1 OQO EVERY-DAY JAPAN UNIVERSITY OF THEATRE STREET, ASAKUSA, TOKYO. EVERY-DAY JAPAN WRITTEN AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS' RESIDENCE AND WORK IN THE COUNTRY BY ARTHUR LLOYD, M.A. LECTURER IN THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY, HIGHER NAVAL COLLEGE AND HIGHER COMMERCIAL SCHOOL, TOKYO FORMERLY FELLOW OF PETERHOUSE INTRODUCTION BY COUNT HAYASHI Late Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs and formerly Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary for Japan in London WITH EIGHT PLATES IN COLOUR AND NINETY -SIX REPRODUCTIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS VBR^JSt OF THE UNIVERSITY SCOND IMPRESSION CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO AND MELBOURNE 1909 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE THE title-page to my book will, I hope, make a long preface unnecessary, for it tells the reader all that I have attempted to do in these pages, written at intervals during two or three years to give a simple, straightforward account of Japan as I have seen it in the course of a busy life. I have not seen the country with holiday-making eyes. For that very reason I may fairly claim to have gained a real know- ledge of the people amongst whom I have lived, and with whom, whilst remaining a loyal Briton, I have almost completely identified myself. Ubi bene est ibi patria. The wonderful kindness I have always received in Japan has made me understand how true the phrase is. I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Count Hayashi for the friendly and valuable introduction to my book, and to the Revs. H. B. Walton and C. F. Sweet for help in arranging my material. I also owe many thanks to the Revs. W. C. Gemmill and G. C. MacOwen for " photographic sympathy," as well as to Messrs. T. B. Blow and J. J. Berington, and Miss Gertrude Palmer. Professor Chamberlain I may describe as having been the good genius of my work ; without his encourage- ment I should not have undertaken it. ARTHUR LLOYD. 189763 CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION BY COUNT HAYASHI xv CHAPTER 1. JAPAN THE LAND ....... i 2. THE EMPEROR ........ 12 3. THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR 17 4. EMPRESS AND PRINCES .21 5. THE CITY OF TOKYO . . . . . . . 27 ^ 6. THE LIFE OF ANCIENT YEDO ..... 32 7. MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN ..... 39 8. JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS . . . . . 49 y 9. JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS (concluded) . . . 57 10. SOME THOUGHTS ON JAPANESE COMMERCE 61 11. PRINCE ITO. 65 12. Two LIVING PIONEERS OF JAPAN'S GREATNESS . . 69 13. THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE 76 14. THE JAPANESE NOBILITY ...... 81 15. THE SAMURAI .84 16. WHO'S WHO IN TOKYO . . . . 91 17. THE IMPERIAL DIET 96 18. THE COURTS OF LAW 100 19. THE MARKETS AND FAIRS OF TOKYO .... 109 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 20. SHOPS 113 21. AN ARISTOCRATIC COUNTRY TOWN . . . . 116 , 22. LIFE IN A TEA, SILK, SAK OR SHOYU DISTRICT . . 121 23. LIFE IN AN AGRICULTURAL DISTRICT . . . 126 24. VILLAGE LIFE ........ 131 25. THE VILLAGE PILGRIMAGE ...... 145 26. THE SAKURADA GATE ....... 149 27. THREE WORTHIES OF YEDO 153 28. THE JAPANESE STAGE ....... 157 29. THE POLICE ........ 161 30. THE DOCTOR . .165 31. THE STORY-TELLER 169 32. A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS . . . . 174 33. A POEM AND ITS INTERPRETATION .... 179 34. A WRESTLING MATCH AT THE EKOIN TEMPLE . . 183 35. SIGHTS AND CRIES IN TOKYO STREETS .... 188 36. A VISIT TO THE FOX-GOD'S ORACLE . . . 192 37. KAMAKURA 198 38. KARUIZAWA 205 39. NIKKO ......... 210 40. HAKONE 216 41. TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 222 42. AN AFTERNOON WITH A SOCIALIST IN UYENO PARK . 240 43. No. 324 .... 244 % 44. A PALACE OF VICE 249 45. INKYO . . . 256 CONTENTS ix CHAPTER PAGE 46. FUKUZAWA AND THE KEIOGIJUKU . . 259 47. JAPANESE SCHOOLS ... .264 48. THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE STUDENT . . 268 - 49. GRADUATION AND AFTER ... . 274 50. STUDENTS FROM OTHER LANDS . . . 280 51. THE SHUSHI PHILOSOPHER . . . 284 52. MONEY-LENDERS AND LANDLORDS ..... 288 v 53. A MARRIAGE IN JAPAN ... . 295 54. A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE : i, A PICTURE . . 301 - 55. A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE : 2, A FEW GRAINS OF SALT 306 56. HOUSE-CLEANING 310 57. JAPANESE THOUGHT ON THE CHANGES IN HOME LIFE . 313 58. WOMAN'S WORK IN JAPAN 317 59. PROVERBIAL WISDOM CONCERNING CHILDREN . . . 323 60. JAPANESE FUNERALS ....... 326 61. SOME CONTRASTS 333 62. JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS ...... 337 63. JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS (concluded) .... 342 x 64. OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES 347 APPENDIXES A : AN OUTLINE OF JAPANESE HISTORY DOWN TO THE BE- GINNING OF THE MOVEMENT WHICH CULMINATED IN THE RESTORATION OF IMPERIAL RULE . . . 351 B : THE RESTORATION OF IMPERIAL POWER IN JAPAN . . 358 C : A FEW WORDS ON JAPANESE RELIGION .... 366 INDEX 373 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS COLOURED PLATES THEATRE STREET, ASAKUSA, TOKYO Frontispiece THE RED GATE OF THE IMPERIAL UNIVERSITY, TOKYO . Facing page 30 THE RICE HARVESTS OF JAPAN 128 A JAPANESE GREENGROCER CALLING FOR ORDERS . . 190 THE LAKE, WITH THE THEATRE AND TOWER, ASAKUSA PARK . 228 THE POND OF JIUNISO, NEAR TOKYO . . . . ,, 260 A LADIES' DINNER PARTY ... . 302 A WINTER'S MORNING IN A COUNTRY TEMPLE . . . . ,,332 BLACK AND WHITE PLATES PACKING RICE ........ Facing page 4 WASHING SEAWEED ON THE MUD-FLATS NEAR TOKYO . 4 MOUNT FUJI FROM LAKE MOTOSU . . . . . 6 MOUNT FUJI FROM KAMI YOSHIDA . . . . . . ,, 6 A GARDEN IN KYOTO : WINTER 8 THE JAPANESE BROADS, TSUCHIURA, NEAR MITO . . 8 THE " MEN'S SLOPE " LEADING TO HOUMONJI TEMPLE AT IKEGAMI 8 ENTRANCE TO THE IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO . . . . ,, ,, 16 NICHIREN TEMPLE AT IKEGAMI . . . . . .,,,,16 THE LATE MADAME SAISHO ATSUKO, POETESS, AND FRIEND OF THE EMPRESS ........... 24 THE GREEK CATHEDRAL, TOKYO . . . . . . ,, 28 A BUSINESS STREET IN TOKYO 28 ON THE SUMIDA RIVER, TOKYO 28 A JAPANESE FIRE BRIGADE DISPLAY . . . . . 34 THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE ON KUDAN HILL, TOKYO . . . ; , 44 THE HIGHER NAVAL COLLEGE. . . . . . . 44 THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT . . . . . . . ,, ,, 44 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS SHIPPING ON THE SUMIDA RIVER, TOKYO . . . Facing page 62 A RIVER SCENE NEAR THE FISH MARKET, TOKYO . . . 62 THE LjAKE IN THE UNIVERSITY GROUNDS, TOKYO . . . ,, 82 A BUSY STREET LEADING TO THE TEMPLE IN THE ASAKUSA WARD, TOKYO 82 THE ANCIENT CASTLE OF MATSUMOTO IN SHINSHU . . . 98 A JAPANESE WELL . . . . . . . ,, 98 INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,, TOKYO, DURING VACATION 98 THE INTERIOR OF A LAUNDRY 114 A POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S SHOP 114 A SMALL TEA HOUSE IN A GARDEN NEAR TOKYO, FAMOUS FOR ITS FLOWERING PLUMS . . . . . . . 122 THE GARDEN OF A JAPANESE GENTLEMAN'S HOUSE . . 122 AN ITINERANT PIPE-CLEANER . . . . . . 132 A SQUATTER'S CABIN 132 A BUDDHIST PRIEST, WITH His ACOLYTE , 138 THE ALTAR OF A TENDAI BUDDHIST TEMPLE, PREPARED FOR THE FEAST OF O BON 138 THE STATUE OF KUSUNOKI MASASHIGE IN FRONT OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO 148 A PILGRIMS' INN ........... 148 MEMORIAL TEMPLE OF A SHOGUN, SHIBA PARK, TOKYO . . ,,148 THE KABUKIZA, TOKYO'S LEADING THEATRE . . . . 156 A CANDY-SELLER 156 A JAPANESE POLICEMAN IN WINTER COSTUME, OUTSIDE A POLICE- BOX .. 162 A PRIVATE WARD IN THE TOKYO HOSPITAL . . . . 162 A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS, AND His WIFE . . . . 174 OUT-PATIENTS' ROOM IN THE TOKYO HOSPITAL . . . 174 A WRESTLERS' BOOTH 182 A QUIET GAME OF CHEQUERS . . . . . . 182 A CAKE-SELLER ,,,,188 A CLOG-MAKER AT WORK . . . . . . .,,,,188 AN ITINERANT CANDY-SELLER, WITH A "MAME DAIKO " DRUM 188 HANEDA, EIGHT MILES FROM TOKYO . . . . . 192 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii THE INNER MOST SHRINE OF THE INARI TEMPLE AT H AXED A Facing page 192 THE APPROACH TO THE FOX-GOD'S TEMPLE AT HANEDA, SHOWING THE VOTIVE " TORII " . . . . . ,, 196 THE BRONZE STATUE OF BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA . . . ,, 196 THE BRIDGE LEADING TO THE TEMPLE OF HACHIMAN, KAMAKURA ,, 202 THE TEMPLE OF HACHIMAN, THE GOD OF WAR, AT KAMAKURA . ,, 202 THE CRYPTOMERIA AVENUE LEADING TO NIKKO . . . 212 MOUNTAINS AND RIVER AT NIKKO . . . . . . ,,,,212 ON THE ROAD FROM NIKKO TO THE ASHIWO COPPER MINES . . ,, 212 THE TEMPLE OF THE Zojoji, SHIBA PARK, TOKYO . . 222 WISTARIA AT THE BENTEN LAKE, SHIBA PARK, TOKYO . ,, 222 IN THE PARK AT ASAKUSA, TOKYO , 226 A GARDEN IN TOKYO ........ 226 SIDE ENTRANCE TO THE ASAKUSA TEMPLE AND PARK . . ,,226 THE TOWER, ASAKUSA PARK . . . . . . . 230 A FETE, ASAKUSA PARK .......,,,, 230 THE FLOWERING CHERRY . . . . . . . 234 THE SACRED PIGEONS AT ASAKUSA 234 THE SHINOBAZU LAKE, UYENO PARK, TOKYO . . . 238 " TORII" IN UYENO PARK, TOKYO. . . . . 238 INMATES OF A YOSHIWARA . . . . . . . ,,,,250 A JAPANESE ASPASIA AND HER ATTENDANTS . . . . 250 THE EXTERIOR OF A YOSHIWARA . . . . . . ,,,,250 A JAPANESE ASPASIA AND HER ATTENDANT . . . . 254 THE HAIR-DRESSER ........,,,, 254 A HAWKER OF BREAD AND CAKES ...... 254 JAPANESE FENCERS ........,, 270 How THE JAPANESE KEEP WARM IN WINTER . . . . 270 VIEW NEAR AGEMATSU ON THE NAKASENDO . . . 290 MlYAJIMA IN THE INLAND SEA 290 A SUNNY CORNER ON A WINTER'S DAY . . . . 290 THE " SHIMADA " COIFFURE GENERALLY WORN BY UNMARRIED WOMEN . 300 THE " SHIMADA " COIFFURE WITH WHITE BAND FOR MOURNING 300 STYLE OF HAIR-DRESSING FOR A MARRIED WOMAN . . . ,, 300 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS A SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL STYLE OF HAIR-DRESSING . . Facing page 300 PLAYING THE "GEKKIM" A KIND OF LUTE . . . ,, 308 WASHING DAY: DRYING THE CLOTHES . . . . ' ,, 308 A JAPANESE HOUSE AND GARDEN . . . . . ,, 308 BUDDHIST FUNERAL PROCESSIONS . . . . . 326 THE ENTRANCE TO A JAPANESE HOUSE . . . . . ,,,,326 A LEPER BY THE ROADSIDE . . . . . . 338 A BELLE 338 A DEALER IN PAPER LANTERNS . . . . . . ,, 338 A DANCING GIRL . . 348 A GIRL DRESSED AS A DANCING BOY . . . . . ,, 348 A JAPANESE DOMESTIC CUSTOM . . . . . . 348 PRIESTS ON A BRIDGE AT IKEGAMI . . . . . . 366 A BUDDHIST TEMPLE, SHOWING THE GALLERY CONNECTING IT WITH THE PRIESTS' HOME . . . . . . ,, 366 INTRODUCTION BV COUNT HAYASHI IT is the opinion of all those who have paid any attention to the progress of the world that the Pacific Ocean will, at a not very distant date, become one of the principal theatres of commercial and political activity ; in other words, that events in the Far East will become more and more matters of world-wide interest as time progresses. It is meet, therefore, that those who are interested in the affairs of the world should pay more attention to the characteristics, customs, and manners of the nations which live in that quarter of the globe, and who are likely to be necessary factors in the events which are expected to happen. For without suitable information it is always impossible to form a proper judgment about passing events. Of all the nations in the Far East, Japan is the one best qualified to become a principal factor, whether active or passive, in any emergency that may arise in that part of the world, and consequently it seems impossible for the world to have too much information or knowledge about her and her people. Since the close of the two great wars undertaken by Japan, hundreds of works about her have been published in Europe and America ; but by far the greater number of these have been from the pens of tourists whose observation of the country has been limited by the shortness of their sojourn, or else from those of writers who have studied the subject only superficially and who have trusted to their imagination to make up for the xvi INTRODUCTION deficiency of their knowledge. Such works are very amusing, and may be useful for killing time, but the ideas gathered from their statements are not only far from being correct but are actually at times misleading, so that they are more injurious than useful as aids in forming a judgment on the events occurring in the Far East " Every-day Japan " is a work whose author has been resident in the country for a quarter of a century, in a position requiring him to be in daily contact with the higher and more intellectual classes of the people, and who has thus had every opportunity for study and observation. Indeed, it may be said that he has a further advantage over even those writers who have been born and brought up in the country. It is said that fish do not see water, nor do Polar bears feel the cold. Native writers on subjects like those the present work deals with do not even think that anything which has been happening daily in their own immediate surroundings ever since their infancy can possibly be worthy of notice ; the author of this work, on the contrary, being a foreigner, is able for this very reason to make a selection of striking facts, and, being also entirely free from local prejudice, is better able to arrive at just conclusions on the matters coming under his observation. I do not hesitate to say that the present work is one of the most useful contributions we have had to our stock of information, and I feel sure that it will be very helpful to those readers who are desirous of forming a sound and correct judgment on the problems that are arising and that may arise in the Far East. TADASU HAYASHL EVERY-DAY JAPAN CHAPTER I JAPAN THE LAND ENGLISHMEN, and Westerners in general, often speak of Japan as " little." If we speak of the stature of the average Japanese man or woman it is undoubtedly true that the Empire of the Rising Sun is inhabited by a small race. But it is not equally true that the Empire itself is a small one. Japan has had the fortune during the last few years to find herself engaged in war against two colossal neighbours China and Russia. In both those wars the Japanese David has con- quered the Goliath that opposed him, and as he stood by the outstretched form of his prostrate foe, he has been hailed as "little Japan." The area of Japan proper, not counting its more recent acquisitions, such as Formosa or Saghalien, is 27,062 Japanese ri, corresponding to 382,400 square kilometres, or 162,655 square miles in our English reckoning. Japan is, therefore, consider- ably larger than the British Isles, especially since its more recent developments. If we were to place Japan on the map of Europe, it would, without Formosa and Saghalien, cover an area equal to the whole of Germany, minus Bavaria and the Thuringian States ; with its new colonies the area covered would be almost that of the German Empire. Or if we were to put the southernmost point of Kyushu in the south of Sicily, it would make a long narrow country covering the whole of Italy, Switzerland, Alsace-Lorraine, Baden, Wiirtemberg, Hesse, and the Rhine provinces of Prussia. Or if you placed its southernmost point at Assouan, in Egypt, which is on the same parallel of latitude with the south of Japan, you would get a 2 EVERY-DAY JAPAN long narrow Empire reaching from there to about Warsaw, in Poland, and containing a population about equal to that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We never talk of " little " Germany, or " little " Austria, or even " little " Italy. The word is a mis- nomer also in the case of Japan. Japan is an island Empire consisting of five and a half large islands (Hondo, or the main island, Kyushu, Shikoku, Yezo, Formosa, and half Saghalien), and about six hundred smaller ones, stretching from the Pescadores, between Formosa and China, to the Kurile Islands, from the most northern of which the mountains of Kamchatka can easily be descried It has a coastline out of all proportion to its area, and good harbours are to be found nearly everywhere, but especially in the southern and western portions of Old Japan. Official returns, giving the total area of the country as 27,06 1*93 square ri, give the coast- line as 4,432*84 ri, which works out at one mile of coastline to every 3*64 miles of the surface area. In some parts, such as Shikoku or Kyushu, there is one mile of coastline to every two and a half miles of surface area. Yet, notwithstanding the topographical advantages of their country, the Japanese have never been a great seafaring nation. The reason for this is not far to seek. To the west and south they could, indeed, make voyages of short duration such as their ships were capable of undertaking, and in the days before the restrictive policy of lyeyasu had sealed Japan from all inter- course with the outside world, Japanese traders, and, far more frequently, Japanese pirates, might be met with along the coasts and rivers of China, in Korea, and as far as Siam and Cochin China. But to the east lay the great Pacific Ocean, a waste of waters all but impossible for the Japanese to traverse in the days of small sailing ships such as the country had to put up with during her long mediaeval period. Thus, the Pacific Ocean, with its difficulties and unknown terrors, was a barrier to Japanese navigation in the east, whilst the Government policy during three centuries kept the Japanese sailors from the more accessible waters to the west and south. All that remained for the seafaring enterprise of the people was the internal JAPAN THE LAND 3 trade among the numerous islands of the Japanese Archipelago and the teeming fisheries in the northern seas. Both of these the Japanese have known how to utilise to their utmost extent. When the call came for Japan to become a maritime nation in the modern sense of the term, there was no lack of mariners trained and experienced by long habit in the ways of the ocean. One peculiarity of the seas surrounding the Japanese Archi- pelago is the presence of two gulf streams, the one cold, the other warm. The Kuroshiwo, or Black Current, is produced near the Equator by the action of the trade winds, flows along the coasts of China till it strikes the shores of Japan, follows the Japanese coastline as far north as about 38 degs. N.L., and thence bends eastward across the Pacific Ocean, where it spends its remaining strength in washing the coasts of British Columbia. The other current is a cold one : it rises near the mouth of the Amur River, and, flowing southwards between the mainland of Asia and the island of Saghalien, washes the western coasts of Yezo and the main island of Hondo, or Honshu. One result of these two contrary currents is to produce sur- prising differences of climate and temperature between places which are really only a few miles apart and which lie almost on the same parallel of latitude. Thus in Tokyo, which is on about the same parallel as Madrid, we have a winter which, while damp and raw, cannot be said to be inclemently cold so long as the sun is shining; while a few miles off, around Kamakura and Hayama, the winters may almost be said to be as mild as on the Riviera. Snow falls but seldom, and when it falls it rapidly disappears. If, however, we take the train running west, across the great backbone range of mountains in the vicinity of the Sea of Japan, into the provinces of Shinshu and Echigo, we are at once made conscious of the influence of the cold current from the north. Here we get a winter not unlike the same season in the southern parts .of Eastern Canada, dry and bracing, with several feet of snow for many months at a time. And yet the distance between Tokyo and Niigata is no greater than that between London and Bath, and the 4 EVERY-DAY JAPAN two places are on almost the same parallel of latitude. This is, of course, only one of the many causes producing differences of climate between one part of Japan and another. The reader will readily understand that a long narrow strip of island terri- tory, beginning just north of the Tropics and ending not far short of the Arctic circle, must of necessity offer an almost infinite variety of climates. It is as hard to characterise tHe climate of Japan as it is to describe in a few words the chief characteristics of its people. Another result of the gulf streams, and especially of the cold stream flowing down from the north, is to bring immense quantities of excellent fish into Japanese waters. The extreme importance of the fishing industry to Japan will be understood when it is realised that the fisheries give occupation to about 900,000 families, or over 3,000,000 individuals, amounting to about 1 5 per cent, of the whole population ; that the 3,000,000 fishermen require 420,000 boats for the purposes of their industry, and that the average annual product of the fish taken is 477>399> I 73 yen, or, in English money, 47,739,917. Fish is considerably cheaper in Japan than it is in England, so that these items would need to be increased considerably in order to make a good comparison with our British industries. The Japanese is, in the main, a fish eater both by religion and by inclination ; the fish which he cannot use for eating is put on his fields as a fertiliser, and the fishing population along the coast not only occupy themselves with fishing, but reap a good harvest from the seaweed and other marine products which are used sometimes for food, sometimes as fertilisers, sometimes, as with coral or pearls, for articles of dress and ornament. Another marine industry is the manufacture of salt, which is almost entirely obtained by evaporation from brine, there being no rock-salt in the country. Salt is not, however, so important a factor in Japanese cooking as it is in ours. The whole of the Japanese Archipelago is mountainous. The two southern islands of Kyushu and Shikoku have ranges radiating from a central point in all directions to the coast and forming a number of small districts cut off from one another PACKING RICE. Photograph by y. Knami, Japan. WASHING SEAWEED ON THE MUD-FLATS NEAR TOKYO. JAPAN THE LAND 5 by high ranges of hills which serve to isolate the inhabitants of one province from those of another. In the main island there is a backbone range running nearly the whole length of the island, with short spurs running out towards the coast on either side. In the deep valleys between these spurs there are rapid streams making their noisy way down to the sea and carrying with them fragments of earth and rock which con- stantly contribute their quota to the numerous alluvial plains to be found in the neighbourhood of the larger rivers. These alluvial plains, such as the plain of Musashi which stretches out for miles around Tokyo, or the plains around Nagoya and Osaka, are the great farming districts which grow the best and most succulent kinds of rice. They are not pleasant districts to live in, for the Japanese farmer is lavish in his use of manures of a pungent odour for the fertilisation of his rice-fields, but in summer and early autumn, when the whole country is full of fields of waving corn, there is a look about the " agricultural pancake " of Musashi which carries the mind of the English- man back to the similar beauties of our own fen country, the land of meres and whitening cornfields that Charles Kingsley loved so well. There is a Japanese saying that the farmer, whose hours of work are very long, worships the setting sun as he comes home from the fields, and I have often noticed on the plains of Musashi the same sunset effects which Kingsley's writings taught me to look for and admire in our own eastern counties. As the country slopes upwards from the alluvial plains to the mountain spurs a change comes over the scene. The paddy field disappears, " upland " rice, wheat, or barley taking its place, low mulberry bushes are planted to form a sort of hedge around the fields, and we get patches of sweet potatoes, daikon, egg- plant, and numerous other vegetables unknown in England both to the farmer and to the cook. Further up the hillsides we find isolated patches of cultivation wherever the land is flat enough to bear it ; but we get into the region of trees. We leave the feathery bamboo in the low-lying lands and gently sloping plains, together with the oaks and other deciduous trees ; 6 EVERY-DAY JAPAN we rise to the elevations at which we get the pines and conifers, the tall bamboo grass and rushes, and at last, as on Fuji or the mountains of Hakone, emerge on the region of short grass and moss-grown or bare rock. What strikes the eye wherever we go is the wonderful greenness of the country, a greenness and freshness of which the eye never wearies. Japan is, indeed, the land of refreshing rains and mists, and though a summer traveller may sometimes complain when his excursions are stopped and picnics put off on account of constant rains in July or August, yet on the whole he gets his quid pro quo in the constant verdure of this land of the summer rain. For, if Japan is a land of mists and rain, it is equally, if not more conspicuously even, the land of sunshine. Its name, Nippon, the " Origin of the Sun," is no misnomer. Here we may, on almost any winter's day, see exemplified the fable of the strife between the sun and the wind. You walk on the shady side of the street on a bright January morning, and the damp cold penetrates to your very bones. You cross to the other side, and in a few minutes you begin to wish that you had left your top-coat at home. You sit on your verandah taking your cup of afternoon tea and enjoying the genial warmth of the evening sun. You watch it set behind Fuji and the Oyama range of hills, and in three minutes you go shivering back into the house and begin shovelling coal on to the stove. Sunshine is abundant in Japan, and it is absolutely needed. The whole domestic architecture of the Japanese is arranged with a view to catching every possible ray of the precious commodity. Records are kept of our daily and yearly rainfall, but I have never yet seen any statistics of sunlight. But to return to the mountains of Japan. They are all the result of seismic disturbances and volcanic eruptions in the distant past There are many extinct volcanoes, and some which are still active. Most prominent amongst the former stands the isolated cone of Mount Fuji, the "peerless mountain," as it is sometimes called from the fact that its name may be written with two Chinese characters, meaning respectively " not " and " two," and giving the combined idea that there are MOUNT FUJI FROM LAKE MOTOSU. MOUNT FUJI FROM KAMI YOSHIDA. PJiotografhs by permission of T. />'. Blow, l-'stj. JAPAN THE LAND ; " no two " mountains like unto Fuji. In the vague religious sentiment which is so common among the Japanese in their meditations on the beauties of nature, Mount Fuji is sometimes almost deified, and the feeling is one which can easily be under- stood. It is not necessary to make the ascent, though that is no very difficult task: the tourist may content himself with the easy journey along the chain of beautiful lakes that surround the base of the mountain. He will still be able to appreciate to the full the awe which the mountain strikes into the native heart. Until a few years ago Fuji could claim the distinction of being the highest mountain in the dominions of the Mikado. Since the war with China it has been obliged to take a second place. The island of Formosa, which was annexed by Japan after that war, contains a higher peak, Mount Morrison, or, as the Japanese have rechristened it, Mount Niitaka. This mountain measures 14,355 feet to Fuji's 12,365, but it lies in a district of Formosa which is little known and difficult of access. It can never have to the Japanese mind the same associations religious, historical, literary, and artistic that Fuji claims. Fuji will always be to the Japanese mind the peerless mountain. Among other high peaks we may mention the group of mountains known as the " Japanese Alps," in the very centre of the main island, and from which the " backbone range " runs out northwards and westwards, extending to Saghalien in the one direction and to Formosa in the other. These peaks are Norikura-take (10,087 ft.), Ontake (10,446 ft), Kaigane (10,335 ft-) and one or two peaks of similar altitudes. But this district, beautiful though it is, is too wild to please the Japanese mind to the same extent as other more favoured localities have done. Nature in this country is beautiful everywhere, and the Japanese has no need to travel merely to find scenic beauty. He travels for health, recreation, rest, and these he finds best when he can combine with good air and fine scenery the hot water which is always to be found bubbling out somewhere or other in the neighbourhood of a volcano, active or extinct. 8 EVERY-DAY JAPAN The principal active volcanoes are Asama (8,130 ft.), Shirane- san (7,500 ft), Nasu (6,300 ft), Aso (5,222 ft), Kirishima (5,576 ft), and Bandai. There is also the volcanic island of Oshima, or Vries Island, whose smoking cone may be seen as the traveller ap- proaches Yokohama from the south or west. But the onsen, or hot-water springs, are distributed more widely than the active volcanoes. Thus the Hakone district, which may be taken as a supplement to Mount Fuji, is full of hot springs Miyanoshita, Atami, Yugahara, etc. etc. though it contains no active volcano. Another group of springs clusters round the outskirts of the volcanic district of Shinshu, with Asama and Shirane as its centre, the principal springs in this district being Ikao and Kusatsu. Mount Nasu accounts for a widely scattered group of springs which fill with hot water the surrounding district as far as the beautiful valley of Shiobara, whilst away in the south, in the island of Kyushu, the onsen are to be found not only where volcanoes are but where they have been. The difference between Japanese and Western tastes in the matter of summer resorts may be well illustrated by the case of Hakone. Hakone is the name given to a district not far from the base of Fuji and stretching part of the way down the peninsula of Izu as far as Atami. It has numerous hot springs, round which villages have been built, and hotels, which are always crowded with Japanese guests who go there for the hot baths. High up among the hills is a lake, by the side of which are two villages. These villages are filled every summer with European and American visitors, who go, grumble about the rain, enjoy themselves, and the next year go again. But there is no hot water, and, as a consequence, there are no Japanese visitors. Karuizawa, the greatest summer resort for foreigners in Japan, is in the same way almost unknown amongst the natives, though the foreign visitors during the summer may be counted by the hundred. Hakone is one of the smaller lakes in Japan. There are many of these small lakes here and there. Haruna, Chuzenji, Suwa, Inawashiro, Kawaguchi, Shoji, Motosu, are all noted for their beauty. A lover of the Norfolk Broads will find his soul A GARDEN IN KYOTO: WINTER. THE JAPANESE BROADS, TSUCHIURA NEAR Ml TO. Photographs by permission of T. B. Blow, Esq. THE " MEN'S SLOPE," LEADING TO HOUMONJI TEMPLE AT IKEGAMI. JAPAN THE LAND 9 contented with a few days among the meres and lakes around Chiba and Narita, whilst the largest lake, Lake Biwa, which is 1 6 ri in length and 81 ri in circumference (the ri being 2*440 English miles), will remind the traveller on the con- tinent of Europe of the peaceful beauties of the Lake of Constance. A land abounding in steep mountains with innumerable springs and mountain torrents naturally abounds in waterfalls. There are many beautiful cascades in Japan, some of the most beautiful amongst them being the ones around Nikko, the show- place for Japanese scenery. Nikko is a sacred place, the beauty of its location having probably led to its selection as a place of religious seclusion. The Buddhist monks, like their Christian confreres in mediaeval Europe, were fond of placing their religious houses in beautiful and retired spots. Thus, as rivals of Nikko for natural beauty, we may mention the sacred villages of Hiyeizan, near Kyoto, of Minobu, on the banks of the Fujikawa, of Koya San, among the mountains of Kii. It can hardly be expected that a long, narrow, mountainous country like Japan should produce many rivers of any size or volume. The longest river in Japan, the Ishikari, in Yezo, is 167 ri (418 miles); the Shinano river is 100 ri (240 miles), and there is no other river of over 100 ri in length. Few of them are navigable for any great distance from their mouths, and chere is one peculiar feature common to all the rivers which discharge themselves into the Pacific Ocean. In every case the Kuroshiwo gulf stream flowing along the coast has produced a sand-bar at the mouth of the river, which effectually spoils the possibilities of river navigation. Of course rivers which, like the Sumida at Tokyo, flow into a deep land-locked bay are free from the sand-bar. But the Sumida can scarcely be called a navigable river, though the neighbouring Tonegawa is much used by river boats of all kinds. I have spoken at considerable length about the natural beauties of Japan, and I trust I have conveyed to the reader's mind some idea of the scenic charms of this land. The illus- trations which appear in these pages will portray these beauties io E VERY-DAY JAPAN far more vividly than my pen can possibly hope to do, and yet no photograph can reproduce the living hues and warmth of the actuality. The subject is one of importance, for the Japanese character has been markedly influenced by the scenes amidst which this people has dwelt for so many centuries, and you will find in the most prosaic of Japanese a sentimental streak which comes into prominence as soon as he touches on the natural beauties of his country. But it is time to pass on to the consideration of the people who inhabit this beautiful land. In the year 1873 the population of Japan was 33,300,675. Thirty years later, in 1903, it had risen to 46,732,841, not in- cluding the 3,000,000 (or thereabouts) of Formosans who had during the interval been added to the Empire. The population of Old Japan has, therefore, during the last thirty years in- creased by over 13,000,000 in a perfectly natural way; indeed, the increase may have been more rapid, as in the earlier censuses the population may not have been quite so large as estimated, whereas the later estimates are based on more accurate calculations. It not un frequently happened, for instance, in earlier censuses that a man was reckoned twice in the place where he was residing and in the place where he " belonged." Such errors are now almost entirely avoided. The population of Japan is smaller than that of Russia (128,000,000), the United States (76,000,000), and Germany (60,000,000). It is about equal to that of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (49,000,000). It is larger than that of Great Britain (42,000,000), France (39,000,000), or Italy (33,000,000). There is no immigration into the country, yet the increase of population year by year compares very favourably with the growth of the United States. Japan is not only a great country but a growing nation, and a growing nation must have elbow-room. In this one fact will be found the kernel of the whole Far Eastern question for years to come. At the end of 1903 there were living abroad 226,469 Japanese, of whom 73,000 were in Australia, 68,000 in Hawaii, 39,000 in North America, and 41,000 in Asia (mainly Korea). JAPAN THE LAND n Europe only took 323, and only 7 had found their way to South America. The principal cities are Tokyo, the Imperial Residence (the name having been changed from Yedo in 1869 when the Shogunate had been definitely abolished and the Emperor took up his abode in his " Eastern Capital ") ; Kyoto, sometimes known as Saikyo, or the Western Capital, where the Emperors resided during their centuries of seclusion; Osaka, Nagoya, Sendai, Yokohama, Kobe and Hyogo, Nagasaki, etc. etc. Some of these cities have beauties of their own, but there is none that can compare for architectural magnificence with any of the greater towns of Europe and America. The Japanese rarely build houses of stone, though they are gradually learning to do so. The streets of a Japanese town often present a very poor and mean appearance, while in the country the cottages of the farmers gain all their picturesqueness from the beauties of their surroundings. Japan has for many centuries possessed a few excellent roads and a good many very fair ones. All the large cities were in constant communication with each other during the whole of the mediaeval period, and the people have always been great travellers. Travelling was done on foot, on horseback, or in a palanquin, known as a norimono or kago. These were all supplanted a few years after the beginning of the Meiji era by the far-famed jinriksha, the invention of an American missionary with a sick wife, and now the jinriksha has, in its turn, been superseded, except for short journeys, by the train and electric tramcar. The Japanese is still a lover of travel- ling and all public conveyances are always crowded. There is abundance of water-power throughout the land, but it is not always steady, as the rivers are liable to great variations in volume. Coal is plentiful, so are minerals ; the forests, which have been much neglected in the past, are receiving a good deal of attention, though more is needed, and the Government does all in its power to encourage horse-breeding, cattle-raising, farming, and the introduction of new plants and fruits. CHAPTER II THE EMPEROR WHEN his present Majesty came to the throne, on the death of his father in 1867, he was a mere lad, without political experience or knowledge of men, and the earlier measures of his reign may therefore with justice be accredited to the wise councillors who surrounded him, men like the Princes Iwakura and Sanjo, and the leading retainers of those daimyos, who, like Satsuma, Chosher, Hizen, and Tosa, contributed most to the restoration of his power. But, like our own great Queen of beloved memory, the Sovereign of Japan, as the most permanent member of his own council, retaining his seat continuously, in spite of all the changes wrought by time, political faction, or the needs of accommodation to the wishes of a people, has accumulated a store of wisdom and experience which has made him one of the ripest statesmen in the Empire, no small praise when we think of the great men whom Japan in these latter days has produced He is, so those tell me who have had the opportunity of knowing, a man of great industry. Every morning at eight he is at his work, receiving the reports of his Ministers and trans- acting all the routine business which falls to the daily lot of a modern Sovereign. He takes but few holidays, summer and winter alike he remains in his palace and at his work, and if a Minister comes to him with important business no waking hour is too late for him to attend to the needs of his State. He is said to be frank and straightforward, and to expect all those around him to be possessed of the same virtue. I am told that he has more than once put an end to tale-bearing and unkind gossip among his courtiers by confronting the tale-bearer with 12 THE EMPEROR 13 the person maligned, and requiring an open repetition of the fabrication in the presence of all concerned. He has a marvellous memory, which is of the greatest assistance to him on these and similar occasions. He takes, not only by soft speeches but by solid acts, a lively interest in everything that is likely to advance the progress of the country, and his encouragement is ever ready for any well-considered and deserving scheme of a public-spirited character, just as his purse is always open for the sufferers in any great calamity. His pleasures are simple and innocent. He is fond of horses and dogs ; he is also fond of composing poems, which always have a true and manly ring about them. As a true son of the Conqueror Jimmu and the heir to a line of ancient warriors, he has constantly devoted his best energies to the care of his Army and Navy and the promotion of that peculiar military spirit which, as one of Japan's poets has put it, is as inseparably and as inexplicably connected with Japan as is the flower that blossoms on the wild cherry trees in the mountains. At the same time, as the true and genuine son of those gentler rulers who sat for so long on the secluded throne of Kyoto, or sought refuge in religion from the anxieties of a tempestuous time, he has sought to soften the hardness of the military spirit and thereby has not only brought it back to its primitive beauty but has in many ways changed its character. During all the long days of the Shogunate, the bushi or samurai were much noted for cruelty and vindictiveness. At any rate, such was the character which they bore among foreign nations. Tales of vendetta are constantly cropping up, both in history and in fiction, and the defeated party in a battle always knew what to expect from his vindictive vanquisher. The age of Meiji has reversed that. It opened with amnesties and pardon. The last Shogun, Keiki, who took up arms to support his tottering cause, and who actually set up a rival pretender to the throne, was pardoned Enomoto, who held Yezo for the Shogun and proclaimed a Republic in that island, was pardoned. The like clemency was posthumously granted to the great rebel Saigo, who after the Restoration headed the rebellion of Satsuma. Our 14 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Queen Mary did not behave so generously to Lady Jane Grey and her abettors, and it is no crime for a Sovereign, even in modern times, to hang a rebel or a traitor. His Majesty has gone back to the higher ideals of Hideyoshi and the ancient bus hi, and has thereby brought bushido back nearer to the ideal of Christian perfection. His last exhibition of this generous spirit was given in the conclusion of the peace with Russia, the responsibility for which he manfully took upon his own shoulders. But His Majesty is responsible for other changes in the spirit of bushido. When the Restoration was first accomplished, it was the evident intention of the new Government to maintain the ancient institutions as far as possible. The daimyos, there- fore, who had contributed so much to the bringing about of the new state of things, were left undisturbed in their territories, with large liberties of local jurisdiction. But a very few years showed that it was as impossible for the new Government to keep good order among the clans of Japan as it was for our William III. to keep order in Scotland under the same conditions. There was in both countries an indispensable necessity for breaking up the clans. William III. had to do it by force and to incur the obloquy of the massacre of Glencoe. The Emperor of Japan was more fortunate, for the daimyos resigned of their own free will, asked the Emperor to administer their territories, and released their retainers from their service. The self -obliteration of the daimyos was laudable, more so that of the samurai, who were mostly poor men, and yet gladly resigned their salaries. But, after all, perhaps the most remarkable part of the whole transaction was the touching confidence which the young Sovereign already inspired. The samurai, henceforth known as shizoku (gentlemen), laid aside their twin swords at the word of command and became " Emperor's men " instead of the retainers of a feudal baron. The same whole-hearted service which they had hitherto given to their princeling was now to be given to the Sovereign of a large and united country their own. Of course, military service was open to them, but there were many other ways of serving the State, personified in the Emperor, and there were others THE EMPEROR 15 besides samurai who were admitted to the ranks of the army. The farmer or artisan, when he donned the uniform of his regiment, became for the nonce a bus hi, and often carried the traditions of a bus hi back with him into civilian life. The descendant of the samurai, who was obliged to leave the pro- fession of arms and take his seat on a stool in a merchant's office, learned that his new pursuits need not interfere with the spirit he had inherited from his ancestors. It was the Emperor himself who told his people in one of his poems that " There is no second way whereby to show The love of Fatherland. Whether one stand, A soldier under arms, against the foe, Or stay at home, a peaceful citizen, The way of loyalty is still the same." And that " way of loyalty," which demands from every good citizen a whole-hearted devotion to his country's weal, is the spirit of Old Japan dressed in modern garments, and christened bushido. The name is quite new I never heard it used until a few years ago but the thing itself is as old as the hills of Japan. It has been my privilege during twenty years of residence in Tokyo to instruct large numbers of young men, of all grades and stations, in the elements of the English tongue, and other things. I have found the spirit of bushido as strong amongst the young men preparing themselves for business life as amongst the cadets and officers of the Naval Academy, and at the com- mencement of the war with Russia one of my pupils at the Tokyo Higher Commercial School brought me a poem, the last verse of which I venture to translate, in a foot-note, as giving what, to my mind, is a good exemplification of bushido in its modern applications.* * ' ' When holy peace on Eastern shores Her mellow light once more outpours, Then, the wise Trade-god's wand in hand, We'll build the glories of this land. But now that, on the battle-field Flashes the sword, to you we yield The post of honour. Strike apace Brave scions of a martial race ! " 1 6 E VERY-DAY JAPAN There was a time, before I knew as much of the Japanese character as I do now, when I invariably found it difficult to listen with patience to the loquacious student who would explain to me that he wished to serve his country by making himself a very rich man. I used to think it was a selfish rather than a patriotic ambition, and that the boy was always an arrant hypocrite. I have learned to mistrust my own sweeping judg- ments. There are some cases, of course, of wilful hypocrisy, for there are hypocrites in all nations, and there are cases also of unconscious self-deception. But in a great number of lives it is the expression of that spirit of bushido which teaches a Japanese to put country first and self second ; and this is by no means an ignoble or unprofitable conception of duty. For if the whole nation is prosperous, the individuals composing it will share in the general prosperity, and there are cases in which it is profitable to lose one's life because one thereby saves it. But it is time to return from a long digression. The Emperor has shown both the generosity and the wisdom of the true bus hi in the freewill grant that he made to his subjects of Constitutional Government. This was a promise which it took him over twenty years to fulfil. The promise to order all things after consultation with the people was contained in the first decree issued after the Emperor's assumption of executive power in 1867 the Constitution was not granted until 1890, when the long-desired Parliament was at length opened. The time seemed long to the ardent reformers, doubtless it was equally wearisome to the Emperor himself, who has always shown himself as ardent in the cause of reformation as any of his subjects. But great changes require careful preparation, and there was an immense amount of work that required to be done before the people could profit by the gift of Constitutional Government. The sequel showed that the Emperor and his wise political tutors had not forgotten the promise made in a solemn crisis, and when the right moment came, the Constitution made its appear- ance as the crowning glory of twenty years' work of reformation and organisation. ENTRANCE TO THE IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO. NICHIREN TEMPLE AT IKEGAMI. CHAPTER III THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR IN the very centre of Tokyo, surrounded by moats and massive ramparts of stone, surmounted by gnarled pines which in the old days of mediaeval warfare afforded an excellent shelter for the archers of the garrison, stands the Imperial Palace, consecrated, in Japanese eyes, by the constant presence of His Sacred Majesty. Before it lies an extensive space of turf, dotted here and there with pines, and occupying the whole area between the second and third, or inmost, moat ; and, encircling it behind, is another moat with very high banks, a favourite haunt of wild sea-birds which live here in absolute security, knowing that no man dare touch them. If your business takes you to the Palace you will enter the wide space, either by the modern bridge which leads from the city to the Palace along a wide road finished since the conclusion of the war with Russia, or else through one of the old fortified gates which flank it on north and south, and are known respectively as the Wada Kura Go Mon and the Sakurada Gate. Inside the Maru no uchi, as this open space is called, you will be struck by the strict simplicity that rules everywhere. The Maru no uchi is but a big grass lawn fringed with stunted trees, yet it is grand by virtue of its very simplicity, and we were able to judge of its dimensions a short time ago when the returning army brought its trophies of guns and other implements of war and laid them down here at the feet of His Majesty. There are two approaches to the Palace leading across the inner moat. If (we will suppose it is New Year's Day, and that you have been honoured with a command to attend the reception) you are a humble rider in a jinriksha you will go in by the gate on the left, past the buildings of the Imperial Household c 17 1 8 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Department, and so gain the side door of the Palace. If you are higher up in the social scale, or drive in a carriage, you will go in by the big double bridge known as Niju Bashi, and so arrive at the front entrance of the Imperial residence. You will be surprised to find it a one-storeyed house, but you will nevertheless admire its simple elegance as you are ushered along carpeted corridors to your waiting-room. All day long His Majesty has been receiving his New Year's visitors, and by the time your turn comes, as a foreign employe of the Government, it will be 2 p.m., but the ceremony is not relaxed in its solemn strictness, weary though Majesty may be of bowing to the streams of persons that pass by in slow-moving procession. Presently your turn will come, and you will take your place with the rest and be ushered into the august Presence. You will advance a few steps, make three low bows, conscious that you are doing it very awkwardly, and back out at the opposite door to that by which you came in. Your part of the ceremony is now over, and you may go home and doff your swallow-tail coat. Behind the Palace there are most beautiful gardens, known as Fukiage, and laid out two centuries ago by the Shogun lyemitsu, who here held his revels, as did also his successors in the Shogunate. Since the new Palace has been finished the public are no longer admitted, though in my early days I have been in once or twice. They are extremely beautiful, though personally I think the celebrated gardens of the old Mito Yashiki, now used as a military arsenal, are much finer. First among the forces that have contributed to the Restoration and Regeneration of Japan in days within our memory must be placed the Sovereign of the country. Indeed, it is not saying too much to affirm that if it had not been for His Majesty, both personally and on account of the peculiarly sacred character which the Imperial House holds in the eyes of the people, the Restoration and Regeneration would have been impossible. None but an Emperor of the ancient line could have combined, under conditions of activity, all the various energies of the nation emerging from its long sleep. A Shogunate, even if it had been a new one, taking the place of the Tokugawas, could merely have given THE PALACE OF THE EMPEROR 19 stagnation and called it peace ; the restored rule of the Emperor alone could give and maintain a really national life. When Admiral Togo, at the conclusion of the war, was returning to Tokyo with his ships to be present at the great naval review and to receive the ovations of the citizens and the thanks of his Sovereign, he landed first in the peninsula of Ise, and there offered his thanks at the shrine which all Japan reveres as the most holy place in the whole country. The gods, to whom this service of thanksgiving was offered, are popularly esteemed to be the divine ancestors of the present reigning Sovereign, and the success which has crowned the Japanese arms in the conflict against Russia is considered by the pious sentiment of the country to have been due, not only to the valour of the Japanese rank and file and the prudence of Japanese generals, not only to the many virtues of the reigning Sovereign whose faithfulness to duty has given and sustained the impulse to reform, but also, and mainly, to the invisible aid of the divine Ancestors of the Imperial House, to the long line of Sovereigns, who ruled once as gods on the plains of Heaven, who descended upon Japan in the person of Jimmu Tenno the first earthly Emperor (B.C. 660), from whom all the other Emperors are descended in a long and unbroken line, each at his decease returning to the plains of Heaven, to join the venerable company of divine ancestors whose privilege it is to receive the adoration and worship of the Japanese people, and to watch perpetually with paternal care over the destinies of the beloved land. As a corollary to this conception, the actual occupant of the throne for the time being is often looked upon as the intermediary between the nation and the gods. On solemn occasions of worship it is he that presents the adoration and prayer as representative and mouthpiece of his subjects ; conversely, the wisdom of the divine ancestors descends upon him for the guidance and governance of the people. It is not my purpose to criticise this conception ; my readers will form their own conclusions. It is a conception which must some day be tacitly, if not openly, abandoned ; indeed, there are many Japanese who in moments of frankness will confess that they have abandoned it. At the present time, however, though 20 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the Japanese conception of " a god " (kami) is very widely different from what we mean when we speak of " God," the theory of the divine ancestors is one that is firmly held by the vast majority of the people. It gives the occupant of the Japanese throne a position of influence in the hearts and over the conduct of his subjects which must be seen to be adequately understood. We know, from the history of our own country and that of other European nations, how great is the hold which the legitimate representative of an ancient line of kings has over the minds of his people. We know, from the history of the Roman Empire, how the rulers of the Julian house strove to establish their uncertain tenure of a great position by the fiction of a divine descent, through Julius Caesar and lulus, the son of ^Eneas, from Venus and the company of the dii majores, and how Virgil in his great poem strove to give embodiment to that fiction. Let the reader combine these two ideas, the legitimate descent and the divine ancestry, and then let him take into further account the undoubted personal merits of the present Emperor, and he will see that the combination, so long as it is implicitly accepted, is one which constitutes a most potent claim to loyal devotion. It is theocracy, divine right, constitutionalism, all in one. It gives a marvellous sense of stability to the Japanese conception of the nation, which, like the sacred waters of Isuzu, often taken as a symbol of the Imperial House, is perennial. " There is a stream," says the present Emperor in one of his P emS ' "Men call it Isuzu,* Whose gentle tide hath never ceased to flow, Whose placid bosom ne'er hath been disturbed, Whose course adown the ages knows no end. ****** Go to the wild sea beach, and gath'ring there A handful of smooth pebbles, build therewith A mimic rockery. Though those few stones Should grow into a mountain, scarred and steep, And overgrown with moss, that sacred stream Shall never cease its soft perennial flow." * The Isuzu is a small perennial stream in the valley of Ise, flowing close to the Imperial Shrines. It never dries in the hottest summer, and is therefore taken as a symbol of the Imperial House which, issuing forth from the gods that are worshipped at the Shrine of Ise, shall endure to the end of time. CHAPTER IV EMPRESS AND PRINCES IT was in January, 1867, at the age of barely fifteen, that His Majesty came to the throne. On December 28th in the following year he was married to the Lady Haruko, third daughter of Prince Ichigo Tadaka. The lady, who thus became Empress of Japan, belonged to one of the very select noble families of Kyoto whose privilege it is to supply consorts for the sovereigns of this country. Our European custom of sending to other countries for the wives of our princes and the husbands of our princesses is one which would not commend itself to the Japanese mind at all. The Law of the Imperial Court (Article xxxix.) provides that " marriages of members of the Imperial Family shall be restricted to the circle of the Family or to certain noble houses specially approved by Imperial order," and it stands to reason that even more care than ordinary is taken in the selection of an Empress-Consort. The Empress Haruko has in every way proved herself the worthy Consort of her illustrious husband. That she is a loving wife may be seen from the poems she has from time to time composed in reference to her husband. When, shortly after a great tidal wave had desolated a large portion of the north-east coast of Japan, the Emperor went north to witness some military manoeuvres her wife-like heart went out in joy as she thought of the happiness those northern fishermen would have in a sight of their Sovereign and friend. " This year, I ween, the hardy fishermen Of Matsushima, and the northern land, Shall wet their sleeves with tears of glad content, Because the waves of mercy are so high." 21 22 EVERY-DAY JAPAN When she thinks of him sharing the labours of his troops, to some extent at least, and assisting in the direction of operations during the war with China from the military headquarters at Hiroshima, she writes : "E'en in the cool broad shade the Palace throws, With splashing- sound of waters, and the breeze That sweeps the open halls from end to end, We hardly bear the heat. How shall my lord, In mountain huts that scarce ward off the sun With their poor shingle roofs, endure the grief Of the long days and sleepless summer nights ? " That she is a woman capable of great and abiding friend- ships I know, not only from what has been told me by persons who have the honour of direct access to her presence, but also from the poems which she has written. It is no hypocrisy that prompts her generous heart to give expression of sympathy for the suffering poor. Her practical charity constantly shows the genuineness of her sympathy. " The winter, with its rigours, touches not Our bodies clad in vestments warm and rich: But when we think upon the shivering poor That freeze in their thin rags, the cruel tooth Of pitiless winter bites our inmost heart." She is a woman of culture, and can write of the pleasures of books. " The jewel in a lady's coronet Gleams in her hair and sparkles in the gloom, And yet 'tis naught a sparkle, not a light. The book whose page enlightens the dark mind Is the true treasure." She knows the value of that education which forms the character rather than the intellect, for she can address the students of the Peeresses' School, in which she has always displayed a deep interest, and give them the following sound advice : " The water placed in goblet, bowl, or cup, Changes its shape to its receptacle, And so our plastic souls take various shapes And characters of good or ill, to fit The good or evil in the friends we choose. EMPRESS AND PRINCES 23 Therefore be careful in your choice of friends, And let your special love be given to those Whose strength of character may prove the whip That drives you onward to fair wisdom's goal." She is not a Christian, but she has the true religious mind : " Take heed unto thyself : the mighty God That is the soul of Nature, sees the good And bad that man in his most secret heart Thinks by himself, and brings it to the light." And, lastly, she has shown during the war now so happily closed that she has understood and taken to heart that eminently Christian virtue which her husband has so happily expressed: " The foe that strikes thee, for thy country's sake Smite him with all thy might, but while thou smit'st Remember that thou love him." Better than any Court gossip or anecdotes, these short poems are excellently adapted to the purpose of bringing out truly and in their right colours the inmost hearts of the Rulers of our allied nation. The Emperor has had several children, though not by the Empress, and of these five are now living. The eldest of these, Prince Yoshihito, Haru no miya, was born on August 3ist, 1879, and proclaimed Crown Prince on November 3rd, 1889. He was always an extremely delicate child, and it required the utmost care of the Court physicians, one of them the well-known German, Dr. E. Baelz, to rear him at all. Now that he has come to manhood, however, he seems to have outgrown his former ailments and, though never robust, enjoys good health. He is extremely bright, intelligent, and affectionate, and possesses the love of the people to a very great extent. He was married, in the year 1900, to the Lady Sadako, fourth daughter of the Prince Kujo, the head of another of those special families of which I have already spoken as having the privilege of supplying consorts for the members of the Imperial Family. It is said to be a singularly happy life which this Imperial couple spend, mainly in their country villas at Hayama, Nikko, or Shiobara, 24 EVERY-DAY JAPAN and the people are delighted to think that the union has been blessed with three children all boys. The remaining children of the Emperor are girls. The eldest, Princess Masako, Tsune no miya, married in April, 1908, Prince Tsunehisa, eldest son of the late Prince Kitashirakawa, who served as a Lieutenant of Cavalry, under General Kuroki, in Manchuria. Prince Kitashirakawa was, when quite a child, the rival candidate to the throne set up by the despairing Tokugawa supporters in opposition to his present Majesty ; freely pardoned by his cousin, he became one of the most valiant supporters of his throne, and died in Formosa during the Chinese war from the hardships of the campaign. It is interesting to see the spirit of reconciliation and gratitude which these incidents show. It is our practice in England that the sons of the king as they come to man's estate are created Dukes, and a certain number of dukedoms York, Connaught, Cornwall, Edinburgh, Albany, Cumberland, Kent, Sussex have been appropriated for the purposes of these creations. In Japan we find a some- what similar practice prevailing. A certain number of Miyasama (a title often translated " Prince," but corresponding more closely to the English Royal Duke) surround the Imperial throne, and these titles of honour are all held by princes of the Imperial blood, by cousins or uncles of the reigning Sovereign. It is impossible for an outsider to explain the exact degree of rela- tionship which each of these Miyasama bears to the Emperor himself, because the relationships are so often much confused by the practice of adoption. Thus a man may adopt his brother, his nephew, or his cousin as his own son, and in such cases the task of making out an exact pedigree becomes very difficult Nor is it necessary for me to do so. It will be sufficient for me to mention the names of some of the principal members of the Imperial Family circle. The senior member of the Imperial circle is Fushimi no miya, or Prince Fushimi. The eldest son of the late Prince Fushimi Kuni-iye, and a cousin of the present Emperor, he was born in 1858, and chose the army as a vocation. He has distinguished himself in his profession. Through the war with China he served THE LATE MADAME SAISHO ATSUKO, POETESS, AND FRIEND OF THE EMPRESS. EMPRESS AND PRINCES 25 with distinction as the Commander of a Brigade. In the war with Russia he took part in all the early land operations in Manchuria and commanded the First Army Division at the battle of Nanshan, after which he was recalled and sent to America as the representative of his country at the St. Louis exhibition. The whole of his house have distinguished themselves on the field of action. His son, Prince Hiroyasu, is a commander in the navy, and was wounded on board the Mikasa, in the battle of the Yellow Sea (August loth, 1904). His brother, Prince Kanin, also a son of Fushimi Kuni-iye, but transferred by adoption to the Kanin family, is now a Lieutenant-General of Cavalry, and has seen active service in both the great wars that Japan has fought. Another brother, Prince Higashi Fushimi, is a commander in the navy, and served through the war on board the cruiser Chitose. Prince Hiroyasu's infant son, Hirotada, is now head of the Kwacho House. His father, born a Fushimi, was adopted into the Kwacho House, and then afterwards returned to his original family, leaving his infant son behind him in his stead. Another prince, second only in seniority to Prince Fushimi, and well known in England, is Prince Arisugawa. The prince has been a naval officer all his life, and was trained in England He served in the China War, but not against Russia. His recent visit to Europe will be in my readers' memory. Other military princes of the Imperial blood are Prince Yamashina, who has been serving as a commander on board the cruiser Yakumo; Prince Kuni, who is a Captain of Infantry and attached to General Kuroki's staff, and Prince Nashimoto, who is likewise a Captain of Infantry and has been serving under Marshal Oyama. One Imperial Prince remains whose vocation in life is not a military one. His name is very seldom mentioned in social circles and there is little said of him by the newspapers. As guardian of the sacred shrines of Ise, he resides away from Tokyo and has little need to come before the public eye. He represents that religious sentiment which does honour to every 26 EVERY-DAY JAPAN family and nation. He belongs to a dynasty for which great claims are advanced on behalf of the Imperial Family of Japan. And if it is true that spirits of the dead, from their abodes in the invisible world, look down with interest and sympathy on the varying vicissitudes of those whom they have left behind, some spirits will certainly watch over the fortunes of the restored monarchy of Japan for which in this life they laboured so man- fully I mean the spirits of the genial and generous Prince Komatsu no miya, and still more of two military princes, the late Kitashirakawa and Arisugawa, who both died soldiers' deaths in the service of their Sovereign and country. CHAPTER V THE CITY OF TOKYO TOKYO has been almost continuously my home during the last twenty-five years, so that in writing about it I shall be describing what I have myself seen, and scenes with which I am very familiar. Moreover, in describing Tokyo, I am practically describing the whole of Japan. There are, indeed, many cities in this country more ancient and more beautiful than the present capital of the Empire, but there is none which is so closely connected with the whole life of the country, both past and present. For not only is Tokyo the seat of Government and the centre of all those marvellous activities which have given Japan so prominent a position amongst the nations of the world ; but it was, till a few years ago, connected in a very peculiar manner with every province in the Empire of Japan. In the days when (from 1600 to 1868) it was the seat of the Tokugawa Shoguns, during those years the actual administrators of the Japanese State, every daimyo, or prince, was obliged to maintain a mansion here, and to give hostages for good behaviour, not only by personal residence during a certain number of months every year, but by keeping his wives and children in the city as permanent sojourners. Every province, therefore, was in the past more or less administered from Tokyo (or Yedo, as it was then called), communications and messengers were continually passing to and fro between the Shogun's capital and the most distant parts of the country, and natives of all provinces were to be found residing here in the service of their feudal lords. Thus Yedo became the centre of national life, far more really than even Kyoto, the seat of the Mikado, could ever claim to be, and this peculiarly national character of the city has been emphasised and strengthened by 27 28 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the political changes which in recent years have made it the residence of the Emperor and the seat of the Imperial adminis- tration. Until the end of the fourteenth century Tokyo was merely a group of little villages, partly agricultural and partly fishing, lying at the entrance to an extensive lagoon which in those days covered what is now known as the plain of Musashi. Hence this district derived its early name of Yedo, the " Gate of the Waters." In the fourteenth century a castle was built here by Ota Dokwan, and Yedo became the residence of a small feudal prince, whose family held it for some years, finally ceding it to the famous Shogun lyeyasu, who made it the seat of the military government which he established, nominally as the Stadtholder of the Mikado, but in reality as a successful usurper. lyeyasu's choice made the fortune of the city. The Shogun came to Yedo himself, and placed in its castle a strong garrison of troops loyal to himself. Every daimyo throughout the Empire was compelled to build himself a residence and to live here with samurai retainers in a style suitable to his rank and wealth. Trade and commerce naturally flocked to a place where so many of the nobility and gentry were obliged to live in costly though apparently simple style. And thus, in the course of a very few years, Yedo rose from being a very insignificant country town to being by far the largest of all the cities of Japan. The lagoon from which Yedo first derived its name has long since dried up, and in its place there is a vast fertile plain, as flat as our own fen country, on which is grown the rice which forms the staple food of the inhabitants of the Metropolis. Through this plain flow several streams. One of these, the Tamakawa, or, as it is called near its mouth, the Rokugo-gawa, rising among the Chichibu Mountains, furnishes the city with its excellent water-supply. The traveller who reaches Tokyo by train from Yokohama crosses this river near its mouth at the small town of Kawasaki. Another stream, the Arakawa, changes its name to the Sumida-gawa before it reaches Tokyo, through which it flows, dividing it into two portions, very much as the Thames does London. THE GREEK CATHEDRAL, TOKYO. A BUSINESS STREET IN TOKYO. ON THE SUMIDA RIVER, TOKYO. OF THE UNIVERSITY ) of THE CITY OF TOKYO 29 On the east side of the Sumida are the districts known as Honjo and Fukagawa, mainly given over to industries and factories, with scarcely any resident gentry, and very rarely visited by foreigners. Yet even here, amidst the smoke and din of the rapidly-increasing industries, there are some places which are well worthy of a visit. There is a long avenue of cherry-trees known as Mukojima, which in April draws thousands to see its beauties; there are the boat-houses of the various rowing clubs, which are often thronged with eager oarsmen and their admiring supporters ; Baron Iwasaki has a beautiful mansion with gardens which will be a lasting memory if you are fortunate enough to get a permit to see them ; there is the Eko-in Temple, to which men go, not to worship, but to witness the great annual contests for the wrestling championship, and lastly there are the far-famed tea-houses, where you can be regaled on eels and rice and other dainties and watch the fireworks at the great summer river festival of the Kawa-biraki. There is a railway station here from which trains start for the provinces which lie east of Tokyo. Spanning the river are several passenger bridges, some of wood and some of iron, and one, for the railway, is in contempla- tion. The river, near its mouth, is very busy, but there are no large craft, as the water is very shallow. Opposite the mouth of the river are a few forts, built years ago in the vain hope of keeping foreigners from landing near the Shogun's capital. On the west side of the river are five large and populous wards Asakusa, Nihonbashi, Kyobashi, Shiba, Kanda, the first four of these running along the river front in the order in which I have named them. They are places of commerce rather than of industry, with many old-established business houses, working cheek by jowl with the new and enterprising ventures which the renovated life of Japan has called into existence. In the centre of the Nihonbashi district is the Nihonbashi Bridge, a poor, wooden structure, but the topographical centre of Japan, as being the place from which all road-distances are measured. Foreigners take an especial interest in the place because in days gone by it was here that stood the notices prohibiting the practice of the 30 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Christian faith. The present attraction of Nihonbashi is its fish market and its bustle. A long street, known by several names, runs through this part of the city from end to end. We shall have occasion to visit it several times in the course of our perambulations. In the centre of the Metropolis lies the ward of Kojimachi, a peculiarly-shaped district forming a ring round the Imperial Palace, which occupies the site of the old Castle of the Shogun, burnt in 1863. It contains, in addition to the Palace, the mansions of the aristocracy, the public offices, the principal foreign embassies, and the Houses of Parliament. It has some very pretty views about it, and a ride around its outside moat in a street car will well repay the traveller for his time. All round Kojimachi, on the side remote from the river, are the districts known as Shitaya, Kongo, Koishikawa, Ushigome, Yotsuya Akasaka, and Azabu. With the exception of Shitaya, which, in the parts bordering on Asakusa, lies very low, and is inhabited by extremely poor people, these districts are hilly, with picturesque alternations of valley and plateau, well covered with trees, and not too thickly populated. There are practically no industries, the houses are for the most part tiny, detached villas, each standing in its own little garden, and the inhabitants are drawn more from the old samurai gentry than from the mer- cantile or industrial classes. They are not, like the people in the riverside wards, genuine Yedokko, or sons of Yedo, with a sturdy pride in their ancient liberties as free burghers of no mean city ; rather, they have sprung from the samurai retainers of the ancient daimyos, and have inherited in many cases the traditions of the province from which their fathers originally came, and to which their hearts constantly turn back. The necessities of modern life have turned them very often into clerks and merchants, but they take with them to their desks many of the traces of their inheritance. Interspersed among these tiny residences are the shops of the retail traders who supply their necessities. In Shitaya Ward is the far-famed park of Uyeno, in Hongo is situated the University ; there are many barracks in Akasaka and Azabu ; Koishikawa boasts of two beautiful gardens, the one at THE CITY OF TOKYO 31 the great military arsenal, and the other the Botanical Gardens. The parks at the Kudan and Hibiya are in Kojimachi. When we get outside these seven districts which I have just mentioned we come to the ring of suburban villages and towns which are rapidly being incorporated with the growing Metropolis, Shinagawa and Omori on the line running to Yokohama, the latter a very favourite place of residence on account of its cheapness and good air, Meguro, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Sugamo, and Oji, the last famed for its tea-houses, its views, and its maple groves. Beyond these is the country pure and simple. Tokyo is a city which covers a very considerable area about fifteen miles of continuous houses in one direction, and nine or ten in the other. For means of communication we had till some three years ago nothing but the jinriksha, and when the war carried off the jinriksha-men as coolies, we began to be very anxious about our threatened communications, for carriages scarcely exist, and walking takes time. Fortunately the electric railway came to our rescue, and we can now go easily and cheaply to our destinations, wherever they may be. There are four terminal railway stations Shimbashi for lines running to Yoko- hama and the west ; Uyeno for northern lines ; lidamachi for the mountain districts north-west of Tokyo ; and Ryogoku Bashi for the provinces on the opposite side of the Gulf of Yedo. There is a loop line which runs round part of the city and connects Shimbashi and Uyeno, and an elevated railway is in process of construction right across the Metropolis, with a projected central station for all lines running out of Tokyo. The whole of the railway system of Japan is now in process of nationalisation, and, a kind of State Socialism being very much in vogue just now, there is some talk of making a municipal concern of the electric railway as well. We are in a state of suspended judgment as to the practical results of these measures. Japanese smokers say that the nationalisation of the tobacco industry has not improved the quality of the native weed. It has certainly made a great difference in the price of foreign tobacco. CHAPTER VI THE LIFE OF ANCIENT YEDO UNTIL within the last few years I suppose that the average untravelled Englishman pictured to himself the life of Japan as he saw it in the quaint pictures and engravings that one sees in old books on the country or in collections of ancient art. It is no longer so to any very great extent, at least not in the capital and the larger business centres, and every year sees the picturesque dresses and customs pushed more and more into the background, while many things eminently Japanese have already become things of the past. But the past is not a very remote one, and there are thousands of people still living who can well remember the customs of mediaeval Japan which I shall attempt in this chapter to describe to my readers. Tokyo to-day is a busy city, as anyone can tell who watches the heavily-laden street-cars passing and repassing with their human burdens. It was equally crowded, at least in parts, in the days preceding the birth of Modern Japan. True, the popu- lation of Yedo was much smaller than that of Tokyo now ; but it was much more dense in parts. The whole of the central part of the city, within the outer moat of the Castle, was reserved for official purposes and had but few residents. A very large portion of the city outside the moats was set apart for the great yashiki of daimyos those great walled camps in which dwelt the barons and their retainers ; and there were no houses on the tops of the hills, for the Japanese loved a sunny dwelling rather than a windy one. The part reserved for commerce and trade was consequently rather narrow in its limits, and the traffic proportionately congested Contemporary pictures give us very vivid scenes of the life 32 THE LIFE OF ANCIENT YEDO 33 in the streets. Here a naked boy is running off as hard as he can pelt, net in hand, to catch the little wriggling creatures in the mud at the bottom of the drains (you may see him do it yet) ; there a group of equally naked coolies is running on some errand, talking and gesticulating the while they run. A knight on horseback, bearing some important message from the Government, rides over, in his eagerness, a bent old woman in his path, while a fisherman, with his two pails of fresh fish slung over his shoulder on a pole, barely makes his escape from the rider. A quack doctor, flag in hand, is crying his wares, regardless of all dangers ; the travelling book-lender, with his bundle of well-thumbed novels on his back, trudges peaceably along, and the medicine vendor, with his chest of drawers, takes his stand at some favourite corner. A daimyo, who has just arrived in Yedo, is riding along there preceded by some two- sworded outrunners and followed by men carrying his boxes and his spear. It would be a dangerous thing to break the pro- cession, but a blind shampooer, pipe in hand, goes on his way unconcernedly ; no one is likely to interfere with him. A wrestler stands in the middle of the street, watching somebody (perhaps the old shampooer who is crossing the daimycts path so daringly), and there are various apprentice boys and shop- girls running about with boxes and pails. In a quiet place round the corner a vendor of goldfish is doing a lively trade with little boys and girls; a dealer in second-hand goods is exposing his curios on a mat on the ground ; while on another mat are arranged the letters which have just arrived from Osaka or Kyoto. There was no post- office in those days, but messengers were despatched at stated intervals to carry letters. When the mail arrived, it was exposed in the street on a mat, and anyone who expected a letter went to look for it. Every house was a shop (I am now speaking of the business parts of the city), and all the wealthier shops were built of black mud, which rendered them proof against the fires which were so frequent and destructive as to be called the "flowers of Yedo." Yedo possessed a well-organised fire brigade. Its 34 EVERY-DAY JAPAN chief deficiency was in pumps and fire-hose ; but its morale was excellent. A fireman ranked, amongst the peaceful tradesmen, almost as a knight, and he took his profession very seriously he was a true " son of Yedo." Every trade and industry had its own guild or corporation, and some of these guilds were, and still are, powerful. They differed very much in degree, but not in kind, from the trade guilds and corporations of London. Yedo had its goldsmiths, its fishmongers, its haberdashers, its stationers, and each of these trades was strictly regulated. Some of these regulations were good and useful, and the merchants of Japan early showed themselves capable of organisation, development, and push. But then came the Tokugawa Shogunate, with its quasi-paternal hand, effectually to cramp all the commercial efforts of the people, telling them what to eat and what to wear, how to shave their faces and how to trim their beards, and the poor merchants had nothing to do but to acquiesce. Things were better in Osaka, which was not quite so much under the shadow of the Shogunal Government ; but in Yedo the energies of the people were terribly hindered. The bad political economy of the Tokugawas was quite easily visible to all who thought at all. There are records of bad famines which the Shogunate did little to relieve, though individual Daimyates did much, and during the whole of the Shogunal period the population of Japan was steadily on the decline. Activity is an essential to human increase and multiplication, and freedom is essential to activity. Many of the trades and industries were congregated in certain localities. There was a district sacred to the manufacture of dolls (Ningyo Cho), another to that of chests of drawers (Tansu- machi}, another to the profession of the pantomime (Sarugaku- Cho). Silversmiths haunted the district now known as Ginza (" the silver place "), while bankers and money-changers flourished in Honryogae Cho (" original money-exchange street "). It was just what we had in London, localised industries and trades,, which have left their names behind them, though they themselves have long been dispersed to meet the changing circumstances of A JAPANESE FIRE BRIGADE DISPLAY. Photograph by J. Enami, Japan. THE LIFE OF ANCIENT YEDO 35 the times. In Tokyo these localities are still generally chief seats of the industries and trades whose names they bear, though it has been interesting to note how gradually one by one other dealers have invaded these streets and the magic circle has been broken. In the house behind the shop dwelt the master, his wife, his children, and his apprentices. The women- folk have always possessed a very large share of liberty and influence in the houses of the old merchant class. A farmer in Japan could not possibly carry on his business without his wife and daughters ; a silk-grower would be helpless with his silkworms if it were not for them, and, likewise, the merchant of old would have been stranded without their aid. The wife and daughters rarely came into the shop, but they helped within the house. It was no small task, keeping house for a large shopkeeper ; for there were many mouths to fill all the shopboys and apprentices living in the house and there were the servant-men and the maids to keep at their work and, what was much more difficult, to keep in order. Indeed, the woman that could do all this had to be a thrifty managing body. Booklearning she had little or none, though she knew enough to keep her own accounts and to help her husband with his ; but she had a good store of mother-wit, and knew both how to keep her own place and how to keep others in theirs. I have always noticed that a plain, straightforward, English housewife, whose mind runs habitually on receipts for jam and her husband's next pair of stockings, gets on admirably with these Japanese merchants' wives. They are not fashionable nor accomplished, but practical and good. May they never die out. The children of the merchants were practically rather than highly trained. When the rudiments had been acquired, the boys went into the shop, the girls into the back parts of the house, where they assisted their mother in the housekeeping. When the proper time came, suitable mates were chosen for them by their parents, the boys marrying with the daughters of other merchants, whilst an industrious apprentice was often fortunate enough to wed his master's daughter. Thus the whole family 36 EVERY-DAY JAPAN was interested in the business ; they talked of it, perhaps they dreamed of it at any rate, the Japanese proverb has it that the merchant's son " wakes up at the sound of the soroban " (or reckoning-machine). It was not considered bad form to talk " shop " out of business hours. All waking hours were business hours; when bedtime came the shutters were put up and the apprentices went to sleep, as they do now, in the shop, and when morning dawned the shutters were taken down and business began. Among the merchants and tradespeople there were good men and bad, honest and dishonest. Japan has never had a monopoly of either sort of business men. The restrictions to trade, which the policy of the Tokugawas imposed on the country, did much to give them a very narrow outlook, and their own system of making a family affair of business fostered a spirit of clique, which did not work for the highest ends. The merchants were not quite satisfied with the Tokugawa policy, but the presence of the Court and the ostentatious habits of the high Shogunate officials brought a good deal of trade to their shops, and so they remained quiet and acquiescent, making money when they could, and enjoying their holidays on the river, in the cherry- gardens, or in the theatres. They liked to see their wives and daughters well dressed on such occasions, and the ladies were, as a rule, not unwilling to humour them in this matter. A becoming dress sometimes meant a good husband for a pretty girl in Yedo, as well as in London. The merchants were in their own way religious, and were almost to a man adherents of the older and more ritualistic sects, known as Tendai and Shingon, with their later off-shoot which goes by the name of Nichiren. These sects have as objects of worship, in addition to the historical Buddha and the other purely Buddhist saints mentioned in their scriptures, seven deities known as the Seven Gods of Fortune (Skichi-fuku-jiri), to whom prayers for temporal blessings may freely be offered. They have also many religious labour-saving contrivances, such as prayer-wheels, revolving bookcases (one turn of which is as beneficial to the soul as the perusal of the whole scriptures), THE LIFE OF ANCIENT YEDO 37 amulets, charms, etc. etc. It is sometimes a great convenience for a busy merchant, who has but little time to think deeply of the mysteries of religion, and very little even for simple and short words of prayer, to light upon a labour-saving contrivance by which the duties of religion can be attended to without the withdrawal of any valuable time from the desk and the ledger. A merchant, too, whose whole energies are devoted to the extension of his business, can appreciate to the full the value of prayers for temporal benefits. The temples belonging to these sects are still to-day constantly being enriched by gifts from wealthy tradesmen and artificers' guilds, and no Christian body of missionaries has yet succeeded in establishing a con- gregation in the densely-populated merchants' quarter of Nihon- bashi to which I have already referred. We should, therefore, have seen many traces of religious influence in the houses of the Yedo merchants, in each of which in an honoured position stood the sacred shelf, with its burning lights, as a centre for family devotions. In the streets also we should have seen many traces of the esteem in which religion was held. Dignified priests would be walking, or riding in ncrimono* sumptuously robed ; begging friars would be going from house to house gathering alms, which at the end of the day's march totalled a fairly large sum ; a funeral procession on its way through the crowded thoroughfares would be an impressive if somewhat curious sight, and the great Temple of Kwannon, at Asakusa, would be then, as now, crowded with fervent if somewhat light-hearted worshippers. In the centre of the city we should have been painfully shocked when the meaning of a notice-board standing by the side of the Nihonbashi Bridge was explained to us. That notice informed the passers-by that Christianity was a dangerous and wicked sect, and that its profession, either public or private, would involve the punishment of death, often with cruel tortures. The proscription of Christianity formed a constant element in the Tokugawa policy, and Christianity remained a proscribed religion till a time well within the memory of many persons * A kind of sedan-chair. 