' ' W\j| / /\, v^^ ^ *$>k (^n . .-) ^'W< NINE YEARS IN NIPON- .s* NINE YEARS IN NIPON: SKETCHES OF JAPANESE LIFE AND MANNERS. BY HENRY FAULDS, L.F.P.S., Surgeon of Tsukiji Hospital, Tokio; Member of tJie Royal Asiatic Society, ALEXANDER GARDNER, 12 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; AND PAISLEY. 1885. TO MY FATHER THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 218747 PREFACE. So many works have of late been written on Japan that perhaps the best apology for publishing a new one is that the public seem to wish for more. My aim has been to give in language as free as possible from pedantic jargon such an account of Nipon and its people as may instruct, without unduly boring my readers. A great deal more might have been written than I have here attempted, but fortunately strict limits were imposed upon me, and I sincerely hope that useful and interesting things only have found admission. I have been obliged to omit, most reluctantly, a large section in which I intended to give some account of the religious and moral systems which prevail in Japan, but, should this work succeed in finding a moderate measure of public approbation, I hope soon to expand my notes on these subjects into a separate volume.- . CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. The Land Its Contour The Four Great Islands Inland Sea Rivers and Canals Coast Lighthouses Harbours The Black Stream Climate Flora and Fauna Races, - ... 9 CHAPTER II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF YOKOHAMA. Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks An Economical Lighthouse Japanese Horror of Paint Human Vultures Yokohama and Its People A Mushroom Settlement Bird's-eye View No Loafers Human Hansoms Building Stone Straw Clothing Tribute to " Toot- sicums " A Motley Crowd, 25 CHAPTER III. A RUN ON THE TOKIO RAILWAY. Granny and the Engine A Solid Road Lady Smokers Paddy Fields and Egrets Fuji, the Peerless Mountain A Clerical Cyclist Quiet Resting Places An Unpicturesque Metropolis Silent Streets Musical Groans, 37 CHAPTER IV. STREET SCENES. Shadow Pictures Street Names /Esthetic Mud-pies Kite Flying A Hint for Arctic Explorers Fishy Conduct of an English Professor The Queen's English A Japanese Crowd A Baby Cook Shop, -....--... 4.5 CHAPTER V. LIFE IN TOKIO. New Friends Sir Harry Parkes Mine Inn and its Master A Hyper - Calvinistic Parrot Plague of Frogs and Students New Mode of "Running a Restaurant" The "Great Workman" and his Little Ways Charm against Leaks Pic-nic and Fireworks A New Mode of Signalling Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies A Japanese Tower of Siloam Christmas in the Far East, 62 CHAPTER VI. A CONSULTATION IN THE HILLS. A Rembrandtesque Scene Novel Style of Drag Daybreak on the Plains A Remorseful Knight Wayside Tea-houses A For- midable Ferry Buddha in Bronze Presbyterian Church in the Hills Dining in Public A Doctor of the Old School Scotch Service amongst Silk Utility of Yawning, .... 76 CHAPTER VII. A CONSULTATION IN THE HILLS (Continued}. A Charming Bedroom Landscape Gardening in Miniature Duck's Eggs and Duty Some World-forgotten Ones Doctors sometimes differ A Hint for Pious Busy-bodies Religious Radishes Tincture of Snake Rays of Buddha Midnight in a Forest "Resources of Civilization" A Suspicious Case Toddy versus Timidity Loving the Darkness, 86 x. Contents. CHAPTER VIIL MITAKE SAN THE SACRED MOUNT OF THE THREE PEAKS. Bad Roads and Better Language Spiders and Beetles A Japanese Scarecrow Night Storm in a Forest A Dispirited Coolie Sunday Quiet and Questioning Buddhist Teaching and Modern Science Passports and Preaching A Picturesque School Sick Cicadas Art and Nature Brambles and Barefeet, ... 94 CHAPTER IX. PILGRIMAGE TO FUGI THE PEERLESS. A Village Festival Butterflies and Cicadas A Noisy Inn River Scene Silk Dining on Hot Water Mimicry in Spiders A Mountain Pass Tea and Tattle A Tragic Pool Dissolving Views Spindle Whorl An Exciting and Ludicrous Scene Limbs of the Law Curious Bridge Pious Parishioners and a Prudent Rector, 107 CHAPTER X. PILGRIMAGE TO FUGI THE PEERLESS (Continued}. Pretty Tree Frogs Ancient Trees Buddha-faced Woman Peep into a Village School Ai Fish Sweet Scenery Awe Inspiring Walk Lava " Froth " and its Use Mild Martyrdom A Heavenly Vision Mountain Lake Volcanic Prairie Flowers An /Esthetic Jinrikisha Man A Statuesque Stoat Novel Tail-piece Patriotic Bias Fans versus Flies, 121 CHAPTER XL IN A COTTAGE BY THE SEA. A Fair Breeze and Holiday Aspirations Voyage of Discovery Crabs and Canal Banks A Marine Tunnel-borer Snakes and Frogs Stone Net-sinkers Koi Fish A Lovely Marvel of the Sea A Dying Cuttle-fish, - 136 CHAPTER XII. TRIP TO THE TOMB OF IYEYASU. Unpromising Start Bridge of Japan Suburbs of Tokio An Amorous Ascetic Flowering Palm Trees A Brazen Serpent Hotel Gossip and Pagan Devotions Wonderful Avenue Primitive Ploughs Weeping Cherry Tree A Quiet Priest and His Garden Shrines and Saints Uncountable Buddhas and Nature's Cynicism, - 147 CHAPTER XIII. NAGASAKI AND -THE INLAND SEA. Yedo Bay Matsuwa's Sacrifice Rapid Currents Fair Islands Atmospheric Effects A Tight Fit Shimonoseki The Resources of Christian Civilization A Big Indemnity Grand Sea Scene and Mai de Mer Nagasaki Harbour Papenberg Story of the Martyrs Chinese Money Changers Tortoise-shell Work Schools and Missions, 164 CHAPTER XIV. TEN DAYS ON THE TOKAIDO. On the Osaka Railway Cold Water Cure for Sin A Kaleidoscopic Cook Hints for Travellers Glimpses of Kioto, the Old Capital Buddhists and their Bells A Lantern-lit City and a Star-lit Hedge- Salamanders and Singing Frogs Snake-baskets and River-banks On the Tokaido Hakone Pass A Volcanic Cup and some of its contents, 173 Contents. xi. CHAPTER XV. JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY OF FLOWERS. Simplicity of Japanese Bouquets Artless Art A Floral Calendar Flower and Tree Markets Fruitless Sprays of Blossom Place of Honour and its Decoration Allusive Obscurity "Heaven, Earth and Man " Symbolism in Flowers Art Training of the People, 190 CHAPTER XVI. THE LANGUAGE OF NIPON. A Japanese Writer's Lamentation Some Common Misconceptions Pijin English and its Uses The Lingua Franca of the Far East -A Big Alphabet Chinese Tones Iconographs or Picture- Words No Declensions, Conjugations, nor Pronouns Imper- fection of the Colloquial Need of Linguistic Development Capacity for Combinations Suspected Sanskrit Affinities Etiquette and Honorifics Future of the Colloquial Language, - 201 CHAPTER XVII. SCHOOLS. General Diffusion of Education in Japan Educational Influence of Buddhism Statistics Duration of School Period Genuine Accomplishments Heroes of the School Pens, Ink, and Paper Introduction of Arabic Numerals A Japanese Writer on Girls' Schools, --.-.....-. 208 CHAPTER XVIII. A GLIMPSE OF THE LAND OF NEGLECTED EDUCATION. The Carlyle and Thackeray of Japan Bakin's Idea of the Genuine Gentleman Geography of the Land The Natives, and their Strange Ways Bad Schoolboys in Japan Apprenticeship Coddling and its Consequences A Family Scene Breaking the Indentures On the Streets Moral, 217 CHAPTER XIX. MY GARDEN AND ITS GUESTS. . A Dull Look-out From Chaos to Cosmos Shower of Frogs (?) A Rare Hedge of Roses How the Japanese treat Sick Trees Painters and Pine-trees Pine-boring Insect Some Curious Spiders A Fable fresh from Nature Ants and Aphides An Entomological Pharisee Nest of the Mantis Sons of the Prophets A Flight of Dragon-flies Moles and Worms Curious Super- stition Committee Fever and Dame Nature's Soothing Syrup, - 225 CHAPTER XX. JAPANESE ART IN RELATION TO NATURE. Absence of Degraded Conventionalism An Exception Proving the Rule Outlines of Fuji The Bamboo in Art Simplicity in Com- position Flight of Birds Spider's Web in Wood- work Want of Truth in Greek Art A Japanese Picture Gallery, ... 238 CHAPTER XXL THE PHILOSOPHY OF HEAVEN AND EARTH IN A NUT-SHELL. Why Some Birds Fly Well and Others Badly Guesses at Protective Imitation A New Version of the Sphynx Analogies of Nature and Man Casting Away of Passion The True Gentleman The Eight Virtues Some \Vise Sayings, 250 xii. Contents. CHAPTER XXII. HOMES OF THE PEOPLE. Moated Castles in Miniature Bird Rest or Torii Grim Gateways Keeping the Wolf from the Door Primitive Stairways Pebbled Courtyard Hara-kiri, or the " Happy Despatch " Wells and Water A Poet and the " Morning Glory" Paper Lanterns, Pillows, etc. Mosquito Nets Rats and Cats The End of the Home "Fire!" 257 CHAPTER XXIII. How THE JAPANESE AMUSE THEMSELVES. Artistic Toys Cheapness, a Hygienic Advantage Gardening in Miniature Archaisms of the Toy World Tough Picture-Books Early Kinder Gartens Dumb Oratory Puppet Shows and the the Drama Wrestlers and their Rewards, - - - - 271 CHAPTER XXIV. JAPANESE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE. Degraded Religions Origin of some Fetishes Superstitious Customs, 280 CHAPTER XXV. GENERAL SURVEY : WHAT I THINK OF JAPAN. Growth of Population Promise of Improved Physique "Bafe" Tea and Blankets A Reasonable People Over-Legislation about Shipping Usurpation of the Shoguns Growth of the Daimiates Questionings Japanese Whigs and Tories Dread of Socialism The Clan Unit Moral Progress Revisal of Treaties, - . 291 NINE YEARS IN NIPON CHAPTER I. Introductory. The Land Its Contour The Four Great Islands Inland Sea Rivers and Canals Coast Lighthouses Harbours The Black Stream Climate Flora and Fauna Races. A PAN is the name usually given by English writers to a fertile and populous group of four great islands associated with a number of smaller ones, which lies in the far East almost where our artificial day begins, and whose people may perhaps therefore, not unreasonably, hope to form a natural link between those of East and West. Its area is rather 1X1 * greater than that of the United Kingdom, and may be about 1 50,000 square miles, much of which still lies waste and uncultivated, though apparently capable of tillage. About one-fourth is forest land. Japan is washed on the east by the sluggish rollers of the Pacific, and on the west by the seas of Japan and io Nim Years in Nipon. Okhotsk. The most westerly point is within an hour or two's sail of the Asiatic continent, and eastwards it is about 5000 miles distant from San Francisco. Comprising the crescent-shaped mainland, or largest island, which is not definitely named like the others Kiushiu, Shikoku, Yesso, the Kurile Islands, and many others it lies stretched from 24 to 50 40' N. lat, and from 124 to 156 38' E. long, that is, speaking roughly, it lies diagonally in, and north of, the sub-tropical belt, and has northern points corresponding with Paris and Newfoundland on the one hand and southern ones placed like Cairo, Madeira, and the Bermudas ; or again, it cor- responds pretty nearly in latitude with the eastern coast line of the United States, adding Nova Scotia and New- foundland ; and the contrasts of climate in the latter island and in Florida are probably not more remarkable than those which are observed in the extreme northern and southern regions of Japan. By the almost U-shaped Suez canal route the distance is nearly 12,000 miles from Liverpool, but by the slightly arched San Francisco route the distance is greatly lessened, much of it being practically still further shortened by railway so that the journey can be accom- plished in a month. The general shape of the mass formed by the four great islands, which lie closely together separated only by the narrowest straits, has often been poetically compared by native writers to the curved form of a dragon-fly in flight. Perhaps to the common-place mind of the western bar- barian it may suggest the less romantic idea of a hen's foot with partly outstretched claws ! Introductory. II SEA OF JAPAN The four islands are 1. KlUSHlU ("the nine counties"), of an irregular double-wedge shape ; its obtuse wedge lying to the north and the acuter one to the south, the mass being placed nearly at right angles to the so-called mainland. The Bungo Nada, a dangerous strait opening from the Inland Sea into the Pacific, separates it from the next, or 2. SHIKOKU (" the four provinces "), an irregular cres- cent lying southward from and parallel to the western part of the " mainland," having its concavity turned south- ward to the Pacific, while its convexity forms the southern boundary of the Inland Sea. 3. The (strictly-speaking) unnamed HONDO, or HON- SHIU, or mainland is considerably larger than the other three islands combined. It is almost divided into two 12 Nine Years in Nipon. portions by the large fresh water Lake Biwa and two cor- responding deep indentations on the north and south coasts respectively, or the bays of Wakasa and Owari. The western or smaller portion lying east- west is some- thing like a human foot with its toes pointing westward, the hollow of the arch forming the north boundary of the Inland Sea. The remaining portion is somewhat like an inverted axe, its handle pointing due north and the blade touching the western portion just described. 4. YESSO, the northernmost island, lies close to the mainland, being separated from it by Tsugaru strait, which can be crossed in an hour or so. It bears no very fanciful resemblance to a gigantic ray fish, steering eastward, with contorted tail pointing to the mainland. The chain of smaller islands trends from S.W., by N.E., forming a broken sinuous line with Saghalien no longer politically a part of Japan and the Aleutian islands. Saghalien was a possession of some value, and in 1875 was ceded to Russia in return for the comparatively worth- less Kurile islands, where sea-otters are obtained. The act of cession was very unpopular in Japan. The island is said now to contain about 400x3 exiles chiefly of the male sex. They are sent by sea from Odessa, and the fatality on the way has been great. The Japanese government seem to have a fairly good claim to the small but interesting group of Loochoo (Liu-chiu) islands, but it is hotly contested by China. The people have more natural affinity in language and customs to Japan than to China, and would be more benefited by control from Tokio than from Pekin. Introductory. 1 3 The Bonins, called Ogasawara, were recently ceded by the British to Japan. The most striking geographical feature of Japan is the Inland Sea, which is certainly one of the beauties of the world. It is a long irregularly-shaped arm of the sea, with tides and rapid currents, of variable width and no great depth, studded with innumerable thickly-wooded islands. It may be entered from the Pacific by two straits, Linschoten strait and Bungo nada, the navigation of the latter in certain seasons being especially dangerous and difficult. On the northern side the Inland Sea is entered from the Sea of Japan through the strait of Shimonoseki, which very greatly resembles the Kyles of Bute in its narrow sinuous passage and surrounding scenery of most romantic beauty. This is practically the shortest way from Yokohama to Nagasaki, Mr. Griffis to the contrary notwithstanding, and is the route now taken by the mail steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company. This little question, however, led, in 1864, to much bloodshed and subsequent diplomacy, of which I shall have something to say in another chapter. The crescent of the .narrow mainland, if the largest of the islands may be so called, presents its convex side to the Pacific Ocean, while the concavity is turned towards the sea of Japan and the newly opened kingdom of Corea. It is pretty clearly divided into somewhat irregular north-western and south-eastern slopes, with well-marked climatic differences, by a grand central range of great height, broken here and there by the strongly marked individuality of a still living, or but recently extinct, vol- cano, the whole forming a rough back-bone flanked with 14 Nine Years in Nipon. many spur-like ranges, water-carved, and often beautifully terraced along the river valleys, but nowhere, so far as has yet been observed, showing any direct effects of glacial action. The Central main line of railway is intended to run along the flanks of this rugged crest, far enough inland to be safe from attack by sea or destruction by flooding of the rivers, whose shifting beds form no very good formation for the long viaducts which would be required in another situation. Most of the larger rivers in the main- land curiously run a course tending almost north or south. The general contour of the land its great narrow- ness is such, indeed, that they must needs be short, but this direction givesthem thegreatest length possible. There are brief periods of excessively heavy rain, and so they are often then in fierce flood, carrying everything before them and leaving great plains of water-worn stones and gravel around their mouths, on which, after a time, soil has sometimes accumulated and great forests have grown. From their extreme shortness of course the chief commer- cial cities of Japan, even when placed on the banks of broad rivers, are always near enough to " taste the salt breath of the great wide sea." The geological structure of many of the rocks has also been favourable to the formation of numerous most pic- turesque waterfalls, which attract the traveller and have from ancient times been warmly admired and eulogised by native artists and poets. The rivers at a short distance from their outlets are rendered navigable chiefly by the courage, enterprise, and ingenuity of the boatmen, who are amongst the most daring and skilful in the world. Introductory. 1 5 Till recently little has been done to deepen river chan- nels or protect their banks except in the interest of agri- culture. In the lower reaches where broad alluvial plains of great fertility have been formed they are frequently intersected by numerous shallow canals for the most part of comparatively recent excavation, but some of them are many centuries old, and these, in the general absence of good roads, have been of immense service in keeping up cross communication throughout the country. The detritus brought down by the heavy rains is, in some parts of the country, enormous, and is the result of the rapid weathering of certain exposed and easily disin- tegrated rocks. Those are nearly devoid of vegetation, and masses may be seen peeling off and visibly crumbling into dust. The beds of the rivers and the bordering tracts on each side in thoseregions havethus sometimes actually been raised above the average level of the surrounding country, and in crossing the bed of the river you have to climb up an embankment which has often been strengthened arti- ficially by means of long "snake baskets" of bamboo, afterwards to be described. Such levies, as geologists call them, are not unknown in other countries. They have been described to me by travellers as being common in the north of China, and there are examples in Italy and in the valley of the Missis- sippi. One or two of the rivers of Japan, such as the Sumida on the banks of which Tokio, the capital, lies, and which is almost as broad as the Thames at Westminster are worthy of note, and at the present day many a fair modern craft on Western lines may be seen, under the 1 6 Nine Years in Nipon. cheerful tap of hammers, taking shape on their banks. Here it may be mentioned that any particular appelation given to a river in Japan holds good only for a limited part of its course, so that it changes its name perhaps four or five times from its birth amongst the cloud-capped, pine-shaded mountains to its final nirvana in the ocean. For example, the river which passes through the city of Osaka changes its name four times within the city limits! The wide bays along the south-eastern coast are for the most part shallow, and a very slight elevation of the land would vastly increase the areas of the bordering plains, which are already very extensive. Such elevations have already notably taken place, as is shown by the presence of naturally deposited strata of recent sea-shells far above high water mark, while there are reliable indications that considerable elevation of the land has taken place even within the historic period. In spite of their shallowness and rapid silting, some of the rivers of Japan are capable of being so improved as to admit of the passage of steam vessels of the largest size, and there are fine natural inlets and one or two spacious bays, which form natural harbours of great excellence. To the wants of a large and progressive society, which nature has thus shown her readiness to favour, the Japan- ese Government are every year becoming more and more alive. What is still more promising, the people them- selves, greatly more active than their neighbours in China, show a laudable desire to initiate and carry out such local improvements as may promise to secure the fullest advan- tage to the community from nature's lavish gifts. Introductory. 17 One of the most interesting and characteristic features of the Industrial Exhibition held in Tokio, in 1882, was the splendid display of local maps and models illustrative of achieved or proposed undertakings in engineering, such as embankments, canals, breakwaters, etc. Many of them were of real value, showed scientific insight as to the economical application of ways and means, and were, as might have been expected, very attractive merely as works of art. Owing to geologically recent elevations of land the coast is usually steep and even precipitous. Its chief natural features, such as sunken rocks, capes, straits, entrances to bays and harbours, and the mouths of rivers, are now well-marked out with beacons, lights or lighthouses of modern construction. Some of the latter are of superior merit, and speak eloquently to the approaching mariner of the progress made in the country since the recent Restoration. I sincerely hope, in the interests of science, that the lighthouse keepers may be encouraged to use the good opportunity they enjoy of observing and recording the flight of birds during their periods of migration ; while they might also, as has been proposed, assist in forming a cordon of meteorological observers which might give valuable warnings to fisher- men and sailors of coming typhoons. The government surveyors seem to have followed our own charts for the coastline to begin with, and they are proceeding rapidly and carefully to fill in all needful details as to the interior. At Yokoska, in Yedo Bay, where the chief docks are, the coast tide is said only to 1 8 Nine Years in Nipon. rise about four feet on an average. In spring tides it rarely exceeds six feet, and in general the height of the flood-tide is never very great. In no mere Tennysonian dream, it may be said " . . . The mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast." This renders navigation in summer dangerous and diffi- cult, and fogs are deemed by experienced sailors to be the great scourge of Japan. Indeed, those malarious cloud- banks, laden with infectious germs, as they can almost now be proved to be, are probably as dangerous to the landsman as to the mariner. While the large area of land lying under shallow water during rice cultivation may have some share in the formation of those dangerous mists, we must seek for a wider and more general cause, and that is readily to be found in the great current (or rather currents) of warm water passing into a colder sea, which is called the Kuro shiwo, or Dark Tide or Current* The yearly evaporation at the tropics of fully fourteen or fifteen feet of ocean water, causes the great equatorial current of the Pacific which moves westward at first, then splits into two streams, one of which curves northward to- wards the colder waters of the sea of Japan, but gives off minor eddying currents running at 30 to 40 knots around the greater islands of the empire. Where the cold waters meet them condensation of the water-laden air takes place with the resulting formation of great cloud banks. The *Not "Black River," as Re"clus translates it in The Ocean. (English edition, p. 82.) Introductory. 19 water appears to be of a deep, almost indigo blue colour, whence the name given to the stream by the Japanese. Fish occur in great numbers where the arctic current of fresher, lighter, and cooler water meets the warm salt stream from the south amidst great commotion. And these seem to be attracted by the myriads of minute organisms which the water there contains. The analogy of this great current to our own Gulf Stream has been pointed out, and there can be no doubt as to its great in- fluence on the climate of Japan. A difference of from 8 to 10 degrees centigrade may be observed in passing from its waters to the cold currents from the north, and the effect of this on the superjacent atmosphere is very marked. Sudden and severe changes of temperature are often noticed on the southern coasts of Japan, and even in Yedo Bay. They are evidently due to eddies or branch currents from the great streams of cold and warm waters which interweave themselves in the neighbourhood. In the northern island, which is rapidly being "colonised" since the Restoration, the extremes of temperature are somewhat greater than in England. In the vicinity of Tokio the winter is usually clear and mild, with occasional sharp frosts and heavy falls of snow. In summer the heat is intensely oppressive for three months or so. The mean temperature is of little practical importance. The ther- mometer not seldom records a heat of 88 to even 97 Fah. in the shade, and even at night the heat remains so high that sleep becomes impossible, the air being muggy and no breath of wind stirring. The greatest heat is usually from the middle of June to early in September, but there are often brief periods of hot weather even in 2O Nine Years in Nipon. May. The cold in winter is much more severe on the north-western coasts, and the roads across the main island are often blocked with snow, so that communication is suspended for months. In such a summary sketch as this, it is impossible to say almost anything of the fauna and flora of Japan. Thom6 gives China and Japan a botanical district to themselves. The useful bamboo flourishes in all parts of the land, sugar cane and the cotton plant grow in the southern parts, tea almost everywhere. The tobacco plant, hemp, maize or Indian corn, mulberry for silk-worm food, rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, potatoes, yams, are all cultivated. The beech, the oak, maples and pine trees, in rich variety ; azaleas, camelias, etc., grow in moor and forest Some of the more charac- teristic plants are wistaria, salisburia, cryptomeria, chrys- anthemums, and varieties of evergreens such as retinos- pora, now well known to all British gardeners. Many familiar wild flowers are to be gathered by hedgerow or mossy bank such as violets, blue bells, forget-me-not, thyme, dandelion, and its allies. The woods are rich in ferns, amongst which the royal fern is conspicuous, orchids, creepers, lichens, mosses, fungi, and liverworts, while the aquatic flora is extensive. The beautiful lotus, though imported, may now fairly be considered as naturalised. There are many water-lilies, reeds, and rushes, some of which are of great utility. The mammalia of Japan are not numerous. In ancient times, before the dawn of history, two species of dwarf elephants existed in the plains around Tokio. There are many monkeys (Macacus) in some parts, and even in ex- Introductory. 2 1 tremely northern latitudes. Foxes abound, and are reverenced ; but it is said none are ever found in Shikoku. Wolves and bears are destructive in the north, and had at one time a more extensive field. There are wild antelopes, red deer, wild boars, raccoon dogs, badgers, otters, stoats, ferrets, bats (including a peculiar fruit bat), moles, shrews, and rats ; while the sea is specially rich in seals, sea-otters, and whales. The country has been found quite unsuitable for sheep, but goats thrive well, although not hitherto much favoured. Oxen are used for draught. Horses are small, but of fair quality, and the breed is being im- proved. The cats are often nearly tail-less. The dogs are of a low, half-wolfish breed. There are some three hundred birds known in Japan. Few of them are what we call song-birds, but the lark is at least one brilliant exception. Game birds are pretty plentiful, and are now protected. Insects are very numerous no traveller will dispute that and Japan is now greatly courted by entomologists, who have done much within the last few years to increase our knowledge of the treasures Japan has to yield to science in that department. Locusts are often destruc- tive, and* mosquitoes are a great pest. Bees, the silk- worm, and the wax-insect are, however, highly appreciated. There are several kinds of lizards, a great variety of frogs, seven or eight snakes, including a deadly cerastes, and two or three kinds of tortoise. Edible turtles abound in the Bonins. The crustaceans are numerous and in- teresting, and of fish there is extraordinary variety, especially of marine species. Oysters are excellent and in great quantity, and Americans can revel in clam 22 Nine Years in Nipon. chowder. Cuttle-fish often rival the monsters described by Victor Hugo. Mr. Blakiston, who has given careful attention to the subject, notes that Japan contains, besides a peculiar fauna, other elements of a tropical and Eurasian character. He proposes to account for the first imported element, reptiles, insects, and bats, by the application of Darwin's ingenious supposition that drifted ancestors might reach such an island home through the aid of such a current as the Black Stream. The Eurasian larger mammalian element might reach Japan, Mr. Blakiston supposes, by the freezing over of the Tsugaru channel, which seems quite a reasonable idea. The fauna of the northern island Yesso thus stops abruptly at the channel which separates it from the rest of Japan ; and while many of the birds found on the mainland are peculiar to Japan, those found in Yesso are often identical with Siberio-Chinese species of the Asiatic continent. As to the Human members of the fauna, there are two well-marked races the Japanese proper and the Ainos in Yesso, of whom there are only some ten thousand surviv- ing. The latter, in spite of a great deal of crude writing on the subject, cannot show any clear claim to be con- sidered the aborigines, are not necessarily older in their occupancy than the Japanese themselves, and were never very numerous. There is no evidence that they were ever greatly different from what they are now, and it may be considered tolerably certain that they are an un- important element in estimating the " pre-historic " traces of human life in Japan, which have a much closer relation to the present Japanese race. The Ainos have a language Introductory. 23 of their own, and are indeed in a sense anatomically distinct from the Japanese ; but of the so-called Ainos a large proportion, through inter-marriage probably, are almost undistinguishable from them, except by acquired language and customs. Some of them are rather hairy. As to the ethnological affinities of the Japanese, nothing is as yet very certain, and mere speculation is of no avail. They answer to that general conception most of us have formed of Mongoloi nations, but what a Mongol is exactly I do not pretend to know, and to call another race Mongoloid is only to deepen our ignorance immensely. According to far- Eastern cosmography there are six points of the compass, the zenith and nadir very logically being added to those with which we are familiar. With charming completeness and symmetry science, aided by tradition, has provided a theory of original migration from each one of those six points ; viz., the Soil (Buddhist view) ; America ; China or Accadia ; Africa, or the Malayan peninsula, or the Southern Isles of the Pacific ; Saghalien or Kamtschatka ; the Celestial Regions of the Sun. Practically there is now great apparent homogeneity of race excluding the small gipsy-like tribe of Ainos throughout the empire. I believe, however, that, as in Scotland, France, and Spain, there are faint traces of a long past fusion of once distinct ethnic types, which further study might yet clearly elucidate. The Japanese, in short, are a race of as yet unknown origin, comprising some thirty-seven millions speaking one language, of fair skinned, black-haired, pig-eyed, lithe, bright, good- humoured, revengeful, courteous, flighty, intensely pug- 24 Nine Years in Nipon. nacious little people, who tell you they came originally from heaven, and I sincerely hope they will all get back again. First Impressions of Yokohama. 25 CHAPTER II. First Impressions of Yokohama. Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks An Economical Lighthouse Japanese Horror of Paint Human Vultures Yokohama and Its People" A Mushroom Settlement Bird's-eye View No Loafers Human Han- soms Building Stone Straw Clothing Tribute to " Tootsicums " A Motley Crowd. THE pale yellow bananas, so like a mixture of honey and mealy potatoes, and the pine apples with their bluish green leaves, covered with peachy bloom, and their golden, ruby-tipped juicy scales, of which we thirsty travellers had laid in such liberal stores at Singapore and Hong Kong which had long hung under the awning in hospitable but fast diminishing festoons have passed away as a sweet vision of the sunny tropics. We have been steaming steadily now for a day or two, through a pale yellow sea, the colour of which, we are told, is due to the mud-laden waters of that euphonious stream, the Yang-tsze-keang ; the male passengers had given up their garments of white duck and were now all but blue noses and red ears encased in the thickest coats or cloaks they could fish out of their mouldy trunks ; for on these chill mornings in the end of February, when the daily scrubbing of the decks takes place, the salt water from the hose at once freezes hard on the clean planks, making a rather too slippery morning promenade. We are now in the latitude of Japan, and after two months' B 26 Nine Years in Nipon. tedious pilgrimage, a day or two more and our weary journey will be at an end, and Japan, of which we have longingly dreamed so often, will be once and forever a genuine possession of our minds ! We have taken a V shaped course, whose angle almost touches the equator, and in the short space of sixty days have experienced, twice over, nearly all the changes the thermometer can indicate to us. On the third of March we passed on our starboard side Iwoga shima (sliima means island), an active volcano, which was smoking away very vigorously from various crevices that seamed its dark sides. At night it forms an inexpensive lighthouse of the first order. Its chief peak was said in the chart to be 2469 feet high, but it struck me as being probably a good deal less in height, a statement which, of course, in the case of an active volcano does not in the least imply inaccuracy on the part of former observers. Faint through combined distance and haze hung in the air on the landward side, dreamy visions of fawn- tinted mountains patched with bright green, which we knew to be at last the land of our aims and hopes. As we entered the great and busy Bay of Yedo, a thick haze hung over all things, blending in one whitey grey sea and land and sky. We hailed the lighthouse which at once gives a sign to the approaching visitor of an alert and advancing civilisation ; got a pilot on board and were soon steaming gently up into Yokohama harbour through fleets of white-sailed junks and sanpans or small rowing-boats. Unlike those of China, they are usually unpainted, and we soon found this horror of paint to be almost a religious First Impressions of Yokohama. 27 principle with Japanese of the old school, of which more anon. The modern spirit, however, which in Japan is not always very " cnesthetic," revels in penki, and can hardly get enough of it, either as to quantity or variety, laid on houses and furniture. A Chinaman loves to have an ever unwinking eye painted on the prow of his sanpan, and his standard joke is to explain to the enquiring stranger, with combined simplicity and terseness, " no got eye, no can see," and in the progressive style of rhetoric dearly loved by Confucius and his followers, he adds, demurely "no can see, no can go." Now, curiously enough, the Egyptians long ago had a similar eye that of Horus- similarly placed on the prow of their galleys. In Japan, however, in place of an eye which I have never seen there a clever zoological compromise between an eel and a snake is painted in red, chiefly, at the bow, and this is usually the only trace of paint to be seen on the craft. As we drew nearer our intended place of anchorage the boats seemed to be drawn towards us by something almost like magnetic attraction. We could see them hastening afar, with attendant splash and shout to share in the spoil, like vultures swooping down on a stranded whale. The boatmen are exceedingly active, square-shouldered, squat little fellows with sinewy limbs ; as a rule, less tawny than I had expected to find them, although some of them were pretty dark-skinned. As their bodies were veiled with very little else than a damask-like pattern, in two or perhaps three colours, tattoed into their skin, one had a good opportunity of judging as to their degree of muscular development. The Japanese generally do not, 28 Nine Years in Nipon. I think, like so many of the Eastern races, form good subjects for artistic representation. Neither men nor women have much of the subtle grace and impressive dignity of form and gait that in the Indian and Arab races impress the western imagination so powerfully. There are, of course, exceptions to this general fact, but after again seeing and studying other races this impression which I formed at first was greatly strengthened. Grotesque and humorous portrayal of the human form, and reflected likenesses of the same in animals was inevitably and naturally the direction in which Japanese art in relation to man had to assert itself, and in this line it has never been greatly surpassed. Yokohama, where, of course, we arrived on a Sun- day, is not a very striking place in itself a low swamp, ditched all over at right angles with broad, shallow, tidal canals, filled with a concentrated essence of sub-tropical drainage which the sea does its humble best, twice a day, to assist the authorities in rendering tolerable ; and bridged over at very frequent intervals with unpainted wooden structures not of a very endurable character ; a town of rapid weedy growth ; choked up with closely built hongs or warehouses, some really fine and well-stored, western shops, a good hotel or two, acres on acres of bonded and free stores, custom- houses, banks, shipping offices, poisoning grog shops, two well built churches, tiny shops of Chinese money- changers, tasteful bungalows with pretty gardens, rifT-rarT lodging-houses, a spacious railway station, an anchorage wide enough for all the fleets of all the nations, and above First Impressions of Yokohama. 29 all, Fuji now gleaming in its snowy surplice like a solemn priest before the altar of God. The foreign residences, quite home-like and tasteful, are built on the " bluff" the sea-ward, wave-eaten margin of a gently undulating fertile plateau which marks the level of the ancient coast, and affords pleasant and tolerably healthy sites for numerous cottages and villas built when military protection was needed and afforded at the " treaty ports," and when foreign trade was much better and more hopeful than it is supposed to be now. The gardens are delightful to look at, and one sees here many plants growing openly which are quite rare in the British Isles. From the bluff you may get a good view of the native town, spread out on the reclaimed swamp of plain below, which we can also see to be bounded all round by the edge of the plateau which forms this same bluff. We can see the busy harbour, dotted with ever-moving small craft, among which float several great ironclads of different flags, and many of the largest sized cargo, passenger steamers, and sailing vessels. Round the mar- gin of the bay sweeps with firm geometric curve the Tokio railway and the centre of the channel is crowded with large white-winged junks, slowly making their way up with a favouring breeze to the great metropolis of the Mikado's Empire. Turning to the west, Fuji rises to a height of about 13,000 feet from behind a frowning mass of lofty dark hills which are sharply silhouetted against its dazzling snowy sides. They terminate a long rugged range which rises in the blue distance far north of Tokio. Let us now, descending by an abrupt flight of stone 30 Nine Years in Nipon. steps, or staggering down one of the steeply-graded roads that connect the low-lying native town with the bluff, take a peep at the streets and at the people who are moving so actively about in them, for in Japan there are almost no native loafers to be seen. Every one has, or at least pretends to have, some means of gaining a living by industry. It is true, we shall not see unsophisticated Japan as we might have seen it, even here, a few years before, but neither do we think can it now be seen by living eye almost anywhere in the empire, so great and , sudden and far-reaching has been the Unloading a Rice Junk. By influence of the once greatly dreaded " black ships," and the lore and merchandise they brought with them for good or ill. Probably the first thing that strikes the new comer as thoroughly Japanese is the jinrikisha or " man-power- carriage." It is a kind of tiny hansom in which one or two may ride, and is drawn by one man or by two, tandem fashion, and not a bad means of locomotion it proves to be if only the springs are good and the roads in tolerable order. I have gone a continuous journey of about 500 miles in this way, and at a most rapid rate. Those little "Pull- man-cars," as they have been facetiously called, are used by everybody, and are to be found everywhere through- out the country, and indeed even in some ports of China and India. They were, however, unknown till the " foreigners " came, and are usually said to have been invented by an American in Yokohama. It is very First Impressions of Yokohama. 