
showmen set up their attractive tents and add to the gen-
eral glitter and illumination. Hundreds linger and stroll
on the bridges to admire the gay sight, for as only this
people could have conjured up so brilliant a spectacle
out of such simple and every-day means, so only they can
fully enjoy its beauty and charm. All the children wear
their gayest holiday clothes on such a great matsuri
night, and the graceful women of the old capital, bare-
headed, rustling in silk and gauze, their night-black hair
spread in fantastic loops and caught with beautiful hair-
pins, are worthy of their surroundings.
We left the bridge and wandered over the loose gravel
and rocks of the river-beds, crossing by many planks and
tiny bridges from one small island of shingle to another.
There were countless fruit-stands, with their ingenious
little water-fountains spraying melons and peaches to a
dewy coolness and freshness, hair-pin stands glittering
with silver flowers, and fan and toy and flower booths,
yinrikisha Days in Japan
and all the while we wandered there the people watched
and followed with a respectful curiosity that amused but
could not annoy. Attracted by the beautiful face of a
young girl just within the curtained door of a side-show,
we paid the one cent entrance fee to see the conjurers.
The tent was empty when we entered, but such a stream
of natives poured in after us as to delight the proprietor
and encourage the musicians to pound out more violent
airs. A few miserable poodles were made to walk on two
legs and otherwise discomfort themselves at the bidding
of the beautiful girl, whose strange soft eyes and lovely
face were set off by an elaborate coiffure, a coronet of
silvery hair-pins, and a kimono of gray silk shot with
many tinsel threads. We foreigners found the faces and
holiday garb of the people more interesting than the per-
formance, and the natives in turn seemed equally ab-
sorbed in watching us. Horse-shows, where daring but
terrified Japanese bestrode steeds and ambled three times
around the ring for a penny, puppet-shows, juggler-shows,
and peep-shows drew us in turn from one end of the river-
bed fair to the other, and when too weary to walk we
remounted to the bridge to admire afresh this feast
of lanterns, until at midnight we sought the groves of
Maruyama.
CHAPTER XXIII
KIOTO TEMPLES
Kioto is seen at its best in summer-time. In the fulness
and color of its out-door life. Though the great plain of
the city bakes and quivers in the sun, the heat is no
greater than in other cities. The views from Maruyama
are always enchanting, and the sunset sky is not lovelier
than the dawn, when all the hill-side lies in cool, green
226
Kioto Temples
shade, when the opposite mountain-wall wears a veil of
rose and lilac, and the air above the plain of gray roofs
is fuU of filmy mists and tiny smoke-wreaths.
All travellers are abroad at sunrise or in the early
morning, for by ten o'clock the sun blazes down with
fury, and humane people keep their jinrikisha coolies
and themselves in-doors. With the cooling dusk mos-
quitoes swarm from all these gardens and hill-side groves,
and the victim fans and slaps until he creeps for safety
under his mosquito-net, which, unhappily, does not ex-
clude the nimble flea, whose ravages test both his en-
durance and his temper. At sunrise all the temples in
Kioto open their gates for the first mass, and at dawn
pilgrimages to these sacred spots may begin, the odor
and silence of that dewy hour adding to their peace and
sanctity.
All the way from Yaami's to the Yasaka pagoda and
the Kiomidzu temple the hill-side is covered with temple
and monastery grounds, the way leading through broad,
tree-shaded avenues and narrow paths by bamboo groves
or evergreen thickets. Wide, flagged walks and grand
stair-ways follow the terraces to temples and bell-towers,
screened by open-work walls and approached through
monumental gate-ways made beautiful by carving, gild-
ing and painting, inlaid metals, and fine tiles. Crossing
from one temple enclosure to another, the walk extends
for two miles along the brow of the hill through beauti-
ful grounds. The park-like demesne of Higashi Otani,
with its imperial tombs, adjoins Yaami's, and next it is
the Kotaiji, with its noble avenues. At the end of one
broad path- way, traversing the upper part of the Kotaiji
grounds, the Yasaka pagoda, with its five stories of curv-
ing roofs and gables hung with old bronze bells, stands
like a picture in the arching frame of green. These ven-
erable pagodas, their walls covered with wondrous carv-
ings and bracket! ngs, faded to dim red and tarnished
337
ytnrikisha Days in Japan
gold, with the gray and white tiles of their picturesque
roofs half overgrown with mosses and vines, the topmost
ridge finished with a tapering, spiral piece of iron, de-
light the lover of the picturesque. Yasaka's cracked
and tongueless bells have long ceased to swing and ring
with every breeze, but they give an airy and fantastic
touch to the fine old structure. The pagoda dates from
the sixth century, and for twelve hundred years its four
altars have heard the prayers of faithful Buddhists. The
early light gilds its eastern wall, and the rich sunset
makes of it a palace of the imagination. To me it seemed
most beautiful one late afternoon, when, hurrying down
the steep steps of a narrow street behind it, I saw its
outlines, delicate and strong, against a glowing orange
sky.
All about the pagoda and the neighboring slopes of
Kiomidzu are potteries and shops for the sale of the
cheap porcelain and earthen-ware that pilgrims and visit-
ors are prone to buy on their way to and from the temples.
The eminence is known as Teapot Hill, and the long,
steep street leading from Gojo bridge to the Kiomidzu
gates is lined on either side of its hilly half-mile with
china shops. There one may collect his three hundred
and sixty-five teapots in an hour, and few leave without
a souvenir of Kiomidzu porcelain, be it from Kanzan's or
Dohachi's godowns of exquisite wares, or from the long
rows of charming little open shops. Kiomidzu is the
centre of the porcelain-makers' district, as the manufact-
urers of faience are grouped together in the Awata
quarter, a mile beyond, and behind the little shop-fronts
and blank walls are busy work-rooms and burning kilns.
The founding of the Kiomidzu temple is lost in fable,
and its legends are many and confusing. All the Japan-
ese rulers, warriors, and Shoguns have had something to
do with the place, and every foot of its enclosure is his-
toric. It is the popular temple of the people, enshrin-
338
Kioto Temples
ing one of the thirty -three famous Kwannons of the
empire, tQ which pilgrims flock by thousands, and where
one sees the most active forms of the faith. Climbing
the breathless hill-slopes and stone stair-ways the visitor
reaches a giant gate-way, in whose shadow mendicant
priests stand with extended bowl, straw hats concealing
them to the shoulders, and their maize and purple gar-
ments hung with rosaries. There are two pagodas and
innumerable stone lanterns and shrines, upon which the
faithful toss pebbles as they pray. If the stone remains
the prayer is answered, and the pilgrim proceeds with a
lightened heart. The Hondo, or main hall, is a most
ancient building, one half resting on the slope of the
hill and the rest extending in a broad platform propped
up by heavy timbers and scaffolding over the face of a
precipice. From this platform jealous husbands used
to hurl their wives ; those who survived the fall of one
hundred and fifty feet to the jagged rocks below being
proved innocent of wrong -doing, and those who per-
ished guilty. There are no rows of ticketed clogs at
the steps of the Hondo, nor soft, clean mats within.
The hall is open and benches are set before the altar,
where the weary, dusty pilgrim may sit and, resting,
pray. Votive tapers are brought to the shrine, and the
low beams overhead are covered with votive pictures.
One fortunate afternoon we chanced upon a matsuri
at Kiomidzu. All Teapot Hill was crowded with peo-
ple, girls and children in their gayly-colored crapes and
gauzes vying in brightness with the decorated houses.
Priests, sitting on small, canopied platforms, hammered
silver-toned gongs to call the faithful to give offerings.
Coins were tossed in generously on the blankets where
the priests sat, but they were not the thick modern cop-
per sens, nor yet silver. Money-changers had their lit-
tle stands along the via sacra, and in exchange for a
sen the believers received a handful of ancient rins and
M9
Jinrtkisha Days in Japan
half-rins. Thus provided, the pilgrim could bestow his
pious alms on each group of priests, and if lifi followed
the polite custom of wrapping any money gift in a bit
of soft paper, the priests could not tell whether he had
thrown silver or copper. Within the temple grounds
tateba were crowded with feasters and ten -drinkers,
dozens of fruit-stands were piled with slices of water-
melon, and fans painted with Kiomidzu scenes were
sold on every side.
Inside the temple itself the scuffle of clogs and mut-
terings of pilgrims drowned all sounds save the silvery
notes of the gongs. On the image - covered altar, one
hundred and ninety feet in length, veiled by clouds of
incense, were dimly visible the gilded statue of the di-
vine Kwannon, the special patroness of Kiomidzu, and
the figures of the priests. It was not easy to pick one's
way among the kneeling multitudes offering their fer-
vent prayers oblivious to all surroundings. As one pil-
grim departed the rest crowded forward, continuing the
beseeching "" Namu Amida Butsu'^ (Hear me, Great
Lord Buddha) which they mutter so rapidly that only a
long-drawn ^'- Na-na-na-na-na-a-a'''' is audible as they
press their palms together and wind their beads around
their hands.
In the second temple, or Amida, were more candles,
incense, and priests, and more kneeling people. At the
end of the hanging platform of this temple is a small,
latticed shrine dedicated to Kamnosube-no-Kami, the
goddess who watches over lovers. He who would make
sure of the affections of his beloved buys a printed
prayer from the priest, rolls it into a narrow strip, and
then, with the thumb and little finger of the right-hand,
ties it to Kamnosube-no-Kami's grating, and implores
her aid. If any other fingers are used to tie the knot,
or if they even touch the prayer - paper, the charm is
broken and the goddess is deaf. While we looked on
230
THE TRUE-LOVER'S SHRINK AT KIOMIDZO
Kioto Temples
one pretty creature in a red crape underdress and a
dark-blue gauze kimono, who blushed most beautifully,
bent her anxious face to the grating and deftly wound
her fingers in and out. Following her a middle-aged
coolie tossed in his fractional coin, rang, clapped, and
tied his sentimental petition to the lattice.
Holiday crowds poured up and down the broad paved
walks, wandered about the paths, or gathered in the pa-
vilions, while new throngs toiled up the stone staircases
to join in the festival. On the overhanging platforms
sacred dances had been performed all day, giving place
towards nightfall to the low tables covered with red
blankets, around which companies picturesquely grouped
themselves, while pretty nesans pattered back and forth
to serve them. The whole scene was so spectacular and
fascinating that we sat there watching the moving
crowds and looking out over the city below us until
the sun sank in clouds of splendid color, and twink-
ling lights began to creep upward from the streets.
Near the top of Teapot Hill a narrow lane diverges
into a dense bamboo grove, where the feathery tips meet
far overhead, and only a green twilight filters down to
the base of the myriad slender columns. This bamboo
grove is one of the finest in Kioto, and its cool shade is
most grateful on a summer day. Beyond it is the fa-
mous Spectacle Bridge, a massive stone pile, whose two
low arches are not unlike a bowed spectacle - frame.
The lotus-pond which it crosses is surrounded in the
early summer mornings with breakfasting parties, who
sit there to see the splendid flowers open their cups
with the first rays of the sun. When that show is over
these flower-lovers wander through the farther confines
of Nishi Otani, with its superb bronze gates and dragon-
guarded tanks, and its imperial tombs hidden away in
the quiet groves.
The chain of temples still lengthens southward, and
Jtnrikisha Days in Japan
among the most ancient, surrounded with walls of Titanic
bowlders, is the Dai Butsu temple, with its huge image
of gilded wood, and its fallen bell, whose interior would
make a temple in itself. A stone monument, the Mimi-
zuka, covers the heap of thousands of human ears, cut by
Hideyoshi's generals from the heads of enemies slain in
the Korean expedition, salted and brought home as proof
of prowess. Last is the Sanjiusangendo, or Hall of the
Thirty-three Thousand Buddhas, which, with its rows and
rows of tall gilded statues, is a curious place, but less like
a sanctuary than a wholesale warehouse of sacred images.
Northward from Yaami's the chain of temples extends
along the leafy hill-side, first among them being the great
Chioin sanctuary, one of the largest, oldest, and richest
in Kioto. Its colossal gate-way, its long avenues, great
stone embankments, terraces, staircases, and groves of
ancient trees proclaim its age and endless honors.
Stretching over surrounding acres run the yellow walls of
its monastery grounds and priests' houses. The Chioin's
altar is a mass of carved and gilded ornaments surround-
ing a massive golden shrine, while the ceiling and walls
of the vast interior are hardly less splendid. Occasional
worshippers kneel in the vast matted hall muttering their
prayers, but usually only a solitary old priest is seen in-
dustriously hammering at a drum, shaped like a huge,
round sleigh-bell. From five o'clock in the morning un-
til the temple closes at four in the afternoon the hard,
mechanical thunk, thiink never stops. A nice old woman,
who must be a professional mender, judging by her in-
cessant patching and darning of blue-cotton garments,
takes care of the shoes while visitors roam through the
temple stocking-footed ; and proudly does she point out,
among the bracketed eaves, the sun-umbrella which the
great builder of the temple purposely left there. Back of
the main temple are other shrines and suites of recep-
tion-rooms, with screens and ceilings decorated by fa-
»34
Kioto Temples
mous artists, and quiet comers where abbot and priest
may sit and look upon the exquisite little gardens.
If I were a good Buddhist I should say a prayer or two
to the Chioin's great bell, an inverted cup of bronze
eighteen feet in height, breathing music so sweet that it
thrills the listener, and ringing so seldom that no one
willingly misses its voice. This bell hangs by itself in
a shady place at the top of a long stone staircase, and is
struck from the outside by a swinging wooden beam that
brings out soft reverberations without jar or clang. This
huge hammer is unchained on rare days of the month at
the sunrise hour, and in the stillness of dawn one can-
not tell whence the sound comes. It is in the whole air ;
under one's feet, or tingling and beating within one's
body, while yet the ear seems to drink in the very ec-
stasy of sound.
About Nanjenji's lofty gate-way are clustering tea-bush-
es, and between its ancient shrine, its tombs, and pictu-
resque bell-tower modern engineering has brought the
aqueduct from Lake liiwa, the long tunnel emerging from
the hill-side back of the buildings. Further on are lyekan-
do, with its lotus lake and verdant cemetery; Niyakuoji's
pretty garden and cascade ; and Shishigatami, Shinniodo,
and Yoshida, each with its distinctive charm and interest.
The way from these sacred places, passing through the
potters' district of Awata, and coming suddenly out on a
level of rice fields, with Kurodani's pagoda and grove
rising like an island from their midst, has been likened
to the abrupt transportation from Rome to the Cam-
pagna. Kurodani is a beautiful old sanctuary, and the
steep hill on which stands its great pagoda is an ideal
Buddhist burial-ground. Tombs, stone tablets, and lan-
terns, and hundreds of images of Buddha, in stone and
bronze, crowd against each other, and some priest or pil-
grim, ever picturesque, is always moving up or down the
broad gray staircase.