38 EVERY-DAY JAPAN now living in Japan in fact, till the last quarter of the nine- teenth century. We should have been extremely fortunate if we got through the city without encountering a procession of two-sworded samurai accompanying their master on a visit of state to the Shogun, or some of the great barons whose mansions stood within the city bounds. Possibly we might have seen two such processions crossing each other's paths, and have thus witnessed the strange jealousy of precedence which animated the different clans. It needed a very strong hand in the sixteenth century to keep down these disorderly factors, and just before the days of the Restoration the clans had got out of hand and were becoming restless, even in Yedo, under the very nose of the Shogun. And in the castle behind the moats and pine-covered ramparts now, alas, rapidly disappearing we should have seen the Shogun's army proud two-sworded samurai and hatamoto, or direct retainers of the Shogun, sturdy men-at-arms with lances and cross-bows, men with matchlock rifles and wooden cannons, and here and there, in the latter days, a company armed and drilled in Western style. It was a strange jumble of conflicting ideas. Something like it may now be seen in the streets of Peking, where medievalism still holds its own against the march of modern civilisation. CHAPTER VII MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN WHEN Japan's new era dawned in the middle of the nineteenth century she awoke from a long and peaceful slumber of two hundred and fifty years. At least so it appeared to the outside world. In reality, however, she never went to sleep. The Tokugawas had forced a peace upon her at the edge of the sword : they had broken the power of the daimyos and compelled them to acquiesce in their hegemony, they had forced the clans, and even the Imperial House, to send hostages to Yedo, but they had not had the strength to disarm their vanquished opponents. Every daimyos castle was, more or less, an armed camp ; all the greater daimyos, the Kokushu, or lords of territories, had armies of trained warriors under their command, with arsenals and military storehouses and all the paraphernalia of war, such as feudal Japan knew them. The enemies of the Shogun were but waiting their time to make a spring at their oppressor's throat, and the Shogun's adherents, knowing this, were accordingly in a state of constant stress and tension. Hence it was that Japan was never able to fall comfortably asleep and lay aside her military habits. Both sides knew them- selves to be in the midst of foes vigilant, active, and relentless ; neither the Shogunate nor the great Daimyates of the west and south could afford to relax for a moment the discipline of the samurai and fighting men ; to borrow a Japanese phrase, neither the eighteenth century nor the nineteenth afforded to either party a chance of " undoing the helmet strings." When, therefore, the Japanese Government, after 1860, began to arm its troops in European fashion, and to make suitable 39 40 EVERY-DAY JAPAN preparations for becoming a first-class military power, one half of the task was already accomplished before she put her hand to the plough at all. Japan had at the time of commencing her own renovation none of the modern appliances of warfare, and no experience in their use, but she had what was worth much more, a race of hereditary soldiers, well trained and disciplined in the military virtues, capable of obedience and capable of command, brave, sagacious, self-sacrificing. Guns and ships can be bought from abroad ; military tactics and strategy, or the managing of complicated machinery and appliances, can be taught by men hired for the purpose in the space of a few months or years ; but nothing except a long training for many generations can produce men with an innate aptitude for the military virtues. Japan, fortunately for herself, possessed these men in abundance, soldiers with spirits and minds as keen and bright as their untarnished sword-blades ; and it is to this long training of her samurai that she owes her present military excellence. When universal conscription was introduced, the samurai thought that their peculiar privileges were being taken from them, and Saigo rose in rebellion against what he esteemed to be an injustice. Time has shown that his fears were groundless. The peasant, accustomed to obey, and yet taught to think, has made the finest rank and file, I had almost said, in the whole world, but he has not deprived the samurai of his ancient privileges of honour. The samurai are still the brains, the intelligence, and the sword-arm, of military Japan. Conscription is obligatory and universal for a period of three years, which will, however, be probably reduced to two, as it is found that the shorter period is enough for military needs. Young men of education can get off with only one year of service, and there are every year a certain number who escape service altogether. After the period of service is over the men are liable to be called back to the colours as reserves or landsturm for a certain number of years, and during the war with Russia great numbers of reservists were thus called out. As December ist approaches, one sees the conscripts being Conducted to the barracks by bands of friends and kinsmen. MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN 41 Flags are flying, and music playing. A few days later one sees the same flags and hears the same music parading the streets. It is a time-expired soldier being welcomed back by his kinsfolk. Life in barracks, in peace time even, is strict and strenuous. Five o'clock in winter, half-past four in summer is the hour for rising. Breakfast follows a few minutes later, and then begin the labours of the day. Simple drilling and parade work do not enter much into the soldier's daily life. He is, of course, taught to march and to handle his gun ; but far more attention is paid to gymnastics, rifle-practice, skirmishing, fencing, and bayonet- practice to everything that will tend to make him not so much a fighting machine as a living and intelligent unit of a fighting force. " Work goes on from six to eleven, with short pauses of five minutes at a time between each form of exercise: then follows dinner, with two hours of repose. From two to six work continues as in the forenoon ; then supper, recreation, and an early bed. " One great feature of Japanese military life is that the officers share in all the exercises of the men, very little being left to non-commissioned officers, sergeants, and corporals. The officers are always on duty, and thus a very complete harmony is estab- lished between them and their men. That terror of the German army, the regimental bully, the martinet sergeant, is practically unknown." The words I have quoted are taken from an essay contributed to a Japanese war magazine by a well-known military officer. They must be taken with a grain of salt (a very minute one), for I have known of cases of bullying. Fortunately they are very few. The military officer has been fashioned on the German pattern, for, since 1870, Germany has been the leading warlike example for Japan to follow. His naval brother has been entirely trained after the model of the British officer. In the earliest days of the Japanese navy the long row of low, white, wooden buildings, which now give shelter to the Paymasters' Training School, were 42 EVERY-DAY JAPAN tenanted by a detachment of British officers, bluejackets and civilian instructors, of whom one still remains in Japan after forty years or more of Far-Eastern life Professor Chamberlain, while his contemporary, Mr. Hammond, instructor of gunnery, has but recently gone to his rest. When the Academy or Higher Naval College was founded, in 1890, Admiral Ingles, R.N., was its organising adviser, and it was but a short while ago that we laid in his grave one whom we all loved and respected, the genial Commander Patterson, who served for three years as Instructor and Advisor to the Academy. My own twenty-three years of happy activity as Instructor in the Naval Academy, Medical and Paymaster Colleges, will perhaps serve as an excuse for my dwelling at some length on the training of the Japanese naval officer. The Japanese naval officer commences his professional studies at the Imperial Naval College at Yetajima, into which he has passed, by competitive examination, between the ages of sixteen and twenty. The college is open to everyone, with the exception of married men, those who have been criminally convicted, and undischarged bankrupts. The examination is of two sorts ; first, a strict medical examination as to fitness for service ; and, second, the usual educational examination. This latter occasionally varies, but generally comprises mathematics, including arith- metic, algebra, elementary Euclid and trigonometry, physics, chemistry, history, geography, drawing both mechanical and freehand English in its various branches, and Japanese. These are compulsory subjects, and a certain percentage of marks must be made in each subject, as also a percentage on the total. Optional subjects, such as French, German and Russian, may also be taken up, and the marks gained there, added to the total made in the compulsory subjects, determine the order of seniority in which the students enter the Naval College. The course is of three years' duration, during which time the whole expense is borne by Government. The students rise at 5.30 a.m. and make ready for the inspection of the orderly officers for the day at 6.10 a.m. Twenty minutes later breakfast is served, after which the students busy themselves till 7.45, when another MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN 43 parade is held preparatory to commencing classes at 8. Dinner is served from 12 to I, and then again lectures till 3.30. Supper comes at 5.30; evening studies from 6.30 to 9.30; and "lights out" at 10. The hours differ slightly during the winter, being somewhat shorter. During his first year at the college the hours apportioned to the different subjects are approximately as follows : Gunnery and seamanship, four hours per week each ; English, seven hours ; physics, etc., five and a half hours ; mathematics, six and a half hours ; engineering, one hour making a total of twenty-eight hours per week of actual lectures. In his second year the student has gunnery, four hours ; seamanship, three hours ; navigation, three hours ; engineering, three hours ; physics, etc., three hours ; mathematics, five hours ; and English, six hours. He commences, besides, a new study, torpedo instruction, to which one hour per week is devoted. In his third and last year at the college gunnery is given three hours per week ; seamanship, four ; navigation, seven ; torpedo instruc- tion, four ; engineering, one ; mechanics, etc., three ; and English, six. Special instruction is also given in observation, surveying, signalling and kindred subjects appertaining to naval life. At the end of each year examinations are held ; and, when the last has been successfully passed, the student is promoted to the rank of midshipman and is sent to a training ship to enable him to put into practice what he has learned up to this time only theoretically. In time of war, however, the practice course can be dispensed with. The training ships are three, the Matsushima, Itsukushima and Hashidate, sister vessels of 4,150 tons displace- ment. They form a squadron under the command of a rear- admiral, and cruise in home and other waters for the greater part of the year. During this time the admiral frequently changes his flag from one ship to another, to enable all to have equal chances of learning the special duties on board a flagship. When the course is finished the midshipmen are appointed to various ships on commission as sub-lieutenants, and are usually, for the first period of their time, placed under the care of an experienced officer, who sees that they receive further instruction 44 EVERY-DAY JAPAN in seamanship, gunnery and other practical work from men well up in these various lines. Whilst acting as sub-lieutenant or lieutenant, the Japanese naval officer has to pass various examinations in duties on board ship, and is required yearly to write an essay on some naval or military topic. The essays pass through several hands, finally reaching the Minister of Marine, who, after careful reading, selects some of the best for publication and distribution to the various barracks and ships. The successful writers receive a diploma of merit which is an immense aid to promotion. Often, too, they are called upon to lecture on some special subject, or some branch of the service of which they are making a speciality; this, however, is entirely at the discretion of the officer .commanding the ship, but is the general rule. Entrance to the Higher Naval College at Tokyo, which may be sought after a period of sea service, is by competitive examination or by special selection. There are four different courses the " Koshu," " Otsushu," " Senka " and " Koshinka." The " Koshu " course provides for the higher education of lieu- tenants, and is usually of two years' duration. The subjects treated are gunnery, torpedo instruction, navigation and shipbuilding, besides international law, political economy, and history. Lectures on other subjects are also given to those making special studies in any other branch of the service. During this period the Japanese naval officer has to attend manoeuvres both on land and sea, visit fortifications, and inspect hospitals and factories of various descriptions. The " Otsushu " course is practically the same, but is of only one year's duration. More attention is paid to gunnery, torpedo and navigation duties. The " Senka " course was instituted prin- cipally for captains, commanders, and senior lieutenants who were anxious to make a further study of their own special lines, and who are allowed to enter, if thought by the authorities to be competent, and if, by their doing so, the navy would benefit The last or " Koshinka " course is not a regular one. When some new invention has been introduced into the navy and a number of officers are available, they are summoned together in order THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE ON KUDAN HILL, TOKYO. THE HIGHER NAVAL COLLEGE, TOKYO. THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, TOKYO ^y#R^T^ OF THE f UNIVERSITY OF MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN 45 to study it, so that, on return to their ships, they may instruct their comrades. In the special training schools, practical demon- stration is made in gunnery, etc., to those officers who have passed in theory but who have not had much opportunity of acquiring practical experience. This completes the training of officers in the combatant branches. For non-combatants there are classes for paymasters and surgeons. In the Medical College all candidates must be qualified surgeons who have already passed the State examinations in medicine, etc. The course is of one year's duration, during which time the students are ranked as midshipmen. Besides the usual medical subjects, it is compulsory to study either English or German. The choice, however, lies with the student. Special courses of lectures on ship's hygiene, the treat- ment of gunshot wounds, etc., are provided, as also on a disease formerly very prevalent in the Japanese navy, called " kakke" This is practically the same as "beriberi" and its symptoms are very similar to those of the " sleeping sickness " of East Africa. Kakke is now, however, almost eradicated from the navy; in the year 1878 the ratio of cases per 1,000 of force was no less than 327*96, with a death percentage of 21*55. In the year 1901, the last of which I have seen any record, this had dwindled to 0-53 cases per 1,000 of force, and there were no deaths. In fact, among an enormously greater personnel, only 14 cases of kakke occurred, as compared with 1,485 cases in 1878. The general state of health in the Imperial navy is good, the death rate for 1901 being only 5-14 of cases of sickness. The total number of deaths was only 136, of which 39 were either suicides or the consequences of accident. After having completed the year's course the students are appointed to various ships, or distributed amongst the naval barracks, wherever there may be a vacancy, to take up the duties of a naval surgeon. At the Medical College, moreover, extra classes of a year's duration are held for men of staff-surgeon rank and above it. These officers are specially selected and are given special instruction in unusually intricate subjects. After com- pleting the course, they are generally put in charge of some 46 EVERY-DAY JAPAN hospital, or sent to take over some special work demanding skill and science. The Paymasters' College is situated in Tokyo, and the course formerly covered three years. It has now been shortened to six months or a year's actual attendance at the college, for it was found that most of the work of this branch could be learned at other institutions, such as the Higher Commercial College or the Imperial Universities of Tokyo and Kyoto. After having successfully passed their entrance examina- tions, the selected candidates are sent to study at specially selected institutions, and during this period they are ranked as cadets. When they come to the Paymasters' College for their last period of instruction they rank as midshipmen, if they have received no special training, as assistant paymasters if graduates of the Universities or Higher Commercial College. Special training is given in the Paymasters' College in the preparation and com- pletion of naval pay-sheets and other duties not to be learned in an ordinary commercial college. They are then graded into the navy as assistant paymasters, first or second class. Attached to the Paymasters' College is the training school for cooks and petty officers. The food supplied to the navy is of good quality, consisting principally of rice, vegetables, meat, fish, with their various condiments and spices. The actual weight of food supplied in 1884 was about 5^ Ib. ; in 1901, however, it had decreased to 4^ Ib. This is accounted for by the fact that, in the former year, a food ration was supplied to each and every man. In April, 1890, the food regulations were revised, and members of a table company exceeding five in number were allowed to draw one money allowance in lieu of rations for every five men. This plan has since been altered, and now one money allowance for every ten men in a mess is allowed. With this money the mess can purchase what extra food its members may wish. Comparing the amount of food with that of the British or other navies the allowance is very liberal. There is also an Engineering College at Yokosuka, a strongly- fortified naval base about twenty miles south of Yokohama, and situated at the entrance to Tokyo Bay. Here specially selected officers receive higher education in dockyard work, shipbuilding MILITARY AND NAVAL JAPAN 47 and repairing. They are usually appointed afterwards to some staff work on shore, supervising and overseeing the maintenance of dockyards, the construction and repairing of warships, and other work of a like description. In Tokyo, moreover, there is a Mercantile Marine School, with a training ship attached. Graduates from the school often receive commissions in the Imperial navy ; indeed, in years of war like the recent one, there is always a large contingent from this college to be found serving with honour on board both men-of-war and transports. The college contains two sides, the navigation side and the engineering, and the systems of teaching and discipline pursued are almost identical with what is given at the Naval College at Yetajima. There are two training ships in connection with this school. One is always kept lying at anchor in the river opposite the new college buildings ; the other is continually engaged in training trips for the students. There is a somewhat similar school at Osaka ; and, until lately, there was one at Hakodate which has been closed. The Nautical College, as it is sometimes called, though better known by its old name of the Mercantile Marine School, is the principal training school of the Japanese mercantile marine. The Japanese naval officer, when young, as I mostly know him, is distinctly a good fellow, and some of my most pleasant recollections are of hours spent in class with Japanese lieutenants, surgeons or paymasters. During the last few months before the war came and swept midshipmen and officers away, we organised a periodical English party at which we " frivolled " to our hearts' content, the only rule or regulation being that nothing but English should be spoken. In the course of a few months we managed to initiate classes of midshipmen and subs, into the mysteries of lancers and waltzes, round games and sea songs. Those few meetings taught me very much about the Japanese character. Up to that time I had looked on my students too much as students, and I used to say that I had never come across students who could work like the Japanese. I now changed my mind, and concluded that I had never come across students 48 EVERY-DAY JAPAN who could play like the Japanese. But I think my readers will agree with me that it was something of a shock for a staid old person like myself to arrive one morning after an " English party" in the class room, and be greeted with a unanimous request to demonstrate, by means of a blackboard and chalk, the intricacies of the third figure of the lancers! CHAPTER VIII JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS IN my present chapter I propose to devote myself entirely to the arts of painting and ceramics as found in Japan, together with such subsidiary or kindred crafts as wood-engraving, designing, and the production of cloisonne enamel. The limits imposed upon me will not allow of my treating my subject in anything but the broadest outlines, but so much has already been written on Japanese arts and crafts during the last fifty years that an outline sketch is, perhaps, all that is necessary. Painting and literature are, in Japan, two kindred arts, and each of them may be subdivided into three sections which correspond very strikingly each to each. Thus, the so-called classical poetry of the Japanese corre- sponds very closely to their so-called classical school of art Both are distinctly home-products, and it is no exaggeration to say that had Japan never come under any foreign influence at all she would still have developed her tanka, or short poems, and those purely classical paintings which have always attracted so much admiration throughout the world. "A bubble on the stream, Raised by the splashing rain, which merrily Dances along the swiftly gliding stream," is a complete Japanese tanka. "A summer moth, Hovering at night around the candle-flame," is another. A tanka is nothing but a dainty word-picture, in- complete in itself, but suggesting an associated thought which the reader is supposed to develop for himself in his own mind ; E 49 50 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the dancing bubble and the hovering moth being, for instance, emblems of the fleeting life of man, the meaning of which cannot be mistaken. There is always a charm in something that we think we have discovered for ourselves, and it is in these half-veiled suggestions that lies the beauty of the Japanese poem. If now we change these word-pictures into actual representations, we have the Japanese classical painting. A few bold strokes to represent a river, a few lines to represent the rain, and two or three bubbles. "Why, the picture contains nothing!" will be the first exclamation that comes to our lips; and yet the Nothing is truly the Everything, and, as we think it over, we learn from the picture, as we learned from the poem, the lesson of the briefness of life. The classical school, whether of poetry or of painting, is as old as the beginnings of Japanese culture. Pictures and poems are alike suited to the taste of this people who, under all circumstances, delight in something dainty, concise, and sug- gestive of deeper thought. Whenever Japanese life has been perforce quiet and restrained, whenever the people have been unable to give free vent to their inmost hearts or have been debarred from free speech, they have found a solace in these suggestive forms of expression. The painters of the classical, and, indeed, of every other school, whether of painting or of handicraft, sink their personal identity as far as possible in the common name of the family or clan to which they belong. Thus there have been generations of painters who have borne the honoured name of Kano, and whose works all bear a great resemblance to one another in style and execution. Sometimes, as in the Tosa School, the name is taken from the locality in which the particular style of pictures has been produced. In the days now gone, apparently for ever, when Japanese entertainments were much simpler than they are at present, a host would frequently invite a painter to come and amuse his guests by exhibitions of artistic skill, and the visitors would crowd round and watch with the greatest eagerness while the deft hands produced representations of birds, beasts, fishes, JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS 51 trees, or flowers, with marvellous skill and celerity. Such rapid paintings were only possible in the classical school of art ; they were not the highest form of art, but it was very fascinating to watch them in the making. But to return to the correspondences between Japanese liter- ature and art. We have in Japanese literature, by the side of the elegant and dainty tanka of native growth, a Chinese style, both of poetry and prose, which is grandiose, pompous, and cumbrous. Corresponding to the Chinese poems and the Chinese works of solemn and "Johnsonian" prose, we find a Chinese style of painting which is stiff, conventional, full of details, and let me give vent to my feelings somewhat cumbrous, too. The pictures of this class are mostly religious or historical. In the former case they bear distinct traces of Indian influence, for all Buddhist art came originally from India (and some would say, even from Greece). In the latter case, it is Chinese art almost pure and simple, with traces of adaptation to the local needs and tastes of Japan. Japanese pictures, whether classical or Chinese, are seldom framed. They are mounted on scrolls and hung up in an honoured place in the toko no ma, or recess, in the best room in the house. Beneath the picture, on a slab of finely-polished wood, stands some ornament a bronze flower vase, an incense burner, or a polished crystal ball on a piece of marble. The Japanese drawing-room is never over-loaded either with furniture or with decorations. Pictures and bronzes are kept neatly rolled up and packed in boxes in the kura, or storehouse, and are brought out for inspection when required, the decorations of the toko no ma being changed from time to time. It is, how- ever, quite common to find over the doorway or sliding screens, which separate one room from another, framed pictures suspended. I call them pictures, though it may seem a misnomer. They are generally specimens of calligraphy beautifully written mottoes in Chinese or Japanese, descriptive of thoughts which the scene from the windows or the associations of the place may have at some time inspired. A Chinese ideograph is, after all, a sort of word-picture, and the Japanese use the same word 52 EVERY-DAY JAPAN for "to paint," "to draw," and "to write." The same Japanese word, though written with a different ideograph, means " to scratch." In Japanese literature we have, further, a popular style of compositions written neither in the classical language of the tanka nor in the pedantic language of the learned writers of Sinico-Japanese. There is also a popular drama by the side of the melodramatic performances of the regular theatre and of the so-called no operas. Corresponding with these, we have in art the so-called ukiyo-ye, the " pictures of the transient world," which are realistic representations of the street, the shop, and the field. Both the Chinese and the classical schools are somewhat too artificial and conventional for our tastes, though the classical painters are masters of that deft art which is used to conceal the artifices of the painter. In the ukiyo-ye the artists are comparatively untrammelled by conventions, and the masterpieces of a painter like Hokusai show great freedom of conception and treatment. The stagnant Japan of the bygone era had but little use for ukiyo-ye pictures, which were deemed to be vulgar because realistic. The living Japan of to-day has taken them into favour, and the ukiyo-ye are in great demand both with Japanese and foreign connoisseurs. Twenty-five years ago an enterprising and far-seeing American hired an ukiyo-ye painter to give him his whole time painting these realistic pictures. The artist was glad to be engaged for twenty yen a month, the American making a very handsome profit by selling his pictures in the United States. Twenty yen a month would not hire a good ukiyo-ye artist now. The painters of the popular pictures of a century ago were often reduced, like the artists of less-favoured countries of the West, to producing " pot-boilers " ; for even the simple Japanese menage must be kept up with money. These " pot-boilers " frequently took the form of nishiki-ye, or coloured pictures, which were engraved on wood and sold in sheets for the amuse- ment of children, generally in sets of three sheets, so arranged that the buyer could put them together and make one big JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS 53 picture therewith. The niskiki-ye as a popular article of com- merce has practically disappeared, and the old trade of the wood-engraver has been driven out of the field by the lithographer, the photographer, and the maker of the cheap picture postcards in which the Japan of to-day excels. But the wood-engraver has, in reality, fallen only to rise again. The " coloured picture " is no longer in vogue as a children's bilderbogen, though there are still some remarkable specimens to be seen in the picture- shops ; it has developed into a high-class work of art, and enterprising art firms, like the Shimbi-Shoin and the publishers of the Kokkwa, have shown the world what can be done by the Japanese wood-engraver with up-to-date appliances. We no longer talk of niskiki-ye. The newspapers describe them as the " triumphs of Japanese chromoxylography." Another small craft, the craft of the designer, deserves a word of mention. In old days designing was very simple and exceedingly limited in its scope. Designs were, however, con- stantly needed for the crests, or mon, which the Japanese of the upper and middle classes wear on the sleeves, shoulders, and backs of their kaori, or outer garments. These mon required great skill and precision in design, and the stencils prepared from the designs had to be cut with most minute care. The mon are still used, though not quite so much as formerly, owing to the widespread adoption of the foreign dress. The mon-ya, however, have suffered no diminution of business, but rather the contrary. Their inherited skill in designing has enabled them to meet the ever-increasing demands for decorative designs for books and for all manner of ornamental production, and the Japanese designs are well known and liked by designing artists everywhere. The present " boom " in Japanese art is, in a sense, due to foreign influence. After the Meiji Restoration the people were quite prepared to throw away all their old works of art, as being merely the relics of a barbarous age, and a school of Western art, established by the Government, was intended to supplant the old schools entirely. But a collection of Japanese paintings were sent to the Vienna Exhibition in the "eighties," 54 EVERY-DAY JAPAN and the admiration which they evoked awakened the Japanese to the fact that their arts were not so barbarous as they had fancied, and a reaction set in again towards the old ways. We have still a School of Art in Tokyo, supported by the Govern- ment, which is doing excellent service ; but the more recently established " classical side " has thrown the " modern side," for which it was originally established, somewhat into the shade. A rather gruesome tale is told of the origin of the ceramic arts in Japan. It was the custom in the earliest ages, when a prince or magnate died, to bury alive around his tomb a certain number of his slaves or retainers, who were supposed to become in the next world the attendants of him whom they had served in this. On one occasion an Emperor his name is of no importance died, and was succeeded by his brother, who cele- brated the obsequies of his predecessor with all the accustomed ceremonial. The deceased monarch was entombed beneath one of the semi-circular sepulchral mounds which are still used to cover the remains of sovereigns, and round it, in small pits, were placed a dozen or so retainers in a standing posture, and covered up to the neck with earth. All night long these miserable beings groaned and howled in pain and anguish, and the new Emperor, unable to sleep, was tortured by the thought of the sufferings which this barbarous custom was causing to innocent persons. At early dawn he called a Council of Ministers to devise means to change this cruel mode of honouring the great when dead ; and, after careful consideration, the Prime Minister, Nomi no Sukune (the name this time is deserving of preservation), hit upon the plan of burying figures of clay instead of living persons in the resting-places of the dead. The plan was adopted, and the Clay-workers' Guild established, from which in process of time the whole ceramic industry of the country has been developed. From the remains found in sepulchral mounds in various parts of the country it can be seen that the potter's art is extremely ancient. When intercourse was opened in the fourth century with the mainland of Asia, the Chinese and Koreans who were invited into Japan gave it a great impetus and inspired the JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS 55 workers with many new designs and ideas. It is possible that the Kiyo-mizu potteries, which are mentioned as amongst the oldest in the country, date from this period. One of the most famous pottery districts is situated near Nagoya, in the village of Seto and its immediate neighbourhood. The industry originated with a man named Kato Kagemasa, who, in 1226, brought the art of pottery from Fukien, in China, where he had served an apprenticeship. Members of the Kato family are still at work at the same old kilns, which for a long time produced only the commonest earthenware, though they did it in such quantities that the word setomono, or "wares from Seto," has passed into the language as a general equivalent for all manner of domestic earthenware. In the beginning of the nineteenth century a man from Arita, in Kyushu, brought with him new methods and designs, which much enhanced the quality of the setoyaki. Another impetus was given to the ceramic trade when Hideyoshi's soldiers came back from their ill-starred expedition to Korea in 1 598. The Kyushu diamyates, especially the Satsuma one, were very poor, and the numbers of fighting men com- paratively large, a fact which will not surprise us if we remember that the Kyushu daimyos, though afterwards defeated by lyeyasu, were at the time making a strong bid for the hegemony of Japan. The straitness of their circumstances put them in the dilemma of being obliged either to diminish their standing armies or to allow their samurai to supplement their incomes by engaging in honest trades. They chose the latter course, and thus there came to be established the famous Satsuma potteries, the potteries at Arita which produce the Imari porce- lain, and those in Izumo, founded in 1673. Other provinces also followed suit, and so arose the kilns of Aizu and Mino, as well as those in Kaga, which produce the well-known Kutani ware. The Dutch at Nagasaki imparted a certain amount of vigour to the manufacture of pottery in that district, and in modern days Japan has learned a great deal from the great porcelain factories of France, Germany, and England. The best cloisonne, enamel- work is made around Nagoya, 56 EVERY-DAY JAPAN though there are also factories in Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, and a few other places. The industry is an exceedingly old one, which fell into decay during the period of stagnation, and was revived early in the last century. It is not a large industry, and is characterised by quality rather than quantity. Enthusiasts say that cloisonne represents the very acme of Japanese art. Other enthusiasts say the same thing about Japanese bronze- work. CHAPTER IX JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS (concluded} ON one or two occasions it has been my sad privilege to visit a house where a Japanese friend has lain dead, and to be taken in to have a last look at the departed. The last time I paid a visit of this kind it was to the house of an extremely honourable but thoroughly unpractical man, who, with the best intentions in the world, had always been unequal to the task of keeping up with the progress his country was making. The poor old man had always contrived somehow to be lagging in the rear, a series of family misfortunes had helped to keep him impoverished, other men always got the good things from him, and he had struggled through life, a gentleman, but a decayed one. As he lay in his coffin in the death-chamber the one emblem, with the exception of the sign of his faith in Christ, was a sword. " He was a samurai? said his widow proudly, " and he always lived as one, though he never fought a battle." The sword, according to the Japanese proverb, is the soul of the bus hi. It is strange let us hope it is not ominous that the art of the sword-maker is at this present moment threatened almost with extinction. The famous blade-makers working in their homes cannot compete with the cheaper articles manufactured for the Government at wholesale factories. Only two widely-known master sword-smiths are now living; their names are Miyamoto Kanemori, and Gwassan Sadamune, and they are both over seventy years of age. There are also one or two others, but none so famous as these two. It was the custom, prior to 1872, for every gentleman to be girded with two swords. The first he used in striking his foe, for he was often " sudden and quick in quarrel," the other was kept for use upon himself, should honour at any moment demand 57 58 EVERY-DAY JAPAN of him the sacrifice of his own life. In those days a sword was a precious thing, and it was nothing out of the common for a samurai to have thirty or more of these choice blades stowed away in his storehouse. In noble houses the store of swords was much greater. The decree which deprived the samurai of their honourable privileges almost at once killed the ancient trade of the sword- maker. The Japanese sword became a curio, a relic, whose sole value lay in its antiquity and associations, and very few people cared to buy a new sword, more especially as, owing to the poverty of the samurai, the old ones could be procured at such low figures. The great master, Miyamoto, who had forged a blade for the Emperor as well as for his father, was driven to making kitchen knives in order to eke out a living, while Gwassan, finding that no one cared to buy the swords which bore his name, engraved on them the names of famous makers of antiquity, and sometimes got a fancy price for a soi-disant Kanemitsu or Masakuni. But things are a little better now. The experiences of war have taught the Japanese that their old-fashioned swords are better than any European-made sabres, and many officers, both military and naval, have, with the consent of their superiors, worn Japanese swords fitted with modern sabre-handles, in battle and on parade ; and if analogy goes for anything, we may expect to see, in the hands of Japanese warriors, in the not distant future, a new Japanese sword, combining the excellences of the old ken and the modern sabre. The teacher of swordsmanship and fencing, whether engaged in the permanent service of some feudal lord, or wandering from place to place, like Bokuden and other masters of the noble art, and establishing his own schools here and there, was an important factor in the moral development of the nation, for he taught a stern code of ethics to supplement his swordsmanship, and was always listened to with respect and reverence. Some of his teachings still remain. The short sword is, for instance, still the instrument of honourable suicide. I say " honour- able suicide," because I have noticed that, in almost all cases, when a Japanese takes his own life for reasons which would appeal to JAPANESE ARTS AND CRAFTS 59 a European debt, for instance, or pecuniary embarrassment, dis- appointment in love, or the fear of unavoidable disgrace he almost invariably chooses some less honourable mode of happy despatch. He takes poison, or hangs himself, lies down in front of a train, or throws himself into a river. A few years ago there was an epidemic of Welt-schmerz in the student world, and half a dozen young men threw themselves one summer into the cascade of Kegon at Nikko from sheer weariness of living. When, however, he seeks death because of a loss of honour, there is never any doubt as to the mode of death, it is always the death by self- inflicted disembowelment, known as seppuku or harakiri. The mediaeval history of Japan is full of such deaths ; in modern times the instances are rarer, and very little is said about them. Not long ago an officer was court-martialled for some misdemeanour, and acquitted owing to some technical flaw in the case against him. Less than a week after we read in the papers a notice of his death. No one said anything, but everyone knew how and why he had died. Women very seldom take their own lives, except it be for disappointed or hopeless love. During the war with China there was one case that came to my knowledge of a young wife who took her life, as a samurai's daughter should, in order to join her lord who had fallen on the field of battle. There may have been more of such cases ; they did not come under my notice. Old Japan would have invariably praised such devotion, young Japan is not quite so sure about the morality of such a course. Not long ago a student brought me a composition which I read with interest, and which will make a good close to the present chapter. It was in the form of a dialogue, and concerned the death of a well-known officer who went to his rest not long ago. It was a death-bed scene. The old man, who had served with distinction in the wars which brought about the Imperial Restoration, was taking a last farewell of his trusty companion, the sword which he had worn so long and so honourably. His wife had been long dead, his only son had been killed in the war against China, and the old man looked forward to joining them both on the Plains of Heaven, with feelings of joyful anticipation. Only one thing 60 EVERY-DAY JAPAN troubled him who was to take his sword after him ? He had only one grandchild, the son of the officer that had died in China, and the grandson, alas! had forsaken the calling of arms and was preparing for a commercial life. It was evident that the sword would be of no use to a merchant's clerk. " Nay," cried the grandson, who had come in during the old man's soliloquy and had been listening to what he said, " though I am to be a merchant, I still claim the sword. For the sword is the emblem of the warrior's soul, and though I am to be a merchant, yet the merchant's soul should be like that of the warrior, keen, sharp, honourable. Give me the sword, and it shall serve me as an emblem of truth and honour ; whenever I see it I shall remember that even in the life of a merchant, noblesse oblige? I have said that the sword-maker's art is dying ; some of the subsidiary arts are already dead. There is no one now that understands how to make lacquer sheaths for swords, and no one that can fix the handles for the old-fashioned weapons. But the sword-polisher's trade still goes on, for the old sword blades must be kept from rust. Let us take this as an omen of good, and hope that the soul of the sword-wearer, the armiger, the gentleman of Japan, may long be kept bright and keen, and untainted by the rusting breezes of modern materialism. CHAPTER X SOME THOUGHTS ON JAPANESE COMMERCE THE student of Japanese history can find traces of a commerce, very limited, indeed, but fairly constant, carried on with China and Korea from the very first beginnings of authentic history, say, from the sixth or seventh century of our era. He will also find that the spirit of commercial enterprise among the Japanese was extremely vigorous during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the people dreamed of over-sea commerce and over-sea conquests until their dreams were rudely broken by the fear of foreign invasion which unfortunately came over them as an indirect and altogether unintentional result of their dealings with Spanish and Portuguese missionaries. With the closing of the country the dreams of the ambitious merchant were dissipated. His energies were confined within the narrow borders of the " four seas " that surround the Empire, the staples of his trade were the few necessaries of life and the still fewer luxuries that his frugal compatriots required, and his clientele was an ever diminishing one, for the population of Japan steadily declined during the whole of the stagnant period of the Tokugawa regime. When the Revolution of Meiji took place in 1868, and the country was in a limited way thrown open to foreign inter- course, commerce did not at once revive, for it is very difficult to move money out of its accustomed channels and grooves. The years from 1869 to 1881 were years of trouble, unrest, and suspicion. The Tokugawa Shogunate had been overthrown, and the new Government had been established in its place ; but it was not quite clear that the era of Meiji was going to be, true to its name, an era of " Enlightened Government," and 61 62 EVERY-DAY JAPAN not merely the old tyranny under a new name. The political horizon was overcast, and the distant prospects vague and hazy ; vision was obstructed by clouds of uncertainty, and the merchant, doubly cautious in those difficult times, put his fingers in his ears and refused to listen to the voice of the foreign trader who tried to tempt him to his store at Yokohama, Kobe, or Nagasaki. In 1 88 1 the Emperor promised to give his people a Con- stitutional Government as soon as they were ready for it, and that promise, faithfully kept though long delayed, changed the whole face of the commercial world. The merchants knew now that there was not going to be a return to the old ways of an autocratic rule, and began to pluck up courage to engage on a larger scale in commerce with foreign lands. The trade with foreign countries was at first almost entirely done through the foreign middleman who had established him- self at the open ports of the country. The foreigner had experience which the Japanese merchant did not possess : he paid ready money for what he bought, he sold his goods at prices far below what they could have got by trading directly with the unknown lands of the distant West in a word, he was an indispensable intermediary. But he was not popular ; he was often proud and haughty ; he had been trained to con- sider that business was business and not a thing to be leisurely dawdled through with many cups of tea and ceremonious exchange of presents, and he lived in a style of magnificence and pomp (for so it seemed to the Japanese) which suggested the sus- picion that he was deriving an altogether disproportionate profit out of transactions from which they obtained but very moderate gains. Besides, he was a foreigner, and that was quite a good reason for disliking him. In 1884 the newly-established Government, which had been through many financial difficulties, resumed specie payments, and thus gave to the country an additional sense of security. In the meanwhile the way of commerce had been prepared by the far-seeing statesmen of the Restoration : a system of banks had been established, the post and telegraph service organised, internal communications by road and rail developed as far as SHIPPING ON THE SUMIDA RIVER, TOKYO. Photograph by permission of J. J, Beringion, Ksg, A RIVER SCENE NEAR THE FISH MARKET, TOKYO. JAPANESE COMMERCE 63 opportunities and means would allow. The year 1884 saw the formation of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha, now one of the fore- most steamship companies of the world. It was an amalgama- tion of two smaller previously established steamship companies, the Mitsu Bishi and the Kyodo Unyu Kaisha, and I remember well that the general public at the time of the amalgamation were not as hopeful as to the prospects of the new company as were some of its more ardent promoters. It seemed like the dream of a visionary to talk, as some did, of the Yusen Kaisha being likely to become some day a serious rival to the P. and O. The dream has been realised, nevertheless, with Japanese capital indeed, but not without the generously recog- nised assistance of faithful and able foreign employes. Japan then set herself to work to get rid of the foreign middleman. By the year 1888 Japanese merchants had got possession of 12 per cent, of the foreign trade of the country. Eleven years later, in 1899, they had obtained 25 per cent, of a very much increased total volume of annual business. The successes of the war with Russia, and the subsequent commercial annexation for such it may almost be named of Manchuria and Korea, have immensely increased the proportion of trade in native Japanese hands. There is no doubt that the Japanese will not stop until they have thus obtained control of the whole of the foreign trade, not only of Japan, but of all those countries, such as Korea, over which they exercise sway. This is not altogether due to dislike of the foreigner, nor yet to jealousy, though both of these motives must still be taken into consideration. The real fact is that the Japanese cannot conceive of himself except as being, in all places and under all circumstances, on the top a very laudable piece of self-esteem, but not always gratifying to the persons whom he wishes to place below him. He can never engage in any business without at once desiring to control it. He is not at all adverse to receiving the aid, assistance, advice of foreigners, and he will pay handsomely for such aid and treat his advisers especially if he likes them and they have shown that they are good for something with the very greatest courtesy and 64 EVERY-DAY JAPAN consideration. But advice is not quite the same thing as con- trol, and the control of foreigners he cannot tolerate. This is the universal experience of all foreigners in Japan merchants, missionaries, business-men, teachers. The Japanese have got all their own institutions, Government and otherwise, entirely into their own hands ; they are engaged at the present moment in swallowing down the Mission Schools and Churches, not alto- gether to the satisfaction of some of the missionary confraternity. Presently the Yokohama and Kobe middlemen (with the exception of those who have proved themselves to be both useful and in- dispensable) will go the same way, and already the new ventures in the industrial world, which bid for foreign capital, ask for it with the distinct understanding that it is to be mainly or entirely under Japanese control. The achievements already made by Japan her military power, her postal and telegraph service, her banking system, her educa- tion all combine to give the world the assurance that when she sets herself to work in earnest, as she is doing now, to get her own commerce into her own hands and to control the markets in dependent countries, she will succeed She has so much in her favour : the industry of her people, their powers of study, the quickness of their observation, their readiness to form combinations and to organise their undertakings. All these things work for her. Against her, she has the lack of knowledge and experience of her old-fashioned merchants, the comparative smallness of her national capital, and, above all, the " defective integrity " which permeates the whole nation. "Defective integrity" is a complaint which is almost universally brought against Japan, and there would not be so much smoke unless there were a good deal of fire to cause it. It is the thorn in the flesh that troubles the lovers of Japan lest they should be too much elevated by the beauty of their beloved For Japan is like a fair maiden who compels the admiration and love of all that see her; but when her lovers would fain boast of the beauty of their lady, they have at times to own with the deepest con- fusion that the beauty is marred by "defective integrity." CHAPTER XI PRINCE ITO THE name of Prince Ito, one of the few surviving pioneers of the great Restoration which brought the Emperor of Japan back to his rightful place as the ruler of his country, is well known the whole world over. During a long course of years of service he has shown himself to be a statesman of singular tenacity of purpose, with enlightened views and broad sympathies, and a marvellous capacity for adapting himself to new circumstances. So great indeed is his versatility in adaptation that his enemies for he has them accuse him of being simply an opportunist with absolutely no settled principles of action, and consequently no tenacity of purpose or strength of will. His admirers say that tenacity of purpose must not be confounded with obstinacy or stubbornness, that Ito is certainly neither obstinate nor stubborn, but that nevertheless he has served his country with a singular tenacity of desire to promote her interests. A member of the Choshu clan, and the early protege of Kido and Okubo, Ito has, ever since his adventurous return from Europe, served his country with unswerving fidelity, but always in a civil capacity. He is now the only one of the senior states- men that remains in harness. He was appointed as a member of Prince Iwakura's mission to America and Europe in 1871, and as a result of that journey drew up for the service of his country the Banking Regulations of 1872, which have served as the basis upon which rests Japan's present financial system. As Minister of Public Works he inaugurated much that was important for Japan, notably her railway system. He was the creator of the modern Japanese Government bureaux, and after the death of Kido in 1 877, and the assassination of Okubo which followed soon F 65 66 EVERY-DAY JAPAN after, stepped into the position of leadership. Whilst smaller politicians talked and vapoured, Ito worked, and always with his eye directed to the one great end which he had set before himself from the beginning, to change Japan into a great modern State. The codification of Japan's laws, both civil and criminal, the drawing up of a system of education, and above all the drafting of the Constitution, a work which occupied him for ten years of constant study, investigation and thought these are but some of the results of a singularly industrious life. When Prince Sanjo, feeling the burden of his years, resigned the Premiership in 1885, Ito succeeded him. He has since been Premier no less than four times, and it has been his work to transform the Council of the Emperor from the informal body of advisers whom the force of circumstances almost threw together as a body of irregular councillors, into the Cabinet of Constitu- tional Ministers responsible to their Sovereign, but also bound to consult the wishes of the people in Parliament assembled. It was during Ito's second Premiership that the war with China broke out ; it was also his task to conduct the peace negotiations with Li-hung-chang at Shimonoseki, and thus to terminate a war which did much to secure Japan's position in the Far East if not in the world. His last Premiership was in 1900, and lasted but a few months, at the conclusion of which he retired to make room for the Katsura Cabinet. He was for some time, as President of the Privy Council, practically withdrawn from active political life, but the needs of Japan after the conclusion of the war with Russia soon called him back into active service, and he is now Resident- General in Korea, charged with a task far weightier perhaps than any he has yet undertaken the administration of Korea, and the political education of its new Emperor and Crown Prince. Possibly he will succeed in bringing order out of the chaos. The problem of Korea is one which all lovers of Japan are watching with the greatest eagerness and anxiety, for if half the rumours that come from that unhappy land are true, it would seem as though Japanese adventurers in the peninsula were de- liberately setting themselves to destroying the fair name of Japan by the most reckless and unscrupulous behaviour, and as though PRINCE ITO 67 Japanese officialdom were unable or unwilling to restrain the excesses of their countrymen. This book has no political purpose, and its pages are not intended for criticism of political affairs. It would be extremely ungracious in me, who have so long eaten the bread of Japan, to play the part of a hostile critic. Rather, I would advise those who decry the conduct of Japan in Korea and Manchuria to investigate the history of Formosa since it came into Japanese hands at the conclusion of the war with China in 1895. They will there see the results of Japan's honourable administration of a newly-acquired territory, an administration which began with precisely the same difficulties, though on a smaller scale, as those which confront Japanese administrators in Korea and Manchuria ; and the inference I would have them draw is that, given time for due organisation and the establishment of enlightened government, there is no reason why Korea under a Japanese protectorate should not be every whit as prosperous and happy as Formosa under the Japanese flag. For the rest, it must be remembered that Japan received no indemnity from Russia for the expenses of the war, and that her only means of recouping herself for the cost of her victories is to exploit to the utmost the commercial advantages which her military occupation of the Hermit Kingdom and Manchuria have given her. I must confess, however, that I should feel much happier as to ultimate results if I could feel that the moral development of young Japan had been as successfully accomplished as its development in intellect and material resources. A State without a religion and that is what its rulers would make Japan is practically a State without a conscience, and everyone knows how unscrupulous, and therefore possibly unrighteous, both individuals and nations can be who have not got what is called the " root of the matter " in them. But it is not with Ito as a statesman that I am concerned, but with Ito as a citizen of Tokyo. The Prince is not a native of the Metropolis, he hails from the far distant province of Choshu in the extreme west of the main island of Japan. But Tokyo has been his home for well-nigh forty years now, so that the capital may truly be looked upon as his real home, though of late years he has retired whenever possible to the charming seaside village 68 EVERY-DAY JAPAN of Oiso, where he has a villa, in a land of oranges and pines in full view of the rolling Pacific. He has had many opportunities of enriching himself ; let it be said to his honour that he has not availed himself, as have others, of the chances that came to his hand, and that he is still a comparatively poor man. He has many enemies among the more radical sections of the community, for he is himself a great advocate of bureaucracy ; but, amidst hosts of other unpleasant things, his detractors have never been able to charge him with greed for money. He is a tremendous worker, with an " infinite capacity for taking pains," and a seemingly equal capacity for doing without sleep. He has a happy disposition, and enjoys life when he gets the chance, a fact for which he is often made the subject of caricatures in the comic papers of the capital. He has no son of his own, but has adopted one to succeed him. Of his two daughters, one is the wife of Baron Suyematsu, whom London Society knows so well ; the other is married to Mr. Nishi, secretary of the Japanese Legation at Vienna. CHAPTER XII TWO LIVING PIONEERS OF JAPAN'S GREATNESS TWENTY years ago the two statesmen of whom I am going to write in this chapter were the leading spirits in the national revival that was then in progress. One of them is still in harness, doing yeoman's service for the Empire ; while the other, although in retirement, is a man who is very frequently consulted Both of them belong to that elite body of Japanese statesmen known as the Genro, or " senior statesmen." It is impossible to read newspaper articles published in Japan or written about things Japanese without constantly coming across the phrase " senior statesmen." It is not always easy for an outsider to know exactly who these personages are. They are not Cabinet Ministers, they are not necessarily members of the Privy Council ; indeed, some of them apparently hold no official or responsible position. And yet they are constantly before the public eye as the persons possessing the greatest influence in the country. Every important measure seems to be submitted to them for their opinion. Whenever a political crisis occurs it is always they whose aid is invoked to find a way out of the impasse; they, more than anyone in the country, seem to enjoy the absolute confidence of their Sovereign in a word, they possess and exercise all the prerogatives and influence which belong to those who in any country have the claim to be called " the power behind the throne." The Japanese term Genro means " experienced statesmen," and it is now constantly applied to a small and diminishing band of men of mature wisdom and experience who have been the Emperor's counsellors and advisers from the beginning of the reforms which have marked his reign until the present day. 69 ;o EVERY-DAY JAPAN In the early days of Meiji, when the Shogtmate had just been overthrown and the Sovereign stood alone as the autocratic ruler of a badly united country, with very little in the way of institutions or precedents to guide and assist him, he constantly appealed for help to the men who had been mainly instru- mental in effecting his restoration to the Kuge nobles, Iwakura and Sanjo, to the Satsuma samurai Okubo, and to Kido, a samurai of the Choshu clan. These four men were his earliest and most faithful advisers ; but before they were taken from him one of them by assassination they had taken into their counsels others who have proved themselves equally wise and equally faithful, and it is to the remnant of this small band of devoted friends of His Majesty that the title of Genro, or " senior statesmen," is given. The student of Japanese history must distinguish between this informal body of unofficial and friendly advisers of the Emperor and the official Genro-in, or Senate (it might also be called a Privy Council), which acted between 1875 an d 1890 as a deliberative and consultative body, in days when there was no Parliament and no Constitution. The Genro-in was never a very flourishing or successful insti- tution. The Genro statesmen, on the other hand, have been the real makers of New Japan. These men owed their early lessons in political wisdom to certain obscure scholars of the " thirties " and " forties," who had, at the cost of great labour and hardship, acquired a working acquaintance with the Dutch language, through the medium of which they had imbibed much Western learning, the full import of which they themselves scarcely grasped. They owed more to certain eager politicians and agitators, to Hirano and Yokoi, but more especially to a man named Yoshida, who was practically the inspiring genius of all the band of elder statesmen. These men never lived to see the fruits of their labours or the fulfil- ment of the dreams which were so constantly with them. In due course of time, however, it was vouchsafed to some of their disciples not only to see the light but by its aid to accomplish one of the greatest transformations the world has ever beheld ; and in recording the successes of their disciples TWO LIVING PIONEERS 71 it seems but right to give at least a passing tribute to their courage and faith. Among Yoshida's pupils were some young men, retainers of the lord of Choshu, who were more fortunate than their teacher in that they succeeded in getting themselves smuggled out of the country in 1864, a thing which Yoshida had in vain attempted to do. Arriving at Shanghai, two of them for history has not much to say of the other three who formed part of the original company were, through the kindness of Messrs. Jardine and Matheson's representative, shipped on board a vessel bound for London, where they arrived in due course of time, having been put to serve before the mast because they had expressed the desire to "learn navigation." The two young men were Inouye Kaoru and Ito Hirobumi, names which have since become famous the whole world over. Ito and Inouye, as samurai of the Choshu clan, had taken part, in 1863, in the defence of their lord's territories against the Shogunal armies sent to punish the obstreperous clan for some of its numerous misdemeanours. They were, apparently, in despair about the situation of their country; they were con- vinced of the legitimacy of the Imperial claims, but they had no hope of overthrowing the Shogunate ; and, in the meantime, they saw Japan in daily danger of becoming the prey of some land-grabbing foreign nation. They concluded that the only thing to be done was to go in person to the West and steal from European nations the secrets of their power. Armed with these, they believed they might not only obtain internal peace for their distracted country, but also enable her successfully to hold her own against foreign aggression. When they arrived in London, they understood the magnitude of the task before them. They had hitherto been, according to the Japanese proverb, like frogs at the bottom of a deep well, drawing conclusions about the great ocean from the few bucketfuls of water that surrounded them. They had now reached the shores of the great ocean itself, and they found that, whilst Japan had been sleeping, the Western world had made progress such as Kyoto and Yedo had never dreamed of. 72 EVERY-DAY JAPAN They saw that Japan had almost everything to learn, and not much time to learn it in. Any day might embroil their hot- headed countrymen with some foreign nation, and the con- sequences of such embroilment might be most serious. It was not enough for Choshu to be progressive, or for Satsuma to adopt Western ways. Japan's only hope was to become a modern State, united, progressive, and cultured, according to the ideals of the West. Then she might hope to hold her own. In the meantime, she must keep free from foreign difficulties, and devote all her energies to material development. These thoughts were in the minds of the two forlorn students in the wastes of London when the news reached them that their turbulent clan had succeeded in getting into trouble with the Foreign Powers, that the lord of Choshu had ordered his for- tresses at Shimonoseki to fire on foreign ships passing the Straits, and that a joint expedition of the foreign forces in the Far East was about to chastise the impertinence of the turbulent daimyo. This news decided their actions. They resolved to return home at once, even though it might cost them their lives, and to try, by clear expositions of the truth as they had seen it, to dissuade their clansmen from their fool- hardy undertaking. They arrived too late to prevent the bom- bardment of Shimonoseki, but they arrived in sufficient time to put their case clearly before their lord and the other leading men of their clan, and they were able to act as intermediaries in the settlement of affairs. It was from Ito and Inouye that the Foreign Powers first learned the true position of the Mikado in the body politic of Japan. The Shogunate had so imposed itself on the world that the outside nations treated the Shogun as though he were the true Sovereign of the country. The frankness of Ito and Inouye put the real state of things before them. At Kyoto resided the true Sovereign ; the person who lived in such pomp at Yedo was not the Sovereign at all, but a usurping Minister who had encroached on the prerogatives of his Master. When the Foreign Powers learned that, they understood that it was their right policy to deal with the Sovereign and not with TWO LIVING PIONEERS 73 his Minister. The consequent change of attitude on the part of the Foreign Powers did much to assist the restoration of the Imperial House. It was not so easy to win over their own countrymen to a change of political programme as it was to persuade the foreign Consuls. More than once they were in danger of their lives from the evil passions of their jealous countrymen, who looked upon them as traitors to the good cause of Japanese independence, and it was only by the devotion of a few friends that they escaped from the fate which has befallen not a few of Japan's patriots. On one occasion, I to owed his life to a woman's fidelity. He was being pursued by a band of armed enemies, who were close on his heels, and, in his despair, took refuge in a tea- house where he was known, and implored one of the tea-house girls to help him. There is in every Japanese house a small dusthole. As the ground floor is raised about two feet above the earth, a square hole is cut in the floor, and the sweepings of the rooms are thus got out of sight. When the sweeping is done, the hole is covered with a board, and a small square mat placed on the top effectually conceals the presence of a dusthole. With great presence of mind, the tea-house girl put Ito down the dusthole, and covered it up. Then she placed a hibachi, or brazier, on the spot, and over it a kotatsu, or framework such as the Japanese use for drying clothes over the fire, and sat herself down by the side of the hibachi to do her sewing. When the pursuers came they found an innocent- looking girl sitting by a fire and doing some sewing of a very domestic nature, who told them that they were quite at liberty to look all through the house and find their victim if he were there ; and not one of them thought of the dusthole under the kotatsu. The lady is now the Princess Ito, and the quondam tea-house girl deserves the gratitude of the nation for having saved the life of the future Bismarck of Japan. Ito's place of refuge cannot have been a very pleasant one not nearly as pleasant as the hole in which Charles II. was concealed in Boscobel House. Two or three years ago the 74 EVERY-DAY JAPAN municipality of Tokyo, as a preventive measure against the plague, ordered all the householders in the city to have a house- cleaning, and these compulsory purifications are now a per- manent portion of our annual duties. All furniture is turned out into the streets, the thick mats which form the floors are taken up and beaten, every piece of woodwork washed with soap and water, and the contents of every dustheap piled in the street for the scavengers to clear away. The annual dust- heaps are still pretty big. I will leave it to my readers to imagine the size of the dustheaps at our first compulsory house- cleaning. When I have gone through the streets of Tokyo during these lustrations, I have more than once thought of Ito in his dusthole. In truth, the literal dusthole cannot have been worse than that metaphorical dusthole into which Ito plunged when he undertook the reformation of Japan. Ito's friend Inouye Kaoru retired from active life in 1898. He has never been Prime Minister, though he was once acting Premier during the illness of his friend ; but he has held the portfolios of Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, Finance, and Agriculture and Commerce, and has thus accumulated no small amount of political experience. A man of a nervous and some- what fidgety temperament, he has not Ito's powers of managing his fellow-men, has consequently never had a large political following, and failed in his early attempts to secure a revision of the treaties made with the Foreign Powers ; but he is a master of finance, and his financial services have been invaluable to his country during the period of transition. As such he has known how to keep in touch with the leading business men in Japan, with the old-established family of the Mitsui who have transformed their old hereditary business from a mediaeval concern to one worthy of twentieth-century traditions, with the more modern family of the Iwasaki, whose petty steamship company of forty years ago suddenly sprang into prominence during the Satsuma rebellion and has now developed into the great Nippon Yusen Kaisha, with lines to America and Australia, to Bombay and London. Mr. Okura Kihachiro, a leading merchant, and Baron Shibusawa, one of the great -. TWO LIVING PIONEERS 75 promoters of banks and business undertakings, may also be mentioned as men with whom Inouye has known how to work, if not personally, at least in spirit ; and though Inouye's name is but seldom heard of now, it is known that, especially in matters of finance, he has the ear of his Sovereign. He is the second of the now dwindling band of senior statesmen. CHAPTER XIII THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE ON the highest elevation in Tokyo, commanding a wide view over the city and the bay, which extends on a clear day as far as the distant hills of the Boshu peninsula, stands the Yasukunijinja, or Patriots' Shrine, better known among Tokyo residents by the name of Shokonsha, or Shrine of the Righteous Souls. The deification of the dead is the constant tendency of the Japanese mind. The Japanese say that it is the universal ten- dency of the human mind to deify the dead, and that we should see it ourselves if we were not so blinded by prejudice. When the great ones of the past died, they were considered to have joined the gods, and the Shinto pantheon, theoretically at least, includes the soul of every Japanese who has departed this life. Japan, they say, is a country of yayoi yorodzu no kami of eight million gods: indeed, the number must be far greater than that. But, of course, there must always be some of this great con- course of deities who make a deeper impression on the mind of posterity than others, and each successive generation adds to the objects of its worship a select few of the most conspicuous and noteworthy among its contemporary heroes. Even we in England have always amongst our great men a chosen few who are deemed worthy to lie in the precincts of Westminster Abbey. In the present generation the most glorious thing to have done is to have sacrificed one's life for Emperor and country. The restoration of Imperial rule in 1868 was not accomplished without much hard fighting and a considerable amount of blood- shed, and when at last the restoration was achieved, and the Emperor was firmly seated on his throne, it was deemed to be 76 THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE 77 the right and proper thing for him to commemorate the memories of those who had died in his cause by erecting shrines in their honour, and establishing rites of religious worship to their manes. So it came to pass that, between the years 1869 and 1874 or thereabouts, there were built, not only in Tokyo, but in all military towns, Shokonsha shrines for the worship of the souls of warriors who had died for king and country. The number of the spirits thus worshipped has increased since then. When Saigo rose in rebellion, in 1877, it cost many lives to put him down. There have been wars in Formosa and China, and now the hard-fought victories in Manchuria have enormously swelled the lists of the souls to be thus commemorated. The Kudan Shrine stands in the midst of spacious grounds, well laid out with trees and walks, and forming a small park to which Tokyo residents often come for rest and refreshment. It is approached through an immense bronze torii, which stands on the brow of the hill overlooking the city. Inside the torii is a broad, stone-paved walk, lined with handsome lanterns in stone and bronze, leading up to the shrine, which, like all Shinto places of worship, is simplicity itself. The English reader may perhaps require to be told that this State Shinto is really a perfectly modern revival. The old native nature-worship was almost a thing of the past, and during the Tokugawa rule had become so mixed with Buddhism that the same temples generally served for the purposes of both religions, though there was here and there to be found a purely Shinto shrine. In the controversies which ultimately led to the Restoration, Buddhism took the Shogunate side and lost nearly everything, while Shinto teachers were among the most powerful advocates of the Imperialist cause. Motives of gratitude, therefore, as well as of policy, led to the revival of Shinto as the religion of the State, to be used on all occasions of public ceremony. The Kudan Shrine is not, therefore, a meaningless survival of the old hoary faith ; it is a piece of modern Japan with a meaning to it. Twice a year, in May and November, is held the great Shokonsha Festival. The gods to be worshipped are the souls of all those who have fought for the Emperor during and since 78 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the period of the Restoration. The adherents of the lost causes are not included, their worship is left to the piety of their own descendants it does not concern the State. The ceremonies last three days. There is a religious service on each morning, on the first day by members of the Imperial House or their repre- sentatives, on the second by the Army and Navy, and on the third by the people, and, more especially, the descendants of the departed warriors. The worship is conducted by white-robed Shinto priests, there are offerings of rice-cakes and flowers, prayers are made, addresses presented, and hymns sung. I could not explain the ritual in detail, but it is reverent and imposing, and lasts about a couple of hours. But the religious ceremony is only a part, and in popular estimation only an insignificant part, of the festival. I never dreamed, in the days when I construed Virgil's " jEneid " in class, that I should ever see funeral games with my own eyes. Yet here they are on the Kudan Hill. Horse races have been abandoned, owing to the smallness of the grounds and the consequent impossibility to keep a course, but there are other amusements in abundance. Wrestlers come from all parts of the country to give exhibitions of their skill and prowess, and though the wrestling matches at Kudan are not like those at the Ekoin, where the issue of the contests decides the wrestler's rank, station, and salary for the next twelve months, they wrestle for the glory of the thing and in honour of the dead. Furthermore, there are contests in jiu-jitsu, fencing, running, jumping, and many other manly exercises. The spirits to be commemorated are the spirits of warriors at rest, and what can there be more dear to the heart of retired veterans for that is how the Japanese looks on the dead in battle than to watch the friendly contests of the men who now occupy their places in the regiments they loved so well ? By the side of the shrine is a museum of military trophies which is well worthy of a visit. It can be reserved, however, for another occasion. To-day we are celebrating the memory of the loyal troops who died for the Sovereign, and the crowds of living persons in the grounds are far more interesting for the present than the lifeless trophies of long-fought battles. THE PATRIOTS' SHRINE 79 The following poem seems to represent with fair accuracy the attitude of the Japanese mind towards the spirits of the departed whom he venerates. He feels himself to be one with them in the Communion of the (Japanese) Saints: THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR. Sounds, like the tread of martial feet, Marching along the silent street That leads to Kudan's Patriots' Shrine, With ordered rank and level line, With ghost-like tramp and hollow cheer, What are these sounds that greet my ear ? "We fought," they say, "we fought and died, By cold Liaotung's frozen tide, On hot Liaotung's burning plain, Some on land, some on the main, Some in blocking the mouth of the Port, Some by the Two Hundred Metre Fort, Some in the trench knee-deep in blood, Where Russians at bay, with their muskets, stood, We fought, we fell, we would not retire; And at eve the lurid funeral pyre, Blazing gloomily through the night, Effaced the traces of each day's fight. *' We fought, we fell, our bones were burned, Our spirits to their posts returned, Kept ghostly guard on Arthur's height, Drew ghostly sword in ghostly fight, And helped our comrades maintain the right. "But now that the Flag of the Rising Sun Flies o'er the port, our work is done, We've come to the Patriots' Shrine to rest In the midst of the heroes ever blest. We fought, we died, the life God lent We returned to God, we're well content; Not Hideyoshi's self can boast Of doughtier deeds than Nogi's host, Or Togo's sailors. We take our place Among the foremost of our race : At Duty's call our lives we spent, We have our rank, we're well content. "Content to leave home, child and wife, And parents dear to us as life? 8o EVERY-DAY JAPAN Content. God rules in heaven above, Our Sovereign's heart is a heart of love, And, though the present hour be black, We mean to watch by hearth and home, To see that no misfortune come; And, with the help of the Power that reigns On Earth, and on the Heavenly plains, We'll see to it that none shall lack That walk in the ways of old Japan, Duty to Emperor, God and man."* * The collocation "Emperor, God and man " sounds strange to English ears, but it is the collocation insisted on by the ardent advocates of the " Japan Spirit." Mr. Kato Hiroyuki has recently published a severe criticism on Christianity for putting God before and above the Emperor. CHAPTER XIV THE JAPANESE NOBILITY JAPAN has an aristocracy of which some of the members are of very long descent. When, in 1884, an Imperial decree created a hierarchy of nobles who were to be known to the outside world as Princes, Marquises, Counts, Viscounts, and Barons, the list of newly-created peers contained the heads of many Kuge families, whose ancestors had from time immemorial been in the service of the Imperial House at Kyoto, and who, though mainly poor, had in them all the honourable traditions of an ancient aristocracy. There were also the heads of the buke, or warrior classes, the daimyos of the principal fiefs of feudal days, corresponding, more or less, to the German ruling princes. Some of these families such as the Houses of Shimadzu and Mori had ruled as kings in their own domains for centuries, and though they had been compelled to bow their heads to the proud Tokugawa, were yet at the time of the Restoration fairly independent. Others had owed their elevation to Daimyates to the favour of the first Tokugawa, two centuries and a half ago, and lacking that feeling of opposition which kept the oldest daimyo families constantly on the alert, had been lulled into a false security by the continual protection of the Shogunate. These families, as a rule, counted for very little, for both they and their immediate retainers had lost their virility, and yet in the days of the Restoration they had deserved well of the Empire, for the whole body of daimyos had, with one accord and spontaneously, laid their domains at the Emperor's feet, so that henceforward there might be but one Ruler in the land. A third class, and one which from natural circumstances is continually receiving fresh additions to its numbers, consists of G 81 82 EVERY-DAY JAPAN families which have deserved well of the Empire in recent times and have been newly ennobled by the present occupant of the throne. This class comprises the names of all the makers of New Japan, and there are new creations every year. There is one spiritual peer, the hereditary Archbishop (if I may so call him) of the Otani sect of Shinshu Buddhists, but he sits as a count and not as a prelate. In public affairs noblemen have prominence accorded to them according to the ability they show in managing public business or understanding the problems of the day. If we trusted only to the newspapers we should get the impression that the new nobles were the only members of the aristocracy that had any weight in public life, for it is they, of course, that are con- stantly prominent men like Hayashi, Shibusawa, Komura, to say nothing of Prince Ito and his compeers. But when we get behind the scenes we find that the old aristocracy still carry much weight, and that, especially, those nobles who ruled over large fiefs, and had numerous samurai under them, still enjoy a very large amount of esteem and influence amongst the members of their clan. I can remember being asked to a dinner given in honour of the heir of a marquisate who was being sent abroad for a tour to complete his education. The family was an important one, and had in the past ruled over wide domains. Many of the samurai belonging to the clan had been active in the modern life of the nation, and had been ennobled, some of them holding titles of the same rank as the one now held by their former feudal chief. It was very touching to see how, in the presence of their former princelet, these men were willing to forget for a moment their own honours and dignities and to pay reverence to the head of the old clan. The samurai, even though now a baron or marquis, still remains loyal to his old clan, and the heads of the old families still exercise a consider- able influence, though one mainly behind the scenes. This state of affairs cannot, however, last for long, for Japan, in spite of traditions to the contrary, is intensely democratic and asks " What art thou ? " not " What hast thou been ? " In the early days, when the daimyos suddenly found themselves on THE LAKE IN THE UNIVERSITY GROUNDS, TOKYO. A BUSY STREET LEADING TO THE TEMPLE IN THE ASAKUSA WARD, TOKYO. THE JAPANESE NOBILITY 83 the same level with other men, they were not very competent, some of them, to manage even their own affairs. I know of one family which in the hour of poverty sold to a far-seeing retainer for a paltry seven hundred yen a plot of land in the very heart of the capital which is now worth hundreds of thousands, and I have only recently read of another noble family ruined by trusting to an unprincipled business manager. But everything possible is being done to see that the rising generation of peers shall be capable of holding its own in the esteem of the nation, and if the students of the Peers' College in Tokyo do not work quite so hard as the students in other schools, I suppose it is equally true that there are schools in England at which the boys work harder than they do at Eton. Generally speaking, the life of a nobleman in Japan is a very quiet one. Archery is a very favourite pastime, and so is horse-riding. The meetings of the race club are well attended, and there is a kind of mild polo, known as dakyti, which is at times in great vogue. Dakyu is really a cross between lacrosse and polo, and affords many opportunities for exhibiting skill, while not so rough and dangerous as the Western game. Etiquette forbids the nobility to attend a theatre in Tokyo ; indeed, when Prince Arthur of Connaught was honoured by a special performance, many of those who attended in his honour were having their first glimpse of the delights of the stage. The old nobility of Japan will never again exercise all their ancient power in the country, for they will be outnumbered by the more democratic peers whose personal merits have procured their elevation. But it is the great desire of His Majesty, so it is said, that the ancient aristocracy should supply the Army and Navy with officers and leaders. This is quite as it should be. Since the surrender of their fiefs and estates the nobles have been the pensioners of the State, receiving fixed incomes from the Treasury. The pensions are generous, and the aris- tocracy, freed from sordid cares, owe it to their country to cultivate those generous virtues which go to the making of military leaders, and which men whose thoughts are of necessity devoted to material objects often fail to attain. CHAPTER XV THE SAMURAI IN every part of ancient Yedo were to be seen in days gone by the yashiki, or mansions of the daimyos. Every daimyo was obliged to spend one half of his year in Yedo, and to keep his family there as hostages for his good behaviour during the other half. He lived in a large square block of buildings, his own house and garden standing in the centre, whilst the samurai had apart- ments in a long, low building, known as a nagaya, or " long house," which ran right round the block, thus serving as a protection to the mansion of the feudal lord. A stout wooden gate, painted black, and secured with ponderous bars, stood at the entrance to the yashiki, to which access was ordinarily gained by means of a small postern door at the side of the big gate. The whole resembled the quadrangle of an English College, with the daimyo s private house to represent the Master's lodge. In the apartments of these nagaya lived the samurai in very simple and poor fashion. There has always been a fighting class in Japan, but the samurai as an organised institution owes its existence to the Hojo Regents at Kamakura, to whom Japan owed so much in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Regents found Japan dis- tracted, with no recognised authority except puppet emperors represented by Shoguns who were likewise puppets. Their own authority and appointment were somewhat irregular, but they had the power in their hands, and they were good and capable states- men. With the help of the Zen priests, whose assistance they invited, they brought order out of chaos, and their great work was the organisation of the samurai, through whom the country was to be governed and controlled. 