31 difficult to believe that an American ever did anything of the kind. Photographs may still be seen showing the first transition from the old familiar idea of the mi-koshior sacred car to the more modern light carriage. It was certainly at first a vehicle of the clumsiest and most primitive kind, even when thus improved, and had no springs of any kind ; but perhaps the American " inventor " did not know about springs. They are often gaudily painted or lacquered and adorned with tragic subjects from Japanese mythology, tradition or the stage. In wet weather a hood made of a tough, almost untearable and evil-smelling oiled paper, without opening for light or ventilation, is drawn over the guest as the hire is delicately called while he is perhaps trundelled rapidly along in a direction quite opposite to that desired by him. Nobody, however, is supposed to lose temper on such occasions, and certainly the coolies themselves rarely do so, even when much time is lost. On the way to the Tokio railway terminus the word " station " is now almost Japanese you pass a number of rather stately edifices, built generally of a soft, easily- carved pale green or marbled tuff, which has the double merit of always looking well without the meretricious adornment of paint, and of resisting fire for a long time rarely long enough, alas ! to resist the heat of those awful general conflagrations which are so common in the wooden built towns of old Japan. This lava stone also, I think, weathers much more slowly than its crumbly texture would seem to threaten, but there are many varieties. It is supposed to have been chiefly formed by the sub- marine deposit of masses of pumice stone from north- 32 Nine Years in Nipon. ward flowing currents when the low-lying land was submerged, as we know it to have once been. When your biped in harness at last holds out with well-feigned disgust the dirty little bit of government paper, which is only twice his proper fare, and utters tor- rents of hopelessly unintelligible abuse, you look with im- perturbable calmness over the hurrying crowds hastening to take their railway tickets or their seats. If the day is wet and cold, short cloth capes, often of fine broadcloth, or little check woollen shawls are worn by the men, while the humbler classes use tippets of plaited grass with broad leaves, or of rushes with the pointed ends tifrncd out and downwards so as to shed the rain, which it does pretty effectually. Strangely enough, the same kind of grass coat is worn in the pro- vince of Minho, in Spain, but why this primitive-looking garment should in Japan have long been called mino is a fact which has not received any explanation. Many of the passengers ' also are clad in oiled paper waterproofs black, dark green, or of the natural dirty- brownish yellow colour ; while nearly all of them have heavy clumsy paper umbrellas, gaily coloured, and often with symbolic designs painted upon their covers. I think they are pretty safe curios to send home to admiring country cousins, but don't be too sure about anything when travel- ling. I bargained once for similar articles of great novelty of appearance, while travelling in the valleys of British Bhootan, but found that they had all been manufactured in Glasgow, whither I was proposing to send them ! Men and women, boys and girls, all wear very short indigo or white cotton socks hooked at the side like boots, First Impressions of Yokohama. 33 leaving the great toe apart from the rest in order to give hold to the latchet of the straw sandals which the peasants, artizans, and poor wear, or of the high-toothed wooden pat- tens which the better-off clumsily clatter about in. They are of various patterns, some resembling our clogs, others are lacquered .and of rather elegant design. The noise of the wood-shod feet of passengers emerging from an arriving train reminds one of a regiment of cavalry pas- sing. Other and sweeter associations seem to have been sometimes re-called. I remember reading a love song, in which the heart of a sighing swain is made to leap with tender joy as the dear little tootsicums of his adored one come " pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat ! " down the alley. I think that poet had genuine imagination. Rarely, very rarely now (1873), vou mav see a depressed and mournful samurai, or knight of the two-swords, with basin - shaped hat, the prominent and richly-adorned hilt of his keen razor-like blade sticking out from his silken girdle, with which in better days he had ever been ready to maintain the honour of his lord ; and beside it, cross - wise, another little one almost like a stiletto, with which he was even now ready in a moment to defend his own, in the saddest . _ . and. to us westerns, strangest way. Few A Samurai. J out of Japan have any idea of the dis- tress that multitudes of those often unwise, but in many respects cultured, noble, and high-minded men have had to endure before they could bring themselves- to part with a trusty weapon, which had been notched and bent in 34 Nine Years in Nipon. many a fray, to some cold curio hunter. Those knights of the so recent feudal age of Japan are fast falling into other ways, hiring themselves out as common servants, or going, often rashly, with their slender savings into mean trade. What an un- workcd mine is here for the future Walter Scott of Japan ; stores of living feudal romances in this prosaic nineteenth century of ours ! The costumes of the people in this evidently transi- tional period, are very amusing and suggestive. The most original combinations of Eastern and Western ideas occur in every few yards of our progress, more notable usually than picturesque or pleasing. You may thus see an intelligent young fellow, perhaps a clerk in a merchant's office, with the newest style of felt hat from Paris or London, an antique Japanese robe of silk, wooden pattens of great height, and a common bath- towel carefully wound around his neck for a comforter ; if the gilded price ticket happens to remain on it, so much the more ornamental ! It was not at the time of which I speak at all unusual to see some important official going to dine in full dress that is, with European " claw-ham- mer coat " and white kid gloves, while his feet were shod with pattens ; or you might meet a thoroughly respect- able citizen of weight and presence going along the prin- cipal streets on a hot day in New European " store- clothes," with nether limbs enveloped only in a cool white cotton garment, not usually made visible to the general public. Varieties of dress tend to become badges indica- tive of business or profession, and it has been interesting to watch the crystallising process going on here, the very First Impressions of Yokohama. 35 same one by which our English wigs of different periods are like fossils indicating, say, the chronological strata in which particular offices had their origin. The government officials of inferior grades delight in a cap of western shape, the marines dress like our British marines, the pupils of the Imperial College of Engineering wear Scotch bonnets, while the medical students in the University appear in those neat dark blue caps which adorn the crania of peripatetic German bands in our country. The country people, farmers or rural shop-keepers, have the most characteristic appearance, and are most interest- ing to visitors. They struck me as being considerably less in stature than the denizens of the towns, an im- pression which their stoop and sandalled feet does not wholly account for. In rain and in sunshine the rustics, who are always a target for city witlings everywhere, wear odd-looking, palm-leaf hats a yard or thereabouts in diameter, and in wet weather they thatch themselves in the peculiar grass overcoat I have already mentioned, which makes them look like so many hedgehogs. The country women, never very remarkable for beauty, are not seen at their best when staring and grinning with widely-open mouths as the foreign barbarians pass, more especially when their teeth are duly blackened after marriage. They wear light blue figured cotton handker- chiefs, tied in a clumsy knot round their heads. The young girls delight in scarlet, or other bright-coloured underskirts. I suppose there may be about twenty millions of those humble, good-natured toilers in the fields, and civilization is slowly but very surely reaching them too. It is curious 36 Nine Years in Nipon. to notice how those simple people bow profoundly to the gold-laced guard before they can presume to enter the car beside which he seems to stand sentry. Sometimes the unsophisticated traveller would leave his pattens outside on the platform, as he had been wont courteously to do on entering a house, expecting to find them lying there when he should arrive at his destination ! There is a fair sprinkling in the crowd of fat, prosperous Chinamen, who somehow contrive to handle most of the money which passes out from or into Japan, of English or American "mashers" of both sexes doing the tour round the world, and getting done pretty well themselves ; and not a few smart-looking, elegantly dressed Japanese, with gold chains of rather extravagant dimensions, who have exhausted the resources of European civilization, mastered all philosophies, sciences, and religions, and now come back to their countrymen, perhaps to teach what they be- lieve if they believe anything at all. A Run on the Tokio Railway. 37 CHAPTER III. A Run on the Tokio Railway. Granny and the Engine A Solid Road Lady Smokers Paddy Fields and Egrets Fuji, the Peerless Mountain A Clerical Cyclist Quiet Rest- ing Places An Unpicturesque Metropolis Silent Streets Musical Groans. O we are at last to ride to Yedo in a railway train ! While we are waiting on the platform a group of most diminu- tive country women, who have come from afar to witness the wonders of the treaty port, are gazing with mingled awe and admiration on a handsome little engine gleaming with burnished brass, which is engaged in making up the train for Tokio. One of them, who is very old and garrulous, and who speaks with a quaint patois, calls it a jokisen (steam-ship), and whenever it approaches she runs off screaming and laughing alternately, like the simple old girl she is ! O baa san (granny) has evidently just seen the railway train for the first time. It is rather wonderful, however, to observe how stolidly the majority of the people seem to accept and appropriate the new ideas and appliances from the west as mere matters of course. Still there remains in the steam engine for a long 38 Nine Years in Nipon. time a great fascination for the Japanese mind. The toy- shops are full of pictures in which a railway train is the central object of attraction, and an intelligent medical student from the country told me with grest glee, that he had secured lodgings from which he could see the trains glide past every day. The line is now a double one, and passenger trains of some eight or ten carriages, first, second, and third classes, leave either terminus every hour or so. The traffic is not only considerable, but the return on the mileage is said to be unusually good. The line, con- structed by British engineers, is, on the testimony of a distinguished American railway constructor, " as firm as a rock " ; the gauge is somewhat narrower than the usual narrow British guage ; the engines are of British build, somewhat too light, perhaps, but effective and extremely elegant in appearance, while the carriages, with the ex- ception of those in the third class, have the seats arranged lengthwise, like our tramway cars. The first class cars are sub-divided into three small compartments, the cen- tral one opening into the other two. Entrance is made as in American cars, from either end of the carriage, but the platform is narrow. Semaphore signals are used on the block system, somewhat imperfectly carried out, it seemed to me. The intermediate stations are very well planned and built, and iron foot-bridges cross the track, which is fenced in all the way along. There have been very few railway casualties of any kind omitting, of course, deliberate suicides, which are painfully common and hardly one of those accidents shows any special tendency to carelessness or inefficiency on the part of A Run on the Tokio Railway. 39 Japanese officials or workmen. Already the railways in the country have begun to work a social revolution, more strongly cementing the family already united so closely bringing communities into closer and more frequent con- tact, developing pilgrimages to obscure shrines, and stim- ulating commerce in farm produce. Above all, railway precision is communicating a notion of the importance of the minuter divisions of time, especially in relation to business appointments, for not long ago the twelve periods of two hours into which the day was divided was the only diurnal division of time met with in daily life. Little square green cushions are supplied for about a penny a run, which are a great convenience to third-class passengers not blessed with much adipose tissue. After our arrival in Yokohama we lost little time in getting our luggage cleared by the custom-house authori- ties, whom we found stringent in their examination, but civil. We then made our way in a train of jinrikishas to the terminus of the railway for Tokio. The company of our fellow-travellers would have been much more agreeable without the odious and depressing stink of coarse and ill- flavoured tobacco which filled the compartment. The pipe- bowl is fortunately very small, but its employment is just all the more frequent. Handsomely dressed and, I believe, quite respectable young girls, leaving their pattens on the floor, tucked up their white-stockinged feet on the matted seats, and proceeded to puff away with great solemnity and sweetness. The conversation seemed to consist chiefly of ejaculations and puffs of smoke, and certainly to one who had only acquired certain phrases and a few useful vocabularies on the voyage out, could 40 Nine Years in Nipon. not possibly prove either intelligible or interesting. The first station on the way is Kanagawa. Commodore Perry, of the United States, made his treaty the first one entered into with western foreigners in recent times after long centuries of seclusion in 1854, at the then miserable little fishing village of Yokohama or Cross Strand. It was thought by the timid Japanese authorities to be safely separated by a wide and barren marine swamp from the metropolis at the head of the Bay of Yedo. In 1859, however, Sir Rutherford Alcock and the Hon. Townsend Harris, ministers of the United States, gained a conces- sion in Kanagawa, across the swamp, and three miles nearer the Shogun's great city of Tokio, and here practically modern foreign relations with Japan may be said to have begun. For various reasons Yoko- hama regained its ground, and Kanagawa is now little but a low and populous suburb of Yokohama, although the official documents of the British Government still, somewhat strangely for so radical a country, continue to give Kanagawa its full dignity. Leaving it to its full but fruitless enjoyment, we dash through a cutting, past a series of beautifully wooded eminences, and are out into the open country. It seems to be one vast fertile plain of moist paddy fields, laid out in small squares, like the map of the United States, through which a few snowy-plumed egrets may be seen stalking, and on our right, seen through a sombre fringe of dark green pines, lies, spread out, the grand Bay, through whose foam-flecked azure fleets of white- sailed junks are sawing their way. Away beyond rich loamy fields of leeks and garlic, rise A Rim on the Tokio Railway. 41 steeply-sloping wooded bluffs of no great height, whose bosky sides are dotted with unpainted Shinto or vermillion- coloured Buddhist shrines, and stained with sweet patches of pale rose-coloured early plum blossom ; while far above these rise the dark masses of the Oyama range, crowned with the lofty truncated cone of Fuji, still white with the winter's snow, and matchless in the delicate grace of its almost flawless curves. There is a tradition, still widely believed in Japan, that it bursts from the solid earth in a single night, making by way of compensation a great gap in the land which became the magnificent fresh-water lake Biwa, of which we shall hear again. One cannot refrain from speaking and thinking of Fuji while living anywhere almost within sixty miles of it It forces itself upon one's notice, and is always beautiful from any point of view and under almost any sky. Two German scientists give its height, Mr. Knipping at twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-four English feet, and Dr. Rein at twelve thousand two hundred and eighty-seven feet. My brother-in-law, Mr. R. Stewart, of the Imperial Japanese survey, found it by his measure- ment to be twelve thousand three hundred and sixty- five feet. Messrs. Satow and Hawes mention that the Japanese suppose that the sand brought down during the day by the pilgrims goes up again at night ! At Kawasaki the river is spanned by a fine iron viaduct of great length, and the plain which seems to have been formed as a delta (in the wider sense of the word) is some twelve or fourteen miles broad where the railway crosses. The lower part of it was a few 42 Nine Years in Nipon. years ago flooded over a very large area, with disastrous results. There are numerous pretty little villages and quiet hamlets on the way to Tokio which seem to be mostly the abodes of fishermen, workers in straw, or shopkeepers dependent on the simple wants of an agricultural popula- tion. Here and there we get a glimpse through its bordering pine trees of a famous imperial road, the Tokaido, dusty and ill kept, as most roads in Japan are. You cannot read very much of a good old romance with- out finding yourself " located," as Yankees say, on some part of this great thoroughfare, or at least on one similar to it, where so much of the romantic life and knightly activity of the ancient empire found its expression. But much of its glory departed after the Shogun fell, and the railway has since arisen and shrieked its doom along with that of feudal Japan. It forms still a pleasant drive, and one esteemed clerical friend cycles it with great gusto even in the dustiest weather. On the railway you pass several populous villages with well-managed stations, through the turnstiles of which crowds are all day coming arid going, to worship at some famous or family shrine, or to do business of some kind ; priests of every Buddhist sect ; pilgrims clad in white, with tinkling bells; fussy western-dressed officials or foreign sportsmen with gun, bag, passport and whisky flask. Sometimes a little rural graveyard, with grey stones, lichened o'er with creamy or orange, pale pink or dark brown growths, reminds us of quiet holy spots amidst the hills of dear old Scotland. Peaceful farm steadings with steep-thatched roofs A Run on the Tokio Railway. 43 are embosomed, even at this early season, in dense clumps of dark green foliage (of the previous summer), through which feathery sprays of the lighter-tinted bamboo rise with bold curve, and droop towards earth again in a graceful sweep. The deep rosy pink of the frequent plum tree gives a warm summer-like blush to the woods, and the vegetable gardens are even now by no means lacking in rich young verdure of the most varied forms and tints. As we draw near the Mikado's capital, bluffs, similar to those we left behind us at Yokohama, draw in towards the shore, showing well the water-worn margin of the old upraised sea-coast which bounded the bay when much of the great plain still lay under its blue waters. Near the point where the railway touches it again lies an old shell-heap which has excited a good deal of heated discussion as to its antiquity. Others are still in course of formation of a more modern type, a few miles nearer the city. After some fifty minutes run over a smooth road, we pass at length through a lofty and leaky cutting, alongside of the Tokaido (which here becomes a busy street, full of vivid pictures of Japanese life and manners), into Tokio. The line sweeps along the curve of the Bay on an embankment, from which you view the line of rude forts, built by the aid of French military engineers, but now superseded by one or two silent " krupps " which lurk among the trees somewhere about the mouth of the river. As we first approach the straggling group of mean build- ings called Tokio, I must candidly confess my feeling was one of great surprise and disappointment. Imagine a grey expanse of dirty sea-water, dotted with dirty-looking grey junks, and bounded by a grey wilder- 44 Nine Years 211 Nipon. ness of dirty shingle, covering dingy wooden houses, with nothing to relieve the eye, save here and there, at great intervals, a bosky clump of trees rising from a fragment of the old higher coast-line I have already mentioned, and shading the lofty tent-like tiled roof of a colossal temple. This wide waste of wooden structures seems in the thin .smoky haze to merge into the horizon, while the sky-line is broken by a straggling big chimney or two which honestly do their best, by intermittently belching forth funereal plumes of hideously black smoke, to impart to this stagnant capital a commercial appearance. But is this quiet, sleepy-looking county town on a large .scale Yedo, " the largest city in the world " of our infallible school geographies ? Certainly its 700,000 or so of in- habitants contrive to keep themselves wonderfully well out of observation. The population has, indeed, been often stated at a much higher figure than I have just given, and an important Japanese official recently referred in public to the city as containing a million of inhabitants. Complete reliance, I am fully persuaded, cannot be given to the statistics on this point ; but even those pro- perly do not refer to the city itself as containing a million of people, but to the municipal district administered by the Tokiofu, which is much more extensive than the city and includes some islands far out at sea. I think I have never been in any city always excepting, of course, dear little St. Andrews whose citizens made so little noise a fact which can only be partly explained by the vastness of the area over which it is spread, and by the great network of broad canals connecting the moats of the castle with the bay itself, an arrangement which has to a A Rtm on the Tokio Railway. 45 large extent rendered cartage unnecessary. The two- wheeled carts in use are very primitive in structure. They are usually drawn by two men, in slight attire, aided by other two or more pushing behind. They move very rapidly along, as you will find if you try to keep pace with them, in long swinging steps, to the accompani- ment of a shrill " hoich ! how ! " which, in evesy variety of tone and key, breaks the almost painful stillness of the thoroughfares. In the suburbs chiefly may be also seen great trains of bullock carts and of heavy-laden pack- horses, which are chiefly used for far inland and mountain traffic. Near the station, which is well built, there is a fine Japanese bank built of variegated volcanic stone, a stone arched bridge, rows of stores, and stretching away through the centre of the city lies the Tori or chief boulevard, built of stucco covered brick. Light tramway cars now run from one end of the city to the other at very moderate fares, and are largely patronised, especially by artizans and Shopkeepers, who seem all to be after business of some kind. This once fine street is, however, losing its characteristic regularity ; a wretched pavement of common red bricks trips up the pedestrian clattering along in his wooden pattens. When we arrived in the'spring of 1874, its double row of pines, acacias, and plum trees which latter were in full bloom formed a sight of rare and touching beauty in the very heart of so large and populous a city. 46 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER IV. Street Scenes. Shadow Pictures Street Names Esthetic Mud-pies Kite Flying A Hint for Arctic Explorers Fishy Conduct of an English Professor The Queen's English A Japanese Crowd A Baby Cook Shop. A GREAT deal of Japanese life is passed in the streets, and can best be seen there. In the good times for which old-fashioned Japanese people sigh, much more of the domestic doings were visible to the public than would now be considered comely or proper ; but at all events there is little of that morbid concealment of private life which is so marked a feature in other Eastern countries. The houses are open from floor to roof in warm weather, and concealment is nearly impossible ; and at night, when the paper windows are drawn closely together, you may see many a painful tragedy or side- splitting comedy enacted in shadow by the unconscious inmates. Japanese caricaturists have, indeed, not been slow to seize and utilize this salient feature in the national life, and comic silhouettes or shadow-pictures are to be seen in any print-shop or bookseller's window. The cities of Tokio and Osaka are intersected with canals, and the bridges which cross them are necessarily numerous. They are often named in a very grand and poetical style : the " Bridge of Eternal Life," the " Fairy Assembly Bridge," and so on. A blind alley is called a Street Scenes. 47 " bag street." So great is the love of nature amongst the people of Japan, that it is said some two-thirds of the streets in Tokio are named after natural objects ; a ten- dency which is amply illustrated by the whole decorative art of the country. Mr. Griffis has pointed out that great battlefields and Japan has not been without them are not commemorated in this way, nor do we find many names of heroes handed down to an admiring posterity in association with particular streets ; although popular wrestlers and fencing masters, priests and nuns, and one famous English pilot (Will Adams), have been thus im- mortalised. Passing along " Shipway Street " into " Lance and Arrow Street," let us see what we can find to interest, amuse, and instruct us. As we go out by the garden-gate, our cook's little girl (we have all men cooks here), Tsiiru, or Miss Crane, as she is called, is busy making, not mud pies, but a pretty little artificial garden, with bits of rock arranged with sloping strata, as in nature ; a rounded mountain, furrowed as if by centuries of rainfall, with tidy, tasteful walks, shaded by gnarled twigs of pine, and brightened' with cleverly contrasted half-open buds of azaleas of various tints. A few blades of bamboo grass, curved by careful art, complete a very pleasing little landscape, which occupies just about one foot square ! It is common to speak of such manifestations of art-feeling in Japan as instinctive. I am not sure that I know what is meant by the term. I can understand, however, that certain ancestral tendencies and habits may be repeated, and in favourable circumstances emphasized in the offspring. 48 Nine Years in Nipon. In regard to Japan, this almost unerring art-sense is demonstrably of comparatively recent origin, and was due primarily to foreign teaching. Art education of a most effective but informal kind, through diffusion of cheap il- lustrated books, has since then helped to develop taste for natural beauty, which had, of course, some existence before it could be developed. We are recalled from this digression by strange whirring sounds high up in the air, which remind us of the asolian harp. They are caused by "singing kites," which are of all shapes : such as a baby in Japanese long clothes, an eagle with pinions expanded and tail spread out, the hideous face of an ogre, or they may assume the form of a gaudy flower, or of a swallow-tailed butterfly. They are kept steady by two long tails, one at each of the lower corners ; and the radiant juvenile who is the happy possessor of a good high-flyer, manages it deftly, sending it up as far as his store of cord will permit without moving more than a yard or two from his starting point. Great is the good nature shown by the jinrikisha men, as I have witnessed with ever-increasing wonder when on my professional rounds, if their faces are brought into sharp and sudden contact with kite-strings. Much dexterity is shown by passers-by in avoiding contact by a timely duck> and by the kite-flyers also in piloting the strings ; but whenever an accident occurs, however annoying it would be to us, it seems rather rarely to evoke even a frown, far less an angry word, or theological recrimination. It is reported that in ancient times large kites were used to aid spies in estimating the forces of the enemy, Street Scenes. 49 just as among ourselves balloons have been used in modern warfare. A law existed in Tokio which enacted that kites were not to be made larger than a certain moderate size, the fear being that the Shogun's castle might be inspected from the city by conspirators. One of the most pleasing contributions by a medical writer in Japan (alas ! no more) to the Japan Weekly Mail, de- scribes a blind boy flying a kite in Tokio : " Who shall describe the sight who adequately pourtray our blind boy, as he stands with body bent forward and quivering with delight, as the kite tugs and strains to get away his poor lustreless eyes widely distended, his cheeks flushed, his lips parted and trembling with excitement, and every involuntary muscle of his hands in action, as his ringers play with the string, along which he has surely projected his whole soul to the toy amongst the clouds ? ' Hi ! Hi ! Stand aside ! ' ' It is of no use, my friends with the nori- mon (sedan-chair), you address yourselves to a mere out- line of a boy ; the substance is far away above you at the end of that string, and cannot hear, call you never so loudly.' " On a certain day in the year, many huge, brightly- coloured objects may be seen floating, or rather wobbling over the city. They represent enormous carp-fish, are made of thin painted cloth, and are hollow, so that the wind fills them and gives them a very lively appearance. They usually indicate the happy arrival during the pre- ceding year of a male child, but are displayed where a family contains boys, though none of them may be re- cently born. A learned English professor in Tokio somewhat 50 Nine Years in Nipon. scandalised his portentously dignified colleagues in the university precincts, by displaying over his door a very large specimen in commemoration of his first-born. It defied the breezes of Japan, and the more potent sneers of his less fortunate fellows, for an unusually long period. In many quiet by- streets you may see women staining or dyeing cloth in the open air. It is a very simple process, and no attempt is made to produce " fast " colours. Chemicals are used also to ex- tract the colour in patterns. It is interesting to Woman Dyeing. (Japanese Sketch.) peep into the VarioUS shops as we pass along the busy thoroughfare. The floors are covered with a fine kind of grass matting, padded underneath, and you have to take off your shoes respectfully, or apologize for not doing so, which latter form has come to be painfully common amongst " bar- barians " from the West. There are all kinds of European nick-nacks for sale, or more frequently clever imitations of them ; ready-made clothes of latest Parisian fashion, fire-engines, patent medicines, scientific apparatus, great numbers of a curious new stove invented by a Japanese, made of a frothy kind of glassy lava, the iron door of which is very appropriately fitted with a common Street Scenes. 51 wooden knob ! Paisley shawls and Brussels carpets ; Bass's beer and Epps's cocoa ; ancient suits of armour ; decanonised Buddhist saints, and rusty American sewing machines. The Japanese merchant is not above taking les- sons from the despised " hairy foreigner," and there are some rare specimens of the Queen's English to be found now and again in this realm of literature. Here is a veritable one, not at all improved for the sake of effect : NOTICE. SHOE MANUFACTURER. DESIGN AT ANY CHOICE. The undersigned being engaged long and succeeded with their capacity at shoe factory of Isekats, in Tokio ; it is now established in my liability at undermentioned lot all furnishment will be attended in moderate term with good quality. An order is acceptable, in receive a post, being called upon the measure and it will be forwarded in furnish. U. INOYA, No. 206, 5th St. Motomachi. When the foreigner, who is a new arrival, stands for a littls at a shop window, he is sure to be immediately surrounded by a rather big crowd, eager to hear his blunders in the language, and to observe how skilfully the wily vendor of curios eases him of his paper money. I have often thought what a boon it might be to the ethnologist were he able by some invisible and instan- taneous process to secure facial types by multi-photographs like those with which Mr. Dalton has recently so interested 52 Nine Years in Nipon. the scientific world. Well, after all, is that not just what caricaturists like Leech and Du Maurier, Caldecott and Ralston have done for us in regard to the types of English society? No limited number of photographs could give us a better idea cf Tommy Atkins than Ralston's few strokes convey. And so too one might with skill and true artistic intuition ideally combine the untutored concep- tions of their race left by native artists. Look around at the calm unsmiling and stolidly attentive faces which compose the crowd. First there is a row of little girls, each with a very uninteresting baby, carried pick-a-back, and fastened by a kind of girdle used specially for that purpose. The wretched little urchin is toasted in the sun all day, and when asleep, as it usually is, its poor little noddle hangs over just like a drooping poppy bud, and is jerked helplessly about with every motion of the playful nurse. Japanese children are not usually weaned till about four years of age, and very often not then. The youngest children have their heads care- fully shaved all over, while those a little older have tassel- like portions hanging down at the " four corners," or have a monk-like fringe left all round the shaven pate. I long ago came to the conclusion that these various styles of hair-cutting are clearly survivals from the castes of Hinduism, the notion of which symbolism Buddhism, however improbable it may appear at first sight, brought over from India to the Far East. There are numerous examples of a similar kind which cannot be appropriately brought forward in this chapter. Close beside us there is a group of very slovenly infantry soldiers, with coal-scuttle shakoes, unbrushed Street Scenes. 53 clothes, and badly made foreign shoes, trodden down at the heels. Their faces are flushed with wine ; they seem disposed to be rude, and carry side arms which they are not at all unwilling to use readily when crossed in any way. At a short distance, a pair of gentlemanly and substantial-looking gens cTarmes, with revolvers and sabres, are keeping calm eyes on the soldiers. A pair of enor- mous black spectacles, accompanying a squat little police- man in dark blue, with naval cap adorned with white cotton sun-shade, and what looks like a window roller under his arm, are glaring fiercely at the crowd, and giving emphasis to the frequent gruff command in Japanese to " move on there !" We obey the order meekly, to the shopkeeper's disgust, and turn our eyes to the street again, which is crowded with jinrikishas, cavalry, ricketty 'busses of the most primitive construction ; neat and well-appointed tramway cars ; a rare kago or sedan chair, with a yellow flag carried in front, denoting that a case of cholera or small-pox is being conveyed to the hospital ; water- men with buckets of water, " full of holes," like Paddy's stocking, which di- vide the misery of dormant dust into one of flying dust, plus mud. These men carry their load across the shoulder. Japanese Waterman. by means of a pole laid 54 Nine Years in Nipon. To each end of the pole a bucket is attached, but the originality of the Japanese mode of distributing the burden is this a shorter pole is placed across the other shoulder nearly at right angles to the long pole, and one end of it is used to lever up the weight on one side, the other end being grasped by the free hand. The weight is thus thrown more evenly over both sides of the body. Immense loads are carried in this way, and with great agility, as a certain springiness which aids quick walking, is thus imparted. A little further along, at a point where the main street forks, a great display of some kind is being made. A newly-finished building is gaily decorated with flowers and flags not the uniform glare of turkey red with which the British householder lavishly resolves to let the world know he wishes to be thought happy on some festive occasion, not that, but a really graceful design of great simplicity. Below the gay streamers, green nodding plumes of bamboo and dark pine branches brightened with festoons of golden oranges, rises a stately pyramid of brand new straw-covered tubs of rice-beer, which a thirsty public are invited for the day to partake of freely to their heart's content. It is a shop-opening, and in this way luck and the good wishes of the community are hoped for by the enterprising merchant. A good-humoured crowd is elbowing its way across the pavement in two streams ; one pale and rather solemn, yet eager-eyed with some pleasures of hope beaming on their faces ; the other flushed, facetious, and rather drowsy. Here is something which, I think, is sure to interest a new comer. It is a peripatetic cook-shop for children, and Street Scenes. 