«3S
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MONTO TEMPLES AND THE DAIMONJI
As an evidence of the vitality of their faith the Monto
Buddhists point to their great new temple in the south-
ern part of the city. This Higashi Hongwanji (Eastern
Temple) was eight years in building, at an enormous
cost, and is the largest temple in Japan. The squared
trunks of keyaki-trees that support floor and roof are of
a fine, close grain, that lasts for centuries without paint
or preserving process, A collection of thick black ropes
hangs from the beams, all of them made from the hair
of pious women too poor to offer other contributions.
The largest rope is five inches in diameter and two hun-
dred and fifty feet long, the hair, wound in a dozen sep-
arate strands around a slender core of hemp, having
been given by three thousand five hundred of the pious
maids and matrons of the province of Echizen. Here
and there in this giant cable are pathetic threads of
white hair, the rest being deep black. Each summer
pious men came to give their days' labor to the temple
when they had no money. The best workers in wood
from several provinces, craftsmen descended from gen-
erations of wood-carvers, were brought together to labor
for several years on the decorative panels, carving from
solid blocks of hard keyaki wonderful birds and flow-
ers, curling waves and dashing spray — designs full of
movement and life.
This Shin, or Monto sect of Buddhists, is one of the
richest and largest. . Its temples are always built in the
336
The Monto Temples and the Daimonji
heart of cities, and always in pairs, a Nishi Hongwanji
(Western Temple) and a Higashi Hongwanji (Eastern
Temple) being found in Tokio, Kioto, and Osaka. At
the Nishi Hongwanji of Kioto the vast interior discloses
masses of carving, gilding, lacquer, damascening, and
paintings on golden groundwork, and Monto altars are
more splendid than those of any other sect. This Hong-
wanji is very rich, having been endowed with lands and
mines in the days of Hideyoshi, its special protector,
and the temple enclosure holds many relics of the Taiko,
Connected with the temple is a great yashiki, or abbot's
residence, and the wall -screens and superb ceilings,
brought from Hideyoshi's castle at Fushimi, south of
Kioto, to adorn the suites of reception-rooms, are finer
than any in the imperial palace. The carved, gilded,
and lacquered ceilings, the wonderful paintings on gold-
leaf surfaces, the damascened mountings of the screens,
the vast audience hall, the private rooms, the No pavil-
ion, and the court where the enemies' heads were dis-
played, are all magnificent. In a corner of the grounds
is the pleasure -garden of Hideyoshi, a leafy, lake -cen-
tred paradise, and a marvel of artistic arrangement, with
its winding water overhung with wistaria arbors, crossed
by picturesque bridges, reflecting its stone lanterns, thick-
ets of oleander, bamboo, pine, palm, and banana trees,
and the two beautiful miniature palaces within the maze.
On a pine-covered knoll is the thatched summer-house,
where the fierce yet poetic warrior sat in his armor to
watch the moon rise over the trees and turn the lake to
a silver shield at his feet.
The Hongwanji services are splendid and impressive
ceremonies ; the companies of gorgeously-clad priests,
the chanting, the incense, the lighted tapers, the bells,
the opening of the doors of the golden shrine to display
the image of Buddha, all bearing a strange resemblance
to the worship of Romish churches. The faithful kneel,
yinriktsha Days in Japan
touch themselves, and use the rosary in prayer ; and high
mass at the Hongwanji might almost be high mass at
St. Mark's. Mass is celebrated at five o'clock on every
morning of the year, and all day worshippers may come
to kneel and pray before the altars. On the first and
fifteenth days of each month special services are held at
two o'clock in the afternoon, and every January recurs
a week of prayer in honor of the founder of the Shin
sect, when priests come from all parts of the empire to
the mother-temple. The fortnightly afternoon services
consist of readings from the sacred scriptures, and the
chanting of Japanese and Chinese sacred poems by some
twenty priests in black gauze stoles ; a larger chorus,
hidden behind the central shrine and altar, joining in
and responding. The high-priest, in a cardinal and gold
brocade kesa, sits directly facing the shrine, and at in-
tervals touches the swinging plate of bronze used as a
gong in the order of worship. The golden shrine, in a
great gilded alcove, or chancel, bears countless gilded
lotus flowers and candelabra, and slender columns of in-
cense rise from the priests' low reading-desk. At the
conclusion of the chanted service the doors of the shrine
are opened, and the sacred image displayed in a silence
broken only by low strokes on the gong. Then the
priests file away, and the faithful, flocking into the va-
cant place behind the rail, and kneeling where the priests
have knelt, prostrate themselves, rub their rosaries in
their palms, and repeat with ecstatic fervor the invoca-
tion : " Namu Amida Butsu " (Hail, Great Lord Buddha).
Every year, on the temple steps, the contributions of
rice from distant provinces are stacked high in their
cylindrical straw bales, themselves emblems of abun-
dance. This rice is sent as an annual tribute from dif-
ferent parts of the empire to the head-temple of the sect
at Kioto, to be used for offerings in the sanctuaries, for
the priests' food, and for alms to the poor.
?38
The Monto Temples and the Daimonji
The present high priest has a longer genealogy than
the Emperor, and is the seventy-third of his family, in
direct succession, to live in the same Kioto yashiki. Be-
sides his ecclesiastical rank, he is a nobleman of the
first order, and moves in the imperial circle, his modern
brougham with liveried men being often seen driving in
and out of the palace enclosures in the western end of
the city. Besides his temple services, he directs the
large college which the Hongwanji maintains for the
education of young men for the priesthood and for ad-
vanced philosophical studies for lay students. In its
library is a vast literature of Buddhism, the scrolls of
silk and paper in boxes of priceless gold lacquer facing
the neatly-bound volumes of Sinnett, Sir Edwin Arnold,
and other foreign writers. The college employs teachers
of all European languages, and intends to send mission-
ary workers to European countries. One of the priestly
instructors, Mr. Akamatsu, spent several years in Eng-
land, and has made comparative religions his great study.
This admirable scholar is an admirable talker as well,
and every student of Buddhism in Japan is referred to
his vast stores of information. The breadth and liber-
ality of Mr. Akamatsu's views are shown in his belief in
the brotherhood of all religions, their likeness, and their
convergence towards " that far-off, divine event, towards
which the whole creation moves." It was he who drew
up and translated that new canon of his faith, which in-
troduced passages from the Sermon on the Mount, and
who explained that these contained exactly the Bud-
dhist tenets. The Shin Buddhists are called the Protes-
tants of that faith. The priests may marry, and are not
required to fast, to do penance, make pilgrimages, or
abstain from animal food. They believe in salvation by
faith in Buddha, and in those ever- higher transmigra-
tions of the soul which finally attain Nirvana. Their
priests maintain that the presence of Christian mission-
339
yinrikisha Days in yapan
aries has made no difference with their people, the schol-
arly and intelligent seeing that the two faiths differ only
in a few articles and practices. For the lower orders,
these spiritual shepherds declare Buddhism to be the
better religion, its practice for centuries having made
the masses the gentle, kindly, patient, and contented
souls that they are. One priest, sent to Europe to study
the effects of Christianity, reported that vice, crime, and
misery were greater there than in Japan, and that the
belief of the west seemed less able to repress those evils
than the belief of the east. These Monto priests, too,
express broad views about the reciprocity of nations and
the fair exchange of missionaries. Now that English
clergymen and thinkers study Buddhism in the monas-
teries of Ceylon, avowing their acceptance of the articles
with much sacred ceremony, Monto apostles may yet
preach to the people of England and America. How-
ever this may be, the priests do not fear the proselyting
labors of the Doshisha teachers in Kioto, and speak
warmly of its good works, and particularly of its hospi-
tal and training-school for nurses.
In 1885 the first American missionaries came to Kio-
to, and as the sacred city is beyond the treaty limits,
the college and hospital are maintained under the name
of the Doshisha company, and the foreigners engaged
in the work are ostensibly in Japanese employ. Back
of the Christian Japanese, who stands as president of
this company, are the rich Mission Boards, which furnish
the money, and direct its expenditure and the method
of work. Each teacher in the Dosliisha school is really
a missionary, and outside the class-room carries on ac-
tive evangelical work. School buildings, hospital, and
residences for the foreign teachers all front on the high
yellow walls of the imperial palace grounds, significant
testimony to the changes that have come, the barriers
and prejudices that have given way. The school is
The Monto Temples and the Daimonji
crowded to its furthest capacity, the hospital is besieged,
and physicians overworked. The teachers claim that
all the students are Christians, that the new religion is
spreading, and that the people are most anxious to know
about it. While they do not affirm that Buddhism and
the old religions are dying, the success of their work
sustains their conviction. They have erected substan-
tial brick buildings and comfortable dwellings, and have
a general air of permanency. The Dosliisha was fortu-
nate in its founders and first corps of instructors and the
records they made, so that, when disasters overtook it,
that prestige prevailed, and after unhappy dissensions the
Doshisha returned to its original purposes and lines, and
'the schools and hospital continue their excellent work.
Of foreign missions in Japan there are the P'rench
Catholic, Russian -Greek, English and Canadian work-
ers belonging to both Established Church and dis-
senting sects, while the Foreign Mission Boards of the
United States have more than three hundred agents
and teachers in Japan, nearly all of whom have fami-
lies. Meanwhile, 191,968 Shinto temples, 101,085 Shinto
priests, and the whole influence of the Government en-
courages this state religion, of which the Emperor is the
visible head. There are 72,039 Buddhist temples, and
109,922 Buddhist priests and 13,922 students proclaim
that faith, while pilgrims to the thirty -three famous
Kwannons of the empire do not lessen in number. A
large fraction of the people profess no religion whatever,
among whom are many of the younger generation of
nobles, who, having studied and lived abroad, have
adopted materialism, atheism, or agnosticism, like other
foreign fashions. When an American devotee of theos-
ophy expounded his occult science in a round oL" temple
addresses he aroused a polite interest, but caused no
excitement and attracted no body of followers. A Uni-
tarian agent enjoyed greatest favor among tne highest
Q a4<
Jinrtkisha Days in Japan
circles of the capital, his system of higher philosophy
appealing strongly to those cultivated thinkers and men
of letters.
The common people, like the ignorant of other races,
do not at all comprehend the religion they do profess,
observing its forms as a habit or a matter of blind con-
vention, and celebrating its events with ceremonies and
decorations, festivals and anniversaries, whose signifi-
cance they cannot explain. Japanese streets suddenly
blossom out with flags and lanterns at every door-way
and along miles of eaves, and if you ask a shopkeeper
what this rejoicing means, he will reply, " Wakarimasen"
or " Shirimasen " (I do not know). Then some learned
man tells you that it is the anniversary of the death of
Jimmu Tenno, or the autumn festival, when the first rice
of the garnered crop is offered to the gods by the Em-
peror in the palace chapel, by the priests at every Shin-
to shrine, and at every household altar in pious homes,
or some other traditional occasion kept as a Govern-
ment holiday.. Closing the Government offices on Sun-
day, and making that a day of rest, was a matter of
practical convenience merely, and the result of the
adoption of a uniform calendar with the rest of the
world, and a modern military establishment on foreign
models.
One of the festivals of a religious character which is
understood by the people, and is, perhaps, the most re-
markable of all Kioto's great summer illuminations, is
that of the Daimonji, at the end of the Bon Matsuri, or
Festival of the Dead. According to Buddhist belief, the
spirits of the departed return to earth for three days in
mid-August, visiting their families and earthly haunts,
and flitting back to their graves on the night of the third
day. During the continuance of the Bon Matsuri, lan-
terns and paper strips are hung in front of those houses
in which a death has occurred during the year, and burn-
342
The Monto Temples and the Daimonji
ing tapers and bowls of food are set before the little
household shrines. Alike in the backs of shops, in the
humblest abodes, and in villas and noble yashikis, lights,
offerings, and fragrant incense welcome back the dead.
In the cemeteries the bamboo sticks at each gravestone
are daily filled with fresh flowers, and on the night of
their return the spirits are guided to their resting-places
by the light of lanterns and oil-tapers burning through-
out these cities of their silent habitation. This beauti-
ful custom, sanctified by the observance of many centu-
ries, is tinged with little sadness, and the last night of
the Festival of the Dead is the great Festival of Lan-
terns, the most brilliant of the long, gay, fantastic Kioto
summer.
We were kindly invited by a Japanese gentleman to
witness the illumination from the upper story of a pa-
goda-like school-house, that rose high above all the roofs
in the heart of the city. Two hundred children were
chirping and chattering in the open-sided class-rooms of
the lower floors, all eager to see the Daimonji, the great
signal-fires on the hills. All sat on their heels in order-
ly rows, and silently bobbed to the mats at sight of us,
going on afterwards with their merry babble, which all
through the summer evening floated up to us in happy
chorus.
As dusk gave way to dark, we beheld a glimmer of
light like a waving torch on the side of the mountain
that stands like a tower beyond Maruyama. Another
and another flash shone out against the dark face of
Daimonji-yama's long slope, until the flames joined and
lines of fire ran upward, touched, crossed, and finally
blazed out in the gigantic written character Dai, in out-
line not unlike a capital A. Next a junk appeared in
fiery outlines on the slope north of the city ; another
mystic character glowed on the next hill ; and to the
north-west a smaller Dai showed, like the reflection of
»4S
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
the first huge symbol. Full. in the west gleamed a torii,
a pillared gate-way of fire. From every house-top and
from the bridges came the shouts of enthusiastic spec-
tators, and the children in the rooms below us twittered
like a box full of sparrows. For centuries the priests of
mountain temples have taught their simple parishioners
to lay their gathered firewood in the proper lines, and
regular trenches mark the course of each device. The
longer lines of the big Dai are each a half-mile in length,
and the five miles' distance of our point of view dwarfed
them to perfect proportions. These fiery symbols burned
for half an hour before they began to waver, and long
after their images still danced and burned in our vision
against the succeeding blackness.
Down in the city the crowds surged through the lan-
terned streets, each adding the illumination of his hand-
lantern to the scene. The river-bed was all recrossing
lines and arches of lights, and myriad points of uncov-
ered flames were reflected in the waters. The hill-sides
twinkled and glowed with the innumerable torches in
the cemeteries, and thus, lighted back to their tombs by
all the city and the hill-side, the Buddhist spirits rest
until the next midsummer season recalls them to their
joyous Kioto.
CHAPTER XXV
THE PALACES AND CASTLE
Kioto remains faithful to its traditions, and yields
but slowly to the foreign fashions which absorb Tokio.
Tokio has nineteenth-century political troubles, even dem-
agogues and hare-brained students, that unruly young ele-
ment, the soshi, keep it in a state of agitation, and some-
times appeal to the old two-handed sword, the dagger,
244
The Palaces and Castle
and the cowardly bomb. But Kioto, devoted to its old
order, maintains the reign of peace, while the arts flour-
ish.
For the thousand years during which this ancient Sa-
ikio remained the home of the Emperor, and of his nom-
inal subject, the Shogun, its western half was crowded
with the life centering about the two rulers. The ancient
Emperors were hidden within the vast palace enclosure,
the centre of other large demesnes, whose yellow walls
were marked with the five horizontal white lines which
indicate imperial possessions. This collection of palaces
and the yashikis of the kuges, or court nobles, were then
surrounded by one exterior wall and moat, making an
immense imperial reservation — a small isolated city.