84 THE SAMURAI 85 When the order was first instituted the samurai was looked upon as one whose mind ought to be filled with high ideals. Devoted to his lord, who was also a samurai, he was likewise devoted to the practice of the profession of arms, which was no mere pastime or means of obtaining a livelihood, but a sacred vocation. He was therefore, in many respects, the Japanese counterpart of the mediaeval knight, but there was nothing mercenary about him, for he would never have dreamed of letting out his sword for hire to the highest bidder. His service was due to his lord and to none other, and the lord, in return, took charge of his retainer and provided him with a small income in rice and land which would suffice for his simple wants. With this he made it a virtue to be satisfied ; to have increased his income by trade or commerce would have been an unwarrantable soiling of hands which ought to be clean. Two and a half centuries of absolute peace would have spoiled the spirit of any warrior caste in the world, and it is immensely to the credit of the samurai that they maintained their high ideals as well as they did, during the dull days of the Tokugawa regime. It was inevitable that in that long period of brooding over a chivalric past which could never be recalled, there should arise mistaken ideas of duty and honour, which would not have arisen had there been a healthier life with greater scope for energy and action. The samurai learned to be very hard with himself, and to prefer a self-inflicted death to the slightest stain upon his honour. That feeling, noble in itself, was carried to a painful excess, and often led to a very needless sacrifice of valuable lives. When Watanabe Noboru, in 1840, felt that his addiction to the study of Western science was bringing trouble upon his clan, he committed suicide. It is impossible to criticise unfavourably the motives which actuated him, but he would have served the cause he had at heart far better had he borne his hardships patiently for a little longer and demonstrated by his life that the forbidden lore he was so diligently studying, far from perverting men, was only calculated to make them better citizens. The forty-seven Ronin who sacrificed themselves at the tomb of the master whose death they had avenged, must have the credit given them of having 86 EVERY-DAY JAPAN signally demonstrated their faithful spirit, and of having made a protest against the tyranny which had condemned their master to a cruel death ; but, again, they would probably have done more useful work by remaining to build up the broken fortunes of their feudal lord's house and clan. The reading of these stories gives us a painful impression ; it seems as though these men had immolated themselves from a feeling of despair quite as much as of injured honour, as though they had felt that the tyranny over them was so heavy that there was no means of protesting against it except by self-sacrifice. And yet it is impossible to withhold from them an abundant meed of admiration and honour. As the samurai was taught to be hard with himself, so he was hard with others. His sword, the thing which he called his soul, was always near at hand. Revenge for insults (and in an unhealthy state of society how easy it is to magnify an uninten- tional slight into a studied affront !) formed part of his creed, and the constant familiarity with the idea of bloodshed and death, as eventual possibilities for himself and others, made him often need- lessly harsh and cruel. The punishments of the Tokugawa age were cruel and barbarous, and they were all the handiwork of samurai legislators and magistrates. It follows of necessity that the samurai had but little use for religion, especially when that religion was the gentle faith of Buddha, who forbade his followers to take animal life in any shape or form. The samurai was therefore- and he still retains this characteristic mainly indifferent to the claims of religion. When he turned his attention to such things, he was as a rule attracted by the meditative sects of the Zen, which recommended him to seek truth for himself by an abstruse contemplation, the exercise of which is said to have an immense value in the formation and strengthening of the military mind. He was also very often a deep student of the Confucian classics, to which the Zen philosophy is largely allied. His ideas and thoughts were therefore mainly influenced by Chinese examples, and he commonly ordered his household according to the precepts of Celestial sages. The samurai ladies, therefore, were far from having the same liberty of speech and action which their sisters among the mer- THE SAMURAI 87 chants and tradesmen enjoyed. It is true that they had some very fine types among them. The wife of Takeda Shingen, who, in the palmy days of chivalry, defended her husband's castle during his absence, is a noteworthy example, and a few years ago I read of a samurai lady who refused to take chloroform whilst undergoing a painful operation. She had been obliged, she said, in former times, to witness the death by harakiri of her own husband and father, and the nerve which had sustained her then would not fail her now under far less painful circum- stances. The samurai women were proud of their inherited traditions, and many an officer whose devotion to his country was so signally shown on the battlefields of Manchuria owed the foundations of his character to an heroic mother. But the samurai was lord in his own house, in a sense that the merchant or craftsman never was. He had a considerable amount of leisure which he spent at home, and it has been noticed in other countries besides Japan that the military man in his own home is apt to become a martinet. Theoretically, the wife was nothing of importance save as a sort of upper domestic ; practically, she knew how to avail herself of all those arts which woman has always possessed as means of attack and defence ; and when she rose to the position of a mother-in-law living in the house of her son she was indeed powerful. She was rarely educated to the level of her husband, who, as a consequence, perhaps, did not always confine himself to her alone. Custom allowed him subsidiary wives and concubines, and the son of a concubine had the same chances of inheritance as the son of the lawful wife. It is only in recent years that the Japanese language has possessed a word for " illegitimate child" The merchant and tradesman had the same liberties in this respect as the samurai, but the influence of the wife in the merchant's domestic economy often acted as a restraining influence. Fencing, sword exercise, riding, archery, etc., were the samurai's occupations. They can scarcely be termed his re- creations, seeing that his vocation was to follow the profession of arms. He was generally more or less of a student, his 88 EVERY-DAY JAPAN principal studies being the Chinese classics and the composition of the short poems which delight the heart of the Japanese and defy the skill of the foreign translator. During the Tokugawa regime two other studies made their way into the country, both of which powerfully influenced the movement which culminated in the Restoration. The Dutch merchants at Nagasaki were allowed to import books in the Dutch language within certain limitations. Books relating to science, medicine, and military affairs were allowed to be brought in, all others being prohibited. It was difficult for a Japanese to obtain these precious volumes, it was more difficult for him to read them, but these obstacles made students more eager to get hold of them, and their zeal triumphantly surmounted the linguistic and grammatical difficulties in the way. Books on medical science, mathematics, and artillery are not such as would be chosen by an ordinary student who had access to the shelves of well-stocked libraries ; but, seeing that there was nothing else to be obtained, the young samurai eagerly sought the illumination that lay in their pages, and, in spite of linguistic difficulties, he found it. The Dutch books produced a band of political and social reformers, bold and daring, who, having once convinced themselves that the West was in pos- session of superior wisdom, would not rest until they had obtained it for themselves. The tendency was one for which the main body of samurai, self-confident and self-conceited, had but little sympathy ; but the Dutch scholars persevered in their labours, and at the time when we English were in the throes of the first Reform Act, they were making their influence keenly felt in Japan. These men represented the intellectual side of Japan, eagerly yearning after knowledge. About the middle of the eighteenth century there arose, again mainly among the samurai, and the priests and physicians who ranked with them, a school of writers whose tendencies were political rather than intellectual. Kamo Mabuchi, Moto-ori, and Hirata were perhaps in the first instance philologists devoted to the investigation of the ancient language of the country. Their investigations led them to the study of the ancient books, the THE SAMURAI 89 Kojiki, Nihongi, Manyoshu, Hyakuninisshu and others. From these books they learned, what the bulk of their countrymen seemed to have entirely forgotten, that the true and lawful Sove- reign of the country was not the Tokugawa who ruled in military pomp in Yedo, but that mysterious personage who dwelt secluded in quasi-divine solitude in the palace of Kyoto, from whence he seemed to exercise scarcely any influence upon the country at large. It required a considerable amount of boldness to make such statements in the very capital of the Shogun, for the Toku- gawas, though veiling their actions under legal forms, were really usurpers, and usurpers do not as a rule love the people who tell them the truth ; but the doctrines of the " loyalists " found accept- ance, nevertheless, and especially so among the samurai of the provinces, who had little reason to love, or even to respect, the Tokugawa, and it is easy to understand and appreciate the indig- nation which their legislation must have aroused in sensible samurai minds. The " loyalists " were very powerful just before the Restoration, when the continual arrivals of foreign ships, and the daily increasing impotency of the Shogunate, made it evident that a political change must shortly come over Japan. It will be thus seen that there were among the samurai two distinct and contrary currents of unrest. The " loyalist " looked to the restoration of the Imperial power, but cared so little for Western learning that he would have been content to continue the policy of exclusion provided only that he gained his object. The Dutch scholar, on the other hand, longed so eagerly for Western learning that he would have been willing to remain quietly under the Shogunate provided only that the country was thrown open to foreign intercourse. These two contradictory tendencies must be borne in mind if we wish to understand the apparent inconsistencies and vacillations of Japanese conduct during the early days of association with foreigners. For the rest, the samurai were well accustomed to the management of affairs. Japan, before the Restoration, was like Germany before the Napoleonic wars, an aggregation of numerous little States, each managing its own internal affairs under the hegemony of the Shogunate. The policy of lyeyasu, which go EVERY-DAY JAPAN compelled every daimyo to remain for six months of every year in Yedo, effectually robbed these feudal princes of the greater part of their influence. The power in each clan gradually passed from the daimyo into the hands of the principal samurai retainers, who were under no such restrictions as to residence. Each clan there- fore could furnish its quota of experienced men, trained in the management of affairs. What prevented them from being formid- able was that, like the petty German States, the clans were con- sumed with mutual jealousies which effectually kept them from combining until the " loyalist " doctrines brought them together round the person of the Sovereign. The spirit of the ancient samurai is far from dead, in spite of the deteriorating influences by which it has been surrounded. Many of the best spirits have remained honourably poor amidst opportunities for self-enrichment, and the following well-known story of Admiral Togo will speak for itself. " Before the fleet sailed from Sasebo he called his officers on board the Mikasa, and addressed them to the following effect : ' We sail to-night, and our enemy flies the Russian flag.' On a tray in front of him lay one of those short daggers which in former times were used to commit seppuku (self-despatch). . . . The officers . . understood his meaning." * *J. Morris: "The Makers of Japan." CHAPTER XVI WHO'S WHO IN TOKYO THE " Japan Year-Book " is quite interesting reading for one who knows Japan and is a little behind the scenes. A very large portion of it is made up of statistics, for the Japanese loves rows of figures above everything else in the way of print especially so if the figures can be made to speak of Japan's wonderful progress and he will tabulate anything that can be tabulated. It con- tains one chapter, however, which is not made up of figures and tables, but as it were of real flesh and blood a chapter entitled Who's Who in Japan, from which I have taken a smaller chapter with a more modest title, to tell the reader of some of our note- worthy Tokyo citizens. Some of the names are familiar to everyone the names of the famous warriors, for instance, Oyama, Kuroki, Nogi, Nozu, Oku, Oshima, of military fame ; of Togo, Kamimura, Yamamoto, Ito, as representatives of naval glories. In the world of politics we have Matsukata, the creator of Japan's financial prosperity, the statesman who used the Chinese indemnity to put the Japanese monetary system upon a gold basis ; and Yamagata, his tried colleague, who has stood shoulder to shoulder with him and with Marquis Ito during all this wonder- ful half-century. They are world-names, but Englishmen will also be familiar with several other of Tokyo's leading citizens. Mr. Kato, now a leading newspaper proprietor, was once Minister in London. A few years ago he was Minister of Foreign Affairs in Saionji's cabinet, which succeeded the "make-shift" Ministry of General Katsura, who came in with six months' prospect of minis- terial life and lasted five years, retiring finally from office at the end of the war with Russia. Kato could not see eye to eye with 91 92 EVERY-DAY JAPAN his colleagues on the subject of the nationalisation of railways, and retired into private life and journalism, being succeeded by Count Hayashi, whom London also knows. Everyone, too, has probably heard of Okuma, the Liberal statesman, and the founder of the Great Waseda College. He was at one time Minister for Foreign Affairs, when the treaties with the Powers were under negotiation with a view to their revision. It was a delicate task, and one which gave much offence to the susceptibilities of his excitable countrymen, and Okuma was the victim, in 1888, of a bomb outrage which cost him his leg. His was by no means a solitary case in the history of modern Japan. Count Mori, the Minister of Education of twenty years ago, was assassinated on the very day of the promulgation of the Constitution, and the present Minister of Education, Mr. Makino, is a son of the great Okubo, the good genius of the Restoration in its early days, who was assassinated, as was also his colleague Kido, not many years after the great change had been effected. In the business world we find many names which are well known in financial circles in England and America the heads of the great banking concerns the Iwasaki ; the Mitsui ; Baron Shibusawa, the first merchant that was ever ennobled in this country ; Takahashi, Vice-Governor of the Bank of Japan ; Sonoda, the financier ; Okura, the owner of the Museum all these are familiar names to Englishmen. Baron Suyematsu is as well known in London as Baron Kaneko is in New York ; Mr. Sawa- yanagi and Baron Kikuchi have addressed London audiences on the subject of education, and Dr. Takagi on medical topics. The scientific researches of Dr. Kitazato, the collaborator of Koch at Berlin, and of Dr. Aoyama, who fought the pest at Hongkong, are everywhere known. I have not mentioned one tithe of the dis- tinguished names that stand on the burgess roll of the capital, and I cannot pretend to do more than mention their names. There is not as a rule much of romance attaching to the names of the solid citizens of a staid commercial city like Tokyo. Yet the pages of " Who's Who " contain here and there a little romantic touch. Mr. Y. Asabuki is a very typical business man, and the success- WHO'S WHO IN TOKYO 93 ful manager of the Kanegafuchi spinning mills. He is a native of the Prefecture of Oita in Kyushu, having been born in 1849* not far from Nakatsu, the birth-place of the famous Fukuzawa Yukichi. Fukuzawa, of whom I shall speak elsewhere, was in the early days an outspoken advocate of the adoption of Western modes and habits of life and thought, and his views frequently gave much pain to the Conservatives of the old school who opposed all such changes. Asabuki, as a boy, was a hot-headed Conservative after the bloodthirsty fashion of those days, and, not able to endure the thought that a man of his own clan should dare to become an advocate of such heinous opinions, he came up to Tokyo, lad though he was, with a full determination to assassinate Fukuzawa. Fukuzawa knew his danger, but he also knew his own strength, and when the lad, untrained, undisciplined, boorish, was ushered into his presence, he began to talk to him in that quiet, persuasive, simple manner of his, with his left hand warming over the hibachi and his right busily occupied drawing geometrical figures with the tongs on the white ash of the brazier, till the lad's heart warmed within him, and the hand, which he held concealed beneath his robes, loosed its hold of the dagger, and the rough, towzled head was hung in shame and penitence. Asabuki was converted by Fukuzawa's homely eloquence, and Fukuzawa forgave him and took him, as it were, to his heart. The lad became one of Fukuzawa's staunchest adherents, owed his entrance into business life to Fukuzawa's influence, and married one of Fukuzawa's nieces. Nowhere but in the Japan of fifty years ago would a lad of sixteen years set out on a four-hundred- mile journey to commit a political murder of his own devising, and nowhere would he have received a wiser and kinder treatment than that which Fukuzawa gave him. Another somewhat romantic career is that of Mr. Y. Ozaki. It is quite a typical story, and well illustrates the ups and downs of many a politician's life. Born in 1859, he was a little over twenty when he came to Tokyo and entered in Fukuzawa's school of the Keiogijuku, which has always been the centre of attraction for all that was vigorous and boisterous. Whose hand it was that tried to shape his destiny I know not, but after leaving the 94 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Keiogijuku he got a place in a Government office, and speedily demonstrated that he was the round peg in the square hole. People were in those days dreaming of parliamentary institutions, and the ardent youth of Japan read Mill on "Representative Government," an institution which did not exist at that time in Japan, and the men of the Satsuma and Choshu clans being in power, meant to stick to office. Ozaki did not exactly ingratiate himself with his Satsuma and Choshu superiors by expatiating in season and out on the blessings of free parliamentary institutions. One day, walking along the street that runs from Mita to Shiba Park, I found the streets lined with policemen as though there was an expectation of some great man passing. And yet there was no crowd of people anxious to catch a glimpse of passing majesty, nothing but the cordon of policemen. I asked what it meant, and after some hesitation I found out the truth. The ruling bureaucracy had got rather tired of the young men who babbled about free institutions and party governments, and was engaged in the painful task of deporting them to safe distances from Tokyo. Ozaki was one of the young men thus deported in the autumn of 1887, and he made use of his exile to go to England, returning in 1890 just in time to be elected a member of the first House of Representatives. He has been a member of Parliament ever since. As a politician he distinguished himself, and in 1897 was made Minister of Education, much to the horror of his bureau- cratic foes. Alas for human greatness! He made a speech soon after his appointment in which he used "the words " Suppose the case that Japan should ever become a republic " The bare supposition was enough, for the Japanese bureaucratist, who has not before his eyes the fear of Him that can "put down the mighty from their seats," makes it a part of his religion to believe that the Imperial House will endure for ever (God grant it may !), and Ozaki was compelled to resign because he had been dis- respectful to the Emperor. He is now a parliamentary free lance, having severed his connection with both parties in the House, and in addition to legislative duties has served the city as Mayor of Tokyo since 1903. He is happily married, and has lately been WHO'S WHO IN TOKYO 95 distinguishing himself by his advocacy of the acquisition of the Electric Railway system by the municipality. "Who's Who" says nothing about the wealthy speculators who have gambled so successfully from time to time on the Stock and Rice Exchanges. But it does tell of one or two who by dint of hard work and perseverance have raised themselves to positions of wealth and affluence, and perhaps no instance is more striking than that of the shipwright who owns the small yard on the deserted fort near the river's mouth, who has con- stantly worked with hammer, axe, and plane, and "made his pile " by honest shipbuilding. CHAPTER XVII THE IMPERIAL DIET BY far the meanest of our public buildings in Tokyo are the Houses of Parliament, or, as the framers of the Constitution prefer to call it, having had German models before their eyes rather than British, the Houses of the Diet. A low two-storied wooden building in a quaint street near to the Tora-no-mon, or Tiger's Gate, and within a stone's throw of Hibiya Park, is the place where from time to time is played the Japanese Kriegspiel of Constitutionalism. When His Majesty ascended the throne, as the result of that Court revolution which transferred the keeping of his person from the retainers of the Tokugawas to the samurai of the Satsuma and Choshu clans, and which made possible the overthrow of the Shogunate and the restoration of Imperial rule, he promised or was made to promise, for he was but a lad at the time that he would govern his Empire in accordance with the wishes of the people. The promise was not forgotten, though it was impossible to fulfil it at once. His Majesty had already been many years on the throne, when at last, in 1890, a Constitution was granted, in accordance with which writs were presently issued for the election of representatives to Parlia- ment. Ito had very carefully drafted its Constitution, and Yamagata had prepared the people for parliamentary govern- ment by the establishment of County Councils and Prefectural Assemblies. The first Parliament met in November, 1890; six weeks after its inauguration the Houses were burnt down, whether by accident or as the work of some ultra-Conservative malcontent is not quite certain. They were speedily rebuilt, and the present wooden 96 THE IMPERIAL DIET 97 edifice occupies the same site as its predecessor. It is in every way unworthy of the dignity of the nation, and rather suggests to the onlooker the idea of instability of Japan's parlia- mentary institutions. The Diet is modelled on German lines. It consists of two Houses. The Upper House is composed of Princes of the Blood, the heads of the old princely and baronial families i.e. the daimyos of old, now showing new faces to the world and appearing in due ranks and grades, as princes (dukes), marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons, a certain number of new nobles, with constant additions to their ranks, a few life members chosen from men distinguished in various lines of life or thought, and a little group of elected members chosen by the highest rate- payers. The Lower House corresponds roughly to our House of Commons, but the electoral franchise is so extremely limited that the House of Representatives cannot yet be said to repre- sent the people of Japan. It is not our present British House of Commons ; it is the House of Commons as it was in the days of Walpole, the great mass of the people being as yet unenfranchised. Government by party does not yet exist. It was talked of, but the idea met with scant approval, and though there are still parties, of which the Seiyukai, or Association of Friends of the Constitution, and Jiyuto, or Liberal party, are the prin- cipal and the most powerful, they have not the same weight as with us. The fate of Cabinets does not depend on parlia- mentary votes: Ministries, responsible to the Crown and the Crown only, hang on to their portfolios in the teeth of adverse majorities, and when a Cabinet change takes place it is never the result of direct parliamentary action. In the Japanese engine of Government the Diet is but a safety-valve ; the real driving-power will be found in the Government Bureaux. But parties are gradually being evolved, and it is not difficult to see their lines of formation. We have on one side the Tories, or " Divine Right Men," if we may take names from English history, who hold that the Constitution, having been the free gift of the Crown, is a thing to be accepted without 98 EVERY-DAY JAPAN criticism or question of modification. My experience leads me to believe that Japanese thought has never been very seriously modified by contact with any nation, but so far as foreign influence may be said to exist, the Japanese Tory may claim kinship to the German Junker, or militarist. Opposed to the Tories, and representing, in their extremer forms, the influence of American democracy, again viewed through Japanese spectacles, are the Liberals of the Jiyuto and kindred associations the men who rally round Count Okuma who say as loudly as they dare that the people have an inherent right to a voice in their own government, and that the Constitution like everything else that is human is capable of improvement. They are loyal to the throne as loyal as their political opponents but they claim the right to criticise. The Russo-Japanese war put a stop for a while to all political strife. Since the conclusion of peace there has come over Japan a great wave of money-making, which has swept off with it Tory and Liberal alike, and turned all the intellectual classes into the votaries of Daikoku, the god of the money-bags. Japan, to-day, is not dreaming of Constitutions and the rights of the people. A dozen years ago I could always lay my hand on half a score of my students whose dream it was to be Cabinet Ministers and thrill audiences of intelligent legislators with their persuasive rhetoric. Six years ago the dream was of conning- towers and bridges, of ramparts and batteries ; to-day they say that their country demands from them another kind of sacrifice. It demands that they shall make themselves rich, and they take most kindly to the sacrifice. It is, after all, a necessary sacrifice, for Japan will never maintain her present position unless she can become a wealthy nation. As long, therefore, as the present commercial, industrial, and money-making fever lasts, so long there will be contentment. And so long as the workmen of Tokyo find abundance of work to do, so long will they cease to trouble themselves about the doings of the legislators. But there is a third party dangerous and growing the promoters of which are sowing their seed on soil that is well THE ANCIENT CASTLE OF MATSUMOTO, IN SHINSHU. Photograph by permission of 7'. B. Blow. J-sy. A JAPANESE WELL. INTERIOR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, TOKYO, DURING VACATION. THE IMPERIAL DIET 99 prepared to receive it. The godless education of Japan, with ethical teachings, which, as given by many teachers, are worse than nothing, has not yet borne all its fruits. It is opening the minds of the lower classes to the possibilities of human life, without giving them any moral guide to direct their wandering footsteps, and however tightly Japanese optimists may close their eyes to unwelcome facts, there is undoubtedly a very ominous increase of practical Socialism in those large classes of the people who are unrepresented in the Imperial Diet. CHAPTER XVIII THE COURTS OF LAW IN the broad street which runs from the Tora-no-mon to the Sakurada Gate, behind the Hibiya Park and facing the rising ground on which stand the Russian Embassy, the Foreign Office, some mansions of the great, and, further off, the Strategic Office, the visitor to Tokyo will see three large handsome buildings in brick and stone the Admiralty, the Courts of Law, and the Department of Justice. They are somewhat German in appearance, and well adapted to the purposes for which they were designed. The ordinary visitor from foreign countries does not go in to see them. Why should he ? He has not come to Japan to inspect modern buildings, and his mind is running on curios, silks, theatres, temples everything, in fact, that is purely Oriental and Japanese. If he looks in for a moment he will note with interest the peculiar caps and gowns of the judges, assessors, and barristers, but he will take little interest in the actual pro- ceedings of the court, which are not unlike those in use in other countries. I do not propose to detain my reader for more than a few moments in the court, but as we go home together I will enliven his journey by a little dissertation on Japanese lawyers and the law. "Japanese law," says Professor Chamberlain,* "has at no time been the genuine outcome of the national life." Not that the Japanese has no legal instincts of his own, but because he has a passion for the logically perfect, and when he sees a system be it what it may which bears the stamp of having been reasonably and logically thought out to all its natural con- * " Things Japanese," ist ed., p. IQQ. 100 THE COURTS OF LAW 101 elusions, he does not seem to be able to rest until he has made it his own. A system full of anomalies, such as is the law of England or America, would be misery to his logical mind. Whether the system works well or not is a secondary matter ; the primary point is that it should be theoretically logical. This is but the natural outcome of the Japanese mind, which has a passion for the study of theory. Our English ways of doing things by " rule of thumb " are an abomination to the Japanese, who in many ways are at the opposite pole of thought to ourselves. In England we have blundered along for centuries in all departments of human life, learning a little here and a little there, paying very dearly for our experiences, and losing very much by our haphazard methods. The results of this procedure may be seen in our national life. Not only in law, but in commerce, in navigation, in trade, in education, nay even in religion and in the spelling and pronunciation of our language, we have evolved systems which are not systems at all, but merely aggregations of isolated facts of experience, which have grown with our growth and become parts of ourselves. It is sometimes very hard to defend our English institutions from the standpoint of logic, reason, or philosophy. Our strongest weapon of defence always remains the practical one " the thing, we grant, is illogical and absurd, but it works well." This is not the Japanese way of looking at things. They say, study theory, understand your subject theoretically first, and then, when you know how a thing ought to go, and why it ought to go in this way or in that, you will be able to work it out in practice. No country is so well equipped for learning the theories of those sciences that are necessary for the working of a complex modern state or society. I have seen the state- ment made in an Austrian paper that no nation possesses an institution for teaching the theories of commerce that can sur- pass the Higher Commercial School in Tokyo, and my own four years' experience in that excellent school inclines me to believe that the Austrian newspaper-man was right I might, I believe, say the same thing about the Mercantile Marine School in 102 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Tokyo and of many another institution in Japan. Whether the practical carrying out of the theoretical instruction comes afterwards or not is another matter. The first thing, to the Japanese mind, is that the teaching of the theory should be logically complete. Twelve hundred years ago, when Chinese influence first began to make itself felt in Japan, the Japanese borrowed Chinese laws wholesale, and Chinese law remained the basis of Japanese law until the Meiji Restoration. Perhaps it would be better to say that the Chinese theories of law formed that basis, for individual laws and concrete enactments naturally had to be modified to suit local needs, though the underlying theories remained unchanged. Nothing occurred to disturb the supremacy of Chinese theories until the nineteenth century. The contact with the West in the sixteenth century was a contact of commerce and religion ; there was, indeed, a fear of foreign invasion, but it was a vague fear rather than an apprehension based on tangible facts, and there was no question in those days of changing the laws and Constitution of Japan to meet the necessities of foreign intercourse. The Meiji Restoration was the result of a com- bination of " Dutch scholars " and Japanese loyalists, all eager to see Japan take its proper place in the active world around them, and when this combination triumphed, the knell of Chinese theories was sounded, too. Chinese theories of law had to go along with Chinese medicine and Chinese philosophy. What was there to take their place ? When the Meiji Govern- ment came into power, it found a code of laws based on a Constitution which had ceased to exist. In the different pro- vinces it found the local bye-laws of the daimyos also based on arrangements which had ceased to exist. The unification of the Empire necessitated the unification of the laws ; and, accord- ingly, of the men who were sent abroad to search for "gold," some were sent to search for the gold of legal reforms and theories of administration. In the late " sixties " and early " seventies " there was but one country in Europe to which Japan could look for legal help THE COURTS OF LAW 103 of the kind she wanted. England, with the best laws in the world, was out of the running, owing to the cumbrous character of her legal machinery and the utter absence of methodical codes. Germany had not yet unified her own laws, nor yet had Italy; but France, in spite of her military misfortunes and her subsequent miseries, possessed the Code Napoleon, the con- ception of a master mind worked out by the best legally trained intellects of Continental Europe, as the greatest and most per- manent gift that the mighty Conqueror had bestowed upon his country. It was as natural as it was wise for Japan to turn to the Code Napoleon for help and guidance in the revision of her laws, for the possession of a national system based on that Code would put Japan on the same footing as that of half Europe, indeed, of half the civilised world. A celebrated French lawyer, M. Boissonade de Fontarabie, was engaged by the Government to carry out the work of drawing up a criminal code which should reproduce the main features of the Code Napoleon with adaptations to Japanese needs. M. de Boissonade was assisted in his work by several Japanese lawyers and statesmen, and the result of their labours, published in 1880, came into force in 1882. But whilst the Japanese Government was thus engaged in the codification of its laws, another work of law revision was going on in another European nation, and Japan could not well afford to neglect the additional " gold " to be derived from this source. The unification of Germany, so singularly analogous in many respects to the unification of Japan, had also necessitated the unification of German laws. Many of the German states and provinces, such as, for instance, the Rhine lands, had formed part of Napoleon's Empire or of the Confederation of the Rhine, and had come under the operation of the Code Napoleon. The German Imperial Code, therefore, which resulted from the revisions instituted by the German Government, was itself a revision of the French Code, and Japanese statesmen were too wise to allow this new revision to pass by unnoticed. During the years from 1880 to 1890 or 1895 Germany was at the 104 EVERY-DAY JAPAN zenith of her influence in Japan. She was regarded as the greatest military nation in the world, as the most learned nation, as the nation of lawyers, doctors, musicians, philosophers, and theologians; and no Japanese preacher or catechist deemed that he had preached the gospel in its fulness if he had not dragged into his sermon a sentence from Kant or Goethe. The revised Japanese Criminal Code, as it is now in force, is therefore practically an adaptation of the German Imperial Code, as based on the Code Napoleon. The same may be said of all the codes which have appeared since then. The Civil Code, the Code of Civil Procedure, the Commercial Code, the Constitution, the Laws regarding the Imperial House, the Diet and Finance, the Local Government Laws, the Statutes on Banking, etc. etc., are all due more or less to German inspiration and drawn from German models. It must always be remembered that the men whom the Meiji Revolution put at the top of affairs in Japan were a band of military samurai with tendencies the very reverse of democratic, and that a military state, such as Germany is, gave them just the kind of models that they desired. The introduction of the new codes was not effected without some opposition from members of the legal profession. When, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the reformers, who had fled to the Continent to escape from the terrors of Queen Mary, came back to England, the ecclesiastical authorities had some difficulty in reconciling the views of the reformers who returned from Frankfort with those of the men who had taken refuge in Geneva. The same kind of thing has taken place in legal Japan. Whilst all have loyally accepted the codes, and worked cordially along the lines thus laid down, there has always been a party of legal students who have looked to England for their ideals of law and law machinery men who have studied in England or America, or under English or American lawyers. These men in the beginning were opposed to codification as being premature, and as being prompted by the desire of making a good show before the nations of the world, and of so hastening the revision of the obnoxious treaties, more than by anything else. Since the publication of the codes they have contented THE COURTS OF LAW 105 themselves with pointing out certain deficiencies in the laws, as looked at through spectacles of English make. When a man in England is accused of a crime, the theory is that he is innocent until he is proved to be guilty. In Japan, as on the continent of Europe, it is held that he is guilty until he has proved himself innocent. A man is therefore put in prison before he is tried, for there is no Habeas Corpus Act in Japan, and he may have to wait a long while before he is convicted or acquitted. This practice is grossly unjust, par- ticularly when a man has been arrested on a mistaken charge. Some years ago, I remember, there was a case of a woman arrested on a charge of murder. The woman was a " Bible- woman " working under an American missionary lady in the north. A passing student, known to them both, had obtained permission to sleep in a downstairs room for a night or two. One morning he was found murdered in his sleep. The ladies were at once suspected The foreigner, as an American citizen, was not amenable to Japanese law ; but the Japanese Bible- woman was at once taken to the House of Detention, and there kept for several months before her innocence was established by the discovery of the real culprit. When a person is thus arrested on suspicion there is, how- ever, always a preliminary investigation. Going along the streets of Tokyo you will frequently see a policeman holding by a thin cord a prisoner whose hands are tied together before him. He is taking him to the Police Office (Keisatsu-cho) of the Ward. Here the man will be submitted to a preliminary in- vestigation, and if the magistrate presiding over this court finds a primd facie case against him, he is committed to prison. For this preliminary investigation the accused is not allowed the assistance of counsel. He must defend himself, often against a charge that has been sprung upon him ; and when a man of humble attainments is thus confronted with a sudden and unexpected accusation he is not always in a position to do himself justice. The English section of the Japanese legal con- fraternity have always maintained that this denial of counsel to a person accused before a Preliminary Investigation Court 106 E VERY-DAY JAPAN is a practical injustice, and they hope that it will not be long before legal procedure is amended in this respect. If the Preliminary Investigation Court finds that there is no case against the man, he is released. If there seems to be a case against him, he is placed in the House of Detention to await his trial. If there is any uncertainty in the mind of his judges, he may be brought up for preliminary investigation as often as seems necessary. A modern Japanese novel tells of a young woman who was thus examined three or four times, and the Bible-woman, whose case I have already alluded to, was also often under examination. In her case, the judges would have been glad to order a release, but the circumstances under which the murder was committed pointed very strongly to her being the probable murderess, and their hands were tied. During this period of detention, and before the actual public trial, the accused is allowed a certain amount of liberty. He is not obliged to do labour of any kind ; he wears his own clothes, can receive food from outside, and is allowed to write letters, to receive visits and presents from friends, and to have frequent consultations with the lawyer who is to conduct his defence. That ancient bulwark of British liberties, the jury of twelve men, does not exist in Japan. For police offences one police- magistrate (juge de paix) is sufficient ; for minor crimes one judge; for major crimes a court of three judges. A certain number of young barristers are present as assessors ; they are hoping to become judges some day, and are there to learn the duties of the office. The counsel for the plaintiff and accused represent their clients rather than defend them. No direct cross- examination of prisoners or witnesses is allowed. All questions are first submitted to the judge, who then himself puts them to the parties or their witnesses, and every question and answer is written down in full, not exactly as it was spoken, but in the corresponding literary language. By this means, the hectoring or bullying of a witness by an unscrupulous barrister is avoided, and the interests of justice are supposed to be safeguarded by the fact that the counsel for the accused suggests the questions which the judge puts, and is also present to criticise or object THE COURTS OF LAW 107 to any unfair questions such as the judge might conceivably put on his own initiative. I do not think that the absence of the jury constitutes any serious defect in the Japanese judiciary system. Trial by jury does not always work well, even in the British Isles, and there are many nations which are manifestly unsuited for it. The chief present defects of the Japanese law-courts are the want of legal experience and the insufficiency of the salaries paid to the judges. We must remember that before the period of Meiji the whole legal system of the country was Chinese, and that very little of the legal experience gathered then was capable of being used under present conditions. The Bar of Japan has behind it none of those long-established traditions of precedent and etiquette, none of the unwritten but neverthe- less universally accepted code of honour which distinguishes the English Bar and makes it the admiration of the world. That this will come with time there is no doubt ; at the present moment, however, the " new bottles " which Japan has been making for her old legal wine are far too large for the supply, and there is need for a large infusion of new wine to fill the new bottles of legal institutions. But even more than from the want of legal traditions and etiquette, the narrow outlook, and the deficient esprit de corps of many of its members, the Japanese legal profession suffers from the inadequate remuneration given to the judges. The stipend paid to a Japanese judge is so small that no eminent or successful lawyer will accept a judgeship. Young men of talents will sometimes take the position of a judge as a stepping- stone to better things ; as soon as they see a good chance, how- ever, they will step down from their seats and take up the more lucrative positions at the Bar. Some nine years ago the public in Japan was amused and scandalised by the spectacle of a " strike " of the judges for higher remuneration ! One did not know which to commiserate with most, the country whose judiciary could condescend to such undignified methods, or the judges whose pecuniary circumstances made it necessary for them to have recourse to such expedients. io8 EVERY-DAY JAPAN To say that this state of affairs is satisfactory would be a untruth. An underpaid judiciary is always, from the nature of things, peculiarly exposed to the temptations of bribery, and if a Lord Bacon fell a victim to the seductions of ill-gotten wealth, why should we expect that the virtue of a poor worried judge, with the anxieties of domestic care upon him, should be proof against a fall? A judge, too, should hold a position in which he stands on an eminence, above the members of the Bar who practise before him. How can that be when the members of the Bar have, many of them, themselves been judges and have resigned their seats in order to take what seems to them a step higher, as pleaders in the courts ? Evidently, the arrangements are not quite satisfactory. It is, however, no blame to Japan if, in the midst of so many other undertakings, she has lagged behind a little in some. Nor does it follow that because things are unsatisfactory now they are going to remain unsatisfactory for ever. I can remember the time when it was the practice amongst unsympathetic observers to point the finger of scorn at many of the newly-established Japanese institutions at Japanese schools, the Japanese post- office, and the Japanese banks. I do not suppose that the Japanese of those days liked the criticisms ; but they took them to heart, and went on steadily improving and improving as time and opportunity offered. To-day we hear very few criticisms about the Japanese postal arrangements ; Japanese banks receive many deposits from foreign residents and merchants, and if we do not send our children to Japanese schools, the main reason is often the linguistic one. We may confidently trust that a nation so earnest and so ambitious as Japan will not suffer an unsatisfactory state of things to last unreformed for long. Ways and means will certainly be found for improving the position of the judiciary, a code of professional honour will certainly grow up around the legal fraternity as a hedge and protection. It is a matter of time and growth, and of the inspiration that comes from high ideals. And my faith is strong that none of these things will fail Japan. CHAPTER XIX THE MARKETS AND FAIRS OF TOKYO I WAS recently reading with a class of students a book on London written by a Japanese. The author had been much impressed by the excellent arrangements for the supply of pro- visions, and expressed a wish that Tokyo were as well supplied. We have three great markets in Tokyo. The first is the fish market at Nihonbashi. It is situated on the banks of a canal up which the fish are brought from the bay, and exposed for sale early in the morning. The Bay of Tokyo has abundance of fish, and, thanks to the network of canals and rivers throughout the country which lies due east of Tokyo, fish is brought to us, not only from the bay, but from the Pacific beyond, so that we have a constant and varied supply of good fish, quite different, of course, from those one sees on an English table. The fish market is mostly attended by the retail dealers, and as soon as the sales have been effected one sees a stream of carts and carriers hasten- ing off in every direction. The carts have come from the retail shops, and the men in charge of them make it a point of honour to go through the streets at a brisk trot. It would never do for the customers to think that the fish was allowed to get stale on its road from market to shop. The men with wooden pails which they carry on poles across the shoulders are fish hawkers, who go from house to house vending their wares. These men mostly have regular beats and constant customers, and their cry is a very well-known sound in the quiet streets and lanes of the city. The vegetable market occupies a number of streets in the neighbourhood of Kanda. Here the vegetables and fruits from the neighbouring country are brought in by farmers in small hand-carts, and the place is full of bustle during the early 109 i io E VERY-DAY JAPAN hours of the morning, and often until half-past nine or ten in the forenoon. We must remember that meat is almost entirely ban- ished from the tables of the Japanese. Fish, eggs, vegetables, form the staple of their food, and though the men will occasionally take a European meal in the middle of the day, the women and children never do so. The vegetable market is therefore a most important factor in the life of the city, and, indeed, there is more than one market. At Kyobashi is the so-called daikon-gashi, or market for the sale principally of the gigantic radish known as daikon, which smells so abominably while cooking, and which, the Japanese say, tastes so good in the eating; and out in the suburbs there are also minor markets for the sale of vegetables. Like the fish, the Japanese vegetables are so different from ours that it seems impossible to describe them. I may mention, how- ever, that during the last few years we have been able to get almost any of our home fruits and vegetables potatoes, cabbage, cauliflowers, beans, peas, asparagus. At the table of a foreigner in Tokyo you very seldom see any of the purely Japanese vegetables, and the Japanese themselves are beginning to follow our lead in this matter. " The Japanese stomach," said a native friend of mine, " is liberal the trouble about your English stomach is that it is so conservative." Meat market there is none, for, when all is said and done, the meat eaters in Tokyo are but a drop in the bucket, yet there is a place somewhere near Shimbashi where our cooks congregate to scramble for the best joints and the choicest fruits. Most foreigners leave the marketing to the cook : he takes a commission on all that he buys, but he is supposed to prevent other men from cheating you, and that is something. If cooks in Japan were always satisfactory persons how happy the world would be for us ! But it is the same old story there are some that cook badly, and there are others whose commissions and squeezes are exorbitant, and others who are too lazy to go down to market and scramble for the best joints. One learns to be tolerant, and personally I have no complaints. Fruit-growing has marvellously developed in Japan, but is as yet only in its infancy. We now get excellent apples, pears, MARKETS AND FAIRS OF TOKYO in and peaches, strawberries in their season, besides the fruits of native growth figs, oranges, grapes, persimmons, the tasteless biwa, and the native pear, which is like a piece of softish wood that has been soaked in sugary water. It is, however, fairly good when stewed. There are times when I feel that I would give a kingdom (how liberal one can be with things one does not own !) to be turned loose on a gooseberry bush ; but when I turn back in memory to the days when an apple was here unknown, I am more than satisfied with present conditions. Very few foreigners, whether visitors or residents, ever visit the markets. But everyone goes at least once or twice to visit a fair ennicki, as they are called, or matsuri. Most districts in Tokyo have one of these evening entertainments once or twice a month. The ennichi with which I am most familiar is always held on the 4th, I4th, and 24th. About five o'clock the vendors arrive with their little booths, which they set up along the sides of the street. There is practically no horse traffic in Tokyo. By six o'clock all is prepared, and by seven the entertainment has reached its height. It is a grand opportunity for buying bargains in all sorts of out-of-the-way lines. There is a crockery dealer with cups and teapots with some little flaw about them that has caused their rejection by the shops ; there is a vendor of curios cheap, dirty, occasionally, by some strange chance, good ; at another stall is an odd-looking collection of old boots, and spread out on a mat near by, a stranger assortment of ancient but not venerable books. The brightest stalls belong to the dealers in artificial flowers, combs, hair-pins, and children's toys. These are always surrounded by children, as are also the glass bowls of gold-fish, which gleam and flash in the light of the many flaring lamps. But the people who do the real business are the gardeners and florists, who have brought cart-loads of bushes and flowering shrubs from their homes in the suburbs. When a tree takes your fancy you ask the price, the vendor asks three times what he is prepared to take, and you offer half of what you would be willing to give ; the rest is a contest of words, and eventually you go home without your plant. About eleven o'clock, when the fair is about to close, and the florist is afraid that he must cart his ii2 E VERY-DAY JAPAN bushes all the long weary way home again, your cook or betto (groom) goes out to have a look round, and the next morning you find that the plant is yours at half the price which you originally offered There are other matsuri which are only held occasionally, in connection with some particular temple or shrine. The best speci- mens of these are the tori-no-ichi (" Bird's Fair ") at Asakusa, and the toshi-no-ichi (" Year's Feast ") at Atagoshita. At both these fairs a great feature is made of selling the straw ornaments, etc., used in the decorations at the New Year, the shadow of whose coming lies across the town on both these occasions. Brooms, dusters, and other appliances of house-cleaning are also sold. It has always been the custom, from time immemorial, for Japanese housewives to end up the year with a susu-haki, or house-cleaning, and the flap of the feather or paper dusters was supposed to have a peculiarly beneficial effect on domestic felicity. Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto (" The god of happiness comes in, and the demon goes out "). Alas ! " happiness " to the Japanese mind is often abso- lutely the same as " prosperity," and therefore the wish contained in the Japanese proverb is not so noble as the one in Tennyson's song of the New Year's bells. CHAPTER XX SHOPS FOR purposes of trade and commerce, Tokyo is practically divided into two parts, the lower city and the upper, and the division was more marked in old days than it is now. In the lower city, along the banks of the canals and little streams that find their way into the Sumida, are the wholesale business- houses, mostly solid concerns which have gone on for genera- tions from father to son, handling the great distributing trade which keeps our river constantly filled with junks and barges. In the upper city, on the low hills around the old castle, where stood in feudal days the yashiki of the daimyos, are the retail traders who act as purveyors to the daily wants of the people. The distinction is not absolute. There are retail shops in the lower city, and every now and again you will find a wholesale place of business in the upper, but the rule practically holds good, and, what is more, each division has its own ways of doing business. In the lower city, where the samurai rarely pene- trated in days of yore, the merchants are said to be brusque, haughty, independent, true " sons of Yedo," as they are proud of calling themselves. In the upper town, where the shop- keepers catered for the wants of the two-s worded gentry, they are said to be civil and obliging, not to say cringing as well they might be, for the samurai of old days was " sudden and quick in quarrel." Two other classes of shops must be mentioned. In the poorer streets nearly every house is a shop for the sale of some humble articles of daily use. In these houses it is generally the case that the husband has an occupation which takes him away daily and by which he practically supports the family. A i 113 ii4 EVERY-DAY JAPAN portion of the savings is invested in the purchase of some stock, and the wife opens a shop as a kind of " side show." It does not much matter whether customers come or not, the family is not dependent on the success of the venture, and so the business is done in an amateurish, haphazard style which does not always satisfy the customer. These shops are dying out, and their places are being taken by new stores with plate- glass windows, counters, and shopwalkers. One or two of the best of these modern shops are exceedingly good, and it is evident that in the future all the shops of Tokyo will be more or less Americanised with prices, alas! to match. One of the great difficulties in the old-fashioned shops is to persuade the proprietors to display their wares or even to bring them out for the inspection of customers. I think that is due to the fact that in old days ladies never went shopping. An old-fashioned Japanese family of rank always had the goods brought to their house for inspection, and to go to a shop, walk round slowly, and pick and choose, was considered absolutely beneath the dignity of a person of rank or position. Things have changed now, and you can see noble ladies in Tokyo shopping like everybody else, and enjoying the pleasure of looking at pretty things, even though they may not be con- templating a purchase. The dress of a Tokyo lady in society is extremely costly, and the new stores, such as the Mitsukoshi and Shirokiya's, do their best to draw a good deal of money out of the pockets of the fair sex. Their husbands can doubt- less afford it the upper classes in Tokyo have made a great deal of money in the last few years. For myself, it is only on the rarest occasions that I visit such establishments as I have been describing. I plead guilty, however, to a partiality for Japanese bookstores, and I have seen great changes in them during my time. A bookstore in Tokyo used to be run on the principle that every man who came to it was a probable thief, and to be kept as far as possible from contact with books. You had to go to a shop with your mind set on a definite book that you wanted to purchase, and if that particular volume did not happen to be in stock your THE INTERIOR OF A LAUNDRY. A POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHER'S SHOP. OF THE UNIVERSITY. OF SHOPS 115 business came to a sudden close. It was no part of the book- seller's duty to suggest another that might possibly do, very often he did not possess the knowledge to enable him to do so ; but, in any case, he did not want you to go overhauling his stock. But one or two shops tried the experiment of letting their customers walk freely among their books, and the inno- vation paid so well that now you can get round most shops and freely examine a book before you buy it. Tokyo is very well supplied with books, and I am often surprised by the finds I make. Not long ago I discovered on a bookshelf an Icelandic Grammar standing side by side with a largish consign- ment of some fifteen or sixteen Roumanian conversation-books! The days of picturesque signboards are over. No longer are we told certainly not in Tokyo that " ladies " can be " fur- nished in the upstairs," or that the stock-in-trade of an egg-shop is " extract of fowl." It is true that there is not far from my gate a mysterious legend which announces that the shop, which is full of wood-carvings, is for " The Trading and Manufacturing of Grocers." This is a belated survival, and it has had the grace to appear in letters of gold on a plate-glass window front. Years ago a student asked me to write him a sign in English suitable for a boot shop, and I wrote him one hurriedly with pencil on a sheet of paper. Next week the whole town could see my neat little handwriting enlarged and parodied and I had even written " boots and shoes " without capital letters ! But it has gone now, and so has the sign " Prefend Cake and Humest Shert," which was taken down a few days after a young lady of my acquaintance had been into the shop to ask for one. With one or two exceptions, where contact with foreigners has taught lessons of forbearance, all bills are paid at the end of the month. But if the tradesman does not know you he will send the bill to you ready receipted by the boy who brings the parcel, and who waits till he gets the money. A Japanese tradesman rarely reposes much confidence in the bona -fides of his customers: unkind gossip says that he frequently has a few slippery by-paths of his own, along which he will sometimes take a stroll. CHAPTER XXI AN ARISTOCRATIC COUNTRY TOWN THERE is in Japan a great tendency to centralisation, certainly in things intellectual. Tokyo draws everything to itself men of letters, journalists, politicians, lawyers ; no student thinks he has thoroughly equipped himself for life unless he has sat for several terms on the benches in one of the Tokyo lecture-rooms, and no doctor is quite up to date unless he, too, has seen some practice in a Tokyo hospital. In things commercial, Osaka more than holds its own with Tokyo ; in things intellectual, social, and religious, Kyoto comes next to the present Metropolis but it is "next with a long interval." No student who can get admission to the Imperial University in Tokyo would ever think of courting the younger sister in Kyoto ; no books of any note are published there, nor are there many literary or philosophical journals I am not thinking of daily papers which are published elsewhere than in Tokyo. The country districts which I describe in another chapter cannot be dreamed of as centres of intellectual life. The wealthy tea-growers, silk-men, and sa&e-br ewers are very seldom of a literary turn of mind, and life in the purely agricultural districts is far too narrow and squalid for anything to be done there in an intellectual way. But there are, scattered here and there throughout the land, old-fashioned country towns, very much like some of the quiet provincial cities in France, where traditions of another sort still hold sway, in spite of the centripetal attractions of Tokyo. I do not refer to Kyoto. Kyoto is a place per se. It was for centuries the chosen residence of the Emperor, its official designation to-day is still Saikyo, the "Western Imperial Residence," just as the 116 AN ARISTOCRATIC COUNTRY TOWN 117 ancient Yedo is to-day officially and popularly Tokyo, the "Eastern Imperial Residence." Kyoto is still the chosen home of many old families whose ancestors were, under the ancient regime, connected with the service of the Imperial House. It is also the Canterbury of Japanese Buddhism, every important sect having there its chief temples, its archbishop, its college of cardinals. No city in Japan can vie with Kyoto either in natural beauty or in the magnificence of its temples and temple grounds, or in the wealth and abundance of historic and legendary tradition. Kyoto, I repeat, stands in a class by itself, and if in the course of this book I have said comparatively little about the claims of this unique city, it is simply due to the fact that my life has not been so ordered as to give me many opportunities of visiting it. I would rather call the attention of my readers to certain smaller towns Kagoshima and Kumamoto in the south, Akita, Hirosaki and Mito in the north, which have preserved a peculiar identity and charm of their own. In these cities the ancient daimyo families, though no longer connected officially with the districts which in former times they governed, still keep up a lively interest in the welfare of their old subjects, and in all of them there are a number of old samurai families, which, when the official incomes of the samurai were cut off, still possessed sufficient private property to enable them to go on living in their simple old ways. In all these towns, therefore, there is to be found what we may call Society persons of education and refine- ment, with high ideals and simple tastes, and possessing the leisure to cultivate literature and arts. It is true that the younger sons all come to Tokyo for education, for business, and to push their fortunes in the world, for Japan does not believe in idle young men ; but the " homestead " is there, in the old ancestral town, and it forms not only a rallying place for the members of the family, but also an illuminating centre for the town itself. The town of this kind with which I am best acquainted is Mito. Mito lies some seventy miles east by north-east of Tokyo, on the banks of a sluggish river which meanders down over the plain from the sacred two-peaked hill of Tsukuba, and is navigable for small steamers from Mito to its mouth, some n8 E VERY-DAY JAPAN seven or eight miles further down. It was for centuries a strongly fortified city. Its first lords belonged to the family of Takeda. When lyeyasu, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, made a rearrangement of Daimyates for political pur- poses, the Takeda family was removed elsewhere, and the Mito principality was given to a member of lyeyasu's own family of Tokugawa. lyeyasu's intention was thereby to strengthen his own dynasty by putting a kinsman in a position of great power in the north- east, a policy which he pursued in other parts of the country as well. But the second of the Tokugawa princes of Mito, a con- temporary of lyemitsu's, was an intense admirer of the principles of legitimacy, and in spite of all private and family considerations which ought to have inclined him to be a staunch supporter of the Tokugawa Shogunate, he remained firmly convinced that the Emperor, virtually imprisoned at Kyoto, was the person who ought to rule. This was in the end of the seventeenth century. There was at that time no hope of altering the status quo, but the Mito prince appealed to history. He established at Mito a historiographical bureau, to undertake the composition of a monu- mental history of Japan. This bureau commenced its labours in 1675 ; it finished them in 1907, when the history was completed and presented to his Majesty, and the bureau abolished. Each successive volume of this history, as it appeared, told of the rightful claims of the Imperial House to exercise actual ruling functions. Each volume, therefore, encouraged the loyalists in the eighteenth century to renewed efforts for the restoration to power of the Imperial house. The Mito Tokugawas were thus estranged from the Tokugawas that ruled the country from Yedo, and when the Shogunate Minister, li Kamon no Kami, rudely set at naught the Emperor's wishes in the matter of the treaty with Commodore Perry, they were Mito samurai that assassinated him by the Sakurada Gate. In the civil war that led to the Restora- tion, the Mito Tokugawas took the side of the Emperor against their own kinsmen. Mito has a quiet beauty of its own. The upper town, where the old samurai families reside, is on a hill. On one side of the AN ARISTOCRATIC COUNTRY TOWN 119 hill is the river, on the other a lake. At one end of the hill is a beautiful park, famed far and wide for its plum trees a gift to the town from its ancient lord ; at the other, behind the ramparts and ditches of the old castle, are the municipal and provincial offices, the public schools, the library, the gaol, and other institu- tions. They are all modest wooden buildings with no archi- tectural pretensions whatever ; but the city library, another gift from the ex-daimyo, is well stocked with English and German books, and any resident can go there and see the latest number of the Weekly Times, the Contemporary, or the Review of Reviews. Many of these provincial towns (I remember especially Sendai and Akita) have library facilities which are for these places simply marvellous. At the foot of the old castle grounds stands the railway station, which separates the upper town from the lower. The two sections of the town have no dealings with one another, just as in the old days the samurai city in Yedo was quite distinct from the merchants' quarters. In the lower town of Mito there are ware- houses and wharves, with barges and river boats, and a large emporium for the staple products of the country around rice, shoyu and sake. A few years ago, Mito had a bad reputation among foreigners. The proud Mito samurai did not like the presence in their midst of rude and mannerless barbarians. The tone of the people has much changed now, and a friend of mine, who is a missionary resident in Mito, tells me that though he has lived in several towns in the interior, he has never been in any place where the people have been so uniformly friendly as in Mito. The change is due to the change in Japan's political circumstances. In the old days, when foreign Powers declined to trust their subjects to Japanese jurisdiction, the Japanese were not unnaturally resentful and sus- picious. The abrogation of the old galling treaties, the military successes, the final entrance of Japan into the company of civilised nations, have opened the windows and let the sunshine of contentment warm the hearts of the Japanese samurai ; and the Japanese samurai is a true gentleman ; when his heart is warm no one can be nicer. 120 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Of course, life is slow in Mito ; indeed, Yokohama and Kobe are the only places in Japan where social life, as viewed by Englishmen, is anything else but slow, and even there the pace is not great. But it is not without its compensations. My friend the missionary is an ardent sportsman, and tells me that he can get excellent snipe-shooting within twenty minutes' walk of his house, and that half an hour by train will take him to the haunts of quail and pheasant. His wife lives in a whirl of lady visitors who discuss babies and domestic cookery sometimes even articles of dress. Very often, of an evening, a Japanese friend will drop in for a chat and a smoke, and no concert or entertainment is con- sidered complete without the presence of my friend and his wife. The favourite excursion from Mito is to the little sea-side village of Oarai. The traveller goes generally by river, on a little river steamer with a cabin so small and low that a foreigner of average stature has to sit on a box on the roof. Two hours' travelling down the sluggish stream brings him to the little town of Minato, from whence, a mile across the sandhills lands him on the beach at Oarai. There is a fine beach and a most beautiful surf, the full force of the Pacific seeming to burst upon the shore. Generally also there 'is a strong, invigorating breeze, and the fresh fish are enough to tempt the most languid of appetites. It was on this piece of coast that, in 1824 or thereabouts, a party of English sailors landed to get fresh water, and were promptly arrested by the coastguard of the Mito daimyo. Though kindly treated, they were kept prisoners for nearly a fortnight before being finally released. If the inn in which they were confined was anything like as good as the one at Oarai, they were not to be pitied. CHAPTER XXII LIFE IN A TEA, SILK, SAKE OR SHOYU DISTRICT As a striking contrast to the general poverty of appearance of districts purely agricultural i.e. devoted to the cultivation of rice and other cereals we have the general aspect of those districts in which tea is the principal product, where silkworms are cultivated, or sake and soy manufactured. In these districts known as " Shoyu " districts there is a far larger amount of wealth, and the general standard of comfort in all classes is much higher. The silk and tea industries also depend so very largely on the labour of women, without whose constant help the farmer could neither get the tea-leaves picked nor the silkworms nourished, that woman takes a very different place in the social economy of those districts. In purely agricultural districts woman is man's willing drudge ; in a silk country she rules the roost, and whereas in other provinces it is reckoned a misfortune to have many daughters, in a silk country a man is deemed happy if there is a bevy of girls in his house. The largest tea-growing district is the Prefecture of Shid- zuoka, which lies south and south-west of Fuji. Over 62,000 families are engaged in tea-cultivation in this Prefecture alone ; next come the Prefectures of Miye and Kumamoto, with 20,000 families; then Nara with 10,000, Kyoto with 9,000, and Shiga with 3,000 families engaged in the production. Small tea- gardens may be found all over the country, but these are mostly only for home consumption in the villages where the tea is grown. The best leaf is grown round Kyoto, which stands second in the value of its productions, though only fifth in the number of families engaged. The most of the Kyoto tea is, how- ever, consumed in Japan itself, where it is esteemed a delicacy. 121 122 EVERY-DAY JAPAN The most picturesque part of the tea industry is in spring and early summer, when the first young leaves begin to appear. These must all be picked by hand, and every available man, woman, and child is turned out into the tea plantation to work. The weather is generally at that season all that could be desired, and sunshine always brings out all the happy qualities of the Japanese character. The tea-picking season is, therefore, very much what hop-picking is in Kent a fete ckampetre. Only there is no need to import labour from the slums of the large cities. Tea-picking is a picnic en famille, without any of the disagreeable features connected in our minds with the gathering of the hops. The tea plants are picked over two or three times in the course of the summer, but the later pickings are not so good as the first ones made in springtime. After picking the tea is dried and fired, and the method of firing the tea decides whether it shall be known as " green " tea or " black " (the Japanese call it " red "). Green tea is mostly drunk in Japan ; it is also exported in considerable quantities to the United States and Canada. China takes a little, but it finds little favour in other countries. The black tea goes to the United States, and in increasing quantities to Siberia. The common green tea is drunk everywhere. When you make a call, or are kept waiting for some time in a shop, it is always brought. If you go for a walk and sit down to rest in a cottage, it is offered you as a matter of course. Even in schools there is always a cup of tea for the teacher while he smokes his half-cigarette between lessons. For the cheap cigarette has quite ousted the old-fashioned native pipe in the business world, and the careful Jap will often cut a cigarette in two and reserve one half for a future occasion. There are also very ceremonial methods of drinking tea, so ceremonial that schoolgirls have to be taught the necessary etiquette in all high-class establishments. Only the very coarsest of earthenware is used on these state occasions, and the old-fashioned samurai had an almost religious veneration for the ceremony. During the tea ceremony he was taught A SMALL TEA HOUSE IN A GARDEN NEAR TOKYO, FAMOUS FOR ITS FLOWERING PLUMS. THE GARDEN OF A JAPANESE GENTLEMAN'S HOUSE. V OF THE UNIVERSE" >LIFOR^3 LIFE IN A SHOYU DISTRICT 123 always to be on the alert, and ready to spring to arms at a moment's notice. It was like the Passover, to be taken "with loins girded" and "with staff in your hand." Alas! the tea ceremony is now just a show which the visitor to Kyoto may participate in for a small money payment. The production of silk in the year 1904 occupied the energies of 1,500,000 households, and it must be remembered that a Japanese household, embracing sons and their wives, daughters and their husbands, servants and their families, is a much larger unit than an English family. Mount Fuji may be taken, roughly, as the boundary between tea and silk. The tea districts are mostly west and south of that mountain ; the silk districts are practically confined to the north and east. The largest silk industries, for the number of persons employed, are to be found in Gumma Prefecture, around Maebashi, Kiryu, and Ashikaga ; the most profitable in Shinshu, around Nagano, Matsumoto, and Uyeda. The Prefectures of Fukushima, Yama- nashi, and Saitama also raise great quantities of raw silk. America is Japan's best customer ; then France, Italy, Russia, Canada, and England, in the order here given. The silk industry is one which gives constant employment to the persons engaged in it. Round Urawa, which I have described elsewhere, rice is grown as a staple. The whole country is as flat as our Fens, and the fields are separated from each other by irrigation ditches and low grass-banks. By the time the train has reached the next station, Omiya, the ground has risen a few feet, and you are out of the slushy paddy district. You now find that the fields are surrounded with hedges of mulberry trees, with broad shining leaves, which add immensely to the general appearance of the country. The farmhouses are also much more solid and spacious, and there is generally a large upper storey running the whole length of the house, which is kept for the breeding of the silkworms. The mulberry trees are in leaf just as the worms are hatched from the eggs which have been carefully kept during the winter, and, when once hatched, the grubs must be carefully and con- stantly tended and fed. Piles of shallow bamboo crates are 124 EVERY-DAY JAPAN piled up on stands in the great upstairs apartment, and in any other quiet place that is available, and here the grubs are allowed to feed to their hearts' content on the broad mulberry leaves which are constantly being brought in fresh and crisp from the fields. Great care must be taken during this period, for the silkworms are easily disturbed, and the country people say that if they hear bad words spoken, or words of ill omen, they will shrivel up and die. Silence is therefore observed in all rooms where there are silkworms. When the grubs have done eating they go to sleep in the cocoons which they have spun for themselves, and a little later, when the right time comes, the cocoons are taken and the silk thread is spun from them. You may now see in every house the women busily engaged with their little spinning wheels, winding off the thread from the cocoons, which are placed in pails of hot water standing by their side to loosen the silk and facilitate the unwinding. The silk thread is now ready for the weaver. Modern industry has filled the countryside with factories for spinning and weaving, which have very much increased the pro- duction and output. Even so the silk-men find it hard to meet all the demands which come in from every part of the world for a product which is becoming every year more important. But the best silk fabrics are those which are handspun and handwoven, and the busy looms may constantly be heard at work in the farmhouses throughout the silk districts. Sake and soy (the latter the foundation of our Worcester- shire sauce) are old-established industries which have generally been carried on by the same families for generations. The same thing may be said of silk and tea. It is in these districts, therefore, that one finds the nearest approach to our ideal of a country gentleman. Religiously speaking, the silk districts are very largely in the hands of a sect of Buddhist reformers, known as the Shinshu, or Monto, a sect of Amida worshippers who are very much like Christians in many ways. The Shinshu priests eat meat and marry, and live in their parishes like the country clergy of England. The silk districts, therefore, have LIFE IN A SHOYU DISTRICT 125 men of local standing who can take a lead in the social life of the community, and who can at a pinch stand up against the red-tapeism of the officials who mostly come from a distance. There is a spirit of enterprise and vigour about these districts which is very refreshing when one comes to them from the comparative squalor of the purely agricultural lands. CHAPTER XXIII LIFE IN AN AGRICULTURAL DISTRICT As concrete specimens of Japanese life in an agricultural district I choose two small country towns, situated about twelve miles north of Tokyo, in the midst of the plain of Musashi. I have called them towns. In reality neither of them is more than a village, for, though the one, Urawa, is the chief town in Saitama Prefecture, and the seat of the prefectural government, whilst Omiya is an important railway junction, with large and busy sheds, the population of the whole district on which they stand they are about three miles apart is not more than 10,000. Of these about 3,000 live in Urawa, 3,500 in Omiya, the rest in the adjacent country. Urawa was in the old days the seat of a small daimyo. The daimyo was so weak and insignificant that he could be safely neglected by the Shogunate government in Yedo, only twelve miles off, which could have crushed him with a blow. He was also so weak that he had not the power properly to administer his territories, which consequently became a refuge and hiding- place for the scum of the great city, when the Shogun's police made Yedo too hot for them. Urawa did not therefore rejoice in a very high reputation, and I have often heard it brought for- ward as an illustration of the proverb Todai moto kurashi (" The darkest place in the room is just at the foot of the candlestick "). At Omiya, besides the railway works, there is a fine temple which is ancient, and a rather pretty park which is modern. In the park are some rather nice tea-houses which are much frequented in summer by excursionists from Tokyo, who go there nominally to catch fire-flies, though there are other pursuits, more attractive perhaps, but decidedly less innocent. 126 LIFE IN AN AGRICULTURAL DISTRICT 127 There are scarcely any resident gentry. The best people in Omiya are connected with the railway. In Urawa, owing to its being the seat of local government, there are the provincial governor with his staff and retinue of officials, a few judges and barristers, the principals of the prefectural schools, the governor of the gaol, and the chief of police (I had better state that I did not include the students at the schools nor the inmates of the prison in my estimate of the population). These form a society of their own, as they do in every prefectural town. In Urawa, however, the distance from Tokyo is so small that many of the officials prefer to keep their families in the capital, and merely live in lodgings or hotels. What were the samurai quarters under the old regime now serve as official quarters under the new, and thus form a town apart. Urawa, like all other country villages, is a long street ex- tending for about a mile along the old road which runs north of Tokyo. At Omiya this road diverges, as does also the railway, one branch going north to Aomori, the other, known as the Nakasendo, running west, and eventually forming an alternative route between Tokyo and Kyoto. Omiya, being situated at the fork of the roads, is not quite so suggestive of length without breadth as is Urawa. Each town possesses a couple of respectable inns and some shops, the latter suffering a good deal from the ever-increasing competition of the capital, which draws everything to itself. The farmers round come in to market, and their few necessary wants must be supplied. It does not, however, seem that a Japanese farmer ever wants to buy anything except now and then some cloth, a piece of iron, or a hoe. He grows his own rice, which is excellent, his own tea, which round Urawa is very poor, his own vegetables, his own cotton. He eats no meat, and he wears no silk. He is almost self-contained. His horses are shod with straw sandals, but he has to get his harness mended sometimes, and there are occasional repairs needed to his cart, his mattock, and his hoe. His wife and daughters can spin and weave, but they cannot dye, so he comes to town for the materials for his clothes. He can grow his own tobacco, but he cannot make sake. 128 EVERY-DAY JAPAN The reader will understand that there is not much trade for the Urawa shopkeeper to do with his country neighbour. True, the pawnbroker makes money, and lends it again at high rates of interest. He is the real man that keeps Urawa going. A third- class ticket to Tokyo only costs a few sen, and it is simply the fear of offending the local capitalist and money-lender that keeps the farmer from bringing his produce to a more profitable market in Tokyo. For a town like Urawa is necessarily a town in which the middleman does a good business. It is he who arranges with the farmer for the purchase of his farm-produce, which he then sends to Tokyo by road. It is he likewise who buys up all the produce of the looms and arranges with the Tokyo houses for its further distribution. Throughout the whole district every house and cottage has its looms constantly at work weaving a rough cotton cloth used for cheap shirtings, and all this comes into the market town, where it is bought up at a low price. Some of the larger farmhouses have thirty or even more looms, at which a great deal of " sweating " work is done, for the local capitalists are not above making a good profit out of the necessities of their poorer neighbours. I remember being on one occasion some years ago very much disconcerted in a little village near Urawa. I had been invited by a farmer, who had over fifty looms, and employed sixty girls, to spend a night and preach. I went, not knowing the character of my host, and in the evening spoke to a fairly large audience of men and women who stood around the open window, which looked upon the street. When I had finished speaking a voice from the darkness outside asked me if I thought true religion was consistent with grinding the faces of the poor. I had very little to say in reply, for I saw in a moment that I had unwittingly accepted an invitation from a Japanese " sweater." This was my first introduction to the Socialism of this country. My host's interest in Christianity speedily waned. But, whether at the loom or in the field, the countrywoman in Japan has to labour hard, her work being, however, fully shared by her husband, brothers, and sons. A few wealthy farmers have good substantial houses to dwell in, though this is rather in the x^S OF THE UNIVERSITY. 