55 consists of two long complicated lacquer-boxes, slung at the ends of a strong pole, and laid across the shoulders in the manner already described. The bearer of the beneficent burden stops at the corner where the crowd is, sets his little charcoal oven fire going in a trice, and very soon the clean copper plate which forms the oven is quite hot enough to begin business with. A large bowl of sweet paste, in a fluid state, forms the chief part of his stock. There is soon a group of hungry children and in Japan, as elsewhere, children are always hungry round the tiny stall, purchasing little saucers full of the enticing stuff. Each pours his purchase out on the heated copper, form- ing such shapes as his own taste or ingenuity may devise, and in an instant it is hard, crisp and brown, to be scraped off in due time by means of a little spoon with which the vendor supplies them. It is really a great treat to watch the children at this useful pastime ; the very youngest managing his or her property most expertly, and all doing their work quietly, courteously and very methodically, with amazingly little bumping, driving or brawling. These itinerant cooks are usually called letter-toasters (mon-Jiyaki), because in old times they formed with their paste Chinese characters. The' thirty odd thousand of those useful symbols of thought, did not however present sufficient variety for the juveniles of Japan. A greater genius still has since stepped upon this mun- dane scene. But here I feel it would be almost profane to attempt to improve on a description by the late Dr. Purcell of the English Legation, which appeared many years ago in the columns of the Japan Mail: "The Ameya combines painting and modelling together. He 56 Nine Years in Nipon. carries about with him his studio and appliances, and is prepared to execute any order, be it never so difficult. He'll stick you a bit of his tenacious barley gluten on a bamboo joint ; and puff f f f it's a white glistening balloon pinch it in at the middle, fashion off the mouth, draw out a bit for a cord, wind it quickly twice round, and back again, tic it into a bow knot, and you have as well-shaped a gourd in a few moments as nature ever took months to produce. ' Please, sir ! I want a couple of rats nibbling a bag of barley.' Ah ! My chubby little master, that'll surely puzzle him you think. Not a bit of it. He does not even stop to consider how it is to be set about, but takes in a twinkling out of drawer No. 2, a lump of his plastic material of just the proper size. This he kneads, and rolls up again, and when of the right consist- ency dusts it with rice flower, to prevent it clinging to his fingers, and then, giving it a pyramidal shape, pinches out a bit at each side of the apex, snips out with scissors a pair of ears, lengthens out the snout, pulls out a tail a- piece, fashions the cone in the middle into a bag, a couple of dots for the eyes of the rats, a streak of red paint underneath them, a bar of blue below that again, a puff of gold dust and ' Now my little boy, where's your coin ? Your rats are finished.' "To try and "puzzle the old artist by devising difficult commissions for him to execute, is a favourite game with the youngsters. He is equal to any call on his ingenuity, however, whether he be required to fashion a monkey swinging by one hand from a branch, whilst it encircles a little one with its disengaged arm ; a pair of rats in deadly combat with their tails as weapons ; or a frog on its hind Street Scenes. 57 legs, daintily pointing his toes and shading himself from the sun under a mushroom which he uses as an umbrella : no flight of imagination seems too high for him. The thought once conceived, his execution of it is marvellously rapid." I have often watched artists of this kind, and the above description is very true to fact. Sometimes the ameya indulges in loftier flights by way of advertisement, and I saw one quickly fashion a bouquet of bright coloured flowers and golden cereals, of some artistic merit apart from the narrow limitations the vehicle imposed on his skill. Another very modest class of artists may be seen seated on the curb - stones, offering to dash off fine sepia, indian ink or water colour drawings often with much grace and felicity for little more than the price of the paper ; while a third set are engaged in cutting out of boxwood private seals in the ancient Chinese characters just as we have our monograms. Great antiquarian interest is attached to those humble engravers, for we see there being repeated the veritable first step the Chinese took, long before the western world was yet awake, in the art of printing. The characters were first engraved singly, and the ink used in those old times was simply brick dust, mixed with water rice water probably. Does this not carry us back to the engraved brick tablets of still earlier times ? I think that possibly the discovery that one of these tablets when accidentally pressed upon left an im- print of reddish brick dust may have been the very first step in typography. The barbers' shops are numerous in all the large towns. 58 Nine Years in Nipou. The honest citizen loves to have a clean shave and the latest gossip, albeit the barbers recently received solemn official instructions to report to government all they might hear of an interesting nature a regulation which gives a powerful stimulus to one's imagination regarding the capacity of government generally. A clean shave in Japan is rather an extensive operation ; it includes a broad strip of the scalp over which is folded and knotted a column of stiffly glued hair, like a little door handle. The whole arrangement reminded me always of a Scotch curling stone. The ears and nostrils, outside and in, are carefully scraped with the razor. The children require a good deal of attention also, as I have already hinted, and many are the variations of style in hair dressing. Many now adopt our western ideas as to hair cutting, and I have been consulted by a lofty official as to the best way to develope a pair of good " Dundreary " whiskers. The usual barber's sign is our own plate and pole, but Japan- ese ingenuity has far outstripped our sober knights of the scissors and razor. The primary significance of the sym- bol which raises the art to the dignity of a branch of sur- gery has been ignored, and the pole has been looked upon simply as a vehicle for the display of gorgeous combina- tions of penki (oil paint). In place of our simple band of tape used by the chirurgeon of old, to stanch bleeding after the proper number of ounces had been withdrawn from the patient's peccant veins, we have rings and other orna- mental displays of colouring, while the flat rounded knob at the top, which the victim had to grasp may, in Japan, become a spike or even a star. Such facts may seem too trivial to record, but to the Street Scenes. 59 archaeologist nothing is common which seems to throw light on the workings of the human mind as displayed in the evolution of symbolism. From barber to beer-shop is an easy step. The national drink of Japan is a fermented decoction of rice called sake, of slightly intoxicating properties, and not very pleasant flavour. Wines, white and red, are now made from the juice of the grape, and English and German beer, not to mention the appropriate labels, are manufactured in Japan. Even in former days before brandy and other strong foreign drinks became naturalised a rather potent kind of spirit was distilled from rice. The wares are contained in bright clean tubs labelled with such titles as " The blooming flower ; " " Great gold- fish," with suitable trade mark ; " The good luck-peony," or " The wine of three virtues," warming the skin, filling the belly, and soothing to sleep. Curiously enough, the ordinary Japanese wine-shop displays a bush (of sugi, a kind of cedar), as a sign, which recals our old saying, " good wine needs no bush." Whether the custom, like the use of the barber's pole, came over from the West long ago, no one can at present tell. Here is a literally exact copy of a sign-board in the city which helps to indicate the rapid advance being made in civilization : A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF NINDOSHIU. This is an intoxicating liquol made from alcohol mixed with other things and flavoured with honey- suckles flower. It has a very sweet taste and is somewhat strong, it resembles whiskey and is good for any one It 60 Nine Years in Nipon. has an effect of exciting the mind and promoting the health of withered persons. In 1878 it has obtained a high reputation in the International Exhibition of Paris. Ladies and gentlemen we wish you would take a cup of it and know what we say is quite true." Not being disposed to rank as " withered persons " just yet, we pass by to look for something else of interest. Many of the back lanes of this great city are alive with poultry. They are mostly of a small, rather elegant breed, the cocks having magnificent tail feathers, which curve gracefully. The best of them now fetch good prices from fanciers in Europe and America. The stoats make inroads upon them at night, however, and indeed it is not unusual to meet one of these animals in a back lane, even at midday. Foxes also, from the sacredness of their claims, are allowed the run of the city, but are much more rarely seen abroad. Here and there you find fish-shops, which add to the sale of more perishable stock, that of live gold and silver carp. Those may be seen partitioned of into separate troughs, according to price, etc., in all stages of growth and development. Some may be surprised to hear that young gold-fish are almost all quite black. Many varie- ties have been cultivated by breeders through careful selection of promising types, and some of those varieties fetch fabulous sums if they are only ugly enough ! I was consulted as to a disease which was spreading amongst the stock of a large salesman of carp. It had been caused by the voracity of a tiny parasite, the Argulus foliaceus which, almost contrary to the usual phenomena of parasitism, possesses a highly specialised and beautifully Street Scenes. 61 complex structure, transparent as crystal. It is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen in the microscope, and may be kept under observation for a long time. It has two powerful suckers by which it fastens itself to its victim, and then unsheathing a long, hollow, rapier-like probe of extreme sharpness, it drives it into the unhappy gold-fish, and thereby sucks no small advantage. It is also armed with a series of powerful hooks, and by means of its flat, fringed, oar-like limbs, it can propel itself at will from one feeding-ground to another. The cleansing of the streets is greatly assisted by armies of large, raven-beaked crows ( Corvus japonensis, Bp.), and rather kingly-looking black-eared kites (Milvus melanotis, F. & S.) which may be seen in myriads, on a calm day, circling at a great height above the city. They have a curious guttural, tremulous cry, similar to that of the kites about Calcutta, to whose habits they very closely conform. A butcher in our vicinity used to amuse himself by throw- ing tit-bits to the kites, which caught them with great accuracy, although their movements were often tumultuous and clumsy. Sometimes they are caught by means of a piece of meat placed in the centre of a running loop, which is drawn tight when the bird alights. I saw one of them trapped in this way by a boy. After it had taken to flight and had gone the full length of its tether, it fell suddenly to the ground like a stone, its pinions remaining all the time fully outstretched, and its tail expanded. It remained in the same position, looking at the group that surrounded it with unabashed dignity fallen, but as proud as Lucifer. 62 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER V. Life in Tokio. New Friends Sir Harry Parkes Mine Inn and its Master A Hyper- Calvinistic Parrot Plague of Frogs and Students New Mode of "Running a Restaurant" The "Great Workman" and his Little Ways Charm against Leaks Pic-nic and Fireworks A New Mode of Signalling Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies A Japanese Tower of Siloam Christmas in the Far East. N arriving in the city we were not long in making acquaintances, our first call being on Bishop Williams of the American Epis- copal Church, who received us very kindly. The Bishop a model of scholarly Christian modesty is now the oldest missionary in Japan, having arrived in 1859, at the opening of the treaty ports. We had an introduction, amongst others, to Mr. Henry Dyer, Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering, whose hospitality we enjoyed for some time. The college was just getting into excellent working order, and the energetic and far-seeing Principal was still busy carrying out schemes of enlargement, and establishing practical workshops of all kinds affiliated to the central institution a plan which was afterwards ex- tended to embrace a very large portion of the circle of artistic and scientific industry. Indeed, Japan had very thoroughly wakened up to her dire need of light and leading in all such departments of Life in Tokio, 63 practical usefulness, and hence it became possible for able men who knew their own minds to carry out great plans for education and other things, almost by a stroke of the pen. Now, however, there are many efficient and even distinguished native young engineers in Japan, who have literally nothing to do. Time will mend this condition, perhaps ; but much capital is needed to carry out the im- provements the roads, railways, and harbours of which the government know very well the importance. Since Mr. Dyer's return to this country the college has been under the genial guidance of a distinguished scientist, Dr. Divers, and is nobly sustaining its reputation for original and genuine work. As a loyal subject of the Queen, I paid my respects to His Excellency Sir Harry S. Parkes, whom I found very accessible, as he takes considerable interest in the philan- thropic efforts of his countrymen. No one would ever suppose that Sir Harry is one of the oldest foreign resi- dents in the Far East. He is a fair auburn-haired, fine-looking, unmistakeably English, man, not very tall, just in his prime, and re- minded me of George Eliot's description of Grandcourt's appearance. He has, of course, the clever little diploma- tic stutter which belongs to official Englishmen generally, and knows exactly when to leave a sentence unfinished, or to wind it off in a rapid series of little inarticulate coughs, which may be interpreted in any one of half- a-dozen ways, and usually wrongly. Sir Harry, in spite of one or two errors, has been of vast service to the young Empire of New Japan, while no one has suspected him of being inattentive to the commercial 64 Nine Years in Nipon. interests of his own countrymen. He is capable of taking a broad cosmopolitan view of affairs, but is essentially and typically a British minister ; and we could not have in China where he now is at the present crisis in her his- tory, an officer more thoroughly alive and intelligent to- wards our own interests, or more likely to serve in a broad and lasting manner the higher interests of that vast and, I believe, most friendly empire. We soon took up our quarters in the apology for a hotel which then existed in the " foreign concession." * The owner peace be to his once rubicund visage was an Irish-American, whom evil-tongued rumour credited with having suddenly left Shanghai, after some one had died of a dose of lead improperly administered. Apart from the absurdity of leaving such a port as Shanghai hastily, under such circumstances, as an extenuation, at least, I may be allowed honestly to testify that he was never able to hit any of the neighbours' dogs, even at short range, during my period of observation, and he used to practise pretty often before dinner time. When he was fairly asleep, which he generally was about midday, it is fair to state that he seemed disposed to live quietly and peaceably with his guests and neigh- bours. The same, however, could hardly be said of a parrot of hyper-calvinistic tendencies which he possessed, and which never seemed to sleep at all, and whose conversa- tion on Saturday night and early on Sunday morning, when billiards and beer were in great request, was rather loud * The very limited territory attached to each treaty port on which foreigners may build is so called. Life in Tokio. 65 than edifying. Its frequent and vigorous condemnation of the company in the strongest of pulpit language, was usually greeted with hoarse roars of drunken laughter sufficient to drive away any possibility of associating the holy day with rest and peace. By-and-bye we succeeded in securing at an exorbitant rent a little barrack-like wooden building, erected, I think, for some French soldiers, the chief objection to which was a plague of frogs. They were " fat and full of sap," and seemed never to be happy unless when getting under one's feet. At night they kept the sour reedy swamp which was honoured with the title of " compound," vocal with their hoarse paeans. Here some doctors' apprentices, thirst- ing for Western lore, scented me out from afar, and would patiently appear at break of day, tapping gently at our bed-room door, or, peering in at the open front and back windows, would salute us with a very deferential ohayo (good morning). This ought no doubt to have been very pleasant from a social point of view, but it takes a little while to acclimatize one's self to new phases of man- ners. Patients soon followed in daily growing numbers, and for a long time, till my medical work had been fully organised in suitable premises, neither my wife nor I knew what privacy was. The surroundings soon told on us both pretty severely. After several unsuccessful efforts had been made, the foreign consuls agreed to ask the Japanese government to allow a sale of the land assigned for the purpose by treaty, and we got a promise from them to do so in the following year. Meanwhile, through a Japanese Christian, we had already been able to rent the buildings of the extinct 66 Nine Years in Nipon. " Cosmopolitan Restaurant," a rather pretentious edifice seated on the bank of a romantic artificial lake. It had to be taken down and rebuilt on another site with many alterations. It is an amusing thing to hear of one in Japan buying an eligible family residence with fine wooded policies, and to see the stately mansion tottering along on a platform resting on barrows, to the inspiring groans of a body of half-naked but tattoed carpenters, while it is followed, perhaps, by a nodding grove of solemn cypress or gloomy pine trees ; but something like this you may often see in Tokio. And yet many things that seem strange to us in Japan may have been quite familiar to our ancestors. In Henry II.'s time it was decreed that the house of the individual who harbours a heretic shall be carried out of the town and burned. Still more remarkable is the resemblance which the framework of an ordinary Japanese house bears to that of an English one of the olden times. According to the History of the Preston Guild, English houses, like those in Japan, were formed of a wooden framework, the interstices of which were formed of clay mixed with straw. Each piece of wood in the framework was usually tenoned fitted into a mortice, and fixed by a wooden peg. The framework was put together by the builder before it was taken to the site. The corresponding parts were also numbered, just as we find them in Japan at the present day, and the rest of the description fits almost word for word. Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his Art and Art Industries of Japan (p. 16), ascribes the want of architecture in Japan to the instability of the soil. But earthquakes here are not, so far as I can find, so much Life in Tokio. 67 more common or more severe than in Italy, where archi- tecture, on the contrary, has always attained a very high state of development. Still, the frequency of earthquakes and their pretty general distribution over the country, may well be supposed to have had some deterrent effect, as hybrid Buddhism has in other countries reared grand edifices of a solid and abiding character. The daiku, or carpenter (literally " great workman "), is usually dressed in tight pants of blue cotton, a short blouse, a girdle, blue cotton socks, and straw sandals. One is reminded here, too, of our own past, and the cos- tume is exceedingly like that worn by what, I suppose, were Anglo-Saxon workmen about the time of the Nor- man conquest. The latter, as ancient tapestries illustra- tive of the period show, seem also to have gone about their work in a somewhat similar way to the Japanese carpenter of to-day, who uses his feet to steady the plank he is sawing, and sits down deliberately to his work. As the great toe is free, a " finger " if the term be allowable being made for it in the sock, a certain firmness of grasp is maintained. The daiku also cuts with the saw on the pull stroke, and so the blade does not buckle. This method, I believe, gives good results with fine " key- hole " and other thin and narrow saws, but for common work the weight of the body is necessary, and it is also said to be easier to saw to line by our own method. The carpenters are reputed to be afraid of the god of metal. Certainly, they use his products rather badly. We could never, for instance, get them to put in a screw- nail by any other process than driving it in by main force with a hammer. It was of no use to apply the counsel 68 Nine Years in Nipon. the butcher gave to good Tom Pinch " Meat must be humoured, not druv," and so' right smash went the biggest screw-nail into the finest piece of wood-work. It was amusing to see those nimble workmen, whom I had daily to superintend, running up the light scaffold- ings which are of pine, or sometimes even of flexible bam- boo. They were almost as agile as monkeys, and seemed to me to grasp with the whole foot, as hard-shoed races cannot do. Very seldom do they fall, and judging from my own experience as a surgeon, they do not often hurt themselves severely, even when falling from a consider- able height. Indeed, their great temperance as com- pared with our own workmen is largely the cause of their comparative immunity from severe injuries, along with the fact that few buildings are made of stone, and none are lofty except "pagodas" and temples. Their superior nimbleness, however, is, I am sure, one element in the case. At the ends of the ridge-tiles a tinted plaster ornament, like the conventional curly foam-crested waves of Japanese art, was wrought to form a charm against the entrance of water. So the tilers said, at all events ; but I formed a suspicion that perhaps the motive might be read the other way, as the roof always leaked dreadfully just about that very spot. The 2Oth of July being the great festival of the Kawa- biraki, or " opening of the river," and a general holiday in the city, we made a pic-nic party, including some very prettily-dressed Japanese girls attending a mission-school, and sailed to the festive scene in the gondola of Japan a miniature unpainted copy of Noah's ark, clean and Life in Tokio. 69 generally very compact, as the cramp in your unaccustomed legs will soon enable you to testify. The boatman sculls from the side while standing upright. The broad and rather dingy river was quite lively with similar crafis similarly laden, and the tinkle of the inevitable samisen a kind of guitar was " sounding sounding " everywhere. On holiday and festive occasions such as this, young maidens dress in loose, prettily-figured robes, with great wide necks. The folds are always made studiously grace- ful, as even our own artists have learned, and books are sold showing the folds and attitudes, considered to be aesthetic and fashionable. The outer robe is fastened with a stiff, plain silk or, it may be, richly brocaded girdle tied in a careful and pro- minent bow behind. The robe opens at the bosom, dis- closing the well-powdered neck, and the parallel edges of a series of pale-coloured vests made of the most delicate crape silks, and with skilfully contrasted hues. A medi- cal man has opportunities of discovering many little secrets about dress ; and just as the lofty man about town, when knocked over by a plebeian cab, has been found by his horrified medical attendant to indulge in " dickies," so I may be allowed here to whisper that those costly strata of silk garments which are the wonder and admiration of the unsophisticated foreigner, are, in modern times, simply very narrow folds of the required material laid together so as to produce a fictitious appearance of great expendi- ture with the minimum of outlay. During the day fireworks are let off, which form cloudy patterns high up in the air and give forth paper prizes of curious shapes, in pursuit of which crowds of city urchins 7 Xinc Years in Xrfon. may be seen rushin- frantically with their loins girded. Those smoke-clouds are often tinted beautifully, and assume fantastic shapes. The substance used to produce the effect is the dried dung of the she wolf for wolves still abound in the northern parts of the empire. The powder Oshima PACIFIC OCEAN is said to cause a dense white smoke which hangs together for an unusual time. I have thought that a similar kind of fireworks might be used for military or other signalling through the day, and might often also give valuable indications as to the direction of currents of air in Life in Tokio. 71 balooning, or for general meteorological purposes. I have seen them break high above low-lying fleecy clouds in the city, and to take a different course from the latter, thus clearly indicating two currents of wind. After the " river-opening," which was first celebrated in Kioto the capital of the country, and still is with more meaning than in Tokio, summer comes in apace, and during the twenty-one days following, the people used to leave the hot and dusty city for the cool breezy banks of the Sumida, which, in the upper reaches, are lined with tea-houses, looking into the river, their verandahs almost overhanging the once limpid and wholesome stream. When passing along any of the narrow streets in a neigh- bourhood where the population is dense, every room seemed to be filled with perspiring citizens, nearly naked, and lying outstretched, fanning themselves or trying to persuade themselves that they were asleep. At night, during the extremely hot season, the people seem to keep walking in little parties about the streets, which are kept moist and as cool as may be by the stagnant water from the gutters being sprinkled about from time to time. I am not sure that the effect is at all unhealthy. The samisens are kept also going all night to tremulous vocal accompaniments. This period might perhaps be called the dog-days, but I have never known a single case of a mad dog in Japan, although I have had to treat numberless cases of bites from angry dogs. Turkey is said also to enjoy a like immunity, and this has been ascribed to the prevalence of a certain tick which greatly infests the dogs there. Strangely enough, a similar parasite is one 72 Nine Years in Nipon. of the greatest afflictions to dog-fanciers in Japan, but I am not prepared to give any opinion on the relation of the two facts. Our housefactor's children got bitten by white mice, about this time, and the sorrowing relatives told me that in Japan this was always fatal. I did what I could for them, but my advice was not closely followed. One child quickly died ; the other suffered for more than a year, but seemed to be recovering when last under my observation. The disease, which was thought to be allied to hydrophobia, seemed to be well known in Japan, but I never saw another case of the same kind. . The canals near us were usually lively in the hot days with schoolboys bathing, and frequently there would be a shout and a sudden rush of people ; an hour or so afterwards a pale little limp and lifeless corpse would be dragged out, still clutching firmly a tuft of chara or other water-weed, under the cruel coils of which the swiftly out-rushing tide had dragged the poor child. Often with sore heart I tried to get some- thing done to prevent those pitiful accidents, as people called them, but almost in vain. On one occasion the body could not at all be found. The bystanders, though not for lack of advice, were at their wits' ends, when I heard some solemn old wiseacre propose that the excellent old charm of placing a cock on a raft and setting it afloat should get a trial. Of course the cock must needs crow when it came to the spot. Some men waded into the canal, pushing the raft about in all directions, and at last baffled in their project, let it go. By-and-by it got aground, and master chanticleer, in contemptuous silence, leaped nimbly ashore amidst the loud voltairean laughter Life in Tokio. 73 of the crowd. The wise propounder of the scheme had meanwhile quietly slipped away. I must candidly add that the raft had never been pushed across the spot where the body was afterwards found lying, in fact nearly opposite the place where the raft had stuck fast. On many of thpse hot days happily there blew a strong cooling breeze from the sea, which made life tolerable. The air was laden with fine salt spray, and at night great indigo-coloured banks of cloud regularly massed them- selves over the hills to the north-west of Tokio. Sheets of silent violet lightning would keep flitting over them till a very late hour, the forked lightning being invisible behind the outer stratum of vapour, and the distance being too great for the thunder to be heard. This never ceased to be a very impressive phenomenon in spite of its regularity. Sometimes violent thunderstorms burst near us, and once, while at dinner, a terrible crash led me to look out to the river, where I saw that the tall mast of a junk, the most prominent in the bay as the storm swept towards Tokio, had been -split right down from top to heel. I got a little boat and pulled off to see if medical help were needed. No one had been hurt, but in the hold the grim old skipper was bowing his head solemnly, while with clasped hands he muttered some prayers or incantations. He seemed greatly annoyed to find his vessel the object of so much sudden curiosity, for crowds of idle gazers had put off from shore, and many were commenting pleasantly on the probable wickedness of those on board, just as they would have done in a good Jewish or Christian country, a matter which furnished me with a theme for some whole- some and, I trust, edifying remarks. 74 Nine Years in Nipon. Tokio was not without its gaieties, and the visit of some prince or ex-president, now and then, found the sombre capital ready to indulge in a great feast of lanterns and champagne. The preparations for General Grant's reception were on an unusually lavish scale. The shop- keepers told us gravely that they had received strict orders from the government not to part with any soap or tooth- brushes meanwhile, lest those useful articles should be required for official purposes during the work of festivities. The outlay at last became so extravagant that a serious remonstrance was sent in anonymously to government on the subject. Indeed the feeling was generally entertained by respectable citizens that the irresponsible expenditure of money raised by taxation must henceforth be carefully watched. I believe this little episode, which did not attract very much attention, has been felt to mark an important stage in the history of Japanese political progress. Whether the soap was all used or not remains doubtful, but it was whispered that some official hands remained pretty dirty after all ! What I have to say of Japanese amusements will be said farther on. Christmas was a great time for hugging memories of the lands we came from. The amount of home feeling which so many " Anglo-Saxon " children claiming origin from both sides the " mill-pond," excited in the hearts of case- hardened old residents, was very touching and beautiful, and, I am sure, altogether purifying in its influence. While might we sigh with the laureate " We live within the stranger's land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve " the season itself was usually cold, clear, and bracing Life in Tokio. 75 often a bright blue sky above us, while the hard ground rung beneath our feet, and under the shade of green bam- boos skaters might be seen gliding on good ice merrily. On a wet day the rows of hooded jinrikiskas, grouped in some lantern-lit compound shadowed with sub-tropical foliage, did not suggest an English Christmas at all till the little fair-haired ones emerged from the dingy oil- paper covers of their vehicles in gay evening-dresses, as an accomplished lady friend once remarked "just like so many butterflies from the chrysalis." Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VI. A Consultation in the Hills. A Rembrandtesque Scene Novel Style of Drag Daybreak on the Plains A Remorseful Knight Wayside Tea-houses A Formidable Ferry Buddha in Bronze Presbyterian Church in the Hills Dining in Public A Doctor of the Old School Scotch Service amongst Silk Utility of Yawning. ONE day, in the summer of 1879, having had a sudden call to go into the interior to see an aged silk grower in consultation with his native doctor, I found myself at midnight, after a hard day's work, drowsily con- templating a scene which might have sprung to life from Rembrandt's canvas. A quaint, old-fashioned Japanese hostelry, outside of which lay, as if they were never to move again, a dusty, dingy, beggarly array of much be- painted and bepatched vehicles, on which had accumu- lated the dust and mud of every journey they had made since first they issued in coats of bright scarlet some time after the dawn of civilization from the builder's yard. I soon noticed that there were others like myself, with strong faith and small bundles, ready to commit their precious souls to those frail tenements of clay. A fat old woman, with strong Tory tendencies, much local know- ledge of routes, coaches, and hours one never speaks of minutes in travelling by coach in Japan, and only of hours as a figure of speech and a formidable array of square dark green bandboxes of split bamboo, for the care and A Consultation in the Hills. 77 transit of which roads, drivers, and waiters, seemed to have been specially called into existence ; a wizened* irresolute looking old man, with a " guid gaun " law suit in the city, who was always nervously preparing for a smoke, but had perhaps run out of tobacco ; a group of portly people in "silk," whose talk was too pro- fessionally technical to be well understood by a foreigner ; a few morbidly well-behaved, nicely-dressed, and unemo- tional children ; a rather merry, red -faced old boy, with a foreign hat on, who had many hospitable city friends to say sayonara (good-bye) to him ; and a quiet, important, clean-shaved man (a local dignitary) with a piping voice ; such was the group of intending travellers that seemed to gravitate around one frail vehicle crankier than any of the others it seemed to me by the solemnis- ing influence of one common destiny. At last 12.30, our hour for leaving, was indicated by my infallible pocket- chronometer ; but silence broken only by the abortive attempts of the old man to start his pipe reigned around. Now and again a nonchalant stable-boy, with dark blue skin-tights, would appear with a paper lantern that sent gross caricatures of us all dancing like fiends on a back- ground of ruddy fire, while the varied features of each face were emphasised with such deep shadows that you felt some great tragedy was in preparation. At length there was a decided stir in the courtyard, the clatter of hoofs and the sweet accents of irate grooms broke upon our grateful ears, while the erst silent streets began to echo the hoarse bray of approaching bugles, in clumsy juvenile and tentative strains that would have driven mad an English guard of the good old coaching days. Two 78 Nine Years in Nipon. raw-backed and bare-ribbed ponies were yoked to the crazy vehicle, one of whose wheels was really not quite circular, and dispensed with the need for springs, of which however there were home-made substitutes. The climax, however, was reached in the drag. My object in this work is to pourtray Japan as it is * and not to invent amus- ing things. Well, it consisted simply of an old Wellington boot of tough texture, which had probably seen much previ- ous service, pressed against the wheel by means of a wooden pin, round which, with the boot, a rope was twisted. Like Captain Cuttle's watch, it had the disadvantage of requiring somewhat frequent adjustment, but thus aided it did its work marvellously well. The vehicle in front of us, going so far the same way, came to grief outside of the city, and we had to give the good-natured occupants some help. There was no grumbling and no blame cast on any one. After hours of hard galloping our horses being changed every seven miles or so and rough, painful jolting through sleeping suburban hamlets and gloomy woods, we began at last to have faint glimpses of the landscape, over which the soft grey dawn was now shed- ding a cold silvery radiance, that seemed to owe nothing to the sun. We were dashing along a vast and fertile plain through which roll several broad branches of the grand river which pours itself into the bay of Yedo, at the city which used to bear that name. This great flat, loamy, garden-like expanse, was gleam- ing with golden patches of the sesamum orientate very * The railway, since the period above mentioned, has been carried along the route herein described. A Consultation in the Hills. 79 like the mustard plant which filled the air with a some- what heavy but agreeable odour not unlike honey. Sometimes a bright purple flush of wild clover broke in strikingly through the monotonous check-tartan of green and yellow ; or a pool of still water, dotted with broad lotus leaves, or quivering with frogs, flashed its glory through broad blades of blooming iris. Everywhere the poor, hard-wrought peasants, in preposterous umbrella- like hats, and literally thatched with straw which made them look when stooping exactly like porcupines, were damming up runnels of water for their rice fields, or trying to urge sluggish and most unpicturesque oxen to drag a wooden plough through the stiff clods. It was curious to observe that this most primitive-looking engine was exactly like the ancient pekton of the Greeks, yet telegraph- posts were near enough for the wearied oxen to rub them- selves on, while not many miles away you might see the steam plough at work. Such is modern Japan ! Here and there a snowy egret, in sharp and dazzling contrast to the dark ooze of the paddy-fields, might be seen poking its long greenish yellow beak into the mud, through which the first green promise of harvest was timidly peeping. The whole atmosphere, and even the damp dewy ground itself, seemed to vibrate with the cheerful crek-kek-kek-kex of the frogs an old and heart- inspiring music, which has never wanted admirers. As the purple hills seemed to rise and draw nearer to us, we came at last to the end of this part of our journey ; for the carriage road ended, for us at least, at a notable little place called Kumagai, where a fair was being held when we arrived. The town is named after a famous So Nine Years in Nipon. warrior of ancient times who, by the rules of warfare, had to behead a tender young captive who had shown great gallantry. In bitter remorse, and with an utter disgust to- wards his profession, the grim old soldier afterwards shaved his head and became a priest, famous for learning and sanctity. The festival which we witnessed was held in his memory. After a very short pause here we were off again, this time in the now world-famed jinrikisha, rattling along narrow horse paths, between rigged fields of tender green buckwheat or Indian corn ; resting now and then for a minute or two at one of the houses by the wayside. These were always musical with the soft tinkling of glass ornaments which convey most grateful suggestions of rest and coolness to the cars of the weaned, hot, and dust- stained traveller. There is usually a wooden bench placed under a spreading vine or cucumber tree. At one of them I got a little tea-girl to warm up a bottle of cold soup, which thoughtful hands had stowed away for me. It was put into a very fishy, but otherwise clean copper, which always gives a nice metallic flavour to Western dishes, and I dined sumptuously the sweets coming first, then soup, fish being served last of all. Off again, now through drizzling and depressing rain, which increased at last into a thunderous downpour, making the roads anything but pleasant or easy to travel over. Two rivers, now terribly swollen by the rain, had to be crossed, and this was done by means of flat and frail boats, worked by pole-oars of strong, but alarmingly flex- ible bamboo. A rope of rudely twisted straw was stretched between the banks some parts of which had been recently washed away and was used by the boatman. A Consultation in the Hills, Si to propel his scow by grasping it hand over hand. At one point the risk seemed terrible ; but after a hard and painful struggle, we landed safely on the other side. One of those torrents is lined by huge ruddy-purple boulders from the famous volcano called Asama Yama, whose cloud-wrapped peak, from which the whitish yellow smoke of continual burning rises in slow curling wreaths, is an object of most impressive grandeur. A short walk through field-paths, embanked with homely stone " dykes," and crossed by a thousand streams fretted by tiny water-wheels and shaded by brakes of the slim and tapering bamboo, over which the magnificent wistaria hung its pale lavender festoons of drooping blos- soms brought us to the mountain town of Kiriu, where my patient lived. It is a solid comfortable-looking place, with a well-made street sloping mountainwards, and claims as its "parish church" a dignified old temple, in the wide court of which the calm-faced image of Buddha rears in bronze its majestic height, from a granite pedestal, resting on finely chiselled lotus leaves. In the background there is an extensive grave-yard, filled with costly and richly carved stones, lichen-stained and moss- grown, shaded from the sun by many lofty trees of long 82 Nine Years in Nipon. growth. One of those trees is fully six feet in diameter, and must, I suppose, have put forth its first tiny rootlets about the time of our Cromwell. The people in Kiriu seemed all to be engaged in the silk trade in one way or another, and had a wonderfully well-to-do appearance. I at once called on the pastor of the Presbyterian (native) Church, and was happy to find that he was an old Tokio friend of mine. After some talk we went through mud and rain to see the patient. His house was on the hillside, and was approached through two broad high-walled courts, with large outer buildings, in which spinning, weaving, and the various other operations of silk culture might be seen busily going on. Many tiresome but most courteous preliminaries having been gone through, I was taken to see the poor old sufferer, across a broad court-yard lying in deep water, for the rain still fell in torrents. After prescribing, I had a long and interesting talk with him ; and then, tired and hungry, laid myself down on the clean soft straw-matted floor of a quaint little room which was assigned to me. A Japanese meal is quite a curiosity even to the accustomed foreigner, because you never know what may be served up. Sometimes the sweetest-looking crape paper napkins are given to you. They are, of course, only used once, and a custom so pleasant might well be imitated at home. They are far from costly. I have never enjoyed stewed monkey yet, but it was a favourite dish in Japan a few years ago. Recent Darwinian teaching has, perhaps, led to a recoil from such cannibalism ! I don't know how others feel in such circumstances, but hungry as I was, it was difficult to enjoy food under the alert and A Consultation in the Hills. 