Within a few years this exterior wall has been destroyed,
streets have been opened, and much of the space has
been turned into a public park. The imperial palace
buildings cover ten acres of ground, and are surrounded
by twenty-six acres of ornamental park. In each of the
four yellow outer^walls is a richly roofed and gabled
gate-way, as stately as a temple, the ends of the beams,
the ridges, and eaves decorated with golden chrysanthe-
mum crests. The great gate, opened only for the Em-
peror and his train, and through whose central passage
only the sacred being himself may be borne, faces south,
as does the throne, in accordance with the old supersti-
tions of the East. The evil influences always threatening
from the north-east are guarded against by many temples
beyond that side of the palace.
In these days of departed greatness only the Daidokoro
Mon (the august kitchen gate), a fine gabled structure in
the western wall, is used. After the visitor presents the
elaborate ofiicial permit, obtained by his legation from
the Imperial Household Department of Tokio, and
stamped after a personal inspection of the holder by the
Kioto bureau of that department, there is much running
«45
Jinrtkisha Days in 'Japan
to and fro of ancient officials, much restamping and re-
cording, before he is led through the precinct by an at-
tendant. Even with this guarantee, the severe and state-
ly old guardians, in their ancient dress and tonsure, seem
to look on the intruder with suspicion.
The Japanese gosho is not exactly translated by the
word " palace," and is merely a greater yashiki, or spread-
out house, constituting the sovereign's residence. This
gosho consists of so many separate roofed, one-story
wooden buildings as to make a small village. Each room,
or suite of rooms, occupies a distinct building, its outside
gallery or veranda forming the corridor, and its sliding
screens the inner walls. Each building has the great
sweeping roof of a temple, the belief in the divinity of
the Emperor, and his headship of the Shinto faith, re-
quiring that his actual dwelling should be a temple, rigid-
ly simple as a Shinto shrine, with thatched roof and un-
painted woods. These clustered houses are the survival
of the old nomad camps of Asia, as the upward curving
gables of the roof are a permanent form of their sagging
tent-tops. The palace has suffered from many fires, the
last occurring in 1854, but each rebuilding has followed
the original models, and the gosho looks just as it did
centuries ago. The same straw mats, open charcoal bra-
ziers, and loose saucers of oil in paper lamp-frames, in-
viting a conflagration there as in the humblest Japanese
home.
The walk around the outer galleries and connecting
corridors takes half an hour, and one must go stocking-
footed, or in the curious slippers furnished by the guar-
dians. In summer the recessed and sunless apartments
are cool and dim, but winter makes them bitterly cold
and forlorn. Except for two thrones, there is nothing
to be called furniture in the palace. The silk-bordered
mats of the floor, the paintings on the sliding screens,
the fine metal plates on all the wood-work, the irregular-
346
The Palaces and Castle
ly-shelved recesses, quaint windows, curious lattices, and
richly-panelled ceilings constitute its adornments. All
the wonderful kakemonos, vases, and curios were stored
in godowns when the Emperor left Kioto, and the seals
have not since been broken. On the screens in the pri-
vate apartments are many autograph poems, written by
court poets or imperial improvisators. The tea-rooms
and the garden tea-houses show how important were the
long-drawn ceremonies of cha no yu in those leisurely
days of the past.
The courts surrounding the state apartments are sand-
ed quadrangles, their surfaces scratched over in fine pat-
terns by the gardeners' bamboo rakes for the easy
detection of strange footprints. In the court-yard before
the old audience hall a cherry-tree, a wild orange-tree,
and a sacred bamboo, all emblematic, grow at either
side of the broad steps. In the middle of the wide,
temple- like apartment commanding this court stands
the sacred white throne of past centuries, a square tent
or canopy of white silk, with rich red borders at the
edges of the overlapping curtains. Two antique Chinese
dogs guard the throne. On New-year's Day, and at rare
intervals when the Emperor gave audience to his vassal
jailer, the Shogun, he sat on a silk cushion within the
closed tent, and only his voice was heard, speaking in
the quavering, long-drawn tones still used by the actors
in the No dance. The imperial princes stood at either
side of the throne, the kugd and officials of the highest
rank knelt on the steps, and the lowest officials in at-
tendance, the jige or " down to the earth " subjects,
prostrated themselves on the sands of the court, while
the mournful and muffled tones of the sacred voice
sounded.
When the Emperor gave his first audiences after the
Restoration, in 1868, he occupied a newer throne in the
Shishinden, a large audience hall with a lofty ceiling
yinrikisha Days in Japan
supported by round wooden columns. On the lower
part of the rear wall are some very old screens painted
with groups of Chinese and Korean sages. The floor is
of polished cedar, and the throne is like that of his an-
cestors, but with the curtains rolled up from the front
and two sides. It stands on a dais, guarded by the Chi-
nese dogs brought as trophies from Korea, and holds
THE THRONE OF 1868.
within it a simple lacquered chair, with lacquer stands
for the sacred sword and seal. After those audiences of
1868 the Emperor travelled to Tokio in a gold-lacquered
norimon, or closed litter, guarded by a train clad in the
248
The Palaces and Castle
picturesque dress and armor of centuries before, and
equipped with curious old weapons. He, himself, wore
voluminous silk robes and a stiff lacquer hat, and the
faithful kuges were attired in gorgeous brocades and silks.
When the Emperor and court returned to Kioto in 1878,
to open the railway to the seaport of Hiogo-Kobe, he was
dressed like a European sovereign, alighted publicly
from his railway car, and drove to the palace in a smart
brougham, escorted by troops with western uniforms and
weapons.
The Shiro, or Nijo castle, half a mile south of the pal-
ace, where the Shoguns flaunted their wealth and power,
is a splendid relic of feudal days. The broad moat,
drawbridge, strong walls, and tower-topped gate-ways
and angles date from the middle of the sixteenth century.
The great gate-way inside the first wall is a mass of elab-
orate metal ornament, ftom the sockets of the corner
posts to the ridge-pole, but the many trefoils of the To-
kugawas have been everywhere covered by the imperial
chrysanthemum. All the rooms, but especially the two
splendid audience- chambers, with a broad dais before
each tokonoma, are marvels of decorative art, rich in
gilded screens, with exquisite paintings and fine metal
work, wonderfully carved ramma, and sunken ceiling
panels, ornamented with flower circles, crests, and geo-
metric designs. But, alas ! a hideous Brussels carpet, a
round centre-table, and a ring of straight-backed chairs
have crowded their vulgar way into these stately rooms,
as into every government building and office, large shop,
and tea-house in Kioto.
The Shoguns had the Kinkakuji, the Ginkakuji, and
other suburban villas to which they might resort, and in
which many of them ended their days as abbots and
priests. The Emperors had only the exquisite Shuga-
kuin gardens at the foot of Mount Hiyeizan for their
pleasurings, until the Restoration gave all such rebel
349
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
property to the crown. The Kinkakuji (the gold -cov-
ered pavilion) and the Ginkakuji (the silver -covered
pavilion) stand at opposite sides of the city, each sur-
rounded with landscape-gardens, from which nearly all
Japanese gardens are copied. Both are as old as the
Ashikaga Shoguns, and both are now monasteries. The
Kinkakuji is the larger, and was even more splendid be-
fore it was despoiled of so many rare and historic stones
and garden ornaments, but the place is still a paradise.
Yoshimitsu, third of the Ashikaga Shoguns, built the
Kinkakuji, and thither the great Ashikaga retired to end
his life. This refuge figures in the many novels of the
time of the Ashikagas, when the War of the Chrysanthe-
mums, the Japanese War of the Roses, raged, and
the Emperors with the kuges suffered actual want and
privation. The memory of this third Ashikaga is ab-
horred, because he paid tribute to China and accepted
from that country in return the title of " King of Japan ;"
but he so fostered luxury and art that some of his other
sins are forgiven him. The pretty little palace at the
lake's edge, with its golden roof and lacquered walls,
has successfully withstood the centuries, and is still in-
tact. In the monastery buildings near the gate-way are
shown many wonderful kakemonos and screens, and in
one court is a pine-tree trained in the shape of a junk,
hull, mast, and sail perfectly re,produeed in the feathery,
living green needles of the tree. It is most interesting
to see how the patient gardeners have bent, interlaced,
tied, weighted down, and propped up the limbs and twigs
•to produce this model, with the slow labor of a century.
To the Ginkakuji retired the dignified Yoshimasa,
eighth of the Ashikaga Shoguns, to found a monastery
and to meditate, until with Murata Shinkio, the priest,
and Soami, the painter, he evolved the minute and elab-
orate ceremonies of cha no yu. The weather-beaten
boards and finely thatched roof of the first ceremonial
3^0
The Palaces and Castle
tea-house in Japan, built before Columbus set sail for
the Zipangu of Marco Polo, are greatly revered by Jap-
anese visitors. Beautiful is the way to the Ginkakuji, past
the high walls and gate-ways of monasteries, past the
towering gates of countless temples, up their long shad-
ed avenues, and on by bamboo groves and terraced rice
fields. You buy wooden admission tickets for ten sen,
which you give to a little acolyte, who opens the inner
gate-way. This chisai bonze san (small priest) might have
been twelve years old, but looked not more than five
when I first knew him, and from shaven head to san-
daled foot he was a Buddhist priest in miniature. This
Shinkaku, leading the way to the lake with solemn
countenance and hands primly clasped before him, sud-
denly broke forth into a wild, sing-song chant, which
recited the names of the donors of the rocks and lan-
terns to the great Ashikaga Yoshimasa. He made us
take off our shoes and creep up the steep and ancient
stair-way of the Ginkakuji to see a blackened and vener-
able image of Amida. Morning, noon, and night service
is said before the altar in the little old temple by the
lake, and this small priest burns incense, passes the sa-
cred books, and assists the wrinkled and aged priests in
the observances of the Zen sect of Buddhists. Back of
the monastery buildings is a lotus pond, where the great
pink flower -cups fill the air with perfume, and every
morning are set fresh before Buddha's shrine.
Going westward from Kioto the traveller crosses rice
fields, skirts a long bamboo hedge, and comes to the
summer palace of Katsura no Miya, a relic of the Tai-
ko's days. An aunt of the Emperor occupied it until
her recent decease, and to that is probably due its per-
fect preservation. An ancient samurai with shaven crown
and silken garments receives, with a dozen bows, the
handful of official papers that constitute a permit to visit
the imperial demesne. Dropping his shoes at the steps,
yinrikisha Days in Japan
the visitor wanders through a labyrinth of little rooms,
each exquisite, simple, and charming, with its golden
screens and gold-flecked ceilings. The irregularly shelved
recesses, the chigai dana of each room, the ramma, the
lattices and windows, are perfect models of Japanese taste
and art ; and the Taiko's crest is wrought in silver, gold,
and bronze on all tlie mountings, and is painted and
carved everywhere. The open rooms look upon a lovely
garden-, and paths of flat-topped stones lead through the
tiny wilderness of lake, forest, thicket, and stream ; over
old stone bridges, stained and lichen-covered, to pictu-
resque tea-houses and pavilions, overhanging the lake.
Stone Buddhas and stone pagodas stand in shadowy
places, and stone lanterns under dwarf pine-trees are re-
flected in the curve of every tiny bay. It is an ideal Jap-
anese garden, with the dew of a midsummer morning on
all the spider webs, and only the low note of the grass-
hoppers to break the stillness.
Although all tourists spend a day in shooting the rapids
of the Oigawa, it seems to me a waste of precious Kioto
time and a performance out of harmony with the spirit of
the place, although in May the blooming azaleas cause
that wild and narrow canon to blaze with color. The
flat-bottomed boats dart through the seven-mile gorge
and dash from one peril of shipwreck to another, just
saved by a dextrous touch of the boatmen's poles, which
fit into holes in the rocks that they themselves have worn.
The flooring of the boats is so thin as to rise and fall with
the pressure of the water, in a way that seems at first
most alarming. The passage ends at Arashiyama, a steep
hill clothed with pine, maple, and cherry-trees, which in
cherry-blossom time, or in autumn, is the great resort of
all Kioto, whose pleasurings there form the theme of half
the geisha's songs and the accompanying dances. From
the tea-house on the opposite bank the abrupt mount-
ain-side shows a mat of densest foliage. A torii at the
as*
The Palaces and Castle
river's edge, stone steps and lines of lanterns lead to a
temple on the summit, and down through the forest float
the soft, slow beats of a temple-bell. The tea-house is
famous for its fish-dinners, where tai, fresh from the cool,
green river, are cooked as only the Japanese can cook
them, and the lily bulbs, rice sandwiches, omelettes, and
sponge-cake are so good that the place is always crowded.
Katsura no Miya is just below Arashiyama, and after
one morning spent in the little palace, with its restful
shade and stillness, our half-naked coolies ran with us
through the glaring sunlight to the tea-house beside the
cool waters of the Oigawa. They barely waited for us
to step out of the jinrikishas before they plunged, laugh-
ing and frolicking, down the bank and leaped into the
river, splashing and swimftiing there like so many frogs.
They had run ten miles that morning, half of the way
under a baking sun, the perspiration streaming from
their bodies, and they plunged into the river as they
were, taking off their one cotton garment and washing
it, while they cooled themselves in the rushing waters.
Then, lying down quite uncovered in their own quarters
of the tea-house, they ate watermelon and cucumber,
drank tea and smoked, until they dropped asleep in the
scorching noonday of a cholera summer. In the late
afternoon, when it was time to begin the long ride back
to Maruyama, they limped out to us, lame and stiff in
every joint and muscle, coughing and croaking like ra-
vens. We felt that they must die in the shafts, but ex-
ercise soon relieved the cramped and stiffened limbs,
and they trotted on as nimbly as ever over the hills to
Kioto.
The coolie and his ways are matters of much interest
to foreigners, but after a time one ceases to be amazed
at their endurance or their recklessness. After the most
violent exercise, ninsoku, the coolie, will take off his one
superfluous garment and sit in summer ease in his dec-
«3
Jinrikisha Days in "Japan
orated skin. Back, breast, arms, and thighs are often
covered with elaborate tattooed pictures in blue, red, and
black on the raw -umber ground. His philosophy of
dress is a simple one. When the weather is too hot to
wear clothes they are left off, and a wisp of straw for the
feet, a loin-cloth, and a huge flat hat, a yard in diameter,
weighing less than a feather, are enough for him. When
there is no money to buy raiment he tattoos himself with
gorgeous pictures, which he would never hide were there
not watchful policemen and Government laws to compel
him into some scanty covering.
The diet of these coolies seems wholly insufficient for
the tremendous labor they perform — rice, pickled fish,
fermented radish, and green tea affording the thin nutri-
ment of working-days. Yet the most splendid specimens
of physical health are reared and kept in prize-fighting
condition on what would reduce a foreigner to invalid-
ism in a week. I remember that while resting one hot
morning under Shinniodo's great gate -way, my coolie,
who by an unusually early start had been interrupted
in his breakfast of one green apple, asked for some tea-
money. I watched the hungry pony while he treated his
companions to a substantial repast of tea and water-
melon. Strengthened and recuperated, he came back,
shouldered camera and tripod, and as he walked down
the hot flagging, complacently picked his teeth with
the sharp point of one tripod stick — a toothpick four
feet long !