1 ( LIFE IN AN AGRICULTURAL DISTRICT 129 districts where silk, sake and soy are the staple products, for in such districts money is more abundant The smaller farmers are extremely badly housed, and no English farmer would think of putting a horse to sleep in what serves as a sufficient dwelling for the labourer. There is no live-stock about a Japanse farm with the exception of a horse or two for carrying packs and drawing carts, and the whole work is done by hand. In the paddy districts there is the work of preparing the soil, of pumping up the water for irrigation, of manuring, of planting out the rice, each rice-plant being put in by hand separately, of keeping off the birds, of reaping and threshing. The rice harvest takes place about the end of November, two crops are frequently raised from the same piece of land, and with the exception of the paddy-fields the farm scarcely ever lies fallow. The Japanese farmer under- stands all about the rotation of crops, uses manure very liberally, and works hard. When he has had his supper and can work no more in the field, he goes to the brook to wash the immense white daikon which are sent off overnight in carts so as to be in Tokyo early next morning. I have never seen any people so thoroughly industrious as are the country Japanese. Social life there is none, for there is next to no leisured class. The wives of the few officials call on one another from time to time, and a few enter- tainments are given on special occasions. No one else has any time for anything but household duties. The things which we associate with country life hunting, shooting, games, parish teas and entertainments, and all the little amenities of the village, are simply absent. There is no squire, and there is no rector. The squire's place is taken by the -parvenu middleman of the little town, whom the farmer hates but cannot dispense with ; the rector of the Buddhist temple is quite possibly studying English in Tokyo, and has left a locum tenens to discharge his duties. The locum tenens has just sufficient education to be able to stumble through the daily services of the temple, and is not qualified to take the lead in social life. Even when the rector is resident, pastoral care does not come within the range of his activities, and unless he is one of the newer sort of priests, uncon- sciously influenced by Christian ideals, he rarely thinks of doing J 130 EVERY-DAY JAPAN anything to make the daily life of his parishioners happier or brighter. There are a few local festivals, but Tokyo has killed them all, or is engaged in the process. Imagine a village shrine on a festival day, with a few banners and paper decorations, a few sorry booths with " candies " of the cheapest description, and a flaring lamp or two to make the gloom more gloomy. And then think of Tokyo, twelve miles off, with cheap excursion trains running daily, with the life and bustle of our streets, and all the wonders of our great National Exhibition. The country bumpkin has no unlimited store of money to throw away at fairs, and Tokyo gives him a hundred times more for his money than he can get at any matsuri in Urawa. Even the fire-flies at Omiya pale into insignificance before the myriad-twinkling electric lights of the bazaars around Uyeno Park and Asakusa. CHAPTER XXIV VILLAGE LIFE IN most villages, indeed in all villages, except a few mining communities which may almost be left out of consideration, farmers form the bulk of the inhabitants. Settling day is always the last day of the year for all outstanding bills and accounts ; but the Japanese farmer does not often observe the same New Year's Day as the townsman. Our calendar was adopted in Japan amongst the other reforms of Meiji, and the official New Year, therefore, coincides with ours. But, just as the people in Suffolk still keep to the old calendar, and observe Lady Day on April 6th, and Michaelmas on October I2th, so the Japanese farmer clings tenaciously to the old ways of reckoning time, so that his New Year often falls in February, whilst his Bon Festival is at least a month after the celebration of the same festival in Tokyo. Indeed, he has practically two New Year's Days, for he is obliged in social matters to keep time with the rest of the world, though for matters of local business he prefers to abide by the old-time arrangements. As the year draws to a close, he often finds himself in sore straits. The seasons may have been bad, or the taxes high, or he may have had a large outlay during the year for wedding or funeral expenses. In the days before Meiji he could not sell his land : all that he could do was to raise money on mortgage, and the interest on loans in those days was sometimes so high that the land remained unredeemed for generations. Fifteen per cent, was a common rate of interest in those days for loans on mortgages, and when taxes and rents were demanded of him in money instead of in land, and when there were as yet no country banks to make advances at reasonable 132 E VERY-DAY JAPAN rates, the money-lenders did a roaring trade and fattened at his expense. After the war with China, fourteen years ago, the farmers had a succession of good years, with rice at high prices and light taxation. The Russian war caused a great tightness in their circumstances. The banks refused to advance money on lands, and the farmers were driven back to their old friends, the money-lenders, who have been doing a better trade than ever. Many of the small farmers have long since fallen into the hands of the money-lenders, and their lands, which are now transferable, have passed into the possession of their creditors ; whilst they themselves have become tenant-farmers, tilling the land which formerly belonged to their fathers. Some of them are even labourers. As a consequence, we have now in a Japanese village three classes of persons engaged or interested in agriculture the tenants, who own no land of their own ; the peasant proprietors, who cultivate their own farms, and the capitalists, who own land which they let out to others but do not farm themselves. These latter are really a new class of country gentry in process of formation. In a novel which I lately read, I found all these classes described. There was a capitalist money-lender, who was rapidly amassing wealth, and who exercised a control over the whole district by virtue of his money. His neighbour, whose father had formerly been the nanushi, or headman, of the village, was on the verge of bankruptcy, over head and ears in debt for expenses incurred over political elections. The farmers, who assembled to do honour to a marriage, had sunk into the position of tenant-farmers, having been obliged to let their lands go into the hands of the above-mentioned capitalists ; and a poor man of the name of Noma was held up for the com- miseration of the reader as having sunk from being an indepen- dent farmer to the humble condition of a hired labourer. The tenant-farmer has very small holdings and works with very primitive tools. If he has a family of seven, of whom four are able to work, he can cultivate a farm of about 28 tan (say, 6 acres). There will be enough for him to feed his family AN ITINERANT PIPE-CLEANER. A SQUATTER S CABIN. VILLAGE LIFE 133 and to pay his rent, and perhaps a very few yen over for necessary purchases. His house will not be nearly so good as a labourer's cottage in England. The peasant-proprietor gets the whole produce of his land, but has to pay the land-tax (which the landowner pays in the case of the tenant). In feudal days the theoretical rate of payment was " four-tenths of the produce for the farmer, six- tenths for the lord " ; but it was very rarely indeed that the daimyo exacted the whole of his " pound of flesh." The Daimyo of Hitotsubashi, for instance, in ordinary years only took two bushels of rice out of every forty-five, and the average tax under ordinary circumstances seems not to have been much over one-twentieth of the whole produce. "In 1873" I am now quoting from the Annual Report for 1905 published by the Department of Finance " the old system of collecting land-tax in grain proportionately to the area of land as taxed was re- placed by a system of collecting it in money proportionately to the value of land ; and for this purpose a general assessment of land throughout the country was commenced in 1873 and completed in 1881. As, however, the condition of land is con- stantly changing, readjustments have been repeatedly made since 1882 by comparing the actual conditions with the entries in the official land registers. . . . The annual rate of land-tax is fixed at 2j^ per cent, of the assessed value of land; but, owing to financial necessities, the tax was, for five years, from 1899 to 1903 inclusive, increased to rates ranging from 3*3 per cent, to 5 per cent., according to the value of the land" There has been a further increase in the land-tax since the beginning of the war with Russia. Rice land (suitable for irrigation) now pays 8 per cent. ; dry land (not suitable for rice) pays 5*5 per cent., and the tax on farm buildings is 8 per cent, of their value as assessed. As a set-off to the rise in the land-tax, we may mention that the price of rice is just about three times what it was in 1874. With regard to the capitalist landowner, it is estimated that if he has a gross income of 1,760 yen (176) per annum, his taxes amount to about 900 yen (^90), which is practically the 134 EVERY-DAY JAPAN old rule of " four for the farmer and six for the lord," except that now there are no reductions. The question of agriculture in Japan is a vexed and vexing problem. Improved methods and implements would do much undoubtedly to ameliorate the condition of the farmer, but the small farmers are too poor to avail themselves of the improve- ments of modern science. It may be that, as a consequence of the wide fields opening for Japanese enterprise, the peasant- proprietors will disappear altogether and the capitalist land- owners develop into a class of landed gentry with means at their disposal for the adoption of improvements. But this would entail a great change of the spirit of Old Japan. The most profitable thing that a Japanese farmer grows is rice. On the uplands, where irrigation is impossible and the best rice will not grow, he can grow barley (much used both for food and for beer), tea, and mulberries, the leaves of this last being used for feeding silkworms. Many vegetables are also grown ; the one which always attracts most attention from foreigners being the long white radish, known as daikon, which has such an unsavoury smell when cooked. In some favoured spots near the cities, there are bamboo farms, where the young spring shoots are encouraged and then cut off like heads of asparagus as soon as they appear above ground. They are esteemed a great delicacy. What strikes a visitor to a Japanese farmhouse is the absence of live-stock. A dairyman's trade is distinct from that of a farmer, and the dairyman keeps his cows penned up all the time, and sends to the mountains every day to have fresh grass cut for them. In the same way, pig-keeping is a trade by itself ; the true farmer never keeps either pigs or cows, and it is only near a big city that you will find a piggery. Cows are more plentiful, milk can now be obtained readily in any town, and there are even some places where butter is made. All agricultural work is done by hand : Japanese horses are too light for ploughing ; besides, as a farmer once said to me, What is the use of ploughing a field the size of a sitting- room ? The only animals on Japanese farms are the dog, VILLAGE LIFE 135 the cat, the domestic fowl, an occasional ox, and always the flea. You can see women at work on the farms almost as much as men. You will see them in the spring up to their knees in slush, planting out the young shoots of rice. If you hire a horse in the summer to carry your luggage when you are out on a tramp, it is ten to one that the horse comes in charge of a woman. It is difficult to say what field labour there is that the woman does not share with the man. From the time that she has reached her full growth to the time that she is beyond labour, she toils in the fields, especially if she is the wife or daughter of a labourer or small tenant-farmer. In the intervals of labour she will suckle a child; when there is no work for her in the fields she is at her loom, weaving some simple cotton cloth for domestic uses. When she is too old for out-door work she stays at home, does the cooking, cleans the house, mends the clothes, and prepares the water for the evening bath. You never find a Japanese country woman idle, and, in spite of their poverty, the savings banks could tell you a great deal about their thrift. In the larger farmhouses, in some districts, there is also the feeding of the silkworms, a most engrossing occupation while it lasts, and happy is the farmer in Shinshu or Joshu who has a houseful of women folk. The greater part of the silkworm-rearing falls on the women, as does the tea-picking in other parts of the country. Every village has its quota of artisans and labourers. A working-man in the country gets his food from his employer as well as his wages (this is not the case in Tokyo, where wages are higher), and has the right to wear a coat bearing the trade mark of the man who employs him. Carpenters, stone-masons, plasterers, and others connected with the building trades get 55 sen a day and a pint of sake with their evening meal. Farm hands can earn 35 sen a day at seed-time and harvest, but not so much at other seasons. A woman working on the land earns from 10 to 20 sen (2^d. to 5d. in English money). A country labourer starts his work about 7.30 or 8 a.m. At ten he takes a cup of tea and a pipe ; at noon his dinner, 136 E VERY-DAY JAPAN after which he rests for half an hour. At three there is another cup of tea; at dusk he stops work and goes home to supper. He is paid by the month or by the year. Domestic servants are paid monthly, half-yearly, or annually, as the case may be. A man-servant gets, on an average, 35 yen (3 i os.) per annum besides his board and necessary clothing. A woman-servant gets 25 yen, board and clothes ; a young girl gets nothing but her food and clothing and occasional presents. When a servant-girl marries she looks to her mistress to supply her with her trousseau, and the tie between master and servant is always recognised, even after the actual service has ceased. I hope none of my readers will imagine that we who live in Tokyo, Yokohama, or similar places can get our domestic servants on any such terms as these. That is another story altogether. Besides the farmers, artisans, and labourers, there is usually at least one shop an aramonoya, or general dealer an inn of sorts, and a tonsorial establishment. A summer or two ago I spent a night at a little village where there was no proper inn, and we were directed to the house of a man who filled the office of soncho> or headman, and was besides silkworm grower, farmer, and general dealer. We had our hot bath prepared for us in the farmyard, slept in a loft over the shop, and the next morning, the silkworm season being over, the eldest daughter of the house shouldered one of our baskets and carried it some ten miles for us to the place where we were to take a boat. The master of the house did a good deal of money-lending among his neighbours ; the eldest daughter was a modest, well- behaved woman of some twenty years ; her brother was a student, hoping to go to the university. Several of the young men of the village were at the time serving in Manchuria, and every time-expired soldier that came back brought with him some new ideas from the great world beyond the mountains that encircled the village. Two days later I was at a barber's shop in another village. I was almost the first foreigner the barber had ever had under his hands, and he took great pains with me. He zealously studied English from me the whole time that he was cutting VILLAGE LIFE 137 my hair, and before I was finished off brought me a copy of a " Hairdressers' Journal/' with plates, and asked me which of these latest styles I fancied. The country barber is generally a pretty prosperous man, for the Japanese of all classes likes nothing better than to be shaved and frised, and the barbers' shops are generally, considering the circumstances of the country, extremely well equipped The village doctor is very often a power for good. I have my mind's eye now on one who lives in a mountain village, where he has practised now for many years. A university graduate, with a good foundation of medical knowledge, he is content to work for the pittance which is all that his patients can afford to give him, and all my recollections are of his quiet cheerfulness as he went on his errands of mercy. I don't think I can say as much of the village priests. Many of the temples are now practically family livings, and very often the incumbent will live in Tokyo, nominally as a student, leaving the care of his flock and the performance of the religious rites to some poor indigent priest who has scarcely the knowledge requisite for the reading of the service books. I know a village in which there are two Buddhist temples. One is so poor that it is now several years since a priest could be found to reside and do the duty ; whilst in the case of the other, the parishioners were so stingy and avaricious that they cut down and sold a whole avenue of fine pine trees for a paltry debt of 30 yen incurred by the incumbent. But it is not always so ; there are also instances where the priest enjoys the respect and confidence of his people. I found that the case several years ago in some villages which I visited in the neighbourhood of Lake Inawashiro. But whether the priest be popular or not, he is a personage whom the Japanese village can ill afford to spare. " When I was a boy," said one of my students to me, describing a New Year's Day in the country, " I got up at the first crowing of the cock (about 2 a.m.) on the New Year's morning, took a cold bath, and went to pay a visit to the village shrine (Shinto) about a mile up the hill, where I 138 EVERY-DAY JAPAN would generally find assembled for the first worship of the year nearly all the younger members of the community. From the shrine we would go to the Buddhist temple, where the priests were all assembled to recite the appointed sutras, while the great bell of the monastery gave 108 slow and solemn peals. By the time this service was over the older people at home had got up and dressed, all in their best clothes, and the lights and ornaments were all in their proper places, both on the kami-dana y or altar-shelf, for the worship of the Shinto gods, and on the butsu-dan, or Buddhist altar. First we worshipped the gods by clapping the hands and bowing the head, and then, before the Buddhist altar, on which were placed the ihai, or wooden tablets, containing the posthumous names of our deceased ancestors, father would read a portion of the Buddhist sutras with prayers and thanksgivings. Then would come breakfast, of which the whole household partook in common before it was yet light, mochi cakes with zoni sauce. , At daybreak the villagers would come to pay their respects to my father, who was the nanuski of the place, and I, though a mere boy, sat in a seat of honour, between my parents, to receive the visitors. Between nine and ten would commence the New Year's feast, fish and sake out of curious lacquer cups and bottles, vegetables, cakes, etc., the gifts of the villagers to my father. In the afternoon father and I, or sometimes I alone, would go round the village returning the calls made on us in the forenoon. But we never went in except at the principal houses. I have not been at home for twenty-five years now, but I have no doubt that New Year's Day in my village is kept just like that even now." The first seven days of the first month, a period sometimes designated as matsu no uchi, " within the pines," from the pine trees placed as decorations before the gate of the house, are considered as forming part of the New Year's festival, and the week is mainly devoted to the exchange of visits between relatives, friends, and acquaintances. During this week, Bud- dhist and Shinto priests, in canonical robes, may be seen visiting their parishioners (often accompanied by an acolyte or assistant A BUDDHIST PRIEST WITH HIS ACOLYTE. THE ALTAR OF A TENDAI BUDDHIST TEMPLE, PREPARED FOR THE FEAST OF O BON. Photograph by permission of Miss (i. Palmer. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VILLAGE LIFE 139 who carries the New Year's gifts which they distribute from house to house), a doctor pays calls on his patients, a lawyer on his clients. Everything wears a holiday dress, and special feasts are prepared on the first three days of the New Year. On January 2nd, however, there is a show made of work. On the morning of that day everyone takes up, if only for a short time, his usual avocations. The father of the family gets some rice-straw and sets to work to plait a rope or a sandal ; the mother takes up her sewing and puts a darn in " her husband's breeks " ; the schoolboy or girl makes a show of reading a book or writing a copy ; the fisherman puts to sea in his gaily-trimmed bark and makes a pretence of casting a net; the carter har- nesses his ox to his cart and promenades the village. On the fifth day the firemen assemble in their quaint costumes and go through parade drill. There is no seriousness in this : it is all nothing but a mere ceremony. Yet it serves as an ocular reminder of the importance of work. Next to New Year ranks the Feast of O Bon the All Souls' day of the Japanese calendar. It is the popular belief of the country that on this festival, which takes place on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, according to lunar reckoning, the spirits of the dead are allowed to escape from the cauldron of hell, which is lifted for the nonce by its guardian deity Ema (or Yama), god of hell, to come and visit the scenes of their mortal life. The whole idea on which this festival is based is an accretion to primitive Buddhism, taken from Hindoo con- ceptions of the state of the soul after death, but it squares well with the native conception of the things hereafter and has taken firm root in the minds of the people. Just as for weeks before the New Year's celebration one hears everywhere the thud of the farmer's big pestle, busily pounding the mochi cake, and the flapping of the housewife's duster as she upsets the whole house for a preparatory " cleaning," so now, in the summer season, the coming events cast their shadows before them. The graveyards are all cleaned, and the graves trimmed with flowers neatly arranged in little bamboo stands ; the little household shrines, which form the religious centres of the family life, are 140 EVERY-DAY JAPAN adorned with flowers and leafy branches, which seem to invite the spirits to come and tabernacle among them ; feasts are prepared for the welcoming of the spirits who must be suffering from hunger and thirst ; and for fear lest some poor friendless spirit, returning, like Rip van Winkle, after an absence of many years, should lose his way in the crooked lanes, lanterns are lit and hung outside the door to guide the returning wanderers. In the temples the priests are busy reciting the Buddhist offices for the dead, which attract many worshippers. The headman of the village once more invites the heads of families to partake of his simple hospitality, visits of congratulation are exchanged, and, as the season of the year encourages travelling, the festival becomes a. gathering time for all the scattered members of the family a festival of home-coming like our English Christmas. Everybody takes a holiday, servant-girls and apprentices receive presents and clothes, and go off for the day, and if there happens to be in the village a shrine sacred to Ema-san as there is in Shiba Park in Tokyo it is thronged with a constant succession of noisy worshippers beating on the big drums. The cauldron of hell has had its lid lifted, and the poor souls in prison have come out for a breath of fresh, pure air. The monks receive a rich harvest. Not only are the services of the temple thronged, but each house invites its parish priest to perform a special service before its own Butsudan, and in this way a big temple will sometimes earn at the Bon festival alone enough rice and money for the needs of the whole year. The Japanese knows how to support his religion, and whatever he really wants he is always ready to pay for. Every night during the continuance of the festival, which really occupies three days July 1 3th, I4th, and 1 5th there is dancing either in the grounds of a temple or in some open place in the village. I have never seen the dance performed in Tokyo it would be impossible in a large city but I have vivid recollections of one or two occasions on which I have witnessed it in the country. The first was in a fishing village near Enoshima, where the dancers sang a weird song which VILLAGE LIFE 141 sounded to my ears like a hymn in a very minor key. The second occasion was at Shiobara among the mountains of Shimotsuke. The police on that occasion tried to stop the dance (it was a cholera year and meetings of all sorts were being prohibited), and the dancers dispersed. But five minutes afterwards the " bobby " went away, and promptly the dancers reappeared, the entertainment being kept up with vigour and shouting till the first streaks of daylight warned the revellers that it was time for the ghosts to return to whence they came. On that occasion my friend, the village schoolmaster, assured me that the spirits of the dead came and joined in the dance with their living brethren. The third time that I witnessed the dance was at a small village by the side of Lake Inawashiro. There was nothing in the dancing there that presented any special features. I remember it chiefly on account of the fact that we had in our party at the time a maiden lady from England who was terribly alarmed by the uncanny sounds which proceeded from the open place in front of our hostelry. She would not have been surprised to see a bonfire lighted and a human victim roasted. The intercourse between the sexes is, as may easily be understood, far more free and untrammelled amongst the simple farmer- folk than it is in the cities, or even amongst the upper middle classes in rural neighbourhoods. These nocturnal dances often give opportunities for clandestine meetings of rustic lovers, and the better class of girls are therefore kept away from the bon-odori. Next in importance to O Bon is the matsuri, or Festival of the Shinto patron deity of the village shrine. I was present at one three years ago, which may serve as a specimen of what such a festival is like. The deity celebrated was the Gongen-sama of Moto Hakone. The word gongen-sama means a " temporary revelation," and was applied to the Shinto deities when adopted by Buddhism as " temporary revelations "of one or other of the great Buddhas. Who the original gongen-sama of Moto Hakone had been I was unable to discover, but the man of whom I made inquiries told me that the personages 142 EVERY-DAY JAPAN now honoured at the matsuri were the Soga Brothers, the story of whose vendetta is one of the most thrilling tales of Old Japan. Here again, the villagers assembled in the persons of their heads of families, and a service was held before the simple Shinto altar by the white-surpliced priests of that ancient cult. In the Buddhist temples we have the music if music it can be called of drums and gongs ; the music of the Shinto shrines is that of flutes and pipes, which, amongst the dark groves of gigantic cryptomerias, sounded weird and death- like. The solemn feeling does not, however, last for long. The village matsuri always gives an occasion for the village fair, and booths, stalls, jugglers, etc., give an apparently far more permanent joy than the religious services at the shrine. The fair at Moto Hakone was, alas! shorn of all its glories the summer I was there. It was war-time, and no one had any money to spare or to spend. One poor little cake-stall repre- sented the whole of the fair, much to the disgust of a little band of boys who had been brought by their teacher to have a good time among the stalls and booths, all the way from Mishima, a distance of a good eight miles. But in ordinary times there are booths all down the village street, with toys and cakes galore, a band of strolling actors or puppet show- men will seize upon some empty house for an extemporised theatre, and in the evening the sacred dashi will be brought out, decorated, and dragged with music and song along the road, its platform being used at stated intervals for the mystic mime- dances which in Japan, as in Greece, lie at the base of the dramatic arts. The equinox in spring and autumn is kept as a religious festival. The word for equinox, " kigan" signifies a passing-over, and is often used to denote that further shore to which we must all pass over some day. The Higan festivals are much used by Buddhist clergy for sermons on death and the transitori- ness of all things human. Those whose special form of religion it is to worship the sun make a point of rising early on these days to adore the first rays that peep above the horizon. VILLAGE LIFE 143 There are special festivals: the Dolls' days for girls and the Carp days for boys. Women keep their third, thirteenth, and thirty-third birthdays with special honour ; for men, the important anniversaries are the fifth, fifteenth, twenty-fifth, and forty- second. These festivals are partly congratulatory and partly exorcismal. If a woman's thirty-third birthday, or a man's twenty-fifth and forty-second, be not kept with the proper observances, it is feared that a fox or other evil spirit may enter in and dwell in his or her breast The rural Japanese is a firm believer in evil spirits, and the badger and fox are the animals most dreaded as the allies of the powers of evil. Some sixteen or seventeen years ago I heard of a case where a man supposed that he was being bewitched by a fox, and so saved his life. It was in a remote district which I have already had occasion to mention, on the shores of Lake Inawashiro. Near that lake is a celebrated volcano, Bandai San, which was the scene of a terrible eruption some years ago. The man of whom I am telling was at work on the mountain, when suddenly there was a roar and a bang, and the whole scene began to change. One half of the mountain was blown off, seventeen villages were destroyed, a valley blocked up with debris, and a new lake formed. " Hullo ! " said the man to himself, " there's that rascally old fox at his tricks again. But he shan't fool me ; I'll master him." And down he sat, his head between his hands and his teeth clenched, to resist the devil and make him flee. Strangely enough, not a stone or a cinder struck him as he sat in the very midst of the convulsions, and when it was over he went down into the valley and told his tale. There are temples, mostly of the Nichiren sect, where they profess to cure men possessed of devils, with starvation, cold douches, beaten drums, and the recitation of sutras. Possibly the village schoolmaster will in time prove himself to be a more potent exorcist. I say possibly, because a materialistic education such as Japan is now giving to her people is not always the best way of killing superstition. The Japanese villager has not many ways of killing his time; indeed, he has often not much time on his hands to 144 EVERY-DAY JAPAN kill. The children, boys and girls, their baby brothers and sisters on their backs, go off in holiday time for happy scrambles among the long bamboo grass that covers the mountains, bathing in the lakes and streams, gathering flowers and berries, or liming birds and dragon-flies with long bamboo rods smeared with some glutinous paste. When they are a little older they go fishing, but scarcely as a pastime. Shooting there is none, except for the landowners ; not that there is any preservation of game, except on the Imperial estates, but because few but the rich can spare the time for the sport CHAPTER XXV THE VILLAGE PILGRIMAGE DURING the summer months, when the corn has been cut and the rice planted out, and when things in general begin to get slack on the farms, the Japanese village turns its thought to religion. It is true that there is always the village shrine, the temple of the uji garni or patron deity, and the little yashiro of the ubiquitous Fox-god ready at hand for worship ; but, in summer, the farmer wants to do something of a more special character, and thinks of wandering to find it ; for there is in most countries a disposition to connect travelling with religion, and, when pilgrimages are cut off, men will substitute international conferences to take their place. Most Japanese villages undertake annual pilgrimages, more or less extended according to the means at command, to the sacred mountains and holy places of Japan, or at least of the immediate vicinity. Everybody cannot go, and therefore delegates are chosen each year to represent the community, and to offer worship on its behalf. The expenses of these pilgrimages are borne by the whole village in common. The pilgrims are dressed in cheap white cotton garments which can easily be washed, tight-fitting trousers, shirt, and a loose*jacket which can be tucked into the girdle. On their heads they have a broad, stiff hat of straw, which affords a splendid shade against the sun ; on their backs, a light piece of matting which protects them from rain by day, and at night serves as a bed. Their luggage is strapped on behind and in front, in two small bundles, the one in front being often wrapped in oil-paper and bearing the name or mark of the particular shrine to which the pilgrims have given their confidence. In the right hand is a pilgrim's staff of K 145 146 EVERY-DAY JAPAN white wood, round the left wrist a rosary, and attached to the girdle a small bell which tinkles as they go. Their feet are shod with waraji, the simple straw sandal, which can be bought anywhere at the cost of one of the smallest copper coins issued from the Imperial Mint. The pilgrims travel by train, by coach, by jinrikisha even, when fatigue compels them to do so ; but they are supposed to travel as cheaply as they can, and mostly go on foot. They work their way from mountain to mountain. They will begin, for instance, with Mount Tsukuba, the solitary two-peaked hill near Mito, which legend connects with the first creation of the Japanese archipelago. The azaleas will be over by the time they go on their pilgrimage, but the slopes of Tsukuba are full of green, and variegated with all manner of flowers, and there is a vast pano- rama from this mountain, the solitary hill in a vast plain sur- rounded at a great distance by far-off ranges. At a little shrine near the top, they will pray. What they pray I cannot tell, but the prayers do not last long. After prayers they rest and smoke a pipe, and descend the mountain on the other side, till they come to a railway station and take the train. When next you see them they will be swarming out from the railway station at Nikko, having on the road received great additions to their numbers. All the little inns in the lower part of the Nikko street will be full of them, and for a few hours they will be wandering round Nikko visiting the holy places. They are not simple sightseers, for all their smiling faces and merry laughter. Then they climb to Chuzenji, where they encamp in the long rows of bare sheds that fringe the lake, and after a bathe in that holy water they ascend the sacred mountain of Nantaizan, and seem to disappear, though others from another side of the country are coming down as they go up. When you meet them again it may be on the slopes of Oyama, on the other side of Tokyo. They have climbed several peaks in the meantime Shirane, Asama, Mitake, it may be and are now on their way to Fuji. When they have climbed Fuji, and prayed to the deity that resides in the little shrine by the now extinct crater, they will perhaps think that they have done all that is THE VILLAGE PILGRIMAGE 147 required of them, and will go home to their native village to report to their neighbours all that they have seen and done. The prosaic and blundering Anglo-Saxon (I do not apologise for the Celtic blood that flows in my veins) has but little use for pilgrimages. I think he would except Japanese pilgrimages, whether private or communistic, from his condemnation, if only he knew them. In the old days, when the country was divided into a great number of practically independent statelets, the pilgrimage served to keep alive in the mind of the peasant the idea of the national unity. The samurai had other means of doing this. He was obliged periodically to go to Yedo with his lord, and in the streets of the Shogun's capital he rubbed shoulders with samurai from other parts, with whom he exchanged thoughts and ideas, and from whom he derived the nascent ideas of Imperial Oneness. But the peasant was not so fortunate. He was bound to the soil, and had it not been for these periodical pilgrimages, undertaken under religious sanctions, he would have known nothing of the wider life beyond the hills that bounded his valley. Even now, with military service and improved means of communication, the Japanese peasant has a narrow horizon. " The frog in the well," says his proverb, " knows nothing of the great ocean." To-day, he no longer needs to be taught, the lesson of national unity, but the pilgrimage has by no means lost its practical value. As the Japanese gentleman has for the last thirty years been travelling abroad, note-book in hand, gathering valuable pearls of information from all nations and climes, so the Japanese peasant picks up during his pilgrimages much valuable knowledge which he brings home with him in his retentive memory. Here he sees an improved water-wheel, there a newly-introduced fruit an apple it may be, or a pear, or a peach, or a grape, which might do well in his own native plains and valleys. Each year the village in this way adds to its stock of knowledge, and it is wonderful how in the most out-of-the-way villages, amidst all the squalor of the simple life, such as the Japanese peasant knows it, there is never- theless a truly immense fund of practical information about the ways and inventions of the great world outside. The Japanese 148 EVERY-DAY JAPAN pilgrim is no religious dreamer like the abstracted Hindoo ; he travels with his eyes open, and gathers more than merely religious impressions on the way. And who shall say that the pilgrimages do not serve to keep alive the spirit of true religion ? It is true that they seem to be simply religious picnics, but they are more than that. The whole village recognises its need of performing a religious duty, and everyone contributes to the expenses of the men who are chosen to go as its representatives. The pilgrims are not merely volunteers who go because they like it ; they are chosen repre- sentatives with a duty to perform of worshipping at certain distant shrines in the name of the whole village. And though it is true that God can and does hear prayers " at all times and in all places," there is yet something in the idea of the Japanese villager that worship is a thing that requires to be done at the cost of a certain amount of trouble and expense. THE STATUE OF KUSUNOKI MASASHIGE IN FRONT OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO. A PILGRIMS INN MEMORIAL TEMPLE OF A SHOGUN, SHIBA PARK, TOKYO. THE TOMB IS AMONG THE TREES IN THE BACKGROUND. CHAPTER XXVI THE SAKURADA GATE GODAIGO TENNO (A.D. 1334) was the Charles I. of Japan. His subjects did not indeed cut off his head, but they rose against him under the ambitious leadership of the Ashikaga house, drove him into exile, and set up a rival on the throne. Like Charles L, he stood for the divine right of the Emperor ; like him, his character seemed to improve with adversity ; and like him, his virtues and fortitude won for him many devoted adherents, among them the noble Kusunoki Masashige, whose statue in bronze is one of the most conspicuous ornaments of the Maru no uchi in front of the Imperial Palace. Masashige, defeated by his enemies, preferred suicide to a surrender to rebels against the Imperial house, and his equestrian statue in the Imperial park is a sign to all Japan that the present Government has, under happier auspices, revived the tradition of a divine-right- monarchy, for which Godaigo lost his throne, and Masashige his life. The statue of Masashige is perhaps the best of the Tokyo statues. An equal interest, historical, not artistic, attaches to the bronze statue of Saigo, which adorns a corner of the Uyeno Park. In 1868 Saigo fought for the overthrow of the Shogunate and the restoration of Imperial rule, and was rewarded with the title of Commander-in-Chief. In 1877, when he saw that it was the intention of the Government to adopt Western ways and abolish the special privileges of the samurai, he rose in rebellion and died in arms against his Sovereign. He was a rebel, but his sin has been forgiven, and his numerous retinue of samurai admirers have been allowed to give their hero a public monument in a conspicuous place. 149 ISO EVERY-DAY JAPAN Near to the Sakurada Gate, on the south side of the Maru no uchi, is the spot where took place, on March I4th, 1861, the assassination of a man to whom no monument has been raised, and whose memory is still branded with the imputation of treason, though he never took arms against his Sovereign, as Saigo did. It was on a cold morning of March, about 9 a.m., that li Kamon, lord of Hikone, the powerful Prime Minister of the Shogunate Government, was being taken in his sedan-chair (nori mono) to the Shogun's Palace, for a most weighty council meeting. He was escorted by a few men-at-arms, but the country was at peace, in spite of the great excitement of the times, and there seemed to be no need for special precautions of any kind. But when the cortege had crossed the bridge over the moat, and was hemmed in between the first gate and the second, a sudden onslaught was made on the attendants of the Minister, and in less time than it takes me to write these lines, several lives had been lost on either side, several persons had been wounded, the Minister himself had been dragged from his sedan-chair and killed, while one of his assailants speedily severed his head from his body and made off with it. It was a terrible crime, even for those days of excitement, when political murders were fairly frequent The astonishment was great when it was found that the assassins were retainers of the Mito branch of the same Tokugawa house of which the murdered man was the powerful Minister, and speculation was rife as to the cause of the dastardly attack. The assassins, many of whom escaped, let it be known that they had murdered li Kamon as being a traitor both to the Emperor and to the Shogun ; some of them delivered themselves up to the authorities and were executed, some apparently made their escape to Kyoto and evaded their punishment, and it has been a constant puzzle to students of Japanese history why this great man should, in spite of his great services in opening the country, have been allowed to be considered as a traitor that deserved to die by the assassin's knife. We shall probably never know all the ins and outs of the wire-pulling intrigues that preceded the Restoration of the Empire ; but the more we know of them the better we can appre- THE SAKURADA GATE 151 ciate the immense difficulties that Japan had to surmount before beginning to set her hand to the plough of reform. li Kamon had a most difficult part to play, and his own ambitions seem to have made it more difficult. Commodore Perry had knocked at the gates of Japan, and had forced the Ministers of the Shogun to make a treaty with America, which gave Ameri- cans liberties of residence and trade. li Kamon found himself between the devil and the deep sea, between the eager American and his ships on the one hand, and the deep sea of Imperial anger on the other. He was convinced that it was the right thing for Japan to open herself to the world. Like Nelson at the battle of the Baltic, he put the telescope to his blind eye, and refused to see the frantic signals of recall which the Imperial Court at Kyoto was making to him. He carried his point, and got the treaty made, and forty years of unexampled growth and expansion have justified his sagacity and forethought ; but he had been studiously rude and outspoken to the Kyoto dignitaries, and he did not understand how firm a hold the "divine-right- monarchy " had taken on the mind of the nation. Simultaneously with the question of making treaties with foreigners, li Kamon found himself confronted with a delicate problem which he could scarcely hope to solve without giving offence to some one. The Shogun was in bad health and was childless, and it devolved upon his Minister, li Kamon, to help him in the selection of a proper heir to the Shogunate. Among the Tokugawa princes were two from whom to select Hitotsu- bashi, son of the Daimiyo of Mito, and a son of Tokugawa, Daimiyo of Kishiu, who was a mere boy, and delicate to boot. Hitotsubashi was a man of considerable powers, and became, in fact, Shogun in later years. He was the popular candidate with samurai and nobles alike, and when li Kamon's choice fell on the delicate prince of Kishiu, there was a strongly-expressed burst of indignation even from the direct adherents of the house of Tokugawa, who felt that the ambitious Minister had purposely selected a weakling prince whom he might use as an instrument in the furthering of his own personal designs. Thus li Kamon succeeded in alienating at one blow the Court 152 EVERY-DAY JAPAN at Kyoto, all those that longed for the revival of Imperial power, the national fanatics who looked on Japan as a Holy Land, and more than one half of the Shogunate retainers to boot, who felt themselves aggrieved by his rejection of Hitotsubashi's claims. If we add to this that, like many a strong man, he was haughty and arrogant, and regardless of the feelings of others, we shall understand the hatred which his name inspired in all classes of the people. His grave, which is marked by just a simple stone, is situated in a little graveyard attached to a humble Buddhist temple in a suburb of Tokyo. A few faithful followers visit the place from time to time. One of these even had a little house built hard by, so that he might spend the rest of his life in watching over the grave of a beloved master who had been kind to him, whatever he had been to others. But the years roll by, and the great man is being forgotten, so that it is very difficult in standing by his humble grave to realise that beneath that stone lies all that is mortal of the man that opened the gates of Japan to intercourse with foreign nations. li Kamon has no monument except it be the Sakurada Gate, which witnessed his assassination. CHAPTER XXVII THREE WORTHIES OF YEDO AMONGST the many men who have left their mark in the history of Tokyo there are three prominent names which I venture to select as being likely to be of some interest to my readers. The first name is that of Will Adams, the pioneer of English- men in Japan, and a splendid instance of that spirit of adventure which made England what it was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Born at Gillingham, in Kent, about the middle of the sixteenth century, he served a twelve-years' apprenticeship in the ship-building yard of Master Nicholas Diggins, of Limehouse, at the conclusion of which he took to the life of a seaman, and served as " master and pilot " on board several of Queen Elizabeth's ships. It was not long before an opportunity presented itself of seeing the world. His old master, Nicholas Diggins, was in the habit of building and repairing ships for the Dutch East India Company, and, probably through acquaintances thus made, Will Adams received an offer to go as pilot-major, second in command of a fleet of five vessels, sailing from Holland for the Far East in June, 1598. Adams never returned to England The ship on which he sailed, De Liefde, arrived in Bungo in April, 1600, in a half-wrecked condition, and only twenty-four persons, of whom three died shortly afterwards, reached the distant goal for which they had set out. The men were kindly treated, and set to work on various useful undertakings by the Daimyo of Hirado, on whose territories they had landed ; but their numbers were further diminished by death, and when, in 1605, an opportunity came for them to be sent home, there were only two who were in a position to avail themselves of it Jacob Quaeckernaeck the captain, and Melchior van Santvoort a merchant. Of the rest, some were dead, 154 E VERY-DAY JAPAN others had married wives of the daughters of the land, and elected to stay where they were, while Will Adams was compelled to remain. He had been singled out by the Shogun lyeyasu, as a man with skill to build ships, and taken to reside in Yedo, where he was well treated as an honoured guest, but not suffered to leave the country. He became in process of time a man of great influence with the Shogun, and was largely instrumental in opening commercial relations between England and Japan. It was owing to his letters that a company was formed in London for trading with Japan, and that a band of English merchants, reinforced later by letters from James I. to the Shogun, made their appearance in Japan ; and it was again due to his influence with the Shogunate and daimyos that the English merchants were allowed to establish their factory at Hirado. He died, full of years and honours, in May, 1620, leaving a Japanese widow with a son and daughter to mourn his loss, to say nothing of the wife and child he had left behind in England, and whom he mentioned in his will. He is said to have died at Hirado, far away in the western part of the island ; but he was buried on the top of a hill at Hemimura, in the midst of an estate which the Shogun had granted him, and there his grave and that of his Japanese wife, who survived him thirteen years, was discovered in 1872 by Mr. James Walter. The village of Hemimura lies over Yokosuka, and it is fitting that the tomb should be placed overlooking the principal naval port of the Japanese fleets. Tokyo boasts of no monument of its first resident Englishman, but there is a street in the business part of the city which goes by his name as written by the Japanese Anjin Ch5. My second Tokyo worthy may be called the Solomon of Japan Ooka, Echizen no Kami a witty judge whose quaint sentences still linger in Japanese stories and books of historical anecdotes. It was Ooka who discovered the thief who stole money from a pickle-jar. " It is certain," said he to the servants of the household where the robbery had taken place, and who had all strenuously denied their guilt "it is certain that if a man puts his hands into a pickle-jar, the smell of the vinegar will cling to his finger- tips. I propose therefore to discover the thief by smelling your THREE WORTHIES OF YEDO 155 fingers. You will come up to me as I call you." There was an awkward pause, and Ooka looked round upon the accused. Pre- sently a hand disappeared into a capacious sleeve, but Ooka was already busy smelling the fingers of one or two of the older ser- vants. Then the hand appeared again, furtively thrust up under- neath the loose overcoat till it nearly touched its owner's nose. " There ! " cried Ooka, " that's the man. He knew his hands had been into the pickle- jar, and he was afraid I might smell them ! " One of the best known of Ooka's judgments is his celebrated "one-dollar-loss verdict," so well told by Professor Chamberlain in his " Romanised Japanese Reader." It is a story of two honest men. One had lost three dollars, and the other had picked them up. It was the end of the year when everyone in Japan, then even more than now, was busy settling up his annual accounts. The loser could not afford to lose his money just then, and the finder could not well afford to lose his time in looking for the rightful owner. Still he did it, at the cost of much labour, and at last his patience was rewarded by finding the man. But the loser was as honest a man as the finder, and absolutely refused to lake back the money, saying that the finder must have spent more than that sum in trying to restore the dollars, and that at any rate he deserved to lose the money. Neither would give way, and the matter was finally referred to Ooka, who, having heard the whole case patiently, ordered the three yen to be handed in to the judge. "It is the verdict of the court," he said, "that the finder shall have two dollars, and it is further the verdict of the court that the loser shall receive two dollars." And when both plaintiff and defendant demurred at this strange verdict, he continued : " My judgment is perfectly fair. The money belonged to A, but he let it fall in the streets. He deserves to lose a dollar. The finder picked up three dollars, which were his by right of finding ; if he receives two dollars he will also lose a dollar. And I lose a dollar. What can be fairer than that ? " A third Tokyo worthy, or rather a Yedo worthy, was Arai Hakuseki, the Shogunal Prime Minister at the beginning of the eighteenth century. He was a worthy statesman, a light shining in a dark place, and must have had a most difficult post as Prime 156 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Minister to a Shogun who valued the life of a cat more highly than that of a man, and who made the citizens of Yedo register the birth of every litter of puppies and kittens with minute descriptions of markings and colours. Arai Hakuseki had a hard task once in settling upon the right verdict to be pronounced on a Sicilian Jesuit priest, Giovanni Baptista Sidotti, who landed in Japan early in the eighteenth century, on a daring expedition undertaken to visit the persecuted remnant of the Japanese Catholics. Arai's reasoning on the case was quite good. The Jesuit was a retainer of the Pope, he said, and the Pope had told him to come. It would be wrong to punish a servant for simply obeying his master. To send him home unhurt, or to allow him to remain unmolested in the land, would also be unwise ; for there was no doubt that in coming to Japan he had deliberately broken what he knew to be the laws of that empire, and leniency would only serve to encourage others to follow his example. Arai resolved therefore to keep Sidotti in honourable captivity, and accordingly brought him to Yedo, where he could be under his own eye. Prisoner and gaoler formed a strange friendship for one another, and many conversations between the two have been recorded in Arai's own memoirs on this subject. The friendship, however, was broken when, two years later, Sidotti's prison attendants declared themselves to be Christians ; and when numerous conversions, due to the patient life spent within the prison walls, began to be announced in the immediate vicinity of the gaol, Arai felt that the time had come for him to change his policy. Sidotti was imprisoned in a foul dungeon, where he was hung up head downwards till he died. The memory of his martyrdom still survives in a street in Ushigome known as Kirishtan Zaka, or the Christian Hill. Another Italian priest lies buried in a district near Shinagawa, which goes by his name and is known as Isaragomachi, or Isarago's Street. He also was suspended head downwards over a pit, but when the agony was at its worst he made a sign of recantation, and his life was spared. He was allowed to marry the widow of a man who had been beheaded, and was buried with Buddhist rites when he died, some years later. THE KABUKIZA, TOKYO'S LEADING THEATRE. A CANDY-SELLER. -o OF THE UNIVERSITY CHAPTER XXVIII THE JAPANESE STAGE THEATRE-GOING in Japan is the luxury of the unemployed. When an entertainment commences at nine o'clock in the morning and lasts all the afternoon, the busy man knows that he must only at long and rare intervals allow himself the dissipation of witnessing a theatrical performance, which is often a very fatiguing ordeal to boot. On entering a theatre you buy your ticket at the little booking-office which stands near the entrance. If the play is at all popular the crowd seeking admission is sometimes very large (for there are always many apparently unemployed people even in this busy Metropolis), and you must take your place in the queue and wait patiently for your turn to come. But every theatre is surrounded with tea-houses and places of refreshment, which cater for the wants of visitors, and those who are wise, and who care for their own comforts, generally prefer to go to one of these establishments and let the land- lord procure the tickets, which he is always glad to do. It pays him to do so, for the performance lasts for ten mortal hours, and hunger and thirst will often assail his patrons during that long spell of looking and listening. Having procured your ticket you next proceed to take your seat. At the back as you enter is an open space and a few rough benches for the " gods " to sit on, tucked away under the shadow of the gallery. What is with us the pit is filled with boxes, six feet square, floored with matting, and separated from one another by wooden partitions, some eighteen inches or so in height. In the gallery there is never more than one there are similar boxes with a few cheap seats behind them for a i57 158 E VERY-DAY JAPAN few of the more favoured "gods." Each party of playgoers occupies one of these boxes, everyone sitting as best he can upon the floor, so as not to disturb the view of the persons sitting behind. If you are a foreigner, and cannot sit cross- legged on the floor for ten hours, they will provide you with chairs in a corner of the gallery, where you will be able to get quite a fair view without being an obstruction to any of your neighbours. There is no orchestra, but on either side of the stage is a place for the chorus, which, as in the old Greek theatre, makes a kind of running accompaniment, instrumental and vocal, to the play that is being enacted, and serves to point the moral and adorn the tale. The centre of the stage is made to revolve, an arrangement which also reminds one of the ancient Greek theatre, and the revolutions thus made are of great and obvious value for the purposes of rapid and effective scene-shifting. In addition to the stage, such as we have it, there are two long, boarded passages running the whole way from the stage to the back of the theatre, one on each side of the house. These passages, known as kanamicki, or " flower ways," are of the utmost value to the dramatist. When Virtue is in distress and Vice on the point of triumphing, the Red Cross knight comes to the rescue along the hanamichi, and the audience are put into the advan- tageous position of knowing something which the actors on the stage are not yet supposed to know. Sometimes, too, when all eyes are glued upon the stage, and the murderer's knife is just at his victim's throat, there will be a sudden start of surprise as the voice of the rescuer comes unexpectedly from behind the backs of the audience. Soon after you have taken your seat a hush will fall upon the audience, and the clap of two pieces of hard cherry-wood, beaten together, will announce that operations are now to begin. Then the first curtain will be withdrawn, revealing behind it a second curtain on which is written in large characters the name of the principal actor about to appear. Each great actor has his own curtain, sometimes a gift from admirers, and the THE JAPANESE STAGE 159 exhibition of the curtain acts sometimes as an attraction and sometimes as the reverse. When the chief actor is a nobody, it may safely be presumed that the rest of the players in that scene will not be great stars. In such cases the old hand, wh knows the right thing to do, quietly withdraws and goes to eat his dinner. It has been maintained that the melodramatic plays of Seneca had much influence on the Elizabethan drama, and that the same influence may certainly be seen in Shakespeare himself. Could Seneca re-visit this earth, he would certainly be satisfied with the melodrama of the classical Japanese stage. We have at present two schools of dramatic art competing with one another for the popular favour, the old national drama and the new romanticism. In the old dramas the subjects are all taken from the history of Japan and are all treated seriously, a Japanese loving what is gruesome and sad, and having a passion for melodramatic declamation. In the modern drama an attempt is made to represent the actual life and manners of the present day, or else to reproduce on the Japanese stage the masterpieces of Europe. We have had Maeterlinck's " Monna Vanna " on the Japanese stage, but the production was by way of experiment and was not much of a success. In the old classical stage, which is still by far the most popular, all the parts are taken by men, an actor who plays female parts being obliged to live almost like a woman in order to be able to do the thing to the life. There are one or two actresses belonging to the modern or Soshi-shibai school, but otherwise the female player is entirely unknown except in certain half-religious communities which give theatrical representations by companies composed entirely of women. A young Japanese man never falls in love with an actress, but the converse will sometimes happen, of a Japanese woman sighing out her heart for a comely actor! Some of the leading actors make fair incomes, a leading " star " sometimes earning as much as 200 yen (20) per month, which is much for a Japanese, but the man who plays " the horse's legs" (horses being always made up for the stage by two men) 160 E VERY-DAY JAPAN and the " invisible " boy who comes in, dressed in black, to remove chairs, etc., or to arrange the folds of an actor's garments, get but a very miserable pittance for their humble tasks. The Japanese stage is not a very lucrative profession as yet. The proud samurai of the middle ages despised the theatre, and never set foot inside of it. It is still the correct thing for samurai families to abstain from theatre-going, at least in Tokyo, and a theatrical audience is, for the most part, com- posed of women of the middle and lower classes, who weep copiously over the misfortunes of the heroes of ancient tragedy. But, though despised by the samurai and the Confucian scholar, the stage has always been a potent influence in popularising the way of the bus hi and implanting notions of chivalry and honour into the hearts of the people, j In the main, " East is East and West is West," and we have to own, sometimes with a regretful sigh, that Japanese ideals of honour and loyalty are not quite ours. But we remember that the same sun shines on East and West alike, and that, while neither is perfect, each has received its share of good and truth so that, while in some points Japanese ideals fall short of ours and even contradict them, there are others in which they hold up to us ethical models worthy of our imitation. But it stands to reason that the Japanese drama, such as it is now, cannot continue to hold the affections of the people for any very long time to come. A change more or less radical, and more rather than less, must soon come. Indeed, the change has already begun to come. The soshi-shibai, founded by Kawakami, but more generally associated abroad with the name of Sada Yakko, its leading actress, has already been the first-fruits of the change. We have now in Tokyo an association, recently founded for the Improvement of the Japanese Drama, and it will not be long before European drama in Japanese dress forms a recognised part of the in- tellectual amusement set before the theatre-loving citizen of Tokyo. The renovated theatre will be an immense force in modifying popular views of life and morals : whether for good or for evil depends entirely on the character of the plays produced. CHAPTER XXIX THE POLICE YOU cannot travel far in Japan, certainly not in a Japanese city, without coming across the ubiquitous policeman. Clad in winter in a uniform of blue, serviceable and warm, in summer in clothes of a more or less spotless white, and girt with a sword as symbol of his authority, he has his boxes at regular intervals along the streets, and from these maintains order and discipline. The police-boxes, which are about a quarter of a mile from one another, are in charge of three men, who are on duty for twenty-four hours at a stretch. At any moment of the day or night you will find one man asleep or resting in the little bunk provided for his slumbers, a second on watch in the box or close by it, while the third is going the round of the district assigned to his particular jurisdiction. At the expiration of the twenty-four hours the three men are relieved by another set of three, and have twenty-four hours of freedom from police responsibilities. Each ward in a large city like Tokyo has its district police office, which is in telephonic communication with the police-boxes throughout the city, and the district offices being similarly con- nected with the Central Police Bureau, it requires but a few minutes to have the whole force throughout the Metropolis on the alert. When there is, e.g., a big fire, the police-boxes promptly issue notices giving information as to its location and extent, so that anxious friends may hurry to the rescue of those whose houses are threatened. The policeman whose duty for the time being it is to go the rounds of the district attached to his box has a multitude of duties. Each box keeps a register of houses with the names and addresses of all persons resident in the district, and at least once L 161 162 EVERY-DAY JAPAN a month the police may be seen going round, book in hand, to verify the entries, and keep the register up to date. This extreme strictness about registration is one that is disquieting to evil-doers, and is not without its advantages to other people. You can nearly always find anyone you want by simply inquiring at the police-box in the neighbourhood of which you suppose him to be residing. In addition to posting up his register, the circulating member of the force has to see after the carrying out of the sanitary regulations which are issued from time to time by the Govern- ment authorities. He serves writs and warrants, and notices to pay taxes and arrears of dues. If an arrest has to be made in his district he is the man to do it. He goes to the house armed with a few fathoms of thin rope, secures his man, and leads him off to the police-station to meet his doom. In the meantime the stationary member on guard near the police-box seems to be invested with almost magisterial authority. There is a collision between two jinriksha-men followed by the inevitable quarrel (for the smiling Jap is extremely peppery), or a suspicious-looking bundle seems to attract the policeman's eye. Immediately the offenders or suspects are pounced upon by the officer on guard at the box, and an informal court of preliminary investigation is held, at which all the unemployed in the neigh- bourhood deem themselves privileged to assist. But after all, this magisterial personage is more or less confined to his police- box, and the wary jinriksha-man, going home at night without a lantern, generally knows how to dodge him. The Japanese policeman takes his duties, which are much the same, mutatis mutandis, both in town and country, very seriously. There are no areas in Tokyo, and " Robert " has no adoring cooks to tempt him to unbend. It is greatly to his credit that he is as a rule superior to bribery and corruption, and that in spite of his exiguous pay. In the early days of Meiji, when the samurai were disbanded and disarmed, many of them joined the police force, which offered them regular ply, and, what they valued more highly, the privilege of wearing a sword. In this way a high tone was given to the force, for the samurai I's 1 is A JAPANESE POLICEMAN, IN WINTER COSTUME, OUTSIDE A POLICE-BOX. A PRIVATE WARD IN THE TOKYO HOSPITAL. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE POLICE 163 have always been the flower of the nation, and it has been easier in later days to maintain the honourable traditions which were thus introduced at the beginning. The police are no longer mostly of samurai origin, but they generally act as such, and that is the main thing. The police are always strict in their methods, and individual policemen are at times given to bullying. I have known others who are very prone to sermonising a practice which the poor ofttimes resent But I have also known cases where the police have been genuinely kind to persons in distress, and the philan- thropic worker can always reckon on valuable help from the force. In spite of his big sword, o mawari san (the " gentleman that goes round") has a very human heart. There are some districts in Tokyo where he needs something more than ser- monising in order to preserve the peace of the city. For rough-and-tumble work he can always fall back on jiu-jitsu, a qualification which puts him on the top of the ordinary rough, who for some reason does not seem to be versed in that accom- plishment. The following incident, which happened to myself, will show the efficiency of their methods. Many years ago, before I knew as much of Japan as I do now, I was one evening at supper, when a young man came to the house wanting to see me. It was winter, and there was a stove burning in my hall, so I asked him to wait until I had finished my meal, which seemed for the moment to be the most important thing in the world. After supper I talked with him. He was very plausible, and professed a great interest in Christianity, and eventually left me, giving me an address and promising to come again. The next morning, when I was going to get into my jinriksha to go to school, my rug was missing, and my servants at once concluded that winter was the season for the sneak-thief, and that I had been victimised. For myself, I found it hard to believe that a man who had expressed himself so well and so piously could have stolen my rug, and I refused to report him to the police, compromising with my conscience by writing him a post-card in English asking him if he had by mistake taken my rug. I got no answer, but three weeks later I had a visit from a policeman, who brought me back 1 64 E VERY-DAY JAPAN my rug. My post -card had been the means by which they were enabled to get on to the track of a well-known personage. I also got a scolding and a lecture for not reporting my case at once to the authorities. Soft-heartedness, I was told, was one of the curses of the world. The Japanese police are not soft-hearted, and they have their enemies, especially among the (alas!) rapidly growing class of Socialists, who look upon them as oppressors. The Socialists have no affection for institutions made in Germany, and it was after Berlin models that the Japanese police force was organised. But as a rule the people exhibit very little hostility to their " oppressors." Only once have I known of any demonstration being made against them, and that one demonstration was on the occasion of the publication of the peace terms with Russia. Everybody was excited and disappointed, and the citizens of Tokyo wanted to assemble in Hibiya Park and talk the thing out. Unfortunately the authorities viewed the matter from a different standpoint, and the park gates were guarded by police, who drew their swords and wounded several persons, some of them fatally. Then the people rose up in their wrath and wiped out the city police, burning nearly every police-box in the town. It was an exciting night, but the next morning all was quiet. Business men went back to their work, and the only unusual sight was the number of loafers fishing in the moats round the Imperial Palace, just to show that, for that day at least, there were no policemen left to warn them off. CHAPTER XXX THE DOCTOR HAD the reader been in Japan some fifty years ago, he would have found nearly all the sick people in the country in the hands of physicians of the Chinese school of medical science. Here and there a few hardy spirits had acquired a knowledge of Dutch in order to wade through treatises on surgery and pharmacy; but they were few and far between as rare, so the Japanese would say, " as the stars in the sky at dawn." To-day, every practising physician or surgeon throughout the country has received a more or less complete training in Western science, and some of Japan's greatest triumphs have been won in the hospital and by the sick-bed. There are still a few survivals of the old regime. Herbs and roots possessing medicinal qualities are still in request among the country people, and acupuncture is practised, though it is now considered as one of the supplementary accomplish- ments of the shampooer rather than of the physician. In other things the Japanese patient receives very much the same treat- ment as he would in England. When a man is sick he sends for the doctor, and the professor of healing comes with speed. He may often be known, as he dashes through the streets, by the red wheels of his jinriksha though this fashion is going out, and he is never in want of sturdy runners. A doctor rarely pays his jinriksha-men any wages ; the runners prefer to be paid for the job by the doctor's clients ; for they can always enlarge upon the haste with which they have brought their master, and they know quite well that, when there is sickness in the house and the doctor has come, people are not likely to haggle over the amount of a jinriksha fare. 165 1 66 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Doctors' fees in Japan are low. A man at the top of his profession will ask 5 yen (say, IDS.) a visit, and there are one or two whose attendances at the houses of the great and wealthy are extremely lucrative. But the average practitioner is content with a much lower rate of remuneration, and you can get a fairly skilful physician for a charge of 50 sen (is.) a visit. This fee will sometimes include medicine. But the doctor does not, as a rule, waste much of his time in running from house to house to visit his patients. As soon as he possibly can afford to do so he fits up a few rooms in his own house as wards for the reception of his patients, and as his practice grows the few rooms will blossom into a private hospital an institution in which Japan abounds. Home comforts in Japan are so few, and the difficulties of keeping a sickroom quiet are so insurmountable, that in most cases a Japanese is only too glad to get his sick taken away and put into a hospital. Not that quiet is as essential to a Japanese as it is to us. A Japanese has the happy faculty of being able to sleep through the most deafening noises, and I know, from my own personal experiences in attending on members of my own family, and on friends who have from time to time been inmates of Japanese hospitals, that the Japanese has very different ideas from ours as to what " quiet " means. Even in a good hospital, the noises which seem to be inseparable from the cleaning of a Japanese house commence at five o'clock with great vigour, and I have known an establishment in which a nurse was allowed, on one occasion at least, to play a concertina half through the night. The reader will, of course, understand that in a country in which there are so many private hospitals there must be great differences of administration. As no man can be obliged to go to a private hospital unless he chooses, the Government leaves these institutions a very free hand to develop as best they can, and some doctors are better organisers than others. Hospital fees naturally vary according to the renown of the physician who manages them. In a good hospital a patient will pay 5 yen (lOs.) a day for first-class treatment with a private ward, THE DOCTOR 167 and the charges will run down to I yen, or 75 sen (from 2s. to is. 6d.) a day for treatment in a general ward. But prices are going up with such extraordinary rapidity all through the country that it is almost impossible to make any satisfactory statement about them. There are, of course, public hospitals as well some of them very excellent but there are very few in which the treatment is gratuitous. The most necessitous cases are paid for by the municipality through the police. The Japanese physician is nothing if he is not scientific. I have known hospitals in which the nurse in charge would go round the wards at midnight, waking up the patients to take their temperatures, and recently, when a member of my family cut his foot while bathing, and went to a doctor to have it treated, he found that nothing could be done until he had first been stethoscoped. But it is always best to err on the side of safety, and if it is true that a Japanese doctor makes a great fuss over his preliminary examinations, it is also true that his treatment is, as a rule, quite satisfactory, and that, in Japan, disease is, for the most part, successfully kept at bay by the efforts of the medical fraternity. Very often, however, a Japanese doctor especially one who has never been abroad will fail in his treatment of a European patient Vegetarianism and nearly all Japanese are vegetarians seems to make the constitution singularly responsive to drugs and medicines, so that a very small dose will have a sufficient effect in most cases. As a rule, therefore, Japanese medicines are so weak that they have no effect at all on the more robust European. They are also plentifully diluted with water, for the Japanese loves large doses. He is a most conscientious taker of medicine, and it is no uncommon sight to see a man in a train taking periodical swigs from a medicine bottle sus- pended from his finger by a string. The Japanese Government thoroughly understands the wisdom of vigorously enforcing the orders and decisions of the medical faculty, and woe betide the man who dares to transgress a sanitary regulation. A few months ago a man in Yokohama had a slight attack of scarlet fever, and was condemned to four 1 68 E VERY-DAY JAPAN weeks of isolation in his own house. The case was an ex- tremely mild one, and at the end of three weeks the patient, feeling perfectly well, could stand the isolation no longer, and went off into the country. The doctor called, found his patient gone, notified the police, and in two days the man had been discovered and brought back to finish his sentence under stricter surveillance ; while the hotel which had innocently harboured him was put into quarantine for a week. CHAPTER XXXI THE STORY-TELLER WHEN a Japanese gives an entertainment he will often invite a company of geisha to his house, to amuse his guests with exhibitions of dancing and posturing which are distinctly graceful and beautiful. At other times he will provide skilled musicians flutists and harpists to furnish the festivities with the harmonies of melodious sounds. At another house you will be treated to an exhibition of conjuring, such as has often been shown in England or America, or there will be a "lightning" artist, who, with a few bold strokes of his brush, will draw wonderful pictures of lions, fish, birds, trees, anything in short that the company chooses to ask for, in less time than it has taken me to write this paragraph. A very common form of entertainment is the story-teller, who, with no " properties " except a desk and fan, will hold his audience enthralled with a tale of woe and horror, or convulsed with laughter over his depiction of the comic aspects of human life. The desk serves to hold the few manuscript notes with which he comes provided, and the cup of tea or water which his eloquence claims as its best reward. The fan is brought down at critical points in the narration with telling raps upon the desk. The story-teller does not, however, confine himself to these visits to the houses of his patrons. He generally has his special lecture-hall near his own residence, where, for a very modest fee, people may come on any evening in the week and spend a few hours with amusement and pleasure. I will take my reader with me to one of these yose, as they are called. It is situated in a wide thoroughfare near the busy part of the town, at a place where four roads meet. Opposite 169 i;o E VERY-DAY JAPAN to it is a great temple, beyond that a very large and busy printing establishment ; the rest of the neighbourhood is taken up with the houses of the middle class and poor and with the numerous little shops which form so conspicuous a feature of our Tokyo streets. It is a two-storied house : downstairs are the dwelling-rooms of the family and a reception-room for visitors. The whole of the upstairs is one big matted room, with a little raised dais at one end to accommodate the story- teller and his desk. A peculiar paper lantern at the front door calls our attention to the entertainment which is being given within, and we resolve to enter. At the entrance a stalwart attendant he may be a " chucker- out " for aught we know takes charge of our boots, umbrellas, and other impedimenta, directs us to the counter where the story-teller's wife sits at the receipt of custom, and shows us up the chicken-ladder which in Japanese houses does duty for a staircase. We follow him, wondering how we shall manage to come down again in the dim light of the poor oil-lamp that is hanging there, and are ushered to our seats which we take on the floor, but with a wall or pillar behind us as a support to our poor weak backs. The attendant brings us cushions to sit upon and a little fire-box for warming our hands and lighting our cigarettes, and we make ourselves comfortable till the entertainment begins. The room was half -full when we entered, but new arrivals are constantly coming in, and the audience is beginning to be impatient. The story-teller, however, refuses to be hurried he is waiting for a few more guests to take their seats, but he understands the natural impatience of the audience, and one of his daughters or a pupil it may be, for even story-telling requires an apprenticeship is told off to keep the company in good humour with a popular air played on the samisen or koto. When the hall is full, he begins. He has a large repertoire of stories to draw from, for Japanese history is mostly made of anecdotes, and a Japanese audience is never tired of hearing the histories of the national heroes. The stories need not, however, be confined to Japanese subjects. Western tales of THE STORY-TELLER i;i adventure or heroism are often introduced in Japanese garb, and one of the most popular of modern story-tellers is an Englishman, born and bred in this country, whose knowledge of his mother-language enables him to draw upon a cycle of narratives and legends which are inaccessible to his Japanese rivals. The stories are not always fit for ears polite, for the Japanese, with all his sense of decorum, has a marvellous knack in some things of calling a spade a spade, and prefers out- spoken names to veiled innuendoes. Sometimes the tales are pathetic, sometimes gruesome, and the story-teller, who is always somewhat of a contortionist, makes his facial expression suit the character of his tale. The story does not in every case carry its appropriate moral with it, for the story-teller does not set up to be a preacher ; but it is often humorous, and its audience goes home with laughing hearts, which is something in this vale of woe. His language is generally colloquial to a degree, which makes him very hard for a foreigner to understand, and of the many stories that I have heard told by these men from time to time there are only two that I distinctly retain in my memory. One was the story of the one-legged ghost that haunted a house at Yotsuya, much to the annoyance and terror of the occupants and neighbours. It was not, however, a noisy, evil- disposed ghost of the kind that may be used in frightening children. It was a gentle, melancholy spirit, so gentle and so sad that at last a bold samurai plucked up heart to speak to it. The ghost told the brave samurai that he had but one desire. He had in life had the misfortune to lose a leg, and the severed limb had been buried beneath the spot where the house he haunted stood. Would the samurai be so very kind as to dig a hole under the house and allow him to recover the lost portion of himself ; for how, minus a leg, could he venture to appear before the spirit of his feudal lord in the nether world? The samurai consented, tore up the tatami, pulled away the loose boards beneath, and, guided by the impatient spirit, began to dig. Presently he was told to stop. A thin, nebulous 1 72 E VERY-DAY JAPAN cloud of vapour rose out of the newly-dug hole. As it rose it slowly assumed a definite shape the form of a human leg. The spirit uttered a cry of joy and glided forward, and the leg, with that swift movement with which the wreath of tobacco smoke passes out of the narrow exit of a half-opened window, rushed to meet its rightful owner and coalesced with him. " Thank you, thank you ! " exclaimed the now perfected ghost ; " I will trouble you no more." And the house ceased to be haunted from that very day. Sometimes the point of the story depends on a play upon words, which it is very difficult to express in another language. A man in the Nihonbashi district hired a house which had not long been vacated by its previous occupant, and noticed, on taking possession, that there was a most unpleasant odour in one of the apartments. On making search he found, hidden away in a dark cupboard under the stairs, a bundle wrapped in dirty, discoloured cloth, which on being opened revealed what looked to be a human head in an advanced stage of decom- position. The discovery threw the whole neighbourhood into a fever of excitement and alarm. A most horrible murder had evidently been committed, and rumour speedily magnified the discovery, and supplied most gruesome details of the way in which the horrible deed must have been done. But no one dared to touch the loathsome object, which remained on a shelf in the cupboard, in a dim light, half- concealed by the cloth which had been loosely thrown over it again. The police would soon arrive to investigate the matter, and until then it was safer to do nothing. In the meantime some incredulous spirit suggested that the ghastly object was not a human head at all. Everybody pooh-poohed the theory of this advanced critic, as sheer nonsense ; but he stuck to his guns, and, when the police arrived, he broached it to the officer in command of the troop sent to investigate so startling an occurrence. " Let me see the head," said the officer. They took him to the cupboard and opened the door. There stood the ghastly object, with the putrid flesh still on it, leering THE STORY-TELLER 173 at the officers from empty sockets and a mouth that was apparently toothless. " It is not the head of a man," said the higher critic. " We will see," said the dauntless officer ; and advancing slowly amidst the breathless excitement of the assembled multitude, he cautiously inserted an inquiring finger into the mouth of the disgusting shiny object. Here the story-teller made a most effective and oratorical pause, expressing the horror of the scene by eloquent grimaces. "After a while," he continued, "the policeman withdrew his finger from the mouth of the filthy thing that lay on the table. 