83 inquiring eyes of a polite crowd of Japanese. My prehensile operations with knife and fork began to appear, to myself at least, unbearably vulgar and absurd. While I was finishing with some chocolate, in came the old family physician, who, since the new regime, no longer wears his sword, which was intended, I suppose, to convey the idea of professional dignity and destructiveness. The old gentleman did not seem quite pleased to find his preserves poached upon, and we had a little fencing in which he came off well, having read Western books with some care. His conceit was thoroughly national, but had not a very solid foundation. A suitable opportunity occurring, I quickly but firmly told him aloud, with the publicity he had courted, what had best be done, and prescribed some well known remedies. He had not heard of them evidently, but tried to put a good face on the matter. The crowd saw fun brewing, and " chaffed " the poor old gentleman rather sorely. He asserted that he had on his shelves all that the Government professors in Tokio hospitals prescribed, implying perhaps that my notions were a little antiquated. A pawky-looking old Christian servant of the silk grower finally silenced him, by saying dryly that he could not of course be expected to know about such remedies if he had never heard of them before, at which the crowd grinned, and the old doctor filled his pipe very quietly. I had been asked to address .the Christians, and had begun to wonder when my chance to do so would come. I found that the old doctor was a difficulty. To hold such meetings might at that time have been thought illegal ; in- deed, Christianity itself is still formally under ban, although 84 Nine Years in Nipon. the highly civilised central Government is disposed formally to adopt liberal views. Beginning to suspect what the difficulty was, and perceiving that the doctor was a hard old nut to crack, and not very favourable to religion of any kind, I told the pastor that it would be better to invite unbelievers to hear what was to be said. We then moved into a large room, into which three others with sliding partitions opened. At one end a somewhat im- posing pulpit, composed of boxes covered with red cloth, had been erected. The large hall for such it seemed was dimly lit by candles placed on tall candlesticks, and I could see that the sick man had been able to "take up his bed," which he had spread on the floor, and was look- ing up with earnest and wistful face. The audience was, to my surprise, very large. I conducted a simple service, such as we have in Scotland, and preached on the first commandment. No preacher ever had a more attentive and eager audience. I was glad to see, listening with sharp and critical attention, the old doctor and his son, the latter being a polite and pleasant youth, with long black locks falling like a thick veil over his bashful face, which he shook back with a jerk every now and again. After bringing the service to a close, I had a good deal of conversation with the people on the subject of the one true God, idolatry, etc., and was glad to see that they had an intelligent grasp of our teaching. No difficulties were urged, but suspense was alleged by them as the most be- coming attitude meanwhile. How thoroughly Eastern this is. One would enjoy hard fighting better. After sundry hints, I again got to the little room I was to occupy, a large part of the congregation accompanying A Consultation in the Hills. 85 me to light their tiny pipes at the charcoal brazier placed in the middle of the company, and continue the conversa- tion. I was really ready for a meal now, and had to share my slender store of cocoa with those who were curious to taste the foreign stuff. It was now late, or rather early, but no signs of my being able to retire to rest were apparent. After long forbearance, and one or two polite hints which were as politely and dexterously fended, I ventured on a highly original course not provided for in Japanese etiquette, and which I would modestly recommend to travellers in the Far East similarly placed. I stretched myself, and gave one most unmistakeable yawn, which a deaf man in the next house might easily have heard. A bomb-shell bursting in the apartment could not have more quickly dispelled its tenants. In a couple of minutes one of the domestics appeared with a pile of silk-covered cotton quilts for bedding, and in a few minutes more, in spite of the picturesque cirri and cumuli of coarse tobacco that floated over my quiet couch, I was sleeping the sleep of the just. 86 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VII. A Consultation in the Hills (Continued). A Charming Bedroom Landscape Gardening in Miniature Duck's Eggs and Duty Some World-forgotten Ones Doctors sometimes differ A Hint for Pious Busy-bodies Religious Radishes Tincture of Snake Rays of Buddha Midnight in a Forest "Resources of Civilization" A Suspicious Case Toddy verms Timidity Loving the Darkness. Y bedroom opened on two sides into adjoining and much larger apartments by partitions of open woodwork, like windows with panes of tissue paper instead of glass, a system which allows of a good deal of wholesome ventila- tion, especially in cold weather. One side of the room was plastered very smoothly and evenly with a warm iron grey cement, while trunks of young spruce firs, stripped of their bark and leaving a glossy clean surface like silk, did duty as posts. As such posts are always carefully selected with a view to ornament they gave the room an elegant air of primitive simplicity idealised, which I think is a chief and very subtle charm in a well planned Japanese house. The floors were of course covered with the usual thick, finely woven, and in this case, scrupulously clean straw mats bordered with coloured tape, My room opened into one of those mar- vellous little courts of some three or four yards square, containing a most effective suggestion of the margin of A Consultation in the Hills. 87 an impenetrable forest from which there projects into a pebbly lake teeming with gold fish, a most geologically correct cape, down which rushes a foaming cascade, and on whose sunny banks bask some metallic blue-tailed lizards and a sluggish turtle. You might cross to the island of well-cropped turf and find there an ancient stone lantern, stained by the grandest of colourists Time with every richest hue of velvetty moss and slow craw- ling lichen. Afterthe clattering of sliding shutters had subsided, I had a hearty breakfast of duck's eggs hard boiled rice, biscuits, and the inevitable straw-coloured tea, and then passed on to the pitifully monotonous little group of blear-eyed, crippled, and occasionally leprous humanity that dogs the steps of a medical missionary. It is curious how hopeless sufferers are dragged, as if by some strange selective mag- net, from their retreats in dim sombre valleys, untrodden by the ordinary visitor, dark hovels and lonely garrets, all forgotten of the great busy world whom they can no longer serve. Here was the old doctor again, clean shaven and hair newly trimmed, grinning as sardonically as ever but vastly more polite in speech, looming in the background generally, perhaps alert enough as to what was doing, but in a most elaborately disengaged manner tapping with ever varying gesture on the edge of the brazier with that everlasting pipe of his. His distress was so apparent that I was compelled to comfort the good old man by drawing him out publicly for by this time we were the centre of a considerable crowd by finding what he did know, and we parted pleasantly, both of us with the happy feeling that we had taught as well as learned. 88 Nine Years in Nipon. After visiting a few sick folk in the neighbourhood who were bedridden, accompanied by my former guide I started on my return journey through fields of mulberry, the people in the crowded court-yard ducking a wave of compliments like a patch of sedges under a strong gale. Then we got into our carriage and pair (of men) and were away through narrow pathways cut through golden sweetly scented acres of sesamum, past sloppy rice fields into the mud of which men and boys were treading cut grass and weeds for manure ; then rattling across rough wooden culverts, or splashing through gleaming pools which the rains had formed. Our way lay past an interesting cave naturally formed, I think, in a very hard rock which scratched glass, and not far from it we saw a famous temple, Me-no-ma Shoden. In the spacious grounds were numerous stalls adorned with toys, ornaments for rustic belles, and sweetmeats. The whole neighbourhood was gay with a festive display of flowers and paper lanterns. What struck me most was a very ample preaching hall, open at the sides and adorned not with the commandments of Buddha or the precepts of Confucius, but with pictured advertisements of the trades to which the pious patrons were severally devoted. The idea seemed a singularly happy one, and I venture to offer the sugges- tion to some of those good people who give their energies to church bazaars. In Japan it is usual, by the way, to give credit for larger subscriptions than are actually received. At the gate there was a curious carved stone pillar, round which a horribly grinning elf was slyly peeping at the passing devotee truly a clever A Consultation in the Hills. 89 piece of rural work. The crest on all the temple adorn- ments was forked radishes rampant with limbs entwined. The temple, I was told, belonged to a corrupt Shinto cult, tainted with Buddhism. The posts were lacquered red like those of Buddhist temples, while within was dis- played the mirror, of which I have said something in another chapter. I have a manuscript copy of the engrav- ings in- a famous old work, the Butsu-zo-dzui, which contains a Buddhist figure like the Hindu Ganesa, with an elephant's head. He holds in one hand a trident, and in the other a forked radish-like plant. As I struck off from the main road by a mountain path, a fine large snake of a species I had not previously cap- tured, became a victim, and I soon had it comfortably settled in a bottle of alcohol which I secured in an oil shop, under the somewhat veiled form of aruko/ioru, as the letter / is awanting in the copious alphabet of Japan. I was generally credited by an inquisitive public with the manufacture of medicine. At Kumagai we found the last coach to Tokio had left hours ago, and the hotel-keepers drew doleful pictures of the state of the road, which, truly enough, was at that time infested with gangs of murderous brigands. I could not afford to delay, and after lavish inducement had been offered, prevailed on two brawny coolies to contract to take me into the city by daybreak. After a hurried supper, I parted with my kind guide who, as I have said, was an old servant of the patient I had been asked to visit. It was clear to me that there was some concern for my safety, and that the two men who drew me were not without some apprehensions. However, I felt that I must go, and that F 9O Nine Years in Nipon. the risk might after all be very slight. By-and-by the shadows on the hills deepened " The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : At one stride comes the dark " lowering summer thunder-clouds gather about the hills we had come from, and they throb with pale purple sheet lightning. The rayons du crepuscie, too, which some suppose to be due to a lofty stratum of suspended ice- particles, stretch their long bows of indigo, alternating with rose, across the zenith from west to east. They are often in the east called the " rays of Buddha." We stopped for a long time at the entrance to a dreaded forest which stretched in one almost unbroken expanse to near the city. Close by the little tea-house where the men were refreshing themselves, was a wood-cutter's hut, from whose dimly-lighted room came a hard, soul-piercing cough, which sounded to a trained ear like a funeral knell. The crescent moon was bending down through a strip of lemon-coloured sky to the western horizon, when I again took my seat, the men warning me that now came the place of danger. As a mild precaution, having no armour, I buckled up a large, very knobby stone into my handker- chief, placed it " convanient," and began to admire the grand woodland scenery, dimly lit by stars and a setting moon. It was highly fascinating, and the sense of lurking danger kept me awake and served to give a certain piquancy, but it at last grew monotonous. By-and-by I glided quietly from the sombre forest with its impenetrable shadows, into a trim railway station, and was off at express speed through gas-lit villages merry A Consultation in the Hills. 91 with the whirr of giant factories, across magnificentviaducts which spanned lordly rivers crowded with great vessels ; over points with many a bump and crash, and at last with a sudden bang into a magnificent terminus, with palatial hotel and crowds of welcoming friends ? no ; but after I had rubbed my eyes very well for a minute or so off the main road altogether, and into the forest itself, the shafts of my vehicle on the ground, and my trusty varlets stand- ing a little apart from me, and indulging in vehement whispers. I clutched my formidable ballista, assumed a dramatic attitude, and prepared, in the solemnising lan- guage of public bodies, " to take such steps as the cir- cumstances might seem to call for." I at once saw that in the first place, at least, I had to deal with allies not foes. They had quenched their paper lanterns, and besought me to remain silent, while they crouched with hands at ears listening intently. There was a faint sound from along the road, which soon resolved itself into a vehicle of some kind, drawn by two horses, galloping madly in our rear. I was still in great doubt as to what the whole thing meant, when the vehicle swept up, and the two men who were with me leaped into the road with a sudden shout. The driver pulled up in fear at first, friendly salutations ensued, and anon a sleepy man tumbled out. At this precise moment I candidly admit that I believed myself to have fallen into a fatal trap, stood with my back against a thick trunk, and took a much cooler last glance (as I really thought) at mother earth than I had supposed at all possible for anybody to do in the circumstances. In a moment I recognised in the drowsy man my recent guide, who lost no time in telling me that he could not 92 Nine Years in Nipon. sleep after his usual " wee drap " of rice-whisky for think- ing of me lying murdsred in this wood, after I had been committed to his care. The faithful old fellow had got out of bed, communi- cated his superstitious dread, or rather toddy nightmare, to the townfolks, and had, at considerable expense to his wealthy master, engaged the vehicle which my coolies only recognised when close to us. That his dread was not quite imaginary I fully comprehended, when I read a few days afterwards in a native newspaper a vivid and trustworthy account of the stoppage of two coaches near that very spot, in daylight, by armed bands of robbers, who wounded the driver and guards and made the passengers stand and deliver. At the post-town close by, and at the same time, the banker and several well-to-do people had their throats cut by robbers. I rewarded my two men liberally, took my seat in the little car, and was soon jolting along merrily, to the accompaniment of some lively tales of murder and robbery by the old man, who waxed garrulous. I arrived in Tokio just before day- break. The streets were deserted, dark, and silent ; but here and there might be seen a broken-down old rascal, with a broken-down and very dirty jinrikisha, doing night work. I engaged one for my bag, and found that his story was a commoner one than many old residents may suppose. He had taken to drink, could no longer get respectable day-work, and so busied himself dragging slowly along, with legs trembling as much from disease as old age, red-faced old Japanese gentlemen who had been " dining out," or spending a day at the theatre, and on A Consultation in the Hills. 93 whom blind fortune had smiled a little more favourably than on himself. So ended my consultation visit to Kiriu. 94 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VIII. Mitake San The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. Bad Roads and Better Language Spiders and Beetles A Japanese Scare- crow Night Storm in a Forest A Dispirited Coolie Sunday Quiet and Questioning Buddhist Teaching and Modern Science Passports and Preaching A Picturesque School Sick Cicadas Art and Nature Brambles and Barefeet. AFTER a hard day and night's work we got off one morning in the hot season long before daybreak with our pale sick-worn little ones. We were quickly hurried through dark miry streets, by mossy walled moats, and through weary long drawn suburban rows of wooden dwellings, the inhabitants of which were just stirring up into activity. Now and again our perspiring jinrikisha men would stop to have a thimble-like cup of pale tea, a tiny pipeful of tobacco, and a spasmodic colloquy, chiefly composed of very significant but to Western ears mild ejaculations about the quality of the roads which, according to the profession, must be under- going very steady deterioration. Poor fellows ! I wonder when some Japanese Thomas Chalmers will be able to solve the problems which they suggest to one. Soon the sun rose laughingly, and then hospital cares, and the raw, clammy mist seemed to vanish together. The children began to be amused with the flowery hedge rows, the patient oxen, and the noisy village festivals in which the Japanese are always commemorating, with gay Ian- The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 95 terns and merry processions, some old dead emperor or the birth-day of his great grand uncle ! By-and-by we stopped to give our men a meal and rest. Some kind farm people in the neighbourhood brought sweets and tempting fruits and vegetables, with now and then some gay flowers, and the children got out to wander amongst the luxuriant vegetation of the garden- like fields through which our road passed. It was won- derful to see how their eyes opened with a new delight when they discovered a great gaudy spider, which began clumsily to vibrate her curious zig-zag netted web to avert attention, or when they happened to uncover a bevy of copper-brown beetles cropping the tender vine leaves. At last with ruddier cheeks and brighter eyes than we had seen for a long time, they came running to announce an as- tounding discovery. It was a curiosity of the quaintest kind a real Japanese scarecrow, which of all the but I fear a description would hardly be suitable for these grave pages. We are soon off again with greater speed. One coolie has sold out his contract, and a new man joins our com- pany, with strange, guttural " slangy " Japanese which none of us can understand very well. After some hours we stopped for dinner at a pretty little wayside tea-house, with big, fat gold-fish and a grand Scotch " burn " foam- ing and tearing through mossy boulders. I distributed here a good number of books to the villagers who flocked to see us. Off again ! for miles along a very broad and leafy avenue, with a ditch running through its centre, on and on till we all began to nod, and awoke to find our- selves being heavily dragged at night through a dreary g6 Nine Years in Nipon. wood, with rain pouring upon us in violent torrents, and even our poor coolies invisible in the gloom, save when a flash of lightning lit up the murky scene. Our men all began to be afraid, and it required all my available wits to keep them up, and to keep them together. Sometimes we had to stop and halloo for five or ten minutes on the others, as we could not find any definite path, and one of the coolies fairly broke down in spirits. He never entirely recovered his cheerful disposition, and I think had been overcome by superstitious dread chiefly. We had two hours of this work in the dark wet forest, but at last arrived at a cheery place of human voices and flitting shadows. There are worse places than a clean Japanese inn after such a dismal night, and we all fully appreciated its com- forts. We had intended to reach the hills that Saturday night, but I was not sorry to find so comfortable a Sabbath resting-place on the way. I arranged, with some caution on account of certain regulations, to have a meet- ing, and went out to see about me. Ome is a large and very pretty market town with an avenue of trees then in full bloom, gnarled pine and cherry, with some plum trees and crape myrtles, running up its main street It lies at the base of the hills, which are grandly wooded just where the sparkling river which supplies Tokio with water breaks from its enclosing valleys and runs joyfully down to the plains. The town lies on one of the boulder-strewn ter- races left by the ancient river. There are no clear evidences of glaciation. It boasts of a fine temple to which you climb by a very lofty and dangerously steep flight of stairs. The people seemed to be better built and The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 97 rather healthier than those of the plain around Tokio, and their oxen were notably large and sleek. We went to the temple, and there found a great many children playing about the shrines, with whom we con- versed, giving away numerous copies of a little illustrated life of Joseph, the only suitable work which had been published. Not far off I stumbled on a finely- carved piece of Sanscrit which might probably be one of those mantras or charms which the de- graded Buddhism of the Far East is too prone to lean upon, but my slight knowledge of Sanscrit was of From a Native sketch. little avail in its interpretation. On coming down to the town again, a kind, hearty old woman, seeing that our little ones were thirsty, asked us into her clean little hut, and presented each of us very gracefully with a cup of deliciously cool spring water, such as the wealth of Tokio could not buy in that city. Gracious old heathen woman, may thy kind and gentle deed be remembered to thee on that Great Day ! In the evening I had prepared to address a good audience, and at the hour appointed came down to a large room of the tea-house opening into the street, which had been kindly offered to me. I was amused to witness the discomfiture of my old cook when we looked round on an array of empty mats, for I am sure he had puffed the proceedings very thoroughly and conscientiously. I tried to assure him that the audience would be all right, and pS Nine Years in Nipon. that we should have a full house. I got the children to the door and began to talk to them playfully in English. It was irresistible. Respectable people, with small bank accounts even, who were loungingabout as if \vaitingappoint_ ments, of course quite unconscious of any proposed meeting, would condescend to pause in passing and laugh for a little at the gibberish, so we bagged them all. We began with about thirty people, and before I had read a portion of Scripture the room was quite full. Some noisy young Japanese lads from the city probably began audibly to criticise in not very polite terms the doctrine of the cross; but they were soon stabbed into silence by a polite but oblique thrust which the audience appreciated heartily, and some of them sneaked in to join us. By-and-by the head official, with a small party, peeped in as he was pas- sing, and stood patronisingly to look on from above the rest who were seated. Curiously enough I proceeded just then to speak of our holy religion requiring proper respect to be paid to those in authority, and was glad to see that he waited till the end. For fully two hours I had as closely attentive an audience as any one could wish for. I told the main facts of the life of Christ, just as we may suppose them to have occurred in the view of a heathen observer ; of how claims of divinity had roused the hatred of the Jews against Him, of His peculiar trial by mixed judicial forms acquitting Him of moral guilt, but condemn- ing Him for calling Himself God ; of His strange and terrible death, burial, and reported resurrection. I went on to examine the evidence of the latter, and told how the civilised races of the West had soon been compelled to 1 he Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 99 accept it as a glorious fact, full of hope for all men. When I spoke of the resurrection, they did not laugh as others did of old, but a very fine-looking, pale old woman with silvery hair, sitting beside her fat, prosperous, jolly-faced husband, and drinking in all that was said with great eagerness stopped me in the most courteous Japanese manner to say, that although I was a foreigner she had understood very well what I had been saying, but that she could not quite understand my meaning when I spoke of Jesus rising from the dead after having been laid in His grave ! I had all my books cleared off very quickly, and could have disposed of many more. Questions about them were freely asked. Long after I had retired for the night I could hear murmurs of conversation on the subject of the religion of Yasu, which was till recently a synonym for every kind of horrible sorcery. Before leaving I was asked to send some one to teach them more about our religion ; but when Mr. Miura, a very able native preacher, went out, he does not seem to have got very much encouragement in fact, and speedily returned. I did not quite agree with him as to this course, as no actual opposition had been offered, and such would now, I am happy to say, be illegal in Japan, where all peaceful religions are tolerated. It is right to add, that this place is in the diocese of a Buddhist bishop, who holds that the earth is flat, and who has been mobbed, it appears, in Yokohama by lads of modern tendencies for teaching such an absurd doctrine. In my first address and before knowing anything about this, I laid down very dogmatic- ally, contrary opinions, and appealed to scientific text- ioo Nine Years in Nipon. books to support my statements, although I am not quiet clear yet as to the immediate connection of that subject \vith Christianity. However, I have faith in the truth of these things ultimately helping us, and the people are beginning to find that we are more accurate and trustworthy in ordinary matters than their own teachers are. It is as yet very difficult to organize regular evangelistic work in the interior, not on account of any bigoted intolerance of our teaching, but simply from the fact that passports are needed for foreigners, and the only objects which have been legitimised are " scientific research " and " health." I have never gone out except on bona fide errands of the one class or the other. I am sure, how- ever, that it was not the intention of the Japanese government to restrict us in propagating Christianity by this regulation, but simply to prevent large mercantile transactions being imposed on simple country folks outside of the treaty ports. There can therefore be nothing wrong or illegal, as some who are uninformed have supposed, in seizing passing opportunities to proclaim the gospel of Christ. The legality of this course is not now questioned by the authorities at all. I trust, however, that such a modification of the existing treaties may soon be made as shall permit, not only the unfettered use of our tongues in the interior, but the organization of regular tours for the purpose of pleading our cause. The Japanese government have shown a very excellent spirit, and are largely tolerant. It remains for our press and high officials on their part to show a somewhat more sympathetic and conciliatory disposition than has sometimes prevailed. The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 101 We left the pretty town of Ome early, and had a delightful journey past peach orchards and through .the rising valleys till we came under the solemn shadow of those " great protuberances " which, in spite of Dr. Samuel Johnson, will always awe and cheer the heart of any genuine warm-blooded Scotchman. The river here was seen through tangled bamboo brake and fresh scented pines to run far below us, through great white plains of pebbles luminous in the sun. It was studded too with clumsily picturesque water-mills, built on huge boats which are strongly moored to the banks, but are ready to be let slip if need be, when the rain floods raise them. Numer- ous rafts of roughly cut wood are floated down from the mountain forests to the populous plain. The road, for a rural mountain road, is very good, and is built up with huge water-worn stones of great geological variety. At one place far from any large village, a very spacious school has been built in the new foreign style, but with Swiss-like and romantic modifications just such a place as one's boyish memories must cling to with^love. I have visited several of those new schools which are spread all over the country, and have been quite pleased to witness the marked efficiency of some of them. What is needed more than anything now is fresh and good text-books suited to the changed times and new life of the country. The Japanese have adopted many translations of our own best text-books, but not a few of them are quite unnatural grafts upon Japanese civilization. Now.as^mission schools are being opened all over the country to which we have access, something of this kind might very soon be attempted, with reasonable prospects of success. It may IO2 Nine Years in Nipon. surprise and please many to hear that in Japan there is not only now an official Sabbath-day of rest, which is spreading its influence wider and wider, but that the government text-books also are often theistic, and might even on account of an obscurity in the language be thought monotheistic. Some may think that this is rather, however, an example of the shallow eclecticism that has so largely characterized the recent progress of Japan. But neither theism nor monotheism are quite fresh and foreign to the Far East. My wife and the children were packed tightly into kagos the old sedan chairs of Japan which are still found useful in mountainous districts, where wheeled vehicles From a Kutive Sketch. cannot go. As we toiled up the shaded paths which lead to the quiet little hamlet and temple which crown the misty summit, we were constantly cheered by the tinkle of many a cool and pellucid rill, the sound of the wood-cutter's axe, or the shrill but not unpleasing note of the cicada, which may be heard at an almost incredible distance. Once or twice while listening to its metallic skirl, which, like the sweet old bagpipes, derives some enchantment from dis- tance, the painted singer suddenly ceased its song and The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 103 fell dead at our feet. Though its three central eyes still gleamed with their own ruby-like lustre, and its outward form and colour were quite fair to see, within it was a mere mass of dust and rottenness, for a deadly fungus had rapidly consumed all its vital organisation, leaving a sweet voice and nothing more. Many insects die in this way, and it has been proposed to cultivate and sow the special parasitic germs which are hostile to any given species, where they can be readily infected. So the much-abused germs of disease may yet come to render friendly services to man. There is a great variety of timber in the mountains of this range, and the forestry department is becoming alive, not a day too soon, to the economical wants of modern Japan in this respect. Very neat books are published by the Educational Department, which contain thin sections of all the woods which are grown. Deforestation had been going on very rapidly in the " good old " feudal times, but when the cry of alarm was raised, efficient measures were taken to remedy the evil in the future. Many are the advantages which the country seems to be about to reap from its intercourse with the scientific activity of the West, and benevolent forethought for posterity is certainly not the lear.t of the virtues which are being derived from contact with our Christian civilisation. They have planted many new trees here, such as the Eucalyptus, or Australian blue gum tree, of whose uni- versal virtues rather wildly exaggerated notions seem to prevail here as in Europe. When we got up into the rarer atmosphere we found it delightfully cool, and the forest paths were gloomy with IO4 Nine Years in Nipon. an almost raw mist, which seemed at once to brace up one for almost any undertaking, Buckle is partly right, although he was late in the field. This influence of the mountain air was disappointingly transient however, and I think we were still under a great malarious fog-blanket which spreads over this part of Japan and of which I could sometimes define the outline very well. Other ranges are more free from it, and I find many medical facts to support this observation. We visited the temple more than once, and, along with a missionary brother of another denomination, had some interesting talks with the old rector. He showed me a fine old native work on archaeology, consisting of about a hundred thin volumes magnificently illustrated. I was fortunate in picking up a complete copy a few years after- wards in a back lane in Tokio, and found the figures relating to Buddhism very valuable. The priests all seem to foresee the decay of Buddhism in Japan ; and some of them also see pretty clearly that even now the battle amongst educated Japanese is between scientific agnosticism and Christianity. The Roman and Greek systems have been very well considered by the Japanese, and will always have " converts " so long as their funds hold out. The " Greeks " use our books largely, and the Bible is read by them. I trust that many of them have got the essence of the faith in them. One misty day we went to visit a very wild and im- pressive glen, through whose mossy boulders a foaming stream tears with thunderous uproar, forming some small but very romantic cataracts. In the midst of the glen there rise up from the thick foliage The Sacred Mount of tJie Three Peaks. 105 two rocky and precipitous peaks, bare of soil, but mossy and lichen-stained with many a rich hue. In a cleft on each peak a very skilfully wrought elf in fine bronze, has been erected. The two figures, which are nearly life-size, are different conceptions. Anything more weirdly gruesome and unhuman I have never seen, even in childhood's dreams. They are really high works of art, and characteristically Japanese. Those who placed them there must have had a keen sense of their harmony with the wild scene which surrounds them. I had other plans to -carry out; but before anything could be done, and while sitting at a lamp one midnight catching moths which were numerous and very beautiful, a Government messenger appeared with a telegram from Tokio, requiring my immediate presence there. After a short nap, I left my sick children, and at daybreak started with my friend, to whom I have alluded, taking unfortun- ately a short cut down the mountain. Of course we lost our way, and just after the sun had fairly wanned to his work, we had to climb again the long and exposed spur we had come down. I lay down at last faint, sick, and thirsty, and was glad to lick any drops of dew which remained on the leaves. My friend had to return after we got into the track. Soon my shoes, cut up by the sharp stones, fairly gave out, and I threw them away. The flinty bed of a dry stream, which served for a road, kept me in active employ- ment for more than half-an-hour, and then, when 1 thought my troubles were at an end, an interminable brambly footpath spread its charming vista before me. \Yith torn and dirty clothes, shoeless, lame, and with bleeding feet } io6 Nine Years in Nipon. I got to my halting place just in time to carry out my plan. My appearance was not calculated to promote respect, and I got an exceedingly rude reception and wel- come refreshment at a little dirty tea-house in an out-of- the-way village at the foot of the mountains. A benevo- lent jinrikisha-man was induced to take me on a bit for double the usual fare, and I got a pair of Japanese socks and sandals, but found that I had been mischievously supplied with women's. However, they were very clean and comfortable, although they did receive more notice from travellers than was pleasant. I got two fresh men, and dashed at a rapid rate over hill and dale, through brake and stream, till at last the large and picturesque town of Hachoji, with its clear cool river, and its great sacred cars, now bright with paint and varnish, began to draw near. There, after a hearty meal with chop sticks, sitting cross-legged on the mats, I caught an antiquarian oddity of a 'bus, which held together toler- ably well till we got to Tokio, which was, as usual, red with the glare of a great conflagration. Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 107 CHAPTER IX. Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. A Village Festival Butterflies and Cicadas A Noisy Inn River Scene Silk Dining on Hot Water Mimicry in Spiders A Mountain Pass Tea and Tattle A Tragic Pool Dissolving Views Spindle Whorl An Exciting and Ludicrous Scene Limbs of the Law Curious Bridge Pious Parishioners and a Prudent Rector. NE who wishes to admire a great mountain must remain below. The very worst possible use you can put it to is to climb it. I have never climbed Fuji, and don't mean ever to do so. I believe what people say as to its height to be pretty nearly correct, and can quite understand that it must be intolerably cold up there, and that the fleas in the rest-houses, on the way up, are found unusually stimulat- ing ; but I don't know that the simple repetition of other people's monotonous experiences in this way would add much to my own knowledge or enjoyment. Besides, if it must be said, I am getting middle-aged and somewhat short of breath, and to go up Fuji on a man's back, as a friend once gravely proposed to me, would, be simple profanity. I left Tokio one afternoon late in July, under a dull sky, in a jinrikisha, with tandem ; was spun rapidly across the lotus-covered moats, past the ruined castle of io8 Nine Years in Nipon. the Shogun now mantled with ivy and bowered in sweet- scented honey-suckle, through a lordly avenue of hoary- pines, past the trim barracks of the Life Guards and the red brick walls of the English Legation away out through the wooded plains after the setting sun. As we reached the outskirts of the city, a village festival was going on ; white-robed Shinto priests in a wooden cage were per- forming some rites ; prettily-dressed girls, be-flowered and be-powdered, their lips reddened with carmine and their faces whitened, were ringing the prayer-bell, while there was a prolific display otgokei or white paper symbols, and piles of unleavened show-bread. A crowd of wor- shippers was busily engaged in making huge pasteboard standards for the impending procession. There are al- ways in the suburbs great trains of bullock-carts, pack- horses, and slow-thinking bumpkins in charge of them. I was greatly struck with the lush verdure of the country, which is a great plain of lava-sand and loamy alluvium, with which worms have had something to do ; but sub- aerial deposit of dust has evidently here, as elsewhere, played some part in the original formation of soil. The hedge-rows not at all like ours abounded in tiger- lilies and a tall, white-flowered plant, something like honey- suckle, which emits a yellow juice. A great many green or golden-red dragon-flies, and most magnificent butterflies, were fluttering about in shady lanes, large " swallow-tails," black or spotted with sapphire tints, and a smaller jet-black butterfly, which ap- peared in the evening ; others bore a close resemblance to dead leaves, and the more closely they were examined, the greater seemed to be the likeness. When they Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 109 alighted amongst old wood chips or decayed leaves, they kept jerking themselves about with their wings elevated. I saw also what seemed to be humming-bird hawk-moths fluttering in and out of large leafy trees. As there are no humming-birds in Japan, we must either believe that the humming-bird once mimicked such moths and I have often seen them in other parts of Japan or suppose, with the great naturalist, Mr. Bates, that similarity of habits has determined similarity of structure. The houses on the wayside are all thatched with great skill and neatness, and wild-flowers often adorn them. As evening closed in, great log fires blazing up for the prepara- tion of the evening meal on glazed black stove-like erec- tions not often seen in Tokio, cast a ruddy glow on the smoky interiors and roused inspiring memories of happy winter evenings in the old country. Those fire-places, which were new to me, resembled in appearance those used by Russian peasants, and were made of clay, black- ened and glazed like an American stove. The country through which we were passing was thickly wooded, and care seemed to have been taken to prevent deforestation. Some of the trees were apparently about two centuries old, and were immensely tall. The tree grass-hoppers and the cicadas made the woods resound with their stri- dent notes as with the roar of a cataract. The cicada beats a pair of drums situated under its belly. The tree grass-hopper plays a kind of fiddle by means of the ser- rated margin of its wing sheath and the roughened edge of its thigh, and plays indeed often with such sweetness of tone that the Japanese imprison them in tiny cages, and feed them as we do canaries. Sometimes, however, 1 1 o Nine Years in Nipon, the screech of those musical tree insects is almost like that of a locomotive whistle competition, and becomes quite painful to listen to. There are in Japan a few grand main roads or imperial highways along which almost all that is important in his- tory seems to have clustered, and they have been deter- mined in early times by physiographical conditions. That on which we are now travelling is called the Kofu- kaido, from Kofu, an important silk and grape growing town to which it tends. Wood, at all events, is plentiful on the way, and we met many an old man tottering along under his load of lichened faggots. At last the landscape grew grey and then dark, and we began wearily to ask" the distance from the first stage. It seemed a long time before the welcome cheery gleam of a lantern-lit town began to show itself through the masses of cypress and bamboo. It was Fuchiu where we were to pass the night, and a gay and festive scene was that on which we entered. The hotels were quite crowded with strangers, but we got accommodation at last For supper we had ai fish and yams, tea, and that never-to-be-forgot- ten semi-putrid " bean " sauce concerning which there are dark rumours that the makers of certain well-advertised English sauces import large quantities from China and Japan. I gat under an immense green mosquito net with my paper lantern, as the insects were troublesome, and began to make the foregoing notes. A fine gold and green buprestis. got in and fluttered about the lamp, while I prepared to compose myself for reading a chapter or two of Bates on the Amazon. The coolies, like pigmies refreshed after supper and a hot bath, came in ducking Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 1 1 1 most vigorously and beseeching me in the most winsome tones to give them a small advance towards my contract, as there was extraordinary and irresistible jollification going on in the hotel. Certainly the halls were filled all night with the sound of revelry, the smell of sake (rice- beer), and the fumes of coarse tobacco. Sleep was impossible, and I found myself to have been the victim of a horrid nightmare, in which the Amazon swallowed up the Tamagawa and Pera merged into the purlieus of Yokohama, but whether I had been dreaming that I was Mr. Bates, or Mr. Bates that he had been me, I could not for the poor life of me tell. At length the impatient cock duly crowed in that pert and mathematically proper style peculiar to such an unimaginative bird, and the shrill scream of sliding shutters soon drowned its im- pertinent and fussy voice. The swallows, who had their nests under the eaves, were twittering in and out of the house, seeming to be specially fond of the telegraph wires and hardly ever alighting anywhere else. The usual washing appliances in a Japanese hotel are a piece of fos- silised soap, a blue cotton and malodorous coarse minia- ture table-napkin for a towel, and a wooden comb like a garden rake, common to all comers, as in the trite story told of the American passenger and the "ship's tooth brush." A small saucer full of dirty salt completes the set, as no Japanese is supposed ever to desire to look at himself in a mirror. The ladies of course have polished metallic ones, and like those of ancient Egypt, alas ! see only therein faces of brass ! Well, I am afraid my lack of sleep had spoiled my temper a bit. After rice and cocoa (I shall not be tempted here 1 1 2 Nine Years in Nipon. to ad\crtisc the maker) we left about six o'clock, the day promising to be a hot one. The country a little beyond tin's opens up pleasingly, and our way now lay through fields of buckwheat, groves of persimmon trees now in fruit, and yams with great handsome leaves like- lilies of the Nile. We had a glimpse of the river Tama-gawa, running between its reedy and gravelled banks, and which for the time had shrunk to small dimen- sions. 1'nder the overhanging roots of an-old tree on the edge of the hank I got hold of a magnificent large fungus, which I brought home with me. While crossing the ferry we found the water to be delightfully cool and clear. It supplier the city of Tokio through wooden mains twenty- seven miles long. Looking up the stream steep wooded banks appeared which had in some parts suffered from landslips, and the raw wounds showed through their bosky sides in whitish strata, looking in the distance like pipe clay. The banks were level atop on both sides at a similar height, showing the old alluvial plateau of the river's bed. In the far distance bluish toned mountains sweetly closed in the scene from the north. The land was now one great garden of mulberry plants, the dark green leaves of which form the food of the silk worm. On the highest of the old river terraces is an old temple built on a platform of large stones, and surrounded by a grove of trees some of which seemed to be nearly two centuries old. Passing by some reedy marshes teeming with interesting microscopic life as I afterwards found, we rattled into the busy little town of Kachoji, which has a population of about 8000. Along the centre of a long sloping street stood rows of Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 1 1 3 patient pack-horses, \yith trappings of burnished brass and long flapping fringes of red and brown leather paper to keep off the flies. They were as usual shod with straw slippers, and had each an extra couple of pairs slung to its harness. Through the middle of the street a stream of clear sparkling water rushes with pleasing gurgle, filling the frequent wells and turning little toy water wheels which children were watching with interest. Silk is the dominating idea of society in Hachoji. The coun- try is green with mulberry for the silk worms ; the shops are filled with baskets and other apparatus required in the rearing of the worms or winding of the cocoons, and every one seems to be engaged in some part of the various pro- cesses of silk manufacture. And yet one is not prepared to hear that Japan after all produces a very small propor- tion of the silk consumed in the world. More energy, more science, more economy, and better means of trans- port are all needed. Before entering the pass there is a small village Kawara-no-hiku, where were some very fine cocoons and some beautiful floss silk. The roadside was adorned with many tall, straight and slim orange lilies growing wild. I examined them carefully but could not in this species de- tect any trace of those curious contrivances for insect ferti- lization of which so much is now written. At the bottom of each calyx lay a considerable quantity of clear fluid. They were quite smooth inside. Many of them were also growing on the grass ridge of the thatched cottages, where they produced a very striking and original effect. Large humming-bird hawk-moths were fluttering in and out of tall tree tops like birds, and I saw some lively specimens U4 Nine Years in Nipon. of dcindela or tiger beetles about the mulberry bushes as we brushed past them. When we stopped to rest an old woman in a dirty little tea-house offered to prepare me some refreshment. I shall not readily forget her astonish- ment when I told her to prepare a simple dinner of clean hot water for me. She had never seen chocolate before, and ventured timidly to taste the " foreign clay " and it seemed to please her very much. I got a fine nest of a Polistes hanging under the eaves rather a queer situation for a wasp's nest, was it not ? While I was sitting at my simple repast, a splendid butterfly, having pale, dingy green swallow-tail wings, with dark spots of great size, was fluttering constantly about a piece of dung on the road opposite the tea-house. Common plantago was growing in great profusion. Here and there the steep hillsides have been terraced with the aid of boulders to yield rice, buckwheat, yams, etc., but the mulberry plant prevails over all this district of Japan. Our way now lay up the toilsome Kobotoke pass. The road is singularly beautiful as it winds up through shady rocks and across boulder-strewn mountain torrents, whose cool white foam made one, panting under a hot sun, distractingly thirsty. The heat was really intense, and here jinrikiskas were of no avail. When resting from time to time on the mossy trunk of a fallen tree I saw many curious spiders, and captured a few interesting specimens which illustrated the principle of protective or in this case rather destructive mimicry in zoology. Those spiders bear a strong resemblance both in colour and form to fresh, unexpanded leaf-buds, and the sly wretch places himself just where a similar bud usually Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 115 occurs. Others I found which closely resembled grass seeds, or withered spikes of larch. Those latter are very expert in hiding themselves, and cling closely to the side of the twig on which they hunt, generally changing their position quickly if you watch them so as to have the stem between themselves and you. After some hours' hard climbing by zig-zag paths I arrived at a delightfully situated tea-house on the mountain's brow. It was propped up partly by a huge tree, and hung from the edge of a rock on a platform of half-rotten pines over a great abyss. Pil- grims with their tinkling bells, pedlars and farmers were constantly arriving and departing, after having bought about a half-penny worth of tea, A refreshing breeze played over my heated forehead, and but for the day's rapid advance I could have remained much longer. The garrulous old landlady, who had something to say to everybody in a hearty piping voice, told 'me they never had any earthquakes there. Now this appeared to me a little striking, as one very notable earthquake apparently traversed the lofty range which this pass crosses, and was distinctly observed at Kofu, many miles beyond, as well as at Tokio, Yokohama, and other places on the other side. The rocks in the vicinity are very interesting, and some good sections are visible. In Japan seismology has been prosecuted by native scholars as well as by foreign professors, with much originality and enthusiasm, and it is to be hoped that clearer ideas will soon emerge. On the way down we met further trains of pilgrims panting up the pass. I overheard two very amusing old fellows discussing in pathetic and most philosophic style the 1 1 6 Nine Years in Nipon. peculiar effect of gravity in making an uphill road so painfully exhausting to human beings. It was clear that, had the universe been left to them to amend this grave error in its constitution would soon have been put right. A series of short climbs, alternating with rapid and rocky descents, in one of which I sprained my foot severely, soon brought us to the river Baniu, which is navigable up to this point for small sailing boats. As my foot was beginning to get red and swollen, I sat down and laved it in the cold clear water for a long time. The scenery was very pleasing, and almost Swiss-like, an im- pression which was greatly aided by the white semi-Italian tower of a modern court-house rising above the shingled roofs of a village on the mountain's side. There was a pretty little fountain playing in the court of a tea-house where we stopped. It was supplied from a spring by bamboos, the thin partitions at the nodes of which are driven out by a long iron rod. Bamboo is often very use- ful in this way, but unfortunately it requires too frequent renewal. They told me, in answer to inquiries, that earth- quakes were felt occasionally there, but they were usually very slight. There are some very remarkable river- terraces of natural formation at Futase-goye. After cross- ing the river here, our path lay along a broad plain of glaring water-worn pebbles, which tried my still tender foot very greatly. Again we had to climb in order to re- gain the plateau of the old terrace on the opposite bank. There were sections of great cliffs exposed which were built up of loosely stratified water-worn stones of variable size, and which had been deposited when the climatal conditions of Japan were probably very different from Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 117 those that now prevail. In some parts the way was rather dangerous, and as night began to draw on, we passed a dreadful pool on a little lonely moor, surrounded by tragic red shafted pines. Soon the moon rose, solemn and clear, and, all alone, I trudged on amidst awful still- ness. The valleys were filled most of the time with soft fleecy clouds. Sometimes, ere it got dark, the great green plain of Yedo, with its meandering rivers and tangled maze of dusty gray roads hanging almost perpendicularly from the sky like a vast panoramic map, would break forth quietly for a little, soon to fade dreamily away again like a dis- solving view on a white curtain of mist. The whole scene was to me like a dream. I spent a very happy, peaceful Sunday in the midst of those calm, quiet hills near Yose, with a most home-like Japanese family, the members of which did everything they could to make me comfortable in mind and body. On the morning of the following day my host was sweeping the floor, and happening to require something, I spoke to him en deshabille. He answered me in humble language like a domestic. By-and-by, robed with dig- nity as master of the house, he came in to give me my morning salute, as if he had never seen me before. This seems a strange kind of hypocrisy, and yet one feels it to be essentially good-breeding on the whole. The morning air was delightfully clear and invigorating, and I started early, passing down hill through a very fine valley. At one quaint little hamlet I got a glimpse of primitive life which gladdened me very much. Some women and girls were busy spinning lengths of yarn by means of old- 1 1 8 Nine Years in Nipon. fashioned spindle-whorls. I have never seen stone ones used anywhere, however, in Japan. That which was being used was a vertical pin of iron with a horizontal whorl of heavy wood. It was sent spinning round rapidly, the yarn being fastened to it and so receiving the proper t\vist. The lines were supported as in our rope- spinning yards, and several lines of thread were being twisted at the same time, each, of course, having its own spindle attached. The same instrument was used in Tokio by a previous generation. As we continued to descend various kinds of rock appeared in succession some of them recent, and of volcanic origin. Springs were very frequent too, and the water was pleasant and cool a real treat to any one coming from Tokio, where the water supply, though originally almost perfect, is con- taminated to an alarming extent by sewage and other im- purities. The roofs of the houses were mostly covered with shingles held in their places as in most mountain- ous countries against high winds by boulders placed atop. Rich balsams were growing in the stone walls from crevices ; the gardens were very trim, the roads wonder- fully well kept, and everything when I passed seemed as neat and clean as if the Mikado himself had been ex- pected to make an imperial progress in a day or so. I had got two coolies to carry me along, but they had been drinking i heavily, and when we came to a sloping and sinuous road, which let you look sheer down over the jin- rikisha into a leafy segment of infinite space, they nudged each other, and commenced a series of very amusing attempts, regardless of my helpless efforts to get out and stop them, to run t me along with one wheel just on the Pilgrimage to Fugi the Peerless. 119 verge of the abyss. I have never used my fists to a Japa- nese in any circumstances whatever, but on this occasion as I was really in danger, I at last stood up waving a corpulent umbrella over their wine-flushed pates like an excited American stump orator, and "felt like" applying it pretty vigorously. As a matter of course we suddenly came in sight of a little police station, with its inevitable pair of goggle-eyed preservers of the peace, who rushed out with severe inquiry and menace on their stern visages but the cause of my offence was too obvious to be mis- taken, and my impetuous steeds were reproved with great severity. This place was Koma-hashi, on the river Katsura, which dashes in white foam over great boulders, hollowing out a gulley through hard stratified rock. You cross by a high bridge into a busy market town. This bridge is called Saru-hashi or the monkey's bridge, and is built on something like the modern cantilever principle. Messrs. Satow and Hawes thus describe it : " It rests on the ends of a series of horizontal beams planted deep in the soil which covers the rock, laid in tiers, each tier projecting beyond and above the other, with cross beams laid in be- tween, and a little roof over the extremities to protect them from the effects of the weather." A little further on and to the right there was a massive dark basalt-like mass of rock, seemingly bare of trees, save two great pines near the flat summit, which only served to emphasize the general barrenness. Another prominent rocky spur rose up behind. We passed several water- falls and tributary brooks turning sluggish water-mills on their way, and then came to a halt for the day at Odzuki. I2O Nine Years in Nipon. There is no good tea-house or hotel at this little village, but by aid of a friendly letter I found a quiet tidy little room, and soon scraped acquaintance with the neighbours, who seemed glad to have a chat with a foreigner. It was surprising to find how well they could understand an English large scale map of Japan (Brunton's) which I had opened out on the floor. The villagers in an English county town would by no means have been so well able to point out rivers and bays in Wales or Scotland on an English map. I am disposed to think that the system of military service and of religious pilgrimages have done very much not only to spread local geographical knowledge in Japan, but also to maintain comparative uniformity in the language. By-and-by my religious function became known, and some amusement was caused when it leaked out that the Kan-nushi of the adjoining parish, who had been conse- crating a new bridge, was to lodge there that night. I expressed great joy in the anticipation of a little friendly conversation before the company on the subject of the merits of our respective religions ; namely, Shinto, or the Way of the Spirits, and Christianity. The proposal was very heartily received by the pious parishioners who had assembled to do him honour ; but after many whispered communications it was made clear amidst much hearty laughter, that the worthy rector had found his duties call him to a hamlet a little further on. This gave me a quiet opportunity of laying down the truth in a non-controver- sial form. Some levy was made on my very small, and on this occasion, merely personal supply of drugs, and I disposed of my remaining stock of books. Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 121 CHAPTER X. Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. Pretty Tree Frogs Ancient Trees Buddha-faced woman Peep into a Village School Ai Fish Sweet Scenery Awe inspiring Walk Lava "Froth" and its Use Mild Martyrdom A Heavenly Vision Moun- tain Lake Volcanic Prairie Flowers An Esthetic jinrikisha Man A Statuesque Stoat Novel Tail-piece Patriotic Bias Fans versus Flies. THERE was no post office in the town, and as writ- ing a letter would have been useless I took a stroll to the river to look at the new bridge which was being built There were some dark purple velvety-winged dragon-flies hovering over the river and alighting on the smooth boulders. In a garden I saw a fine shapely column of basalt, hollowed out as a water-basin on the top, which confirmed a report I had heard of a beautiful formation of that kind further down the river, but which I could not reach. An old lady with an immense crowd of children about her was spinning, and looking now and again with calm interest at the " hairy foreigner." There are many venerable" trees in this neighbourhood, and I saw one stump which showed more than two hun- dred rings. I am aware that now-a-days it is not sup- posed that a single ring invariably stands for a year ; but I think that those trees were about two centuries old at least. In the evening I walked along to the temple. The H 122 Nine Years in Nipon. moist rice-fields were swarming with beautiful little bright green gilded tree frogs at least the tips of their toes were expanded into small cup-like discs exactly like those of tree frogs, of which there are many in Japan. The little animals were exceeding lovely in colour, form, and even in expression. A curious water-worn stone is placed conspicuously by the wayside, its hollowed out cavity containing water. Close by is a wide court-yard containing a tree of great diameter, and what appeared to be an old temple. I saw no one there, but when I began to measure the girth of the trunk I became conscious of the wondering gaze of a kindly calm-looking matron, with the very expression Japanese artists so often give to their Buddhas, but which I had never seen in real life before. She was looking down on me from an adjoining two storey building of some dignity, from which the drowsy hum of many boy- ish voices rose. As I felt myself to be somewhat of a trespasser I explained that I had been attracted by this wonderful old tree, on which she asked me with great genuineness of manner to rest for a little, when her hus- band the schoolmaster would be glad to give me any in- formation about the district I might desire. The good dominie soon joined us, some very intelligent lads, who had been busy at vulgar fractions as I could overhear, chiming into the conversation with much pleasant hum- our, good sense and useful information. There was soon put before us all the usual pale strong tea in tiny cups, without sugar or cream, and little tablets of peppermint sugar a favourite sweetmeat. After this the children, who were mostly from about seven to ten years of age, Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 123 were put through their exercises in reading and arithmetic very creditably. Indeed many of 'our own school inspec- tors would really have been able to appreciate their work, even in an unintelligible language. None of them knew a word of English, but it was clear that they were being taught efficiently to garner some of the best results of modern cosmopolitan civilization. They used the Arabic numerals as being more convenient, and had good maps and diagrams on the walls. The teacher himself was a new arrival, and had been educated in Tokio. He and his wife felt lonely in such a dreamy rustic neighbourhood, and he was longing for a sphere with greater stir and bustle. In a little the good lady hurried in with some fresh country eggs a treat to any one who is accustomed to the fishy flavour of those produced on the seaboard. The fowls were of unusual size and vigour. The teacher had arranged a little excursion for next morning, so I was up at cock- crow, and found him along with a troupe of bright-faced merry big boys waiting for me when I arrived at the school- room. His kind spouse pressed some very eatable little dumplings on me, which Angler. were of good service before I 124 Nine Years in Nipon. had gone far. We crossed the rushing Katsura, here famous for its fine ai which are caught with live bait, con- sisting often, as the teacher told me, of the young of the same species, usage quite as bad as seething a kid in its mother's milk, and certainly not what one would expect in a Buddhist country. But modern Buddhism does not strictly forbid either fish or wine, though you may see on any temple court-yard notices forbidding the carriage of those popular commodities through the sacred precincts. Evil-minded people whisper that they may be taken into the enclosure, however, without any serious penalty being incurred. The ai is a large fish when full grown, and re- sembles salmon a little. The object of our little expedi- tion was to visit a great dark basaltic rock resembling that on which Edinburgh Castle is so grandly perched. Its steep sides are thickly wooded, and we found it hard and hot work to reach the ruins of the old castle of Sir Oyamada Bichiu, belonging I think to the latter part of the sixteenth century. The boys leaped along the peaks of basalt like goats, now yelling with delight when they un- earthed an unfortunate snake, or with a somewhat different emotion when they trod on a prickly shrub. The stones were very slippery, fallen trees presented good opportuni- ties for gymnastics, and every spot was covered by long rank grass which cut your hands like a badly set razor. At one secluded spot there was an old forgotten looking tem- ple, the images in which were of a rather primitive type, found in only a few parts of Japan. On our way down we called on a wealthy silk farmer, whose mulberry groves flanked the mountain. He gave us a most kindly and hospitable reception to his large Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 125 and orderly establishment, and showed us his collection of Japanese drawings and pottery. After my back had been suppled with profound salutations to each member of a large family, tea and a delicious kind of Turkish de- light made in the district were laid before us, and we sat on the clean straw mats discussing the latest news from Tokio and the new doctrine of Yasu, till it was time to return. On hearing I was a surgeon it was felt at once that the " gods were gracious," as the good lady of the house was suffering severely from an eye affection, for which I was able to leave some useful medicine and direc- tions. After a present had been given me of fresh grapes, candied in a way for which the adjoining town is famous, and many hearty parting salutations had been exchanged, we hurried back amidst gathering shadows through the river valley to Odzuki. After crossing the Katsura again in a frail and tremb- ling boat, which a silent Charon with face like a withered apple, guided across the foaming torrent by aid of a rope stretched from bank to bank, I engaged a pawky old fel- low with great conversational powers, and a never failing fund of humour, to carry my " traps." We set off briskly on foot amidst a slight shower of rain for Kami Yoshida a great resort of pilgrims preparing to make a meritori- ous ascent of Fuji, or returning after having performed that feat. The road was good, I was now in capital trim for walking, and the scenery was very pleasing hills soft in outline and green with new verdure refreshed by the shower, sometimes well wooded, but more usually terraced visibly by the ancient carving power of the river, aided somewhat by the art of man in fitting the soil for the cul- 126 Nine Years in Nipon. ture of rice ; but the country was here richly diversified with the varied products of a most economical and indus- trious husbandry. There seemed to be no room for weeds anywhere. Melons, gourds, or cucumbers trailingly spread their bright golden flowers and veiny leaves, so rich in form and mellow shadow tints, over the cottages. Every flower plot was brightened by rich balsams, scarlet, crimson or creamy white, delicately tinted with pink ; while close by every gateway tiny streams of cool clear spring water gurgled, and cascades were crashing on their way to turn some lazy but picturesque moss-clad old mill-wheel which were met with at almost every turn of the road. We passed through many villages, the country seeming to be popu- lous even for Japan, and the streets were crowded with stolid, attentive, unamused children, of the type to be found anywhere throughout the empire. Here the idols, or " statues " as it is fashionable to call them, now presented some unique features, but whether purely local or not I have not found. For some distance our way lay between great walls of rough ruddy grey lava, tumbled about in great rocky masses, that gave an air of hideous ruin and desolation to a moor-like expanse, on which the shades of night were now closing, tempered by a broad bar of lurid red in the western sky. I could not help picturing to myself, as I picked my way over the lava, scenes of blood and violence, such as might have supplied plots to any number of "penny dreadfuls," and really, some of the inky pools over which huge contorted demon like masses of lava kept watch might have hid many a dreadful secret. My jinrikisha man gave the expressive name of awa Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 127 (froth) to the honey-combed slag-like lava. These curi- ous bits of scoriae are utilised in making rockeries, and many tons of the material are sent to Tokio and other large towns for this purpose. In some places great walls were built of the material, a slight growth of vegetation had covered the stone, filling the crevices with rich mosses and rare ferns, while here and there a gnarled pine tree had audaciously struck its roots into the stony soil. One could not help thinking of that fearful time recorded in Japanese history when the hot liquid stream ran down those now silent slopes, carrying terror, death, and desola- tion with it. A cold dry wind began to set the fossil demons a- howling in the eeriest way, and right glad was I when the upward-sloping main street of Kami Yoshida at last stretched its pale dusty vista before me. I have arrived late, footsore and soiled with dust, at many a Japanese town, but never before nor since have I had such a rough reception as I am about to relate, and which is very rare at the present time in the experience of foreigners. At first I merely thought that our advent excited un- usual interest, which puzzled me a little, as I knew that travellers from the West had often been there. By-and- by something like a crowd collected and dogged my weary footsteps, and once or twice I thought I overheard some not very complimentary epithets. Thereafter a few little pellets of mud came curving towards my devoted head, and in a trice I was conscious of being stoned by a large Japanese mob. The slightest loss of temper or lack of firmness, and my case might have become serious. I 128 Nine Years in Nipon. kept watch on the ringleaders and steered steadily for the inn which I had been advised to seek. I there planted myself firmly in the doorway, faced the mob now becoming somewhat roused at prospect of losing their prey and requested shelter for the night. It was refused, but on showing my passport and requesting the presence of the chief magistrate or head of police while I tempo- rarily, at least, claimed shelter, the master of the house thought it wise to give me his countenance. I civilly asked the apparent leaders of the mob young lads they were to be reasonable, and to explain the offence which seemed to them to justify such an extraordinary reception of a quiet traveller who had come to admire the famed beauties of their district. I received no explanation, but the very mild and practically harmless stoning began to cease, and the more active lads whom I now fixed with my eye slunk off, when I warned them that their govern- ment would hardly thank them for embroiling the country again with foreign nations. The innkeeper, fearing trouble, arranged that I should go elsewhere, and at last by the efforts of my pawky old baggage-carrier, who kept aloof till all danger was over, I got into splendid quarters the very best the town had to offer as compensation for the first rudeness of my reception. The old fellow, in short, I could hear dilating in the most eloquent terms on my many excellent qualities and on the considerateness which I had shown to himself and to others, as reported to him before starting with me. I need hardly say that his pleading was urged as a ground for fresh liberality when parting next morning. My quarters for the night were in a large newly- Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 129 matted room, from the open verandah adjoining which I could see the base of Fuji, which rose steeply to the heavens, its summit buried in widespreading cottony cumuli. No food was forthcoming, and to all my requests the curt answer was, " There is none." I had seen potatoes growing in the garden and asked for some, offering to dig them up myself. This brought me a good meal at last. A lady who was, according to the simple manners of the country, to occupy a portion of my large room, was joined by some intending pilgrims of both sexes, and the conversation, as a preliminary to sleep, at once turned upon the entrance of the " blue- eyed, red-haired devil." I am fortunately neither blue- eyed nor red-haired, but in Japan all Western foreigners ought to have the qualities those terms describe. Well, such had been the rhetorical effectiveness of my porter's defence, that the worthy lady a model matron of Japan it must be admitted, appearances to the contrary notwith- standing spoke to her numerous associates during the night in the most appreciative way of my manners, and admitted that externally nothing had been shown to reveal the depravity that belonged essentially to foreigners. The fact was, as I afterwards heard, the place had recently been visited by one or two French naval officers, and the worthy inhabitants of Kami Yoshida not bad sort of people, I can assure you had erroneously supposed that Englishmen were something like them, and hence the, in the circumstances, very justifiable stoning. Verb. sap. Just before daybreak I arose . refreshed, and went into the tiny courtyard to wash. The sky was grey and misty as on a raw winter morning in England, and nothing was 130 Nine Years in Nipon. to be seen in the grey dawn but a leafy patch of yams, bounded by a straggling forest of young cypress and pine trees. In a moment afterwards the mist had whitened and rolled away in torn masses like the rending of the temple veil. Then one of the most impressive and heavenly sights I have ever witnessed burst upon me with a strange surprise. The great tent-shaped mass of Fuji, then of a dark bluish purple, looking awful in its silent majesty so suddenly revealed, swept up in one perfect unbroken curve from where I stood, as if to the very throne of heaven, while its base seeming to have become immeasurably broad lay immersed in great billows of glistening silvery vapour which lay stratified in perspective. Above this gleaming veil of clouds rose, as if to meet her strong bride- groom the sun, the now blushing cone of Fuji. Such exquisite gradations of warm flesh tints ruddying into the deepest rose purple shaded with indigo grey, no mere pen and ink could be made to paint. Two bars of glistening snowflecked the summit, and when the remaining cloudsfled as if affrighted before the rising majesty of the sun, dark woods still in the gloom of night shewed themselves as if crawling over the purple grey lava up the lofty slope. Exclamations of chastened surprise and joy rang from the lips of the now awakened pilgrims whom the hazy yesternight had bitterly disappointed, and even to me there seemed for the moment to be a sacred solemnity in this beautiful mountain which might almost justify the most ascetic pilgrimage a feeling not a little deepened by the slow and sonorous boom of a large temple bell close by the inn. After an early breakfast of tea, rice, and hard boiled Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 131 eggs, I set off in a jinrikisha, intending to join the main road again at Odawara which lies at the foot of the Hakone pass. The road lay for the most part through rough masses of lava, which seems to crumble down as you descend the slope leading to the sea shore till at last it is reduced to a fine dark sand and even into a loam like soil which is well cultivated. The watercourses there are a curious and interesting study for the physiographer, and seem to form a geological model of the earth in miniature, almost every style of mountain carving, river bed and lake, being richly illustrated. A great gloomy wold spreads itself out, between the sea and the southern base of Fuji, and as you rise above its level to cross the flank of the Oyama range the vast view becomes deeply impressive. On the one side sleeps a quiet lake in whose glassy bosom was mirrored a range of partly wooded, deeply furrowed hills that reminded me of the shadowy Ochil range near Stirling. On the other side the lofty Hakone range of volcanic origin hid its ever cool forehead under a thunderous canopy of dark clouds. All around near where I stood lay stretched a great prairie of lava sand, as it were em- blazoned with the richest and most varied display of wild flowers I have ever seen. A rich flora is said to be com- mon enough at the base of such extinct volcanic cones, and while the chemical constituents of the soil may partly account for it, the high temperature of such a region is long retained, while there is also much moisture. The Japanese are passionately fond not only of beautiful scenery, but of flowers ; and I was not quite surprised when the sober-looking coolie laid down the shafts of his 132 Nine Years in Nipon. rickety " hansom," and rushed amid the tall flowers with open arms like a school-boy. After his fit of enthusiasm had somewhat subsided, he returned with an armful of bright yellow and white compositae, orange lilies, and some graceful sprays, on which shone numbers of beauti- ful large crimson scarlet brambles, or rather raspberries* with which he adorned his vehicle. They tasted, how- ever, very much like hot cinders, or rather water in which red-hot iron has been cooled, and recalled to one's mind the famous apples of Sodom. Thanks to the aesthetic culture of my drawer, we lost our way twice on this lava plain. At one point the river beds, which are cut through the lava sand, were quite dry, and although a thunderstorm could be heard muttering in our rear, I waited patiently under a broiling sun to see the effect of a spate, and was not entirely disappointed. When the rain at last fell, the foam-edged water would come rushing for a few yards further, and then sink into the deep sand, as if it were so much blotting paper. Another wave, and a new channel would be opened up for a moment, again to dry up as suddenly. At last passers-by warned us that the soil under our feet might become soaked, and carry us away. Indeed, there was genuine cause for alarm, as at last we began to feel and perceive, and we lost no time in gaining a distant ridge which wound towards the path we sought. Here I had some muddy and insipid tea, dismissed my charioteer, and engaged the humbler services of a pack- horse for the mountain pass, while I trudged along on foot with the aid of a stout stick. The ditches were over- hung with the coarse webs of enormous greenish and Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 133 yellow spotted spiders, which had a lace-like zig-zag net- work to strengthen one segment, and on this part the host sat disguising his presence from inexperienced insects then just emerging from their pupal state, by rapid vibra- tions which rendered him nearly invisible. Beautiful large swallow-tailed butterflies, of dark blue velvety texture, seemed to be sipping the puddles on the shaded roadway. At one point, where a quaint mossy bridge crossed a mill stream, I stopped to rest, and, looking down, I saw a kind of stoat, I think, emerge from between the stones of the piers. Our eyes met, and silently and motionlessly I watched him till he seemed to become mesmerised, as he stood arrested quite in a statuesque position lifting a fore- paw. At last I moved, and he disappeared amidst a bunch of ferns like a flash from a pistol. As the pathway emerged from under the grateful shadow of pine trees it became hard work panting up thirstily amidst the dust raised by a train of pack-horses, and under a fierce sub- tropical sun blazing in a now almost cloudless sky. I was fain at last to take hold of my pack-horse's tail, and in this undignified fashion did I toil up many hundreds of feet. By-and-by we came to a welcome spring bubbling through lichened boulders and graceful ferns. I sat down on a mossy rock and turned round to admire the scene through which we had been passing. Away above me and out of sight I heard a voice shouting, and soon there came plunging down the rock-strewn footpath an eccentric form in foreign clothes, which I took to be that of a native of the country. He turned out to be an Italian silk dealer. He was in a state of wild enthusiasm, and said the scenery beat anything he had witnessed even 134 Nine Years in Nipon. in Italy. I politely expressed my regret that he had not seen Scotland, but really even the " patriotic bias " could not restrain me from joining warmly in his praises of the landscape. Nothing in Japan is absolutely without its uses. Here I came across a scene which set me laughing, all alone as I was, very heartily. A small " sweetie " shop, as it would be called in Scotland, was planted beside a tiny cascade, which, besides giving romance to the scene and cooling the air around the bench on which customers might regale themselves, supplied water to the interior through a hollow bamboo. Now, flies are fond of sugar, raw or manufactured, and in a hot country and warm season they are apt to multiply at a more rapid rate than their natural foes can keep pace with. Well, the worthy old couple who owned the shop had devised a complex net- work of cord movsd by a little water-wheel, and in turn giving wild and impetuous movement to a set of fans which were made to wave in an absurdly jerky, angry, human- like fashion over the precious wares. My laughter brought the smiling, ruddy-faced old confectioner out with apolo- getic bows " Really they were very ignorant and clumsy people, but those nasty flies were so troublesome and greedy ! " I cannot yet get rid of the ludicrous impression made by the frantically impatient movements of the fans and the rhythmic dance of the irrepressible flies, in and out of what they no doubt considered their lawful preserves. I soon arrived at the gay and bustling town of Odawara, at the foot of the pass, once a military post of great importance when East and West in Japan were like Pilgrimage to Fuji the Peerless. 