Kioto Silk Industry
CHAPTER XXVI
KIOTO SILK INDUSTRY
Kioto remains the home of the arts, although no lon-
ger the seat of government. For centuries it ministered
to the luxury of the two courts, which gathered together
and encouraged hosts of artists and artisans, whose de-
scendants live and work in the old home. Kioto silks
and crapes, Kioto fans, porcelains, bronzes, lacquer, carv-
ings, and embroideries preserve their quality and fame,
and are dearer and better than any other.
Silk is the most valuable article of export which Japan
produces, and raw silk to the value of thirty millions of
yens goes annually to foreign consumers, while the home
market buys nearly seven millions of yens' worth of man-
ufactured fabrics. The Nishijin quarter of Kioto and
the Josho district, north-west of Tokio, are the great silk
centres of Japan, and any silk merchant, fingering a crape
gown, will tell instantly which of the rival districts pro-
duced it. Recently Kofu, west of Tokio, and Hachioji,
twenty miles south, have become important centres of
manufacture as well. The silk market has its fluctua-
tions, its panics, and its daily quotations by cable ; but
raw silk has so inherent a value that it is a good collat-
eral security at any bank, and the silk-broker is as well
established and important a personage in the mercantile
world of the Orient as the stock-broker in the Occident.
Next to specie or gems, silk is the most valuable of com-
modities in proportion to its bulk, the cargo of a single
steamer often representing a value of two million dollars
>S5
yinrtkisha Days in yapan
in gold. The United States is the greatest consumer of
Japan's raw silk. In 1875 fifty-three bales only of raw
silk and cocoons were shipped to America. Ih 1878
there were two thousand three hundred and thirty-six
bales, in 1887 some sixteen thousand eight hundred and
sixty-four bales, and in 1901 the export of raw silk to
America amounted to forty seven thousand six hundred
and sixty-two bales. Our share of the raw silk is nearly
all consigned to Paterson, N. J. With the opening of this
great foreign trade, silk is dearer to the Japanese con-
sumer than twenty years ago ; and while it still furnishes
the ceremonial dress, and is the choice of the rich, cotton
and, of late, wool have taken its place to a great extent.
Everywhere the rearing of the worms goes on. The
silk districts and villages are always thriving, prosper-
ous, and tidily kept, forming peaceful and contented
communities. Each house becomes both a nursery for
the worms and a home factory, where every member of
the family engages in the work. Wages in silk districts
range from eight to twenty cents, in United States gold,
for a day's work of eighteen hours, the higher price be-
ing paid to the most expert and experienced only. The
houses are all spacious, kept most exquisitely clean, ven-
tilated, and held to an even temperature. Sheets of pa-
per coated with eggs, and looking like so much sand-
paper, will in a few days fill the waiting trays with tiny
white worms. The mulberry-leaves have to be chopped
as fine as dust for these new-comers, which are daily
lifted to fresh trays by means of chopsticks, the fingers
being too rough and strong for such delicate handlings.
For a week at a time the tiny gluttons crawl and eat,
then take a day and night of sleep, maintaining this rou-
tine for five weeks, when, having grown large enough,
they begin to wind themselves up in cocoons. Then the
cauldron of boiling water and the whirling reel change
the yellow balls into great skeins of shining silk, ready
256
Kioto Silk Industry
to be twisted, tied, and woven either at home or across
the seas. Compressed into bales of a picul's weight, or
133^^ pounds, the raw silk finds its way to market, or,
woven in hand looms in the usual thirteen-inch Japanese
widths, or in wider measures for the foreign trade, it is
again sold by weight, the mome being the unit. One
hundred and twenty mome are equal to one pound.
Twenty-five yards of fine- white handkerchief-silk weigh
from 150 to 200 mome, and 100 momd of such silk
varies in price from six to seven dollars, gold.
Steam-looms are fast supplanting the old hand-ma-
chines in Nishijin and Josho. The Government sent
men to study the methods in use at Lyons and bring
back machinery, and now^there are filatures and facto-
ries in all the silk districts. Private corporations are
following the Government example. At the Kwangioba
no Shokoba the first exhibition of foreign machines, with
instruction in their use, was given. To-day the lively
clatter of the Jacquard loom is heard above the slow,
droning noise of the hand-loom behind Nishijin's miles
of blank walls. Slowly the weavers are abandoning the
rude loom, which was probably in use, like gunpowder,
at an age when Europeans clothed themselves in skins
and lived in caves ; and the singing draw-boy is descend-
ing from his high perch, where he has so long been lift-
ing the alternating handful of threads that make the
pattern.
In a tour of the Nishijin factories, one scorching Au-
gust day, we saw many of these primitive hand-looms,
with half-clad weavers tossing the shuttles of silk and
gold thread, their skin shining with the heat like polished
bronze, and marked all over with the scars of moxa
cones. Everywhere were gathered books upon books
filled with samples of superb brocades, many of them
more than a century old. Everywhere we were regaled
with sweets and thimble-cups of lukewarm amber tea,
» »S7
yinrzkisha Days in Japan
that seemed harmless as water, but murdered sleep.
Everywhere we found a new garden more enchanting
than the last, and everywhere the way in which work-
room and kitchen, living-room and sales-room were com-
bined ; women, children, family, workmen, and servants
were ruled over by the master of the home and factory,
offered a curious study in political economy and patri-
archal government.
Until the Emperor, and finally the Empress and court
ladies abandoned the national dress, the court-weaver of
brocade remained a considerable personage, for he and
his ancestors had been both tailors and dress-makers to
those august personages. We visited the beautiful gar-
den and lantern-hung verandas of this artistic dictator,
and sipped tea, fanned the while by attentive maids,
while the stout, dignified, and prosperous head of the an-
cient house and our Japanese official escort conversed.
Afterwards we were shown the books of brocade and
silks manufactured for the imperial family and court.
The gorgeousness of some of these, especially the blaz-
ing red brocade, stiff with pure gold thread and covered
with huge designs of the imperial chrysanthemum, or
the Paulownia crest of the Emperor's family, fairly daz-
zled us. We saw the pattern of the old Emperors' cere-
monial robes, and patterns designed by past Empresses
for their regal attire. Several of these were of a pure
golden yellow, woven with many gold threads ; one de-
sign half covered with fine, skeleton bamboos on the
shimmering, sunshiny ground. The splendid fabrics that
bear the imperial crest may be woven only for the reign-
ing family, and their furniture coverings, draperies, and
carriage -linings are as carefully made and guarded as
bank-note paper. Squares of thickest red silk, wrought
with a single gold chrysanthemum, are woven for the
Foreign Office, as cases for state papers and envoys'
credentials. Rolls of the finest white silk were ready to
258
Kioto Silk Industry
be made into undergarments for the Emperor, who, nev-
er wearing such articles twice, obliges his tailor to keep
a large supply ready ; and these garments that have once
touched the sacred person are highly treasured by loyal
subjects.
The weaver exhibited flaming silks covered with huge
peonies, or fine maple-leaves, or circles of writhing dra-
gons, which the outside million may buy if they choose,
but not a sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum are they priv-
ileged to obtain from him in any way. In discussing the
changeableness of the American taste, Kobayashi and
his staff wondered that the mass of our people did not
care for silks that would wear forever, rather than for
the cheap fancies of the^moment. The Japanese cling
to the really good things that have stood the test of a
century's taste, and Japanese ladies had a pride in wear-
ing the brocade that had been theirs for a lifetime and
their mothers' before them. In noble families inherited
ceremonial dresses are as highly treasured as the plate
and jewels of European families, though they are now
seldom worn. Rolls of such silks and brocades were
often presented by Emperor and Shogun to their court-
iers, and the common saying, " He wears rags, but his
heart is brocade," attests the esteem in which these ni-
shikis (brocades) were held in olden times, and those
yesso nishikis, with their, reverse a loose rainbow of woof
threads, are far removed from the thin, flat, papery, char-
acterless stuffs known as Japanese brocades in the cheap
foreign trade.
A heavy silk tapestry, peculiar to Japan, although sug-
gested by Chinese models, is best woven now at the
Dotemachi Gakko, an industrial school for girls, main-
tained by the Government. The art had nearly died
out when the aged tapestry-weaver was brought to the
school and given a class of the most promising pupils.
The fabric is woven on hand -frames, the design being
»59
Jinriktsha Days in Japan
sketched on the white warp threads, wrought in with
shuttles or bobbins, and the threads pressed down with a
comb. Each piece of the design is made by itself, and
connected by occasional cross threads, or brides, as in
lace. The fabric is not dear, considering its superior
beauty and durability, as compared to the moth-inviting
tapestries of the Gobelins and Beauvais, and conven-
tional and classic designs are still followed, the old dyes
used, and gold thread lavishly interwoven.
The gold thread employed in weaving brocades and
tapestries is either a fine thread wound with gold foil,
a strip of tough paper coated with gold-dust, or threads
wound with common gold -paper. The fineness and
quality of the gold affect the cost of any material into
which it enters, and in ordering a fabric or a piece of
embroidery one stipulates closely as to the gold-thread
employed. The fine gold -wires of Russian brocades
are very rarely used, because of their greater cost. The
manufacture of gold thread is an open secret, and wom-
en are often seen at work in the streets, stretching and
twisting the fine golden filaments in lengths of twenty
and thirty feet.
The old dyers were as much masters of their craft as
the old weavers ; and in trying to match the colors in a
piece of yesso nishiki, I once went the round of Paris
shops and dress-makers' establishments in vain. Noth-
ing they afforded would harmonize with the soft tones
of the old dyes. A distinguished American connoisseur,
wishing to duplicate a cord and tassel from one of his
old lacquer boxes, took it to a Parisian cord-maker. The
whole staff looked at it, and the proprietor asked per-
mission to unravel a bit, to decipher the twist and obtain
some long threads for the dyer. But with months of
time allowed him, he could not reproduce the colors nor
braid a cord like the original, nor even retwist the Jap-
anese cord he had unravelled.
360
Kioto Silk Industry
Velvet-weaving is one of the old arts, but it was ac-
'complished by the most primitive and laborious means,
and the fabrics, dull and inferior to foreign factory
velvets, do not rank among the more characteristic pro-
ductions of Japanese looms. Kioto's painted velvets are
unique, however, and charming effects are obtained by
painting softly-toned designs on the velvet as it comes
from the loom, with all the fine wires still held in the
looped threads. The painted parts are afterwards cut,
and stand in softly-shaded relief upon the uncut ground-
work.
The crape guild of Kioto is as large, and commercially
as important, in this day, as the brocade guild, whose
members rank first among manufacturers. All crape is
woven in tans, or lengths 6f sixty Japanese shaku, two and
a half shaku being equal to an English yard. On the loom
this material is a thin, lustrous fabric, hardly heavier
than the gauze on which kakemonos and fan mounts are
painted. It is so smooth and glossy that one cannot
discover the smoother warp and twisted woof threads,
alternately tight and loose, which give it its crinkly sur-
face. When finished, the web is plunged into a vat of
boiling water, which shrinks the threads and ensures the
wrinkled and lustreless surface. Once dried the tans
are tied like skeins, and lying in heaps, look like so much
unbleached muslin. Crape must be dyed in the piece,
and stretched, while damp, by bracing it across with in-
numerable strips of bowed bamboo. In the bath the
pieces shrink from one-third to one-half in width, and a
full tenth in length, but the more they shrink the more
cockled is the surface. When finished the tan may
measure from seventeen to twenty-four yards in length,
but weight and not measure determines its value, and
the scales are used instead of the yard-stick.
While the Chinese weave only the original Canton
crape, with its heavy woof and firmly twisted threads,
a6i
yinrzkisha Days in Japati
the Japanese have produced a dozen kinds, each wrin-
kled, cockled, waved, and crinkled in different ways. The
great Joshu district produces not as many kinds of crape
as Kioto, and Nishijin's looms are busier each year, weav-
ing crapes as light and thin as gauze, or as heavy and
soft as velvet ; some costing only thirty or forty cents
a yard, and others two and three dollars for an arm's
length. The soft, thick, heavily - ribbed kabe habuiai,
i^^^i
KABE HABUTAI
once kept for ceremonial gowns and the favorite gifts of
the great, is most expensive, having heavier threads and
larger cockles than other crapes, and never showing
crease or wrinkle. Plain crape, or chirimen, differs as the
fineness of thread and the closeness of weaving add to its
weight, Ebisii chirimen might be called repousee, from
the scale-like convexities of its surface, and is a most
fascinating fabric. Finest and most exquisite of all is
Kioto Silk Industry
the lustrous kinu chirimen, or crinkled silk, which shows
"bnly the finest lines and parallel ridgings marking its
surface lengthwise. Used chiefly for the carelessly tied
obi of the bath kimono, or as obishime, tied over the
CHIRIMEN
womens' heavy satin and brocade obis to keep their stiff
folds in place, these stringy scarfs add a last artistic
toucR of color to a costume. Kinu chirimen shrinks
half its width, but loses nothing in length in the bath,
and a tan a yard wide ranges from eighteen to twenty-
eight dollars in price. Kanoko chirimen is plain crape
dotted over with knots or projections in different colors,
a result arrived at by processes similar to those em-
ployed at Arimatsu for dyeing cotton goods.
Yamamai, so little known outside the home market, is
a most artistic fabric, roughly and loosely woven of the
threads of the wild, mountain silk-worm, that is fed on
a6j
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
oak- leaves. Yamamai has the natural yellow color of
the cocoons, is considered both a cure and preventive
of rheumatism, and is often worn at the command of
foreign physicians. It is softer to the touch than the
Chinese pongee, not being weighted with the clay dress-
ing of Shantung pongees, while much heavier than the
Indian tussores, all three of these fabrics being the
product of the same wild oak-spinner.
The painted crapes of Kioto, specially designed for
children's holiday dresses and obis, are works of art, in
the manufacture of which the old capital holds almost a
monopoly. All the elaborate processes of patterning
EBISU CHIRIMEN
such crapes were shown us one morning at Nishimura's
great establishment. First, on a square of white crape,
wrung out in water and pasted down at the edges on a
board, the outline of the principal design was sketched
264
Kioto Silk Industry
in indigo. This line was then carefully covered by a
thread of starch, drawn from a glutinous ball held upon
the point of a stick, while the painter turned and tilted
the crape to receive it. This starch, or '* resist," as oc-
cidental dyers term it, is to prevent the spreading of the
colors by capillary attraction, and the limits of every
color must be carefully defined, unless the fabric is to
be made one of those marvellous studies of blended and
KI.NU CHIRI.MEN
merging tints. As soon as the first color dried, the first
starchy outline was washed out, and another drawn for
the second color. After the removal of each "resist,"
the square was stretched on bowed bamboos and dried
over a hibachi. The artist had purposely worked out
his design with such cunning that it was only when the
last touches in red had been given that we discovered
the Daimonji's fires burning on the mountain-side, and
265
"Jinriktsha Days in Japan
a troop of men, women, children, and jinrikishas, all
with glowing lanterns, figuring as silhouettes on Sanjio
bridge.