'Ha nashi da' was all he said." And so the story ended amidst the applause of the audience. I must spoil my story by adding an explanation. "Ha nashi da? pronounced with a pause to mark the break between the words, means " There are no teeth." The ghastly object was but a decaying turnip scooped out to represent a human face. " H 'anas hi da" pronounced without the pause, means " This is only a story," and expresses the story-teller's not unreasonable exultation at having thus fooled his audience for a solid half -hour. And amidst the applause of the audience and the cheerful twanging of the metallic samisen, we leave our comfortable corner against the wall, grope our way down the dimly-lighted break-neck stairs, collect our boots, hats, and umbrellas, and go home laughing. CHAPTER XXXII A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS I PURPOSE in this chapter to give the life story of an old friend of mine, to whom I will give the name of Suzuki Dairoku, who worked on the first press with movable types ever set up in Tokyo, and for whom I have, for many good reasons, a feeling of the highest respect. It is a story which to me is full of interest, not only on account of the changes which my friend has witnessed in his country, but also because he himself is such an excellent exemplification of some of the very best features of Japanese character. Born eighty years ago in 1826 in Yedo, as the present capital of Japan was then called, he was a man of mature age when Commodore Perry came to Japan in 1853. He was one of the samurai of the Tokugawa clan, and shared in all their tastes and prejudices. As he never grew to be much more than four feet two inches in height, I do not think he can have been much of a warrior! Still, in the battles between the Shogunate and the Imperial troops, which preceded the Restoration of the Empire in 1869, he fought on the losing side, and when a few years later the Daimyates were abolished and the samurai deprived of their swords, he found himself, like thousands of his fellow-warriors, out of a job. And not only out of a job, but out of an income. To be a samurai was not like being a soldier or policeman, an engagement for a certain term of years, with prospects of rise and promotion and a pension at the end. A samurai was the born, hereditary retainer of his feudal lord, bound to keep himself ready for military service whenever required, and in the meantime to do whatever his clan required of him as being conducive to its interest. And in return for A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS AND HIS WIFE. OUT-PATIENTS' ROOM IN THE TOKYO HOSPITAL. A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS 175 this, he received a small but assured income all the days of his life. When the blow fell which dissolved the Daimyates and broke up the clans, Suzuki was cast adrift Many of the samurai became policemen and postmen. Suzuki was too short of stature to become the one, and too proud, perhaps, to become the other ; but a printing press having just been opened in the city, he put his pride in his pocket and became a com- positor. The samurai had always been the patron of literature and Caxton did not feel that he had come down in the world when he set himself up as a printer. For several years he worked at his new profession, and supported himself and his growing family by the sweat of his brow. In the late " seventies " he came under the influence of a pioneer of Protestant missions, that truly holy man, Bishop Williams, of the American Episcopal Church, and in the days when to become a Christian was a dangerous thing for a Japanese to do, was baptised into the faith of Christ. At the same time I am quoting his own words he " renounced the service of the devil and gave up printing." I have always believed that he found the devil in the printing office, for Japanese type-setting is in truth what youthful profanity would call the "very devil." Thousands of characters are used in Japanese printing, and the cases have to be set up in rows all round the room with the type in them arranged according to the number of strokes required in writing the character. The Japanese compositor cannot, therefore, have his type all neatly disposed before him on his desk as we can in England. He has under him a little host of type-collectors boys, to whom, after having read his manuscript, he gives lists of the types he wants, and who go forth type-hunting among the cases until they find what they require, sometimes carrying sheets of the author's precious MS. along with them to aid them in their researches. Their labour is further increased, when the tiny kana syllables are printed by the side of the Chinese characters to give the sound of the word. Having thus renounced the nefarious life of a printer, i;6 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Suzuki became a catechist, and worked for over twenty years at a somewhat thankless occupation sheer misery to any man whose heart is not in his work. When I first knew him he was in charge of a somewhat neglected mission-room in a slum, to which he stuck in spite of discouragements which would have disheartened many a less faithful, stubborn, or pertinacious man. Eventually the mission-room blossomed into a church, not a grand one indeed, but one highly valued as having been built by the personal efforts of the men actually interested in it, and he himself was ordained to the diaconate at the age of seventy- two years. And thus I came to have a curate under me who was almost old enough to be my grandfather. He has retired from active work now, and my own connection with the work of the mission is a thing of (to me) a remote past. But the old man is to my mind a characteristic type of Japanese pertinacity. If the nation were not pertinacious to a remarkable degree, they could never have accomplished all that they have achieved. His Majesty the Emperor has, in a recently published poem, excel- lently described the characteristic pertinacity of the Japanese: " Water, so weak that it will take the shape Of goblet, cup, or bowl, to suit the taste Of every hand that pours it; yet, withal, Mighty to percolate the close-grained rocks That form the framework of the eternal hills." From the time when Suzuki entered the first printing office in Tokyo to the present, great changes have come over Japanese journalism, which is now one of the most powerful factors in the life of the country. The first bond -fide newspaper in the vernacular, the Mainichi,vfa.s started in 1870; in 1898 the number of papers and periodicals published in Japan was 829 ; in 1904 it had grown to 1,590, a number which has much increased since then, and which does not include the few English papers pub- lished by foreigners at the Treaty Ports. The Japanese Government at one time exercised a very strict censorship over the Press, and the theory is still kept up, though modified in practice. Hence arose a custom, which was at one time almost universal, of having a dummy editor, to go to A NESTOR AMONG PRINTERS 177 prison whenever the real editor talked a little too freely for the authorities. Further, every paper desirous of discussing the political topics of the day is required to deposit with the Government a sum varying from 175 yen (17 55.) to 1,000 yen (100), according to circumstances. This deposit money, on which the depositor receives interest, forms a sort of guarantee for good behaviour which is not without its value. Newspaper profits are moderate. One newspaper ventures to charge 2 sen for a number ; every other paper is sold for I sen (a farthing). One or two of the best papers have a circulation of about half a million. As for the contents of the papers, they are practically the same, mutatis mutandis, as those of an English newspaper. We get telegrams from all over the world, and know more of what is going on in Europe than the average Londoner knows of what is going on in Japan. We have leading articles on the topics of the day, some of them extremely shrewd and well- written. Then there come local intelligence, reviews of books and literature, personal paragraphs (which occasionally, in the lower-class papers, are extremely personal even mali- cious), official notifications and advertisements. Almost every newspaper has a feuilleton novel appearing daily in its columns ; indeed, it is to the daily Press that Japan owes almost all of its modern novels a subject which would demand a whole chapter to itself and some of the journalists undertake a sort of moralising mission among their countrymen. Most of the Japanese papers are fully conscious of the importance of their duties, and there are some, such as the fiji Shimpo, which can always be trusted to say the right thing at the right time. There are others which cannot be trusted, and there is no doubt that half the trouble which arose after the conclusion of the war with Russia was due to the irre- sponsible writings of journalists who had led their readers to expect confidently an immense war indemnity together with a large slice of Russian territory. There are also some papers written in English. Yokohama and Kobe can boast of several the Herald, the Mail, the i;8 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Advertiser, the Gazette, and the Chronicle, which latter comes from Kobe, which also boasts of a Herald. The Japan Times, printed in Tokyo, is entirely in Japanese hands, though there is generally one foreigner on its staff as linguistic and general adviser. It is very largely read by the foreign community, and may be taken as a good specimen, both as to contents and tone, of a modern Japanese paper of the best type. CHAPTER XXXIII A POEM AND ITS INTERPRETATION I OWN to a partiality for Japanese poems. They are short, concise, easily remembered, and it is a very favourite pastime of mine on my frequent journeys, in jinriksha or tram, from one end of Tokyo to another, to translate these dainty little verses into rough English metres. Many of my Japanese friends know my little weakness, and very often I become the recipient of some poetical effusion, of which I am asked to furnish an English version. The other day an old pupil showed me a poem which he said had taken his fancy, and which he therefore brought to me for my approval. It was a poem by a young author of no particular fame, and it ran as below. I give it in its original form, so that the reader may see at a glance all that there is in a Japanese poem. There are some varieties which are shorter than the one here given, but under no circumstances can a true Japanese poem be longer : " Kami ni niru wa, Tada kimi kooru Kokoro nari. Shin wa futari no Mune tsutsumu aya." The literal translation runs as follows: "The God-like is only the heart that loves me : Faith is the mesh that enfolds two persons." I thought over these few words for the whole of a day, and slept over it, not only in my after-dinner nap, but during the whole of an autumn night as well. The next morning I had, as I thought, arrived at the meaning, and, mounting my Pegasus, 179 i8o E VERY-DAY JAPAN wrote out the following, which I think the reader will allow to be a liberal amplification of the original. I was very proud of it when I had done. " God ? * Can I write of that I cannot see Nor comprehend the Vaguely Infinite, Beyond all human ken, or word, or thought? Yet from the Known we figure the Unknown, And shadow forth the Shadowless : and thus, God is the Heart that loves the Lover's Heart, That looks and longs for sweet return of love ; The Husband's Heart, that makes companionship With her whose hand He holds and calls His own; The Father's Heart, that careth for His son, Watching his growth with fond paternal eyes. And lovers, parting, oft-times interchange Twin trinkets, tokens of a common love : And each one, gazing on the ring he wears, " My love," says he, " beyond the cold grey sea. Wears the twin fellow of the thing I keep, And, gazing, thinks of me, as I of her; By this I know our absent love doth hold." Such is the thing which men have christened Faith. I heard shortly afterwards that the Japanese poet was very much obliged to me for my generous interpretation of his song. He had really had no idea that the poem was capable of so fair sounding a translation. What he had really meant to say was something as follows : " There is nothing God-like except the heart that loves me, and there is no Faith except the bond of possession." My student expressed himself as far more satisfied with the next version which I attempted this time without undue amplification : " My sweet-heart is my sole divinity : And heart on heart my only form of faith." I had come down from my high horse with a vengeance ! My pupil was satisfied, and so, he said, was the author ; but I was not. I went to another ex-pupil for an unbiased opinion. His verdict was that the Japanese language was capable of great vagueness, especially in its poetical department ; that my first version was certainly quite a possible and legitimate one, and that the same might be said of the second. As for the A POEM AND ITS INTERPRETATION 181 author's preferences, they did not count for much. " These poets," he said, " never quite know what they mean, and forget to-day what they said yesterday." I have told this story in order to bring out more distinctly the great contrasts of character as of everything else that one sees in Japan, contrasts which make generalised descriptions of the people absolutely impossible to one who knows them. Sweeping generalisations are almost always unjust and unfair ; indeed, I would qualify this sentence by the omission of the word "almost." Sweeping generalisations are always unfair. Here is a poem which, as explained to me by the student who first brought it, had a deeply spiritual meaning, one not un- worthy of the best Christian thought, and an Englishman, reading it even in its baldest and briefest form, might at once conclude that the Japanese are a race capable of the most exalted conceptions. Should my second version meet his eye first, he might run away with the idea that the Japanese are a race of sensualists, and that even their poetry belongs to the fleshly school. Had he come across my other pupil, he would possibly have dubbed the whole race as materialists who cared nothing for that which they could not see nor touch, nor turn into money. Some Japanese are by nature endowed with very high spiritual qualities, but the whole nation is not so. The people who rave about bushido and other " high falutin " virtues make a great mistake by their broad statements. Some Japanese are sensual, but by no means all, and though there is a " fleshly school " in art, in literature, and in daily conduct, it is by no means characteristic of the whole people. Some Japanese are purely materialistic, as unblushing and as unscrupulous in their money- grubbing as any Shylock in East or West. But, again, it is not true to say that the whole nation is composed of sordid people whose one idea is gold. There is one inference which might perhaps be made with a certain show of verisimilitude. Like his poetry, the Japanese is apt to be vague and indefinite. He lacks the downright bluntness of the Britisher; he does not carry his 1 82 E VERY-DAY JAPAN heart on his sleeve ; he loves to hedge and to protect himself behind words of undefined interpretation. Hence it comes to pass that, whilst the globe-trotter boldly rushes in to express his opinion about the inhabitants of the Island Empire of the East, the old resident hesitates to speak about a people whom it is very difficult to know, and about whom generalisations are impossible. A WRESTLERS' BOOTH. A QUIET GAME OF CHEQUERS. THE TWO FIGURES ON THE LEFT, WITH QUEUES, ARE PROFESSIONAL WRESTLERS. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHAPTER XXXIV A WRESTLING MATCH AT THE EKOIN TEMPLE To-DAY we will go to the Ekoin Temple, in Honjo, and have a look at the wrestlers who are busily engaged there in one of their wrestling competitions. We must make a fairly early start, for the competition has now been going on for a week, and all the inferior wrestlers have already been eliminated from the contest. To-day only the elite will be engaged, and all Tokyo is thrilling with the important and absorbing question as to who will gain the championship of Japanese wrestlers. Is it to be Ume-ga-tani or Hitachiyama? It is a question on which much depends. The Ekoin Temple lies beyond the Sumida River, in the Honjo district, and as we cross the new Ryogoku Bridge, which has but recently taken the place of its old wooden predecessor, we see before us a tall scaffolding, surrounded with flags of various hues, but chiefly the national bunting, and surmounted by a platform on which stands a drum which is being con- tinually beaten by a succession of boys and young men. In what country would not lads delight to climb to the top of a high scaffolding and beat a drum ? The scaffolding stands in the precincts of the Ekoin Temple, and the beating drum is the notification to the world that wrestling is going on there. You will possibly be a little puzzled to find a wrestling match taking place in the sacred precincts of a temple, and talk in disparaging tones of heathenish customs. I think I shall be able to show you that the thing is not half so strange as it looks, and the custom arose in the most natural way in the world The popular name of the temple, Eko-in, means a place in 183 1 84 E VERY-DAY JAPAN which masses are said for the dead, such masses forming a very large portion of Buddhist worship. But it has another name just as Westminster Abbey is the Church of St. Peter and is dedi- cated beautifully dedicated to the pious memory of helpless persons. Its official name is Mu-yen-ji, "the Temple of Help- lessness," and it is dedicated to the memory of the helpless souls who found here a resting-place after death. In writing about Shiba Park I shall mention the fact of the frequency of conflagrations in ancient Yedo. In the year 1657 one of these terrible fires swept the city from end to end, ruthlessly destroying everything that came in its way, there being nothing to resist it in a city built of wood and paper. The conflagration lasted for forty-eight consecutive hours, and over one hundred thousand persons lost their lives in it. It was a greater blaze than our London fire which took place a few years later. The outcast class of the Eta, descendants of prisoners of war, who have been suffered to remain amongst this people as hewers of wood and drawers of water, and who, being outcasts, were allowed to handle dead bodies and to trade in leather, were entrusted by the Government with the task of burying the corpses of the victims ; and finding across the river a vacant tract of land suitable for the purpose, conveyed the dead thither and buried them in a common pit, with solemn obsequies, which lasted for seven days. Priests of all sects took part in these obsequies, and the temple which was erected over the remains belonged to no one in particular. For that very reason it remained unendowed. But who Christian or Buddhist would accept a living with- out glebe or tithes, and with no parishioners except the poor helpless dead ? Nevertheless an incumbent was found. His name it deserves to be remembered was Shinyo Shonin, a zealous reformer who, disgusted by the worldliness of his richly- endowed brethren, had been preaching that Buddhist priests should renounce the world as Sakyamuni had done, and live lives of holy poverty. Shinyo Shonin readily accepted the un- desirable living, and seeing that saying funeral masses for one A WRESTLING MATCH 185 hundred thousand helpless souls, who had no fees to offer him, took up all his time, without bringing in any reward or income, he instituted periodical wrestling matches for which he charged a small admittance fee, and thus obtained an income for his benefice. In the middle of the arena, as we enter, is a circular mound of sand, kept in place and shape by huge straw ropes which surround it on all sides. The mound is raised some two feet above the surrounding earth, and a herald, dressed in the correct kami shimo of the ancient samurai, and wearing his hair in the old-fashioned queue brought forward and plastered down on his smoothly-shaven crown, is announcing to the eager crowds in the tiers of surrounding benches the names of the com- petitors in the bout which is just about to begin. He turns first this way and then that, and announces in loud, stentorian tones that such and such a wrestler will now come forward as champion of the East, and such and such another as champion of the West. Every wrestler has his rank and grade carefully kept and recorded, and the sporting man knows at once, when he hears the names, what sort of a contest it is likely to be. If A stands I4th on the official list, and B is I5th, there is a good chance of witnessing a pretty even contest. If A is 7th on the list and B 3Oth, the probabilities are that it will be a walk-over for A. But sometimes the dark horse wins in Japan as in England, and then B goes to 7, while A sinks to 30. To be defeated by a man much below you is like being " bumped over two places " in the May Races on the Cam, and the man who has worked his way up to the top and ranks as No. I, be he Ume-ga-tani or Hitachiyama, is like the boat that rows head of the river, or the winner of the Derby. A wrestler's salary depends on his place in the official list. Hence the eagerness of the contest from beginning to end of the performance. The wrestlers of Japan form, as it were, a close corporation. At the top of the profession stand the champions for the time being, the men who are in the height of their vigour and who are always a safe draw. The younger men enlist themselves 1 86 E VERY-DAY JAPAN under one or other of these famous champions and serve their apprenticeship under their direction. In process of time they, too, will rise to the top of the profession, and their instructors of to-day will pass into the ranks of the toshi yori, the " old men/' who sit on the front benches as honoured guests and act as umpires in the contest. When a competition is held at the Ekoin the whole of the gate-money, which amounts to a very large sum, is handed over to the wrestling confraternity, who allot one portion as stipend for the incumbent, another as pension-money for the toshi yori, the rest being divided amongst the higher members of the active confraternity. Each of these latter is responsible for the support of the younger men training under him. He supplies his scholars with food in abundance, clothing, lodging, and but little money. The great size of the wrestlers is said to be entirely due to the voraciousness of their appetite, and they are encouraged to eat without stint, because Japanese wrestling is a pastime in which weight tells. The Ekoin meetings take place in spring and winter, and last about ten days at a time. In the intervals the wrestlers are starring the country, drawing crowds everywhere and making much money. But the Ekoin matches are the important ones, for it is by them that the toshi yori decide the standing of the active men. Meanwhile the champions of East and West have come forward at the bidding of the herald, and after a few pre- liminary stampings and posturings, just to get their muscles into perfect action, have taken up their positions opposite to one another. They are immense fellows with huge muscles, and are perfectly naked except for a waist-cloth and an apron, which latter is sometimes very richly embroidered. When the signal is given, they do not close at once, for in wrestling everything depends on the way in which you catch hold of your adversary, and so they stand like fighting cocks waiting to make a spring. Suddenly the spring is made, and amidst thunders of applause the two men grapple one another, push, pull, squeeze, hug, groan, grunt, until at last one of them stumbles, and in a moment more is rolling on the ground with his adversary atop of him. A WRESTLING MATCH 187 Then the populace shout for joy, and the drums on the top of the scaffolding beat louder than ever. " It was quite worth seeing," we exclaim, as we work our way out of the crowded space, and go home for a well-earned tiffin. CHAPTER XXXV SIGHTS AND CRIES IN TOKYO STREETS COMPARED with other cities that I have known, Tokyo is a noiseless town, and as for strange sights, habit has so inured me to what comes under my eye in my daily life that I scarce heed it at all. The first sound I hear in the morning comes from a temple, separated from my house by two gardens and a hill, at which the Buddhist priests say matins just at sunrise, or even a little before it, with the beating of a drum and the prolonged rattling of a noisy gong. When I hear that sound I think of how the " saints rejoice in their beds " though there are also days when I am reminded that I am not a saint, and that if I would get through the day's work before me I must up and be doing. The next sound I hear, after an interval of uncertain dura- tion, is the unbarring of the front gates by the bettos the handy- men that groom our horses, cut our grass, sweep our gardens, and, in a word, do everything that needs to be done outside of the house. When I hear the rumble of my neighbour's gate I know that the secular life of the city has begun, just as the religious life began some thirty minutes previously. Domestic life begins at a somewhat later hour, but in the streets I can already hear the cry of " Natto, na tto /" which tells me that the poor are beginning to bestir themselves. Natto is a con- coction of beans which have been kept until they are beginning to go bad. It is said to have a rich tasty flavour, and to be verj popular with some sections of the community. It is essentially a poor man's dish. By the time the natto sellers have done their business, othei 188 A CAKE-SELLER. A CLOG-MAKER AT WORK. AN ITINERANT CANDY-SELLER WITH A " MAME DAIKO " DRUM. ; SIGHTS AND CRIES IN TOKYO STREETS 189 itinerant vendors have begun their rounds. The newspaper-boy's advent is always heralded by the tinkling of the bell which he carries suspended at his girdle; the milkman and baker have each their distinguishing cry, as has also the vendor of the bean-curd, known as tofu, which is much in request among people of, and above, the middle classes. A middle-class woman in Tokyo does very little cooking, beyond boiling the rice for the household. Most of the things that are eaten with the rice she can buy from these peripatetic merchants. The next to arrive are the sellers of fish and vegetables. But by this time domestic life is well under way, and business life is about to commence. As I jump into the tramcar in Shiba Park a newsboy is calling the morning papers lustily, and all along the route into the city I am being tempted with offers of the leading journals and the latest news. From nine in the morning to four or five in the afternoon the business parts of the town are almost devoid of special cries, for the Japanese never seems to encourage midday hawking in the city, unless it be within certain limits of time and space, such as on the occasion of a fair or within the pleasure-ground of Asakusa. Yet even in the thick of the city you may see the mendicant priests, bowl in hand, going from house to house among their parishioners, and chanting monotonous prayers to the occasional tinkle of the bell they carry in their hands. They never make the mistake of calling at a wrong house, for the middle-class Japanese puts a ticket above his door which states the sect to which he belongs, and the Buddhist clergy never poach or profess never to do so on one another's preserves. Each priest knows where his sheep reside, and the sheep know their pastors who come to them regularly for the little dole of money which takes the place of broken meats. Other frequent sights in the residential quarters of the town are the wandering tinkers and clog-menders, whose cries are easily recognised, and the pipe-cleaners, who need no cry since they travel with a miniature steam-engine which continually blows a whistle, except when the steam is being utilised for the purpose of cleaning the pipe. Lamp-cleaners and menders are active in igo EVERY-DAY JAPAN the streets all day. They are often rag-pickers and chiffonniers as well, and there is many a humble household that procures its wicks and its new lamps by barter in return for broken glass, scraps of paper, and cloth. And, of course, where the lamp-cleaner goes the oilman must follow ; and the professional lamp-lighter makes his rounds twice a day, cleaning your gate-lamp during the forenoon and lighting it at dusk. As the afternoon wears on the newspapers often take the opportunity of some political excitement to issue a gogai, or " extra/' which sends hundreds of excitable youngsters round the streets selling the little sheets. A gogai is very often some- what of a fraud; but Japan loves to hear what is new, and these extras always seem to be profitable to their publishers. Towards evening the vendors of food are busy once more, and, later on, the hot potato man and sellers of fried fish and other delicacies do quite a good trade ; for the Japanese likes to have what he calls his supper at five o'clock, and if you sup at five you begin to want a " night-cap " about half-past nine. Among the strangest things you will see in Tokyo are the kan-mairi, or " frost-pilgrims," during the cold evenings of January. There are in Tokyo a certain number of Buddhist temples dedicated to a Buddha of the name of Fudo Sama, a special giver of health and strength to his worshippers. At each of these temples there is a deep well of ice-cold water, and the temples are at some distance from each other. When the weather is at its coldest, in the period known as daikan, or the "great frost" i.e. from January loth to February 1st, with a few days of grace on this side and on that you may see at any hour of the night a figure almost naked running at full speed through the streets and ringing a big bell as he goes. He is a kan-mairi. He has performed his devotions at one of the shrines of Fudo Sama, with copious showers of cold water from the well poured over his shivering frame. He has then put on one thin summer garment, and thus scantily clad is running as fast as he can to shrine number two, where he will repeat the operation. Before he has finished he will have visited every Fudo shrine in the place. Possibly he may SIGHTS AND CRIES IN TOKYO STREETS 191 die; but whether he survives or not he believes that he will obtain for some loved invalid the precious boon of restoration to health. When we walk down the wide street of Ginza at noonday, and look at modernised shops with plate-glass windows, at the tramcars and the telegraph poles, we think that we are almost on the verge of the twentieth century. We have to see Tokyo in the dark before we can realise how extremely wide is the gulf which separates the idealistic Orient from the materialistic West. CHAPTER XXXVI A VISIT TO THE FOX-GOD'S ORACLE I ONCE met, on the lonely top of Mount Tsukuba, the solitary two-peaked mountain that rises out of the great plain to the north-east of Tokyo, a widow and her son, whom I accidentally disturbed at their devotions. Tsukuba San is famous, among other things, for its azaleas, which, blossoming in late spring, cover the whole hill-side in a robe of gorgeous red. It was a season to tempt the excursionist, it was too early for the general run of pilgrims, and I was, therefore, considerably astonished to find anyone on the mountain for other purposes than those of pleasure. I found out presently that the widow had taken her son to this lonely shrine in fulfilment of a vow made during a dangerous sickness, from which the lad had now happily recovered. I looked at the shrine it was a Buddhist shrine such as one may often see on the countryside. It contained an image a mother hold- ing in her arms a babe ! The Japanese have a proverb which says Todai moto kurashi, "Just under the candlestick is the darkest place in the room," and if you could see a Japanese room with a tall wooden candle- stick, holding a dimly-burning candle enclosed by a shade of semi- transparent paper, you would see how true to life the proverb is. It is true also in another way. Tokyo is the candlestick of Japan the light-giving centre of Japanese illumination. A few miles out of Tokyo you come upon dark spots' which seem to be abso- lutely untouched by Western civilisation and light. They are at the foot of the candlestick, and the bright rays of Western light have passed them over on their way to enlighten other places. 192 HANEDA, EIGHT MILES FROM TOKYO. THE INNERMOST SHRINE OF THE INARI TEMPLE AT HANEDA. A VISIT TO THE FOX-GOD'S ORACLE 193 Such a place is Haneda. It is eight miles from Tokyo, at the mouth of the river which you cross at Kawasaki by train on your way from Yokohama to the capital. In old days you went by train to Kawasaki, and then on foot to the mouth of the Kawasaki River ; now an electric car takes you in an hour from Tokyo as far as Anamori. When you alight from the car at Anamori you go over a bridge under the stone torii or gateway, and so up the street towards the temple, or shrine. The torii is a meaningless gate which is found at the entrance to every Shinto temple, and very often in Buddhist temples as well ; for Buddhism and Shinto were in the past very neigh- bourly creeds, and borrowed a great deal from each other. Not unfrequently one temple served for both cults, so that it is very difficult to say sometimes to which religion the temple belongs. Some people say that the word torii comes from tori, "a fowl," and that these gateways were used for tying the sacrificial fowls to, a theory which I can well understand if the Japan fowls in olden days were at all like the fowls which are now found in the province of Tosa, creatures with tail feathers sixteen feet long A man must walk behind them, to carry their train, whenever they go for an airing ! At any rate, the torii is of no earthly use now, save as an ornament ; but it is a common thing to present a torii to the temple as a thank-offering for a prayer that has been heard, and to judge by the avenue of little wooden torii leading to this temple, it would seem that the god of Haneda must be a power- ful god ; for the torii stand there by the thousands, some made of costly white stone, the offerings of wealthy worshippers, and others of the simple wood that the poorest can afford to give. The number of these votive torii would lead you to infer that the worshippers that visit this shrine are very numerous and so they are. The Electric Railway Company would not have run a line down to this out-of-the-way hamlet on a lonely mud-flat if the numbers of the pilgrims to the shrine had not been sufficient to justify their doing so. For the accommodation of the numerous worshippers there are many tea-houses. When a Japanese tea- house or inn enters upon the pilgrim business, it has its trade 194 EVERY-DAY JAPAN mark and name printed in white on pieces of dark blue cotton, which it sends round to all the other houses in the same line throughout the country. These strips of cloth are hung out in front of the inn, but not for mere ornament. The pilgrim who is making an extended tour finds in them a convenient Hotel Direc- tory, and when he has by their means " spotted " the right place for his next night's sojourn, he goes to the landlord and gets from him a letter of commendation to take with him. In this way the pilgrim innkeepers are in continual touch with one another. Very often, too, the parting guest receives as a present a little white cotton tenugui, or napkin, with the name of the hotel printed in blue upon its surface. The tenugui is in constant use during the pilgrimage, serving as towel, handkerchief, duster, and headgear ; and when the pilgrim has done with it, it is sometimes hung out on a pole, where it serves to advertise the merits of the hotel, by showing to all the world how many guests from distant locali- ties have deigned to lodge there. We will suppose, then, that, fatigued with our journey, we have reached the hostelry its name, the Komeya, or Rice-hotel. We are not in a hurry to go on, so we sit down and wait, have a cigarette, and a cup of tea with a biscuit. Having done this, and when we are rested, we go through the little village street to- wards the temple, which is now quite near. Perhaps we have brought our children with us, or perhaps we have left them behind with the promise of a present, or perhaps there is a neighbour's child to be propitiated with a gift. In the first case, pea-nuts will possibly be sufficient ; if the present is for children at home, our own or our neighbour's, we shall have to get one of those curious straw images which form one of the staple industries of the place. The mud-flats of the delta of the Rokugo River pro- duce abundance of corn and rice, and there is always straw to be had for the asking. Straw-plaiting is the staple industry of the district, and when the women want a change from the everlasting braiding of straw for the far-famed Japanese hats, they devote their leisure moments to the manufacture of straw lions, dogs, and men, which are painted with the gaudiest of colours and dangled on strings to tempt infantile mankind. If you are reckless enough A VISIT TO THE FOX-GOD'S ORACLE 195 to buy one of these monsters you will have to carry it about with you for the rest of the day, and everyone will know that you have been to Haneda. Sitting by the roadside you will find a leper, to whom you will toss a small coin a miserable way of telling him that you know not how to help him better. And then you will enter the shrine, a typical building of its kind, in which the eye is confused by the multitude of mysterious and apparently meaningless sym- bols. Characteristic of the place are two stone images of foxes, sitting up and "begging," with frills around their necks. This is a shrine of Inari, the Rice-goddess, the friend or foe, accord- ing to circumstances, of the men who come into contact with her. She knows the Future as well as the Present, and the foxes are her attendants in the matter of revealing what will happen. The fox, in Japanese legend, has the power to assume at will the form of a man, and to mix in human society. He therefore knows a great deal, and can give most useful information when he pleases. It is, on this account, often a paying speculation to come to a fox-shrine to find out about stocks and shares, so we let the landlady of the tea-house know that we wish to consult the kannushi, or head-priest of the temple. The landlady, being a woman, will ask us whether we wish to inquire about a marriage or about our business speculations ; for those are the two things as to which men all over the world are most interested to know the future. We shall have to satisfy her curiosity somehow or other, and then she will go to the priest and make arrangements for us to spend the night alone in the shrine. When the devotee is thus alone in the sanctuary he listens to the voices of those who come to the shrine during the night to worship. Possibly these are the unhappy ones among men, who come to pray, in their hour of sorrow and shame, when none save the Unseen can see them. But that is not quite the popular belief about them. To the superstitious these mysterious wor- shippers are foxes in human form, who have come to serve in the temple of their mistress Inari, the goddess of Rice, and the words that they utter on such occasions are not the sighings of a con- trite heart, but vaticinations of the future, to which the devotee ig6 EVERY-DAY JAPAN must listen with rapt attention, as containing something that it is of importance for him to know. On the morrow he will go to the kannushi, tell him what he has heard, and receive the inter- pretation thereof. A friend of mine once told me of an experience which he had It was not at Haneda, where this particular sort of divination is not practised, but at another Inari temple near Osaka. The man was a rice broker, and had had so many unlucky speculations on the Rice Exchange that he thought of giving up the business entirely. But before doing so he thought he would consult the oracle. So he made an arrangement with the kannushi, and in due time was locked up in the dark, uncanny idol temple. Had it been in the summer he would probably have had many nocturnal visitors, but it was winter, and he had to wait a long time ; for even foxes will not readily leave their snug little lairs when the thermometer is below freezing. However, at last someone came, and the sound of the wooden geta on the stones showed that it was a party of two. My friend listened with breathless attention. The foxes in human form approached the shrine, sounded the gong, clapped their hands, breathed a silent prayer with bowed head, and then at last one of them broke the silence. " How far is it to Takaeda ? " said he. " Not very far." " Then let's go there and spend the night." And with that they walked off, and for the rest of the night there was silence. The next morning he went to the kannushi and told him what he had heard. " Ah ! " said the reverend gentleman, who received him in full canonicals, "the one asked how far it was to Takaeda, did he ? " "Yes." " And the reply was that it was not far ? " "Yes." " Hm ! And did you notice the direction in which they went?" " Yes ; they turned to the left." THE APPROACH TO THE FOX-GOD'S TEMPLE AT HANEDA, SHOWING THE VOTIVE " TORN." THE BRONZE STATUE OF BUDDHA AT KAMAKURA. A VISIT TO THE FOX-GOD'S ORACLE 19; "That's good," said the priest. "The left is the fortunate direction it is a good omen. And they asked the distance to Takaeda. Taka-eda means ' high branch ' ; it shows that your fortunes are going to rise. And they said it was not far which shows that your fortune is going to rise soon. It is quite clear that you had better go back to Osaka, and go on with your speculations." My friend was overjoyed, and hastened back to his haunts on the Osaka Rice Exchange, where he plunged manfully into speculation as the Fox-god had told him. But Taka-eda proved a broken branch, and let him down badly. He lost and lost, and at last was forced to give up the business of a rice broker. And these people, you will say, are the countrymen of Oyama and Togo, of Ito, Okuma, and the other makers of New Japan the men renovated and inspired by the bushido that men vaunt as the best thing that the world has yet seen ! We might have found some of the same contrasts in the days of Christ and his Apostles, had we visited Imperial Rome. On the one hand, a newly-established Empire, built up on the foundation of an Imperial House, which claimed divine descent, by the labours of men of great culture, refinement, and of the loftiest spirit, of Horace and Maecenas, of Caesar, Augustus, and Germanicus ; on the other, in the slums across the Tiber, the crassest of superstition and the most degraded of religions. Sub- stitute Japanese names for the names of the great ones, and you have, save for the one fact that the Japanese is more aesthetic than the Roman, an exact replica of Imperial Rome in the Japan of to-day. CHAPTER XXXVII KAMAKURA ONE of the holiday resorts most easy of access for the jaded Tokyo resident is the little seaside town of Kamakura, which lies, as the crow flies, some forty miles south-west of Tokyo. The railway journey takes about two hours from Tokyo, and one from Yokohama. The road presents no features of interest, and the tourist had better provide himself with a newspaper or book to while away the time in the train. When he emerges from the station at Kamakura he will find himself in a broad valley between low hills covered with bamboos and conifers. The whole plain is covered with little hamlets dotted here and there, and what will perhaps first strike his eye will be a fine avenue of trees running from the sea in a straight line up to a great red temple which stands out conspicuously on an elevated plateau at the foot of some green hills. He will find that the hillsides have in many places been cut out and levelled, as though for building purposes, and on asking the reason for all these elaborately prepared sites, which yet show on them no vestiges of buildings of any kind, he will be told that centuries ago, before Yedo existed, Kamakura was a flourishing city and the seat of the actual Government of the country, though it has now shrunk to the dimensions of a small country town. If he follows the avenue right down to the water's edge he will find himself on a sandy beach in a bay between two headlands, with the waves tumbling in to the shore from the great ocean before him. Right in front of him he will see on the horizon the smoking volcano of Vries Island, or, as the Japanese call it, Oshima. If he climbs the hills to the right, he will get a magnificent panorama over the peninsula 198 KAMAKURA 199 of Izu and the mountains of Hakone. High up in the back- ground of the picture will be the snow-clad cone of peerless Fuji, and at his feet, Enoshima, the St. Michael's Mount of Japan, " bosomed in the blue " of the placid waters. If he turns eastward and climbs to the summit of the promontory on his left, he will get a similar panorama over Misaki and the entrance to the bay of Yokohama. On a clear day he will descry the ships passing to and fro through the comparatively narrow entrance to the gulf, and his gaze will reach as far as the serrated mountain range of Boshu, known among the Japanese as Nokogiriyama. He will see no towns, but one cloud of smoke near by him will mark the site of Yokosuka, with its great naval dockyard, at which was laid down in 1905 a battleship, the Satsuma, nearly one thousand tons greater than our English Dreadnought. Another cloud of smoke will mark Yokohama, and the distant horizon will always be heavy towards the north with the clouds that constantly hang over the manufactories of Tokyo. During the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries of our era Kamakura was the practical metropolis of Japan. Kyoto was the Imperial residence ; it was also the residence of the Shogun. But neither Emperor nor Shogun during those years of strife and confusion had more than a shadow of actual power. The whole power was held by the military " regents " of the Ho jo family, who ruled in the name of the " puppet " Shogun as the Shogun ruled in the name of the Emperor, whose actual place in the Empire was for the time equally insignificant. Kamakura in the day of its prosperity was a place of splendour, as may be seen by the few buildings of the time which still remain. It would be difficult to find a more picturesque spot, or buildings more tastefully built to suit their environ- ments, than the famous twin monasteries of Kenkoji and Enkakuji, where men still sometimes practise that essentially old-world rite of sitting still in placid meditation until the whole hidden meaning of the universe gradually unfolds itself to the mind. Kamakura was also the home of a large body of military men and samurai, for the Hojo Regents held their power by the sword ; but when they had established a peace 200 EVERY-DAY JAPAN throughout the land, the swords of their samurai somehow grew dim, and Kamakura became a place of luxury and effeminacy. Carpet knights are a product by no means peculiar to the decadent West. Protests were not lacking. The country was threatened with an invasion of Mongols, and the great Buddhist reformer and prophet, Nichiren, took to preaching in the thoroughfares of Kamakura against the follies of the Regent's Court and of his blinded co-religionists who approved of its policy. Nichiren, not unnaturally, became an object of dislike and hatred to the Court. His life was more than once attempted, and Kamakura is full of reminiscences of his marvellous escapes. In a little hamlet among the hills his enemies sought to slay him in a sudden night-attack, and would have succeeded had he not been aroused from his slumbers by the cries of some pet monkeys, the faithful creatures taking him by the hand and pulling him away to a place of safety. Across the Bay of Sagami, near Atami, in Idzu, is an islet, or, rather, an isolated rock, a little distance from the sea. A rough seaman was told to take Nichiren, nominally into exile, but with secret orders that the exile should be one from which there was no returning. The captain understood, and on near ing the coasts of Idzu threw his prisoner overboard by night. But Nichiren swam to the rock, and the next morning a grass-cutter on the Idzu hills heard a sound of Buddhist prayers, and, looking out to sea, beheld the lone figure of the monk at prayer upon the rock. Nichiren returned once more to Kamakura to worry the Regent. Then the Regent made another attempt. He ordered Nichiren to be beheaded, and the spot is shown on the lonely shore between Kamakura and Enoshima where the preparations were made. Nichiren kneeled down upon the mat placed to receive him, and bowed his head for the stroke. Thrice the executioner raised his sword to strike ; thrice a blinding flash of lightning stayed his hand. A pause was made for consultation, and before operations were begun once more a messenger arrived post-haste from the Regent, who had been warned in a dream to change his purpose. KAMAKURA 201 Another of the Regents was so desirous of effecting a reform of abuses that he resigned his office to his son, and, disguising himself as a monk, made a journey through the country to see things for himself. One winter evening he found himself in the snow on a wide expanse of bleak moor- land He had lost his way, and seeing at some distance the glimmer of a light in a cottage window, went to ask for a night's shelter. He found there a comely woman of middle age, busied with her work. " There is an inn at a village three miles distant," she said, pointing him the direction. " I know you are tired and hungry, but my husband is out, and I cannot take you in. It would be an unseemly act." The Regent was much disappointed, but he knew what Japanese etiquette was, and went his way. He had not gone very far when he heard footsteps labouring behind him, and a voice calling on him to stop. It was the woman's husband, who had just arrived home, and, hearing what his wife had done, had run after the traveller to bring him back. His wife was no longer alone, and there being nothing contrary to etiquette that real Sovereign of Japan she now gave him the best entertainment she could afford. It was but simple fare, and there were many signs of poverty on all sides, but there was courtesy and true kindness, and the Regent was more than content. After supper the two men drew over the fire, and the Regent noticed that the spluttering wood was plum and cherry, green and fresh, and concluded that the couple had evidently sacrificed some favourite flowering trees to provide their guest with fire. He then began to make some inquiries, and found that his impoverished host was a samurai unjustly driven from his inheritance by the minions of the Regent's Court, and reduced to great poverty. " But," said the old man, proudly, " I am still a samurai. I have my sword, my breastplate, my helmet and my horse, for the country's needs." Some time after this incident the old man received an order from Kamakura to join the standard of his ancient lord for a military review. So he donned his shabby armour, and mounted his lean old horse, hung his sword by his side, and set out for 202 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the muster. He was the shabbiest man there, and much laughed at by the gay carpet-knights of Kamakura, whose taunts he had some difficulty in bearing. When all were assembled, he tried to keep himself and his old horse as much as possible in the background, but the Regent had determined otherwise. The review had really been held in the old man's honour, and the Regent, calling him out in the presence of all his knights, told them the story of the cottage on the winter moor and the chopped- up plum-trees, and restored him to the estates from which he had been ousted by the greed of the Kamakura courtiers. It is a pretty story, and brings out many of the best features of old-world Japan. The spirit of the old man is by no means dead in the country, but, nevertheless, " the old order changeth." Most visitors to Kamakura make their first visit to the Daibutsu, or great Idol of Buddha, and thence to the temple at Hase, which contains the world-famous image of Amida that floated across from China in the days of faith. They are both interesting sights, and the Daibutsu, so oft described by travellers to Japan, is really a figure of remarkable proportions, well calculated to convey that idea of strength and repose which is associated with the idea of a Buddha. There is, however, in those features, none of the ruggedness which betrays strong will, mental struggles, or keenness of intellect, and we Westerners value a face which bears on it the honourable traces of the conflicts and labours through which it has passed. The Man of Sorrows appeals to us more strongly than the meek-eyed Contemplative.* The Japanese of to-day has not much use for the Daibutsu. He would rather go up the long avenue to the Temple of Hachiman which we saw as we emerged from the station. This deified hero is the god of War, and naturally his shrine has been a favourite one of late years. It is not only a shrine but a museum, and, when the short orison is over, the visitor can * To the Japanese, it is not so. To him, religion is intimately connected with quiet and contemplation, and Christ, whose life was spent, as far as our records go, in battling for Truth, does not seem to them to have been in a position to enunciate those universal truths which can only be the products of an absolutely dispassionate mind. THE BRIDGE LEADING TO THE TEMPLE OF HACHIMAN, KAMAKURA THE TEMPLE OF HACHIMAN, THE GOD OF WAR, AT KAMAKURA. KAMAKURA 203 walk round it leisurely from room to room, admiring here the bow-case and quiver of Yoshitsune, the Napoleon of mediaeval Japan, or the banner which was borne before lyeyasu at the great battle of Sekigahara which overthrew the coalition of hostile barons and made him master de facto of all Japan. The Japanese will talk about the history of his own country for hours together, and the Hachiman Temple is a never-failing source of delight to him. When he is tired of the temple he will go down to the beach and look at the historic headland round which the Loyalist, Nitta Yoshisada, led his devoted troops on dry land by a path made for him by the receding waves, driven back in answer to his prayer. But I think my reader will be weary of stories from Japanese history. We will, there fc/e, sit down in a sunny corner on the sandy dunes and watch the fishermen hauling in their nets. They have just begun to pull at the ropes attached to either end of the net, the conclusion of their labour is still a long way off, and you will have plenty of time to smoke your cigar before you need stir from your comfortable seat to walk down to the beach for the actual hauling in of the net itself. The net will be full of wriggling, splashing, glistening creatures good to eat, though destitute of English names. Fisheries are one great source of Japan's wealth, and her sea-coast people have always been daring fishermen. It is said that the fisheries in the vicinity of Tokyo have deteriorated since the advent of steamers, but the boats do not go a long way from home, and yet there always seems to be abundance of spoil. There need be, for the Japanese use their fish not only as articles of food, but for spreading on their fields as manure. It is a very picturesque sight to see the boats come in. The vessels them- selves are quaint but graceful ; the shouts of the fishermen as they swing to and fro over their long sweeps are by no means devoid of melody they have even songs which they sing in chorus ; and if you are lucky enough to see them going in procession on the second of January, dressed in most gaudy kimono, their boats trimmed with flags, streamers, and feathery bamboo, you will not soon forget the sight. 204 EVERY-DAY JAPAN There are three ways by which to go back to Tokyo. We can go by the way we came, but that would not be interesting ; or we can go by electric car past the hamlet known to foreigners as Poker Flat, and past the place where the Regent's men tried to cut off the head of Nichiren, to the island of Enoshima, which you can reach on foot when the tide is out. Enoshima has much that is interesting, and when you have seen all that Murray's Handbook tells you to see, you can take the electric car again, and so reach a railway station. Or, better still, you may turn eastward by a cliff road that, but for the oranges, would remind you of Devonshire, to Dzushi and Hayama, and thence across a narrow but hilly isthmus to Yokosuka, from whence you can take a steamer to Yokohama. Dzushi is a very pretty village situated in a valley very much like the one in which Kamakura lies. Hayama is the favourite abode of royalty ; there is a small Imperial chateau here, a frequent place of resort both for the Empress and the Crown Princess, and many Japanese grandees have their villas in sheltered corners under its wooded hills. Yokosuka is a dirty modern town, full of sailors and soldiers, with Admiralty offices, naval barracks, docks, shipbuilding yards, and arsenals, to say nothing of the man-of-war squadron which is always anchored in its sheltered bays. When you are in Yokosuka you have the feeling that the authorities do not wish to see you, and will be glad when you are gone, and this feeling will make you go willingly on board the wretched little steamer that is going to convey you as far as Yokohama. I think I had better add that, when taking the trip to Kamakura which I have described in this chapter, you had better leave your camera behind you. There are localities where the possession of a camera is apt to bring a man into trouble. CHAPTER XXXVIII KARUIZAWA As the summer begins to come on, the jaded foreign resident of Tokyo, who always thinks of himself as leading a very strenuous life, begins to think of some place in which to spend the season of the great heat, a season which practically coincides with the months of July and August. His mind may turn to Hakone, or Nikko ; it may even incline him to one of the seaside resorts, Oiso, Chigasaki, Kamakura, which are so dear to the native of the country. But in nine cases out of ten, if he can afford to take a holiday of some duration, and has a wife and family to think of, he will select Karuizawa as the proper place for recuperation, and set about inquiring among his friends for a little house that he can hire. If he likes the place, as most people do, he will buy himself a little piece of mountain land, on which he will build a simple shanty, sufficient for the wants of a summer camp, and thus become a permanent citizen of Karuizawa, the most popular summer resort in the whole of the Far East. Early in July he will pack his boxes, make a selection of beds, cane chairs, hammocks, and other simple luxuries, and send them forward by train, under the charge of a trusted cook of house-boy ; and about the tenth of that month he and his family will be standing, early one morning, on the platform of the Uyeno Station, waiting for the porter to open the wicket gate and allow him to get into the train. Travelling in Japan is slow the trains do not go so fast as they do in England but it is not intolerably uncomfortable. There are no dining-cars, except on a very few long-distance trains, and there are no refreshment-rooms ; but at intervals all 205 206 EVERY-DAY JAPAN along the line provision is made for satisfying the wants of the inner man. As the train moves slowly into certain stations, vendors of refreshments come out to sell their wares. One man has tempting little bento or lunch -boxes, made of beautifully clean white wood. The lower compartment is filled with boiled rice, packed in tight about as much as would make a fair-sized pudding; in the upper compartment is an assortment of delica- cies to eat with the rice a few pieces of eel fried in shoyu, one or two pieces of chicken, some pickled beans, a slice or two of lily-root, a little kamaboko, a concoction of fish and bean-flour, a stick or two of ginger. The whole is fastened together with a little piece of string, through which, in a long dainty envelope, is stuck a pair of chopsticks. You are quite sure that they have never been used, for they are still in one piece, split about four-fifths of the way down, and you have to pull the pieces apart before you use them. A little wooden toothpick, sticking between the chopsticks, completes the apparatus. Thus armed, you eat at your leisure when the train is once more in motion, and when you have finished you throw what remains, box and all, out of the window, or push it under the seat. Another vendor brings a tray of little tea-pots, each with a tiny cup attached. The tea-leaves are already in the tea-pot, and when you give him three sen (three farthings), his companion fills the pot with boiling water from a huge kettle that he is carrying, and hands it in to you through the window. You can get stronger drinks if you wish. You can buy beer (the Japanese brew excellent beer, under German auspices), but the bottles have been standing in the blazing sun for hours, and you don't feel tempted. Besides, beer does not go well with rice a little bottle of Masamune sake might suit you better ; or perhaps you would prefer fruit. As you get among the mountains you will probably get some apples that will remind you a little of home, but I cannot recommend the pears, or the biwa, and it is too early yet for persimmons. If you have children travelling with you, you will spend a few sen on shio-sembei rice bannocks which will always please them. KARUIZAWA 20; For the first part of the journey you traverse a great plain of paddy-fields, but after Omiya the ground begins to rise mile by mile, and at Takasaki, where you change, you are at the foot of the mountains. From here to Karuizawa the ascent is steep, and the train climbs laboriously up through more than twenty long tunnels until it finally reaches the top of the pass. At the top of the mountains, right on the divide, there is a solitary station Kuma no taira (" the bear's plain ") with a lovely spring bubbling up perpetually, and here a row of basins is provided, and the third-class travellers wash their faces and hands. After Karuizawa the train goes down hill again, through a long series of valleys at the base of the active volcano of Asama, towards Nagano and the plain of Shinshu. Twenty years ago Karuizawa was a decaying village on a wide, elevated plateau on the top of the mountain-chain that forms the backbone of Japan. It had been destroyed several times by volcanic eruptions from its neighbour, Mount Asama, and what was left of its ancient prosperity (if it ever had any) was threatened with extinction owing to the changes in the political circumstances of the country, which no longer necessitated the continual passing up to Yedo over the Usui Pass, at the mouth of which it lies, of daimyo processions and Government runners. The silk manufactured in Shinshu and Echigo looms found for a short while an easier route, though a longer one, by way of sea, from Niigata. The village, therefore, was fast decaying, when a couple of Tokyo gentlemen, in search of a cool spot in which to spend the summer the late Archdeacon Shaw and Professor W. Main Dixon discovered its beauty and the salubrity of its cool mountain air. For the first year or two a summer sojourn in Karuizawa was a matter of picnicking and camping out, and the early pioneers had to take most of their provisions with them from Tokyo. But there is now a railway running from Tokyo to Niigata, with a station near the village, and every year has seen an addition to its attractions as a place of rest and refuge from the heat It was estimated that during the summer of the year 1906 there were over a thousand foreigners sojourning in the place, and the 208 EVERY-DAY JAPAN plain is dotted all over with wooden shanties, which give the place somewhat the appearance of a newly-established ranching centre on the foot-hill prairies of Saskatchewan or Alberta. There are two churches, simple, but well appointed, a tennis club, golf links, stables for horses, and two or three large hotels, which give good accommodation. Grocers, butchers, and other trades- men from Tokyo go up for the summer, and, greatest boon of all, there is generally a dressmaker's establishment in the village. Karuizawa's most numerous summer residents are country mis- sionaries, and missionary ladies from out-of-the-way towns in remote districts, where no other Europeans are to be found, have opportunities of replenishing their wardrobes and re-furbishing their bonnets and gowns, which, being human, they enjoy to the full. Karuizawa is a longed-for oasis in many a lonely life at a missionary outpost, and the two summer months in its fresh, cool air have saved many a man and woman from a mental and spiritual breakdown. Karuizawa, however, is not altogether a place for mere in- dolent inactivity or amusement. The summer rest is utilised for conferences, quiet days, intellectual gatherings of all sorts and shades ; and thus the place has come to be a recognised factor working for good in the life of the foreign communities in Japan. In the early days no Japanese would go to Karuizawa. The Japanese ideal of a holiday was a day spent lolling about on the matted floor, watching fire-flies and catching mosquitoes, with a leisurely saunter after sunset to the sea-shore or to some noisy cascade. A summer resort in the mountains, without a hot spring to bathe in, was a thing undreamed of. But by degrees they found out that the summer among the mountains, spent, as the Englishman or American spends it, with healthy amusements and quickening social life, sent him back to his work a new creature ; and they have begun to break through their prejudices and to frequent the place of rest and repose which the foreigner discovered for them. It is a good omen, and the land- owners in Karuizawa will doubtless be able to turn it to good account. KARUIZAWA 209 In concluding this chapter, full of praise, and sincere praise, too, I think I had better say that I have never yet spent a summer holiday in Karuizawa. The truth is that there are other summer resorts, a fact which the genuine Karuizawa-ite never can be brought to admit. In other chapters I shall try to describe these other haunts of the weary in such a manner that my own personal predilections may, I trust, be successfully concealed. CHAPTER XXXIX NIKKO NlKKO has never been the same to me since the railway was brought to it. In the old days it lay, as Minobu does now, out of the beaten track, a day's journey at least from any- where, and one seemed to breathe a sort of Sabbath rest as one walked in its streets or wandered amongst its mountains and temple-groves. Twenty years ago the railway was open as far as Utsuno- miya on the main line of the Northern Railway. It took four hours by train to reach Utsunomiya, and another four hours of solid jolting along a rough road in a jinriksha drawn by two men to reach the beginning of the Nikko street. But you were well paid for the journey, for the road lay under one of the most beautiful avenues of trees in the world, and the farther you went the more beautiful the trees became, so that the last five or six miles of the road lay between rows of veritable forest giants. Now a train takes you from Tokyo to Nikko in four and a half hours. You only catch fleeting glimpses here and there of the avenue, which has been cut down in places to make room for the iron road, and a hotel porter meets you at the station and telephones up to the hotel to say that you are coming. The poetry has gone, and you feel that you are in New Japan. However, Nikko is distinctly a place to be visited, and as it has to be visited under modern conditions I will try to describe it in its garb of to-day. When you arrive at Nikko station, which is the terminus of a branch line of railway, you find yourself at the top of the beautiful avenue which I have 210 NIKKO just described. Looking down you can see a little Eta* village where the people, being practically outcasts from the Buddhist world, are allowed to trade in skins and leather, and where before you return you will buy a few furs as presents for friends at home. Before turning round you will look down the avenue for some distance, and you will notice that there are really two avenues, the one you have come by running down over the sloping plain to Utsunomiya, while the other branches off at Imaichi and is eventually lost to sight among the mountain slopes to the west. These avenues were planted by the daimyos of Japan in the seventeenth century as a monument to the great lyeyasu, the Shogun, who lies buried at Nikko. "If the approach is so beautiful," you say to yourself, " what will the tomb itself be ? And what manner of man must he have been who could have inspired his followers with the idea of erecting so noble a memorial in his honour ? " Then you turn round Before you lies a village with one long street, quite a mile in length, running up, up, up, until it seems to lose itself in a mass of sombre foliage. To your right are tiers upon tiers of hills, their tops covered with evergreens, their bases a blaze of azaleas in early summer, of crimson maple leaves in early autumn. On your left a rushing river, and beyond it trees, hills, open plain, and a distant fringe of mountain. In front of you, as a background to the mass of sombre foliage in which the village street is lost, three great mountain peaks watching over the peaceful scene, while peeping out between the trees here and there are the gilded roofs of temples and the tapering spires of pagodas. The Japanese say that one cannot pronounce the word kekko (" beautiful ") until one has seen Nikko. One begins to make one's first efforts at pronunciation as soon as one emerges from the station. As we go up the street we notice that one half the houses are inns, and that the rest, which are all shops, seem to sell a great assortment of varied wooden ware, rough lacquer dishes, wooden cups, and long white staves. In some of the inns we shall probably see some white-robed pilgrims resting from their * For Eta see chapter on Ekoin, p. 184. 212 E VERY-DAY JAPAN journeys, their broad-brimmed hats reposing at the entrance beside their bundles and their waraji sandals. The pilgrims do not come specially to visit the tombs of the Shoguns at Nikko. They come in shoals to climb the mountains that surround us, and to pray on the top of Nantaizan ; but they are very pleased to take Nikko by the way. When we reach the top of the street the houses, inns, and shops all improve, and presently, quite at the end, we come to the roomy buildings of the Kanaya Hotel, which stand on an eminence just overlooking the end of the street and the bridge by which one crosses the river to reach the priestly part of the town. The street we have hitherto been ascending has nothing about it that is specially ecclesiastical or sacred. Just below the Kanaya Hotel the river takes a bend and crosses the top of the street at right angles. It is crossed by two bridges : one a humble wooden bridge on which any human or animal feet may tread, the other a sacred bridge reserved for Imperial feet alone. The latter bridge is not yet finished ; its predecessor, all resplendent with the most costly of red lacquer, was washed away a few years ago by a demo- cratic freshet that knew no respect for Emperor or Prince, and the replacing of it has been, and still will be, a work of time. Here again we may pause to look at the view. Behind us lies the long street of Hachiishi which we have just been coming up, with the wooded hills which we saw on our right on coming out from the station. At our feet the bend of the river and the two bridges which span it. To our left the valley of the Daiyagawa (as the river is called), with the village of Irimachi running off at right angles to the Hachiishi Street. Across the bridges, where the two divergent streets meet, the sacred ground of temples and shrines. And high above the temples the tower- ing mountain tops, beginning with Nyo-ho-zan and ending with Nantaizan above Chuzenji. The ecclesiastical portion of Nikko is indescribably beautiful. Its crown and glory is formed by the two great mausolea erected to the honour of lyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa line of Shoguns, and his grandson lyemitsu, the stern persecutor THE CRYPTOMERIA AVENUE LEADING TO NIKKO. MOUNTAINS AND RIVER AT NIKKO. ON THE ROAD FROM NIKKO TO THE ASHIWO COPPER MINES. NIKKO 213 of Christianity. These two shrines cover an immense area of ground on the side of the mountains, and the visitor goes through courtyard after courtyard, rising all the while from splendour to splendour until at the top is the actual temple in which the manes of the deceased are worshipped. Beyond are stone stairs, covered with the moss of centuries, leading under the sombre silent shadow of the dark-foliaged cryptomeria to the actual resting-places of the august dead. Nature is as beautiful here as it can be, and the art of Japan lends itself to blending with Nature, making a tout ensemble of ravishing beauty. They were no common men in whose honour these monuments were erected. Fifteen years saw the end of Crom- well's usurped power, and Napoleon's Empire stretch it out how one will scarce reached to two score. But these two Japanese usurpers both, and holding their power by the sword succeeded in establishing a rule which kept the whole nation under the sway of their descendants for two centuries and a half. It was done by means of secluding Japan from the rest of the world, and yet as we walk through the mausolea and admire the costly gifts which came to them from Loo-choo and Korea, from the Portuguese and the Dutch, we learn how truly far-reaching was the power which they held. Personally, they were far from infallible, and if it had not been for the faithfulness of their retainers would have com- mitted many blunders. Japan is essentially the land of the retainer, and even to-day many of her greatest men are what they are through the faithfulness of their confidential retainers, who, seeking no honours for themselves, come as unauthorised guests to be present at the most secret councils of their lords, and to give them the benefit of clear, shrewd, and benevolent advice. When Hidetada, the second Shogun, was an elderly man, he was tempted, through the charms of a young and beautiful concubine, to desire to disinherit, in favour of her child, his eldest son lyemitsu, the offspring of a previous and more legitimate union. It was a rash plan, born of uxoriousness, and his Ministers saw that, come what might, he must be turned 214 EVERY-DAY JAPAN from it But Hidetada was deeply enamoured of his concubine, and determined to promote her son to the highest honours. It is always difficult and dangerous to oppose a tyrant in his whims, as our own Sir Thomas More found to his cost, and the difficulty was increased by the fact that one of the Shogun's Ministers, for private reasons of his own, was encouraging Hidetada in his folly. But what the Ministers could not do a faithful retainer was found to accomplish. " I quite approve of your Highness's plan," said he to Hidetada before the Council. " The child whom you propose to make your heir is in every way suited to the post of Shogun, far more suited than his elder brother lyemitsu. The only difficulty is that lyemitsu has already been recognised as your heir, not only by the Mikado and the Daimyos of the Empire, but by the venerated Toshogu* himself. If you should now change your august intention and this is a matter of which none but your Highness can be the judge it will be necessary to make a notification of the fact to the persons concerned. You will have to notify the Daimyos and the Mikado and then how about the Toshogu ? It will be rather a difficult task to let him know. He would not like it if he were not informed, and he will certainly require a personal message. . . . But perhaps " and here he turned to the time-serving Minister "perhaps my lord on the left will under- take to convey the message to the Plains of Hades." The heir ship of lyemitsu remained undisturbed. There are many other shrines besides the mausolea of the two great Shoguns, and the whole of sannai, or the " purlieus of the (sacred) mountain," is dotted over with charming villas, inhabited by the priests attached to the great monastery of Mangwanji. All the daimyos, and especially those that were connected by blood with the family of the Tokugawas, were in the old days compelled to send periodical envoys to worship at the shrine of the Toshogu, and these villas belonged to them * T5sh5gu is the posthumous name under which lyeyasu is worshipped at Nikko. It is a common practice in Japan to give a man a new name when he dies. This is always done in the case of the Emperors. NIKKO 215 as places where they might sojourn. Now the daimyos come no more, the Buddhist priests are excluded from the mausolea which have been handed over to the care of their Shinto rivals, and the hotel-keepers are responsible for organising the periodical processions and pageants for the benefit of the globe-trotter. But nothing can spoil the scenic beauties of Nikko. You may climb the hills behind the mausolea and get a magni- ficent view over the immense plains of Hitachi and Musashi, as far as Tokyo, and beyond; you may even climb above the clouds, and see nothing but rolling fields of white and grey vapour, with the peak of Fuji rising above them on the horizon, a hundred miles away. You may walk east, west, north, and south, and, whichever way you turn, your walk will end in some beautiful nook with a cascade roaring among the rocks. You may walk for miles up the valley of the Daiyagawa, along the narrow tramway that brings down the copper from the mines at Ashiwo, and then the river will take you up a most beautiful winding gorge, full of rocks and boulders, with a series of tumbling cascades, each named after the great periods of Sakyamuni's supposed earthly life, and ending in the sheer fall of Kegon which tumbles over the face of a precipice into a black pool some four hundred feet below. At the top of the precipice is a wood, and, beyond the wood, the calm clear lake of Chuzenji fringed with trees and summer residences, with its village of pilgrim huts gathered round the base of the great Nantaizan, proudest of the Nikko range, with streams of white-robed pilgrims ascending the mountain to make their prayers, or descending to bathe in the icy waters of the lake. Beyond Chuzenji you can walk for days over grassy plains, full of flowers, amidst mountains, forests, and rocks. But you have taken this trip in the company of a Tokyo resident, and the strenuous life of the metropolis is calling him back to his work. At any rate, you will have learned something. You will henceforth know how to pronounce the word kekko. CHAPTER XL HAKONE HAKONE is one of the favourite playgrounds of Tokyo, and is the name given to a block of mountains not far from the base of Fuji, at the neck of the rocky peninsula of Izu which juts out into the sea about sixty miles west of Tokyo. Hakone is reached by the Tokaido Railway. The original Tokaido is a road connecting the two capital cities of Tokyo and Kyoto, a road once teeming with all the life of ancient Japan, but which has now been entirely superseded, except for the most restricted local traffic, by the Government railway. Two hours by train will take the traveller from Tokyo to Kodzu, past Yokohama, past Ofuna where the line branches off to Kamakura and Yokosuka, through a region of sandy flats covered with forests of young pines, and then, among hills green with orange -groves, past the favourite seaside resort of Oiso. Twenty years ago the sandy flats were treeless and barren : the planting of the pines has changed the whole aspect of the district, which is now covered with villages and bright with fields of vegetables and various cereals. Oiso is the Bourne- mouth of Tokyo. Twenty years ago it was but a stopping station for travellers along the dreary stretches of the Tokaido ; to-day it is a bustling seaside resort, much frequented by Japanese gentry and nobility, and the favourite haunt of the laborious Prince Ito. Arrived at Kodzu you are, however, still a long way from Hakone. You find outside the station an electric railway, which will take you in about an hour to the foot of the mountains at Yumoto, past the long, hot, dusty street of Odawara, with its ruined castle which was in feudal times a place of so much 216 HAKONE 217 strategical importance. But a few years ago you would have marvelled in summer at the number of naked figures that met your eye ; you marvel no longer, for the police fiat has gone forth, and the coolie dresses himself even during the dog-days. It is often amusing in the remoter villages to see how quickly garments are assumed when o mawari san, or the " gentleman who goes round," makes his unwelcome appearance. Yumoto is practically the beginning of Hakone. It is a cluster of hotels and shops which have gathered around some hot springs which give their name to the place. The hotels are good, the baths are delightful, the scenery around you is beautiful. Two streams unite their waters at Yumoto, and two valleys lead you into the heart of the mountains. The old- fashioned Japanese will be content to stay at Yumoto and potter about ; young Japan doffs its " high collar " at this point, and, like the foreigner, commences to climb. We will climb by the easier road. If we turn to the right and walk along, past the sister village of Tonosawa, we shall find a good road, broad enough for carriages and easily traversed by jinriksha, winding upwards among the hills, with beautiful peeps of rock and ravine, to the village of Miyanoshita, where stands the Fujiya Hotel, which, in spite of the many attrac- tions of Yokohama hostelries, still claims to be the best European hotel in the Far East. You can stay at the Fujiya Hotel and enjoy every comfort that a reasonable soul can desire ; you will have good company, good accommodation, a good table, good baths, beautiful walks, and good shops where you can buy presents for your friends. But you won't see much of Japan, for the summer resorts where globe-trotters and such-like congregate are not the places which the better class Japanese chooses for his own recreation, and your only Japanese society will be that of hotel " boys " and " ne-san " of coolies and guides. Nevertheless, you will enjoy yourself, and the beautiful air will do you good, and if you want to go out into the wilds, and are not accustomed to roughing it on Japanese food, it is a good thing to come back to the Fujiya Hotel from time to time for a square meal and a comfortable bed 2i 8 EVERY-DAY JAPAN I have said that there are many beautiful walks in the immediate neighbourhood Buy Murray's " Guide to Japan " and see for yourself: you cannot have a better guide than Chamberlain and Mason's excellent book. I shall only take you for one or two of the longer excursions where you will be able to take in the general features of the country and its main points of interest. And, first, I shall take you to Mount Fuji, the sacred mountain, which, though invisible from Miya- noshita, still dominates the whole vicinity. In the old days, when we had to have passports for travelling, our common permission was to travel in the " Thirteen Provinces round Fuji." In making the excursion to Fuji you start from Miyanoshita on foot, on horseback, or in a kago, or chair, across the Sengoku Plain, and over the chain of hills which surrounds the beautiful lake of Hakone. At the summit of the Otome Toge, the pass which leads you over the mountains, you will pause for lunch, and while your coolies are having their post-prandial pipe you will enjoy the magnificent panorama : behind you the placid lake of Hakone walled round by green hills, the smoking solfatara of Ojigoku, "the big hell," and the massive heights of Komagatake, which shut off your view of Miyanoshita, with distant prospects over the blue waters of the bay of Sagami with the limitless Pacific beyond ; in front of you an immense sweep of country sloping down to the sea on the other side of the peninsula of Izu, a smiling plain of forest and field, with white villages here and there and the occasional smoke of a passing train. Rising over the plain is the solitary and sym- metrical cone of Fuji, a thing to be felt, not described, with the lines of pilgrim roads leading to the summit and the rest- huts along them like tiny specks visible on clear days. The days are not always clear, and you may be caught in a mist at the top of the pass, so you will npt linger too long, but will hasten down into the valley to Gotemba, from which you begin once more to ascend. From Gotemba you may make the ascent of Fuji directly, or you may take a rickety one-horse car as far as Subashiri, HAKONE 219 from which village the ascent is easier. You can go up and down in a day if you are very active, but you had better face the discomfort and fleas of one of the rest-huts near the summit and get a view of the sunrise from the top. It is not a difficult climb, and the Japanese have a saying that you are a fool if you do not go up once, and a bigger fool if you go up twice. The energetic Englishman will not quite agree with this verdict. If you are not actively inclined, or if, having made the ascent, you still find that you have time at your disposal, you may make a beautiful trip round the base of Fuji, along a chain of lakes which encircles the sacred mountain, and then in a boat down the rapids of the Fujikawa to the town of Iwabuchi, where you will be once more on the Tokaido Railway, by which you can reach Kodzu, and so rejoin your friends at Miyanoshita. You will have seen many interesting sights on the way, for Gotemba was a favourite hunting-place to which Hideyoshi was wont to go with dogs and hawks, and there are weird tales of vendetta connected with that plain. You will have visited the Temple of Minobu, and paid your respects to the tomb of the great Saint Nichiren ; possibly you may have drunk a bottle of the wine made from the grapes of Kai, and have been surprised at the comparative excellency of its flavour. When you reach Kodzu and Yumoto on your way back from Fuji, you will perhaps allow me to take you by another route. We will not go by Miyanoshita, but will follow the old Tokaido road which goes by a very steep and arduous climb to the village of Hakone itself. If it is summer you had better go what the Romans called succinctus in a shirt and trousers, with a good big pocket handkerchief for the road is toilsome and the summer sun is scorching, in spite of the avenue of cryptomerias through which you pass for some portion at least of your journey. When you reach the summit and look down on the village of Hakone nestling in a bay among the trees by the lake, " where every prospect pleases, and only " (but I will not finish the quotation), you will be disposed to agree with the 220 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Japanese writer of English prose that " the result of toleration is pleasure," and that Hakone is one of the few places in Japan where there are song-birds. Hakone in ancient days boasted of a barrier-gate where all travellers had to stop to be examined, and the daimyos, whose circumstances compelled them to be continually passing to and fro between Yedo and the provinces, made it their practice to stay the night here in "dauk bungalows" specially designed for their reception. The villagers have thus been inn-keepers for centuries, and, the " dauk bungalows " remaining, they con- tinue to pursue ancestral avocations by taking in and doing for the select band of adventurous foreigners who prefer the quiet solitudes of the beautiful mountain lake to the more active social life of Karuizawa or Nikko. Few Japanese choose it for a summer resort, as there is no hot-water spring ; but I once heard of one who tried it. One day my cook complained to a vegetable vendor of having to pay two and a half sen for a piece of Indian corn. " But," said the man, " you are having it cheap. Viscount , down the street, pays four sen a piece, and never murmurs." The foreigner is not the only person in Japan who has to pay through the nose for what he buys! From Hakone you can make an excursion along the top of the mountain range which forms the backbone of the Izu peninsula to the " Ten Province Pass," from which you can get a magnificent view of mountain, plain, and limitless ocean, whenever the weather is clear enough for you to do so. From the " Ten Province Pass " you will drop down rapidly into the little town of Atami, with its geyser and its consumptive patients, a place to visit but not to stay in, for it is very enervating, and one wants all the bracing air one can get after the strenuous life of Tokyo. From Atami to Odawara you travel by what is called the jinsha a cross between civilisation and barbarism, and a fit emblem of Japan in the days of transition. The jinsha is a truck on rails, or, rather, a box (for it is covered and is very small). A band of coolies push it uphill ; when the top is reached they all jump on, and let the vehicle HAKONE 221 run down as best it can. The track runs in and out along the face of the sheer cliff; nobody has ever yet been killed, and the scenery is really worth looking at. It is a distraction from the ordinary cares of life, and it " bucks you up." You go back happy and contented to your office-stool or your pedagogue's chair. CHAPTER XLI TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS: SHIBA PARK OF the four great parks in Tokyo, each has its own peculiar characteristics. Asakusa is essentially a place of pleasure ; Uyeno inclines to education and the serious side of life ; Hibiya is modern, with accommodation for athleticism and all the forms in which the spare energy of the twentieth century delights to clothe itself ; Shiba in some ways the most beautiful of them all, though far smaller than Uyeno is in the main an ecclesiastical paradise. The ancient temple and monastery of the Zojoji had been founded more than two centuries when lyeyasu made his choice of Yedo as the residence of his all but royal Court. The priests of the Jodo sect had shown him much kindness in the difficult days of his struggle upwards to the light, and they now reaped the fruits of their political sagacity. The priests of Jodo were made court chaplains, as it were, to the new ruler of Japan, and their temple in Shiba Park was enriched with many gifts and privileges. When lyeyasu died, his son Hidetada continued his favour, and, dying in 1632, left directions to be buried in the sacred precincts of the Shiba Park, which hence- forth became, with Uyeno and Nikko, one of the sanctuaries of the Tokugawa House. Only two of the Tokugawa Shoguns but they the greatest, lyeyasu and lyemitsu lie buried in Nikko ; five were laid to rest at Uyeno, seven at Shiba. Shiba is, therefore, by far the most important of the Tokugawa resting-places. In the centre of the park, at the foot of steep wooded hills, stands the great Temple of the Zojoji in its spacious court- 222 THE TEMPLE OF THE ZOJOJI SHIBA PARK, TOKYO. WISTARIA AT THE BENTEN LAKE, SHIBA PARK, TOKYO. TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 223 yard. It is dedicated to the worship of the great Buddha, the Shadow of Christ, the Being of whom it is said that for love of mankind he laid aside his kingly state and did works of penance and charity, refusing to rest until he had prevailed to found in the Invisible World, a Pure Land (Jodo, Paradise), into which all should go at death who in lifetime should, with a pure heart and earnest faith, invoke his holy name. Other Buddhas there are, says the Jodo Buddhist, but this is the Buddha for me ; and often, when in the quiet evening the monks are chanting their not unmelodious vespers, the passer-by feels himself involuntarily solemnised by the sounds and sights of the place. On either side of the Zojoji Temple stand the mausolea of the Shoguns, rich in gold and lacquer, with costly engravings in wood and stone and stately lanterns in stone and bronze, the gifts of the daimyos to the memory of their departed rulers. There is much sameness in the structure of these memorial shrines. You go from court to court, each court higher and more elaborate than the last, until you come to the Holy Place, where you must take off your shoes and enter with reverence. Beyond this Holy Place is a further sanctuary into which you do not enter ; you may only look dimly into it through a curtain of split bamboo. It is a picture of the life of the great man in whose honour the shrine was erected. The eye of man watched him grow from strength to strength, from rank to rank, till at last the great honour was attained. But there was always an inner adytum into which none might penetrate, not even his nearest and dearest, the inner sanctuary that lies hidden from sight behind the curtain-veil of personality, that secret self into which outsiders may never penetrate. When we have gazed our fill, we put on our shoes again and are taken behind the Holy Place to a solitary tomb a bronze urn standing by itself on a pedestal of stone. It is a most striking contrast to the magnificence we have just quitted. Sic transit gloria mundi. A few short steps, and he who was once the actual ruler of the Japanese Empire lies humble and obscure beneath a simple stone. No lessons in wood and stone 224 EVERY-DAY JAPAN could possibly be more striking than the sermons on Human Greatness and Death preached by the Shiba mausolea. Behind the tombs of the Shoguns are some wood-covered hills, among which it is most pleasant to saunter. There is an extensive view over the bay, a few stone monuments, and a pagoda which is very striking. When you have crossed the summit of the hill you come down to the pond of Benten, with its little island and temple, and its trellis-work of clustering fuji. Benten is one of the seven gods of luck, and, being a female deity, is supposed to have a special interest in all that concerns the hopes and flutterings of the female heart. In front of the sanctuary of Benten is another plain-looking shrine, containing an image of a very fierce-looking, repulsive deity. It stands, as a rule, in solemn silence : it is the Temple of Yema, the god that rules in the lower regions, the god whom nobody wishes to have for long in his thoughts. Only at long intervals is his shrine surrounded with noisy worshippers, with beatings of drums and constant howlings. On such occasions you will be told though not without considerable hesitancy, for the Japanese does not carry his religious heart on his sleeve that King Yema has lifted the lid from off the cauldron of hell and that the poor souls are having a time of refreshment and solace. But whilst Shiba is thus mainly a place of ecclesiastical surroundings, it has been found impossible quite to keep the world out of its domains. As we climb up the next hill, after emerging into the valley behind the hills of the shrines, we come to two famous houses of entertainment which to me, as to many another Tokyo resident, bring back some very pleasant recollections. Whether it be Tokyo or Cambridge, a boat-supper or a graduation dinner is always a pleasant memory for after years. The first house we come to is a foreign-style restaurant. In the other house of entertainment, the Koyokwan, or " Maple Club/' the amusement generally takes another form. In the Maple Club everything is in the best of Japanese style, and a dinner given here would not be considered complete TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 225 without an exhibition of dancing by the girls of the establish- ment, who are famed as being the best-trained dancing-girls in Tokyo. Here, too, you may spend many a pleasant evening sometimes in the company of old " sobersides " who try to persuade themselves that they are witnessing an artistic show in which they are bound to take an aesthetic interest, sometimes with officers, merchants, or students whose interest in the good cheer, the wine, and the dansenses is something more than merely aesthetic, and none the less genuine. Certainly a Japanese dinner is a place for enjoyment, when once the initial difficulty of sitting on the floor has been overcome. You need never be bored by your next-door neighbour's want of conversation. You may, at any moment during the feast, pick up your sake cup and go off on a round of visits, exchanging cups with each one of your many friends, and having a laugh here and a little exchange of compliments there. If after all this you ever get back again to your original seat, you will find that your taciturn neighbour has in the meantime taken himself off on a similar tour of inspection, and that he is by this time as happy as you are yourself. And by nine or ten o'clock that night you may be safe at home again, ready for your bed. Quite close to the Koyokwan is the Church of St. Andrew, the religious home, if I may so call it, of the English com- munity, with a vigorous Japanese congregation worshipping there as well. Next to the church and the Bishop's house is the Shiba reservoir of the City Waterworks. I can remember the time when all the water we had came from shallow wells with an uncertain and varying supply, when Tokyo was never free from epidemic, and when scarcely a night passed without a conflagration more or less disastrous. Tokyo is now one of the healthiest cities in the world, and the "flowers of Yedo," as the fires used to be called, blossom but rarely. To this happy state of affairs there have been many contributing causes, of which by no means the least has been the bringing in of a plentiful supply of pure water from the sources of the Tamagawa among the Chichibu Mountains. 