135 two kingdoms. Its castled moat, over which now ivy crawls and water weeds thickly grow, speaks of a vanished age of war and romance and practical misery. Next morning I was dashing along the Tokaido, or great main road to Tokio, behind two nearly naked jinrikisha men, through a piny avenue and in view of the stately march to solemn music of foam-crowned rollers from the Pacific, rushing up the tawny beach at last like a charge of plumed cavalry ; and in the evening I was clasping in my paternal arms sweeter flowers than ever bloomed out of lava dust. 136 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER XI. In a Cottage by the Sea. A Fair Breeze and Holiday Aspirations Voyage of Discovery Crabs and Canal Banks A Marine Tunnel-borer Snakes and Frogs Stone Net- sinkers Tai Fish A Lovely Marvel of the Sea A Dying Cuttle-fish. FOR many hot, breezeless days the river had been choked up with idle junks waiting for a fair wind to carry them to distant ports. At last, just as the tide was turning to go out, a favouring breeze sprang up, and there was a sudden commotion ; the strange, prolonged tones of shipmates on shore for boats, and of shipmates on board for help ; the creaking, rasping, and groaning everywhere of primitive capstans, followed by the rattling and flapping of great whitey-grey square sails ; and in almost less time than I have taken to tell it, a countless fleet of junks, as like each other as peas, was curving out in well-kept line through the dingy brown mixture of brackish mud and city sewage which forms the head of the bay, past the lemon-yellow buildings of the U.S. Legation ; along by the noble pine-bordered gardens of " The Palace by the Strand," through the silent weed- crowned forts built by the French for the defence of Tokio, and away out at last to where the sea became blue and the haze veiled them at last from sight, leaving us to dream of imaginary beauties of scenery in places far away. I had been following with longing eyes those In a Cottage by the Sea. 137 white sails gleaming in the mellow sunset, and, tired, hot, and stupid with many a hard summer-day's work in a crowded dispensary, thought I should like to make a little voyage of discovery in a Japanese junk. My wish had not long been expressed when its fulfil- ment was secured. Two seafaring country fellows thought of making a venture for cargo to a village just in the vicinity of the place I wanted to reach, and they offered to take myself and family, including our lares and penates, for the usual unnameable " mere trifle," to Tomioka, a pretty quiet little place on the sea-shore, where is an hospitable Buddhist temple and rectory, and a few native houses which can be had during the hot season for the sea-bathing. We had the usual fate of running aground several times in the shallow bay, which did not, however, seem to modify our rate of progress very much. By-and- by we passed through an artificial canal, cut through high rocks for a considerable distance, and thus we saved a long detour. The worthy boatmen duly dined on a great bucketful of very grey-coloured rice, flavoured with raw fish as a relish, and frequent cups of pale green tea. We toasted our share of fish on the charcoal embers on the brazier, and enjoyed some boiled yams, the unwonted fresh scent of the sea giving me an appetite I had not en- joyed for months. As we gently glided along it was amusing to watch the stealthy scuttling away of myriads of crabs into their holes on the canal bank. They de- stroy those banks very greatly, but no remedy has been proposed. Is it they who drag in the straws of which the ends are to be seen protruding in many places, and, if so, what can be their purpose in doing so ? Those burrowing 138 Nine Years in Nipon. crabs, which are to be seen in hundreds, are large, dingy grey, with reddish-coloured markings, and are roundish in shape. Further along is the deep cutting just referred to. It has been made through beds of a rock that looks as if composed of stratified pumice formed by submarine deposit. As the boat cleaves its way through the glassy water, we could see down into depths of verdant forests, consisting of a kind of cJiara and other water plants. On the surface with heads up out of the water and tails down, there were generally three or four frightened pipe fish, of more than a foot long, wriggling out of the way, and leaving long wavy angles in their wake. The cliffs at Tomioka are of a soft blue sandy tuff, which is somewhat tenacious like clay. They are bored through in all possible directions by a little crustacean about the size of a horse-bean and like a rock slater (Ligia) in appearance. Their work has been ascribed by a good scientific observer to Pholades. I have seen the empty shell Qi&pliolas now and again in the vicinity, but never have I seen a living animal of the species, although I daresay they may sometimes be found. Wherever I have met with the characteristic borings in the rocks about the shores of the bay, I have always found this slater-like animal at work not far from the spot, and have carefully watched their operations while supplying them now and again with salt water, fresh from the sea. A fragment of cliff bored by them often presents the appearance of a bit of sponge, although the tunnel made by each animal is as a rule almost perfectly straight and cylindrical. The little creature rolls itself up into a ball like an armadillo when you meddle with it, and is slow to unrol itself again. In a Cottage by the Sea. 139 When at work they scuffle the water out from below the abdomen with great rapidity, and in a continual stream. I made a careful microscopic examination of them, but am not quite satisfied yet as to the meaning of what I have seen and drawn. In order to work they must be constantly supplied with fresh sea water. They spring in the water in a very peculiar way, and they seemed to me to study well the bearings of a particular spot before they began boring operations. Some of them tried to climb up the glass side of the vessel in which they were confined, but they invariably slipped down again. The little ones often began to bore from the sides of a tunnel made by the larger ones, and in course of time the rock for a few inches about water mark is thus quite riddled with tiny tunnels, so that portions become readily undermined and give way by the action of the waves. In one place further down the bay, there is an exposed section of the rock already mentioned, having one regularly waved central layer lying evenly disposed between an upper and a lower horizontal layer. It seemed to be somewhat like the result of expansion by molecular rearrangement. The appearance presented was like this, ^ " Our cottage " was a very pleasant little residence indeed. We could step from our rooms almost right into the tepid waves of a good beach, and from its open verandah, one could watch a great American packet churning the entrance to the Pacific with its huge paddles, and now and again a British gunboat, under its pious symbol of the triple cross, plodding on to Yokohama. I found much to interest me in the insects of the little garden amidst the foliage of which our youngsters discovered 140 Nine Years in Nipon. with much joyful emotion, many tiny green tree frogs seeking an honest livelihood. The frogs at Tomioka are varied and numerous, and include an edible variety, whose nutritious qualities however we did not venture to test Close beside our modest cot, we once saw a large snake attempting to swallow a larger frog. I saved master froggy, whose lower extremities were already engulfed, and sacrificed the snake, as the worthy villagers believed (so I was afterwards told,) to the shrine of ^Esculapius, which seemed to them a highly rational proceeding. Nothing occurred of special interest, except that after we were all asleep a loud banging of antediluvian muskets of preposterous length, roused us with the idea that a revolu- tion was taking place in the village. It turned out to have been a robbery. An old couple living not far off, had been bound and robbed, but succeeded at length in giving an alarm, and we all turned out very courageously, I must say, to help the noise. Next morning after a refreshing struggle with the briny surf, I wandered along the beach, and had a chat with the fisher laddies who were helping to lay out the nets. I have not found many examples of the modern use of stone in Japan, but here, sure enough, were stone sinkers of a kind quite primitive enough to satisfy any archaeologist. A pair of dark grey, almost bluish -black, martins were circling about our Stone net sinkers used in heads in swift pursuit after in- sects. They had a nest, the boys said, in a cliff, behind In a Cottage by the Sea. 141 a temple by the shore. On the morning, I heard sweet notes which a friend compared to those of a wood-lark, but which our host said were those of the martins. They called them Iwa tsumu y which sounded very much like a local contraction of Iwa-maki tsubame, the " Black- chinned Martin " (Chelidon Blakistont). A pair of rooks also, they told me, had built their nest on a tree on the cliff, close by the same temple, for three successive years. Out at sea, some black-tailed gulls, (Larus crassirostris, Vieill.), were disporting themselves merrily. The boys called them " sea-cats," a name which their mew-like cry might readily enough suggest. Near the chief landing place, at a height of about ten feet above the level of high tide, there are layers of recent shells naturally embedded in the soft slate-grey coloured rock. They have been chemically softened, and some of them were partly, I think, altered in shape by the pressure to which they had been subjected. I have often seen the effects of such pressure on early fossils, but I have not observed any reference to the fact of similar changes going on at the present time. There is also a small artifi- cial shell heap of recent origin quite near the same spot. At another point on the same beach, I found similar layers of recent shells, at a height of about forty feet above the present level of the sea. A day or two was spent in exploring many woodland footpaths, which so wind around little semi-cultivated knolls, water-worn vestiges of the old upraised shore that you are apt to return to the very spot you started from, without intending it. On one occasion, we had spoken to a ruddy cheeked old woman who was hoeing 142 Nine Years in Nipon. yams near the shore. By-and-by, after working steadily inland as we supposed, we came upon her again, and gave her a fresh salutation. She laughed a good deal at this, which opened our eyes to the fact that we had been making a grand circle and were near home again. On the way we gathered some rather insipid yellow rasp- berries, and a kind of prickly walnut (?), of which I made a rough sketch. After exhausting the novelties of the neighbourhood, we set sail on a glorious morning for Nojima, which is a few hours further down the bay. Winding through wooded islands and shallow channels, we at last landed on a wide shell-strewn shore, over a part of which ex- tended many acres of shallow troughs where sea water, caught at high tide, was being evaporated by a powerful sun for manufacture into salt. In a Cottage by tJte Sea. 143 There were many sandy-coloured, prawn-like creatures moving about in the concentrated brine, but I could not examine them very closely. Sea-birds, of which gulls formed the major part, wagtails, and numerous little long- legged shore birds were poking about the wet beach, from which the tide was fast receding. Myriads of tiny crabs, some of a pretty pale violet colour, were hurrying after the receding waves, and hosts of soft-tailed hermit crabs, in all stages of growth, were hiding snugly in shells which their lawful owners had vacated. We stopped to dine at a tea-house near the landing place. As we sipped the refreshing beverage of Japan, we sat overlooking a deep clear pool fed directly with water fresh from the sea. It was lined with large rough- hewn stones, loosely built up so as to leave numerous spaces from which sea-weeds hung in radiant clusters, giving variety of colour to the lucid green depths. Koi Fish. (From a Japanese Sketch.) One or two elegant koi fish were curving about play- fully. They are among the finest table fish in Japan, and are of two varieties rosy scarlet and black. A single specimen of a very striking fish called hobo, and 144 Nine Years in Nipon. which, I suppose, is a variety of gurnard, arrested my at- tention. It was apparently a little more than a foot long, nearly cylindrical in shape, but flattened a little from side to side. Its pectoral fins were exceedingly large, and spread out like fans. The body was of a light greyish colour, and had several cross stripes each about half-an- inch broad, dark on the back, and fading quite away on the belly. Its spiny wing-like pectorals were of a bluish grey, brightening greatly towards their margins so as to- form a broad edge of lovely sapphire blue. The hobo seemed to rest on a series of barbel-like structures spring- ing from below the mouth near the pectorals, and these bent under its weight so as to make them seem like the jointed legs of a great insect. Indeed, when it gently opened and closed its sapphire vans while crawling along the rocky lining of the pond, it assumed a very startling resemblance to some large and gaudy tropical butterfly basking in the air. The likeness was even intensified when, without other apparent aid than its leg-like appen- dages, it crawled perpendicularly up the stone wall and hung (under water, of course,) almost upside down. I have seen few sights more fascinating than this one was, and I tried, but in vain, to secure the strange and beautiful creature. A large cuttlefish was lying in a pail of salt water, and as it was still alive, although in the agonies of death, I had an opportunity which was quite fresh to me, of observing minutely the strange mysterious flushes of varying colour that swept over the surface of the dying animal. It would pass from a pallor that, to our emo- tional nature, appeared deadly, to an angry flush of dull In a Cottage by the Sea. 145 scarlet changing to fiery orange, and then suddenly to a warm indescribable shade of chocolate like mother- of-pearl mixed with golden bronze. On looking into the skin more closely, it could be seen that it was all speckled over with minute points of orange colour, which never faded entirely away. The sepia spots, on the other hand, were often very large and distinct each being usually about the size of a sago grain, from which size they would quickly contract to an almost invisible pin point. Very often they assumed an oval form, or again they would change into that of a ring of pigment surrounding the original coloured point, but the ring would not remain of equal breadth throughout, and at some points might be- come so narrow as finally to disappear before the un- assisted vision. When you looked at one of those little dilated points of pigment from the side so as to view its depth, the skin was seen to be quite transparent, and the fluid underlying colouring matter could be seen, but I could not detect any visible rush of pigment from below when dilatation took place. The point of colour seemed rather to spread out flat like drops of grease on the sur- face of hot soup, and yet I could not say from observa- tion that the depth of colour was diminished by actual loss of density. Rather it seemed as if there were an out- rush of colouring matter from some unseen reservoir below. The process, however painful to the poor cephalopod, was intensely interesting to me, and singularly beautiful as a display of changing colour. The Japanese revel in cuttle-fish, fresh or salted, and they are to be seen in great numbers for sale in a dried state all throughout the Empire. Fresh specimens occur 146 Nine Years in Nipon. in the fish-market almost rivalling the famous monster depicted by Victor Hugo, and did not my exhausted space forbid, I could tell many a strange and startling tale of their doings from the lips of fishermen and others who have coped with them in Japanese waters. One of the most touching I have heard was of a hard- working mother, who had to leave her infant by the sea- shore while reaping a little croft. She heard faint screams, and, looking up, was horrified to find her little one en- circled by the strong stinging arms of an appalling mon- ster of this kind, which had just been cast on the rocky beach. The brave woman sent her mingled mother's love and hate thrilling through the curved blade of her reaping hook with such strength and skill, that the great ugly brute soon lay writhing in pieces near her unharmed darlincr. Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 147 CHAPTER XII. Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. Unpromising Start Bridge of Japan Suburbs of Tokio An Amorous Ascetic Flowering Palm Trees A Brazen Serpent Hotel Gossip and Pagan Devotions Wonderful Avenue Primitive Ploughs Weeping Cherry Tree A Quiet Priest and his Garden Shrines and Saints Uncountable Buddhas and Nature's Cynicism. ONDAY, I9th May, 1877, was a bright day in my calendar of routine experience, but a par- ticularly dull one in Tokio so far as the terrestrial sky was concerned. I had been completely knocked up with trying dispensary and other work, and it had dawned upon me that I must at once get a week's rest in bracing mountain air, or give in altogether when the grilling dog-days came. What with one sudden call after another to professional duty, my well-laid plans for the day's journey were spoiled, and the afternoon was far advanced before I took my seat in the jinrikisha, after a display of voluble guttural eloquence on the subject of pay. Out of a crowd of tight-limbed coolies, each secretly ambitious to be liberally paid in hard cash for a meritorious pilgrimage to Nikko's sacred shrines and groves, followed by a quiet rest of three days on the hills, I selected two whose running and staying powers I had often tested and could rely upon. They were in high spirits, lifted the shafts with a too hearty jerk, and were 148 Nine Years in Nipon. off with me like a stone from a sling, amidst the mortified felicitations of their comrades and adieus of my little household. My steeds heavy chargers I might have called them carried on a brisk colloquy, eager with anticipation of the wonders of a region which fills the popular imagination more than any other in the realm with ideas of dreamy grandeur and almost super-mundane sanctity. The grey, wooden streets and lanes of Tokio seem inter- minable on such a dull drizzling day as this was. I had soon to draw down the mal-odorous oiled paper hood, leav- ing no room for my pith helmet which is a necessary pro- tection in hot weather, and there was but a narrow opening before which a depressing panorama of the world, as it must have appeared at the opening of the deluge, flitted past. All distances in Japan are estimated, as a rule, from Nipon bridge the London bridge of the country, a crowded but common-looking structure close by which the imperial edicts and other official announcements are posted up. From the summit of its " hog back " now improved away fortunately you see a great bustling fish- market, the Central Post Office built in western style, and miles of great solidly constructed stores, white plastered or black lacquered, and quaintly marked with crests and Chinese characters. The moat, which here widens into a great river is covered with acre upon acre of closely packed junks, as like each other as peas, which are discharging rice, evil smelling dried bonito, cuttle-fish, sake or rice- beer, and other enticing commodities, for the consumption of some 700,000 hungry and thirsty Japs. Taking a short cut through narrow lanes, we were Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 149 soon careering over slushy suburban roads, anon dashing along the wooded banks of the noble river, whose whitey- brown was fretted now and again by clumsy little old fashioned steamers, screaming frantically with their hoarse whistles whenever any object appeared within a quarter of a mile of them. The Sumida at this point of its course, reminds one somewhat of the upper reaches of the Thames, between Chelsea and Mortlake. When about four or five miles out of town you pass Senji, the old execution ground and the chief crematory, (not the place where ice-creams are pre- pared, as the cockney young lady supposed) whose germ- destroying fires burn almost nightly. There is nothing offensive about the place to sight or smell. Senji consists to a great extent of one long main street lined on both sides with large rather dignified-looking edifices, through the open portals of which may be discerned as we glide past them, cleanly matted rooms looking down into court- yards, green with choicest foliage, cool on the hottest days and richly adorned with old stone lanterns or fantastic bits of rock work shaded with ferns. The merry tinkle of guitars and strident falsetto notes that pain refined western ears now and again waken the silent echoes, followed some- times by hoarse winey laughter and coarse masculine jests. By the dignified doorways are hung in massive lacquered frames, coloured photographs of gaudily dressed girls with powdered faces and reddened lips, richly bejewelled as to the stiffly glued hair. Their names, which almost remind one of those the fairies bear in The Midsummer Nighfs Dream, are written beneath, as wares might be ticketed in a shop window, and at night amidst a blaze of light the frail 150 Nine Years in Nipon. creatures themselves, more modestly dressed, the Japanese say, than our model Christian matrons at evening parties, arc seated at the glassless windows fanning themselves coqucttishly and carrying on conversation I dare not listen to with every passing message boy or government clerk. My esteem for the Japanese people has almost compelled me to pass by this subject, but I am not without hope that public morality is still strong enough to aid those who are trying to impress on their countrymen the need of social as well as of political reform. The most beautiful and highly accomplished daughters of respectable parents, as things go in Japan, take tempo- rarily to this degrading life almost as those of similar rank and circumstances in our country go to become governesses. Nor does it involve final disgrace. It is recorded in a daily native paper, for example, as a heroic act of wifely and maternal devotion that the mother of several children thus sold herself for a term of years, in order to rescue her husband from debt. The wives of many influential citizens and officials in Tokio have had such a history, and it is but simple justice to state that when duly married, they often lead blameless lives. Looking at the whole question broadly one can only sigh, God help and pity the state which almost syste- matically selects its fairest women for a life of sterile and sinful bondage, and makes wives of them only when disease has done its retributive work in stamping a great people, whom every other circumstance favours, with marked physical decay ! Not far from this_spot there is the statue of a Buddhist priest with a hammer and gong, who used to toll mourn- Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 151 ful requiems day by day and night by night for the re- pose of those who had fallen hard by, by the headsman's swift stroke. The pious peasants, hurrying past at night, used to dread the eerie sound and quicken their footsteps. The story goes that the lonely ascetic was beguiled to give his heart to an accomplished and beautiful woman, who loved him in return. The sacrilegious lovers could not brave public opinion, so, in Japanese fashion, they filled their wide sleeves with stones, and locked in each other's arms cast themselves into the dark river. By-and- by they made a Buddhist saint of the poor weak man. The country here is almost like a great cultivated fen, and the croaking of frogs accompanied us for many miles. After the town is fairly left behind, the hedges in front of private houses or well-to-do farms are trimmed with the greatest care, all withered leaves and dead branches being removed. They are generally of privet, holly, or camellia, and sometimes rise to the height of fifteen or even twenty feet, dsnse and square as stone walls, and giving most grateful shade, except at noon in summer ; in winter they afford shelter from chill winds. All the way to the foot of the hills, I saw with delight for the first time a palm- tree (the Chamcerops fortumi, I think), laden with pale golden clusters of tiny granular seeds, drooping like great bunches of grapes, and forming a bright contrast to the dark green of the leaves. At the gateway of a village temple on the way, there is a very striking carved stone image of a serpentine dragon twining around a straight two-edged sword of primitive pattern. Soon after seeing this, I found a similar figure of a Buddhist object of reverence from India, in a manu- 152 Nine Years in Nipon. script copy of a rare old work, the original of which is one of the temple treasures of Tokio. The whole subject of the connection between the naja, or cobra cult of the Indo-Malayan region and of ancient Egypt on the one hand, and the dragon or vapour-force of China, is very interesting. I think the transition might almost be shown stage by stage, and the last one was very recent. The figure, as it first struck me, instinctively recalled the brazen serpent which Moses used in the religious instruction of a body of slaves escaping from Egypt, and it is in close analogy to the ordinary classic symbolism of the healing art. It is a very common thing on country roads in Japan to find a dead snake hung across a forked branch, which is stuck upright in the ground in a prominent position. It is intended for the convenience of any wayfarer who may desire to use it as medicine. We passed at Soka a busy cotton cloth factory and print-work. Close by was a shrine, guarded by large, strongly-carved lions of grotesque and mythical type, and shaded by a grove of very tall and stately pine trees, amid the withered needles of which large velvety black butter- flies were fluttering. Those strange lions with grinning visages, strong teeth, and fantastic curls over all their joints, are perhaps as sacred and solemn in the association they present to good Buddhists, as the spotless lamb is to the sincere Christian. Like the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Buddha is spoken of in their scriptures as strong to conquer and crush his spiritual foes, while the curls are amongst the marks of his true Buddhaship. My resting-place for the night was to be Kasukabe, a Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 153 well-built, clean-looking, quiet little village. The princi- pal production of the bare tea-house garden seemed to be green moss and liverworts, which were in subtle harmony, as art critics would say, with the raw drizzling mist which hung over the whole prospect. This lovely Eden, which needed no Adam to water it, was bounded by a dull ver- milion wall, the upper part of which was a pink, which made my head ache badly. While I waited in eager ex- pectancy for a Japanese dinner in which there always lurks a large element of the unpredictable I could find no other amusement than to stare at the vermilion till my eyes got hot, and then to rest them again on the cool, damp moss, listening meanwhile to an invisible orchestra of great bull frogs, which quacked like ducks. This became rather monotonous after a lengthened trial, so I got my muddy boots on again and sallied forth to look for the lions of the place Buddhist or otherwise. The first one I met was bellowing very lustily down the lanes and up the by-lanes something sounding remarkably like " the last speech and dying confession of that 'orrid and hinfamous murderer Bill Sykes " of our innocent and joyous boyhood, when halfpenny newspapers were un- known ; but the damp and dirty little chap-books turned out to be the lives of the classic virtuous women a popular work in quiet country places. Two withered old cronies were intently discussing with a cooper some absorbing question about renewing the wooden lining of a well, while some boys were playing under a shed rather sheepishly in the presence of their sedate seniors. I might have been an invisible ghost so far as any evidence of my presence being perceived could be detected. 154 Nine Years in Nipon. Finding nothing to entice me any further from my prospective dinner, I returned, not, alas ! to my mutton, the rarest delicacy in Japan, but to sticky boiled rice, sweet yams, bean sauce, Japanese sardines, and delightful mushrooms, followed by the inevitable thimblefuls of pale tea. Ere the clean rush-matted floor groaned under the smoking viands, I overheard an amusing discussion in the distance as to the nature of foreigners. A kindly, for- bearing old gentleman, travelling on business and resting here for the night, and who was always addressed as sensei (rabbi), seemed to have the impression that we were a peculiar kind of animal for which enlightened people must see to provide the proper kind of food, however absurd it might seem, and diffidently made some rather impracti- cable suggestions to the energetic landlady. He chuckled very pleasantly, however, when a report entirely favourable to the Japanese things was brought, and seemed specially to approve of my asking with emphasis for another pot of the special tea of the district, in which I suspect he was interested. The girl who waited table or, to be quite accurate, floor had a large lacquered band-box kind of arrangement in which to hold the boiled rice, which is always administered ad libitum like potatoes, and I sup- pose for combined security and comfort she always, after administering a dose, closed the box and sat down firmly on the lid thereof. As the band-box was weak and the fair waitress unusually heavy, I ate my repast amidst con- stant fears of an appalling catastrophe, never having had any professional experience of hot rice poultices applied on so extensive a scale. A soft-eyed, bright, intelligent Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasn. 155 little girl, just learning the fine art of making and present- ing tea, entered on a modest little chat with me, and. was quite anxious to hear about the strange countries I had visited on my way from Igirisu (England). She was quite as much surprised as I expected her to be when I told her I had once lived on the Himalayas, for this sounded as mysterious and supernatural in her ears as a narrative of a visit in the flesh to the Heav'enly Jerusalem would seem in those of a little Christian maiden in this land. She told me in return that she had heard of a great prince who had left her own province to visit India, and had passed through four seas one being indigo, another yellow, a third white, and the fourth I forget of what colour. This peculiar, almost tabular, use of numbers is a very common feature in traditions derived from Buddhism. lam disposed to think that it simply arose from experience of its mnemonic utility when Buddhist literature was merely in the stage of oral tradition, and so a false habit became fixed. While the good-natured, kindly old scholar was pouring forth in loud but not pharisaic tones his prayers of thanksgiving, I, too, knelt down beside my paper-cased rushlight, and raised silent prayers to the Father of all lights and Giver of all good, and the tender Saviour of mankind, before whom race and rank are as nothing, and who enlighteneth every man coming into the world. The mornings come round very quickly when you are travelling in Japan. After a hurried but hearty breakfast, we set off in real earnest, hoping to make up for the delays of the previous day. One cannot control the weather, however, and we had rain and mud great part of 156 Nine Years in Nipon. the way. In place of nobly riding, I had humbly to push, the wheels of our vehicle being up to the axles in mud, and often we found it much easier to abandon the king's highway and take to the fields ! The old roads in Japan are nearly all bad in foul weather, but where the over- hanging trees cut them up with rain-drops their condition is indescribable. Surely every one now must have heard of the great avenue which gives romantic beauty to some fifty miles of the road leading to the shrine of lyeyasu, the combined Moses and Cromwell of Japan. Furzy plains blushing with pink and crimson or blaz- ing with scarlet azaleas, lay on either side of the way, which was arched over with tall pines on the plain, and with the Cryptomeria japonica, a kind of cedar, further up the hills. It would be degrading to speak of those grand fluted shafts as like the columns of any temple made by human hands. They often lean over gracefully breaking the rigid lines of the view with interlacing branches. Sometimes, and more frequently, they rise straight as masts to a height of thirty or forty feet, with never a twig nor leaf. Some few of those stately old giants had been blown down by a recent taifun, and when I passed, were being cut up into logs, sending a grateful odour all around. Near the shrine the road is often greatly eaten away by the rain, leaving bare the gnarled and twisted roots of the great cedars, which here are taller than elsewhere, and their colossal shafts are joined in many places so as sometimes even to form an impassable wall for short dis- tances. Even where the stiff, straight cedars predominate, Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 157 the ruddy branches of a great pine will assert its individu- ality, its fleshy tints contrasting very wonderfully in the subdued light which plays under the greenwood, with their own dark foliage and the gleams of sapphire sky which luminously fill up infrequent gaps. I have since walked on foot over every inch of this wonderful road, and have learned to love it. On a recent occasion I passed along there in the month of April. The air was quite musical with the sweet though familiar song of the lark, while ploughs of the usual primitive kind were at work in all directions. There are many raised and interweaving footpaths out- side of the two great hedgerows of trees, and beyond these a broad strip of leafy, uncultivated scrub wood or hara, amidst which beautiful wild azaleas flaunt their gay rosy pink, pale or deep lavender, crimson or scarlet petals. The latter variety, when in full blossom and of a flame colour, is a favourite garden plant, and used to be called " the burning bush" amongst foreigners, not a leaf being visible in the glory of floral flame. When the soil was not covered with rank, saw-edged grass it had a thin skin of damp liverworts, with here and there on a shady bank a sweet little home-like patch of violets. At noon, dead stillness and a cemetery-like calm reigned around, and you might look along the shadowy vista fading into gloom at either end, like an immense tunnel, and see no living thing in motion. I rested frequently on the trunk of a fallen cedar, avoiding prostrate pine trees on account of their tendency to form too strong an attachment to one's snowy inexpressibles. At one lovely spot there was a weeping cherry tree in full bloom, over whose honied 158 Nine Years in Nipon. blossoms hung a loud booming cloud of bees and a bevy of large-winged butterflies. Among the snaky roots of the great pines myriads of ant-lions had formed their smooth funnel-shaped pits and were vigorously showering the dry soil upon their luckless guests. A tawny red fox passed by quite close, looking at me askance the while in a sneering and quietly con- temptuous way as an evident unbeliever in his pretensions to sanctity as an incarnation of Inari, the august pro- tector of rice fields. In spite of the intense simmering heat the air felt wonderfully crisp and bracing as com- pared with that of the muggy plains about Tokio. The white piled-up cumuli and the underlying shadowed mountains showed sharp clear outlines free from haze a happy state of things for invalids suffering from malaria, but unfortunately rather rare in Japan. Near Nikko, sparklingly clear and delightfully cool streams course along both sides of the way with musical murmur, and little valleys with boulders hewn into tomb- stones or memorial tablets with chiselled Chinese inscrip- tions, are a frequent feature in the landscape. Most of the Buddhist images here are of a peculiar type- the head reclining pathetically on the palm of one hand, the elbow being grasped by the other. The country houses are much larger than any I have seen elsewhere in the east and have immense neatly thatched roofs. Frequently a clear stream rushes through the " crown of the causeway," with many openings in its pavement covering by which the villagers may draw water. About the roots of the cryptomeria trees the soil is of a remarkably pale brick- red colour, as if mixed with iron, while under the roots it Trip to tJte Tomb of lyeyasu. 