When a whole tan of crape is to be painted, much of
the design may be stencilled through perforated card-
board, but, in general, the best painted crapes display
free-hand sketches, with patterns never exactly repeated,
nor exactly matching at the edges. After the general
outline is sketched, the tan, sewn together at the ends,
is made to revolve horizontally on two cylinders, like a
roller towel, passing before a row of seated workmen,
each of whom adds a single color, or applies the " resist,"
and slips it along to the next. Sitting on the mats, the
soles'of his feet turned upward in his lap, in a pose that
a circus contortionist might envy, each workman has a
glowing hibachi at his knees, over which he dries his
own work. And such work ! Hazy rainbows on misty
skies, flights of birds, shadows of trees and rushes,
branches of pines and blossoming twigs, comical fig-
ures, animals, and fantastical chimeras, kaleidoscopic ar-
rangements of the most vivid colors. the eye can bear.
These painted crapes are beyond compare, and the Eng-
lish and Dutch imitations in printed delaines fall ab-
surdly short.
Following the Chinese example, Kioto silk -weavers
now make silk rugs equalling the famous ones of Pe-
kin. Even when new they have a finer bloom and
sheen than the old prayer-rugs of western Asia, but their
designs, first made from the suggestions of an American
house, are neither Japanese, Turkish, nor at all Orien-
tal, nor do they allow the best effects to be obtained.
At two dollars a square foot, these thick, soft rugs make
the costliest of floor coverings in a country where the
cotton and hemp rugs of Osaka sell for a few cents a
square foot, and the natural camel's-hair rugs of North
China for eighteen cents a square foot.
*66
Embroideries and Curios
CHAPTER XXVII
EMBROIDERIES AND CURIOS
Their range of stitches, their ingenious methods and
combinations, and the variety of effects attained with the
needle and a few strands of colored silk, easily place the
Japanese first among all embroiderers. Although China
taught them to embroider, they far surpass the Chinese
in design, color, and artistic qualities, while they attain
a minute and mechanical exactness equal to the soul-
less, expressionless precision of the best Chinese work.
They can simulate the hair and fur of animals, the
plumage of birds, the hard scales of fishes and drag-
ons, the bloom on fruit, the dew on flowers, the muscles
of bodies, tiny faces and hands, the patterned folds of
drapery, the clear reflection of lacquer, the glaze of por-
celains, and the patina of bronzes in a way impossible to
any but the Japanese hand and needle. Sometimes they
cover the whole groundwork with couched designs in a
heavy knotted silk, and this peculiar embroidery has the
name of kindan nuitsiike. With floss silk, with twist-
ed silks, with French knots, and with gold and silver
thread, couched down with different colored silks, with
silk threads couched, and with concealed couchings, a
needle-worker attains every color effect of the painter ;
nor does the embroiderer disdain to use the brush, or
to powder and spatter his designs with gold, nor to en-
croach upon the plastic art by his wonderful modelling
of raised surfaces, rivalling the sculptor with his counter-
feit faces. His invention and ingenuity are inexhausti-
ble, and the modern craftsmen preserve all the skill of
their ancestors.
»67
yinriktsha Days in Japan
The oldest existing piece of Japanese needle-work is
the mandalla of a nun, kept at Tayema temple in Yama-
to, which is certainly of. the eighth century, although
legend ascribes it to the divine Kwannon. Pieces of
equal antiquity, doubtless, are in the sealed godowns of
Nara temples, but very little is known of them. The
latest triumphs of the art, pieces showing the limit of
the needle's possibilities, are the ornamental panels and
makemono executed for the Tokio palace, and other
work by the same artists exhibited at Paris in 1889.
This exhibition work was executed under imperial com-
mand at Nishimura's, the largest silk-shop in Kioto, a
place to which every visitor is piloted forthwith. Solid
brown walls, black curtained doors, and the crest of
three hexagons are all that one sees from without ; but
the crest is repeated at door-ways across the street and
around corners, until one realizes what a village of crape-
weavers and painters, velvet-weavers and embroiderers,
is set in the heart of Kioto by this one firm. The master
of the three hexagons has taken innumerable medals,
gold, silver, and bronze, at home and abroad, and, in re-
sponse to every invitation to make a national exhibit,
Government commands are sent him at Kioto. The
blank outer walls and common entrance, the bare rooms
with two or three accountants sitting before low desks,
do not indicate the treasures of godown and show-room
that lie beyond. In an inner room, with an exquisite
ceiling of interlaced pine shavings, curtains, kakemono,
screens, and fukusa are heaped high, while others are
continually brought in by the small porters. In spite of
the reputation and the artistic possibilities of the estab-
lishment, it sends out much cheap, tasteless, and in-
ferior work to meet the demands of foreign trade, and
of the tourists who desire the so-called Japanese things
they are used to seeing at home.
For the old embroideries, those splendid relics of the
268
Embroideries and Curios
national life with its showy and picturesque customs,
the buyer must seek the second-hand clothes-shops, the
pawn-shops of the land. In the Awata district lives the
great dealer who gathers in old kimonos, obis, fukusas,
kesas, temple hangings, brocades, and embroideries from
the godowns of nobles, commoners, priests, actors, saints,
and sinners, to whom ready money is a necessity. Gei-
shas and actors, with the extravagant habits of their
kind, are often forced to part with their wardrobes, and
the second-hand shops are half filled with beautiful and
purely Japanese things which they have sacrificed. When
I first beheld " my uncle " of Awata, his was a dark, ill-
smelling, old clo' shop, with two bushy-headed, poorly-
dressed attendants. Gilbert and Sullivan unwittingly
made his fortune, and the old dealer could not at first
understand why the foreign buyers, hitherto indifferent,
should suddenly crowd his dingy rooms, empty his go-
downs, and keep his men busy collecting a new stock.
Three years after my first visit there was a large, new
building with high-heaped shelves, replacing the dirty old
house and its questionable bales tied up in blue cotton,
and horribly suggestive of smallpox, cholera, and other
contagions. Prices had trebled and were advancing
steadily, with far less embarrassment of choice in the
stock than formerly.
The gorgeous kimonos of actors and geishas offered
at such shops far outnumber those richly-wrought gowns
worn by women of rank at holiday times and at the pal-
ace, and most of the showy and gorgeously-decorative
gowns displayed in western drawing-rooms have ques-
tionable histories. Even the stores of No dance cos-
tumes have been drawn upon, and choice old brocades
are rarer now than good old embroideries. The priest's
kesa, or cloak, a symbolic patchwork of many pieces,
and the squares and bits from temple tables, for a long
time offered exquisite bits of meshed gold-thread and
a69
Jitirikisha Days in yapan
colors, and on the back of such pieces one often found
poems, sacred verses, and fervent vows, written by the
pious ones who had made offerings of them to the
temples.
The stores of fukusas seemed inexhaustible a few years
ago, and I can remember days of delight in that ill-smell-
ing old corner of Awata, when one out of every five fuku-
sa was a treasure, while now there are hardly five good
ones in a hundred of those needle pictures. The finest
work was lavished on these squares of satin or crape,
Embroideries and Curios
which former etiquette demanded to have laid over the
boxes containing gifts or notes, both box and fukusa to
be duly admired and returned to the sender. These cer-
emonial cloths were part of the trousseau of every bride
of high degree, and old families possess them by scores.
The nicest etiquette ordered the choice of the fukusa,
and the season, the gift, the giver, and the receiver were
considered in selecting the particular wrapping. The
greatest artists have made designs for them, and a few
celebrated ones, bearing Hokusai's signature, are owned
by European collectors. The crests of the feudal families
become familiar to one from their constant repetition on
fukusas. Numberless Japanese legends, and symbols as
well, constantly reappear, and no two are ever exactly
alike in design or execution, however often one may see
the same subject treated. Equally popular are all the
symbols of long life — the pine, the plum, the bamboo; the
tortoise with the fringed shell that lives for a thousand
years ; the peach that took a thousand years to ripen ; the
stork, the old man and woman under the pine-tree hail-
ing the rising sun — and all, when wrapping a gift, equal-
ly convey a delicately expressed wish for length of days.
The fierce old saints and disciples, who with their drag-
ons and tigers live on old Satsuma surfaces, keep com-
pany with the sages who rode through the air on storks,
tortoises, or carp, or stand unrolling sacred scrolls be-
neath bamboo groves. And the Seven Household Gods
of Luck, the blessed Shichi Fukujin, are on the fukusa
as well. There smile Daikoku, the god of riches, upon
his rice-bags, hammer and purse in hand ; Ebisu, the god
of plenty, with his little red fish ; Jurojin, the serene old
god of longevity, with his mitred cap, white beard, staff,
and deer; high-browed Fukurokujin, lord of popularity
and wisdom ; Hotei, spirit of goodness and kindness,
sack on back, fan in hand, and children climbing and
tumbling over him ; black-faced Bishamon, god of war
a7«
yinrikisha Days in Japan
and force, holding his lance and miniature pagoda ; and
Benten Sama, goddess of grace and beauty, playing the
lute.
Takara Bum, the good -luck ship, the New-year's
junk, with dragon beak and silken sail, bearing rich
gifts from the unknown land, is another favorite subject.
To sleep with takara bune's image under one's wooden
pillow on New-year's night insures good-luck and good
dreams for the rest of the year. Quite as significant are
the takara mono, the ancient and classic good-luck sym-
bols, which are the hat, hammer, key, straw coat, bag or
purse, sacred gem or pearl, the scrolls, the clove, the
shippo, or seven precious things, and the weights. These
emblems, introduced everywhere, fill flower-circles, or the
spaces and groundwork of geometrical designs, and are
always received with favor. The shojo, who have drunk
sakd until their hair has turned red, the rats and the rad-
ish, the cock on the temple drum, poerns in superb let-
tering, all ornament the fukusa, and there the mysterious
manji, or hook-cross, and the mitsu tomoye, or three com-
mas curved within a circle, are continually reproduced.
This manji is the Svastika, or Buddhist cross of In-
dia, which appears in the frescos of the Pyramids and
the Catacombs, in Greek art, in Etruscan
tombs, in the embroideries and missals of
mediaeval Europe, in the Scandinavian de-
sign known as Thor's hammer, in old Eng-
n ' lish heraldry, in the Chinese symbol called
-J' ' the "tablet of honor," and on innumerable
temple ornaments.
Five of the old daimio families had the manji as their
crest, and it came to Japan from China and India, along
with the Buddhist religion. On old armor, flags, and war
fans it is constantly found, and it is the sign of life, of the
four elements, of eternity ; the portent of good-luck, the
talisman of safety from evil spirits, and an amulet against
Embroideries and Curios
threats or harm from any of the four quarters ; while
the word " manji " is derived from the Chinese word
" mantse," meaning ten thousand.
The mitsu tomoye is another universal symbol of in-
numerable meanings. It occurs on the crests of eight
daimio families; on temple drums, lanterns,
the ends of tiles, and on Daikoku's mallet.
It is variously said to represent falling
snow, leaping flames, dashing water, and
clouds; the thongs of a warrior's glove,
uncurling fern -fronds, the down of seed
pods ; the three great elements, fire, air, and water, the
origin of matter, the great principles of nature, an orien-
tal trinity. On house-tiles and ridge-poles it invokes
protection from the three evils — fire, thieves, and flood,
and everywhere these two mysterious symbols confront
one.
Kioto abounds in curio-shops, ranging from the half-
mile long row on either side of the Manjiuji to the
splendid accumulations and choice art collections of
Ikeda, Hayashi, Kiukioda, Takada, and the bazaar at the
foot of Maruyama. At Ikedas, which is really an art mu-
seum filled with precious things, the processes of damas-
cening and lacquering may be watched. It has been prov-
en of late that, when patrons will pay a price to warrant
the endless labor and care, as good lacquer may be made
to-day as formerly. Connoisseurs admit that they are
often deceived, and that they are able to tell the qual-
ity only, and not the age, of any really choice piece.
The new is as indestructible as the old, if carefully made.
A pin-point or a hot coal leaves no mark, a year's bath
in sea-water no trace, and amateur photographers have
found it proof against the acids and chemicals of devel-
oping fluids. Yet this substance, enduring as crystal, is
made by coat upon coat of an ill smelling black varnish,
which, stirred in a tub with iron-filings, and set in the
s »"
yinrikisha Days in Japan
sun to thicken and blacken, may be seen daily in the
streets of any Japanese city. New lacquer is so poison-
ous to many persons that the curious are content to
watch at a distance, while the workmen apply coat after
coat, set the article in a moistened box to dry slowly,
and grinding and polishing surface after surface, add
those wonderful decorations that result in a trifle light
as air and precious as gold or gems.
The " incense-shop " is one of the choicest and most
truly Japanese of curio-shops. It looks, from the street,
an every-day affair ; but after propitiating the attendants
by a purchase of perfume, the inner wealth is revealed
in rooms filled with the choicest old wares. The sales-
men tempt the visitor with rare koros, or incense -burn-
ers, and, in an elementary way, the master plays the dai-
mio's old game of the Twenty Perfumes. He sprinkles
on the hibachi's glowing coals some little black morsels
in the shape of leaves, blossoms, or characters ; scatter-
ing green particles, brown particles, and grayish ones,
and showing the ignorant alien how to catch the as-
cending column of pale-blue smoke in the bent hand,
close the fingers upon it, and convey it to the nose.
You cannot tell which odor you prefer, nor remember
which dried particle gave forth a particular fragrance.
The nose is bewildered by the commingled wreaths and
mixed cathedral odors, and the master chuckles delight-
edly.
There are certain curio-shops of an even more exalted
kind, unknown to tourists, and reserved to Japanese
connoisseurs and to those few eminent foreign residents
who, in taste and appreciation, are Japanese. There,
little tea-jars, ancient tea-bowls, and ornaments for the
ink -box delight those to the manner born, and com-
mand great prices ; and there one sees the precious iron
pots of Riobondo lifted from brocade bags, and ancient
pieces of wrought and inlaid bronze and iron, old hel-
Embroideries and Curios
mets and swords, such as are to be found nowhere
else.
Tokio and Osaka rival the Kioto makers of the finer
modern metal -work, all three cities having been equal
capitals and centres of wealth and luxury in the feudal
days, when the armorer was the warrior's right-hand.
The descendants of the ancient metal-workers of Kioto
still labor at the old forges, and marvels of art, as well
as of patient labor, come from the various workshops of
the town. Both old and new designs are employed to
beautify new combinations of metals, but at the present
day the metal - workers' art expends itself on trifling
things. Instead of adorning armor and weapons and
fashioning their exquisite ornaments, the artists' taste
and skill must be lavished on vases, placques, incense-
burners, hibachis, water-pots, and flower-stands, and the
countless cheap trifles and specimens of bijouterie made
for exportation. In the coloring, cutting, and inlaying
of bronze the Japanese are unrivalled ; but for the great
metal-work of the empire the student of native art must
visit private collections and the treasures of the great
curio-shops.