226 EVERY-DAY JAPAN ASAKUSA PARK There are many ways of going to Asakusa, which is situated in the north-eastern corner of Tokyo. You cannot, it is true, go by train, but the electric car goes there, and you may hire a carriage if you are proud, or a jinriksha if your means are moderate, or you can walk the whole way if you are economically disposed. If you are willing to be guided by me, and if the weather is bright and clear and Asakusa requires such weather to show off its beauties I shall take you by river, in one of the little steamers which ply up and down the Sumida. Our starting-point will be a little wharf at Tsukiji near the mouth of the river. Tsukiji is the old foreign settlement of Tokyo. When foreigners first came to Japan it suited the convenience of all parties alike to put them to live by them- selves in districts set apart for their own special use. In Yoko- hama and Kobe, which were ports with much foreign trade, these settlements became large and important places ; but foreign merchants did not want to reside in Tokyo, and commerce re- fused to be wooed to take up her abode in Tsukiji. The place consequently became a special reserve for missionaries but not for them alone insomuch that the Japanese nicknamed it Teramachi (Temple Street) from the number of churches and chapels collected in it. The revision of our treaties with Japan has changed the foreign settlements, which are now shorn of their special privileges and immunities, and Tsukiji is rapidly passing back into the hands of the Japanese, who are buying up every lot that falls vacant. Ere long it will cease to be a teramachi) and will be utilised for warehouses and docks in connection with the new harbour which is one of the dreams of Tokyo's citizens. We shall find the river in its lower reaches full of shipping ; for Tokyo is a great place of distributive commerce, and there is a considerable fleet of coasting schooners and junks that ply in and out of the river. There are no vessels of any size or tonnage, for the river itself is only accessible by one channel which at best is very shallow, and the small harbours which are IN THE PARK AT ASAKUSA, TOKYO. A GARDEN IN TOKYO. By permission of J. J. Berington, l ; .sq. SIDE ENTRANCE TO THE ASAKUSA TEMPLE AND PARK. OF THE UMIVE&SITY OF TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 22; to be found along the eastern coasts of the Empire are generally unsuited for large craft Still the trade is very active, and one of the attractions of Tsukiji, when one has got accustomed to the syrens and steam whistles of the bustling little tugs, is to walk up and down the Bund and watch the shipping. As we steam up the river we shall pass under several new bridges which would do credit to any town, as well as under one or two relics of the past long wooden bridges which date from a time when wheels were all but unknown and when it was not required of a bridge that it should be wide. On the right we shall pass the excellently equipped Mercantile Marine College, which trains the officers and engineers of the Merchant Service of Japan ; and on the left, the site of the old rice granaries of the Shogunal Government, which were so important in the days when taxes and salaries were alike paid in kind. On both sides of the river are to be seen noblemen's mansions, with beautifully laid-out gardens, and some of the most noted restaurants in Tokyo lie on either hand of us. It is a sign of the times, of the corning reign of materialism, that one of these noble and beautiful gardens has recently passed into the hands of the Sapporo Beer-Brewing Company. Thanks to the kind- ness of German brewers, Japan now possesses several excellent brands of beer, and the Japanese has not required much in- struction in the art of beer-drinking. He does not, however, quite understand yet how to handle his beer, and frequently allows it to get too hot in summer or too cold in winter. Near the Ryogoku Bridge we may possibly hear the sound of beating drums. It comes from Tokyo-across-the-River, where there is a wrestling contest going on in the grounds of the Ekoin Temple. If we were not going to Asakusa to-day we might, perhaps, stop to witness a bout or two of wrestling, but we have a great deal before us to look at. So we stay by our steamboat until we arrive at Azuma, the last of the Tokyo bridges, from which a few steps will bring us to the entrance to Asakusa Temple and Park. At Asakusa religion and pleasure are combined. I will say a few words first on the religious character of the place. The 228 EVERY-DAY JAPAN temple at Asakusa belongs to the Tendai sect, and its chief est and most conspicuous idol is one of Kwannon. Kwannon is a female Buddha, the goddess of Mercy, and is usually depicted with a thousand arms and hands, with any or all of which she is ready at any moment to succour suffering humanity. The idol which is venerated in the Asakusa Temple is said to have been fished out of the river Sumida by some fishermen who were netting the stream for fish, about the year A.D. 708. This seems to have 'been a favourite device of Buddhist propagandists in those early years. At Kamakura the visitor is shown an immense bronze statue of Amida, which is said to have floated across the sea from China, avoiding rocks and shoals, and skilfully doubling headland and capes, until it floated safely into a sandy cove on the other side of the island. As a matter of historical fact, this figure, which, if it were standing erect, would measure approximately 135 feet in height, was cast in segments, probably by immigrants from Korea, and built up on the spot. I have heard that there are others of such floating images of the Buddhas in various parts of the country, some of wood and some, like these, of metal. I believe no Japanese Buddhist ever dreams of praying to the historical Buddha, the man who founded the religion in India. When he prays he does so either to Amida these are always prayers for salvation at or before death or else to Kwannon, for temporal blessings. There are also other beings to whom he may pray. If he has a face-ache or an ache in any other part of his body, there stands in the Temple of Asakusa a little red idol of Binzuru Sama, to which he will turn for help, rubbing the corresponding part of the idol's body as he prays to be relieved of the pain in head, or teeth, or lungs, and just outside the temple is a little shrine at which a young maiden may pray for a husband or a young wife for a bonny babe. As I have said, it is a Tendai Temple, and the Tendai doctrine encourages the worshippers to use aids for multiplying devotions prayerwheels, amulets, and charms, which can be bought in great variety and at very reasonable prices. I have never yet met an educated Japanese of any sort who THE LAKE, WITH THE THEATRE AND TOWER, ASAKUSA PARK, TOKYO. r. V OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 229 did not give an apologetic smile when the religious observances of Asakusa-Kwannon were mentioned. According to some of these gentlemen, Japan has laid aside all mediaeval superstitions, and I have uniformly been discouraged by Japanese when I have wished to investigate these practices. This has been for fear I should hold them up to ridicule, for the Japanese is morbidly afraid of being laughed at. The day, however, has long gone by when the European could afford to laugh at the religious practices of the Japanese, and it is with a totally different object in view that I have dwelt on the popular cults at Asakusa-Kwannon. The Asakusa-Kwannon Temple is thronged morning, noon, and night, and on every day in the year, with worshippers of every sort and of every age. There is no other temple in Tokyo like it : none where you can see such a constant stream of fervent devotees, each with his keenly- felt w at to present before the Invisible Power. These worshippers come mainly from the lower and lower-middle classes, and are therefore the representatives of the vast majority of the nation. With the Asakusa Temple before me I cannot believe the oft-repeated statement that the Japanese has no religion. He has a religious sense, deep and fervid, a realisation of his own need of the help of a beneficent power beyond him, and, whatever the proud samurai may think, the great mass of Japanese to-day do stretch out hands of dimly-groping faith to Someone who is not a God far off, but a very present help in time of trouble. When a Japanese goes for a day to Asakusa with his family he does not spend much time over his devotions. You can express your needs, as a rule, in a very few words, and Heaven is not so stupid as to require prolonged explanations. There are many objects outside to interest and amuse. You approach the temple by an avenue of shops, at which you can buy toys, picture-books, cakes, and roasted pea-nuts. Then you pass into the big courtyard, where you pause to admire the rich mellow sound of the big bell, whose beautiful tones are said to be due to the fact that when it was being cast the Shogun lyemitsu 230 EVERY-DAY JAPAN himself threw two hundred broad gold pieces into the crucible. As you stand there, listening, you will find the ground all around you thick with pigeons, who have come flocking around ex- pectant of your charity; for the vast roof of the temple affords nesting-room for thousands of these peace-loving birds, and there are old women with stalls ready to sell you five-rin's worth (half a farthing) of peas or beans to throw to them. Then you come to the park, laid out in 1885 as a recreation ground for the people. On one side is the Hanayashiki, originally a flower garden but now much more of a zoo, while over against the Hanayashiki is the fishpond teeming with goldfish, with a tea-house and a bridge, and in summer an arbour of trailing Wistaria beautiful to look upon. Beyond the lake on one side is the Aquarium ; on the other the great Theatre Street, with its row of " Dime Shows " where you can see a constant succession of feats of jugglery and acrobatic performances. Archery, which is always a favourite pastime with the Japanese, has a special corner for itself, and, if you are fond of exercise, you may climb to the top of the twelve-storied tower, from which you can get a very comprehensive bird's-eye view of the whole city. Everywhere you will find the place swarming with itinerant vendors and hawkers with most varied assortments of goods, and you will be obliged to keep a smart look-out for pickpockets, who are now beginning to know their ways about foreign clothes as well as about the native dress. The smartest thing I have heard of a Japanese pickpocket doing was to steal a pair of boots off a man whilst he was standing up in them. This is how the deed was done. The thief takes an old pair of get a (Japanese clogs) in one hand, and a long piece of thin bamboo in the other, and goes into a crowd. Presently he sees a man wearing a nice new pair of geta in front of him, and commences operations. The bamboo goes down, and the man begins to have a tickling sensation in one of his feet "Dear me!" he says, slips his foot out of the thong that fastens on the shoe, and lifts the foot up for a scratch. At the same moment down goes the thief, and before the scratch- THE TOWER. ASAKUSA PARK. A FETE, ASAKUSA PARK. TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 231 ing is finished an old, worn-out geta has been substituted for the new one that the man has perhaps just bought. The same sensation is then repeated with the other foot, and the man goes home in blissful ignorance, to be scolded by his wife for being so careless about his things! Japan certainly has its share of thieves and pickpockets, and organisation is one of those things in which the Japanese excel. It is said that Tokyo possesses one of the most highly organised thieves' guilds in the world. I have seen in Tokyo several large funerals those of the late Prince Iwakura, of Mr. Fukuzawa, of the great actor Danjuro, of Commander Hirose, who died before Port Arthur. The late president of the Thieves' Guild, who died some eight years ago, had a funeral which equalled any one of these as a popular demonstration of affection and esteem! He was a powerful man, and in his own way patriotic. When the troops came home in triumph from the war with China, and the country people all flocked in to see the show, the Head of the Police is said to have made representations to this potentate that it would be a most un- patriotic act to pick the people's pockets on a day of public rejoicing. The King of Thieves accepted the suggestion, and there was no picking of pockets in Tokyo on that day. My excuse for speaking of the Thieves' Guild in this chapter must be that the headquarters of the guild are said to be located in this district, and that the late King of Thieves resided there. A visit to some of the restaurants in Asakusa Park I am far from saying this of all these houses will show that there are other dangers than those from thieves and pick- pockets, and it is only a very short distance from Asakusa Park to the great Yoshiwara, the largest and most famous of the prostitute establishments in Japan, where such institutions flourish and abound. Much has been said and is to be said on the subject of State regulation of vice. The question has its pros and cons, but the experience of life seems to show that vice is vice, whether State-regulated or not, and that you cannot have vice without its attendant miseries and woes, and the subsequent 232 EVERY-DAY JAPAN further crimes which the initial vice always leads to. In Japan we understand how to make clean the outside of the cup and platter, and passing visitors go away and say how nicely those clever Japs manage these things. They do not see what lies under the surface, the hidden workings of the wretched system. It may possibly be more seemly than our English want of system, but the final result is the same misery gilded, indeed, but misery. In speaking of the evils of the Yoshiwara system, I am not speaking altogether without a book. It is true I have never been in the place myself, but for two years I was priest-in- charge of a mission in Asakusa, and had many opportunities of learning from members of my flock, Japanese fellow- workers and others, about the practical miseries entailed by the system. The congregation of St. John's, Asakusa, was very largely recruited from persons residing round the purlieus of the great temple and pleasure park, and in the vicinity of the great palace of vice. Most of them had, through friends and rela- tives, some experience of the system, and it was from them that I learned to understand its inevitable misery. Living as they did in a population made up of many bad elements, the thieves and pickpockets and the hangers-on of great establishments ministering to pleasure or vice, the members of that congregation were conspicuous for their earnestness and devotion. They were not easily managed, and ofttimes freely criticised things in their priest-in-charge which did not please them. They were poor, but very practical, and I shall not soon forget the thrill of pleasure I experienced when my flock once rose to an occasion. We had had long rains, and the Sumida, overflowing its banks, had flooded all the low-lying parts of Asakusa, thereby causing much misery and distress. The members of the congregation were too poor to give of their substance, but they gave gladly of their labour ; and, headed by their Japanese pastor, Seida, whom God has since called to his rest, they turned out for two or three days and cleaned out all the wells, which the overflowing river had filled with dirty water and black mud. TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 233 To me this is one of my pleasantest recollections of Asakusa, and with a pleasant recollection I will close my account of it. HIBIYA PARK The youngest of Tokyo's parks is situated in the space of ground lying between the outermost of the three moats sur- rounding the old castle and the middle one. In feudal times it had served for various purposes connected with the Shogun's Court. When I first saw it it had already been turned to account by the erection of some Government departments on parts of it ; but the greater part was a hideous waste, occa- sionally used as a parade ground for soldiers, but generally given over to dogs, which were so bold and audacious that I remember reading of their having, on one occasion, attacked, killed, and eaten a boy of some six or seven years of age. It was a standing misfortune to be obliged to cross that waste ground. When it rained it was a succession of pools ; in dry weather it was a dust-cloud. Shortly after I came to Tokyo one part of it was handed over to the care of a wealthy capitalist for the erection on it of good business houses. Another part of it was taken by the Prefectural Government of Tokyo for just as London is a county as well as a city, so Tokyo is a prefecture, Fu, as well as a municipality, Shi, possessing a governor for the one and a mayor for the other for the erection of suitable offices. Then the Naval Department, with the Department of Justice and the Courts of Law, made their appearance in another corner, with a couple of schools ; and the Houses of Parliament, with official residences for their respective Speakers, followed suit. A few years ago the installation of the waterworks made the creation of the new park a feasible undertaking, and now there is left but a small extent of waste land to be covered in the near future with handsome and substantial buildings for so the contract runs. Hibiya Park was begun and completed in a wonderfully short time, and, thanks to the skill which Japanese gardeners possess in moving trees, it already has lost its very new 234 EVERY-DAY JAPAN appearance. A Japanese gardener will remove a big tree, in bloom, and at any season, and plant it in a new soil, without doing it any apparent injury, and the new trees in Hibiya Park only drooped for a few days and then plucked up heart to- bloom as vigorously as ever. I think I am right in saying that the first great occasion on which the park was used for a public demonstration was when the citizens celebrated the safe arrival from Italy of the cruisers Kasuga and Nisshin, which had been bought, though not taken over, just before the commencement of hostilities with Russia. There have been many jovial demonstrations since. Tokyo has here celebrated all the great victories of the war. It was here that Togo and Oyama were welcomed on their safe return from the scene of battle ; it was here that Japanese sailors first learned to fraternise with British tars (there had been a little shyness, I am told, up till then) ; it was here that the citizens welcomed Prince Arthur of Connaught when he came to bring the Garter for the Emperor. Other demonstrations have not been quite so pleasant. It was here that the citizens of Tokyo or portions of them met to record their protest against what they deemed to be the shameful conclusion of the war, and it was here that the rising took place of the people against the police, which for about twenty-four hours left the former masters of the situation. It is a peculiar trait of the Japanese character that at a critical moment someone will suddenly lose self-control, and in an access of blind fury commit deeds which bring shame on the whole nation. It was such a sudden fit of madness that caused the assassination of Count Mori Arinori, on the very day of the promulgation of the Constitution, a day of rejoicing for Japan if ever there was one. It was thus that an attempt was made to take the life of the Czarewitch (the present Czar) when he was the guest of the country, and of Li-hung-chang when he came as a plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty of peace. The attack on the police in September, 1905, was not quite like the instances I have just quoted. There was ground THE FLOWERING CHERRY. Photograph by permission of T. />'. Blow, Esq. THE SACRED PIGEONS AT ASAKUSA. OF THE NIVEftSITY OF MF TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 235 for justification in the fact that the police were trying to inter- fere with the citizens' liberty of speech, yet undoubtedly there was also a manifestation of that strange fury which will some- times come over a Japanese and annihilate for the moment all his powers of self-control. But, fortunately for ourselves and for the world, the Tokyo citizens are not always demonstrating. There are times when there is nothing exciting going on, and then the citizens flock to the park for other purposes. Omne ignotum pro mirtfico. We are apt to admire Japanese gardens with their rocks and shrubs and sombre colours ; I believe that one reason why the Japanese of the middle and lower classes flock to the Hibiya Park is that they may see the many and gay-coloured flowers in the trim beds, for the park is laid out in the Western style of gardening. And no wonder! Japan is a land mainly of sombre hues, in spite of all that globe-trotters may think or say. The cherries are not in blossom all the year round, and there is very little brightness in the dingy back-streets of Kyobashi and Kanda, to say nothing of Fukagawa and the manufacturing quarters beyond the river. Another great attraction is that the park affords many facilities for play and sport. Young Japanese of both sexes are acquiring a great fondness for athletic sports, and some of them are extremely good at tennis, base-ball, and rowing, though their light weight is against them in the last. Foot- ball they play well, but there are only one or two schools where the boys can afford the luxury, which is ruination to the clothes. Cricket they never touch ; the turf is, as a rule, too bad to make a good pitch. Base-ball is the favourite game at Hibiya, and almost any Saturday or Sunday you will see a match going on, with thousands of spectators eagerly watching, and the numbers will be increased if, as sometimes happens, the band is playing on the same day. Hibiya Park has the advantage of lying at the very heart of Tokyo, at a point where many tramway lines converge and cross. It is easily and cheaply accessible from any point in 236 EVERY-DAY JAPAN the city. We have recently been raising our tramcar fares, much to the annoyance of some of our citizens. But even now that we have increased our prices, we have still the cheapest fares in the world. For five sen (i^d.) we can ride from one end of the city to the other ; and if we buy our tickets twenty or thirty at a time we can get them at a rate, practically, of one penny each. UYENO PARK It is not now, as I write, the season of the cherry-blossoms when Uyeno assumes its dress of surpassing beauty. But Uyeno is always beautiful, and its spreading trees and shady lanes never fail to extort a willing admiration from Japanese and foreigners alike. Uyeno Park is intimately linked with the name of lyemitsu, the third Tokugawa Shogun, the contemporary of our own Charles I., the man who put down Christianity with an iron hand, and who, with equally heavy hand, established over his country the feudal tyranny which Japan happily shook off some forty years ago. Before his day, the park had been in the possession of a private family, but lyemitsu took it as a possession of his house. It was destined to serve as a burying- place for many of his descendants in the Shogunate ; and in order to protect his own residence from the many evil influences which, as every superstitious Buddhist believes, come constantly from the north-east, he erected here a temple which in its day surpassed all other ecclesiastical edifices in Japan even the magnificent shrines of Nikko. The temple was an extremely honourable shrine, and its head priest was always a son of the reigning Emperor, lyemitsu intending by this simple device that the Mikado in Kyoto should always give him a proper hostage for his quiet behaviour. One of the last battles of the civil war was fought fin Uyeno Park in 1868. The Shogun's troops were badly defeated, and retired north with the abbot of the Great Temple, whom they proclaimed as Emperor in a vain hope of thus rallying their followers. The wooden gateways, riddled with bullet-holes, are still to be seen, but the beautiful temple was destroyed by a TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 237 conflagration during the battle ; and the clemency of the Emperor was shown in a free pardon to the abbot who had thus con- sented to be set up as his rival. As Prince Kitashirakawa, the deposed abbot lived to be one of the firmest supporters of his kinsman's throne, and died a soldier's death during the war with China. Our own Queens, Mary and Elizabeth, did not display so great and so wise a clemency to Lady Jane Grey and Mary Stuart. The place is full of historical reminiscences. As we alight from the street-car we stand on Sammai Bashi, the place where in the seventeenth century the great champion of the poor, Sakura Soguro, vainly tried to hand a petition to lyemitsu, imploring the great Shogun to exert himself on behalf of the poor farmers in Shimosa who were being cruelly oppressed by the Lord of Sakura. He failed to do so, was goaded into insurrection, was defeated, and with his wife and three sons suffered death by crucifixion on a hill outside the town of Sakura. But he lives still in the memory of the poor for whom he suffered. Some years ago I was travelling through Sakura with a native Christian, now a priest of the Anglican Com- munion. On reaching the place where Soguro was buried the man got out of his jinriksha, entered the little cemetery, and worshipped before the tomb of the Poor Man's Advocate. " I cannot help doing it," he said, apologetically, fearing that I might be shocked. " The man who laid down his life for the poor was so like Christ ! " In another part of the park are the tombs of the Shoguns, many of the later descendants of lyeyasu having been laid to rest here. If proof were required of how bad for Japan was the iron rule of caste and exclusion which the Tokugawas maintained, it might be found in the mausolea of the Toku- gawa family. For lyeyasu and lyemitsu magnificent tombs were erected, which cost untold millions of money, and Nikko is still one of the show-places of the world. But after lyemitsu there comes a falling off that is most significant. Each Shogun left in the Treasury a smaller sum than that he found there, and the end was evidently bankruptcy. Had Commodore Perry 238 EVERY-DAY JAPAN never come to Japan, had no foreign fleets ever bombarded Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, the Shogunate would still have fallen, for the Treasury was within measurable distance of utter depletion. Behind the Shoguns' mausolea stands another historical memorial. Jigen Daishi was, in lyemitsu's time, the abbot of a little Buddhist temple which now goes by the name of the Jigen do. Jigen was a learned man, versed not only in Buddhist lore, but in Chinese philosophy as well, and it was in the quiet precincts of that small temple that was worked out that peculiar mixture of contemplative Buddhism and Shushi philosophy which was, for two and a half centuries, Japan's answer to the Christianity which it had discarded. But my reader will take more interest in Uyeno Park as it is to-day than in all the historical associations which it has for the student of the past. There is in Uyeno Park very little of the frivolity which characterises Asakusa. Uyeno is very largely educational. As you go up the main drive you see to the left, on the rising ground across the Shinobazu Lake, the buildings of the University ; in the centre of the park, on the site of the great temple which was burnt during the battle, stands the Museum ; not far from it are the Imperial Library, the Academy of Music, and the School of Art. A very special attraction for country cousins lies in the Zoological Gardens, which cannot, it is true, be compared with similar institutions in European capitals, but which nevertheless have an interest of their own. Our children, born in Japan, would grow up in entire ignorance of what a sheep looked like if there were not some specimens of the domestic ovis in the Zoo at Uyeno. There is something about the grass of Japan which makes it impossible for the sheep to thrive. A friend of mine some years ago, travelling in the interior, came to a little town where he found a travelling menagerie, one of the great features of which was a strong cage securely fastened with thick ropes and stout bamboo, and containing, so it was said, a lion. The showman was eagerly expatiating on the ferocity of this untamable beast, which had THE SHINOBAZU LAKE, UYENO PARK, TOKYO. "TORII" IN UYENO PARK, TOKYO. TOKYO'S FOUR GREAT PARKS 239 to be kept in a state of cowed submission by a series of ringing blows with a thick stick on the roof of the cage, which duly impressed the villagers with the terrors of the monster inside. My friend peeped into the cage, and retired without " letting on " that the monster was only a common sheep. There is a foreign hotel in Uyeno Park, where you can satisfy the inner man ; there also are tea-houses and refresh- ments galore. If you want to buy your friends at home a nice little present, there is an excellent kankoba, or bazaar, with all sorts of tempting things in it. From time to time there are shows dog shows, poultry shows, exhibitions of paintings. I have also seen at work a " switch buck " (sic) railway, " which goes from the down to the up by the power of the up to the down." If, however, you would see Uyeno at its best, you must come in April when the cherries are in bloom. Underneath the sombre branches of the great trees there are thousands upon thousands of cherry-blossoms which burst into bloom simulta- neously, and fill the air with fragrance and delight. The sight is beautiful beyond words, and the happiness of the people at the joyful return of spring is simple and unaffected. It shows itself in gay dresses, elegant coiffures, laughing, talking, boisterous merriment. Sake and sakura (cherry) are words of very similar sound, and the cherry season is a time of popular unbending. A well-known Japanese ditty may thus be para- phrased in English: " How can I make merry, Seeing the blooming cherry, Without a glass or two of sherry ? " CHAPTER XLII AN AFTERNOON WITH A SOCIALIST IN UYENO PARK "Mrs. Masula's daughter Yae was walking under the cool shade of the great trees in Uyeno Park in front of the entrance to the Zoological Gardens, where the summer heat never seems to penetrate. She was hold- ing Shunzo fast by the hand, and dragging him along at her will to a place where an orator was holding forth to an interested assemblage." I HAVE begun this chapter with a quotation from an English translation of a modern Japanese novel, which has reference to a speech, supposed to be made under the shadows of the great trees by a Socialist orator, on the questions of the day. It will doubtless be a shock to many, who have hitherto looked on Japan with purely sentimental eyes, to be told that there is Socialism even in the land of bushido. It is nevertheless so. Socialism exists and Socialism is growing, not as a protest against bus kid o, but as a protest made by bushido against the unscrupulous sordidness of certain classes of money-makers. I suppose it must always be so ; moderate fortunes, such as were the rule in Japan before the Restoration, excite no envy. The spectacle of immense fortunes, amassed in the space of a few short years, by means that are often questionable, cannot fail to arouse and to keep alive the resentment of honest but im- poverished workers. My meaning will be more clear if I go on with the chapter of the novel : The children, students, and workmen, who were loafing about in that part of the park, were all running together to hear and see something that seemed to be a dancer or acrobat, who was performing within a ring-wall of human faces by the torii that stands in front of the Toshogu Temple, as the shrine erected for the worship of lyeyasu is called by the Japanese. " Let's have a look, brother," said Yaechan, as she dragged her com- panion to the spot. Shunzo peered through the crowd to see. 240 AN AFTERNOON WITH A SOCIALIST 241 A man in a red dress and red cap, wearing spectacles, and appar- ently some thirty years of age, was beating a mamedaiko drum with his right hand, while his left was busily occupied in regulating the move- ments of some puppets. He was singing a song to a lively tune ; and in front of him he carried a box painted red, with the legend " Socialist Party " conspicuously inscribed on it. Buyers gathered round him from right and left, and there was a brisk business doing. Each buyer received a small quantity of sweetstuff done up in a little paper bag. Presently he raised his voice again and began to sing : " What is it that sparkles on the brow of the nobleman's mistress ? A diamond? No, you are wrong. 'Tis the drops that fall from the brow of the toiling farmer." Then the drum beat, and again the song began : " What is it that glitter's on the breasts of Ministers of State and Generals ? The Order of the Golden Kite ? No, you are wrong. 'Tis the skull of a dead soldier." Again the drum, and then the next verse : " And what is it that sparkles in the rich man's cup ? Champagne ? No, you are wrong. 'Tis the life-blood of our factory girls." When the song was over, the orator shook his head, raised it, and began his oration. "Well, gentlemen," said he, "the Shakaito (Socialist) sweetmeats, which I have been putting on the market, are not in the least like the kompeitd (comfits) or hakkato (peppermint) which you can buy from other dealers. They are concocted of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, and are excellently adapted for promoting the well-being of the whole human race. The nature and purposes of these Socialistic sweetmeats are totally different from those of the quack preparations offered to the world by politicians who hang out flags inscribed with ' The Interests of the Empire/ or ' The Enlargement of the National Power,' and then proceed to suck the life-blood of their people in order to obtain these objects. They are quite different, too, from those of the religionists who talk of mercy and gentleness and the life of the world to come, and then cringe and fawn before worldly authorities. Gentlemen, you talk about your industrial developments and plume yourselves on the advance of your civilisation. Ah ! my friends, do not those same eyes of yours tell you that, along with the advance of your so-called civilisation, there is also an increase in the poverty of the masses, in ignorance, vagrancy, starva- tion ? You talk about constitutional government, and flatter yourselves that you have a voice in the affairs of your nation. Gentlemen, I see before me merchants, artisans, soldiers, men that look like teachers, and others that look like gentlemen. In other words this little assembly? of ours is in a sense representative of the whole people. Tell me, gentle- men, how many hands are there here that hold the right of voting ? " * * The franchise in Japan is extremely limited, only those who pay a certain high amount of Imperial taxes having the right to exercise it. Q 242 EVERY-DAY JAPAN The sweetmeat-seller looked round him with his bright eyes : the crowds listened in deep silence, open-eared and open-mouthed, to all that he had to say. Then a student stepped forward and cried out : "There is none." The sweetmeat-seller nodded his head. " Then, gentlemen, the civilisation of the twentieth century which you boast of so vainly don't you think that it stands in need of a great renovation ? " Shouts of applause greeted this remark; but at that moment a police- constable broke in upon the assembly. " Now, young man," he said, " you must come with me." The crowd broke up. Many of them were angry and restrained them- selves with difficulty from striking the policeman. But the sweetmeat- seller held up his puppets and drumstick in either hand and stopped them. " Gentlemen," he said, " think of these things when the world is in confusion." Then the crowds dispersed with bansais, here and there, for the Socialist Reform. Yaechan held her sweetmeat-bag tightly in her hand, and clung close to Shunzo. "Brother," she said, "what is he? He's not like an ordinary man, is he ? " Shunzo was gazing intently on the surging wave of men in front of him. " It is the Spirit of the Age," quoth he. There are many problems which confront the statesman, the philanthropist, and the parson in all lands, and Japan cannot be expected to be absolutely free from them. But it will be very interesting to observe, and lovers of Japan will watch with the deepest sympathy, how the question of the " submerged tenth " is grappled by Japanese workers in the cause of humanity. It is one which every day is bringing more and more into pro- minence ; and certain measures of what is practically State Socialism, such as the monopolisation of the tobacco industry, the nationalisation of the railways, and the proposed trans- ference of the electric car system from a private company into the hands of the Tokyo Municipality, all indicate the rising power of Socialism and the increasing dread of it in the minds of our leading men. These measures must not be considered as springing from a genuine admiration of Socialistic principles. They have their roots in State indebtedness, and in the desire of AN AFTERNOON WITH A SOCIALIST 243 governments, municipal and otherwise, to get possession of per- manent sources of revenue to meet present and future expendi- tures. But they likewise show the increasing influence of Social- istic theories, and herein, to my mind, lies their ominousness. There is no smoke without a fire to cause it ; there would be no Socialism but for a certain feeling of hopelessness which comes over the minds of men as they contemplate the prospect of obtaining redress for certain galling wrongs or the relief of some pressing burden ; and recent legislation in Japan has often reminded me of the witty lines of the Cambridge poet of forty years ago, who warned his readers against putting their trust in a well-known local tobacconist: "Manillas vocat, hoc -prcstexit nomine caules." CHAPTER XLIII NO. 324 TO-DAY I am going to ask you to pay with me a very short visit to a Japanese prison. I do not think I shall have time to take you all round the institution, but I have a particular piece of business that I wish to execute, and I want you to come with me. The prison is not in Tokyo. It is situated at Urawa, a few miles distant. Urawa is little more than a village, but it stands to Tokyo in the same relation that Brentford once stood to London. It is the chief town of the district or prefecture out of which the Metropolis and Metropolitan district have been carved: it is the seat of the prefectural government and con- tains all the prefectural institutions of the Saitama Ken. Half an hour by train from Uyeno will bring us to Urawa, and a twenty minutes' walk through poor, mean-looking streets will bring us to the black gate of the prison, a collection of unimpressive wooden buildings surrounded by a high fence richly garnished with spikes and enclosing a large area of ground. I am personally acquainted with the governor, and we shall, therefore, have no difficulty in securing admission, more especially as our charitable object in coming is so very laudable. After a few minutes of detention in one of the reception-rooms we shall be taken by a warder to see the man whom we have come to visit, for reasons which it is not necessary here to state. We shall go past the cells, but they will not detain us, as it is a work-day and all the prisoners are in the shops, the kitchens, or the garden. We shall peep into the chapel, where, before a solitary figure of the Buddha Amida, the prison chaplain is saying his prayers half-aloud. On Sundays, when 244 No. 324 245 the shops are closed, his reverence will preach to the prisoners as though he were a Christian. We shall take a peep into the kitchens, admire the great variety of industries represented in the shops, and shudder at the dismal-looking sheds that serve for solitary confinement. We shall not, however, stop at any of these places, but shall make straight for the rice-mill, where twenty or thirty men are at work, some at the treadmill and some carrying bags of grain or flour. A Japanese treadmill, by the way, is not a mill, but a huge pounder or pestle worked by the foot, and the rice is not ground but pounded, the husks being afterwards separated by a process of fanning. Staggering wearily under a load of flour, much smaller than the burdens that the rest of the prisoners are carrying, is an old man, grey-headed and bent, whose feebleness is due to other causes besides the lumbago from which he is evidently suffering. He had a name in the world, but now he is best known by the number 324, which he carries stitched on to the front of his peach-coloured garment, and it is by that name that we shall speak of him to-day. No. 324 has an apparent affection for the pink-coloured garb of the convict, for this is his fourth period of sojourn within one of his Imperial Majesty's prisons in Japan, and he is rapidly acquiring the reputation of being a confirmed gaol-bird. In the good old days, forty-five years ago, No. 324 was a samurai of a good family in the south, and wore his two swords as jauntily as the rest. Never a " booky " man, he was an expert at all feats of arms, and had once gained much credit by lifting a bag containing a little over a coomb of barley at the end of his spear. This feat was performed in the presence of his feudal lord himself, who thereafter showed him great favour ; but no baronial favours could keep him quiet during those days of turmoil and excitement, and when the Choshu fighting was going on he did what greater men than himself did also, in those days of confusion he deserted from his lord and worked his way up to Yedo as a free-lance and soldier of fortune in Japanese, a Ronin. Marshal Yamagata's free lance brought him to distinction ; 246 EVERY-DAY JAPAN for is he not to this day one of the powers that shape the destinies of Japan? No. 324 was not equally fortunate. After the wars of the Restoration were over, a law was passed depriving the samurai not only of their two swords, but of their fixed salaries and other privileges ; and one day No. 324 found nimself cast adrift on the world, with a small house and garden of his own, a pension bond representing a few hundred yen, and the habits of an old-world military gentleman. What was he to do ? He was by that time a man of middle age with a wife and child, and house, garden, and pension bond were not enough to support him and his family. He was too old to become an officer in the Imperial army, too proud to turn policeman, there were but few vacancies in the civil service, and the old-fashioned merchants who traded on the outskirts of the samurai quarters of Yedo had no vacancies for men of his stamp. They were for the most part doing a good business as things were, and took no interest in new departures in trade. But there were the ports newly opened to commerce, and other prospects of business opening out to young Japan in which there seemed to be a fair field for everybody. Almost every book that came into the country spoke of the honourable splendours of foreign commerce ; and, whether they could afford it or not, the foreign merchants in Yokohama lived in a style of magnificence which seemed to betoken the great profits to be made out of merchandise. No. 324, dazzled by what he read and saw, plunged into busi- ness. He had, practically speaking, no capital, and absolutely no business experience, and he took unto himself partners as wise and as wealthy as himself. And what was the result ? What could it be but an eventual smash ? And what do people do when they get themselves into financial straits, as did so many of the mushroom houses in Japan in the early days of foreign trade ? Why, what can they do ? Either they go quietly to the wall, as poor No. 324 did, who, having lost his little all, lived on the charity of his son as long as No. 324 247 he could, and when his son died, took to the course of petty larcenies which ensures him a life free from the worries of existence within the precincts of a gaol. Or else they wriggle and shuffle, and stoop to those mean- nesses and dishonesties which must end in destroying their business and credit. Often they, too, end as No. 324 has ended ; but the effect of their wriggles has in the meantime been to destroy entirely the commercial reputation of their country. When, therefore, I am questioned as to the commercial morality of the people amongst whom I live, I always turn in mind to the history of No. 324. A few men, even in those early days, could command the necessary capital as well as the experience that was needful for the successful carrying out of great commercial undertakings. Iwasaki, Mitsui, Shibusawa, Sumitomo, Yasuda, are the names of successful men whose business credit has always been un- tarnished, and there are other names like them. A greater number of men started in business with insufficient capital and experience, got themselves into difficulties, wriggled and lied, as drowning men do who catch at any straw, and by so doing ruined for a whole generation the commercial credit of their country. Some of these doubtful firms and houses have weathered the storm and come out safely and with credit, but their number is not a large one. In the meantime, however, the educational work of the last thirty years has begun to tell on all sides, and nowhere more conspicuously than in the world of commerce and business enter- prise. The young Japanese merchant starts in life now with a full knowledge of what lies before him and of the resources upon which he can depend. He knows the importance of capital, organisation, accuracy and enterprise sometimes, indeed, he knows too much. He is learning and bitter experience has taught him the value of honesty in his business relations with others, whether his own countrymen or strangers from abroad. When all is said and done, his best friends have to confess that he has a good deal to learn in this respect, for moral progress has 248 EVERY-DAY JAPAN by no means kept up with material developments. It is some- thing, however, to know that the leading men are on the right side, and that commercial integrity is being preached zealously and earnestly in every school and college in the Empire. Alas! for our poor weak human nature! Is it not too true that in other countries besides Japan there is an occasional discrepancy between the precepts of the lecture-room and the practice of the merchant's desk? But the merchants of Japan are by no means all of samurai origin. There was a merchant-caste in the old' days, and the merchant ranked low in the social scale. He had his revenge on Society by sharp practice in business transactions, and the bad habits of a class it is hard to eradicate. He had no moral restraints, he was not a disciple of Confucius, nor even a bus hi, who could on occasions be a very scrupulous person indeed. His religion did not much help him : it taught him to worship Daikoku, the god of the money-bags, during his lifetime, and invoke Amida when at the point of death. When Western learning flowed in, he made Political Economy his religion, and brought to its study a mind perfectly open and absolutely free from scruples of any kind. The result has been that the Japanese merchant has gained an unenviable notoriety in the business world as being a very difficult customer to deal with, and we, whose hearts are with this people, can only possess our souls in patience and wait for the dawn of better things. And, having said this, honesty compels me to add that my own personal experiences with tradesmen and shopkeepers have been quite as satisfactory as they would have been in any other country, and I have heard some Yokohama merchants maintain that they have had nothing to complain of in this respect. I have never been cheated more than I deserved. CHAPTER XLIV A PALACE OF VICE IF I lived in India I should probably never see a tiger, for the simple reason that I should not go to places where tigers abound. For a similar reason I have never seen the places and the people whom this chapter describes, indeed it is not a subject which I take delight in handling. But if I am to write of Tokyo I must describe the bad as well as the good, the haunts of vice as well as the abodes of virtue, for it is only thus that I can hope to show my readers what a truly human city is the capital of the Mikado's Empire. The palace of which I propose to treat lies in Asakusa, not far from the park and temple of which I have already spoken. There are other similar establishments in several of the suburban districts, but the Yoshiwara of Asakusa is the most famous, and is typical of them all. Prostitutes in Japan have been for centuries looked upon in the light of slaves, most of them having been bought when quite young, say, at the age of five or six years, and specially trained in prostitute establishments for their profession. The poor girls never saw anything else but the life for which they were being trained, for they were never allowed to trespass beyond the well-guarded walls of their prison, and were specially educated in all the arts of meretricious pleasing. This practical enslavement of a whole class was, I am told, contrary to the usage of ancient Japan, which tolerated no slavery. The system originated with the Tokugawa legislation, and the Tokugawa police found it to their interest to perpetuate and enforce it as rigidly as possible, because they were thereby able to keep in touch with the criminal classes, the proceeds 249 250 EVERY-DAY JAPAN of many a theft finding their way to the prostitute quarters, where hands could also often be laid on the thief himself. Voices were from time to time raised against the system, even in the pre-Restoration days of Japan. Thus, we read of a certain influential retainer of the Lord of Nagaoka, in Shinshu, who tried to get prostitution, as a recognised insti- tution, abolished throughout his lord's dominions, late in the eighteenth century. His proposals met with strong opposition from the other members of the Clan Government, and he was met with the argument that youthful passion must have oppor- tunities of gratification. To refute this argument, he took his stand at the gate of the prostitute institution, for several nights in succession, and noted those who went in. He found that the great majority of visitors were married men of middle age the men, that is, who found that their homes were insufferably dull, and that their wives (ill-educated women to whom they had been married, according to ancient custom, without any choice of their own) were far less companionable than the specially trained beauties of the Yoshiwara. Trie moral of this story is obvious. Educate woman to be the companion and help-meet of the man, and home will have more attractiveness. It is a theme on which thoughtful writers in Japan are for ever expatiating. A mere chance brought the prostitute class a slight ameliora- tion. Nothing was done for them at the Meiji Restoration, which gave freedom and recognition to other outcasts ; but in 18/2 a Peruvian merchantman, under stress of weather, put into the port of Yokohama, and it was discovered that she had on board a number of Chinese slaves. Acting under the advice of some of the foreign Consuls, the Japanese Government liberated the slaves on the Peruvian ship, and then proceeded to take steps for the liberation of its own bondwomen ; and the then Minister of Justice, a man of pronounced views, Eto Shimpei, who subsequently raised a rebellion against the Government, for which he forfeited his life, obtained the issue of an Imperial ordinance which materially changed the status of the poor women. The houses used for these purposes were to be no longer called joroya (prostitute houses), but kashi zashiki (hired apartments), INMATES OF A YOSHIWARA. A JAPANESE ASPASIA AND HER ATTENDANTS. THE EXTERIOR OF A YOSHIWARA. A PALACE OF VICE 251 and the women themselves were henceforth known as dekasegi- skogi (harlots engaged in business on their own account). It was further enacted that a girl must be fully sixteen years old before admission to such houses (the age has since been raised to eighteen years), that she must be destitute of all other means of livelihood, that she must have the consent in writing of her real (not adopted) parents, or, failing them, of her nearest relatives, and that she must be free from syphilis or other contagious disease. In other words, the prostitute ceased to be a slave, and obtained recognition as a woman engaged in a recognised calling, undertaken as a means of earning a living and requiring a certain standard of good health. It has, however, fared with these as with many other well- meant reforms. Girls are still received into prostitute estab- lishments, not as prostitutes, but to be trained as such, and though they cannot appear publicly until they reach the proper legal age, they are nevertheless being fitted for their future life all the time. As the time approaches, a costly trousseau is required fine feathers being always needed for such fine birds and the girl, though nominally a free person, trading in a hired room on her own account, is actually destitute of the capital wherewith to buy her outfit. The master of the house in which she is to ply her trade makes her the necessary advance of a thousand yen (100) or so; and from that moment she is practically a slave, for her indebtedness will be made to con- tinue until she is too old to earn money by the prostitution of her body. She is not positively unhappy, for she has had no experience of anything else ; but she and her sisters, living in a world of their own, and even speaking a language of their own, are to all intents and purposes slaves. A determined effort was made in 1899 by prominent Japanese, backed by some members of the missionary body, to procure the liberation of these slaves. The practical outcome of this agitation was an ordinance issued by the Home Office affirming the right of these women to leave the Yoshiwaras whenever they wished to do so, by a simple notification to the police, and also securing them from being molested for any obligations 252 EVERY-DAY JAPAN due to the masters of prostitute houses on account of advances made for outfit, etc. This ordinance was supposed to be at the time a tremendous moral victory for the reform party, and, like the law for suppressing juvenile smoking, which the Japanese Parliament passed about the same time, looks extremely well on paper, as testifying to the enlightened sentiments of Japanese legislators. We did, indeed, hear of two youthful British middies being run in by a policeman at one of the Tokyo stations for having tobacco-pouches and pipes on their persons, and we similarly heard of a few cases of prostitute girls forsaking their calling. But the canary that has been bred in captivity comes to love its cage, and many of the women, who were encouraged to break their bonds, returned of their own free will to the life they had abandoned. We have already seen that even the law in Japan looks upon prostitution as a legitimate business, undertaken by persons who feel the pinch of poverty, as a means of earning a living. To the ordinary middle-class Japanese, uninfluenced by Western ideas, the calling of a prostitute may even be an honourable one. This may be seen from some of the dramas which are specially beloved by the populace. In the drama entitled Sekitori-senryo-nobori we have a scene in which two wrestlers are pitted against one another. The favourite, Magawa, could easily vanquish his antagonist, but his hands are tied, so that he hesitates to put forth his strength, by the fact that he owes his opponent a sum of two hundred ryo ($200) which he cannot repay. At the critical moment, just before the last bout of the match, the manager of the show announces that a sympathiser has just sent in a gift of two hundred ryo for Magawa. The gift has come from Magawa's own wife, who has turned prostitute in order to pay off the debt, and has thus enabled her beloved husband to gain his victory. In another popular drama, Miyagino, we find a farmer planting out rice-sprouts in a field. By accident he splashes some mud over the dress of a passing samurai, who is so deeply incensed at the supposed insult that he kills him on the A PALACE OF VICE 253 spot. The farmer's wife dies of a broken heart, and the daughter, reduced to the verge of despair, goes to Yedo to seek her elder sister, who is a courtesan living in the Yoshiwara. The two sisters, on comparing notes, find that the samurai who has killed their father is the lover of the elder girl, whom he visits frequently at the Yoshiwara, and the two then plan and execute a cruel vengeance which never fails to thrill the audience. The Japanese conception of sexual morality, among the classes that live only for the pleasure of the day and hour, will have to be radically changed before we can expect much improvement in the system of the Yoshiwaras. Every evening shortly after sundown hundreds of visitors flock to the Asakusa Yoshiwara and other kindred institutions, for, as I have said, one establishment does not suffice for the needs of a city like Tokyo. Here they find the courtesans ready to welcome their guests, all dressed in their best finery, in rooms opening upon the street. They may, if they wish, make their bargains directly with the girls of their choice ; or, if they are shy about doing so, there are complaisant old women at tea-houses near by who will gladly act as go-betweens. A first visit is generally not very costly, for the object is to induce the man to become a regular customer ; but each sub- sequent visit becomes more and more expensive, for presents must be given and feasts provided. One day, perhaps, the young man finds that he cannot pay the costs of the entertain- ment. In such a case the brothel-house keeper will take him, so I have been told, to the lamp-room at the back of the house, which serves as an extemporised prison. Here he is searched, and stripped of any valuables he may possess, or he is kept in durance vile until some friend can be persuaded to bail him out, or he is sent home in charge of the " chucker-out " attached to the establishment, to find the money. How many crimes and petty larcenies have been and are committed to meet these Yoshiwara bills, only those who have seen the seamy side of Japanese life know. Sometimes it happens that the man honestly falls in love with the girl, or the girl with the man. In such a case, if he can afford it, he will redeem the girl and marry her ; if he cannot, and 254 EVERY-DAY JAPAN if the love is unconquerable, but one course generally remains, and then we see a paragraph in the papers telling of a double suicide in the purlieus of the Yoshiwara, or in the waters of the Sumida River. Of the hundreds of visitors who go to the Yoshiwara at night, more than half go merely to have a look at the girls, and a chat, and then return. But the seed of impure thoughts has generally been planted in their minds by their visit, and all around the licensed establishment they will find unlicensed houses, the owners of which have no hesitation in trying to entrap their unwary steps as they return. These places are almost more dangerous to morals than the licensed establish- ments we have been considering. If it were a choice between two evils I would rather choose the frankly honest, medically inspected licensed house. It is at least above-board and open, and less exposed to physical dangers. The geisha, or dancing-girl, is a feature of Japanese social life which must not be overlooked. Her function in the world is to go to her employer's house, or to attend the feasts he gives at ordinary tea-houses and restaurants, and provide amuse- ment for the company by dancing, singing, and other accom- plishments. The line of demarcation between the geisha and the courtesan is sometimes very indistinctly traced, but some of them are, I am told, women of pleasant manners and a certain amount of intelligence and refinement, and we shall find their counterparts in ancient Athens. We shall not be far from the mark if we say that Aspasia, the chosen companion of Pericles, was a geisha of the best type. My description of the Yoshiwara has not been a pleasant task. The system is not a nice one, but it is a solution of a much-vexed question which is at least deserving of thought and study. As long as human nature remains what it is, so long shall we have the sins of the flesh with us, and just so long, whatever action the State may take, will it be the duty of us Christians to resist evil and to bear a witness, much needed here as well as elsewhere, to the constant need of purity of life. Again, honesty compels me to chronicle a distinct A JAPANESE ASPASIA AND HER ATTENDANT. THE HAIR-DRESSER. A HAWKER OF BREAD AND CAKES. A PALACE OF VICE 255 improvement in public opinion and practice in this respect. In Japan's unregenerate days it was not unknown for a teacher to take his pupils for an evening's entertainment at a Palace of Vice, and fathers have even been known to take their sons on these unlawful excursions. At present, though God knows there is much to cause painful thought, there is at any rate a rapidly growing body of public opinion which has set its face steadfastly against such practices, and for this we can be very thankful. CHAPTER XLV INKYO WHEN a Japanese reaches the age of sixty, he, or she, will very often retire from the responsibilities of the family and household to spend the rest of his, or her, life in dignified and not unprofitable leisure. This is known as inkyo. The headship of a family in Japan, or even of a household (the two are by no means identical in this country), is often a very onerous position. It involves not only the responsibility for the support of the members and the care of the family property, but also the numerous legal and social formalities which are so worrying to old men. The due registration of marriages and funerals, the proper observances of the numerous anniversaries in honour of the departed, the calls, presents, etc., etc., which Japanese etiquette demands, all require a great amount of time and trouble, and may far better be left in the hands of a younger generation. So, at sixty, a man retires from all the cares of family business and from all responsibility for social and legal observances. He is now spoken of by the members of his family as inkyosama, or the " retired gentleman," and moves off with his wife into some small house where he can be free and at his ease. His son takes his place as head of the family, and an allowance is made out of the family income to enable the old people to be free from pecuniary cares. It is a very beautiful custom, and the nearer I draw to my own sixtieth birthday, the more clearly do I see its beauties. The son continues to have the experience of the father for a period of years, to support and aid him in cases of emergency, whilst at the same time he has that free hand in his family and business 256 INKYO 257 which every man desires to have by the time he is forty. Should the son prove an abject failure as the head of the family, the other members can always have recourse to the inkyosama to save the situation, and cases sometimes occur when a family council will insist on bringing the inkyosama back into active life to save the little commonwealth from detriment. A woman who is by birth the head of a family can become inkyo, motu fcroprio ; an ordinary married woman becomes inkyo with her husband ; a single lady cannot retire, because she has no duties to retire from, except the constant duty of passive obedience. It can, however, hardly be said that there are any old maids in the country. When a lady retires at the age of sixty she is very often, in this country, where girls marry so young, a great-grandmother, and her daughter, who has herself dandled her own children's children on her knee, feels it time that she was the recognised head of the female portion of the family, and that the oldest lady retired from active service. Occasionally, a business man or a man of property will become inkyo in order to follow the fluctuations of the money market with greater ease and certainty. In such cases, he is a sort of sleeping partner in the firm of which his son is the actual managing director. The old gentleman has nothing to do but watch his investments, and if he has the wisdom to profit by the ex- periences of the previous sixty years, he can generally do so with profit to himself. But an inkyosama of this kind must be looked upon as a compromise between feudal and mediaeval tradition and the spirit of latter-day life. The great wave of money-making, which is sweeping over Japan, keeps men at their active life much longer than was formerly necessary, and it has been observed that there is in inkyo, as in many other of the old institutions, a tendency to decay. It is a great pity; inkyo is one of the most beautiful examples I know of a practical fulfilment of the Fifth Commandment. Generally, when a man retires, he is accompanied into retire- ment by his wife, or by some elderly female relative who can provide him with companionship and care. If there is no one who can be set apart for the care of the old gentleman he will 258 E VERY-DAY JAPAN sometimes remain in his son's house, though there are obvious difficulties in the way of such an arrangement. Occasionally an inkyosama will take unto himself a wife to be the solace of his declining years. It is supposed that a marriage of this kind is undertaken mainly for the purposes of " mutual society, help and comfort," and the lady is in such cases often characteristically described as o cha nomi tomodachi (a " tea-drinking friend "). But subsequent developments cannot always be foreseen, and sometimes an unwelcome little stranger will arrive, to upset the whole family by his claims to a share in the inheritance which had all been settled at the time of his aged father's retirement. Adoption is always possible, and the eldest son will sometimes solve the difficulty by taking his infant brother as his own adopted son. But a son cannot always be expected to bear patiently with his father's belated matrimonial ventures, and efforts are some- times made to get the child out of the way by adoption into another family. Many years ago I made the acquaintance of an elderly gentle- man, who visited me frequently for three or four weeks, and then vanished out of my life. Eighteen years later he sent me a message asking me to go and see him. I found that he was now inkyo, having left his business to his eldest son, and that he was devoting himself to poultry and curios. He gave me the impression of being a man failing in body and mind, and I expected to hear shortly that he was either dead or an imbecile. I heard nothing more for over a year, and then the son came to visit me, accompanied by the family doctor. They told me that the old man had got married, that none of them quite knew what to do with the baby, and that they would be very much obliged if I would kindly adopt it, in which case they were pre- pared to treat me with free-handed liberality. Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes. This, however, was a case of the misuse of inkyo. In its original intention, and as it is generally carried out in practice, it is a fine institution for providing old age with tranquillity and peace. It is much better than the workhouse. CHAPTER XLVI FUKUZAWA AND THE KEIOGIJUKU As the traveller coming by train from Yokohama draws near to the Shimbashi terminus, he will have on his left-hand side a series of low bluffs which extend for two or three miles, in a line which is not absolutely straight, but which will be by his side all the way from Shinagawa to a point half-way to Shimbashi, where they leave the line of railway and strike off to the north. A little beyond that point he will see one of these bluffs surmounted by a large brick building with no special architectural features, but commanding an extensive prospect over the bay. If he should deem the place worthy of a visit it lies in a district known as Mita he will find that on climbing the hill he has arrived at a very large educational establishment, and that the whole of the extensive plateau is covered with dormitories, class-rooms, play- grounds and fencing halls, the school having grown so big that it has overflowed its bounds and taken in a considerable area of the flat ground on the other side of the hill. There is no pretence at architectural beauty of any kind ; most of the buildings are, indeed, of wood ; but if he will time his visit so as to be there at some hour of the forenoon, he will find that the class-rooms are filled with over 3,000 students of all ages and grades, and that the whole place is teeming with life. The school is the famous Keiogijuku, and its founder, the late Mr. Fukuzawa, was one of the noblest among the many makers of the New Japan. The very name of the school is suggestive. In the Japanese reckoning of time the Chinese system is followed of reckoning by "year periods." In China, whenever an event of any great magnitude occurs, a new year period begins, with a suitable title, and the years are reckoned from the new date, which continues 259 260 EVERY-DAY JAPAN to rule time until some fresh event of importance warrants the commencement of a new era beginning with the year " one." Similarly, in Japan, we are now in the fortieth year of Meiji (" Enlightened Rule "), it being a new regulation of the Restored Empire that year periods shall henceforth be made co-terminous with the reigns of the Sovereigns. Before Meiji (1868) there was no such rule ; a year period might begin at any time, and end at any time, according to the fancies or whims of the authorities, and there have been a couple of hundred or so of these periods since Japanese history began to be written, some very long and some very short, but infinitely more difficult for the schoolboy to learn than the list of the Sovereigns of England with the dates of their accessions. Before the Meiji era dawned, during the years 1865-1868, Japan was in the period of Keio, and the meaning of the name Keiogijuku is " the institution founded in the period of Keio." The name is a note of antiquity. Keio was a period of civil strife and confusion during which every school and college in Japan closed its doors all except Fuku- zawa's school which proudly kept up its studies during the whole time, its class-rooms being attended by three students on the very day that the last great battle of the Civil War was being fought at Uyeno. Fukuzawa was a man of a striking character, and from his boyhood showed the greatest contempt for anything that savoured of superstition or absurdity, in the ways of Old Japan. A samurai of the old clan of Nakatsu in Kyushu, born about the year of Queen Victoria's accession, he early learned a trade, that of a clog-maker, to eke out the small pittance which was all that the authorities allowed his widowed mother. He had reason early to feel the value of riches, and when asked, at thirteen, what he would like to be, he replied, " The richest man in Japan." He soon gathered, from the experience of early poverty, that success in life depended on his own exertions, and shaped his life accord- ingly. His father, a strict Confucianist, had put him to school with a teacher in Osaka, where he was then residing, and the boy was taught the multiplication table and other useful things, so new-fangled in the old man's eyes that he removed his son FUKUZAWA AND THE KEIOGIJUKU 261 from the dangerous seminary. The boy was, therefore, obliged to study the Confucianist doctrines and conceived an abhorrence for them, and perhaps not without reason ; for Confucianism is always dull, though not always wise. He soon learned to abhor the exaggerated respect which was paid to princes. He had by accident trodden on a piece of paper on which was written the name of his feudal lord, Okudaira, and was punished for so doing ; and feeling that the punishment was in excess of the offence, his mind turned rapidly to the discovery that the whole feudal system was a sham. He then made an experiment with the gods. He wrote the name of one of the gods on a piece of paper and trampled on it. He expected that the god would punish him for his mis- deed, but no punishment came. Emboldened by this success, he went by night to a shrine, stole the idol, and placed a stone in its stead. No sign of the divine wrath was shown, and so, by the time Fukuzawa was twenty, he had come to the conclusion that man has nothing to fear from god, Buddha, or feudal lord. He must be self-reliant and industrious, and carve out his own destiny, for and by himself, if he would achieve true manhood. These principles never deserted him. He remained through life an apostle of self-reliance, and was himself a conspicuous example of the value of his principles, for he succeeded in every- thing that he set his hands to undertake. His school, starting from small beginnings, grew to be a great institution, one of the greatest in Japan, numbering over 2,500 scholars before he died. He taught his scholars to be self-reliant, and his educational methods won for him the confidence of the Japanese public. He then set himself to work, not merely to translate, but to adapt and popularise the thoughts of the West. His books were eagerly received. I think I am right in saying that his translation of Dr. Smiles's book on " Self -Help " has had as many readers in its Japanese dress as the English original had in the home countries. He enriched his native language with one new word enzetsu (" lecture ") and the simple lecture-hall, where he spoke to his students, in straightforward, colloquial language, on many topics of interest and utility, was always crowded for him with eager listeners. He was practically the father of Japanese 262 EVERY-DAY JAPAN journalism, and the great newspaper which he founded, the fiji, remains to-day as one of the greatest papers in Japan, though it has many rivals. He steadily refused all temptations to go into political life, deeming that he could do better by his country as a critic than as a legislator. He declined the peerage offered to him by his Sovereign, and when presented by the Imperial bounty with a large sum of money, in recognition of his eminent services, handed it over to his school as an endowment fund. He has left behind him a number of disciples devoted to the cult (I had almost said the religion) of a manly independence and self-reliance, and those who know Japan can well compre- hend how great is the need of that spirit among the middle classes. His great friend, Count Okuma, has walked in the same paths, and Okuma's College at Waseda is the honourable rival of the Keiogijuku. Japan has had its full share in the present day of great men men who would be reckoned great in any country or age and Fukuzawa was one of them. But I should wish my readers to understand that all Japanese are not great men nay, that there are in Japan some men that are very small, not physically only, but spiritually and intellectually. And the small man is always a parasite. The theory of the Japanese family is that the family, as a unit, is bound to care for the welfare of the individual members, so that there shall be no want or distress among them. The actual practice is that, in every family, one or two active members do the work, and the rest hang on. In feudal days a few active samurai did the work of the clan, but all the samurai were not active, and there were some that just hung on for the sake of the pittance of rice. When the clans were broken up, the bureaux and Government offices took their place, and the retainers again hung on. There is not a single pros- perous man in Japan who escapes from these parasites, and to hang on to some great man is sometimes the only means of advancement that a young man can see before him. Fukuzawa felt that the hanger-on could never be a free and independent personage ; but must always be the servant of the man whose bread he has eaten. He therefore sturdily set his face FUKUZAWA AND THE KEIOGIJUKU 263 against the time-honoured ways of " small " Japan, and he suc- ceeded in leaving behind him a following of men of independent and self-reliant ways, who are to be the continuers of his much- needed work. I will conclude this chapter with one characteristic story from the life of Fukuzawa a story which is not generally known, but which excellently brings out the good side of the Japanese people. At the time of the Restoration, when the feudal rule had been abolished and the Imperial authority was not yet firmly settled, a dispute arose between two neighbouring villages in the province of Shimosa as to the right of fishing in a certain mere that lay between them. The men of the larger village were disposed to take the matter into their own hands and to oust their weaker neighbours from their immemorial rights. The weaker side found themselves quite helpless. They were not strong enough to fight the battle for themselves ; the daimyo of Sakurai, who would once have settled the matter with rough and ready, but impartial, justice, had gone ; the new Government officials small men, with their heads full of their newly-gotten importance were too haughty to trouble themselves about such trifling details as a squabble between villagers. The countrymen heard of Fukuzawa, as a righteous man, and went to beg his assistance. He gave it them freely, took the matter through the law courts, and saved them from their enemies. In token of their gratitude, the farmers then resolved that their benefactor should never be in want of faithful servants. When I visited the Keiogijuku a few weeks ago I found the same old retainer who had been the school servant when I was teaching there twenty years ago. He had been sent by the villagers to serve Mr. Fukuzawa, and he stays at his post. CHAPTER XL VII JAPANESE SCHOOLS I HAVE often been interested in watching two principal theories at work in Japanese schools. In some of the schools with which I have been connected I should hardly like to say how many American principles have had the upper hand, and individualistic theories have been diligently instilled into the minds of the pupils. In these schools I have found, as a rule, much liberty, occasional licence, and happy-go-lucky methods of instruction and work. In the Government schools they work on the theory that the student is a budding citizen, and that he must work " as though this were his last life " (issho kemmet) to learn his duty in the position to which the State calls him. In these schools, especially in those under samurai principles, and where the spirit of bushido reigns supreme, a student is supposed to be for ever preparing himself for his future in life, and never to take his eye off the main object in view, a specialisation which sometimes results in extreme narrowness. Strict supervision is exercised over even the recreation-hour reading of the students, and I once had to make an appeal on behalf of a student who had had an English book taken from him by one of the under- masters on the ground that it was " frivolous." I experienced no difficulty in obtaining from the Head the restoration of the book in question, but I was a little amused to find that the offending work was an English New Testament, confiscated as " frivolous," on the ground that it contained no words likely to help an officer in the Mercantile Marine in the discharge of his sea-duty ! This was, of course, an extreme case ; in most schools there is much more liberty, and it is only when a thoroughly convinced bushidoist martinet gets into a position 264 JAPANESE SCHOOLS 265 of control that the ideal standard of Spartan thoroughness is reached. It is our common human nature to relax a little just before we reach perfection ; but I have been under a " Principal " who kept us at work until 4 p.m. on December 2Qth before he allowed us to commence our Christmas holidays. The students in that case were all living within the school under the strictest discipline, and could not shirk, however much they complained. Under more usual circumstances it generally happens that some- where about December I2th I receive an intimation generally a postcard from my class telling me that I need not come again, as they do not intend to be present in the class-room until the examination, and wishing me a Happy Christmas. Japan is a neutral State as far as religion is concerned. No religious teaching of any kind is allowed during the hours devoted to the State programme of studies. After school hours, everyone is free to do as he likes. There are, of course, schools in which there is an anti-Christian and anti-religious tone, just as there are schools, whether missionary or otherwise, in which a more religious spirit prevails. But, whatever may have been the object for which any particular school was founded, the Government is always quite distinct on one point. The whole Government programme must be obeyed to the letter, and if a school cannot do its secular work properly it is closed, or suffered to die of inanition. If the secular work is well done, the Government asks no question about the religious work, be it Christian or Buddhist, Protestant or Roman. After all, "to do one's duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call us " is a good religious work, and for that the Japanese Government makes careful provision to the best of its ability. It has had its eye on England and France, and it has determined to avoid the question of religious education, in the controversial form which it has assumed among us, for it deems that our controversies have not done much to advance the best interests of national education, nor even of religion itself. It has also had its eye on countries where a system of education wholly secular is in vogue, and has resolved to supple- ment the purely material teaching of everyday life by a code 266 EVERY-DAY JAPAN of ethics which shall be truly national. At the present moment, the ethical teaching in a Japanese school is often cold, dull, lifeless, and leaves but a faint impress on the minds of the rising generation, who are not the men that their fathers were, in the days of a more Spartan rule and discipline. But the machinery is all there in the educational system of the country, and some day a Japanese prophet will arise who will teach his countrymen to put the true element, of enthusiasm based on truth, into the teaching of ethics, and then the lesson on " morals " will no longer be the dull, lifeless, hour that it now so often is. In the invaluable " monthly summaries "of Japanese thought, secular and religious, which appear in the columns of the Japan Mail, the student of modern Japan will find abundant evidence of the truth of what I have said. Japanese educators, neutral in point of religion, are earnestly seeking for a system of ethics which can be taught with all the enthusiasm that comes from religious conviction. I am continually forced to admire the self-supporting ways of Japanese students. There are, of course, many who owe their education to the liberality and generosity of parents and relatives, of rich friends, of their former feudal lords, of charitable societies, missionary and otherwise. But there is also a large and happily increasing number of young men who put themselves through their college studies by their own exertions. Of my university students, one supports himself by touting for an American insurance company ; another adapts plays for a theatre ; quite a number are editors and sub-editors of maga- zines and periodicals ; whilst others teach English in night schools to supplement their scanty allowances. But there are humbler grades of self-support which deserve a more honourable mention even than these. To draw a jinriksha at night, after school hours, is hard and humiliating work, but it is done ; to carry round milk or hawk newspapers is not very remunerative, but the milk-can and the newspaper have their student slaves; and there is in the Azabu district an association, entirely managed by students, which finds work for quite a large number of poor scholars. Every member of the association must be a JAPANESE SCHOOLS 267 bona -fide student, and no member may accept alms of money. The members help one another to find jobs, and the association undertakes almost every kind of work. They will sweep gardens, clean boots, do washing, take in mending and darning, run errands, and act as copyists or scribes. They get enough work in their neighbourhood to secure about fifteen yen (thirty shillings) per month for each member, and this is, fortunately, sufficient for all the ordinary expenses of a Japanese student's simple life. CHAPTER XLVIII THE EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE STUDENT WHEN I look back to the days when, twenty-five years ago, I stood up before my first class of Japanese students for a reading lesson (Guizot's " History of Civilisation " was the book we read), it is like looking back on another world. Before me, on rude benches, sat a motley crowd of ruffians unkempt, unshaven, I had almost said unwashed, with bare legs and short gowns, not short exactly with the ragged dignity of the vestment worn by the Cambridge undergrad, but short with the brevity of a thin garment worn by itself on a hot summer's day. When my class had finished reading in loud, harsh, disagree- able voices, I announced, for the second hour, a lesson in dictation, to be followed by conversation. Some of the students had brought no paper with them, but paper was not far to seek, and was torn without ceremony from the paper slides which gave light to the room. The conversation was a series of inquisitive and searching questions about my birthplace, my age, the extent of my family, and other personal details, varied with demands that I should there and then give them an extemporised address on the civilisa- tion of England. Presently I found that human and humane hearts beat under those rough externals, and that the seeming lions only required a little proper teaching and good-humoured management to turn into veritable lambs. The Keiogijuku has now blossomed into a great school, and some of the " ruffians " of that class have since become distinguished men who occupy posts of great importance and dignity. I doubt whether they would recognise themselves to-day, could they be taken back twenty years to see themselves once more as they used to be. 268 EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE STUDENT 269 The fact is that, in those days, the students of Japan had inherited revolutionary ideals and traditions. It could not be otherwise. All during the first half of the nineteenth century, to be a student of Western science was almost tantamount to being a revolutionist. It was the " Dutch students " the men who, at the peril sometimes of their lives, had laboured to acquire the language of the traders from Holland who, linking themselves with the Imperialists who drew their inspiration from the ancient legends, engineered the great revolution whose end we can even now scarcely foresee. There are fashions in these things. There was a time when English students and others tried to dress after the style made fashionable by Lord Byron. When I came to Japan it was the fashion for a student to ape the ways of a Ronin or masterless samurai. If you asked them what they were after, it was " civilisation." Everything Japanese was looked upon as barbarian, everything Western was "civilised," and, as such, to be drunk in, whatever it might be. The ardent youth was all of one mind in its desire for acquiring the supposed higher culture of the West. The teacher, who knew as much as he wanted about the conditions at home, was apt sometimes to become bored with having to answer questions about civilisation. The fashion did not last for long, though the fever was pretty severe whilst it raged. Sager heads suggested that Japan possessed an ancient civilisation of its own, which there was no need to discard in its entirety. More prudent observers spoke their minds to the effect that there was no true patriotism in the boisterous swagger of the so ski (as these wild students were often called) with their braggart talk of Yamato damashii (" the spirit of Japan "). More practical thinkers saw that teaching of a positive kind was needed to ensure the ultimate success of the principles for which the Meiji Revolu- tion had been carried out. Bushido was revived, expanded, and made the dominant principle of national morals ; instruction was made less theoretic and more adapted to everyday needs, no expense of trouble and money was spared in the discovery of the best methods : and the result has been extraordinary. The students I had before me this morning were clean, orderly, well- 2;o EVERY-DAY JAPAN dressed, with habits and methods of work which would pass muster anywhere. Indeed, I might go further and say that, in his eagerness to learn, the Japanese student is ahead of his compeers in other lands. The only difficulty in teaching him is that he does not know how to work by himself, that he wants to be passive in the class-room rather than active, receiving all from his teacher, as far as possible without mental exertion of his own, and that he has a confidence in his note-book which ultimately ruins his memory. It will therefore be understood that Japanese students are not all absolute perfection. I am continually being reminded of the fact that God has "made of one blood all nations of men," and that human nature in its broad outlines is pretty well the same everywhere. The majority of my students are good workers faithful, steady, diligent, polite. I have, however, known Japanese students who have been vicious, spendthrifts, idlers, incompetent, stupid, and, that worst of all adjectives, hope- less. These gentlemen will cheat in examinations and crib with unblushing effrontery. When public examinations are held, as, for instance, entrance examinations for Government schools, public services, or the like, where great crowds of candidates are assembled, each candidate has his photograph nailed to the desk in front of him, and the features of the writer must tally with those of the man in the photograph. But I have very seldom heard of a case of bullying, and I never knew of a student who " sneaked " or did anything against those rules of etiquette and good behaviour which govern the schoolboy world everywhere. " Schoolboy honour " is no idle expression in this land, where students have lives of so much freedom and choice, and " men are but children of a larger growth." You can see in miniature, in every Japanese school, that wonderful power of hanging together which was so remarkable in the whole nation during the great