159 is white and dry and very like touchwood in appearance. I saw, in passing through Utsunomiya, that this material was liberally applied to the roots of some flowering cherry trees which adorn the main streets. Well, the westering sun had sunk to rest behind a wall of forest clad mountains ere we entered Nikko, or rather Hachi-ishi, pushing our way through a laughing, tea- sipping crowd, clustered around a sober, quick-eyed story- teller, who was constantly waving in his hand a most eloquent fan. The shops are chiefly devoted to the sale of various nicknacks as mementos of the pilgrimage, photographs of glens, temples, and waterfalls, and an ecstatic kind of " Turkish delight," which is one of the specialties of the district Pilgrims Buying Souvenirs. (From a Japanese iketch.) What can I say of the beauties of Nikko, natural or artistic, that has not already been better said ? To me, 160 Nine Years in Nipon. however, the shrines and temples were disappointing. Great wealth, lavish expenditure of skilful workmanship excellent carving; there was plenty of all that, and, in addi- tion, red paint enough even to have pleased the infallible British workman demonstrating on the franchise. My first impression was that the august and mysterious Wombwell of our school days had set up his menagerie in the midst of those silent eastern hills, an impression which the brightly painted monkeys, tapirs, tigers, ele- phants, wild boars, and cranes cleverly carved on the panels and eaves of the wooden temples did not rapidly tend to dissipate. In spite of the lack of religious solemnity, and the artistic incoherence of the whole, added to the sense of veneer and paint everywhere, I yet finally came away feeling the wonderful sublimity and pathos nature itself has contrived to throw around the whole scene. Over every chiselled stone she has so lovingly hung a rich drapery of drooping mosses, or stained deep into its texture gory hues breaking into patches of almost fiery red, or deepening into velvety maroon, and overlapped, perchance, by scales of deep green liverworts or rich orange and creamy toned lichens. And then over and through all this there is the sweet grand murmur, sometimes very gentle but never quite unheard, of fresh mountain air sifted through the million leaves of great solemn forests of memorial pines and cedars. I cannot here attempt to write in detail of the shrines and temples at Nikko, already so faithfully and fully described by Messrs. Satow and Hawes. In one court I idly plucked a strange looking leaf from a tree which grows not in Japan, and was told that it had Trip to the Tomb of lyeyasu. 161 sprung from a shoot of the Bo tree under which Gautama attained the peace of Nirvana fully two thousand years ago. There is in another court a carved stone trough from which flows all around a smooth, perfectly flawless sheet of clear water a marvel of exact workmanship. In another there is a memorial lantern all hacked with sword-cuts ; but I have not space to tell of the magnifi- cent gifts of bronze, of the great bronze candelabrum which is in style somewhat like the figure of that shown on the arch of Titus, which once glittered in the temple of Jerusalem ; of the great pagoda within which hangs like a colossal pendulum to steady it against earth- quakes, one of the tallest of tree trunks; of the mellow deep-toned bell whose sound floats down from the hills like a voice from another world ; of the wind-swept heights ; of the rushing torrents and the roaring cataracts, on which eye and ear might feed unsatiated for weeks. Walking on the free hills was intensely enjoyable after being cooped up for five years in the midst of Tokio's grim urban acres. I went off to see one of the famous waterfalls, literally enough " A pillar of white light upon the wall Of purple cliffs, aloof descried," and brought home an armful of rare ferns, lichens, mosses, and orchids. While returning I found a wasp's nest which her ladyship was busy adjusting under the surface of an overhanging cliff. High up in the air a woodcock was " tilting " in the curious eccentric manner recently de- scribed by a writer in the Zoologist. I found that I had to cross a very wonderful little 1 62 Nine Years in Nipon. garden belonging to an old priest. He was much in- terested in my rather amateurish botanical collection, and showed me many rare plants he had collected. His garden was a perfect model of fine culture and rich variety, and had cost him the earnest labour of a long lifetime. He was anxious to hear of the latest phases of the Eastern Question, and weighed the influence of European statesmen and sovereigns with a good deal of insight I have the pleasantest memories of the hospitable cup of tea and profitable chat I had with this gentle, genial old priest. My last walk was up along a leafy glen through which tore in angry foam over glossy bluish boulders and through dripping ferns a mountain torrent called the Daiya. Along the mossy footpath were arranged some hundreds of stone Buddhas, mostly of heroic size, which it is said no man can number. The reason is perhaps very simple, the rank is so irregular, some having fallen, others being overgrown with long grass or hid in bamboo brake, so that although I along with several others essayed to count them we could in no wise agree as to the num- ber. The Buddhists in Ceylon believe that the steps to Adam's Peak are uncountable, and so it used to be said in their neighbourhood that the stones of Stonehenge in England can never be correctly enumerated. All the oft-told glory and magnificence of Nikko did not impress me so strongly as this long row of Amida Buddhas, their faces portraits of old monks I think they must surely have been leprosied over with lichens of every tone and colour so as to give one strange impres- sions as of frozen grimaces of pain or sardonic laughter Trip to tJu Tomb of lyeyasn. 163 stereotyped into a changeless calm. One felt, indeed, as if the frenzied living world with all its intensity of sweet- ness and beauty were but fleeting vanity, and that in death alone could the eternal truth of things begin to be fitly seen. 164 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER XIII. Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. Yedo Bay Matsuwa's Sacrifice Rapid Currents Fair Islands Atmo s pheric Effects A Tight Fit Shimonoseki The Resources of Christian Civilization A Big Indemnity Grand Sea Scene and Mai de Mer Nagasaki Harbour Papenberg Story of the Martyrs Chinese Money Changers Tortoise-shell Work Schools and Missions. IT was on an evening late in October that the donkey- engine on the P. & O. S.S. "Sumatra" ceased its continuous braying, and we glided out of the harbour of Yokohama, past the glooming bluff through which a few ruddy lights gleamed and twinkled, shining, we wot, on familiar faces, threaded our way through grey junks,, showing their lights as civilized ships ought to do, cleav- ing a smooth obsidian sea till we were past the lighthouse. At the entrance to the Bay of Yedo white phosphorescent wavelets began to gleam, the good steamship to rock, and I climbed rather hastily to my humble hammock. The morning dawned without any sun having taken the trouble to rise on an angry heaving sea of monot- onously dark indigo, through whose white capped waves great bonitos were leaping joyously alongside of us like a crowd of schoolboys racing beside a mail coach. Great numbers of|those giant mackerels are brought to the Tokio market, and bring good prices. The Tokio people are even proverbial through the Empire for their absurd love of a fish that can hardly be eaten fresh, it decomposes Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 165 so rapidly. It is therefore sold when alarmingly " high," and the market is not very pleasant to pass through in hot weather when the supply is a little more plentiful than the demand. We were soon off the beautiful, but wild and rugged Kii coast, which lay north-east of us. The valleys are said to be well populated, but no signs of habitation could be discerned. The mountains were thickly wooded, and not much cultivated land was to be seen. The people indeed, are chiefly engaged in wood cutting and fishing. Not to speak of the Great Sea-serpent which once turned up somewhere thereabouts, and was well authenticated for such an animal whales are hunted for in a peculiar way. Many boats go out in pairs with long loose nets, which are woven around* the monster one by one, some- what in the manner in which I have seen a spider fasten an unwelcome wasp, till he is fairly worn out with worry and ineffective attempts to free himself from his tormentors, and becomes an easy prey to their weapons. There is a fine revolving light of the second order at Cape Kashi, which is visible for eighteen miles ; and at Shiwomi Cape there is a fixed one of the first order, while an inferior one is situated on an island, so that a difficult passage has now, I believe, been rendered quite practicable at all hours. The route from this point to Nagasaki is one diversified panorama of striking beauty, although I cannot say that it is altogether unequalled, except, perhaps, in mere extent. Hiogo is the western terminus of the projected grand trunk line which is to connect that port with Tokio and the north, and with its modern foreign suburb Kobe, 1 66 Nine Years in Nipon. it forms one of the most important seaports in Japan. The railway has already been completed for a good many miles past Kioto, the old inland capital, and passes through what in times not very old was the greatest commercial city in Japan Osaka, where there are still fully a quarter of a million of busy people residing. Its many named river might easily be deepened, I think, and then poor old Osaka would quickly renew its once vigorous youth. Beside Hiogo there is another river overhung with tall pines, which had its course artificially diverted many cen- turies ago. On its now neatly laid out banks a bloody battle, disastrous to the Mikado's army, was fought in 1336 by the first Shogun of the Ashikaga line. There is, as mentioned by Messrs. Satow and Hawes, an artificial island called Tsuki-jima. As the narrative related by them in connection with the island is one of the most re- markable occurrences supposing the original story to be genuine in the religious history of Japan, I transcribe it closely. STORY OF MATSUWO'S SACRIFICE. " Tradition says that this island was twice constructed, and after each occasion demolished by the waves. A great scholar named Abe no Yasu-uji, being asked to find out the cause of this repeated catastrophe, discovered by his art of divination that the sea in this part was the abode of a dragon, who could not endure that it should become dry land, and to appease him it would be necessary to bury in the sea thirty ' human pillars/ upon which should be placed stones engraved with Sanskrit texts. This being done, the construction of the island Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 167 would be allowed to proceed without further opposition. Acting on their advice, Kiyomori beset the high road by Ikuta wood with a guard of soldiers, and made up the required number of victims from travellers who passed that way ; but the people of the neighbourhood protested so strongly, that all belonging to Hiogo were let go. This gave rise to the saying, ' Spare him, he is a Hiogo man.' The number was afterwards made up again, but the friends and relations of the intended victims made such an uproar that the ceremony of sinking them in the sea was postponed by Kiyomori, and in the meantime a youth named Matsuwo Kotei came and begged that the thirty might be released, saying that he would allow him- self to be buried in their stead, and that the dragon would doubtless appreciate his intention, and accept his life fcr theirs. This magnanimous offer was accepted, and Mat- suwo being accordingly placed in a stone coffin, was sunk in the sea, to the entire satisfaction of the dragon, and the island was completed without any further difficulty." I think there can be little doubt that the Kiyomori mentioned in the narrative is a historical personage. A monument may be seen which is said to have been erected in A.D. 1286 a century after his death. Possibly, however, the existing memorial simply represents the one just mentioned. It must be remembered that Buddhism was then widely professed all over Japan. Long before this the idea of substituting images for living persons had been adopted, and the act here recorded is very like a sudden reversion to an old and forgotten rite. The history of Taouism in Japan has not yet been written, but it is not unlikely, from the mention of the use of Sanskrit mantras or charms, 1 68 Nine Years in Nipon. that the Taouists, who are little more than heretics from Buddhism, had some influence there. The adherents of at least one of the chief Buddhist sects in Japan are little else than Taouists, and they are now very poor sort of creatures indeed. The number thirty is somewhat remark- able, and is not very common in Buddhist symbolism. I do not feel that it would be possible for me to do justice to the romantic, changeful beauty of the Inland Sea, of which Japan is justly proud, and so no pictorial description need be looked for here. Few of the islands we passed near enough to see distinctly were of marked geological individuality, or such as to demand special notice. In another respect also the view was perhaps to some little extent disappointing, I refer to the general lack, here as in Japan generally, of soft mellow effects of golden light and warm, half luminous shadows which give so much subtle sweetness to our home landscapes. I missed also those shifting shadows of well-defined clouds in a clear sky which are almost constantly to be seen amongst the western isles of Scotland, unless when the hills are half- veiled in a tenuous mist Indeed I must frankly say that I have rarely been impressed with the beauty of atmospheric effects in Japan, and in nine years' attentive observation can only recall five or six such sunsets as are to be witnessed very frequently in places so widely re- moved as Ceylon and the West of Scotland. The sunrises may perhaps be what Japan lays herself out for specially, but for reasons which I need not enter upon, this depart- ment of nature has received less of my attention. I cannot name any special reason why the scenery is felt to be so charming as it is. Truly Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 169 . . . " The earth and ocean seem To sleep in one another's arms, and dream." The width of the channel varies very greatly, and the isles and islets are very irregularly distributed, so that as the panorama unrolls itself there is a constant sense of change and movement, of wild expectation and pleasing surprise. There is one feeling perhaps always lurking obscurely in a practical mind, too, and weaving threads of interest around each fairy scene, the sea is studded with trading junks ; the larger of those fertile bosky islands are well inhabited by a rising race of most industrious, orderly, and friendly people ; and one cannot but believe that in a short time this great navigable inland channel with which Providence has so richly blessed Japan will yet be fretted by the fleets of all nations, bent on the peaceful errands of commerce to great towns and harbours which as yet exist only in day-dreams. I do not know anything of the natural history of the Inland Sea, which would, I am sure, prove very interesting. Mr. Griffis mentions that a " mollusc " is actively engaged in those waters, perforating timber and doing much destruction. I have already referred to the similar action of a Ligia in Tokio Bay, but there are many marine borers of a destructive kind in Japanese waters, and they would seem to demand the careful attention of the Government. The afternoon was advancing into evening, when our large steamer, steered with great caution, passed through the rushing current of a narrow crooked passage. We were before the old batteries of Shimonoseki the Gibraltar of the Japanese Mediterranean. Here, in 1864, the grim "resources of a civilization" L 170 Nine Years in Nipon. calling itself Christian were brought to bear on the recalcitrant prince of Nagato, whose forts and ships had fired on the U.S. Pembroke and other vessels. Finally, one hundred British guns and another hundred or so of French, Dutch, and American drew much blood from the Japanese, and an indemnity of three million dollars, which sum was divided equally amongst the avenging nations. America, after some discussion, has restored her share to Japan, without interest and minus the amount claimed for actual trifling losses sustained. It is to be hoped, therefore, that Britain which is not yet on the eve of bankruptcy, may find it a pleasure to restore the sum, which was really never ex- pected to be paid. The policy pursued, as a piece of sharp diplomatic practice in an urgent crisis, may not have been without a certain influence from which good came ; but we have nothing to lose and everything to gain now by soothing an old sore which has ever since remained open, and which irritates to a degree few out of Japan can quite appreciate. We were soon out in an open rough sea, from the seething current-tossed waters of which stood out boldly in the pale light of a youngish moon, strange fantastically carved columns of black rock. Next morning we awoke at the sound of a sudden salute, to find ourselves dropping anchor in the lovely lake-like harbour of Nagasaki, close beside a large well- manned British ironclad. After selecting from a fleet of small boats one which seemed tolerably safe and sweet, we made for the landing-place, and found the usual rows of radiant jinrikisha-men making ducks decoy ducks ? Nagasaki and the Inland Sea. 171 to secure our favour ; scaly crowds of fish hawkers, jolly Fish Hawkers. (Japanese Sketch.) tars of every flag, a Loochooan or two, crowds of China- men, and a few phlegmatic Dutchmen. There is now a splendid graving dock in the harbour, and, on the whole, Nagasaki did not look to me as if it were quite on its last legs. As we steamed out in the evening, we passed on the right a steep wooded cliff, on the brink of which once stood crowds of Roman Catholic Christians pallid with torture perhaps, but not from fear waiting to be hurled down the face of the cliff and perish in the deep, unless they should trample on the cross and disown their faith. It is not supposed by the heathen that any significant number of them shrank from this awful test of their faith, and so it came to pass that the infallible historians could for once record that persecution had blotted out a Church. It was not really so, however, and thousands claim Christian and blood descent from those who then gained the martyr's crown. The Dutch Calvinists, who seem always 172 Nine Years in Nipon. to have had some of that delightfully Christian spirit the Boers manifest in Africa, humorously called the ever sacred spot where so many Christians meekly met a pitiful death the Papenberg ; and so the name lives,, though not the sneer. Ten Davs on the Tokaido. 173 CHAPTER XIV. Ten Days on the Tokaido. On the Osaka Railway Cold Water Cure for Sin A Kaleidoscopic Cook Hints for Travellers Glimpses of Kioto, the Old Capital Buddhists and their Bells A Lantern-lit City and a Star-lit Hedge Salamanders and Singing Frogs Snake-baskets and River-banks On the Tokaido Hakone Pass A Volcanic Cup and some of its Contents. A MONGST the many overlapping geographical \_ divisions that distract travellers and students, none perhaps has been so permanently popular as that which is connected with the great old highways of Japan. Suppose we were daily accustomed to divide England into great districts or circuits according to our railway systems, as the Midland, the Great Northern, and so forth, we should then have some idea of this peculiar arrange- ment. The Tokaido, or " East-sea-way," is the road inclusive of the bordering country which runs close by the southern shore of the Hondo or Chief island from Kioto, the old capital, eastward on to Tokio. Along with an American professor I had arrived in Kobe by steamer through a rather tempestuous sea, sick, dirty, and miserable, amid a pallid crowd of woe-begone Japanese fellow-passengers, if possible more sick and miserable even than ourselves. The rain was pouring in torrents and a piercing wind chilled our very marrows as we landed. After a good hot bath, a sound sleep, and a very hearty mid-day breakfast, we walked round the 174 Nine Years in Nipon. settlement, which had been thoroughly well washed down by the rain. Kobe is a modern " foreign "-built town, with regular, well laid out streets. The houses are usually tinted in two colours, according to the Italian style, and have a very pleasing appearance. The settlement seemed to be raised on a succession of broad scrub-clad gravel terraces, and is closed in by a high range of hills crowned with patches of dark wood and scraggy brushwood. Close by is Hiogo, a characteristic old native town, where there is now the spacious terminus of a well-laid railway which runs to Osaka and Kioto, and will yet, it is hoped, soon reach Tokio. A waterfall of no great volume a " one- horse fall " my friend termed it is the chief attraction to visitors about Kobe. The dark vegetation surrounding it was, however, very romantic and beautiful, and one or two pious persons were shiveringly doing the " cold water drip " penance which I suppose is a religious substitute for our honest British B. and S. at a considerable rill beside the main volume of water. After drifting about the settlement in rather an aimless manner we took tickets for Osaka, which was then the temporary terminus of the railway. The railway crosses at a high level a spur of the range that encloses Kobe and then darts down towards Osaka, straight as an arrow, by a series of alternating slopes and levels which had rather a striking appearance from the top of the incline. The traffic even then was very good, and seemed to bid fair for the ultimate success of railways in Japan. It is now, I understand, almost as great as that on any line of similar capacity in our own country, and the returns are good. Ten Days on the Tokaido. 175 Osaka was formerly the chief commercial town of Japan, and is still a city of not less than 400,000 inhabi- tants, boasting of a very old moated castle of much historical interest, a modern mint, an arsenal, and a con- siderable garrison. Few foreigners live there, and those are chiefly either missionaries or government employes. It is situated not far from the sea, on the banks of a "shallow river which must some day soon be deepened, and SEAopJAPAN I Island of Shikoku the city is intersected by numerous canals meeting at right angles. The houses which overhang the canals have a 176 Nine Years in Nipon. very characteristic Japanese look, and reminded me strongly of some quaint old illustrations in works of romance. From certain points a little above the city we could see away out at sea white h specks of sail glinting in the sun- light, which recalled a famous voyage made ages ago by a citizen of credit and renown a sort of poetical Pepys of the period, for an interesting account of whose old- world diary we are indebted to Mr. Aston, our scholarly Consul-General in Corea. After roaming about the endless half-dead and alive streets we found a French hotel and had dinner, which combined most of the worst features of Japanese and French systems of cookery, and a splendid cup of coffee which almost atoned for all that had gone before. We had brought with us a Japanese servant who amused us with somewhat preposterous stories of his own doughty doings in the great wars which preceded the Restoration, and who described his marching as one of the guards of a train of bullock-carts laden with solid gold, which he is quite sure has been cleverly secreted somewhere by the officials of the Shogun's time, to be unearthed when some great crisis arrives ! This now peaceful warrior was sent to forage for jinrikishas, and soon arrived, flushed and argumentative, with a grand array of those useful vehicles and the drawers thereof. It seemed as if such terms of payment as the law gravely lays down had never once been pro- posed in Japan before, but we drove a bargain at last after much forensic display ; for Mr. Mankichi was an accom- plished amateur lawyer as well as an invincible warrior ; Ten Days on the Tokaido. 177 indeed, his character was quite kaleidoscope, for we soon became involved with him in almost fierce discussions on astronomy and the ultimate causation of fossils. After lots had been cast by means of straws, a bargain was struck at the despised rate, and the crowd of disappointed candidates retired, grinning good-naturedly in Japanese fashion at their bad luck. It is best in travelling in hot weather over dusty roads to avoid white linen clothes some prefer Chinese blue flannel, others duck, with military collar to the coat. The popular white suit becomes hopelessly grimy and degraded-looking after a few miles. I find a most useful thing is a small snap-bag with provender, and a kori a kind of basket woven of thin flexible bamboo laths in two portions, the one overlapping the other like a grass or cane tobacco pouch, and so varying in capacity with the need of it. Others are made of willow. They can be rolled up in the tough, untearable, oil-paper of the country, and then strapped behind the hood of the jinrikisha. A satchel is useful to have across one's shoulder to contain geological or botanical specimens when on foot. Two good runners will carry yourself and light luggage along, without undue fatigue, at the rate of about seven miles an hour, and will run with one or two short intervals for rest and refreshment for seven or eight hours in one day, or even longer in an emergency. For a short distance, in mild weather and on an exceptionably good road, very rapid work is sometimes done. I think, how- ever, that tourists have often shown a tendency to exaggerate the staying powers of the coolies. When pitted against professional runners, Japanese jinrikisha- - 178 Nine Years in Nip on. men have been badly beaten. I have myself drawn a loaded jinrikisha for a short distance, and the labour is less than one might suppose, when some momentum has been acquired. The men do not suffer severely from their occupation, as far as a medical experience of nine years, chiefly in dispensary practice, enables me to judge. On the contrary, I think they are on the whole a very healthy class, and the broken-down members of it are chiefly those who have already failed in other spheres from intemper- ance or bad health, or idleness. Those men slink into by-lanes for hire, and carry priests, sick folk, and old women, bent on doing shopping, at lower than the usual fares. An active jinrikishaman can earn a fair wage, and has a reasonable prospect of living quite as long as is good for him. I know of no special diseases to which they are subject, but have seen some bad cases of rheumatism, bronchitis, and so forth, from exposure in bad weather, just as in the case of farming and other out-of-door work. I have also seen a few cases of varicose veins in the legs, but that affection is more frequent amongst English shop- keepers who stand most of the day, than amongst the car- drawers of Japan. Soon we passed the old castle with its ivied cyclopean walls on our right, running along a low embankment through wide marshy tracts, interspersed with rice fields and closed in with beautiful blue-tinted mountains, lying low on the horizon below banks of gloriously-moulded silvery clouds. When we reached a hamlet in the suburbs called Moriguchicho, the coolies became insubordinate, and an Ten Days on the Tokaido. 179 amount of unintelligible but eloquent slang was expended, that promised to leave little breath for the long pull before them. A formal appeal to the wizened, tremulous old " elder " of the community, resulted in a bat-gain being formally drawn out and solemnly sealed signing is not a Japanese custom, The project was one which I have since found to be very common ; the city coolies hoped to sell out their contract to the villagers at a profit to them- selves. It is rather disagreeable to have the consciousness of being sold in this way. Many are the reasons alleged for the breach of contract, such as a broken spring, mysterious spasms, or a thorn in the foot, and no one need wonder that the trick very often succeeds. After we got on our way again the sky was yellowing it rather rarely reddens here for sunset, and soon we sunk into a gloomy valley which night had already reached. Here we had to alight and walk through marshes, rustling with bullrushes, to an invisible ferry-boat which many farmers, hawkers, and others were very patiently waiting for. Dark shadows were now falling over the reedy flats, and the plaintive cries of various water-fowls quivered through the silent fen. The sun was now only indicated by an oval slant- ing glow like that of the zodiacal light, and one by one pale stars tremulously peeped forth from a marvellously clear sky. The conversation quite naturally turned on astronomy, and it was curious to hear how well-informed were some of the intending passengers regarding a system supposed to have been introduced into China 2000 years before the Star of Bethlehem struck chill terror into Herod's heart. After crossing the ferry, to the rather rare accompani- i So Nine Years in Nipon. ment of a genuine Japanese song, we had a long ride through dim lit villages, inhabited by rough and danger- ous people as we were warned in one case, dark hedge- rows and dreary rice fields, and at length when we were fairly nodding with sleep, we passed through what seemed interminable miles of long dark streets, at every corner of which I felt that a bloody tragedy might fitly have been enacted. At last we stopped at a cheery well lit hotel, romantically Japanese in structure, but with much Euro- pean comfort about it, and there we found right good wel- come in the native fashion, and the best of good cheer. On the morning we climbed a picturesque slope behind the hotel, through a winding woodland path, smelling of fresh pine resin, and visited the red painted Buddhist shrines and temples that cluster beneath the umbrageous foliage of many lofty and venerable trees. I made many notes on details, which, however, I am sure would not be very interesting to readers. The temple servants were just swinging the heavy wooden ram which does duty in Japa- nese temples for a bell-clapper, striking the bell power- fully from the outside, but with great softness of effect. We were really startled when the first sonorous boom of a bronze giant quivered through the leafy gloom in most musical waves, went echoing in . ever mellowing tones down through the hot city, and trembled in fainter and fainter vibrations far away across the valley to the bosky shrine-crowned heights beyond. Bells in Japanese temple grounds are often made of the molten contributions in hard cash of pious believers, and the custom seems to me a very suggestive and pretty one. It is from this cause, the priests tell us, that the tone of Ten Days on the Tokaido. 181 their bells is so notably sweet, for gold and silver enter in considerable proportion into the composition of some of their finest bells a fact which has been confirmed by chemical analysis in one case at least With a fine combination of American push and Scottish prudence we had applied for permission to visit the Impe- rial Palace, which was not then usually so open to visitors as it afterwards became. We were therefore greatly grati- fied to have a visit in an hour or so afterwards from a most courteous official of the municipality, who favoured us with a special permit from the Chiji a sort of perpetual Lord Mayor of this grand old royal city of Kioto, I have little to say of the palace. It was spacious, costly, and severely plain in many respects ; but there was little in it to interest any one but a professional tourist. We spent the evening looking over the latest English and American papers we could find none of them very fresh ; and when the shades of evening fell rather suddenly over the valley in which the old city lies embosomed so beautifully, we were surprised to see the river's bed which was almost dry suddenly glowing into one wide ruddy blaze of light ; while one long street > lined on either side with coloured paper lanterns, stretched away in two straight beams, till the lines converged into a vanishing point in the hazy distance. It was the annual festival of the river-opening in which Kioto, fortunately for us, is always to be seen in its best and most character- istic aspects. The contrast between the lemon-yellow sky, still luminous with the last rays of a dying sun ; the dark wooded sides of the valley, and the ruddy glow of 1 82 Nine Years in Nipon. torches and coloured lamps was as fascinating as any fairy dream of a young school-girl after her first panto- mime. We hurried over dinner and made for the town, so as to see what the festive citizens were about. The erait, dress, and manners of the Kioto ladies are much o * more pleasing and refined than those of Tokio, and their hair is always prettily dressed. There is generally throughout the community more old-fashioned punctilious etiquette, and the language is spoken with greater fastidiousness both in respect to clear enunciation and the choice of words and phrases. The atrocious nasal sound of g which prevails in Tokio is quite unheard in Kioto. Kioto is noted for its fans, so I invested in a few choice artistic specimens for friends. One of them contained a well-drawn fanciful group of the great classic authors of Japan, male and female. Another very pleasing one was composed of the different kinds of maple leaf known in the country, and contained great variety of form and colour gracefully contrasted. In lecturing on Darwinism, I pointed out the fact that a Japanese artist had thus found beauty in all the so-called accidental varieties, and so ob- jective beauty might be considered as a phase of utility in viewing the universe Ideologically, as it was still possible to do. This and similar illustrations, I found, had been very effective, as addressed to a highly educated Japanese audience. We spent some time amidst the giddy throng in the dry river's bed, listening to open air story-tellers, laughing at mummers, indulging in sips of tea and peppermint toffy, and chatting in a free and easy way to the world and his very sedate wife. Ten Days on the Tokaido. 183 As we retraced our steps, warm and weary, the hedges of mingled cryptomeria, privet, and fern, were mysteriously lit up here and there by the pale lambent green light of glow-worms, while now and again a star-like firefly floated silently amongst the foliage. I have seen much larger and brighter ones when travelling through Bengal, and I never saw in Japan, what is often a very striking and mysterious phenomenon nearer the tropics, the rhythmic simultaneous twinkling of all the members of a single group of fireflies. We were just in time to see, by the dim candle light of many paper lanterns, in the court of an adjoining house a grand display of old-fashioned court dancing, or rather posturing in operatic costume, varying with the nature of the piece to be performed. It was rather a dull perform- ance, and far too artificial to interest even a Japanese. Before leaving Kioto we paid a visit to a porcelain estab- lishment, and were pleased to see artists painting extempore designs of great beauty with a firm, free hand. In a tank close by I noticed a great eft-like brute, which lay quite still. It was a splendid specimen of the gigantic Sala- mander of Japan. I obtained a dead specimen of a kind of tree frog called Kajika, a con- traction for kawa-shika (river- deer), which is found at Arashi Yama, about four or five miles from Kioto a district famous for its fine cherry-trees. Those frogs ar . , are prized greatly for their fine Singing Pros (Drawn from Nature). musical voice, which ressmbles the sweet chirp of some tree crickets, and like them they are kept in cages. They 184 Nine Years in Nipon. arc fed on flies when in confinement. Similar frogs occur in one or two other parts of Japan, and I had once the good fortune to hear one in Tokio, chirping in a very sweet and mellow tone, which I am not musician enough to describe. We visited all that was to be seen in Kioto, which left a very charming impression on me, so little does it seem to differ from the Kioto one reads of in old world tales of the feudal times that have fled for ever. We walked on a rough newly-laid road to Otsu, got caught in a deluge of rain, and in the circumstances had a rather dispiriting view of the great fresh water lake of Ja- pan, called Biwa, from its supposed resemblance in shape to the Japanese lute of that name. We spent our first night on the way to Tokio at Ishibe. The people were very attentive, and soon after we retired for the night closed our shutters, depriving us of every breath of air. We had made a successful appeal against this arrangement when an old night watchman appeared on the scene, and roused the dormant echoes and inmates by a pair of loud clappers, which he worked with painfully frequent itera- tion. We ventured to expostulate, but were at once offered our choice of either sharp horn suffocation or sleeplessness. Knowing the vigilance of the watchman would soon succumb we preferred to have some air. Just as I had expected, the worthy old guardian of our safety soon quietly dropped off to sleep, but rose once or twice suddenly ere cock-crow and made up for long silence by an unusually vehement clattering of his sticks. It is so always in Japan the silent watchman is believed to be asleep. He must attest his vigilance by audible evidence of it Ten Days on tJie Tokaido. 185 We were soon passing curious raised river beds, which have been formed like those on the great plains of Lom- bardy, and sometimes like them break their bonds and rush upon the plain below. We spent a quiet restful Sunday at Sono. Some villagers brought specimens of quartz with pyrites which they suspected might be gold. My friend, who had had some experience at the Californian diggings, was struck with the resemblance to auriferous rocks which some of those specimens bore. I went to the temple and found an old farmer enjoying a " crack " with the rector. No notice whatever was taken of my presence, but when I asked some questions as to the temple, civil answers were returned and the conversation opened up pleasantly. Goyu was our next stopping place, where we had to ourselves a clean pretty little room, opening on a charming artificial garden, with a river bridge in the distance and a mountainous background of romantic loveliness. After that we spent a night in a large empty house in Shiraska, whose custom seemed to be leaving it, judging from the oppressive civility we received. There were several " ironwood " trees in the garden, and nothing else. The mats were all edged with red cloth, the reason for which I did not understand, and I do not remember of seeing it elsewhere in Japan. At Suta Gawa we got into a junk, and others joined us, so that we had a large company. The sails flapped as soon as we started, and then a dead calm with a sultry sky set in. I cannot recall another so dreary episode in my life as this voyage turned out to be. We were soon afflicted with violent cramps, which relieved the M 1 86 Nine Years in Nipon. monotony a little, but the natives even got irritable with the heat and sense of helpless stagnation, and no one could be induced to try an oar, lest a sufficient breeze should afterwards arise, and there would then have been so much dead loss of energy don't you see? In one vast shallow creek which we poled through there were great shoals of tiny fish about the size of sprats, which rose clear out of the water like flying fish. I could not find what their nature was, and certainly I have never seen large flying fish in Japanese waters. The banks of the tributary rivers were carefully lined with great " snake-baskets," which are made of tough split bamboos woven in an open net-work of wide meshes. They are filled with large stones from the river bed, and seem like enormous sausages as thick as the body of a man and from twenty to twenty-five feet long. They are embedded in rows, silt soon accumulating about them,, and if not carried away vegetation springs up and still further guards the banks. The road is lined most of the way with venerable pine trees, and the humble beggar in a Japanese novel always looks to end his days, nameless and forgotten, under the shadow of one of those great trees. The telegraph is seen nearly all the way. In some places great spiders hang tough threads over the path, which crack across your smarting face with a twang almost like that made by a piece of pack-thread. Every few miles or so you find a tea-house, and in busy places there may be several in one mile's distance, where you may have a cup of tea and a quiet smoke. As we dashed through Shidzuoka with its old ivied castle, Ten Days on the Tokaido. 