Feudal life invested swords and armor with their high
estate, and gave the armorer his rank. The fine temper
of the old blades has long challenged European admira-
tion, and the sword-guards, the knife -handles, and the
minute ornaments of the hilt are beyond compare. Sen-
timent, legend, and poetry glorify the sword, and the
edict of 1 87 1, which forbade their use as weapons, in-
creased their value as relics, and brought thousands of
them into the curio market. In rich and noble families
they have always been treasured, but collections of fine
blades are found in other countries as well, and the
names of Muramasa and Masamun^ and the Miochin
family, are as well known as that of Benvenuto Cellini
to connoisseurs of metal-work anywhere.
a7S
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
In the earlier uncommercial times little distinction was
recognized in the comparative value of metals. Their
fitness for the purpose required, and the effectiveness of
their tints and tones for carrying out ornamental de-
signs, were what the artist considered. One metal was
as easily wrought by him as another. Iron was like clay
in his competent hands, and he moulded, cut, and ham-
mered as he willed, using copper, gold, silver, iron, tin,
zinc, lead, and antimony simply as pigments, and com-
bining them as a painter would his colors. The well-
known sniduic/ii, or mixed copper and silver, and shakudo
or mixed iron, copper, and gold, are only general names
for the great range of tints and tones, shading from
tawniest- yellow to darkest- brown and a purple -black,
and from silver-white to the darkest steely-gray. Silver
and gold were inlaid with iron, the harder metal upon
the softer, and solid lumps of gold, silver, and lead are
found encrusted in bronze in a way to defy all known
laws of the fusion of metals. While good and even mar-
vellous work is still done, the old spirit is gone, and the
objects of to-day seem almost umvorthy the art lavished
on them.
The magic mirror is still manufactured in Kioto, and
although the tourist is often assured that it does not
exist, innumerable specimens prove that the face of a
common polished steel mirror, of good quality, will reflect
the same design as that raised in relief on its back. With
small mirrors ten inches in diameter, as with the largest,
in their elaborate lacquered cases, one may throw, with
a ray of sunlight, a clear-cut image on wall or ceiling.
The pressure of the uneven surface at the back, the va-
rying density of the metal, and the effect of polishing,
all combine to give this curious attribute to these kaga-
mi, which are gradually giving place to foreign glass and
quicksilver.
376
Potteries and Paper Wares
CHAPTER XXVIII
POTTERIES AND PAPER WARES
The porcelains of Kiomidzu, renowned as they are
throughout Japan, figure lightly in the export trade lists,
as compared to the immense shipments of decorated
faience from the Awata district, for which there is such
demand in foreign countries. On the main street of
that quarter, which is the beginning of the Tokaido, the
larger establishments cluster near together, and Kinko-
zan, Tanzan, and Taizan attract one in turn. Latticed
walls and plain gate-ways admit visitors to a succession
of show-rooms, where they may wander and look. As
it is the characteristic Japanese custom to consider every
foreigner as a mere sight-seer, who puts tradesmen to
trouble for nothing, the bushy-headed young men in
their clean, cool cotton gowns make no effort to sell
until he purchases something. Then he is led through
further rooms to godowns or upper chambers, and their
more desirable wares are displayed.
Kinkozan's specialty is the manufacture of the fine,
cream-colored faience with a crackled glaze, which, when
decorated in one way, is known as Kioto or Awata ware,
and when covered with a blaze of color and gilding is
the gaudily gorgeous, modern, or Kioto Satsuma, export-
ed by ship-loads to America, where its crude hues and
cheap effects are enjoyed. No cultivated Japanese,
however, would ever give these monstrosities a place in
his own home. In America these garish six-months-old
vases and koros are even passed off as old Satsuma,
»77
yinrzkt'sha Days in Japan
to which softly -toned and simply - decorated ware it
is no more like than is a Henri Deux tazza to a Limo-
ges garden - stool. Kinkozan turns out also a coarse
s/iippoyaki, or doisonnee enamel, some on faience and
some on copper ground ; and the blue-and-white-gowned
young man will lead one past garden and godown, and
show one every stage and process of the manufacture of
the different wares. The potters sit in little open al-
coves of rooms, each with his low wheel and heap of
clay before him. One old man sits with his feet doubled
up before him, his right foot locked fast in the bend
of the left knee, and the left foot laid sole upward on
the right thigh, in the impossible attitude of so many
Buddhas. This position he maintains with comfort for
hours, and this lean, bald-headed, old man, wearing
nothing but a loin-cloth and a pair of huge, round, owl-
ish spectacles, is as interesting as his work. He puts a
handful of wet gray clay on the wheel before him, mak-
ing it revolve with a dexterous touch of the hand, while
he works the lump of clay into a thick, broad bowl. With
his fingers and a few little sticks he soon stretches the
bowl upward, narrows it for a neck, broadens and flat-
tens it a little at the top, and presently lifts off a graceful
vase and sets it on a board with a row of others. In an-
other place the workmen are grinding and working the
clay ; in another, preparing the glaze and applying it,
and near them are the kilns in every stage. In a further
garden the decorators are at work, each with his box of
brushes and colors beside him, the vase being kept in
half- horizontal position before him by a wooden rest.
Each piece goes from one man to another, beginning
with the one who sketches the designs in faint outline,
thence passing to him who does the faces, to a third who
applies the red, to a fourth who touches in the diaper-
work and traceries, and so on to the man who liberal-
ly bestows the gilding. Lastly, two women slowly bur-
278
Potteries and Paper Wares
nish the gold by rubbing it over with wet agates or car-
nelian.
At the other houses faience, in an infinity of new and
strange designs and extraordinary colors is seen, each
less and less Japanese. All these Awata potters work
almost entirely for the foreign market, and their novel-
ties are not disclosed to the visitor, nor sold in Japan,
until they have had their vogue in the New York and
London markets. From those foreign centres come in-
structions as to shapes, colors, and designs likely to prove
popular for another season, and the ceramic artists ab-
jectly follow these foreign models. All this helps to con-
fuse a stranger ; for, though the wares are named for the
districts, towns, and provinces of their supposed nativi-
ty, he finds them made everywhere else — Satsuma, in
three or four places outside of Satsuma ; the Kaga of
commerce, almost anywhere except in Kaga ; while un-
decorated porcelain is brought from France by ship-loads
to be decorated and sent out again, and everywhere the
debasing effect of imitation and of this yielding to for-
eign dictates appears.
Cart-loads, car-loads, and ship-loads of screens go from
the great ports to foreign countries, and in Kioto the
larger proportion of these are manufactured. Whether
byobtt, the screen, is a purely Japanese invention, or a
variation of the hinged door easily suggested to any
primitive people who can watch Nature's many trap-
doors and hinges, this people certainly makes most per-
sistent use of it. Twenty different kinds may be seen in
one's daily rides past the little open houses, but never
does one discover the abominations in coarse gold thread
on black satin grounds so common in our country and
so highly esteemed. The four-fold or six-fold screen of
a Japanese house has its plain silk, paper, or gold-leaf
surface, covered with one large design or picture extend-
ing over the whole surface, instead of the narrow panels
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
and patches of separate pictures which Western taste de-
mands. In great establishments and monasteries there
is a tsiii tate, or flat, solid screen of a single panel, within
the main door-way or vestibule — a survival of a Chinese
fashion, intended less to baffle inquisitive eyes than to
keep out evil spirits and beasts. Peculiar to Kioto are
screens on which phosphorescent paint is used. A fa-
vorite design for these is the rice field at dusk, starred
with flickering fire-flies, whose lights glow the more as
the room darkens. A half century ago Gioksen, the ar-
tist, achieved great fame with these phosphorescent fire-
flies ; and recently the idea has been revived, with a fine
promise of being vulgarized, growing coarser and cheaper
in execution and poorer in quality, to meet the demands
of the barbarian markets of the Occident. In the New-
year week, when each family brings out its choicest
screens, the display in the best streets is an art exhibition.
Screens of all sorts are more important in summer life
than clothing, and, of necessity, are greatly relied on in
the absence of garments. Screens with tiny windows in
them shelter the undressed citizen and give him glimpses
of the road, and screens with a variety of shelves and
hooks bring a whole kitchen to the side of the hibachi
on a windy day. Among summer screens, the common-
est is the sudare, or curtain of reeds or tiny bamboo
joints strung on threads. The waving of these strings
and their tinkling sound are supposed to suggest the
freshness of the stirring breeze, and the Japanese imag-
ination transforms the bits of crystal, strung here and
there, into cool rain-drops slipping down the bamboo
stems. The taste of the foreign buyer has vulgarized
the sudare, which is often a nightmare of crude design
and worse color, weighted with glass beads of every col-
or, and even made entirely of beads. The sudare in the
streets of a Japanese town is almost as surely a sign of
a shop where shaved ice and cooling drinks may be had,
280
Potteries and Paper Wares
as is our striped pole of the Occidental barber's prem-
ises.
Kioto fans are celebrated, but they are no better now
than those of other cities, and prettier Japanese fans are
sold in New York for less money than in Japan, because
the enormous foreign demand keeps the best fan-paint-
ers and fan-makers of Kioto constantly employed on ex-
port orders. American importers send their buyers to
Kioto and Osaka every spring to order fans for the fol-
lowing year. Designer and maker submit hundreds of
models, and the buyer offers suggestions as to color and
shapes. The men who execute these large orders sel-
dom have an open shop or sales-room, and their places
are known only to the trade. Thousands and hundreds
of thousands of ogi, or folding fans, go annually from
the port of Hiogo-Kobe to America, and as many more
from Yokohama ; while of the flat fans with handles,
the nchiwa, the number is even greater. One American
railroad company has for years taken a hundred thou-
sand uchiwa each season for advertising purposes, one
side being left plain, to be printed upon after they reach
the United States.
The fan is the most ancient and important utility in
Japan, and since Jingo Kogo invented the ogi, after the
model of a bat's wing, men, women, and children have
never ceased carrying one in their summer obi folds.
Fans are the regulation gift upon every occasion and lack
of occasion, and a large collection is acquired in the
fewest summer weeks. Every large shop and tea-house
has its own specially decorated and perfectly well-known
uchiwa to be given to patrons, who in that way declare
their wanderings ; and at feasts each guest receives a
plain white ogi, upon which poems, autographs, and
sketches are to be traced by his fellow-guests.
Formerly, Kioto shops exhibited many more kinds of
fans than at present. Among them were the court fans,
aSi
Jinrtkisha Days in Japan
or hiogi, made of twenty-five broad wooden sticks strung
together, and wound with heavy silk cords, and as long
as the Empress retained the old dress she and her ladies
carried these heavy and useless articles. The suehiro, or
wide-end fans of the priests, were a specialty of Kioto
and Nara, and the suehiro accompanied every gift at
New Years, weddings, and anniversaries, as certainly as
the red and gold cords and oddly folded little papers
now do. The gumbai uchiwa, heavy war fans, often with
iron or bronze outer-sticks, went with each suit of armor ;
and the large oblong uchiwa, descending from priests to
No dancers and to umpires in games and contests, were
equally well-known productions of Kioto. Fans serve an
infinite variety of purposes and speak a language in this
land of their own, and no season or condition of life is
without its ministrations. The farmer winnows his grain
with a fan, the housewife blows up the charcoal fire with
a fan, and gardeners, sitting for hours on patient heels,
will softly fan half-open flowers until every petal unfolds.
For specific gifts, specific designs and colors appear.
One fan may be offered to a lady as a declaration of love.
Another serves as her sign of dismissal, and the Japan-
ese are often amused to see foreigners misapply the lan-
guage and etiquette of fans.
Although gas and electricity light every Japanese city,
and American and Russian kerosene come in whole car-
goes, the manufacture of paper lanterns increases apace,
for now all the quarters of the globe demand them. Con-
structing the flimsy frames is a sleight-of-hand process,
and with the same deftness the old lantern-makers dash
on designs, characters, and body-colors, with a bold brush.
But one must live in Japan to appreciate the softened
light of lanterns, and in the lavish and general nightly
use of them learn all the fairy-like and splendid effects
to be obtained with a bit of paper, some wisps of bamboo,
and a little vegetable wax poured around a paper wick.
Potteries and Paper Wares
Cotton goods are largely manufactured in Kioto, and
at all seasons the upper reaches of the Kamogawa's
broad, stony bed are white with bleaching cloth. The Ka-
mogawa's water, which is better for tea-making, for rice-
boiling, and for mixing dyes than the water of any other
stream in Japan, is also sovereign for bleaching, and its
banks are lined for a long distance with dyeing establish-
ments. The river-bed, paved with stones under each of its
great bridges, is dreary, wind-swept, and colorless in win-
ter-time, as compared to its summer brilliancy; but in Jan-
uary it is the place of the kite-flyers, and Hideyoshi's
bronze-railed Shijo bridge — the southern end of the To-
kaido, the centre from which all distances are measured
— commands a view of an unexampled aerial carnival.
Thousands of giant kites float upward, and the air is
filled with a humming, as they soar, sweep, and circle
over the city like huge birds. Kite combats take place
in mid-air, and strings covered with pounded glass cut
other strings, and let the half-animate paper birds and
demons loose. Jinrikisha coolies on bridges and streets
must dodge the hanging strings, and boys run over and
into each other while watching their ventures ; but the
traditional kite-flying grandfathers whom one reads about
in Western prints are conspicuous by their absence.
There is a game of battledore and shuttlecock much
played at the same season by the girls, the battledore a
flat wooden paddle ornamented with gaudy pictures of
Japanese women. The game is a pretty one, and the
girls are wonderfully graceful in playing it, the long
sleeves and the flying obi-ends taking on expressive ac-
tion when these charming maidens race and leap through
its changes.
Kioto is not without its theatres and places of amuse-
ment, ever ready to beguile one from the sight-seeing
and shopping rounds. Its great actor is Nakamura, and
it maintains an academy for the training of maiko and
y/nriktsha Days in Japan
geisha, where every spring there is a long-drawn-out fes-
tival of dances to help on the rejoicings of the cherry-
blossom season. But its great place of amusement, its
Vanity Fair, is the narrow theatre or show street running
from Sanjio to Shijo Street, just beyond the bridges.
This thoroughfare is lined all the way with rows of
shops, labyrinthine bazaars, stalls, and booths, theatres,
side-shows, peep-shows, puppet-shows, wax-works, jug-
glers, acrobats, wrestlers, trained animals, story-tellers,
fortune-tellers, all exploited by the voice and drum of
their loquacious agents at the door-way. No jinrikishas
are allowed to run on this highway, and day and night,
morning and midnight, it is filled with strolling people
and playing children. In winter it is a cheering refuge
from the wider, wind-swept streets, and in summer days
it is cool and shady, the pavement constantly sprinkled,
and the light and heat kept out by mat awnings stretch-
ed across the narrow road -way from roof to roof, in
Chinese fashion. At night it is the busiest place in
Kioto, even with the rival attraction of the river-bed;
crowded with revellers, torches flaring, drums and gongs
sounding, the high - pitched, nasal voices, of the show-
men sing-songing their stories and programmes; and
peddlers, pilgrims, priests, men, women, and children,
and the strangers within their gates, making up the
throng. Once when a giantess was on exhibition in
a tent the spectators, instead of being awed by her he-
roic eight feet of height, were convulsed with laughter
at sight of her. Every movement of the colossus sent
them into fresh spasms. It was like a personification
of some netsuke group to see this huge creature, with
hair-pins like clubs, and clogs as large as a door-step,
standing with folded arms, while pigmy visitors climbed
up to perch like insects on her shoulders.