crisis of the late war, and has been so throughout their whole history. An English reader, with his exalted ideas of the value of athleticism, will probably ask first about the games played at Japanese schools. The old-fashioned pastimes of Japanese JAPANESE FENCERS. HOW THE JAPANESE KEEP WARM IN WINTER. UNDER THE QUILT IS A CHARCOAL FIRE IN A PROTECTED BRAZIER. EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE STUDENT 271 schools are fencing, wrestling, jiu-jitsu, and archery, which will be found everywhere, though they are probably no longer quite so prominent as they used to be. No school would, even nowadays, be considered properly equipped, without provision having been made for instruction in fencing, wrestling, and jiu-jitsu ; and in a secluded corner of the university grounds I have often seen the quieter and more sedentary students practising archery, for which their forefathers were as justly famed as were our English bowmen who fought against the French at Crecy and Poictiers. But newer pastimes are claiming a continually increasing share of patronage. Cricket is practically non-existent, and there are not many schools which go in for football, though there are a few teams both for " Socker " and for Rugby; but baseball and lawn tennis are to be found everywhere, and a Japanese team from one of our larger and wealthier schools has even crossed the Pacific to meet the Americans in California on their own ground and in their own national sport. All the larger institutions in Tokyo have their boat-clubs, and the college regattas on the Sumida are much patronised by the whole student community. All schools also have their annual or semi-annual athletic meetings, and at least once in every year there is a school excursion to some neighbouring place of historical interest or scenic beauty. I fear that to me the chief feature of these meet- ings is the fact that a regatta, athletic meeting, or excursion, necessitates one day's holiday for preparation, another for the event itself, and a third day for the students to recover from their fatigue. This seems a very large allowance in the way of holidays, but then it must be borne in mind that the regular school hours are very long, with lessons going on from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., that there is no regular half-holiday except on Saturday, and that even the afternoon of Saturday is frequently taken up with lecture meetings and debates. The ordinary Japanese student is a born orator, and one of his greatest pleasures, next to that of hearing his own voice, is that of listening to the orations of others. There never was such a nation of listeners as the Japanese. What is to my mind a very commendable feature in Japanese schools is that, whilst the advantages of bodily exercise are fully 2/2 EVERY-DAY JAPAN recognised, athleticism has nevertheless been kept rigidly in its own proper place. The school is distinctly a place for study, and, as there are few if any Japanese students who do or can look forward to a life of leisure and ease, the great mass of students enters thoroughly into the principal objects of the school curricu- lum. The drudgery of school-work is reduced to a minimum when a whole class is willing and interested, and keenly anxious to get the utmost good out of the work of the institution. In most other countries it is the task of the teacher to keep his pupils up to the mark ; in Japan, things are reversed, and the most popular of teachers is soon made to feel the resentment of his classes if he fails to give them matter which is practically useful. And the Japanese mind is so precocious that compara- tively young students think themselves quite able to form a clear conception of what kind of instruction will help them, whether in their examinations, or in their subsequent careers. If one considers the comparative precocity of the Japanese youth, as well as the wild and lawless traditions which the students of twenty years ago had inherited from their predeces- sors, and adds thereto the further consideration that twenty years ago parental authority was at its lowest in Japan, for the reason that the go-ahead sons were conscious of knowing a great deal more than their old-fashioned, old-world parents, and also that the supply of really qualified teachers was painfully small and insufficient it will not be wondered at that in those early days strikes sometimes took place which bore a speaking testimony to the power of organisation which is innate in the Japanese. Strikes in the old days were of two kinds: (i) against the cook, a form of revolt which may be found sporadically in other countries also, and which is now mostly avoided in Japan by allowing the students in their corporate capacity to make their own arrangements with the makanai (cook); and (2) strikes against the authorities, which were more serious. The biggest affair of this kind that I remember was in 1885 or 1886, when the whole of the great Keiogijuku College, with the exception of one class, went out on strike over some grievance about class-marks, and refused for more than a month to receive EVOLUTION OF THE JAPANESE STUDENT 273 the instructions of their professors. When the strike was finished, students and professors had a grand feast of reconciliation in the playground, where speeches were made and toasts drunk. A short time ago I still possessed a big photograph of this entente cordiale established between teachers and taught. But I must warn my readers that I am talking of events which took place many years ago. Things are very much changed now. School strikes on a very small scale do indeed still take place from time to time, but they are mild affairs when compared with the heroics of the past. The go-ahead student of twenty years ago is the go-ahead parent of to-day, and has succeeded in re- establishing over his children that parental authority which for the time slipped from the grasp of his old-world father ; and the crude teacher of the early days has made room for the better trained teacher of to-day, so that the whole atmosphere of the Japanese school has undergone a change for the better. There is indeed very much still that needs improvement, but the steady reform of schools is constantly going on, and is an abiding and re-assuring earnest of future progress. But let me close this chapter with a serious word of warning. The Japanese school is a model of the principles of secular education, fearlessly and logically applied. It is an experiment that has succeeded wonderfully well, but let it not be supposed that the full results of the experiment have yet become apparent. The moral fibre of the Japanese student has not kept pace with the improvement in his dress and his skill in handling the tennis- racket and the oar. Every year brings to the educationalist in Japan the sense of something wanting, the absence of which, like the one brick that was missing in the Enchanted Palace of the fairy tale, prevents the attainment of absolute perfection. The thing lacking is a recognised moral code, one that is taught with the enthusiasm that is born of conviction, and accepted with the reverence that comes of faith. Ten years hence all Japan will be saying that secular education is a failure, but what there is to fill the gap it is not quite so easy to see. We can only do what Nehemiah did of old, and wait for a priest to stand up with Urim and Thummim. CHAPTER XLIX GRADUATION AND AFTER ONE of my pupils once recommended me to read a book entitled " Ryojin no Jihaku," or " The Confessions of a Husband." He told me it was one of the best Japanese novels he had ever read, and I have found much to support the verdict, as far as the first volume is concerned. The later volumes are Socialistic, and pro- pound most distressing views on the sacredness of marriage ; but the earlier chapters give an accurate picture of actual condi- tions of life in Japan. I propose, therefore, to take a few pages from the life of Shirai Shunzo, the hero of the book, and to supplement his experiences with criticisms and explanations of my own. The story opens with Degree Day at the Imperial University of Tokyo. The streets leading towards the university are, on a hot July morning, lined with expectant crowds, kept in order by the dapper little policemen who are so much en evidence in Japan. The great gate of the college is decorated and flagged ; inside the gates, and on either side of the drive, are marshalled the members of the university, professors, officers, students, with a goodly array of Court officials, Cabinet Ministers, and other persons of distinction, all awaiting the arrival of the Emperor, who always honours Degree Day with his presence. After some minutes an outrider makes his appearance, to herald the approach of His Majesty, and everybody makes ready to receive him. Presently he arrives, and is received, not with wild acclamation as in England, but in dead silence, with bowed heads. Here we have a difference at once between Japan and England. In England we like to show tumultuous and boisterous affection ; in Japan, respectful silence has been required from 274 GRADUATION AND AFTER 275 the subject in the presence of his Sovereign. The word Banzai has been popularised since I have been in Japan ; it was invented to meet the necessities of the times. It is only a stagnant people that can be content with silent homage ; where there is activity and life there must also be noise. There has been no lack of boisterous noisiness in the receptions accorded to Togo and his seamen, and since that time the Emperor himself has actually been cheered in the streets. When the Imperial cortege has driven slowly up the drive to the entrance of the college buildings, a procession is formed into the Great Hall, and there the whole company stands until the diplomas and prizes have been given and the formal speeches read. Degree Day at the Tokyo University is quite different from the boisterous functions at the Senate House in Cam- bridge. There are no jokes to enliven the scene, and the whole assembly is silent as though engaged in worship. There are no sounds save the voices of the deans summoning their pupils to receive their diplomas, and no movement apparent except the passing to and fro of the students whose names are called. Whilst the ceremony, in the novel, is at its height, a melancholy figure, in the uniform of a student, comes slinking out of the building, and walks dejectedly towards the gate, with head droop- ing and eyes cast down. We should suppose that he was one of the " plucked " ones, and that he could not endure to see the triumph of his more fortunate classmates but that is not so. He is a yutosei graduate in law (in Cambridge parlance, Senior in the Law Tripos), and has won the Emperor's prize to boot* * In Japan, where everything is systematic and orderly, every village has its shogakko or elementary school, which every child has to attend ; and every county or town has its koto shogakko, or higher elementary school, for those who have gone through the rudiments of learning but are not old enough to enter the next grade of school, which is the chugakko, or middle school, of which each prefecture and town has at least one. When the chugakko course is finished the boy may go into business (if he is a labourer he goes at the end of the shogakko}, or into one of the higher special schools, as the School of Commerce, Technology, Navigation, or into one of the non-official universities, as the Keiogijuku or Waseda. If he wishes to enter the State University, he first takes a course at the Koto Gakko, or High School, of which there are five, and thence goes to the Imperial Universities of Tokyo or Kyoto. Tokyo is the senior and the larger university, and therefore to be yutosei at Tokyo is the highest degree a Japanese student can take. 2;6 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Shirai Shunzo had, therefore, nothing to be dejected about. But he was a dreaming idealist, and as he had stood in the hall the thought had come over him that his happy college days were finished, with their dreams and ambitions, that to-morrow he must be a man of the world, and that the world had in store for him some tasks which it would be very difficult to perform. The thought quite overcame him ; he could not endure to remain to the end of the ceremony, but, bursting unceremoniously out of the hall, rushed off to his lodging-house, where, in spite of the kindness of his landlady, he gave himself up a prey to melancholy. The deep-seated sentimentalism of young Japan, often veiled under most prosaic exteriors, is a phenomenon which is a constant surprise to me, familiar though I ought to be with it. It shows itself, sometimes in a moist film over the eyes when a touching incident is being read in class, sometimes in a touchiness which takes offence at some most trivial matter, sometimes in a melan- choly and despair that leads to suicide. It has its ridiculous aspects, but it is, after all, the presence of this vein of strange sentimentalism that makes Japan capable of rising to such heights of self-sacrifice and patriotism. The boarding-house in which Shunzo took refuge was kept by a widow woman of the name of Masuda, with one little daughter of ten or eleven years old, Yaechan by name, between whom and Shirai a great friendship had arisen. In a city like Tokyo, with a student population of more than twenty thousand young people from every part of the country, there are naturally very many of these boarding-houses, where students can get the modest accommodation which is all they need for sums varying from twelve shillings to one pound a month. In return for this they get a room some nine feet by six, three simple meals a day, and attendance. They bring their own furniture with them a writing-table, a lamp, a few flat cushions to sit upon, a bookcase, an inkstand, and some bedding which last they put into the cupboard during the daytime. A small valise suffices to hold all their clothes, and in most cases they have to sweep and dust their rooms for themselves. The students in these GRADUATION AND AFTER 27; lodging-houses are under no sort of discipline, and in bad houses they often learn much that is wrong.* Shirai Shunzo was, how- ever, fortunate in that respect ; for Mrs. Masuda was a good, kind, motherly woman, with a real affection for her lodger. The students attending the Tokyo schools are not all men. For the last dozen years hundreds of young women have been coming up every year to attend courses at the Women's University and other establishments for female education, and many of these girls are obliged, faute de mieux, to live in boarding-houses like the men. It must be said, to the honour of Tokyo students, male and female alike, that there have been fewer scandals arising out of this anomalous state of affairs than might have been expected. But all serious-minded people feel grave anxiety about the lack of proper provision ; for even where no harm actually arises, there is always a danger of intimate association between the sexes and of their falling in love with each other a proceeding contrary to Japanese ideas of decorum (decorum in the East is often very much the same thing as morality, and love in Japan is not quite what it is in England). This is, however, just what Shunzo had done. He had fallen in love with a lady student, the beautiful Miss Midori, and he knew that in a few days he must part with her for ever. Years before, when Shunzo was yet a boy, he had been betrothed to his cousin O Taka, and now that his college days were over, he would be obliged to return to his home amongst the mountains of Shinshu to redeem the promise made for him in the years of his nonage. It is the regular practice in Japan that marriages are arranged for the parties most concerned and not by them. The parents of a boy who is approaching the * Many efforts have been made to counteract the evils arising from the present want of system. Some schools, especially mission schools, have dor- mitories of their own ; and there are many missionaries of all nationalities and denominations who have opened boarding establishments for the reception of such students. But when all is put together it is but a trifle, and there is much cause for serious anxiety as to the ultimate results of this congregation in Tokyo of so many students of either sex. 2;8 EVERY-DAY JAPAN marriageable age will discuss a project of marriage with the farmer higher up the valley who has a daughter for whom a husband is desired ; if they do not know of any suitable young lady themselves they will commission a friend to find one. The hairdresser, who goes from house to house and gossips with the women-folk, is often a much esteemed and successful match- maker ; and when all the preliminary arrangements have been made, the persons most concerned are told of what is practically a fait accompli. Sometimes they are consulted, sometimes they are given an opportunity of seeing one another, but it also sometimes happens that husband and wife see each other for the first time at the wedding ceremony, or just before it. Love, such as we know it, is beginning to assert its presence, even in Japan ; but it is but like the faint streaks of light before the dawn. In most cases it is not required or thought of: it is enough if a wife "honour and obey" her lord. Shunzo had been betrothed, for family reasons, to his cousin, O Taka. His uncle, a wealthy landowner and money-lender, had no son, and Shunzo would, therefore, by marrying O Taka, become the heir to a large property. But quite independently of the fact that love had stepped in to claim his dues from Shunzo and Miss Midori, the idea of a marriage with O Taka had become unendurable, and there was nothing attractive for him in his uncle's money-bags. A high-souled, sentimental idealist, what had he in common with his close-fisted money- grubbing uncle ? A man of education, dreaming of great reforms, how could he endure his badly educated cousin's narrow- minded ways ? His whole soul revolted at the idea. And yet his widowed mother desired the marriage with all her heart, and he, her only son, with those lofty ideas of filial piety which one so often meets with in Japanese, could not possibly resist her wishes. He knew that it was his duty to do as his mother desired him. But it was going to be a tremendous sacrifice, and that was why his spirits were so low at a moment when he ought to have been so full of a well-earned happiness and elation. GRADUATION AND AFTER 279 Shirai Shunzo's is by no means a solitary case. The new learning is changing the lives of thousands daily in this country, and it is becoming a problem of growing importance in town and country alike, how to harmonise the results of the new education with the spirit of the ancient institutions. CHAPTER L STUDENTS FROM OTHER LANDS THE conclusion of the war with China, fourteen years ago, left Korea at the mercy of Japan, and though this country was not able to carry out all her designs at that time, still it seemed for the moment that Japan was going to be the paramount power in the Korean peninsula, just as she is once more now, after her victories over Russia. The moment of victory seemed to be the time for assuming towards Korea the role of an educator, and hundreds of Korean students were shipped over to this country to be instructed A batch of two hundred or so was sent to the Keiogijuku, the great Tokyo school which has played so creditable a part in the development of New Japan. I can well remember their arrival. Embarking at Chemulpo, in the long, flowing, white robes of Korean gentlemen, they had had a three days' tossing on the sea, in the steerage of a second-rate Japanese coasting steamer, followed by a long third-class railway journey from Kobe, during the whole of a dusty night in early autumn ; and when the Keiogijuku en masse, and with beating drums and waving banners, turned out to meet them at Shimbashi, they were indeed a sorry sight. The first thing to be done was to put them to bed to have their clothes washed. When that had been done they were provided with pocket-money and taken to see the sights. They spent their money in buying watches and having their photographs taken. When that excitement was over, they were put into the clothes of the ordinary Japanese students, shorn of their queues and top-knots, and set to work at their books. They were neither very diligent, nor very apt, and the experiment was hardly a 280 STUDENTS FROM OTHER LANDS 281 success. Still, when the treasurer of a club, which had been founded for them by the Japanese, got off to America, treasury and all, people began to feel that the Koreans were getting on, and would soon be able to graduate. Japan has, in Korea, a problem very similar to that which has always faced us in Ireland. There is an absolute dis- similarity of mental characteristics between the Island Empire and the Peninsula, and there is no love lost between the two peoples, who have long been alienated from one another by the memories of bygone wars in the long past, as well as by the galling sense of present misunderstandings. The antipathies are not entirely owing to the Japanese. Many of this country have been animated by a sincere desire to help the Koreans, but the Koreans are stupid, lazy, thriftless, and have turned a deaf ear to all the generous appeals made to them by the Japanese. Neither is it entirely the fault of the Koreans. The Japanese who have most keenly felt a desire to help the Koreans have, as a rule, remained at home and written magazine articles ; those who have gone to Korea have often been the men who wanted to help themselves and not the Koreans ; and just as Ireland in Elizabeth's time and after became a hunting- ground for unprincipled English adventurers, so the name of Japan has been made to stink in Korean nostrils by worthless men, who seem to have gone there to show to the world how bad a bad Japanese can be. The matter will right itself as the Japanese authorities obtain a better grasp of the reins of power in the land, and a keener sense of responsibility, and as they become better able to control their subjects ; but in the meantime the unscrupulous dealings of the immediate past and present have left a wound which it will take years of good government and righteous administration to heal completely. The Korean students have now all gone, and their places have been taken by students from China and India, who have come to add interest and colour to the already variegated life of the Japanese metropolis. The present experiment has more chances of success than the Korean one had, for the Japan of 1909 is a very different 282 EVERY-DAY JAPAN country from the Japan of 1896, and Tokyo actually has at this moment a very large amount of excellent teaching power The Chinaman, too, is a very different person from the Korean. He, like the Indian, has learned to read the signs of the times, is anxious to learn, to go home as a reformer, to see his country regenerated. He conies to Japan ; the Korean was only sent. The Indian student comes to this country for technical studies mainly, though in part also, of course, to learn what is the secret of Japan's success in the world. He is not much en evidence in the streets indeed, his numbers are comparatively small but he writes, generally with intelligence, in the Tokyo papers. The Chinese student comes for the rudiments of a general modern education, and the housing of his hordes has given considerable anxiety to the educational authorities in the capital. It was bad enough to find board and lodging in one city for twelve or fifteen thousand Japanese students (not school-children) of both sexes, and the question of accommodating the female students alone was in itself a problem of consider- able magnitude. But Tokyo has been further invaded by an army of over ten thousand Chinese students, and that this horde should have been provided for with so little friction speaks volumes for Japanese powers of administration. There has been friction, of course, for the Chinese student has come as a lover of liberty and has resented the imposition of discipline. He has learned now that there are bounds and limits which he must not overstep, if he would preserve his liberty, and has settled down quietly, in schools especially provided for him, to the study of elementary knowledge. He is, outwardly at least, orderly and well-behaved. He dresses, when in the streets, as any Japanese student would do, wearing the uniform of the school he belongs to ; and were it not for his walk, and that peculiarly bland smile which the Celestial always wears, might be easily mistaken for a subject of Yamato. It is a good omen for Japan to see these students from other countries flocking to her capital city to acquire the know- ledge which she can best impart to them. Here in Tokyo one sees Japanese life at its very best ; at the fringes and outskirts STUDENTS FROM OTHER LANDS 283 of the Empire, and in the lands which Japan is now exploiting, one sees the people only too often at their worst. When China moves and the movement has already begun and when, in some more distant day, India also begins to bestir herself with the consciousness of a new life, it will be found that the in- spiration I have no fear of it : it will, I think, be a good one will have come from Tokyo, and the men who will guide and manipulate those movements will have learned their lessons in what, to an Oriental, must always be the more congenial atmo- sphere of a Japanese classroom, at the place where Japanese life is best and most attractive. Yet again, we must fain admit that many of the students from foreign lands have been pro- foundly disappointed by what they found in Tokyo classrooms. They had been taken in by the fulsome adulation of things Japanese which went round the world a few years ago. They came to Japan, as to a people that had attained, they found her as one still struggling after attainment, and they went back disappointed. Over-adulation is a most dangerous poison. Let us hope that some of the disillusioned will go home with the realisation of the truth that no nation can save another. Each nation must work out its own salvation, and God helps those who help themselves. CHAPTER LI THE SHUSHI PHILOSOPHER IT was a cold winter's night about the end of December, some eight or nine years ago. I had been attending a meeting at the other end of Tokyo, and was returning home, as the manner of the city then was, by jinriksha. The streets were practically empty, for there was nothing to tempt men abroad, and as I was drawn along the quiet thorough- fare which my jinriksha-man had selected, there was but one man to be seen in front of me. One man, and the whole width of the street wherein to pass him! One would have thought that a collision was impossible ; but my jinriksha-man must have fallen asleep while running, for suddenly I, who was sitting in the jinriksha with the hood drawn and the apron up so that I could not well see what was going on felt a jerk and a bump which almost threw me off \my seat. My jinriksha-man had managed to run down the solitary passenger in the street. I expected for a moment an exhibition of temper, and an outpouring of Japanese words of abuse (for the man looked quite a common workman, and there are " swear-words " in Japanese as well as in other languages) ; but in this I was mistaken. The unfortunate victim of my jinriksha-man's carelessness, who had surely received provocation enough to justify a saint in losing his temper, quietly picked himself out of the mud, and then in the calm, impassive voice of a judge, proceeded to point out to my jinriksha-man the error of his ways. The effect on the jinriksha-man was simply amazing. He had expected an alterca- tion, and was preparing himself to give back as much as he received ; but when all he got was a gentle remonstrance : a Friend, wherefore hast thou done this ? " he merely bowed his 284 THE SHUSHI PHILOSOPHER 285 head in simple contrition. Even I, who had had nothing to do with the accident, except perhaps by unconsciously giving the impetus of my weight to the collision, went away from that inter- view a very much saddened man. I found out afterwards that the man whom we had run into was not indeed a saint, but what in Eastern eyes is far greater, a sage, an adept in the teachings of Confucius as improved upon and deepened by the great Shushi (Chinese, Chuhi, A.D. 1130-1200), the apostle of self -discipline and culture. His calm- ness under provocation was thus nothing to be wondered at, for Shushi' s teaching represents the very highest moral teaching that is to be found anywhere in the East, and if a Shushi philosopher, who is always practising self-discipline, cannot restrain himself, there is no one else in the world that can do it. When the history of Japan comes adequately to be written, and an impartial inquiry can be made into the nature and origin of bus hid o, it will be seen how much that system of ethics owes to the great Chinese sage Shushi, of whom the Western world has remained so strangely ignorant There are many schools of Confucianistic teaching, and it is the great merit of Shushi to have raised Confucianism from a dead mass of ceremonialism, ancestor-worship, and devil-cult, to a really living system of moral culture and ethics, the rival of Roman Stoicism in its palmiest days ; and it is quite characteristic of the Japanese, who have always gone about choosing and adapting what they found to be best, to have selected Shushi as their type of ethical teach- ing, just as they have taken the best of Buddhism, and just as they are beginning to take the best of Christianity and the best of Western thought. The teachings of Shushi came to Japan during the civil troubles of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, the period of strife and confusion during which was formed the unwritten code of Japanese chivalry which is now so world-famed. It entered largely into the elements which formed the character of Hideyoshi, the flower of knighthood, and of the great lyeyasu. Under lyemitsu, the contemporary of our Charles L, and the suppressor of Christianity, it became the official system of moral 286 EVERY-DAY JAPAN education, and such it remained until the Restoration of the Imperial House, in 1867, brought about a change of conditions. All the men of leading and light during the last three centuries have come under Shushi influences, and nearly all of them have been proud to consider themselves disciples of the sage. To-day, Shushi principles are by far the most powerful of all the moral elements that go to the making of Japan as it is. I do not mean to say that Shushi principles are universally adopted, any more than I should say that Christian principles are uni- versally adopted in England or America. There are many Japanese, e.g. the Japanese " carpet-baggers " in Korea, that are giving their country such a bad name among the nations, who act in direct opposition to the teachings of Shushi, and deride him as old-fashioned and behind the times ; yet all the best elements in Japan work along Shushi lines, just as all the best elements in England or America work along Christian ones. " Father," said a young boy of my acquaintance, " I want to become a Christian ; will you let me be one ? " The father was a devoted Shushi believer. He did not lose his temper with his son, but he set to work to teach him, and having himself travelled widely and kept eyes and ears open to what was going on around him, he was able to do so well. " My son," he said, " there is nothing wrong with Christian doctrine in its main and essential features, though there are local excrescences which seem foolish and absurd. And there is nothing wrong with Christ, whom, though I don't revere him as God, as the Christians do, I recog- nise as having been a powerful teacher of men. But there is a good deal wrong with Christian practice, and I think that what I shall tell you will give you reason to pause. " Some years ago there was the Boxer trouble in China, and our troops came nobly to the front in putting down the trouble. It was not unnatural that the Chinese, who have always been trained to hate and despise foreign nations, should have behaved as they did. The Chinese are not followers of Shushi as we are, and there is nothing in their religion, as they know it, to reprobate racial hatred and animosity. But what are we to say when we see Christians in Russia deliberately massacring the oppressed THE SHUSHI PHILOSOPHER 287 people of the Jews, not once, but frequently? Or what are we to say of the conduct of the French clergy in their malicious attacks on Dreyfus, and their hatred of atheistic freemasonry ? Or what shall we say if we turn to America, and see Christian white men lynching Christian negroes, out of pure race hatred ? Or, what are we to say to the spectacle of educational discord in England ? " " My son," he said, after a pause, " take all that is good in Christian doctrines and hold Christ in high esteem, and help Christians in all good works, but don't join their fellowship or follow after them, until their practice has been made to square with their doctrines. Or, if you must make a profession of Christianity, have a Japanese Christianity which shall recognise the good that was in our land before the Westerners came, and let it be known that Japanese Christians have no part or lot in the barbarities of the West" The young man saw reason to pause. And there are tens of thousands in Japan to-day in the same attitude of benevolent neutrality. "Ah! if only " CHAPTER LII MONEY-LENDERS AND LANDLORDS IN a former chapter, describing the graduation ceremony at the Imperial University, I gave a novelist's description of the feelings of a new-fledged B.A. as he realised that his happy undergraduate days were ended, and that now he must face the realities of life ; the first fact that stared him in the face being the prospect of going down into the country, and there fulfilling the contract made for him by his parents that he should marry his badly-educated cousin. I resume the same theme in my present chapter. Resolved not to grieve his mother, Shunzo returned to his home as soon as he had wound up his University affairs, to make the best of what he felt would be a disagreeable duty, involving a possible life-time of misery, but yet the right sacrifice for a dutiful son to make. We will not accompany Shunzo on his journey home, which would lie past Karuizawa. We will suppose that the railway journey is over, and that he has walked from the station to his mother's home, which was also the home of his uncle, and of the prospective bride who had such terrors for him. Shunzo's return had been expected for days, and Shunzo's uncle had begged him to send a telegram to announce his coming, so that the whole village might turn out to do honour to the yutosei student, who had done so well at college. But Shunzo had purposely disobeyed his uncle, and had quietly come home without warning or notice, to avoid the fuss which the villagers were prepared to make over him. His arrival was therefore a bit of a surprise. Still, they wel- comed him heartily. As soon as his form appeared through the 288 MONEY-LENDERS AND LANDLORDS 289 big gate of the homestead, the servants all hurriedly left their occupations and crowded together at the kitchen door to greet their young master. Inside the kitchen, Shunzo sat down on the edge of the platform which forms the floor of the house, and pro- ceeded to take off his waraji. But he was not allowed to do it for himself. His old nurse and her husband life-long servants of the family came forward to do this office for him : a tub of fresh water was brought from the well for the washing of the travel-stained feet, and not till then was he allowed to stand upon the mats and advance to receive the salutations of his uncle and the other members of the family. There they stood, the uncle, quiet and dignified, as becomes the master of the house, the aunt, fretful and peevish, yet proud of her promising nephew, the cousin, soon to be the bride, curiously wondering what sort of a husband he was going to make, and behind them all, the dear, frail, old mother, who had tottered out from her bed of sickness to greet her only child East or West, human nature is the same. The Japanese, in spite of their proprieties and decorum, are the most democratic people in the world. The officer chats with his men as he marches beside them, the servant considers it his privilege to join in the conversation of his master and mistress. There is no consciousness of a division between above stairs and below. A Japanese house is a family. As Shunzo stands, the centre of the group, with his mother's wasted hand laid on his strong shoulder for support, the servants burst out with admiring remarks about his stature and healthy appearance. "And to think, madam," says one, to Shunzo's mother, "that this is the child we never hoped to rear. Do you remember, the doctor used to come and see him every three days? And how many prayers we offered at Zenkoji and Hachiman for the preservation of his life." " It shows," says the old man-servant, " that the gods and Buddhas truly exist. They have heard our prayers." The prospect of having to keep the promise of marriage which had been made for him by his elders and betters, and to which he had at best yielded but a reluctant consent, did not become 2 9 o EVERY-DAY JAPAN any more attractive to Shunzo, after he had been a short time at home. He found his prospective bride selfish, prejudiced, and narrow, utterly incapable of entering into his hopes and ambitions, and determined that, whatever happened, she would not allow her hus- band to live in Tokyo, where she, a country girl with no education, would be a mere nonentity. It must not be supposed, whatever Japanese writers of the male sex may say to the contrary, that the Japanese woman is always the meek, submissive creature that she is represented to be in the goody-goody books. She has been provided by nature with a tongue, like most people (the ideo- graph which is used to signify " noise," or " a row," represents three women under a roof), and trusting to weapons of nature, O Taka determined to keep her husband cooped up in Shiojiri, or, at the worst, in the neighbouring country town of Matsumoto, where, as a lawyer's wife, for instance, she might hope to have a good social position. The conflict had already begun when the following incident took place. One day, shortly after his arrival, Shunzo's uncle took him for a walk, and resting under a tree at the summit of a hill which commanded the smiling valley beneath, descanted on his own wealth and prospects. "All this valley," he said, "is practically mine. That man Shiose, who lives in the big house yonder, is head over ears in debt, nominally to the Bank at Matsumoto, but really to myself. Whenever I choose to say the word, he falls, and I take his place. To all my wealth you are the heir ; it will all be yours as the husband of Taka, and you are therefore in a position to embrace any honourable career you like. Only, I bar politics, for political life is nothing but a sheer waste of money. It is by going in for politics that that man Shiose has ruined himself." The words were a terrible blow to Shunzo's hopes, for a political life is the ultimate dream of every ambitious Japanese student. It is true that some men avoid the life, because there is no money in it, or not enough ; but the Idealist dreams of parliamentary life as a means for enabling him to carry out those social reforms which he feels to be so important for the country, VIEW NEAR AGEMATSU ON THE NAKASENDO. MIYAGIMA IN THE INLAND SEA. Photographs by permission of T. 7>'. HI on, J-s,/. A SUNNY CORNER ON A WINTER'S DAY. MONEY-LENDERS AND LANDLORDS 291 whilst there are not a few who look to the loaves and fishes, to the salary paid to parliamentary representatives, and to the chances of the " squeeze " which an active and unscrupulous mem- ber may so often get for himself. Even the man who resolves to be a merchant still hopes that when his fortune is made he may end his days in the Chamber of Representatives if not in that of the Peers. Shunzo was learning that the carrying out of his obligations was going to involve much self-sacrifice. A few minutes later he learned that it implied even more. Whilst they were thus sitting, Shunzo and his uncle on the root of a tree, and the old servant a few yards away, a man came by them, a lame peasant, very poorly clad, and carrying on his back a heavy load of mulberry leaves which he had been gathering for the silkworms. When he caught sight of Shunzo's uncle, he stopped, with a look of rage on his careworn face, turned sharply from the path, and dashed down the hill through the thick bamboo grass. Shunzo's uncle also seemed strangely perturbed. No sooner had the man disappeared from sight than he rose from his seat, and remarking that it was time to get home, started off at a sharp pace, leaving Shunzo and the old servant to follow at their leisure. As the two walked slowly down the hill, the old servant related the history of the strange-looking, lame peasant. His parents their name was Noma had formerly been small peasant pro- prietors in fairly good circumstances. They had had three sons, the third, the lame fellow who had just passed them, and who had the reputation of being half-witted, having been born as the result of his mother's conjugal infidelity. A series of misfortunes had befallen the family. The eldest son had perished in one of the great floods which from time to time cause such havoc in the country. The second had gone as a soldier, and had never come back ; rumour said that he had been bullied to death by a ser- geant, who had taken a spite against him, and whom he had been too poor to bribe into kindness; a series of bad seasons had followed, with sickness resulting from old age. The land and homestead had passed long ago into the usurer's clutches, the 292 EVERY-DAY JAPAN usurer being none other than Shunzo's uncle. And now the aged parents, destitute and miserable, were dragging out a wretched existence on the petty day-labourer's wages which were all that the half-witted Yosa could earn. The old servant was sufficiently loyal to his master not to tell Shunzo the whole truth. It was left for a subsequent day to disclose that the usurer who had ruined the Noma family and reduced them to such abject misery was indeed Yosa's real father. It was for the sake of Shunzo's uncle that Yosa's mother had proved herself an unfaithful wife. The chapter of the novel from which I have taken these incidents might well give a writer on Japan a text from which to preach. The usurer is one of the universal elements of Japanese fiction. I have not read a single Japanese novel certainly not a modern one in which the villain has not been a money-lender. Indebtedness shares with misplaced affection the burden of every play and every romance. It is no mere fiction, no mere invention of the playwriter's pen. It is one of the most serious features in the social economy of Japan. It is not so bad in the towns, where people are making money and have done so especially since the war with Russia. But it presses very heavily on the agricultural classes. This indebtedness is due partly to the pressure of an old- world etiquette. Ask a Japanese mercantile clerk why he wears European clothes instead of his own comfortable Japanese dress, and he will tell you that etiquette demands so much in the way of dress from a Japanese gentleman that it is cheaper to take to the foreign clothes, which are exempt from the sumptuary laws of fashion. The wedding of a gentleman costs a large sum of money. When he dies, etiquette will demand of his heirs the expenditure of large sums on costly funeral rites. When a Japanese entertains his friends he does it in grand style ; there is hardly such a thing as dropping in to take pot luck. Etiquette is a terrible tyrant in Japan. Another cause, to which I have already alluded, as affecting the agricultural districts, is the heaviness of the land tax. In the towns, where the land-tax is naturally a less prominent factor, luxury and the love of ostentation draw many a man into the MONEY-LENDERS AND LANDLORDS 293 meshes of the usurer. Outward circumstances may differ from age to age and from country to country, but the heart of man is all one. There are places in Japan where an apostle of the simple life is needed quite as much as in London, Paris, or New York. For the simple life is the result of the simple heart, and a man may sit on tatami and eat with chopsticks and yet lead a life which is anything but a simple one. The eldest son of the Noma family had lost his life in a flood. This brings us to one of the permanent causes of agricultural distress the frequency of natural calamities. Within my own memory I can recall to mind several natural catastrophes, some of them of an appalling nature. The first summer that I was in Japan there were serious floods in the neighbourhood of Osaka. I was a newcomer then, and consequently more impressionable. But looking back now over the years that have elapsed since then, it seems to me that there has not been a single summer without its floods in some part or other of the country. Of great earthquakes I remember two at least of exceptional severity, one in the neighbourhood of Gifu, which caused widespread distress in the year 1891, and one a few years later around Tsurugaoka, in the north. Of minor earthquakes there was a severe one in Tokyo in 1894, which did not, however, affect agriculture, though it did much damage to town houses, and, as everyone knows, smaller shocks are of constant occurrence. I have not included the great eruption of Bandai San in 1887, though it deserves to be ranked with the catastrophe in Mar- tinique a few years ago ; and as for tidal waves, the great Tsunami, which swept over our coasts in 1897 makes Japan the holder of the " record " performance for this class of events. All these things tend to impoverish the farmer, who has on his shoulders the further heavy responsibility of being called upon to produce sufficient food for the needs of a growing nation from an area of arable land which is ridiculously out of proportion to the extent of the country. The result has been that whilst the inhabitants of the towns, thanks to the marvellous " boom " in industry and commerce, have been getting rich, the agricultural population has become steadily 294 EVERY-DAY JAPAN poorer. The peasant proprietors are disappearing, and we are getting a class of landlords and absentee landlords at that who live in the towns and rent the lands they have acquired to the sons of the former peasant proprietors, of whom many have sunk from tenant farmers to day-labourers. The poverty of the agri- cultural population was seen in the famine which raged a few years since in the north, in the statistics of the emigration com- panies which make it their business to provide labour for Hawaii, Mexico, and Peru, and in the great tracts of uncultivated land in the north of the main island. As soon as ways are found of developing the agricultural districts as energetically and as pru- dently as the cities and towns have been developed, so soon will the outflow of emigration be checked, doubtless to the satisfaction of British Columbia and San Francisco. In all this I have no word of blame for Japan. She has done very much, we cannot expect her to do everything at once. CHAPTER LIII A MARRIAGE IN JAPAN FROM time to time I receive from some of my friends or former pupils a neatly-printed card of invitation in Japanese, of course informing me of a marriage which has just taken place, or which is about to take place, and inviting me to be present at a feast to be given in honour of the event. The invitation is generally given in the names of the parents of bridegroom and bride and of the friends whose intervention has brought the marriage negotiations to a successful issue. A card of this sort, just received, will form a good text for my present chapter. The legal aspects of marriage are all regulated by the Civil Code, which has now been in force for some years. Chapter iii. of that Code provides that a man must be seventeen, and a woman fifteen, before legal marriage can take place ; it prohibits a married person from contracting another marriage, and in cases of divorce safeguards the interests of possible offspring, by enacting that a divorced woman shall not contract another marriage for at least six months, unless she was already pregnant at the time of divorce, in which case she is free to marry again as soon as the child has been born. If a person has been divorced for adultery, or received criminal sentence for this offence, he or she may not marry his or her paramour. But, alas for the ways of the world, no one ever heard of a man in Japan being divorced or sentenced for adultery. What is sin in Eve is universally condoned in Adam. A marriage cannot take place between lineal blood relatives, or between collateral blood who are within three degrees of relationship. (This does not apply as between an adopted person 295 296 EVERY-DAY JAPAN and the relatives of the adoptive parents.) Neither can it take place between relatives by marriage in the direct line, even though the relationship by marriage should have ceased by divorce or adoption into another family ; nor yet between relatives by adoption, such as an adopted son and the widow of the adoptive father, etc. A man under thirty, a woman under twenty-five, must have the consent of both parents. In certain cases the consent of one parent is sufficient ; failing parents, there must be the consent of the guardian or of the family council. The family council can override the consent of a step-parent if deemed necessary, and a person interdicted from the management of his or her property is under no obligation to obtain the consent of the guardian. The only legal requirement for a marriage is registration. Notice of the marriage must be given to the registrar by both parties and by two witnesses who are over age, and the notice may be given either verbally or by a document bearing the signatures of all. The registrar does not marry the couple, as with us; he merely records the actual fact of the marriage having taken place. A .marriage is regarded as invalid if, owing to mistaken identity (as, for instance, when Jacob married Leah thinking it was Rachel a case not impossible in Japan where bride and bridegroom sometimes scarcely see each other at all before the actual day of marriage), one of the parties had no intention to marry the other. It is also regarded as invalid if the parties neglect to give the proper notice to the registrar. One of the most painful experiences of my life as a clergyman was the case of a couple of Christians who, having been married in church by myself, neglected to notify the fact to the registrar. A marriage, otherwise valid, may be annulled if any of the conditions mentioned above have not been fulfilled. It cannot, however, be annulled if six months have elapsed since the person who had the right to give consent to the marriage became aware of the fact that the marriage has taken place, or since the discovery of the fraud, or the release from com- A MARRIAGE IN JAPAN 29; pulsion. Nor can it be annulled if the person whose consent to the marriage was necessary should afterwards ratify the fait accompli. If two years have elapsed since the registration took place the marriage cannot be annulled. A divorce can always, however, be arranged with ease. The wife enters her husband's family, except where the husband is adopted, as nyufu (" entering husband ") at marriage, or as mukoyoshi (" adopted son-in-law ") before marriage. A nyufu or mukoyoshi enters the family of his wife and changes his name. A wife is bound to live with her husband, and the husband is the wife's guardian so long as she is a minor. The husband bears all the expense connected with a marriage, except where he is only a nyufu, in which case the wife, being the head of the house, has the responsibility for expenses so incurred. The husband is also responsible for all management of property, except where special provisions have been made for the safeguarding of a wife's interests. Married persons may arrange a divorce by mutual arrange- ment ; the consent of relatives being in some cases necessary. In such cases no judicial sentence is required : a registration of the fact on the registrar's books being sufficient for all legal purposes. When mutual consent is impossible, an action may be brought in the courts : if one of the consorts commits bigamy, if the wife is guilty of adultery, if the husband has been convicted of an offence against morality, or for any offence involving major imprisonment for three years or more ; for incompatibility of temper, wilful desertion, disappearance. There is a further clause which runs thus : "If cruel treatment or gross insult is received from a lineal ascendant of the consort," or, in other words, if the marriage after having been consummated does not satisfy the father or mother-in-law and quarrels ensue. If we remember that a newly-married couple in Japan do not set up house for themselves, but go to live with the father or mother of the bride or bridegroom, we shall see that this clause is not without a justifying reason. I remember a case in one family where the father and mother forced their son to divorce 298 EVERY-DAY JAPAN his wife against his will. The son did so, and dutifully married again. The sister, however, profited by her brother's misfortunes. She married and loved her lord. But the husband, who had come to live under her father's roof, could not hit it off with his father-in-law, and there was talk of a divorce. Like Hyperm- nestra of old, she preferred her husband to her sire, and one night the young couple eloped. But though the legal formalities are so simple, the marriage itself is ceremonious enough. We will suppose that the pre- liminary arrangements have been all made in a satisfactory manner, that the parents and relatives on both sides are content, and that the future bride and bridegroom have expressed their acquiescence. The next thing to be done is the exchange of uino, or engagement gifts. The bride sends her prospective husband a suit of clothes (haori and hakama} ; the bridegroom presents his fiancee with a sash (obi). Along with these gifts go presents of fish, hemp, seaweed, incense, sake all gifts of excellent omen, and the engagement is then considered as having been formally entered upon. The next thing is to find a lucky day. Certain days e.g. January i6th and the whole month of July are known to be unlucky ; the middle of November is supposed to be the most fortunate of all seasons, but the fortune-teller will probably be invoked to give his aid before the day is finally chosen. Just before the wedding, generally on the morning of the wedding itself, the bride sends her trousseau to the bridegroom's house great wooden chests filled with dresses, household require- ments, and a sum of money, according to the rank and position of the family and each of the men carrying the boxes must have a handsome fee for his labour. The bride's toilet is elaborate and lengthy. When it is done, she appears before her family for the last time ; her hair care- fully arranged, her face and neck powdered, and wearing a dress of white silk over which is cast either a kaidori, or outer robe of silk crepe, or a long-sleeved furisode of delicate colours. The bridegroom, who is awaiting her arrival at home, is dressed in the ordinary haori and hakama of the daily life of good society. A MARRIAGE IN JAPAN 299 Before leaving her house, the bride receives from her father his parting words of comfort and advice, and is then taken to the bridegroom's house for the ceremony. The ceremony takes place in a room prepared for the purpose, and decorated with pine, bamboo, and plum blossom, which are the emblems in Japan of conjugal happiness. Before entering the room she puts on her veil, a kind of hood made of white silk wadding, which partly conceals her face, and is then con- ducted into the room where a small party awaits her. The bridegroom and his parents, the parents of the bride, the go-betweens and their wives, and two small boys who act as cup-bearers twelve persons in all form the wedding party. No others are admitted. The bride and bridegroom sit opposite one another. Between them stands a table made of white (unpainted) wood, a foot square and eighteen inches. in height. On the table stand three bowls of different sizes, one above the other. The bowls are of red lacquer, and are intended for sake. No words are spoken, no promises, no vows, no prayers ; only the sansankudo, or ceremonial exchange of wine-cups three times three, is performed. Bride and bridegroom drink alter- nately from these cups until all the sake has been consumed and each of the cups has been used three times. In this way they signify that husband and wife are partners for joy and for sorrow, and that they take each other for better or for worse. The newly-married couple now rise and offer cups of sake to their parents, after which the bride removes her veil, the ceremony being at an end, and the rest of the guests are admitted to partake of the festivities and mirth which are the accompaniments of marriage in all lands. Of local customs there are endless varieties, though the central ceremony is always the same. In some places e.g. in the Prefecture of Fukuoka they had a custom of stealing their brides, and a pretence is still made of abduction. In the island of Awaji they have a way of blackening a girl's teeth forcibly, and if the lover can succeed in doing this the girl is bound to marry him. Fires are often lighted to welcome the bride on 300 EVERY-DAY JAPAN her arrival at her new home, and games, mummery, frolics, form an invariable accompaniment of the country wedding. A married woman is now distinguishable only by the large round marumage chignon which she alone has the right to wear, and which is, to my mind at least, by far the most becoming of Japanese modes of dressing the hair. The custom once prevailed of blackening the teeth of married women, but it has now quite died out, and it is only now and again that one sees an elderly woman thus disfigured. The shaved eyebrow was also at one time the distinguishing mark of the Japanese woman, but this custom, too, is dying out As it is the ambition of every Japanese man to be in all things the equal of the Western man, so is the Japanese lady determined to continue no dis- figuring practices which are likely to handicap her in the world's competition of feminine beauty. The Japanese are very much attached to their national marriage customs. I have noticed this attachment very strongly amongst Japanese Christians. Our Western idea of a marriage in the face of a large congregation is to them a reversal of the laws of propriety ; for they hold most strongly that the marriage ceremony itself is a thing which propriety demands should be done in private. Japanese Christians are often married in church with a Christian service, but in many cases the Christian marriage service is supplemented by the native ceremony at home. It is not till then that they feel that they have been truly and properly married. THE "SHIMADA" COIFFURE, GENERALLY WORN BY UNMARRIED WOMEN. SHIMADA" COIFFURE, WITH WHITE BAND FOR MOURNING. STYLE OF HAIR-DRESSING FOR MARRIED WOMEN. A SOMEWHAT UNUSUAL STYLE OF HAIR-DRESSING. CHAPTER LIV A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE I. A PICTURE IT is 4.30 a.m. in a Japanese house, and everybody is asleep ; father, mother, and baby in one room, the boys in another, the girls in another, the married son with his wife in another. Grandmother is honoured by having a room to herself. The servant-maids are sleeping in their apartments by the kitchen, yet so that " granny " can keep them under her watchful eye ; and the men-servants are snoring in an outhouse. Everybody sleeps on the floor, under futons and on them, the upper quilt being made in the shape of a huge wadded overcoat with sleeves, the latter not being intended for the arms of the sleeper, but to tuck in behind him so as to protect the small of his back from chills. The house is not exactly still, for the sleepers in the various apartments do a good deal of groaning, and the partition walls are extremely thin. Occasionally some- one has a pipe, and you hear the striking of a match, followed by the thud on the fire-box as the tobacco ashes are knocked out after a few whiffs. Daylight is approaching ; the light of the night-lamp is burning low, and the sleepers under the huge green mosquito-nets might easily see the rays of bright daylight through the chinks in the shutters. Wh-r-r-r-r! wh-r-r-r-r! goes the alarum-clock which provident " granny " has placed in the maid-servants' room. One or two forms arouse themselves and slip out into the kitchen, whence you presently hear a few dim sounds of crackling paper and breaking firewood, for the fire is the first thing to be made. In a few minutes the fire is burning cheerily and the smoke is working its way up through the kitchen rafters to the small 301 302 EVERY-DAY JAPAN window in the roof. Then the man-servant goes into the yard to do various odd jobs, while the women go into the house to open shutters. In doing so they effectively murder sleep, for the sluggard whom the noise failed to arouse would find himself quite unable to continue his slumbers in the bright morning light amidst the bustle and excitement of a new day. One by one, boys and girls, married and unmarried, old and young, struggle out of their couches, adjust their night-garments, and go off to their ablutions either in the bathroom or in some quiet corner of a downstairs verandah. There is no morning tub, but the little brass basins are vigorously used, and there is much noisy cleaning of teeth, after which the menfolk stroll around the garden for a few minutes or lounge about the verandah, toothbrush in mouth, enjoying the view. When they come back to their rooms they find them empty, swept, and garnished. The nightlights have been taken out, and deposited on the verandah until they can be carried off to the lamproom ; the quilts have been neatly folded and put into cupboards in the walls ; the mats have been swept ; there is a little tray on a table in the middle of the room with tea-things and a few pickled plums for a morning's relish, a fire-box with fresh charcoal and a kettle, and the universal smoking apparatus. Then father and mother begin to dress, or, rather, father dresses leisurely with a good many intervals for conversation, and mother waits on him as a good wife should. Breakfast awaits the children in a room near the kitchen, and is soon being noisily discussed. While it is going on, mother goes to the kamidana, or " god's shelf," and, assisted by one of her daughters, renews the daily offering of rice and incense, trims the lights, and prays for a few moments in silent reverence. By the time the worship is finished the children have at last ended their breakfast, and are clamouring to be got ready for school. That takes some little time, especially when the family is numerous and the children are young. Hair has got to be brushed and plaited, and there are the usual recriminations and I oc LU Z z Q CO UJ Q A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE 303 expostulations from the youthful victims ; a motherly woman has the same worries in Japan as in other countries about dirty nails and grimy necks and the fear of cold water. Dresses I can't call them frocks have to be looked to, and though the boys are generally left to do their own toilets for themselves, yet there always are books which must not be forgotten, and the precious lunch-boxes which it would never do to leave behind. But all these preparations are finished in due time, and by about 7 a.m. boys and girls are off to their respective schools, the younger ones under the charge of maids, of whom there is never any dearth in a Japanese household. Then father and mother have their breakfast quietly. After breakfast mother helps him into his outdoor suit of clothes, sees that he has forgotten none of his requisites, and accom- panies him to the door where the jinriksha, freshly washed, stands ready in the porch to take him to his office. From eight to ten is a very busy time in a Japanese house- hold. During those two hours all the cleaning takes place ; rooms are dusted, verandahs and floors are washed (one cannot say scrubbed), bedding and bedclothes are put out in the sun to air, there are many things to be done in the kitchen, the baby has to be bathed, and it is fully ten o'clock before the house- mistress has a moment that she can call her own. From ten to noon she is pretty well free. During those hours she will read the newspaper with all its gossip and chit- chat, do her daily accounts, give her orders to tradesmen, write her letters, and, if studiously inclined, read a book. The house is quiet during these two hours, the storm-centre having been removed to the well, where, amidst the talking and laughing without which no Japanese can work, the maid-servants are busy cleaning rice, washing clothes, or scrubbing pots and pans, while the jinriksha-man, who has deposited his master at his office, is busy drawing the water for the evening's bath. Sharp at noon comes the mid-day meal the least important meal, for the children are away and the master is at the office. After dinner, in summer at any rate, a siesta, and then, for a time at least, things move slowly. The mistress will go shopping or 304 EVERY-DAY JAPAN make a call, or else, with her maids around her, she will do dressmaking or sewing. The all-important hairdresser will come with her stock of gossip, and, her hair having been previously washed by herself or by one of her maids, the mistress will submit to the pleasurable torture of an elaborate coiffure, the arrange- ment of which will effectively pass away the hours. By half-past three the children come back. They have very few home-lessons, it is true, but they often have extra lessons from teachers specially engaged, and the mother has to see that all these tasks are rightly and duly performed, that the boys don't give all their time to games, that the girls practise on the koto and learn their songs, or their steps, or their manners. Everything in a Japanese household turns on the mother, and if Japan has astonished the world by its virtues and powers, the whole credit is due to the mothers who under- stand so well how to do their duty. Etiquette demands that a wife shall be on the doorstep to meet her husband when he returns, and there are few women in Japan who would dare to make a practice of neglecting that rule. By five o'clock, therefore, the wife is expected to be at home to welcome her lord and to fuss round him with kind attentions. She will help him to change his clothes from the European suit, which modern etiquette demands in an office, to the comfortable kimono which rejoices his heart at home. She will wait on him at the bath which has been prepared for his return, and when he is thoroughly comfortable she will give him his supper. Supper is the meal par excellence of the Japanese household There is no haste or hurry about it. It is very early according to our notions between five and six in the afternoon but it suits the Japanese taste, and that is the main thing. After supper the children have their bath, and then comes the children's hour, when, clad in their comfortable sleeping-dresses, they frisk about the garden or house, not retiring early as with us, but keeping awake as long as their elders, unless haply they fall asleep from sheer weariness. Some time during the evening the wife will get an oppor- A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE 305 tunity of showing her husband the household accounts. There is not much to be done : some will play games, some will read books, but the light is poor, and the day began very early. By half -past nine they will begin to yawn, and by ten o'clock the shutters will be closed and the silence of night fall upon the household. CHAPTER LV A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE II. A FEW GRAINS OF SALT IT must not be supposed that the picture of Japanese domestic life given in the preceding chapter is an absolutely correct one, in spite of the fact that it was all taken from a book. No one picture could possibly represent the whole facts of the case, for the domestic life of a nation is a complex matter, and there are always modifying factors in every individual household. Of course much will depend on the rank and circumstances of the family. In the last chapter we had a picture of a middle-class family, with five or six children, and perhaps three maid-servants, and one man to do the outside " chores " and pull his master's jinriksha. There are, of course, families below this in the social scale, with fewer servants, or even with none ; there are also families with a very numerous train of domestics. The wealthy Japanese employs a great many more servants than we should think necessary, and, as a rule, every child, cer- tainly every girl, has a maid of her own. I have known a family the master was a rich publisher in which there were eighteen or twenty children, all living with their parents under the same roof. They had thirty-five women-servants, besides a number of men-servants ; and Japanese ladies have more than once envied my wife for being able to manage our household, which is by no means a small one, with only four, or occa- sionally five, servants. It will be readily understood that these large bands of servants are difficult to manage, that their work is comparatively light, and that there is often a good deal of jealousy and bickering among them. Their wages are generally 306 A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE 30; very low, so that the expense is not so prohibitive as might be supposed. , The next point to be observed is that in the picture given in the last chapter the wife is a paragon of all virtues. Of course, she is not always such women in Japan have all the failings of their sex, and whilst the average is undoubtedly very high, there are some Japanese women with tempers, others who are bad managers and extravagant, and, again, others who are very fond of paying visits and gossiping amongst their friends. Of course, where the mistress of the house is of such a kind the household is at sixes and sevens, and the harmonious picture becomes blurred and marred. It is then that " granny " comes in. Not much was said about her in the preceding chapter, but the little that was said was characteristic. She was represented as setting the time for the household and looking after the alarum-clock, and that is just the function she has in the family economy. Often spoken of as inkyosama, the "person relieved from social duties and retired from the world," she stands, as it were, behind the life of the family and keeps everyone in place. Her husband, good soul, is dead, and her son rules in his stead, but she rules over her son more completely than she ever did over her husband, and is now the power behind the throne. Everyone respects her for her wisdom and experience, and the respect is not unmixed with fear, for she knows her mind and can express it with forcible politeness. To live with " granny " under the same roof is a liberal education for many a flighty young wife. But then "granny," brought up in the traditions of the old world, is often hopelessly at variance with her son who is, as a rule, very modern in his way of looking at things. Her daughter-in-law may be modern, in which case she may possibly be a companion to her husband, though a " modern " Japanese wife who plays the piano, talks a little English, and does a little embroidery is not necessarily a good housekeeper ; or she may be old-fashioned and hardly able to enter into her husband's habits of thought and life. In that case we must remember that the simple life is 308 EVERY-DAY JAPAN very often a dull one the husband will be tempted to find his pleasures elsewhere, whether in the house or out of it, and the harmony of the family is not always increased when the children are by different mothers. There is much, however, that is most admirable in the simple life of the Japanese. In the furnishing of their houses they teach us how many things man can do without and yet be happy, and the simple ornaments of their houses are more beautiful and can be better appreciated than the crowded vulgarities of our ostentatious drawing-rooms. But the Japanese house has certain drawbacks. It is not well suited for working purposes. To sit on the floor in foreign clothes means to ruin the knees of your trousers; to sit on a chair in your office in Japanese clothes means to be cold about the legs. A Japanese has to have two styles of dress, one to work in and one to play in, and a suit of Japanese clothes such as etiquette requires a gentleman to wear is very expensive. The dress of a Japanese lady is very pretty, but it is costly. It has some features in common with the dress of the European lady of fashion tight-lacing, for instance, is a vice of both East and West and there are other obvious dis- advantages which strike the eye of the observer. The constant sitting on the ground, for instance, is a great provocative of the much-dreaded disease known as kakke in Japan and as beriberi in the Malay Pensinsula. Kakke is, however, also, indeed mainly, caused by the lack of proper nourishment, and the Japanese dietary, in which there is very little variety and practically no salt, is said to be very bad in this respect. Foreigners are much divided on the question of Japanese food. Personally, I am very fond of it, and it is with a feeling of sentimental regret that I see the change which is coming over the people in the matters of dress, furniture, house architecture, food, and family life. They are changes which must be ; let us hope they will be changes for the better. PLAYING THE "GEKKIM" A KIND OF LUTE. WASHING DAY: DRYING THE CLOTHES. A JAPANESE HOUSE AND GARDEN. A DAY IN A JAPANESE HOUSE 309 But whatever changes come in the course of the years, let us hope that the hot-bath will never change. If, of the many globe-trotters who reach these shores, a few would take home models of Japanese bath-tubs with heaters, and show English country labourers and cottagers how to use them, they would be conferring a very great boon on the British nation. The Japanese bath is a great promoter of good health. CHAPTER LVI HOUSE-CLEANING ONE of the characteristic sights of modern Tokyo is the period- ical house-cleaning, which takes place under police supervision. Twice a year, at least, every street is visited in its turn by the authorities, and every householder is compelled to wash and scour everything in his house. That such a cleaning should have to be done under police auspices will perhaps be a surprise to my readers, who have probably been under the preconceived idea that the Japanese is a people which fully appreciates the advantages of cleanliness. It is not a wrong idea. The Japanese are in truth very clean, and that they appreciate the advantages of cleanliness may be seen from the readiness with which they have accepted a police regulation which must give them an infinity of trouble and incon- venience. But there are some things about their houses which naturally predispose them to the accumulation of dirt, and the educated Japanese takes the conclusions of science so seriously that bacilli and bacteria are no laughing matter with him. Besides, is not China, with its pestilential cities, his next-door neighbour ? And were not awful epidemics of smallpox, etc., frequent visitors in the cities of Japan not long ago ? Our first impression on entering a Japanese house is that it is spotlessly clean. The woodwork is so smooth and polished, the mats look so inviting, the paper shoji are so free from all suspicion of dust that we readily enter into the spirit of purity that seems to pervade the house, and reverently take off our boots before entering the sanctuary. More intimate acquaintance shows us that there are some flaws in the arrangement, and though we still take our boots off, we no longer do it with reverential awe. 310 HOUSE-CLEANING 3 1 1 In the first place, a Japanese lives all day long with his house open to every possible breeze, and to my mind this constant breathing of a pure atmosphere is one of the most pleasant features of a Japanese house. But anyone who is at all acquainted with the country knows how quickly its light, volcanic soil turns to dust, and the Japanese house, open to the wind, is also open to the dust-cloud. A great part of a woman's domestic labour consists in going round, flapper in hand, and noisily dislodging the dust from its resting-places on shelves and cupboards ; but the dust thus dislodged merely settles upon the mats, and if the reader will remember that a tatami is a pad of closely compressed hay or straw covered with a finely woven mat made of fine rush, he will understand what a capacious harbourage there is here for grains of dust and wandering bacilli. Again, in every house you will find a corner where the kitchen boards lift up, or where a square hole has been cut in the mat, and the piece replaced in such a way that it can easily be removed. That hole represents the passage from the outside to the inside of the cup and platter. The accumulations of the broom are dumped through it into the vacant space below the house, and many an unconsidered trifle finds its way in as well, so that pre- sently there is quite a museum underneath the house, and the rats are tempted out of the sewers to disport themselves amongst tins and cans, broken glass, and food remains. And the rat is highly unscientific. In the midst of the general confusion of a universal house- cleaning, when everything portable has been carried into the street and dusted, and everything not portable has been washed with disinfecting soaps and handsomely besprinkled with chloride of lime, there is always an oasis of rest. It is the house of the foreigner, and it is a great tribute to the merits of our good spouses that the Japanese police authorities consider them capable of doing their own house-cleaning in their own fashion. When a foreigner lives some time in Japan he generally con- trives to build himself a house more or less on European lines, or if he contemplates a lengthy sojourn in a Japanese house, he replaces the mats by wooden floors, and has glass shutters in the 312 E VERY-DAY JAPAN place of the wooden amado, which you cannot close in winter without excluding the light. A wooden floor can be scrubbed frequently and kept much cleaner than the straw tatami ; there are no trap-holes for the reception of rubbish, and the frequent cleanings which the foreign lady demands from her servants are not without their value as object lessons. It will some day dawn on the Tokyo citizen that it is extremely inconvenient to be compelled to clean house in this drastic fashion, and then perhaps he will ask himself why it is that the foreigner should be unofficially exempt from the troublesome undertaking. And, having thought out the reason, he will, with his keen appreciation of whatever is practically useful, change his style of architecture to suit the requirements of a practical age. We can already see the beginnings of these changes in the houses of the wealthier classes. Japan will, alas! lose in picturesqueness as it gains in prac- tical utility. For a while we may certainly expect that the hideous will reign supreme, for the Japanese artist and workman do not yet know sufficiently the rules which govern Western art, and cannot tell the good from the bad. This will come right in time, for the Japanese seems born with a sense of beauty which must eventually make itself felt in all the work he produces. Meanwhile, there is one really admirable thing about these periodic house-cleanings, and that is the thorough-going way in which Japan has put into practice all the well-established con- clusions of science, especially in matters connected with sanitation and hygiene. It requires moral courage in a government to compel its people to accept such stringent measures, and there are many slums in the ancient and wealthy cities of Europe, not to say England, which would be all the better for a taste of the Japanese thoroughness in this respect CHAPTER LVII JAPANESE THOUGHT ON THE CHANGES IN HOME LIFE A WRITER in an influential monthly has spoken vigorously and sensibly about the way in which the transition from feudalism to constitutionalism, and still more, from mediaeval dreamland to the modern era of commerce and industry, is likely to affect, nay, is already affecting, the life of the Japanese at home. The most striking fact in connection with modern changes is the immense increase in the cost of living. At least, that is the thing which is most constantly present to the mind of the Japanese householder, who, as a consumer and a rate-payer, has to bear the burden of the glory with which the nation has covered itself by its achievements in many fields of human activity. There was a time when Japan was a poor country but a very cheap one. That time has gone for ever. No longer is it possible for the samurai to deem himself " passing rich " with a house and twenty or twenty-five yen a month. House-rent, especially in Tokyo, has increased ten-fold since the commencement of the Meiji era, five- fold during the last five years, and has almost doubled itself in the short period that has elapsed since the con- clusion of the Russian war. Food and food-stuffs have gone up, though not quite so alarmingly, the importation of new ideas has made the Japanese increasingly dependent on articles of foreign manufacture, and the Government has put on protective and revenue tariffs which have sent up the price of every imported article to figures which will rival those exacted in the United States. Turn where he will, the householder finds himself con- fronted with increased expenditure, and the monthly settlements make him more and more anxious, unless haply he is one of those favoured few that swim on the tide of commercial and industrial 313 3 i4 EVERY-DAY JAPAN success. For it must be granted that fortunes are being made in Japan, and that the increasing embarrassments of the many are being in a way counterbalanced by the increased affluence of the few. The Japanese household is, therefore, no longer able to go on the even tenor of its ancestral way. Sons, as they grow up, have to be sent away from home to make their living, and daughters follow suit, in the wake of husbands who are obliged to quit the parental home. Thus, the old idea of the homestead disappears, and with it is going all the ancestral worship which was formerly so potent a link between men of the same blood. With one son in Manchuria, and another in Formosa, and a third possibly in California, it is impossible to keep up the worship at the family graves, or to feel the authority of the family council. Meanwhile, those who remain at home find things changed in a different way. The Japanese, when first introduced to the Western world, was a merry, light-hearted little fellow, on whom the cares of life sat lightly, and this light-heartedness showed itself especially in the cheerfulness of home and home life. It is no longer possible for the father of a family to put away his cares as he takes off his out-door suit of clothes, and home is, therefore, no longer quite the bright place it was, when father could spend the evening in the consciousness of freedom, and not, as now, in devising means for increasing the family income. Another disturbing factor in the new life of Japan has been the immense increase of population. In spite of a constant stream of emigration to every part of the Pacific, the population of the Empire is increasing as rapidly as that of the United States, and the struggle of life is becoming very severe. " It is stated " (I am quoting from a review in the Japan Mail for October 1st, 1906) "that twenty-five yen a month (2 los.) is deemed a good salary for graduates of the University when they first enter life, and many do not receive more than eighteen." One of my students in English literature, who graduated this year, is now glad to work for a firm of publishers for a modest fifteen yen (305.) per month. A shilling a day for the services of a University B.A. ! The case I have quoted is exceptional, but there is no JAPANESE THOUGHT ON HOME LIFE 315 denying the fact that the intense competition in all centres of activity and life is keeping the salaries of the many down at an almost starvation figure, and that the same competition keeps men all their lives from earning a real living wage. The com- petition helps to sharpen the wits of young Japan, but it also tends to keep young men from marriage, and all history shows that a country in which early marriages are discouraged is ex- posed to serious evils of another kind. There is a tendency now for men to postpone marriage until they are forty or thereabouts. The father of a family, however, is anxious to get his daughters married as soon as he conveniently can, and the consequence is an increasing disparity in age between bridegroom and bride, which makes any community of interests between husband and wife more and more difficult. It will, of course, be understood that I am speaking of the middle classes which form the bulk of the nation. The upper classes are generally in possession of private incomes which make them inde- pendent of earned salaries, and the lower classes, whether in town or country, are mostly led to marriage by considerations which are not pecuniary. Household management, under the altered circumstances of the day, is plainly very different from what it was in the days of the old regime, and the future wives and mothers of Japan are very much in need of a training which shall fit them for their domestic duties under the new conditions. So says the author of the article from which I am quoting, and, after making due allowance for the inveterate habit of preaching into which the Japanese man of letters so readily falls, especially when discussing female education, there is a grain of truth in what he says. The modern education of the Japanese woman was begun by the mission schools. The education given in those schools has been good, but not ideal. It has very often been conducted under the impression that the training of an American girl was the thing to be aimed at, and not the making of a Japanese mother and wife, and too much attention has been paid to needless accom- plishments, such as the piano and singing. When the Japanese took hold of female education they laid less stress on the social 316 EVERY-DAY JAPAN attainments, but they were merely empiricists after all, and the tendency in the early days of Japanese management was to look upon woman as a literary animal and to train her accordingly. Japanese husbands demand neither the lady with Western accom- plishments nor the lady with literary aspirations, and the diffi- culties of making a somewhat fastidious choice are said to be deterring many young men from entering upon wedlock. The experience of the last twenty-five years in Japan should, however, be sufficient to warrant a feeling of confidence in the future. From the beginning of the new movement the Japanese leaders have never shown a lack of moral courage in facing the problems with which they have been confronted, and if we could look ahead for some twenty-five years we should find that by that time the " storm and stress " will be over, that the day of the theorist in Japanese schools will be over, too, and that the " eternal and universal feminine " will have thoroughly established her claims to shape Japanese wives as they should be shaped. CHAPTER LVIII WOMAN'S WORK IN JAPAN A COUNTRY woman in Japan is a very hard worker, sharing in all the labours of the field as well as undertaking those duties which fall more especially within her own sphere, such as cooking, the care of children, sewing, and household work. In the large cities, such as Tokyo, we have also of late seen women taking the work of men ; for the war made male labour very scarce, and many peculiarly male occupations have had to be undertaken by women. Quite recently I saw a band of women at work on the foundation of a house, and during the war I saw some others engaged as navvies making a railway embankment. The town women of the lower classes have, on the contrary, a comparatively easy life. Their houses are much smaller ; they are able to buy all their provisions ready cooked from travelling pedlars, and so, after the rice has once been properly prepared, and the rooms dusted, a Japanese housewife of the lower classes has but little housework left to do. Whatever she or her family require to eat along with the rice is procured from the itinerant vendors who are continually perambulating the streets. But though her household labours are thus artificially lightened, the Tokyo woman does not have an absolutely idle time, for in almost every case she supplements the labours of the man by some naishoku, or home industry, which materially increases the family income. Some of these industries throw interesting sidelights on the social conditions of the people. Some, again, are of modern origin, while others date from quite the old order of things. I will begin my enumeration with these latter industries. Teachers of music, singing, or dancing form an honoured 3 1 ? 