187 where the ex-Shogun now lives in dignified retirement far from the din of the world, we passed some great hulking over-fed giants in peculiar attire one after another in rapid procession, as if one were in a nightmare. They A Cup of Tea and a Quiet Smoke. (Japanese Sketch.) were professional wrestlers who were to perform in town that evening. Soon afterwards we came to a turn of the road where through a veil of mist we looked sheer down into a boiling, foaming sea, and by-and-by a great plain opened out to view, from which arose in ever steeper sweep the great wood-embroidered flanks of Fuji, stupendous and seeming to merge into heaven itself, as I have seen no other mountain do, and not even Fuji from any other single point of view. We had to ascend Hakone Pass in cages. The price agreed upon was declared to be too little, and our gentle bearers began a series of mild persecutions, bumping our poor weary bones and giving us constant cc asion to 1 88 Nine Years in Nipon. change our position. I began to see that this little game was proving a very great amusement to our demure oriental friends, so I passed the word to my companion to take revenge, and a very sweet and prompt one we did take. By raising ourselves well up and rhythmically bring- ing our whole weight down smartly whenever a bump was planned for us, the poor shoulders of our bearers soon came to ache so badly that they " smelt a rat " ; a loud but disconcerted laugh was the result, and then we all got on amicably like good Christians for the rest of the way. We found the heights of Hakone delightfully cool after the sweltering heat of the plains, and then there are hardly any mosquitos there. The hills are softly rounded, and when not thickly wooded are covered with wormwood scrub. Goats seem to thrive on the coarse pasturage, but have not yet been bred to any extent. We crossed the ridge at a height of about 3000 feet. The little town is spread along the margin of a deep and picturesque lake which occupies the cup of an old volcano, and in which moun- tains capped with cottony clouds were reflected as in a mirror. The depth varies about two feet according to the rainfall. We had some fishing from a little shallop, but were not very successful. I was told that the following varieties of fish were found in the lake : Masu (which is the best), akahara (red-belly), funa, namadzu, koi (see design on the cover of this work), eels, and a kind of minnow. Newts and a lizard with a metallic tail of great brilliancy abound. There are toads with reddish brown spots, adders, and at least two varieties of snake, the ao-daisho and Yama kagashi or Yama gachi, as I have Ten Days on the Tokaido. 189 also heard it called. The latter bites angrily, but not fatally. Great water spiders were swimming about, and I saw many pale cream-coloured butterflies tinted with red on the hinder half of their wings. They were hovering over a sweet-smelling plant like our own honeysuckle, but with stiff, tiny, star-like flowers. Midges were gyrating in swarms as evening closed in, but I saw no swallows there, though they were numerous on both sides of the Hakone Pass below. I was soon striding down the long stone causeway which leads to the plains, outstripping a very determined little policeman in plain clothes who gave in rather un- willingly to my greater length of limb, and I arrived at Odawara at night On asking for a glass of water, I got one containing, inter alia, a very beautiful large specimen of earthworm vulgaris, which almost spoiled my appetite for a jolly dinner I was looking forward to next day in the Royal Hotel, Yokohama, after ten days' Japanese fare and a tough dyspepsia. 190 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER XV. Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. Simplicity of Japanese Bouquets Artless Art A Floral Calendar Flower and Tree Markets Fruitless Sprays of Blossom Place of Honour and its Decoration Allusive Obscurity "Heaven, Earth and Man" Symbolism in Flowers Art Training of the People. WHEN you enter the guest-room in a Japanese mansion of the better class you are at once impressed with a subtle elegance and propriety not easily explained. The room may contain but a very few simple articles of adornment, and the chief or only one may be a plant or a bouquet. By-and-by it dawns upon the observant foreigner that the very same elements dis- posed by clumsy western hands in but a slightly different way would deprive the room of half its charm. The pleasing effect is surely then due to art and not to accident, and if so, some rational exposition of the principles which underlie it may yet be hoped for. I was once greatly struck with the unique beauty and effectiveness of a large and stainlessly white blossom of peony, accompanied by a single pearl-toned bud, which was thus made almost to furnish the drawing-room of one of the highest government officials. A Japanese friend, famed for plant-lore, who was with me, pointed out what art had done in this case to single out and firmly accent the best of nature's work for attention and admiration. Now, if it be true as President M'Cosh has said, that there Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 191 is enough even in a single "pine cone to reward the study for hours together of the very highest intellect," it may not be uninteresting to observe the manner in which an aesthetically gifted people have been wont to prepare the beauties of the floral world as objects of cultured contem- plation. For all their apparent artlessness is itself an art bound by technical rules and based on carefully attained principles. In one which, by the way, happens to be a sermon of Mitford's charmingly told " Tales of Old Japan " there is an amusing account of the efforts made long ago by an accomplished girl, the daughter of a self-made man, to entertain a pious preacher of great celebrity. Amongst other pretty doings she arranged bouquets of flowers and wove garlands round pine torches. Now this old-fashioned accomplishment is by no means extinct, and there are still in Tokio many " professors " who gain a livelihood by revealing its mysteries for a very small fee indeed. A great deal is now even popularly known in western countries of the Japanese love of plants and flowers. The whole calendar is pervaded by festive seasons named after particular flowers or plants, and the newspapers, for days before a festival of this kind, record the local progress towards perfection of the season's floral attraction ; picnic parties are arranged, and the staid official or practical merchant, with family all arrayed in their holiday best, move to the scene with a sense of as solemn obligation as westerns feel on the occasion of a religious service. On certain nights, too, which in the stifling summer time happily come very often, certain streets may be seen from afar to gleam with the radiance of innumerable torches, 192 Nine Years in Nipon. and, shades of Macbeth ! whole uprooted forests often in full bloom, are seen moving towards the open flower- market The pot plants and cut flowers are always very attractive, and on those sultry or muggy nights during the midsummer heat, one never tires of viewing the fresh and dewy leaves and half-opened buds which make the dusty thoroughfare into a cool forest retreat. The streets in spring, summer and autumn teem with the trim and taste- ful stalls of peripatetic flower-sellers. Indeed, they are not at all unknown in winter even, for then the camellias, holly, early plum blossom and several others are in season. Such wares are in constant request even in the very poorest localities ; and flowers are largely used for religious offerings by the Buddhists a custom which seems to have existed from the very time of Shakya Muni himself. To those who seek a philosophic explana- tion of all customs in soil and climate, it may here be mentioned as of some interest that flowering plants seem to blossom much more luxuriantly in Japan than in the west ; perhaps the decomposed lava soil may be a main factor in the result, as flowers growing on the slopes of volcanoes are proverbially notable for their bright colour. The fact, at all events, is strikingly observable in the case of certain plants brought from England. Near Tokio most kinds of fruit with only an exception or two indeed reach maturity with difficulty, and the blossom has very naturally come to be esteemed for its own sake rather than for the problematic benefits it might afterwards procure. . And so a Japanese instinctively tears down great branches from a flowering plum or cherry tree to the disgust of the inexperienced Japanese Philosophy of ' Floivers. 193 foreigner who looks for something beyond its evane- scent beauty. The art of arranging flowers, then, has perhaps somewhat naturally come to occupy a promi- nent place in Japanese education. Besides the living in- structors already mentioned, cheap works containing lessons in the art are widely circulated. In one of them before me is a specimen which is simple and pleasing, while it approaches much more closely to our ideas of a bouquet than others which follow. It belongs to the beginning of this century. The elements which compose it are, a straight stem of single hollyhock, a bit of begonium, and a pink or two. I cannot discern in it any of that sym- bolism which, as we shall see, usually dominates the art. It is almost the only specimen in my collection of prints in which the vase and chief mass of the bouquet lie in one perpendicular line. It is well balanced, without undue emphasis of symmetry, and the lines present pleasing repetition, with some slight variety to break it. The vase was probably intended to bo hung against one of those straight panel-like ornaments called "pillar hangings," which adorn the exposed interior posts of Japanese houses, and hence the shape of the bouquet would be appropriate. Simple often as are the materials employed homely as the despised grasses of the field, with which Ruskin proudly adorns " The Two Paths " as a frontispiece few Western ladies, I fear, could use them to so much advantage. Have we not then something yet to learn from the Japanese ? Beginning our systematic study of the subject, then, let us look first at the place of honour where the floral orna- ment is to be set. It is a shallow recess in the chief room, having a raised platform, and is called the toko no ma,. 194 Nine Years in Nipon. which we find from old books to have been, literally, the bed-place, in old houses of Chinese style. While its original dimensions have been greatly contracted in modern times, its dignity has been much enhanced, and very lofty indeed is the role which it plays in the compli- cated etiquette of Japan. The v taste and culture of the householder is brought to a focus at this point, and the fertility of invention shown in the adornment of this simple recess never fails to interest one in visiting Japanese houses. A curious and pleasing feature is the love dis~ played for inartificial or simply natural forms. The richest merchant or highest official may have the bounding posts of this recess made by preference of twisted and gnarled pine trees splashed with moss and lichen, or of smooth and satiny trunks stripped of their bark, or of beams of water-logged timber covered with barnacles, and honey- combed by the action of sea creatures. The plaster, again, may be mixed with many tinted sea-shells, or adorned with sea-weeds of many colours, irregularly but artistically arranged ; but space will not admit the bare enumeration of varieties even of common occurrence. After nine years residence, the study of this little region is to me ever full of fresh surprises. I have even seen a live cherry or plum tree growing outside, coaxed to yield some of its best branches to adorn the mansion within. Great ingenuity is shown in the selection and construction of a vessel to hold the flower. It may be a joint or two of bamboo, plain, smoked like a meerschaum pipe, or carved ; a bas- ket, real or imitated in pottery of some sort ; a model junk, or a vase in bronze, Jaience, or creamy satsuma. There is in most cases a tray or stand of simple and Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 195 according to Japanese ideas, at least elegant design. I have often seen in the place of honour a bit of oyster-clad rock, or the gnarled stump of a dwarf tree, carved in broad wavy lines by the larva of a large beetle, or arabesqued with rich creamy orange or bricky scarlet lichens, and set in deep green many-tinted mosses, from the dank velvet of which a spray of tiny fern or feathery plume of some rare woodland plant would peep. Then, too, there are often most subtle relations of the flower itself to the form or colour of its containing vessel ; and here the refined instincts of the true artist best display themselves. Often, however, as we shall see, the sway of symbolism is too rigidly enforced. The higher masters of the art usually affect to disclaim the use of anything but simple water for the preservation of cut flowers. Usually, however, morning glories (con- volvulus) are set in tepid water. Some flowers, again, are allowed good tea to drink, flavoured with a pinch of stimulating spices. The stems of peony and Lespedeza are put into hot water. The flowers should be invigorated by filling the mouth with water and squirting it over the leaves, as one may any day in Japan see the green- grocers freshening their wares for fastidious tastes ! All defective leaves should be neatly cut off, and the plant trimmed as desired. The number of chief branches allowed to remain is usually three, but tastes vary as. to the precise number of blossoms which should be left The number four (ski) is disliked because it sounds the same as the word for death. The branches should be held over steam till they are sufficiently flexible, after which they may easily be bent so as to retain the " set " 196 Nine Years in Nipon. which is given to them. The pupil who probably in- clines unconsciously to illustrate Sam Weller writing his famous love-letter is warned to keep his mouth closed or the twigs are sure to be broken in the process. When bamboo sprigs are used during winter the backs of the leaves should be smeared with sugar and water, but in summer salt water should be similarly used instead. The root or end of the stem must be carefully and firmly fixed in its place. Japanese philosophy which has chiefly hitherto been that of China, from whence it came divides the universe into three grand realms, Heaven, Earth, and Man ; and so in the symbolism which gives technicalities to the art, the three bunches or groups of twigs which are usually made prominent are named thus : the central or " true " stem is Heaven, the " flowing " or broad one is Earth, and the " stopped " or limited one represents Man. Sometimes they are also more familiarly called the father, mother, and child. The art came from China, but was at first less rigidly artificial, and was developed along with the extraor- dinary and elaborate etiquette which prevailed in Japan in connection with tea - drinking in the good old times. There have been many styles of flower- arranging, some nine of which, at least, are now all but forgotten, and are indiscriminately referred to in common talk as the Ko-riu or Old Style. What is called the style of Yen-shiu is so named from the region in which it origi- nated. It is now the most popular but is usually rather too stiff and constrained for refined western tastes, although some little latitude is allowed for individual fancy. As to liberty, three degrees are supposed to be admissible, and Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 197 these are named after the three modes of writing Chinese characters : Skin, Giyo, So, which may be made partly in- telligible by the analogy of our Roman, Italic and Script characters. Flowers placed in front of Buddhist shrines are arranged in symbolic flame shape. Kake-mono or scroll pictures are often hung beside the flower, and these have usually a symbolic or at least indirect relation to the season to which the flower belongs. The contained allu- sion may be quite veiled to the foreigner, but is generally caught up by any Japanese with some degree of culture. To take some curious examples of such far-fetched sug- gestions. The pot flower is a chrysanthemum. Beside it perhaps hangs a picture of a monkey suspended by one arm from a tree and grasping at empty nothing with the other, and from an allusion in a short stanza appended to the scroll we find that he is grasping^vainly at the reflected moon. But both the moon and its reflection are purposely omitted from the picture. Now in Japanese poetry, wherein the words and ideas are narrowly restricted, the moon our own harvest moon par excellence is always associated with late autumn, to which season, in short, the chrysanthemum in the pot belongs ! In another example which accompanies a chrysanthe- mum with seven blossoms, a rather boyish looking old gentleman, who is the god of plenty, is pointing not directly to Heaven as the bounteous Giver of all good but to the invisible harvest moon of autumn again. Again, we have perhaps a bit of plum blossom. The companion picture contains pine and bamboo, and these three woods, pine, plum and bamboo or " the woody trip- let " are always found combined for the New-year's festi- 198 Nine Years in Nipon. vitics. The pine is hale and green amidst the cold snows of winter, the plum blooms first in the year, or as the Japanese poet martially describes it, "leads the van with its serried hundreds ; " while the bamboo with its straight stem and regularly recurrent joints is the fitting symbol of an orderly and well regulated life. Their relative places may be interchanged, and so we may have the pine in the pot and the plum and bamboo on the picture, etc. While Buddhists have a liking for the num- ber eight, other Japanese, like the Jews, seem to favour the number seven for flower blossoms. The vase or pot usually rests on a stand or tray with four legs, and Buddhist symbols are found in their ornamentation, as, for example, elephants supporting an outspreading lotus. Sometimes boxes are used instead of vases, while in sum- mer baskets are frequently substituted. Symbols of waves and hares occur together, because the word for spindrift in Japanese also means hare, an astronomical symbol. We come now to ask whether these and other similar accomplishments are due to a special art sense or instinct peculiar to the people of Japan, or are they the result of a long continued training in that particular direc- tion ? The one alternative does not necessarily and com- pletely exclude the other. Both elements have probably existed in some degree, and both are required for any full explanation of the result. The latter in recent times has certainly had prominence given to it. On the other hand, for example, I have seen an old metal mirror, dating on the best native authority from the very dawn almost of Japanese history, and on its reverse side is stamped in Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. 1 99 relief the cherry blossom, speaking to its fair possessor in the language of the national poetry, of the fleeting nature of human beauty. Numerous examples, indeed, might readily be given to show that modern conventional types of natural loveliness have had a very persistent existence in Japan. On the other hand, as I have already hinted^ much has been done in very recent times to popularize the knowledge of natural forms, and especially the graces of plants. An ordinary workman or schoolboy can in a bold, free-hand style, draw leaves or flowers that might shame many a Western drawing-master. Little books which contain masterpieces for imitation, -are very cheap, and often not unpleasing to the most critical eye. We have nothing exactly like them in Western lands, and this might suggest a new field of adventure to enterprising publishers. It must be remembered, however, that these booklets were created to satisfy a felt need for them amongst the populace. The natural fitness to use them was there, and hence the present capacity, I believe, for a further develop- ment in art that may soon arrest attention. If the cave men were Eskimo, and if the Japanese are descendants of them, both of which views have been held singly, then we find such a special art sense very far back indeed. An impression seems to prevail amongst some foreigners that the ability of the Japanese free-hand artist is limited to a few well chosen but strictly conventional forms. I am quite sure that this is not a fair statement of the case, and I now possess many original drawings of birds, insects, and other objects, in which unusual but life- like postures have been well caught and rendered. In one of 2OO Nine Years in Nipon. these cheap little books published just after the railway was opened, appears a quite unconventional sketch of a railway train rapidly retreating behind an embankment. The in- visible engine with its trailing clouds of lightly whirlingsmoke and the retreating buffers give a sense of motion which to my mind is singularly lacking even in many of our best prints of the same subject. Again, as has been mentioned in another chapter, there are in all the streets plastic artists often of very original powers, who for half a cent mould out of brightly-coloured candy or rice, any flower, animal real or mythological bit of still life, or active enterprise which ingenious urchins can devise. And these urchins do manifest genuine wit in devising puzzles for the artist's creative skill, while it is quite evident to the bystander that the unhesitating worker does not go by rote, but reveals a natural capacity for art which, under scientific training, might lead us to expect much greater things. The national taste coincides very frequently with the aesthetic principles scientifically expounded by Mr. Ruskin, Grant Allen, and other recent writers. Most intelligently in their " education " of trees and flowers do the Japanese observe what the former writer calls " the awful, the fate- ful lines of branch and foliage," and in a popular Japanese newspaper I read a short time ago a paragraph in which the ideal education of a city Arab is compared to the gentle process by which a wild chrysanthemum is fitted to grace the place of honour in. a tasteful drawing- room. The Language of Nipon. 201 CHAPTER XVI. The Language of Nipon. A Japanese Writer's Lamentation Some Common Misconceptions Pijin English and its Uses The Lingua Franca of the Far East A Big Alphabet Chinese Tones Iconographs or Picture- Words No Declen- sions, Conjugations, nor Pronouns Imperfection of the Colloquial Need of Linguistic Development Capacity for Combinations Sus- pected Sanskrit Affinities Etiquette and Honorifics Future of the Colloquial Language. ATELY a Japanese writer wrote thus in plaintive tones : " The things of ancient days were admirable, but in modern times customs are more and more deteriorating. The beautiful vessels made by ancient carvers of wood are finer, as their forms are the more primitive. And so, too, in literature we find that the style of language used by the ancients, as preserved on every scrap of paper which has come down to us from them, is very fine. But at the pre- sent time the popular language grows ever worse and worse. In the olden time people were accustomed to say ' Please, raise the vehicle,' ' Pray, favour me by elevating the lamp-wick.' Now-a-days they bluntly say ' Raise it,' 4 Poke it up,' and thus in many ways the Ministers of State, and even what pertains to the sacred majesty of the Mikado himself, are spoken of in less honorific language than was customary in days of yore." The fact is the wave of aufklarung which rose in France a century ago has now broken on the shores of those fair islands in the Pacific. Words and sentences are fossil H 2O2* Nine Years in Nipon. thoughts. When organic nature rises to a higher level of being, effete forms are soon left to bury themselves in the preserving rocks. But words are not merely fossils. Even when buried in old books they haunt in ghostly form the busy throngs of men. In China, Corea and Japan the Chinese written language is understood by all highly educated men, but I find a very common and erroneous impression prevails that the Japanese language is just a dialect a slight variation of Chinese. The question is much more complex than many suppose, and another common misconception must first be cleared away. When two Chinamen from provinces not far apart meet, they cannot always converse together. If they are educated enough to be able to read and write they can communicate through the written language as adopted by the officials. Very often in settlements like Shanghai they may be heard resorting to the much maligned pi/in or " business " English introduced by the " foreign devils." Now, had he pronounced the name of the thing wanted according to any one or to all of the provincial dialects of China successively, he might have entirely failed to convey any idea whatever of what he wished to obtain. In short, the Chinese written language chiefly appeals to the eye, and in this way is more than the Lingua Franca of the Far East. It has also, of course, a sound associated with it, and here the real difficulty springs up. The sound is usually of one syllable. There are upwards of 30,000 characters, and necessarily, as we may at once see, the same single syllable, say ki, may suggest to the ear a great variety of dissimilar ideas, just as our sound-- The Language of Nipon. 203* we cannot here call it a word box did to the bewildered Frenchman when on a visit to England. Well, the Chinese got out of the difficulty by having tones rising, prolonged, falling, etc. like those with which young clergymen studying elocution are driven nearly frantic. More correctly perhaps we may suppose that those Chinese tones are surviving indications of lost phonetic elements in the words thus differentiated. But there are no such tones in the Chinese of Japan, or at least they are not vividly preserved as an inherent and necessary part of the language. The lack of them, however, may turn out to be no real misfortune as we shall presently see. I have taken as an example the Japanese sound ki (pronounced like our key}. A Japanese would quite instinctively ask you which ki you meant unless the sentence in which it occurred guided him clearly, and you would probably observe him drawing an imaginary series of hieroglyphs with a finger of one hand on the open palm of the other. He has learned to a great extent to think in Chinese characters. Now, let us take as an analogy our astronomical symbols, or our Roman or Arabic numerals. Clearly enough you will perceive that each represents the same concept or abstract notion to the French or German, Englishman, Spaniard or Italian, to whom it may be pre- sented. It is also quite evident that the sounds associated with the one symbol may be very different to each of the nationalities supposed. In the case of Latin again, which was used so extensively in the western world during the middle ages, and is still so largely a medium of intercourse amongst scientific men in all parts of the globe, there are different schools of pronunciation, the Scotch and Contin- 2O4* Nine Years in Nipon. ental, for example, and that of Oxford. So it is with Chinese. It is certain that many of the Chinese characters were at first what is termed iconographic, representational or imitative, simply pictorial in other words. As writing was more and more used in the daily inter- course of men briefer modes of representation were fol- lowed, and instead of a completed picture we find a mere hurried stroke or two of the pen indicative of the artist's intention, for an artist rather than an author he must have been at this early stage. Soon the various stages of the process might become obscure to later observers from the very great ease and rapidity with which the evolution of the written language would now take place. Sometimes a part only would be made to express the whole. Thus in Chinese (and in Japanese also) the icono- graph of a tree thrice repeated stands for a forest. There is a very strong analogy between the Chinese and Egyp- tian modes of expressing ideas, but it would be quite mis- leading were I to give the impression that any traces of historical continuity have as yet been detected between the two languages. It is somewhat striking, however, that the Egyptian root ka " form," has at least an analogy to the ka in Japanese (and Chinese ?) which is found in such words as kage, shadow or reflection ; karada, body ; katachi, form, shape, etc., etc. Leaving out of sight for a little the historically imported Chinese alphabet, and dealing as far as may be possible with the pre-existing elements of the language, we find that it belongs to the agglutinative Tatar or Turanian type. Words are not declined or conjugated. Ideas are brought into mutual relation by intervening TJie Language of Nipon. 205* preceding or following particles. There are no pronouns in the language, strictly speaking, although practically very good substitutes for them exist. The distinction between singular and plural is not quite clearly or directly brought out, nor has gender any genuine place in the grammar. Now, when the Chinese system of writing was introduced and there are no reliable specimens of writing prior to that period the fifty odd simple sounds of the Japanese language seem to have had assigned to them one, and unfortunately sometimes many, Chinese hieroglyphs used phonetically that is, simply to express the Japanese sound. Then as Chinese culture in Japan advanced, others were used iconographically, and finally the same character might be used both ways, to the utter confusion and bewilderment for all time to come of all sensible people who don't think pedantic memories be- token the highest attainments of intellect. At present it is perfectly certain that no sane person and a fortiori no insane one completely understands and is master either of this system or of Buddhist mythology, the two most meaningless freaks the Oriental want of imagination has ever produced. A speech addressed to an educated Japanese audience, or an official document containing a public announcement, departs from the simplicity of the earlier language, and is quite as intelligible to ordinary natives as a document written in lawyer's or doctor's Latin would be to schoolboys who have only learned the de- clensions. I have seen a political lecturer of specially popular gifts, mark you address a great popular audi- ence, and every now and again an assistant had to hold up a placard containing a catch-cry or striking phrase in Chinese characters ! 2O2 Nine Years in Nipon. The inconveniences resulting from all this complexity and obscurity are very great, and various measures have been proposed, chiefly since the Restoration, to meet the urgent need which has arisen for a simple and more effective mode of conveying thought in these days of telegraphs and telephones. Fortunately the monosyllabic Chinese terms so largely adopted lend themselves very readily as readily as Greek or German ones do to combination. Take the word jin-riki-sha, which has occurred frequently in the earlier chapters of this work. A Chinaman seeing the characters on a sign-board which the Japanese pronounce in this way, would at once know that it denoted an office for the hire of " man-power-carriages," although he might not know how to ask for one in words. The sign would be quite as clear to him as that of a finger pointing the way under the effigy of a Highlander taking snuff would be to us. And to the Japanese all obscurity of sound disappears at once on the combination of several signs. The some- what recently coined medical and chemical terms are very expressive and useful for the most part, and represent the stage of physiology and anatomy we have now reached. A nerve, for example, is very beautifully and expressively called a " soul-thread," and many of the anatomical terms explain themselves, instead of being named after some ancient physician who first discovered the objects they denote. The late Prof. Lenormant and Dr. Sayce have supposed that the Tatar group is connected with old Chaldean or Accadian. I should think, on many grounds, that this is highly probable, although the supposition cannot, perhaps, The Langiiage of Nipon. 203 in the nature of things, be very fully verified. Undoubtedly there has been pouring into Japan a constant stream of Chinese influences even from early times. Special Chinese eras have left their traces on the language of Nipon, even as regards style of pronunciation. To the present day a Chinaman is called in Japan a Nankin man, pointing to a period when the south of China was dominant. Another early foreign element which has hitherto been ignored, is Sanskrit. It is obvious enough that many terms might be brought from India along with Buddhism, which, however, did not come directly to Japan. But apart from this, I have the impression that a closer study might reveal some affinity hardly yet suspected. As examples of terms which are perhaps of Buddhist origin, the following occur to me, but the list might be very con- siderably extended. It is to be remembered that Buddhism sprung from an Indian tribe which was pro- bably of Turanian origin. Sewa, Sanskrit, service, attendance, worship. Sewa, Japanese, service, help, duty, business. Shin, S., spirit, soul. Shin, J., spirit, soul, pith of a tree. Sahae, S., help, assistance. Sahai, J., oversight, help. Kusa, S., sacred or sacrificial grass. Kusa, J., grass. Such proper names as Yama, the god of judgment the Pluto of Indian mythology which is Yemma in Japanese, are of course quite numerous. There are many examples of what some may term merely false analogies, but some of them are striking 204 Nine Years in Nipon. enough, and the number of examples is really consider- able. The following may suffice as specimens Na, S., negative, not. Na, ]., negative. Hin, S., deficient, destitute. Hiii) J., poor, wanting. Han, S. (pronounced ha with nasal sound), yes, aye. Hai, J., yes, aye. Mudha, S., deprived of reason. Muda, ]., useless, vain, ineffective. Kanaka, S., gold. Kane, J., money, metal. Shikar, S., hunt, chase. Shikari, }., hunt, hunter, sportsman. Nak, S., nose. Hana, J., nose. Bin, S., lute (nasal sound of n). Biwa, ]., lute. Hans, S., goose. Gan, J., goose. I shall now mention, and very briefly for lack of space, some of the more striking and interesting features of the language. There is a tendency to make etiquette supreme even here, and it requires great alertness to keep oneself right, in addressing different classes. In speaking of the members of one's own household, humble terms are used ; while you must needs grovel to the man who is hardly more than your equal. In the earlier years of my stay in Japan I blandly asked an official how his brat (segare) was. This would have been the appropriate and modest term to apply to one's own child, as he at once showed by saying, with a smile, The Language 0/ Nipon. 205 the brat was very well indeed. The honourable country, or hat, or stick, at once indicates, in spite of the Japanese horror of pronouns, that your native land or personal pro- perty is referred to with laudatory deference. Terms of an evil meaning are rarely used directly in courteous conversation, and words of a similar sound, with a different meaning, are also studiously avoided. Shi means death, and also four, but it is better to use another term to express four. The same dread of words of evil omen is widely spread amongst nations in a low stage of culture, as for example, in Samoa (see Turner's Samoa, p. 33)- The Japanese use water greatly, and I was not sur- prised, therefore, to find that their vocabulary is mar- vellously rich in expressive terms connected with rain, hot water, cold water, and the like. So it is with rice culture, navigation, fishing, and other industries which are prominent in the country ; the terms connected with them are numerous, and full of fine distinctions, illustrat- ing the value of what Dugald Stewart called " attention." I venture to doubt whether some have not spoken a little too deprecatingly of the colloquial language. It does indeed occupy a very ignoble position in Japan at present, but there are new and powerful forces now in operation, which must inevitably raise its level somewhat. It is necessary only to mention the growth of public speaking, which will, I am sure, become more and more a necessity as the liberal movement towards popular representation becomes realised in living institutions. When the collo- quial language, which is a necessity in the senate and on the platform, becomes a powerful political engine, it will 206 Nine Years in Nipon. speedily come to be associated with the grandest and gravest thoughts in the minds of the people. Even now one might almost detect some rising perception of the ridiculousness of the inflated style now in use amongst the educated classes. In a colloquial newspaper which is said to have by far the largest circulation in Japan, a writer argues that the sinical authors, that is those who write in Chinese, are like artists whose sketches of dragons and other fabled animals, which nobody ever saw to compare them with, seem wonderfully accurate and beautiful, but when the same gentlemen condescend to draw anything from real life their failures are very conspicuous. He ends by very sensibly advocating greater care on the part of colloquial writers in securing fidelity to the facts of na- ture. The idea may perhaps be thought suggestive of the future prospects of this part of the language. Some writers on the subject ignore the existence of works of a grave cast in colloquial Japanese. Not to speak of volumes of well-known sermons by different Japanese authors several minor Christian publications have already been issued and circulated widely, and many others are projected. One or two lucid and lively little scientific brochures have also recently got into print, and been widely circu- lated amongst an intelligent class who cannot read books in the Chinese style, and who crave for something more solid than romances of the old school, or the blood and thunder of the half-penny dailies that circulate largely in Tokio. A strong crusade has been initiated against Chinese as a medium for scientific purposes. Those who have distinguished themselves chiefly in the advocacy The Language of Nipon. 207 have unfortunately not enjoyed any great reputation as Chinese scholars amongst their countrymen in Japan, but nevertheless the time has now come when it may fairly be raised as a practical question whether Japanese progress is compatible with the fetters imposed by such a compli- cated system as the use of the Chinese characters in- volves. English has also been proposed for adoption, and it is easy for foreigners to learn because it is blunt, truthful, straightforward. An excellent business man a German told me that his countrymen in the far east greatly preferred to carry on their correspondence in Eng- lish even with other Germans ! It has been proposed as a kind of compromise to use Romanised transliterations of the Japanese characters. The difficulties in the way are great. An accurate ortho- graphy sacrifices the practical benefit of an agreement in the spelling with the prevailing pronunciation. Nikk5 would be spelled Nitsukuau, while Tokio would be lengthened into Toukiyau. Were the Japanese to adopt the Italian vowels and spell their words as good speakers now sound them, it is dreaded that we might make one or two mistakes as to how those words were spelled many centuries ago a catastrophe too appalling for us seriously to contemplate ! My only fear is that the love of com- plexity is too deeply engrained in the Japanese mind for us to hope for immediate great benefits from any new sys- tem. Japanese learn to write our script characters with great elegance and clearness. But in the main street of Tokio there is a gilded sign-board gracefully written in English letters, but so cleverly obscure that almost no