In this ever-open market one may buy the tailless cats
of the country ; forlorn, spiritless creatures, staying at
284
Golden Days
home and in-doors at night, and never going on midnight
prowls. Or, if he prefer, there are the wonderful long-
tailed Tosa chickens, fowls kept in tall, bamboo cages,
that their tail-feathers, measuring ten and twelve feet in
length, may make a graceful display. When they are let
out to scratch and wander about like other chickens,
their precious feathers are rolled up in papers and pro-
tected from any chance of harm, Japanese spaniels, or
Kioto chins, those little black-and-white, silky-eared pets,
with big, tearful, goggle eyes, and heads as round and
high as Fukurokojin's, are fashionably dear, ranging from
five to forty dollars each, even in their native town.
From the lower end of Theatre Street a covered way
leads to the fish-market of the city, a dark, cool, stone-
floored place, where more peculiar things may be bought,
and more picturesque groups may be studied, in the
strange Rembrandtesque light, than anywhere else in
Kioto. The foreign artists, who carry away scores of
sketches of Japanese life, seem never to find this fish-
market, nor in general to seize the best and least hack-
neyed subjects. Most of their pictures have been long
anticipated by the native photographers, and the foreign
artist repeats, with less fidelity, the familiar scenes and
subjects, with that painstaking western method that, to
the Japanese eye, leaves as little to the imagination as
the photograph itself.
CHAPTER XXIX
GOLDEN DAYS
Nammikawa, the first cloisonni artist of the world, has
his home, his workshop, and his little garden in a quiet
corner of the Awata district. Most visitors never pass
beyond his ante-room, as Nammikawa holds his privacy
yinrikisha Days in Japan
dear, and that small alcove with the black table gives lit-
tle hint of what lies beyond. The more fortunate visitor
follows the master through a dark recess to a large room
with two sides open to the garden, and a tiny balcony
overhanging a lakelet. He claps his hands, and big
golden carp rise to the surface and gobble the mochi
thrown them. In that little paradise, barely sixty feet
square, are hills, groves, thickets, islands, promontories,
and bays, a bamboo - shaded well, and a shrine, while
above the farthest screen of foliage rise the green slopes
of Maruyama.
A Japanese friend, who described Nammikawa as
" the most Japanese and most interesting man in Ki-
oto," took us to drink tea with him in this charming gar-
den, and, on the hottest afternoon of a hot Kioto sum-
mer, we noted neither time nor temperature until the
creeping shadows warned us to depart. Old Japan seem-
ed to re-live in the atmosphere of that garden, and a cha
no yu was no more finished than the simple tea-ceremo-
ny the master performed there. By the old etiquette a
Japanese gentleman never intrusted to any servant the
making of tea for a guest, nor allowed the fine art of
that simple, every-day process to be exercised unseen.
The tea-tray, brought and set before the master, bore a
tiny jewel-like tea-pot of old Awata, and the tiny cloi-
sonne cups with plain enamelled linings were as richly
colored as the circle of a tulip's petals, and smaller far.
With them was a small pear-shaped dish, not unlike our
gravy-boats, a beautiful bronze midzii tsugi, or hot-water
pot, and a lacquer box holding a metal tea-caddy filled
with the finest leaves from Uji tea-gardens. Taking a
scoop of yellowed ivory, carved in the shape of a giant
tea-leaf, our host filled the little tea-pot with loosely-
heaped leaves, and having decanted the hot water into
the little pear-shaped pitcher to cool a little, poured it
upon the tea - leaves. Immediately he drew off the
Golden Days
palest amber fluid, half filling each cup, and presented
them to us, resting on leaf-shaped stands or saucers of
damascened metal. The tea was only lukewarm when
we received it, but as delicate and exquisitely flavored as
if distilled of violets, as rich and smooth as a syrup, the
three sips of it constituting a most powerful stimulant.
In the discussion of tea-making that followed, our Jap-
anese mentor explained to us that to the epicurean
tea-drinkers of his country, boiling water was an abom-
ination, as it scorched the leaves, drove out the fine
fragrance in the first cloud of steam, and extracted the
bitterness instead of the sweetness of the young leaves.
" It may be well enough to pour boiling water on the
coarse black tea of China's wild shrub," said this delight-
ful Japanese, " but the delicate leaf of ^«r cultivated tea-
plant does not need it."
With the tea our host offered us large flat wafers of
rice and fancy confections in the shape of most elab-
orate asters and chrysanthemums, too artistic to be eat-
en without compunction. The cups were refilled with
the second and stronger decoction, which set every nerve
tingling, and then only were we permitted to see the
treasures of Nammikawa's creation. From box and
silken bag within bag were produced vases, whose lines,
color, lustre, and brilliant intricacy of design made them
beautiful beyond praise. They were wrought over with
finest traceries of gold, silver, and copper wires, on
grounds of dull Naples yellow, soft yellowish-green, a
darker green, or a rich deep-red, wonderful to behold,
the polished surface as even and flawless as that of a
fine onyx.
One by one some smaller pieces were brought in, in
little boxes of smooth white pine, beautifully made
and joined. Nammikawa opened first the cotton wad-
ding, then the inevitable wrapping of yellow cloth, and
lastly the silken covers, and handled with a tender rev-
187
yinrikisha Days in Japan
erence these exquisite creations of his genius, every one
ot which, when placed on its low teak-wood stand, showed
faultless. For two years his whole force was at work on
the two sixteen-inch vases which went to the Paris Ex-
position, and four years were given to the Emperor's
order for a pair for his new palace. These bore the
imperial emblems, and dragons writhed between chrys-
anthemums and through conventional flower-circles and
arabesques, and the groundwork displayed the splendid
red, green, russet, mottled gold, and glistening avanturine
enamels, whose secret Nammikawa holds. For it is not
only in his fine designs, but in the perfect composition
and fusing of his enamels and the gem-like polish that
this great artist excels all rivals.
In another garden, concealed by a bamboo hedge, is
the tiny laboratory, and the one work-room where less
than twenty people, all told, execute the master's de-
IN NAMMIKAWA S WORK-ROOM
Golden Days
signs. One etches these patterns on the copper base,
following Nammikawa's delicately traced outlines ; an-
other bends and fastens the wires on the etched lines,
and a third coats the joinings with a red oxide that, after
firing, unites the wires more firmly to the copper. Oth-
ers dot the paste into the cell-like spaces, or sit over tubs
of water, grinding with fine stones, with charcoal, and
deer-horn the surface of the pieces that have been fired.
Nammikawa adds the master-touches, and after conduct-
ing the final firing, himself gives them the last incompar-
able polish, after his men have rubbed away for weeks.
These workmen come and go as they please, working
only when the spirit moves them, and doing better work,
the master believes, when thus left to their own devices.
All of them are artists whose skill is a family inheritance,
and they have been with Nammikawa for many years.
The most skilful of these craftsmen receive one yen a
day, which is extravagant pay in this land of simple liv-
ing, and shows in what high esteem they are held. A
few women are employed in the polishing and the sim-
pler details, and, while we watched them, were burnish-
ing a most exquisite tea-pot covered with a fine foliated
design on pale yellow ground. This treasure had been
bought by some connoisseur while the first rough filling
of paste was being applied, and he had bided his time
for a twelvemonth, while the slow processes of filling and
refilling the cells, and firing and refiring the paste had
succeeded one another until it was ready for the first
grinding.
Fifty or sixty small pieces, chiefly vases, caskets, and
urns, three and four inches high, and ranging in price
from thirty to ninety yen each, are a whole year's output,
and larger pieces are executed by special order at the
same time with these. Nammikawa does not like to sell
to the trade, and has been known to refuse the requests
of curio merchants, making his customers pay more if he
T S89
yinrikisha Days in Japan
suspects that they are buying to sell again. It is his
delight to hand the precious article to its new owner, en-
joining him to keep it wrapped in silk and wadding, and
always to rub it carefully to remove any moisture before
putting it away. He cautions visitors, when they attempt
to handle the precious pieces in his show-room, not to
touch the enamelled surface with the hand, the metal
base and collar being left free on each piece for that
purpose. Nor must two pieces of cloisonne ever be knock-
ed together, as the enamel is almost more brittle than
porcelain. Curiously enough, this great artist uses no
mark nor sign-manual. " If my work will not declare it-
self to be mine, then the marking will do no good," he
says ; and, indeed, his cloisonne is so unlike the crude
and commonplace enamels exported from Japan by ship-
loads for the foreign market, that it does not need the
certification of his name.
Nammikawa has the face of a saint, or poet — gentle,
refined, and intellectual — and his beautiful manner and
perfect courtesy are an inheritance of the old Japan.
His earlier days were not saintly, although they may
have been poetical. He was a personal attendant of
Prince Kund no Miya, a brother of Prince Komatsu, and
cousin of the Emperor, and was brought up in the old
court life with its atmosphere of art and leisure. The
elegant young courtier was noted for his gayety and im-
providence. He remained in Kioto when the court moved
northward, and all at once ceased his dissipations, even
putting aside his pipe, to devote himself to experiments
in the manufacture of cloisonne, for which he had always
had a passion. In his laboratory there is a square
placque, a bluish bird on a white ground diapered with
coarse wires, which was his first piece. One can hardly
believe that only fifteen years intervene between this
coarse, almost Chinese, specimen of his work, and the
vases for the Emperor's palace. From the start he threw
Golden Days
himself into his profession with his whole soul and spirit.
Incessant experiments in the solitude of his laboratory
and work-room at night, and the zeal and patience of a
Palissy at the furnace, conquered his province. He is
still constantly studying and experimenting, and always
fires his pieces himself, keeping long vigils by the little
kiln in the garden.
Hurry and money-making he despises. Gazing dream-
ily out into his garden, Nammikawa declared that he had
no ambition to have a large godown, a great workshop,
and a hundred workmen ; that he always refused to take
any large commissions or commercial orders, or to promise
a piece at any given time. Neither good art nor good
work can be commanded by money, he thought, nor did
he want his men to work faster, and therefore less care-
fully, because greater prices are offered him for haste.
It was his pleasure, he said, to take years for the execu-
tion of a single piece that might stand flawless before
all connoisseurs, and receive its just reward of praise or
medals. The latter are dearer to him than any sum of
money, and in his own garden he finds happiness with
them.
There is a Nammikawa of Tokio who is not to be con-
founded with this Kioto artist. The Tokio enameller
has an entirely different style, a simple design thrown in
a broad style upon an unbroken groundwork, easily dis-
tinguishing his work from any other ; but Nammikawa
of Tokio deals directly with the trade, even contracting
with foreign curio dealers for seasons of work, and makes
replicas of his exquisite pieces by the score for them.
Imitators of his style have arisen, and already many
cheap pieces, copying his best models, can be purchased
in foreign cities.
The idling most delightful of all in Kioto is going
over and over again to the same places, doing the same
thing repeatedly, and arriving at that happy and emi-
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
nently Japanese frame of mind where haste enters not ;
time is forgotten, days slip by uncounted, and limits
cease to be. The spring days, when the rain falls in
gauziest mist — the rain that is so good for young rice —
or summer days, when the sun scorches the earth and
burns one's very eyeballs, seem to bring the most un-
broken leisure and longest hours in any agreeable refuge.
Sitting on Yaami's veranda, with the great plain of
the city wreathed in mists or quivering in heat, I have
recognized my indebtedness to Griffis, Dresser, Mitford,
Morse, and Rein, those authorities on all things Japan-
ese, not to mention Murray and his ponderous guide-
"book, whose weight and polysyllabic pages strike terror
to the soul of the new-comer. Griffis I read, until Tairo
and Minamoto, Hideyoshi and lyeyasu, grew as familiar
as William the Conqueror and the Declaration of Inde-
pendence ; Dresser's text and illustrations were a con-
stant delight and illumination, explaining the incompre-
hensible and pointing to hidden things ; and Morse's
Japatiese Homes laid bare their mysteries, and made ev-
ery fence, roof, rail, ceiling, and wall take on new feat-
ures and expression. Rein's is the encyclopaedia, and
he the recorder, from whose statements there is no ap-
peal, and to him we turned for everything. It is only
on the sacred soil that the student gets the true value
and meaning of these books ; while nothing so nearly
expresses and explains the charm of the country as that
prose idyl, Percival Lowell's Soul of the Far East, nor so
perfectly fits one's moods on these.long, leisure days, and
Mitford's Tales of Old Japan are of ceaseless delight.
In this Japanese atmosphere the traveller feels what
he misses through his ignorance of the vernacular, and
is even inspired with a desire to study the language ; but
a little skimming of the grammar usually brings down
that vaulting ambition. It is easy to pick up words and
phrases for ordinary use, as all servants understand some
292
Golden Days
English, and every hotel and shop has its interpreter.
Upper-class people, whom one meets socially, always
speak English, French, or German. Scholars declare
that the mastery of the language takes from twelve to
thirty years, and the compiler of the standard lexicon
modestly says for himself that forty years is not enough.
With a few most illustrious exceptions, no foreigner, who
has not learned Japanese almost before his own tongue,
has ever been able to grasp its idioms so as to express
himself with clearness and accuracy. The whole theory
and structure of the language are so different from and
so opposed to European speech— so intricate and so ar-
bitrary, that the alien brain fails to grasp it. The lower,
middle, and upper classes have each a different mode of
expression, and the women of each class use a still sim-
pler version. He who learns the court language cannot
make himself understood by shop-keepers or servants.
He who has acquired coolie talk insults a gentleman by
uttering its common words and inelegant expressions in
his presence.
As if the differences between the polite and the com-
mon idioms and names for things did not make verbal
complications enough, the imperial family and their sat-
ellites have a still finer phraseology with a special vocab-
ulary for their exclusive use. Sak^, or rice brandy, be-
comes kukon at court ; a dumpling, which is a dango in
the city, becomes an ishi-ishi when it enters the palace-
gates ; and a shirt, ox jubati, is transmuted to a heijo on
an imperial back. Well-bred women say o hiya for cold
water, and men always call it mizu. A dog not only gets
the honorific prefix <?, but if you call him, you say polite-
ly idf, just as you would to a child ; while the impera-
tive koi f koil (come, come,) is polite enough for the rest
of the brute creation. Children say umamma for food,
but if you do not say omamma instead, nesans will gig-
gle over your baby talk.
193
Jinrikisha Days m Japan
Dialects and localisms contribute still further to con-
fusion of tongues. A hibachi in Kioto is a shibachi in
Yokohama, as a Hirado vase is a Shirado one. When
you inquire a price, you say ikura for " how much " in
Yokohama, and nambo in Kioto. All around Tokio the
g has the sound of ng, or gamma nasal, and this nasal
tone of the capital is another point of conformity with
the modern French.
Everywhere in Japan an infinity of names belongs to
the simplest things. Twenty-five synonyms for rice are
given in Hepburn's smaller dictionary, all as different as
possible. Rice in every stage of growing, and in every
condition after harvesting, has a distinct name, with no
root common to all. Endless mistakes follow any inex-
actness of pronunciation. The numerals, ichi, ni, san, shi,
go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, Ju, are easily memorized, and
learning to count up to one hundred is child's play com-
pared to the struggle with French numerals. It is not
necessary to say "four times twenty, ten, and seven," be-
fore ninety-seven is reckoned ; that is simply ku jii shichi,
or nine tens and a seven. Twenty is ni ju, thirty is san
ju, fifty is go ju, and so through the list. The ordinal
numbers have dai prefixed or ban added, and "fourth" is
then yo ban. That ichi ban means "number one," and ni
ban, "number two," surprises people who had supposed
that Mr. Ichi Ban and Mr. Ni Ban owned the great Japan-
ese stores that used to exist in two American cities. After
learning the plain cardinal and ordinal numbers, the neo-
phyte must remember to add the syllable shiki when
mentioning any number of animals, nin for people, ken
for houses, so for ships, cho for jinrikishas, hai for glasses
or cups of any liquid, hon for long and round objects, mai
for broad and flat ones, tsu for letters or papers, satsu for
books, wa for bundles or birds. Any infraction of these
rules gives another meaning to the intended phrase, and
the slightest variation in inflection changes it quite as
Golden Days
much. If you want three kurumas, you say " kuruma san
cho" and five plates are '■'■ sara go tnaiy To say simply
saiyo (yes), or tye (no), is inadmissible. The whole state-
ment must be made with many flourishes, and frequent
de gozarimasus adorn a gentleman's conversation.
If a curio dealer asks whether you wish to see a koro,
and you look for the word in the lexicon, you find that
koro means, according to Dr. Hepburn's dictionary, time,
period of time, a cylindrical wooden roller used in moving
heavy bodies, the elders, old people, tiger and wolf, i.e.,
savage and cruel, stubborn, bigoted, narrow-minded, a
road, a journey, a censer for burning incense, and the sec-
ond or third story of a house. So, too, kikii may mean a
chrysanthemum, or a compass and square, a rule, an
established custom, the moment or proper time; fear, ti-
midity, and a score of other things. The chief compensa-
tions of the language are its simple and unvarying rules
of pronunciation, every syllable being evenly accented,
every vowel making a syllable, and, pronounced as con-
tinental vowels are, giving music to every word.
The written language is the study of another lifetime.
Having the Chinese written language as its basis, the
Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans can all understand one
another in this form common to all, though not in the
spoken tongue. It is common to see Chinese and Jap-
anese coolies writing characters in the air, in the dust, or
in the palms of their hands, and seeming to make them-
selves intelligible in this classical sign language. The
written language has the katagana, or square characters,
and the hiragana, or "grass" characters, the latter sim-
pler and more nearly corresponding to our script or run-
ning hand.
The efforts of scholars are now turned to Romaicising
or transliterating the Japanese sounds and characters,
and expressing them by the common alphabet of Latin
and Anglo-Saxon people, basing it on phonetic spelling.
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
Volapuk, the new universal language of all nations, offers
great difficulties to the Japanese, for although Schleyer,
its inventor, kindly left out the r, which the Chinese can-
not pronounce, he left in the /, which is a corresponding
stumbling-block for the Japanese, who is seldom a natural
linguist.
CHAPTER XXX
SENKE AND THE MERCHANTS' DINNER
It required an elaborate negotiation extending through
two weeks, as well as the tactful aid of an officer of the
Kioto Kencho to arrange for me a cha no yu at the house
of Senke, the great master of the oldest school of that
art. Senke was about going to Uji to choose his teas ;
he was changing his teas; he was airing his godowns, and
he sent a dozen other excuses to prevent his naming a
day. Not until it had been explained fully to this great
high-priest of the solemnity that I had studied cha no
yu with his pupil, Matsuda, and that, knowing that Mat-
suda had first studied the Hori no ^'/-method, I was pur-
suing the art to its fountain-head, to make sure that no
heterodox version of the Senke method had betrayed my
inexperience, would he consent to receive me.
Senke is a descendant of Rikiu, the instructor and
friend of Hideyoshi, the Taiko. For years they prac-
tised the " outward " rites together, and wrote poems to
one another, until Hideyoshi admired Rikiu's beautiful
daughter. Rikiu refused her to him, and estrangement
followed. Rikiu had built a splendid gate-way for the
Daitokuji temple, within which, as was the fashion of the
time, he had placed a small wooden statue of himself.
Taiko Sama, riding through with his train one day, was
296
Senki and the Merchants' Dinner
told of the statue overhead. He declared it an insult to
him, the Shogun, and sent to Rikiu the fateful short sword,
the wakazashi, and the great master died the honorable
death of seppuku, or hara kiri.
"And the daughter? Did the Taiko get her after Ri-
kiu's death ?" we asked, as we sat waiting in Senke"s
garden, listening to the many histories connected with the
place. " Wakarhnasen " (I do not know), said our friend,
with that Japanese indifference to the end of a story that
so perplexes the western mind.
Senkd has a lovely garden beyond the palace walls, and
reached by deserted streets^whose blank walls shelter
aristocratic homes. Crossing a court, we crept through
a small door in a large gate-way and entered this retreat,
whose floor was all irregular stones, covered evenly with
a soft, velvety, green moss. Upon this verdant surface
fell dappled shadows and an occasional ray of sunshine
from a canopy of maple, cherry, and pine branches, care-
fully clipped and trained so as to form an even tent-roof
over the whole enclosure. The stillness was unbroken,
though upon this strange paradise looked out a dozen
exquisitely simple tea-rooms, each isolated and sheltered
from the view of any other. Pupils come to Senke from
all parts of Japan, but even when every tea-room is in
use the same hush reigns. To subdue us to what we
were to work in, and to enhance Fortune's supreme fa-
vor of a cha no yu in the Taiko's manner, we were made
to wait and wait before we were invited into the cool
twilight of a large tea-room. The house has been burn-
ed twice since Hideyoshi's day, but each time has been
exactly reproduced, so that virtually we sat where the
Taiko had sat for many hours, and we used the verita-
ble bowls, spoons, trays, and tea-caddies sanctified by
his touch three hundred years ago. The Taiko's crest
was on the simple, gold flecked screens of the room, and
an autograph verse on a kakemono, and a single pink
a97
Jinrikisha Days in Japan
lily in a bronze vase, were the ornaments of the toko-
noma.
Senke, now past seventy years of age, receives few
pupils himself, but neither he" nor his handsome son of
about thirty years is wholly incurious as to the strange
fashions that have entered the country since the Res-
toration. We bowed with the profound solemnity of
mourners, but with the vigilance of spies we watched
Senke as he built the fire, laid on the white azalea char-
coal, dropped some chips of sandal-wood, and boiled his
historic iron kettle. Then followed the feast of many
delicate dishes— tea; bean-soup, with bits of egg-plant;
raw fish with shreds of daikon and fresh ginger; tai-
soup, with sea -weed and mushrooms; broiled ai, with
shoyu ; bamboo - soup ; dried Shikoku salmon ; broiled
birds ; Kaga walnuts, preserved in a thick syrup, and
other dishes ; each course accompanied by rice, and
ending with barley-water. An old iron sake -pot and
.shallow red lacquer sake -cups were passed around with
the various dishes, and we gravely pledged one another
and the master who served us. When the dried fish was
brought in my Kencho friend nipped off some choice
bits with his chop sticks and offered them on a paper to
our host, who ate them, and put the paper in his sleeve.
At the end of the feast the first guest — the one sitting
nearest the tokonoma — wiped all his bowls and dishes
clean with paper, which he put in his sleeve, and we fol-
lowed his example. With the thirteenth course we gath-
ered up our tray of sweets and retired to the garden,
waiting there until soft strokes on an old bell called us
back to the r-oom, which had been swept, and the pict-
ure and vase in the tokonoma changed. Senke, too, had
replaced his dark gauze kimono by one of pale -blue
crape, and sat in a reverent attitude. With infinite de-
liberation he went through the solemn rites, and duly
presented us each with a bowl of green gruel more bitter
298
Senki and the Merchants* Dinner
than quinine, twelve spoonfuls of powdered tea being
the measure used. This was his koi cha. The usu cha
was a less strong decoction, demanding a simpler cere-
mony, and was served in a bowl passed around for all to
sip from in turn. Previous study enabled us to note in-
telligently every movement of the old master, and the
significant position of each thumb and finger, hand, el-
bow, and wrist, as the venerable artist of cha no yu ex-
emplified the grace and niceties of the " outward "
school.
At the proper time we asked the history of the imple-
ments used in the ceremony. The na tsume, or tea-
bowl of Raku ware, in Jo-o shape, belonged to Rikiu,
Jo-o having been the teacher of Rikiu, and the arbiter
of the form of many implements of cha no yu. The
little bamboo slip with a flat, curved end, which lifted
the powdered tea from its box, was cut by Rikiu. It
bears no decoration or mark, and is of the ordinary
shape ; but this commonplace c/ia shaku cannot be bought
for even two hundred dollars. The Emperor Komei,
father of the present Emperor, was taught by the elder
Senk^, and bequeathed to his master various autographs
and an incense-box of great antiquity. Driven though
he is by the spirit of innovation and progress, the pres-
ent Emperor occasionally enjoys a few quiet hours at
cha no yu. The Empress is most accomplished in its
ceremonial, and delights in the little poems which guests
are always expected to write for the host.
When the moment arrived for the production of these
tributes at Senke's tea, our Japanese friends dashed
them off in an instant, as if, with the return to their cer-
emonial silk gowns, they had returned to the habits of
thought of old Japan, when poetry filled the air. But
one of them whispered, to encourage us, " I have been
thinking it these two weeks."
With regret we saw cha ire (tea-caddy), cha wan (tea-
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Jinrtkisha Days in yapan
bowl), cha sen (tea -whisk), and cha shaku (teaspoon),
tied up in their precious brocade bags, and, with pro-
found obeisances, we took leave of Senke, feeling that
for a day we had slipped out of our century, and almost
out of our planet, so unlike is the cha no yu to any other
function in this irreverent, practical, and pushing era.
Of our friend, who had drained two or three bowls of
it, we asked, " Does not this strong tea make you nerv-
ous, keep you awake, give you the cha ni yotta, or tea
tremens ?"
" Oh no," he answered ; " I do not drink enough of
it. I am very careful. But my friends, when they be-
gin the study of English and foreign branches, find that
they must stop drinking it. The English seems to bring
into action many nerves that we do not use, and the
drink is probably exciting enough in itself."
Foreign teachers say the same thing, and at the Do-
shisha school tobacco must be given up, though, next to
tea, it is the great necessity of the Japanese.
Kioto's maiko and geisha performances are, of course,
more splendid than those of any other city. The great
training-school of maiko conforms to the classic tradi-
tions, and critics and connoisseurs assemble at the Ka-
burenjo theatre each spring when the famous Kioto
dance, the Miakodori, is given by troops of maiko.
Did I not possess the ocular proof of a fan and a few
souvenirs I could believe the fete which I saw to have
been but a midsummer night's dream. A club of the
great merchants of the city, wishing to do honor to two
Tokio officials, devised a dinner, or geisha party, and in-
cluded their American friends. The evening was one of
the heaviest, hottest, and sultriest of the Kioto summer,
and, after the sun sank in a bed of mist, swarmed with
myriads of mosquitoes. Later, the full moon poured
down a flood of silvery light that seemed to quiver with
heat, yet, apparelled in our uncomfortable regulation cos-
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Senki and the Merchants Dinner
tume, we found our way through the lanes to the dark
gate-ways of Nishi Otani's long approach. The broad
stone path lay marble-white in the moonlight between
rows of gigantic trees, the tall stone lanterns looked like
ghostly sentries, and fire-flies floated through the still, hot
darkness. At the foot of the avenue a line of red lan-
terns hung glowing and motionless in mid -air, like so
many strange fruits on the black branches. When we
passed into the open, moonlighted court of the Gion
temple and under its giant torii, we were received at a
wide door-way by the master of the feast and the whole
tea-house staff.
Above were our forty-four hosts of the evening, among
whom were the court brocade-weaver, the great merchant
of painted crapes, the maker of the incomparable enam-
els, the masters of the great potteries and bronze works,
and a few artists. We bowed three or four times to each
gentleman, who bowed twice as often to us, and we won-
dered how these quiet, grave, and gracious hosts, in their
rustling garments of dark striped silks and their white
tahis, could look so cool and fresh.
All the screens of the upper floor had been taken out,
and three sides of the room were open to the night. We
were conducted to seats at one end, the company grave-
ly dropped upon the cushions ranged along either side,
and the master of ceremonies, a great silk merchant and
manufacturer, made a formal speeeh of welcome, and
begged us to accept the poor repast they were about to
oflfer. Every one bowed three times, a proper response
was made, we all bowed again, and a file of nesans in
dark silk gowns brought in tiny cups of tea. Then fol-
lowed ten of the most famous maiko of Kioto, dazzling
beauties, who advanced noiselessly, two by two, in ex-
quisite kimonos of painted crape and obis of woven
sunshine, and with coronals of silver hairpins on their
heads. As they drew near, all gliding with the same
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Jinrikisha Days in Japan
slow grace, they knelt and set before us the ozens, or low
lacquer tables, holding cups, bowls, chopsticks, and nap-
kins. Two tiny maiko then entered with large trays of
sweetmeats, and the master of ceremonies lifted off with
his chopsticks and set before us sections of confection-
ery — waves and fan -tailed goldfish, an impressionist
sketch in sugar of rippling water filled with darting fish.
On Nabeshima and Owari plates, and in lacquer and por-
celain bowls, were served innumerable courses — soups,
omelet, lily bulbs, chicken, small birds, jellies, many un-
known and delightful dishes — ^and with each remove,
rice, lifted from a fine, red-lined, gold lacquer rice box
furnished with a big lacquer spoon worth six silver ones.
Tai, the sterlet of Japan, the arbitrary accessory of any
great feast, whose curiously shaped bones are symbols
of hospitality and abundance, was accompanied by a
peppery salad, and followed by more birds, by bamboo
sprouts, and a stew of beche-de-mer, before the appearance
of the piece de resistance.
The maiko advanced in a broad line, two of them
bearing a large tray on which lay a magnificent carp,
still breathing, and with his scales shining as if just
drawn from the water. The master of ceremonies ad-
vanced, and, receiving the tray from the maiko, set it
on the mats and turned it slowly around for all to be-
hold. As the maiko retired all leaned forward to watch
the noble carp, as it lay quivering on its bed of moss
and cresses, with a background of greenery like a true
Japanese garden. This custom of serving the living fish
at a feast is a survival of a traditional usage that for-
eigners seldom witness. Morsels of the fish were pres-
ently lifted from its back and passed to the company.
To us the performance was a kind of cannibalism pos-
sessing a horrible fascination, but the epicures uttered
sounds expressive of appreciation as they lingered over
the delicious morsels. A sudden jar or turning