3i8 EVERY-DAY JAPAN class by themselves. Western music, singing, and dancing, are always taught at schools or special academies; it is only the Japanese branches of these arts that are taught at home. The music consists of instruction in playing the koto, samisen, kokyu, drum, and flute ; the singing is the peculiar nasal performance so annoying to Western ears, and the dancing is the graceful posture-dancing which most Japanese girls learn as a finishing accomplishment. For any of these arts the tuition fee is from fifty sen to one yen (one to two shillings) per pupil per month at the teacher's own house, but appreciably higher if the teacher visits the house of her pupil for the lesson. It is a very common practice at Japanese entertainments to engage dancing and singing girls to perform for the amuse- ment of the guests. At large feasts these are generally pro- fessionals who are thus employed, but I have been at more select dinner-parties where the daughters of the house have given performances which always cause pleasure. A second accomplishment, which a young lady has to acquire, is the proper way of dispensing tea not on ordinary occasions, indeed, but at very solemn and stately festivities which require a great deal of ceremonial. I must confess that I have been only once at one of these tea-drinking ceremonies, and then my patience gave out before it was more than half over ; but by those who have a taste for ceremonial it is said to be full of hidden sweetness, and it certainly connects itself with much of the old-world formalism of mediaeval Japan. The income of a teacher of tea-ceremonies varies very considerably accord- ing to her skill or popularity ; but her prices are always low, and pupils have to be taken singly, or in very small classes, so that the most skilful teacher of the chanoyu tea-ceremonies will rarely make more than, say, thirty yen (3) per month. In the same way, as the tea-ceremony has been elevated into an art and a philosophy, has the art of floral arrangement been brought to so high a pitch of perfection that it is necessary in Japan to have teachers of the art, who will come to their pupils' houses for fees which run very much on the same average as those of other teachers. WOMAN'S WORK IN JAPAN 319 But all these employments are only for the elite, for a woman capable of teaching music, singing, dancing, tea-cere- monial, or floral decoration as she ought to do must have some education and a poetic spirit. Lower down in the intellectual scale we come to more prosaic employments which a larger number of women may take up. Some dressmakers take in pupils whom they instruct in the art. Each such pupil pays a monthly fee of from thirty to fifty sen (say, from sevenpence to a shilling), and is from time to time called on for a subscription for renewing the mats in the sitting-room which she has helped to wear out. If the dress- maker is merely a seamstress who goes out sewing or takes in work from her customers, she can earn about thirty sen (say, sevenpence) for each dress she makes. It is true that she can make more than one Japanese robe in her working day, but even so, her income per month cannot be very enormous. Quite a number of women, both in Tokyo and Osaka, are employed by the shops as bill collectors, and are, as a rule, paid a commission on the amount they collect. These women really play quite an important role in the lower strata of our social system. A Japanese of the lower orders has not, as a rule, a very large selection of household goods ; indeed, there are many houses in which one hand-cart will carry all the family possessions, and often near the end of the month the belated traveller will see, going along the deserted streets, a loaded vehicle followed by a mysterious-looking man or woman. In such cases he may be quite sure that it is a family flitting by night to escape from its creditors. A Tokyo bill collector has to be not only persistent, but also vigilant. After the bill collector the hairdresser claims our attention, as being a woman in great request. Every Japanese woman, from the highest to the lowest, has her hair done for her by these itinerant artists, at least at certain intervals, and the hair- dresser plays a really important part in woman's life. She is the purveyor of news from house to house ; she becomes the confidante of both mother and daughter, both mistress and maid ; and when a marriage is in contemplation, it is she who always 320 EVERY-DAY JAPAN knows where to look for a suitable partner for the young man or young woman of the house. It takes several years of apprenticeship before a woman can become an expert hair- dresser, but when the knack has been acquired she can always reckon on a good and steady income. A single dressing of the hair costs from 3 to 5 sen (^d. to I ^d), or a woman may pay 30, 50, or even 70 sen per month for regular coiffure. A hairdresser's best customers are the women in the Yoshiwara, who have to keep their heads always sleek and shiny, and who, therefore, have to pay as much as 1*50 yen (35.) per month. A good hairdresser can add as much as 25 or 30 yen (2 ics. to 3) to her husband's monthly income. Many women, again, are employed as gyosho, or itinerant merchants, carrying haberdashery and sweetmeats from house to house, and making a profit commensurate to their skill in puffing their wares. One common variety of gyosho is the agent of the circulating library, whom one may often see, with a great bundle of books on her back, going the round of her customers. The Japanese are great readers of novels, and the Japanese booklenders have long since anticipated many of the latest wrinkles recently adopted by the Times or Mudie's. They also send you your books in brown paper covers, for a mere pittance, but then the books are neither very new nor very clean and sometimes they are not very moral. But Japan is working out its pure literature problem for itself. Blind women become shampooers for their own sex, just as blind men may be seen acting in a similar capacity for men. Shampooing is in one sense the exact opposite of massage, for the Japanese shampooer rubs you the wrong way from the point of view of a masseuse; but the Japanese are rapidly changing their methods, and I am constantly passing sign- boards in the streets announcing the residence of a masseuse of the Western school. But shampooers of the new school are not blind. All the above pursuits require more or less of going out of the home. For those who cannot or do not wish to leave their WOMAN'S WORK IN JAPAN 321 homes there are many occupations. Let me try to enumerate some of them. Knitting in wool or in floss silk, embroidery, artificial flowers, Japanese hairpins, fans, book-binding, envelopes, pill-boxes, winding cotton, hair pencils, lamp-shades all these and similar home industries are to be found among the women in Tokyo. The above need no explanation ; but an English reader will be at a loss to know what is the use of paper- twisting, paper- folding, or clog-thong making. I have often noticed a Japanese boy fastening his papers together in an examination. He makes a hole through all the sheets with a knife, and then proceeds to twist a piece of Japanese paper into a string, which he passes through and fastens. This paper-twisting gives rise to two industries. Twisted paper is used for tying-up women's hair, and for this purpose it must be thin, strong, and black. Again, no present can be made without a piece of twisted paper string, partly gilt and partly white, and there are families in which the women- folk do nothing else but make these strings. In the same way, the paper- folders are making the little coloured paper noski, which are also the invariable accompaniments of presents. The Japanese geta, or clogs, are fastened on to the foot by two thongs, which pass between the big toe and the second, and these also have to be made in private houses. I had almost forgotten the makers of the black paper frame-works which form the basis of many styles of hairdressing. When a Japanese woman of the lower classes goes bald she will sometimes try to conceal the loss of hair by means of a patch of black paper. Some of the best fabrics of Japan are even now the produce of home looms, but I fear the day of these home industries is over. Big factories can turn out more, and turn it out cheaper, though not so well. The factory system is not for the good of the Japanese girl, either morally or physically; but at any rate it is one of the means by which she can con- tribute a good deal to the support of the family. Better class girls, of respectable family and good education, can now find employment in banks, insurance companies, rail- v 322 EVERY-DAY JAPAN ways, and telephone exchanges, as clerks, tellers, and copyists. They are also employed in education ; indeed, in Tokyo, nearly one-half of the primary school-teachers are women. As sick- nurses they have long since established their reputation, and as doctors they are creeping on. Japan also has her women journalists and lady novelists, and some day, when a way has been discovered of satisfactorily simplifying the written language of Japan, the merchants of Tokyo will begin to employ lady typists. At present writing by machine is all done in English or in some other European language. CHAPTER LIX PROVERBIAL WISDOM CONCERNING CHILDREN THERE is probably no country in which the importance of children is so fully recognised as it is in Japan. Ko takara (" Children are a treasure ") says one of their proverbs, and Ko wa fufu no aida no kasugai (" Children are the bond that bind husband and wife together ") says another. The second of these proverbs is no mere otiose expression denoting the increased love between the husband and wife whose union has been blest with offspring. Childlessness is always reckoned in this country as a legitimate ground for a divorce, and a woman who bears her lord no son is never sure of her position. The responsibilities of fatherhood are very heavy. Ko wa sangai no kubikase (" Children are a chain around one's neck in all three worlds " in the life that is past, the life that is, and the life that is to come). One cannot become a parent in the life that is, unless in the life that is past one's merits have been such as to qualify one for parenthood, and to be a good parent or a bad one confers merits or demerits which will continue to haunt one in the life beyond the grave. But it is not of the life of the world to come that the Japanese parent mostly thinks when a child is born to him. It is the present which is of the most pressing importance. How shall he clothe his child, and, if it is a girl, how shall he find her a husband ? There is, therefore, always a tacit recognition of a father's right to decline the gift which Heaven has bestowed on him in accordance with his own previous deserts, and a new-born babe is still formally presented to his father for acceptance. Ko wo suteru yabu atte mo, oya wo suteru yabu nashi 323 324 EVERY-DAY JAPAN (" There are bamboo-groves in which you may expose your baby to death, but there is none in which you can expose your parents "). In old days, when the new-born child was laid at his father's feet, the father could refuse to take it, and the child was then exposed to die in a bamboo-grove, as the proverb says. The custom exists no longer ; I doubt whether it ever prevailed to any very great extent, but it has left behind it a very picturesque reminder. If parents have lost a child by death, they often, not perhaps unnaturally, look upon their loss as the visitation of an angry Heaven, which must needs be pro- pitiated by the free-will offering up of the next born child. So when the next child is born it is taken to the bamboo- grove and left by its parents. The exposure is, however, nothing very serious ; a friend of the family is waiting round the corner for the weeping parents to abandon their infant, and a few minutes afterwards he comes in, quite, as it were, by accident, and tells the bereaved couple that he has just picked up a fine, handsome baby boy (or girl), which he hopes they will take and rear. Thus the anger of Heaven has been, figuratively at least, averted, and the baby is known in after life by the word sute (" abandoned ") prefixed to his personal name. He is known as sutejiro or sutesaburo, as the case may be (" the abandoned second son" or "the abandoned third"). With the advent of the children the parents enjoy their first taste of love. Ko wo motte oya no on wo shiru (" It is not until one has a child of one's own that one understands the nature and depth of the love one's mother bore him "). And with the mariages de convenance which are usual in Japan, it is often true that husband and wife do not love each other until they have become father and mother. Love is first awakened in the family by the advent of the " little stranger," and so intoxicating is the first draught of it that the whole household combines to pet and spoil the newcomer. Even the grandparents, who ought to know better, join in the child- worship. Ko yori mo mago ga kawaii (" A grandson is even a greater darling than a son ") says a proverb ; and no Japanese would by nature cross a child's wishes if he could help it. It WISDOM CONCERNING CHILDREN 325 is true that Japan has a proverb about the sparing use of the rod (" If you love your children give them plenty of whippings ; if you hate them give them lots to eat"), but the proverb is not of Japanese origin. It comes, together with so much that is good in this country, from the wisdom of China ; and I have always noticed that when in this country one finds children that have been well brought up, the merit is always to be ascribed to an observance of Confucian wisdom. Confucianism in Japan has been a most potent moral strengthener. The next proverb that I shall quote in this chapter points to a darker side of home life. Kodomo no kenkwa ni oya ga dern (" When children quarrel the parents are obliged to take sides "). It is true everywhere, of course, but it is an aggra- vated family calamity when the children are by different mothers, though all living in the same house. In such cases it happens from time to time that the family disagreements between half- brothers will bring great sorrow upon a man ; and there is another proverb which tells us of a father who "wanders in the darkness on account of his children " (Ko yue ni yami ni may OIL]. But family discords and family troubles are not allowed to mar the happiness of the Japanese child. Kodomo ni kikin nashi (" There is never a famine for children ") ; and how- ever great may be the needs of the older people, the children are always well cared for. A couple of Chinese proverbs, taken from the Confucian writings, which have done so much for the moral culture of Japan, will draw the necessary lesson for our instruction. The result of all this parental love should be a return of filial love and devotion. And when there is filial love virtues of all kinds become possible. Ko wa hyakko no moto (" Filial love is the beginning of a hundred good deeds "). Ko no owari wa fubo wo arawasu (" The end of filial love is to show forth the merits of the parents "). There is good Scriptural authority for the duty of children towards their parents, and Japan is happy that she can set the world so bright an example in this respect. CHAPTER LX JAPANESE FUNERALS ONE evening on my way home I overtook a funeral pro- cession. It was wending its way slowly under the Great Red Gate of the Zojoji Temple, and the white-robed bearers were already taking their mournful burden up the steps of the temple, preceded by priests in gorgeous robes and musicians playing mournful dirges on mysterious wind instruments, such as are used only in the offices for the dead In the courtyard were arranged the tall standards of flowers which head every first- class funeral on its way to the resting-place of the dead, and the mourners, having alighted from their jinrikshas and deposited their cards on a little table placed there for the purpose, were preparing to follow the coffin into the sacred building. When a death occurs in a house notification is made far and wide to relatives and friends, not, as with us, by announce- ments in the paper, but by means of letters or postcards, the announcement, as a rule, containing not only the date of death, but also, when possible, the hour and place of the funeral service. On receipt of this announcement it is customary to pay a visit of condolence to the house of the departed. It is not necessary on such occasions to enter the house. A card left at the door will very often suffice, but the card is very frequently accompanied by an envelope or carefully folded piece of paper containing a small present of money. Funeral expenses often fall heavily on a bereaved family, and the little offering thus made is a sensible and much appreciated way of showing sympathy with our neighbour in his sorrow. The great majority of funerals are conducted with Buddhist 326 BUDDHIST FUNERAL PROCESSIONS. Photographs by permission of J. J. Kcrington, F.sq. ENTRANCE TO A JAPANESE HOUSE. JAPANESE FUNERALS 327 rites. In the old days, when Buddhism and Shinto were prac- tically amalgamated, a custom sprang up of employing Shinto priests for all joyful occasions, and Buddhist ones for all ceremonies connected with the sad events of human life. A Buddhist priest at a wedding ceremony was considered as a bird of ill omen, but when sickness came he was sent for to pray over the dying, and the disposal of the dead was always a part of his duties. At the present day one may often hear the noisy drums of the Nichiren monks invoking the aid of the Hotoke (Buddhas) for some afflicted member of their flock, and most of the funerals one sees are Buddhist, with ceremonies differing a little according to the sect of the officiating ministers. Shinto funerals, as a rule, are confined to the official classes and State interments. A Buddhist funeral passing through the street is generally an impressive sight : everything is done decently and in order, and there is a handsome display of flower-standards and lanterns, with, occasionally, great cages of birds to be liberated at some appropriate part of the ceremony. To set free the captive is generally considered to be a work of mercy which brings its own reward, and the liberation of the caged prisoners is done on behalf of the deceased with a view to increasing his stock of merit. Arrived at the temple the service is conducted with chanting of prayers and burning of incense, the choir of priests in the meanwhile reciting antiphonally the sutras relating to the dead. The service is not understood by the majority, for the Buddhist priests give to Chinese a pronunciation which has long since been discarded by ordinary Japanese ; but there is a great charm in the mysterious and unknown, and the minds of the congregation are made solemn by the sights, sounds, and odours of the elaborate ritual of the dead. When the service is over the mourners advance one by one, and, taking their stand in front of the coffin, bow their heads in token of a last farewell to him who has gone before them into the unseen world, and then one by one file out of the temple. For most of them the ceremony is now ended, and they can 328 EVERY-DAY JAPAN go home. A select few, however, remain, and, with the officiating priests, see to the due cremation of the body, either in some crematorium properly fitted up, or else at some simple burning- place in a retired corner of the hills or fields. I have myself only once witnessed one of these simple cremations. It was at the funeral of an English friend who had desired to be cremated, and the only spot available was a rustic crematorium used by the people of the seaside village where my friend had died. It was not much more than a pile of firewood on which we deposited the coffin, which was then covered with straw mats and brushwood, to which a match was set by the nearest friend present. We stood by and waited for the body to be burned for a couple of hours ; then night fell and we returned to our lodgings, and some of us to the station to catch our train. The next morning one of our number received the ashes in a white porcelain urn, which in due time found a resting-place in the cemetery at Aoyama. In Tokyo we have two large cemeteries, one at Uyeno and the other at Aoyama. The graveyards around the temples are now nearly all closed. There are two or three good modern crematoriums, one of them being for burning horses. At the conclusion of the war the Buddhists held memorial services in honour of the horses that had fallen in battle. In a Buddhist graveyard you will look in vain for the names of the dead. When a man dies in Japan the priests give him a new name, which is inscribed on his tomb. It is like the new name which the postulant sometimes receives on entering a religious order ; a sign that the man, dying to the world, is still alive in another let us hope, a better form of existence. But this does not apply to the more recent tombs which stand in the modern cemetery at Aoyama. Here many nay, most of the illustrious dead have been buried with Shinto rites, and the doctrines of Shinto are very different from those of Buddhism. The Buddhist believes in a form of immortality ; but the circumstances of the human mind are so changed that the identity is scarcely preserved from one life to the next The Shintoist believes in the continuation after death of exactly JAPANESE FUNERALS 329 the same life which the man lived here. The Buddhist expresses his belief by giving a new name ; the Shintoist by retaining the old one. One of the last great funerals I remember was that of General Kodama, the strategist of Marshal Oyama's staff. It was a most impressive sight ; in detail it did not differ very much from the memorial service I describe in the following paragraphs. Shortly after Admiral Togo's return to Tokyo, after he had been to the Imperial presence to make his report, and whilst the people were busily engaged in welcoming him, he performed two services in public in honour of the dead. The first of these services was held in Uyeno Park ; the second, to which I had the honour of receiving an invitation, in the great cemetery of Aoyama, the district of the " green hills " on the outskirts of the city. It was a cloudless October morning, one of those bright days which make life in Japan worth living. As I entered the cemetery I had, to the left of me, the silent resting-places of the dead ; to the right, the great red-brick barracks, generally full of life but now almost deserted owing to the absence from Tokyo of the greater part of the army. In the open space between the barracks and the streets of tombs, on a gently sloping hillside, an enclosure had been made with hangings of white and blue cloth, such as the Japanese always use on these occasions. Inside the enclosure, which was oblong in shape, I found myself placed under a long tent on the west side, in the company of naval and military officers, Ministers of State, prominent officials and gentry, and a few foreigners who, like myself, had been fortunate enough to obtain tickets of invitation. In a similar tent opposite to us, on the east side of the enclosure, were the relatives of the deceased officers and men, whose spirits were to be honoured parents, wives, brothers, sisters, children. The south end was occupied by Imperial Princes surrounded by a guard of honour consisting of bluejackets from the men-of-war then lying off Shinagawa ; whilst the north end was taken up with the altar of plain white pine, draped with simple cotton cloth of 330 EVERY-DAY JAPAN spotless whiteness, on which stood the few simple symbols of the Shinto ritual. In the places of honour on our side, near to the altar, sat men whose names have been ennobled by great services to their country Ito, Katsura, Okuma, Yamamoto, Terauchi. Over against them, at the head of the mourners, stood the admirals of the Combined Fleet, the heroes of Port Arthur and the Sea of Japan, Kamimura, Uryu, Kataoka, Dewa, and others. In front of them were two chairs : on the one sat the great little man Togo, the essence of modesty ; on the other a boy of about fourteen, in the uniform of the Nobles' School, the representative of the officers' orphans. Within the sanctuary, on the east side, sat the officiating Shinto priests, clad in white " surplices " gathered round the waist with a girdle, and wearing on their heads the peculiar black mitre which is the distinguishing honour of the priest- hood. Some of these priests were musicians, who from time to time accompanied the rite with their weird but not displeasing music ; the rest were to be occupied in ritual acts. When the chief priest, standing before the altar, had bowed and prayed, the offerings to the spirits of the dead were brought in (offerings of food on little trays of pure white wood), and placed on tables in front of the altar. Then followed another prayer from the chief priest, and when that was over, Admiral Togo, in whose name the whole service was being performed, came forward and read an address to the spirits of the deceased. His voice quivered with emotion as he read the words, and there were many eyes in the audience wet with sympathetic tears. These were the words of his Salmon, or address to the departed : " The clouds of war have disappeared from sea and from shore, and the whole city, with peaceful, placid heart like that of a child, goes out to meet the men who shared life and death with you, and who now return triumphant under the Imperial Standard, while their families wait for them at the gates of their homes. " Looking back we recall how, braving the bitter cold and enduring the fierce heat, you fought again and again with our strong foe; and while the issue of the contest was still uncertain, you went before us to the grave, leaving us to envy the glory you had won by your loyal JAPANESE FUNERALS 331 deaths. We longed to imitate you in paying the debt we owe to sovereign and country. Your valiant and vehement fighting always achieved suc- cess. In no combat did you fail to conquer. Throughout ten months the attack on Port Arthur continued, and the position was determined. In the Sea of Japan a single annihilating effort decided the issue. Thenceforth the enemy's shadow disappeared from the face of the ocean. This success had its origin in the infinite virtues of the Emperor, but it could not have been achieved had not you, forgetting yourselves, sacri- ficed your lives in the public service. The war is over. We who return in triumph see signs of joy everywhere. But we remember that we can- not share it with you, and mingled feelings of sadness and rejoicing struggle painfully for expression. But the triumph of to-day has been purchased by your glorious death, and long your loyalty and valour will inspire our Navy, guarding the Imperial land for all time. " We here perform this rite of worship to your spirits, and, speaking something of our sad thoughts, pray you to come and receive the offerings we make." (Signed) TOGO HEIHACHIRO, Commander-in-Chief of the United Fleet. (Dated) igth day of the loth month of the 38th year of Meiji. At the conclusion of this address the admiral laid his offering on the altar a branch of sakaki, tied with white paper. The attendant admirals and the little orphan boy did the same. After that the admiral notified to the representatives of their Majesties what he had just done, and they, followed by the Princes of the Blood, advanced and did the same. When that had been done, the whole audience filed before the altar. Each received from one of the attendant priests a little branch, which he deposited reverently on the tables in front of the altar, and returned to his place. With this the ceremony was finished. It was a most impressive, reverent service, marred only by the camera fiends, who knew no shame, and who reminded us that the spirit of the twentieth century is not always one of reverence and godly fear. The ceremony took place on a Sunday morning; and before I went to it, in a little Christian church hard by the cemetery, I had assisted in those solemn mysteries in which " with Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify God's holy Name, evermore praising Him and saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts." 332 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Frankly pagan though the Japanese may be, he is not without his religious instincts ; nay, truly, he is a man of deep religious sentiment. In course of time he will assuredly be won for Christ, for he sees, and will see more clearly, that a genuine Christian faith has much to give him that he needs. But no form of Christianity will ever give him permanent rest and satisfaction which does not recognise to the fullest extent the realities of the Unseen World and the blessed Communion of all Saints, living and departed, in Christ. Such were my reflections as I came home that Sunday after listening to the sermon that had been preached for me by Admiral Togo on the green slopes of the Aoyama Cemetery. A WINTER'S MORNING IN A COUNTRY TEMPLE. CHAPTER LXI SOME CONTRASTS AMONG the most interesting features of the Japan of to-day in its state of rapid transition must, I think, certainly be placed the strange, almost weird, contrasts that are to be found. I have had this subject brought home to me quite recently by three entertainments to which I have been invited or of which I have heard. As autumn comes on and October is in its prime, the coming- birthday of the Emperor casts its shadows before. Invitations are issued by the Minister for Foreign Affairs for a ball on November 3rd, and a little later a favoured few will get invita- tions to the Chrysanthemum Party in the Imperial Gardens. These functions I may describe as being positively European. We go to them dressed " up to the nines," or at least as near to the " nines " as the Tokyo milliners will allow our wives and daughters to get let us say " up to the eights " and we behave as though we were in London or Berlin. Everything is just as it should be band, dancing, supper, the ladies, the flowers and the only jar to the harmony is the occasional globe-trotter who has worried his Minister into getting him an invitation and then does not quite know how to comport himself, or stands before the whole assembly with his back to the Emperor's portrait. A birthday ball or an Imperial garden-party is always a delightful function, and the Japanese are invariably excellent hosts. The next entertainment which I have in my mind's eye is a much simpler affair. In the old days, when Tokyo was called Yedo, and was the capital of the Shogun, all the daimyos were compelled to keep their wives and families in Yedo as hostages for their good behaviour in their own dominions. Yedo was 333 334 EVERY-DAY JAPAN at that time full of daimyos 1 mansions, some of them standing in very large grounds of their own, most of which have long since disappeared in the growth of the modern metropolis. A few were taken for Government purposes, and still remain practically intact, and one of the largest of these estates passed into the hands of the naval authorities. It contains three educational establishments the Naval Academy, or Higher Naval College, the Naval Medical College, and the Training School for Paymasters and Petty Officers. In one corner of it stands the Naval Club, and though some parts of it have been somewhat disfigured by warehouses and sheds, the greater part still retains its original beauty. It has beautiful trees and lawns and several ponds, one of which, dotted with islets, is intended to remind the visitor of the famous "Thousand Islands" of Matsushima, its quondam owners having once been the lords of Sendai. Once a year the officers connected with the three schools above-mentioned have an al fresco entertainment for themselves and their wives and families. They call it a garden party a fishing party would be a more appropriate name and it com- mences at nine o'clock in the morning. The ponds are always well stocked with fish, and on the eventful day anybody may catch his own fish for dinner if he likes. But if he chooses to do so, he must keep out of the way of the professional fishermen who have been engaged for the day's fun. These men have boats and nets of all shapes and sizes, as well as other fishing gear, and the main entertainment of the morning is to watch them give an exhibition of various styles of fishing, which is sure to be interesting and amusing. The fish are brought to land as they are caught, placed in large tubs, and after lunch divided amongst those present, lots being drawn for the biggest ones. It is just the kind of entertainment that the Japanese loves out of doors, simple, unceremonious ; there is no need for an elaborate toilette, and there is no danger of ruining one's digestion with rich foods. Above all, it is early. The day chosen is always either a Sunday or a national holiday, when there are no professional duties to call the revellers away, and there is no SOME CONTRASTS 335 sitting up late for so-called pleasure, which is an abomination to the average Japanese. The entertainment is generally finished by half -past four or five o'clock; but next Sunday the Imperial Band gives a concert in Hibiya Park, and the Japanese is becoming a great lover of music. So the fishing party will be finished at 3 p.m. Three days ago our housemaid (pnna no boy, " the female boy," as that functionary is termed) asked for a week's holiday to go to her home in Boshu, the peninsula on the other side of Tokyo Bay. She would not tell us why she wanted to go, and the other servants would not explain it either. They only laughed, but they seconded her request. We have found out since. It appears that Boshu, where the people are mainly fisher- men, exposed to the perils of the wild Pacific, is a land devoted to the worship of Kwannon, the great Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, who is said to have revealed herself to mankind in thirty-three distinct avatars, or incarnations. There are in the province thirty-three temples dedicated to the thirty-three avatars of Kwannon, and every twelfth or thirteenth year there is a great pilgrimage of the inhabitants to visit these thirty-three shrines. Everybody that has any connection with Boshu tries to take part in this pilgrimage, no matter how far off he may live, and Boshu people are as plentiful in Tokyo as the Irish are in Liverpool. To accommodate this immense influx of visitors the resources of the province, which has no big towns and practically no railways, are taxed to the uttermost. Inns and hotels charge half-prices, private houses are thrown open, and there is un- limited and unstinted hospitality. The whole place gives itself up to enjoyment and revelry, and in no country are fishermen a very refined people. The whole thing is not unlike what might have been seen two thousand years ago around th'e great temple of Paphos in Cyprus. A few years hence and the march of a materialising civilisation may have swept away the Boshu pilgrimages and all that is connected with them leaving what in its stead? A few years hence and possibly our naval officers (I write almost as a 336 E VERY-DAY JAPAN Japanese) will no longer be contented with the simple al fresco pleasures of to-day. The Japan of to-morrow will be a wealthier and in many senses a better country than the Japan of to-day ; but she will never again be as simple and as picturesque as the Japan of yesterday. CHAPTER LXII JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS THE circumstances of their country have made the Japanese compulsorily thrifty and simple in their habits. Sunshine is a prime necessity with them, so is air. Wood is plentiful and readily worked, and a wooden house can easily be constructed so as to admit both sunshine and air, while the stone houses used in other lands are mostly suggestive of a desire to exclude both. The Japanese began by building houses of wood because he had not the necessary implements to build in stone ; he has gone on building in wood because he has found that material more suited to his wants, and his peculiar style of domestic architecture has eternally committed him to simplicity of life. Japan is, moreover, a land of natural disturbances, of volcanic eruptions, floods, tempests, and earthquakes, to say nothing of the disastrous conflagrations to which these commotions of nature frequently give rise. Experience has taught the Japanese that a light wooden house can be more easily replaced than one of more solid material, and that the less he has in the way of furniture and valuables the greater the equanimity with which he can bear the reverses of fortune or the shocks of Nature. He has learned, therefore, to cultivate an elegant simplicity in furnishing which serves as an object lesson to the world at large as to the number of things that a cultured and civilised man can dispense with in every-day life. Furthermore, the area of arable land throughout the country has always been very small as compared with the size of the population, even in the middle ages when the country was not half so thickly populated as it is now. Cattle-raising, mining, shipping, oversea commerce, are all modern introductions. The w 337 338 EVERY-DAY JAPAN Japanese has for centuries been comparatively poor, and his poverty has led him perforce to be frugal, industrious, practical, and simple. These are his greatest virtues. The Japanese also possesses to a remarkable degree the qualities of personal bravery and physical courage. Nature has taught him the constant need of courage and presence of mind in face of sudden emergency, and the peculiar Spartan discipline which the younger members of the warrior class were forced to undergo has done a great deal to strengthen that personal bravery which comes to the Japanese, partly as a hereditary gift, and partly from the lessons taught by Nature. The Japanese also is full of kindness towards all those with whom he is brought into contact. This comes to him partly by nature, for he is generous and high-spirited, and kindness seems to be the unfailing corollary of these great virtues. It is also partly the result of religious teaching and ethical training, for Buddhism and Confucianism both teach the necessity and excellence of this virtue, and the Japanese is distinctly a reli- giously inclined person, as may be judged from the number of shrines and temples which he has built in every part of the land It is' true that his religion is mostly hazy and nebulous, and based not on revelation but on Nature ; but such as it is, it is one of the forces that have gone to mould his character, and the observer may see the traces of it in the well-trained and yet natural kindness which runs through all the actions of his daily life. He is a worshipper of Nature, but he looks at her with " natural " eyes, and not, as Wordsworth does, through spectacles coloured by Christian doctrine ; and sometimes he draws from Nature thus contemplated conclusions which perplex and astound us Westerners. His sexual ethics, for instance, are not always the same as ours. I have spoken of the training of the old-fashioned samurai as having been Spartan in the sternness with which their youth was schooled to personal bravery, physical courage, and bodily endurance. It was Spartan in another aspect. The samurai, like the Spartan, was trained to despise money and to profess the utmost contempt for the merchant whose first thought on A LEPER BY THE ROADSIDE. A DEALER IN PAPER LANTERNS. JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS 339 waking was of the rattle of the abacus-beads with which he cast up his accounts. The Spartans, as we know, came in later times to be noted for their avarice and love of money, and there were many of the sons of Lacedaemon who, like Pausanias, were open to bribes and squeezes. There have been similar cases in Japan. The old and honourable obligation to poverty under which the samurai lay was removed suddenly when the old system collapsed, and in the changes brought about by the introduction of the materialistic methods of the West many found themselves impotent to resist the allurements of wealth suddenly placed before their eyes. The very samurai who were once so proud of their poverty are now often to be seen scrambling after money-bags and riches in a way their fore- fathers would have despised, and the alteration is scarcely one for the better. It is a pity, but it is, perhaps, the inevitable outcome of the sudden leap from Japan's idealistic past to her materialistic present. These considerations may perhaps save us from speaking in ill-considered superlatives, either of praise or blame, on the subject of Japan's commercial morality. The " ill-considered superlatives " of half-informed writers have done Japan an immensity of harm in the world's estima- tion. To such persons we (for long residence and the reception of many kindnesses lead me often to identify myself with this people) are always either superlatively good or superlatively bad, either models of virtue and good sense or deterrent examples of the very opposite. The truth is that the Japanese cannot be put in a class by themselves, however much some of their own writers, even, would desire to do so. They are just " average human " ; they have their vices as well as their virtues, their shortcomings as well as their excellences. The earliest legendary history of Japan tells us of the landing, some six centuries before Christ, of a chieftain with a band of followers near Takachiho in the island of Kyushu. This chieftain is known to later generations as the first of the earthly emperors of Japan, by his posthumous name of Jimmu Tenno, and seems to have been followed by other invading bands who settled themselves in various parts of the islands 340 EVERY-DAY JAPAN and completed what may be termed the " Norman Conquest " of Japan. When authentic history commences, the " Norman Conquest " had been finished, and by the fifth century A.D. we find the Imperial House in nominal possession, at least, of the whole country, with dependent chieftains under them, over whom they exercised a loose form of suzerainty. Underneath these chieftains and their followers were the common people, the subjugated remnants of the aboriginal in- habitants, of whom we still have traces in the Ainu of Yezo. These stood to their conquerors somewhat as Anglo-Saxons stood to Normans, only they were not Anglo-Saxons, or any- thing like them, in moral bravery and endurance. In this relation of conquerors and conquered we may find the origin of that peculiar twist of the Japanese language which compels the student to learn one word of humble import to describe his own actions, and an honorific word to describe the actions of the person spoken to, which varies its idioms according to shades of rank and degree. Doubtless Confucianism has tended to strengthen that ten- dency by exaggerated teachings on the value of rank and authority ; but the tendency appears to have been there before Confucianism, and seems to be best accounted for by the rela- tions which I have just suggested. The whole structure of the language seems suggestive of fear and servility, as though the conquered race had been in terror of their fierce conquerors, and though the component elements of the nation have long been blended into one, the language bears indelible traces of the conquest. There are, however, other traces besides those of language. The Japanese, possibly as a result of heredity derived from the bitter experiences of the past, whilst not actually deceitful, is marvellously close and reticent, and never reveals to an out- sider the whole of his heart. This closeness is not without its advantages for the moment, but it engenders an atmosphere of doubt and suspicion and often leads to actual untruths, which lower his credit among outsiders. We may find another trace of the " Norman Conquest " in JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS 341 the wonderful way which the Japanese has of saying smooth things and avoiding all occasions of giving needless offence. A Japanese can be perfectly plain and outspoken when he likes, but plainness of speech is reserved for occasions when it is absolutely necessary. At other times he uses smooth words cal- culated to please his hearer. It is very pleasant to the ear and mind, but it is sometimes misleading. It has its ludicrous side, also, for it is hard at times to resist a smile when one sees a Japanese beating round the bush before he tells you some trivial thing which he is afraid will not please you. Conquerors and conquered stood against one another in two hostile social camps. In later times the various clans of the conquerors themselves became .rivals for power and dominion, and, since the clans have been weakened, Japan has found her- self surrounded by commercial and political rivals in the wider spheres of a world's activity. History has taught the Japanese the immense value of combination against outsiders. The clan was a close corporation, intended to safeguard local interests ; the nation is now a close corporation intended to safeguard similar interests on a large scale. So long as Japan does not forget this lesson taught her by her own experience, so long will she be practically invincible and certainly inviolable. No nation that could not unite as one man against all outsiders could ever have accomplished the wonderful results that Japan has achieved during the last few years. CHAPTER LXIII JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS (concluded?) THERE has recently been started in Tokyo an association of journalists and others for the elevation of the Japanese drama. Its success is problematical, at least in the immediate future, for it will have to make its way in the face of much hostile criticism, and will antagonise many vested interests ; but its aims are good and its principles will in the long run prevail. Briefly stated, the association aims at reforming the Japanese stage by the infusion of Western methods and spirit, and by the adoption of European ideas of staging and scenery. It does not wish to denationalise the stage by the wholesale rejection of the ancient drama of Japan which has been advocated by others, for its promoters hold that there is a great deal in the old drama that is noble and inspiring. Nor does it purpose to spoil the flavour of the foreign drama, as was done by the bold innovator who represented Othello in Japanese costume as a hero of Formosan battlefields. It is the desire of the members to represent Japanese dramas as Japanese, foreign plays honestly as foreign, to retain all that is best of the old national tragedy, and to supplement it where needful by all that is good on the stages of European theatres. Time alone can demonstrate how far their plans are feasible ; in the meantime their aims and objects are worthy of praise and encouragement. Early in December, 1906, this association, conceiving that ron yori shoko, that concrete example is better than abstract speechifying, gave a series of public performances in the Meijiza Theatre, at which the plays were chosen, with a view of demonstrating the principles underlying their course of action. I purpose to give in this chapter the gist of these plays, because 342 JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS 343 they so admirably illustrate some of the most highly valued characteristic features of the Japanese. In the first play we were shown a young and ardent musician who loved art as something holy, to be prized for its own sake and more highly than life itself. He has heard a great master performing on the flute, and the consciousness of his own inability to attain to such proficiency has filled him with despair. He has solicited the master to take him as a disciple, and has been refused; there seems to be no hope before him in life, and he is preparing to commit suicide out of a feeling of wounded honour. Whilst making his final preparations he receives a visit from a nobleman. " The master," says this nobleman, " is going to the north to join the armies of the Minamoto to whose party he belongs. Follow him in any capacity, constantly, and at all risks, and it may be that in the end he will give you the secret of his musical skill rather than allow it to die with him." Tokiaki (I think that was his name) accepts the kindly advice, and obtains permission to follow the musician-knight, Shinra Saburo, in the capacity of a groom, and we are next taken to the mountain pass of Hakone, where we find the knight on horseback, followed by his faithful groom, who, in his turn again, is followed at a very respectful distance by his faithful wife. Shinra is at first cold and suspicious towards his attendant, whom he would shake off if he were able to do so. Presently, however, he thaws to his assiduous attentions, and at last, on the eve of the battle, when, like Korner at Leipzig, his mind is solemnified by the prospect of a soldier's death, he resolves to communicate to Tokiaki the secret charm of his music. Tokiaki is overjoyed ; but the secrets of art are things too holy to be received except by the pure, and he pre- pares himself for the solemnity by a purification with water in the lake of Hakone.* The Japanese have hitherto been an artistic nation, but the spirit of commercialism has crept into their art and is debasing * So the men of the Japanese Navy were given a bath and change of raiment before the battle of Tsushima. I once had a very earnest-minded convert who insisted on having a bath as a preparative for Baptism. 344 EVERY-DAY JAPAN it. It is, or at least it can be made, the province of the Japanese drama to keep alive before the eyes of the people that true conception of art as a holy vocation to be pursued for its own sake and at the cost of great sacrifice, which has always been so characteristic a note of Old Japan. This was the first of the points which the association wished to emphasise at their first performance. The next piece was one with more dramatic action in it. It was also a story of the feudal ages of idealism, when that which men call bushido is supposed to have been in its prime. It was at the time of the protracted feud between the families of the Genji and Heike, which correspond so closely both in date and character to our own long Wars of the Roses. Yoshitsune, younger brother of Yoritomo, the Genji Shogun, had defeated the Heike forces and taken prisoner the young Prince Atsumori, the sole surviving hope of the Heike house. Nothing now was wanting to the Genji triumph except the death of their prisoner, and Yoritomo gave orders that Atsumori should be slain. The carrying out of the sentence was entrusted to a knight called Kumagaya, the Japanese Hubert. The scene opens at the headquarters of the Genji army. Kumagaya's wife, having heard nothing of the battle, has come to inquire after her husband and also after her only son, who has followed his father to the war. Kumagaya assures her of his own welfare, but is reticent about her son, and ends by advising his wife to go home and not bother him. She refuses to do so. At last her husband, brave warrior though he is, runs away from further questioning and leaves the room. The wife, disturbed beyond measure, sits weeping by herself, for she is filled with sad forebodings about her child, which her husband's answers have done little to dispel ; but she is not long left alone. A visitor is announced : it is Fuji no Tsubone, the mother of Atsumori, the Heike prince, who has heard of the disastrous battle and has thus, in disguise, penetrated into the enemy's camp to ascertain the fate of her son. Atsumori's father had once shown kindness to Kumagaya, and she hopes that he will now repay the kindness by befriending her. JAPANESE CHARACTERISTICS 345 Kumagaya's sad story crushes all her hopes. Yoritomo had ordered Yoshitsune to see to it that Atsumori was killed; Yoshitsune had entrusted Kumagaya with the execution of that order ; and who was Kumagaya to resist his lord's commands ? It grieved him to the heart to tell so sad a tale, but in fact he had done as Yoshitsune bade him, and had slain Atsumori. A very tragic, melodramatic scene ensues. Presently, however, there is a still more tragic scene. Yoshitsune comes in, followed by his staff, and asks of Kumagaya whether he has obeyed his orders or not. Kumagaya goes out, returns with a box under his arm, removes the lid, and shows the ghastly contents to the astonished eyes of Yoshitsune. At the self -same moment his wife also makes the discovery that the head is not Atsumori's but that of her own son. Kumagaya, unable in conscience to disobey his feudal lord, and unable likewise to betray to death the son of his benefactor, has solved the difficulty, in the true spirit of Japanese chivalry, by killing his own son in the stead of Atsumori.* The honourable spirit of loyalty which sticks at no sacrifice has always been one of the chief glories of the Japanese national character. The modern spirit of individualism is cutting that loyalty to the very quick, and the members of the association have felt that the theatre must play its part in keeping it alive. In a third piece the audience was introduced to a scene from the life of the renowned Buddhist reformer, Nichiren. That great saint began his active ministry by a splendid sermon in the temple of his native village, in the course of which he lashed the vices of contemporary religion, and pointed out ways and means of reformation and restoration. His boldness caused him to be driven with contumely from the sacred precincts, yet his words were not without their immediate fruit, and the outcast monk, sitting on a stone under a flowering cherry-tree, preached the law to the first three of his band of zealous disciples. He told them that Sakyamuni's intention had been to point his followers not to this Buddha or to that, but to that which lies behind * This is not true history. The real Kumagaya killed Atsumori, though not without compunction, and his own son had been slain in battle earlier in the day. 346 EVERY-DAY JAPAN all Buddhas and all phenomena the eternal, uncreated Being, which we know as the Word of God. Japan, say the Japanese, has always been the "country of the gods," and the ancient characteristic spirit is worth preserving ; only it must be national and have its roots in the religious experience of the people. Thus we were presented with a Japanese trilogy, bringing out three of the characteristic virtues of ancient Japan idealism, self-sacrificing loyalty, and religious zeal. The fourth play was a comedy, from the German of Kotzebue, full of homely, inno- cent mirth and genuinely laughter-provoking. "We have been accustomed," said my friend to me, " to go to the theatre to cry; we want to teach our people to go there to laugh, and to laugh innocently." There is no Puritan so thorough-going as the Shushi philosopher or the zealous buskidoist. But Puritanism is not the whole of life, and Japanese humour, directed into proper channels, will have a very elevating influence. It is here that foreign literature can play its part with effect. Life in Tokyo constantly reminds me of the prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. We have our chivalric knights, our noble ladies, our franklins, our priests and friars, our poor parsons, our scholars ; we have also our pardoners, our reeves, our wives of Bath, our wild and not over-moral students. Like England in the time of Chaucer, we are emerging from the darkness of the feudal period, and the times are big with future possibilities of good or evil. Japan has not yet achieved her true greatness, but the promise is there ; and if she builds on the foundations she already possesses, and modestly uses all that lies open to her, she will achieve it There must be modesty, and there is an " if" but there is something more than a mere hope. CHAPTER LXIV OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES Two New Testament sayings seem to be impressed with special emphasis on our minds as we study the recent history of Japan, of which, when all has been told that man can tell, all still remains to be told, so baffling is the task. " No man, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new ; for he saith, The old is better." Could any words more accu- rately sum up the attitude of intellectual Japan to-day ? The Japanese have long drunk of the old wine of their ancient civilisation, a civilisation quite different from our own, indeed, but by no means beneath it, except perhaps in material develop- ment and science. They have during the last forty years deliberately gone round the world " seeking for gold " and tasting the wines which other countries have offered them. They have come back, saying, " Our old wine is better than that of other countries ; at any rate, it is more suitable to our palates. We will abide by our old national spirit, our old way of looking at things, our old philosophy, our old religion. We do not desire this new wine that the West has to offer, for now that we have seen the world we are more than content with our own." At the same time they have realised that, excellent though the old wine might be, the old leather bottles in which it had been kept were sadly in need of renovation and repair, nay, of being replaced by new bottles of a stronger and more durable make. Side by side with the determination to spare no effort to keep the old wine unchanged, there has also been the effort to provide new bottles to keep it in. Organisations, machinery, institutions, systems, have been renewed or changed, but the essence has been left untouched as far as possible. In law, in 347 348 EVERY-DAY JAPAN commerce, in military arts and sciences, in education, in religion, the constant effort and determination of Japan has been to make everything material and tangible as perfect as possible, but to preserve the sake of the national spirit untouched, in legal arrangements, in ways of doing business, in the carrying on of war, in the education of children, in the worship of God, and, more than all, in social life. The shape and pattern of the material bottles do not so much matter ; what is essential in Japanese eyes is that the ethereal spirit within be preserved in its first purity. It cannot, however, be said that the Japanese have more than half succeeded in their attempt to procure new bottles for their old wine. In the process of being transferred from the old bottles to the new the wine has necessarily lost some of its old flavour and sweetness ; it has in many cases acquired a new flavour from the new leather of its recently-acquired bottles, and this flavour is sometimes so strong that it threatens entirely to spoil the good old wine within. Electric cars and telephones with their overhead wires have destroyed the old world religious processions in Tokyo ; the unity of the family assembled round the tombs of departed ancestors has been broken by railways and by the expansion of the Empire, which has sent the younger people to the ends of the earth to seek their fortunes ; new conditions of trade and commerce have sent some men up and others down, and have completely reversed existing social conditions. The old spirit is no longer what it used to be : it has been tainted by materialism, by the greed of the merchant, by political chicanery, by unbelief and doubt, by the thousand evil taints which cling to the material side of Western institutions ; it is no longer quite the spirit that it was when the process of re-bottling first began. Wine merchants know that there is such a thing as " doctor- ing " wine, not for purposes of adulteration, but in order that the wine may be preserved wholesome and sweet, and the wisest heads in Japan already see that a similar process must be tried here. To save the deterioration of the Japan spirit there must A DANCING GIRL. A GIRL DRESSED AS A DANCING BOY. A JAPANESE DOMESTIC CUSTOM. THE OUTDOOR BOOTS ARE TAKEN OFF ON THE Tl UNIVERSITY Of OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES 349 be a judicious infusion of the best elements taken from the spiritual experience of other lands. These, and these alone, can preserve the old wine as a wholesome and palatable drink for the Japanese nation. The doctoring process must be done by Japan herself, for none understand the tastes, needs, and desires of Japan so well as Japan's own sons, and it is they, and not we, who have to drink the old wine, doctored, from the new bottles. Nations, like individuals, have to work out their own salvation, and we, the rest, can only stand by and watch the struggle, giving the Japanese our intelligent sympathy and the lamp of our experience to illuminate their path across the dark places of their coming history ; for dark places there will assuredly be before the transformation of Japan, so happily commenced in the nineteenth century, is completed in the twentieth. On the issue of that internal reform now going on depends the position which Japan ultimately will take among the nations of the world. It is clear that she is now, and will be for many years to come, a great military nation. It is also clear that she is rapidly becoming a great industrial and commercial nation a rival seriously threatening the commercial predominance in the Far East hitherto claimed by other races. The two things combined do not always work for the world's peace. The rise of a strong military, and at the same time commercial, nation, may be a curse to the world rather than a blessing, if that nation is not also actuated by those nobler motives which prompt it to seek the things which are just, pure, noble, and of good report. Such a nation would indeed become a menace and a peril, and there are moments when the best friends of Japan tremble for her, fearing what will be the outcome of the changes which they are so constantly witnessing. In such moments there is always the comforting thought that nations whose greatness is founded on greed, rapacity, hypocrisy, or injustice speedily sink back into the insignificance from which they have emerged so soon as their task has been fulfilled as the scourge in the hands of God. What does the world care now for the great Napoleonic Empire ? 350 EVERY-DAY JAPAN But such, I am persuaded, will not be the ultimate destiny of Japan. Japan has in her elements of moral greatness, which will in the end triumph over the frankly materialistic I had almost said sordidly materialistic ideas which are now pre- dominant. She counts among her sons many who are, honestly and honourably, seekers after truth and righteousness, and it is to these that I look as the ultimate preservers of the old wine in the new bottles. We outsiders cannot assist ; we can only encourage the noble efforts we see our friends making. But God helps those who help themselves, and it cannot be said of Japan that she has at any period of her history sat still with folded hands to wait for a salvation for which she had not laboured. Japan will assuredly work hard to deserve her place in the world ; when she has firmly established herself in her new position, and has time to pause and take stock, she will find that the change has been even more complete and radical than she dreams it has been. The ultimate and lasting glory of this great Empire will not be the dregs of the old wine drained off into new bottles and spoiled in the process, but a new and better wine stored in new and better bottles, and matured in the only possible way, namely, by age. APPENDIX A AN OUTLINE OF JAPANESE HISTORY DOWN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT WHICH CULMINATED IN THE RESTORATION OF IMPERIAL RULE THERE is much in the first period of history that is legendary and untrustworthy. If we follow the Japanese chronicles with a somewhat critical eye, we may gather that, whilst the arrival in Japan of the first Emperor, Jimmu, is generally placed in the year 660 B.C., many years must have elapsed before the whole of the country was entirely subdued to the sway of the Imperial House. Writing was unknown, con- temporary records impossible; all that we have is a list of Sovereigns (which may be correct, but which is equally likely to be fabulous), and a few scattered notices in books like the " Kojiki " and " Nihongi," from which we learn that the work of conquest was gradually pushed on from point to point, that the conquered districts were divided into provinces over which were set hereditary princes, with the authority of governors, which they held as vassals; that some of the early Em- perors were more distinguished than others for the care they bestowed upon the temporal and spiritual wants of their subjects, by the en- couragement of agriculture and commerce, the regulation of markets, and the erection of temples; and that some of the hereditary vassals were haughty and rebellious, and gave their Sovereign a good deal of trouble. There is nothing in this period that need detain us long. It is mainly important as showing the unique position of the Sovereign at the earliest period of Japanese history, and the composite character of the people which could only be welded into one by the conqueror's sword. There were two races at war with the invading followers of Jimmu, the Emishi, or barbarians, who are now represented by the Ainu; and the Kumaso, who have become fused and identified with their pure Japanese neighbours, just as our Anglo-Saxons became fused with the Normans. That the Kumaso, whose chief seat of habitation was in Kyushu, were originally of Mongolian stock, and kinsmen of the Koreans, seems to be borne out by the fact that in the struggles which this freedom-loving tribe waged against the descendants of Jimmu Tenno and his family they appealed for help to, and were constantly supported by, the Kings of Korea, and especially by those of Shiragi, the most powerful of the States into which the Korean peninsula was then divided. The support 351 352 APPENDIX thus given to the enemies of the Empire involved Japan in war with Korea, and was the beginning of a long series of conflicts between the two countries. The rebellion of the Kumaso was put down, and an expedition against Korea undertaken by the warlike Empress Jingo in the year 193 A.D. During the next four centuries and a half we have traces of fourteen military expeditions undertaken against Korea, the last being the one under the Empress Kokyoku in A.D. 660, after which Japan for a while laid aside all her quarrels with Korea. During this period the followers of the Emperors, whether in their expeditions against rebellious Kumaso or in their foreign wars on the Asiatic Continent, underwent many hardships and cheerfully endured many privations. But the long and, on the whole, victorious wars served to call into activity the military and war-loving spirit which lurks in every Japanese breast, and the worship of the heroes who had died fight- ing for their Sovereign and his cause must have received as mighty an impetus as it has done in these later days from the ghastly memories of Port Arthur, Nanshan, or Mukden. The withdrawal from Korea, and the subsequent abandonment of all warlike designs on that country, seems to have been due very largely to the civilising and tranquillising influences of the moral and religious teachings with which Korea requited Japan for the many attacks which the latter had directed against her. In the later years of this period must be placed the introduction into Japan of Chinese letters and Bud- dhist teachings. Both came to Japan first from Korea, which was at that time a highly-cultured land. The Chinese teachings were warmly wel- comed. China had been the schoolmistress of Korea, and now Korea sent over to Japan the practical wisdom that she had learned the arts of writing, medicine, astronomy, architecture, painting, music. Artisans of all sorts flocked over carpenters, weavers, potters, shipbuilders and the Japanese, then as now, were eager and apt pupils. Confucianism also came from China, and was a welcome arrival, as it tended to strengthen the authority of the Imperial Court and establish the dignity of the throne. The teachings of Confucius have no supernatural basis : it is a purely ethical system resting on man in his different relationships, as ruler or subject, as master or servant, as father or son, as teacher or pupil, and its whole energy is bent on helping men to discharge their duties properly in these comprehensive relationships. It was just the kind of moral support that the ruling classes needed to lead the restless masses of the people to the rightful performance of their duties, and as such it was unhesitatingly welcomed. It is true that in a later period, in the eighteenth century, when men of reflection were groaning under the petty tyrannies of the later Tokugawa Shoguns, and were yearning for the restoration of the personal rule of the Emperor, men like Moto-ori and Hirata blamed Confucianism as the origin and fountain of all the evils in the State, because it had taught the Emperors to lay aside their primitive simplicity, and had taught a system of ethics by rule instead of those simple natural morals which men who are naturally good will APPENDIX 353 always observe of their own free will and without compulsion. When Confucianism came to Japan, the Japanese were not so good as to be able to do without ethical teachings, and Confucianism, which taught men their duties without requiring them to give up any of their old ancestral beliefs, must have appeared to the leaders of the country in a most favourable light. The case was different with Buddhism, which was not accepted with- out a struggle, at least by the upper classes. Buddhism, in its origin a protest against caste, knows no distinction between man and man, and pays no heed to social status or rank. It teaches men to turn away from the pomps and vanities of a transient world, and to look to a future emancipation which is essentially not of this world. To the con- quered half of Japan, who had not yet fully learned to lie still under the yoke of the conqueror, but sat like the Anglo-Saxon under the domination of the Norman, and was compelled to bear the burdens and pains of wars domestic and foreign (" Quidquid delirant reges plectuntur Achivi"}, the message of Buddhism came with a peculiar sweetness, for it spoke the language of hope. Buddhism was at once welcomed by, and has ever since been the favourite religion of, the middle classes. But by the upper classes it was at first bitterly opposed. Its intro- duction was accompanied by bloodshed and tumults. More than once were the temples of the new religion burnt and its priests banished. The leaders of the opposition were, for the most part, men of high posi- tion and rank, members of the Emperor's Court and high officials, who probably feared the consequences, political and otherwise, which might follow the introduction of a religion so much opposed to the funda- mental principles of Japanese thought. When Buddhism made its footing sure, it was no longer quite the same Buddhism as that which had been preached in the first instance. The early preachers of the Indian faith in Japan were Chinamen; its later advocates were Japanese who had gone to China to make inde- pendent studies for themselves. The Japanese has always been patriotic enough to prefer to receive his teaching from the mouth of one of his own countrymen. The early teachers had preached the simpler forms of Buddhism known as the "Lesser Vehicle" : the Japanese who went to China brought back with them the system known as the " Great Vehicle," a very late form of Buddhism, much modified during its passage through Thibet and China, a system which had already in China learned to adapt itself to the Confucian ethics, and which was prepared to adapt itself equally readily to Japanese principles or prejudices. It was this form of Buddhism that was ultimately adopted by the upper classes and the Court. Amongst the warlike samurai it never took much root. The prince who brought the Imperial Power to its height, and who at the same time worked most powerfully to promote the cause of Buddhism, was Shotoku Taishi, a prince who never mounted the throne, but who was content, like our own Frince Consort, with the humbler 354 APPENDIX position of an adviser and counsellor. Under Kotoku Tenno, A.D. 645, large reforms were instituted; the great barons who held hereditary office as governors of provinces and were apt to assert themselves against the Imperial dignity, were brought into proper subjection, and the Sovereign's claim asserted to be "over all causes within his dominions supreme." At the same time, under Kotoku and his successors, the northern parts of the main island were finally subdued, and the island of Yezo added to the dominions of the Empire. A form of military con- scription was introduced, learning and science were encouraged indeed, the whole of this period may be looked upon as the golden age of ancient Imperialism. The Emperors, however, fell under the influence of Buddhism, which now became mighty at the Court. But it was not the simple Buddhism that Sakyamuni had preached the teaching of the " Small Vehicle." It was a corrupt and worldly form that laid much stress on superstitious practices, on pretended miracles, fortune-telling, amulets and charms. The effects of its teachings were soon to be seen. Whilst the great military families steadily increased in power and influence, the Court became enervated and nerveless. Religious ceremonies, processions, images, were treated as matters of the greatest importance ; the weightier matters of the law were set aside. The whole period of seven reigns (from A.D. 707-781) during which the Court resided at Heijo (Nara) has become a byword for luxury and corruption. The last of the Nara Emperors, Konin Tenno, made some effort to break the bad tradition. His son, Kammu Tenno, who inherited, in A.D. 787, succeeded in removing the Court from Nara to Kyoto, and so breaking for a while the spell that hung over the Imperial House and making the Imperial authority re- spected in the utmost corners of the land; but Kammu Tenno's energy bore no lasting fruit. His successors sank back into the luxurious ways which had become fashionable with the Court ; the effeminate successors of Jimmu Tenno needed someone to take them by the hand, and this they found in the ambitious family of the Fujiwara, which for many a long year overshadowed the Imperial House. With the accession of Seiwa Tenno, in A.D. 858, may be said to have begun the one thousand years of the practical extinction of Imperial authority. The Fujiwara family retained its power over the Imperial Family and Court for over two centuries, mainly by the policy, steadily pursued, of supplying the Emperors with wives from the daughters of their house. Thus it came to pass that during this period there was always a Fujiwara who enjoyed the dignity of father-in-law or brother-in-law to the Sovereign, and the all-powerful family well knew how to push to the utmost the advantages which they thus possessed. Occasionally a faithful courtier, like the scholar Sugiwara Michizane, would raise a voice of protest against the system so ruthlessly adopted by the family, and one Sovereign at least Daigo Tenno (897-930) succeeded for a while in making his personal influence felt in the Empire. But the break was only temporary. Daigo's successor was under age when he came to APPENDIX 355 the throne, and the Fujiwara reasserted their usurped rights to control the Imperial Court as they pleased. It will be readily understood that the position which the Fujiwara had assumed caused much jealousy among the great military families in the provinces, and that many of the warlike nobles were waiting only too eagerly for the time when the Fujiwara should fall a prey to the same enervating luxury through which they themselves had held the Imperial House in a state of insignificant subjection. Into the place thus vacated by their fall there stepped two great rival military houses, the Taira and Minamoto, each aspiring to headship in the State. A long and bloody civil war broke out, which lasted for over a century, and ended, after many vicissitudes, in the decisive victory of the Minamoto under their leader Yoritomo. This is one of the most picturesque periods of Japanese history, and one which is constantly alive in the memories of the people, whose literature and art are full of its echoes. But the long and fierce wars were fraught with much misery for the nation, and the sufferings of the time may be seen in the new forms of religion which arose during the troubles. The earlier forms of Buddhism, the teachings of the Great Vehicle sects which had first taken root in the land, had spoken of charms and incantations and prayers for temporal blessings. They had little of comfort for those sad times. One new system, which became very prominent and found adherents among the military classes, was the so-called Zen, a sort of Stoic philosophy, which taught its dis- ciples to strengthen the mind by constant meditation against the hard- ships of this transitory world of trouble. The other always a favourite sect amongst the poor and ignorant taught its followers to put all their trust and confidence in a Buddha named Amida, a mythical personage so like Christ that many have thought him to be but a shadow-picture of the historical Saviour in whom we have learned to believe. These sects, which are purely Japanese, still exist and flourish. A period of stress and anxiety, like the war through which Japan has recently passed, always brings many additional adherents to the contemplative sects of the Zen. Yoritomo assumed the title of Shogun (military governor), and as such took into his own hands the reins of government, which he admin- istered in the name of the Emperor. In order better to administer affairs, he removed his own court to Kamakura, on the Bay of Sagami, leaving his Sovereign to reside, as hitherto, in the seclusion of Kyoto. He left no successor worthy of his greatness, and after his death the same fate befell the Shogunate that had already befallen the Imperial House. Just as the Emperor had been forced to place all executive power in the hands of a Shogun, so now the degenerate sons of Yoritomo were compelled to entrust their powers to a Regent belonging to the powerful house of Hojo. Thus the Hojo Regents became the actual rulers of the land, and the people had before them the far from edifying spectacle of puppet Emperors and puppet Shoguns, and the supreme 356 APPENDIX power in the hands of a usurping Regent. That things were not much worse than they were is due to the fact that some of the Hojo Regents were really good men, and that under their administration the people were kept contented and happy. But, however good a usurping Government may be, it lacks stability from the very fact that it is usurped. As long as the Hojo were good men, so long they retained their power ; but, being only usurpers, they had many jealous rivals, and their first slip was the signal for troubles to break out. Once again an Emperor, Godaigo, succeeded in asserting himself for a while, and in breaking through the fetters of the Shogunate and Regency; but he had not the power to establish his authority permanently, and the result was confusion worse confounded. A vassal of the Hojo succeeded in making himself Shogun : the noble Godaigo was forced to flee from his capital, and a rival Emperor was proclaimed. It is beyond the scope of this work to give a detailed account of this period, and nothing but a detailed history would suffice to guide the reader through the mazes of Japan's most bloody period of civil strife. Suffice it to say that it lasted for two centuries and a half, that it embraces some of the most prominent names of Japanese history Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Tokugawa lyeyasu and that it ends with lyeyasu's great victory at Sekigahara, when Japan, thoroughly exhausted, fell at the feet of the conqueror, ready to accept any terms he might be pleased to grant. In the midst of these civil confusions, about the year 1549? the Catholic missionaries arrived in Japan and began their evangelistic labours. They could not well have chosen a more inopportune moment for the commencement of operations. The country was literally torn to pieces by civil faction, and the great daimyos of the extreme north and the extreme south, that ruled in Sendai, Yamaguchi, and Kagoshima, like kings in their own dominions, were glad to avail themselves of any ally to help them in their struggle against the new power that was springing up in Hideyoshi and lyeyasu, and that threatened to crush them out of existence. Every record seems to point us to the conclusion that the Catholic missionaries were a fine set of men, honest and simple-minded, with a single heart for the service of God whose business they were engaged in doing. But the southern daimyos who welcomed the missionaries also welcomed the traders of Europe; the great northern daimyo, Date Masamune, sent an embassy to Rome and others of the Courts of Europe ; and lyeyasu saw that these things, if allowed to continue unchecked, would speedily destroy all the system which he had so carefully built up. Had the trade all come to Yedo, and had the Shogun's Government reaped all the benefit of the commerce with Spain and Portugal, Christi- anity might never have been proscribed. But to tolerate Christianity involved the necessity of allowing others besides priests to tread the shores of Japan; there would have to be trade and commerce, and an open market would benefit the opposing factions in Kyushu and in the north. Rather than do that, lyeyasu determined to cut off all intercourse APPENDIX 35; with foreign nations, and the Catholic missionaries were made the scapegoat which seemed to justify the harsh measures he adopted, lyeyasu is by no means the only statesman in the world who has com- passed his ends by misrepresentation and unjust charges, but that does not palliate his crime. Layman or priest, nobleman or peasant, the early Christians of Japan were the innocent victims of lyeyasu's worldly policy; and though they may occasionally have lacked wisdom, it is impossible to bring against them any provable charge of corruption or political intrigue. The Christianity of men like St. Francis Xavier is not open to the charge of corruption or depravity, and the unshaken patriotism and loyalty of the Japanese Christians of those days was triumphantly demonstrated by the fact that two and a half centuries of galling and cruel persecutions were unable to shake them in their allegiance to Emperor and Fatherland. The world has nothing to com- pare with the constancy and loyalty under adverse circumstances of Japanese confessors and martyrs, unless it be the similar constancy under similarly trying circumstances of the downtrodden handful of English Catholics during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Time brought its own revenge in working for the downfall under changed circumstances of the power that crushed the Christians under its unjust hand. How and when that vengeance was ultimately accomplished I will leave for a subsequent chapter of my appendix. APPENDIX B THE RESTORATION OF IMPERIAL POWER IN JAPAN DURING the two hundred and fifty years which elapsed between the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which practically shelved the Imperial House, and the restoration of the same to power, there were many causes at work to bring about a change in the current of Japanese policy. These causes may be enumerated as follows : 1. The discontent of the barons, and especially of those who, like Shimadzu and Mori in the south, were rulers of extensive territories. These magnates had been practically independent princes long before the comparatively modern family of the Tokugawas had ever been heard of. Defeated in battle at Sekigahara, they had been obliged to sacrifice their autonomy, to give hostages for their good conduct, and to become the humble vassals of an upstart. It is true that they had not always, in days gone by, been models of obedience in their relations to the Imperial House; but, after Sekigahara, they found that they had come under the rule of King Stork, and were only waiting for a safe oppor- tunity to throw off the yoke. This, of course, does not apply to those families which had been placed over Daimyates by lyeyasu himself, and established in various parts of the country to watch over the interests of the Shogunate. 2. A second cause leading to the overthrow of the Shogunate was the estrangement which took place between the Buddhists and the Confucianists. lyeyasu and, still more, his grandson lyemitsu, had made a skilful combination of the Buddhist and Confucianist elements to sup- press Christianity and help them in maintaining their authority. But it was soon discovered that a permanent union between the two systems was absolutely impossible, and Professor Inouye has shown quite well in his book on the Shushi philosophy that the breach between the two quondam allies was getting wider and wider during the whole of the eighteenth century. 3. Finding themselves in disagreement with their allies, the Bud- dhists, the Confucianists turned for sympathy to the Shintoist remnant which still remained faithful to the cult of the ancestral gods from whom the Imperial House claimed descent. The new allies took refuge in the study of history. Those weird chronicles, the "Kojiki" and "Nihongi," were unearthed and carefully edited, with commentaries behind which 358 APPENDIX 359 there lurked something more than a mere desire for scholarlike erudition; and the great daimyo family of the Barons of Mito Confucianists, though of the House of Tokugawa commenced the compilation of a history of Japan which did much to bring out the paramount position of the Imperial House. This history, commenced two centuries ago, has re- cently been completed, and there was, till 1907, in the town of Mito, a committee of scholars engaged in the work of compilation. 4. At the end of two hundred and fifty years of persecution, the Catholic missionaries, in 1859, discovered over 20,000 Christians in the neighbourhood of Nagasaki alone. This body of people had, during all that long dreary time, kept up an "underground" practice of their faith. One would infer that the number of secret adherents must have been even greater, and these men cannot possibly have been well disposed to the Shogunate which had put down their religion with so unscrupulous a hand. 5. lyeyasu had hermetically sealed Japan from the outside world, as he thought; but he had left, in the Dutch factory at Nagasaki, a tiny airhole through which news from the outside world came into Japan, in driblets indeed, but still in amount sufficient to effect a lasting result. The "Dutch scholars" knew something about Western science and politics; they understood how far behind the rest of the world Japan had fallen; they had heard of the fate of India, Siberia, the islands of the Pacific, and they were indignant with the Shogun's Government for allowing Japan to remain helplessly exposed to so many threatening dangers. All these causes were at work in Japan in 1853, when Commodore Perry arrived with his squadron of American ships. The Shogun's Prime Minister at the time was li Kamon no Kami, one of the greatest of Japanese statesmen, whose tragic fate I have recounted in my chapter on the Sakurada Gate. li Kamon saw the needs of his country very well ; but he did not comprehend the strength of the feeling of loyalty to the Imperial House in its retirement at Kyoto, nor yet how intense was the jealousy of the territorial clans against the domination of the Tokugawas. It would seem that he fully shared the hatred of foreigners with which the policy of the Shoguns during the last two centuries had imbued the Japanese people; but he recog- nised that Japan was too weak to cope with foreign Powers, and that a radical renovation of the system of government was an absolute necessity. In carrying out this policy he saw, so it is believed, a good opportunity of ending the anomalies of Japanese government by establish- ing his master, the Shogrm, on the Imperial throne, and his enemies were not slow to profit by his mistake. He was assassinated by a band of Mito Samurai, with whom at least one Satsuma man had associated himself, was laid in a dishonoured grave, and brought upon his own followers the disgraceful suspicion of having been associated with a choteki (traitor). It was left to other hands to effect a successful consummation of 360 APPENDIX the Imperial restoration and the renovation of the country. I will proceed now to tell the story. It was in the year 1862. The treaty with Mr. Harris, the American plenipotentiary, had been signed three years previously, and the hated foreigners had for about the same period of time been defiling the sacred land of Japan with their presence. li Kamon, the bold minister of the Shogun, who had dared to sign that treaty in spite of the prejudices of his compatriots, had paid the penalty of his boldness, and his body had already been laid in a quiet grave in a remote village cemetery, honoured only by the few who had known him in life as their hereditary feudal lord. The Tokugawa Ministry had not really been able to recover from the blow which li Kamon's assassination had inflicted on it. It stood irresolute and helpless in the midst of a distracted nation. On one side, the Imperial Court, the majority of the great nobles, and the whole of the great class of samurai, who then as now formed the fighting strength of the nation all these forces to a man were opposed to the introduction of the foreigner; on the other hand stood the great commercial classes of the country, the unarmed people who had no great love for the bullying samurais, and loved dollars well enough to be ready to do a little business with the blue-eyed barbarian; while, in a corner by themselves, the great territorial barons of the south were waiting to play their own game, ready to welcome the foreign mer- chants to their own territory, but not at all willing to acquiesce in a treaty which brought the trade to Yokohama, where the Shogun was lord paramount. All that the Shogun Government, deprived of its master mind, could do under the circumstances was to play a waiting game. It took great care to do nothing to break the treaties it had made with the foreign Powers. With its domestic foes it temporised. Its great aim was to carry out its original programme of gaining time for the military and naval development of the country. Looking back now on the history of that period, we cannot help admiring the wonderful forbearance and patience of the much-abused Tokugawa government. The Americans were clamouring for more privileges, and asking for the opening of Hyogo (Kobe) to foreign trade, a port which would have brought them quite near to the sacred city of Kyoto and the presence of a semi-deified Emperor. Behind the Americans stood England, France, Prussia, Holland, all eager for similar privileges. The Shogun's Government had no objections to this request, but the whole nation the whole fighting part of the nation, that is was up in arms at the very thought, and it was hard to restrain their misguided indignation. It was much harder when we consider that, whilst England and America were making demands that were perfectly legitimate, another Power was quietly playing its own game in the distant territories to the north of the Japanese Empire, that Russia had just seized the southern half APPENDIX 361 of the island of Saghalien, and that a Russian man-of-war had taken possession of the island of Tsushima, in the Straits of Korea, whence it had only been driven by the prompt appearance of a British frigate. How hard it must have been under the circumstances for the Shogun's Government not to join in the popular outcry against the barbarians ! The year 1862 saw the despatch from Japan of the first embassy that had left the shores of the country for more than three centuries, with the exception of one to the United States two years previously. It went, amongst other places, to Russia, to negotiate on the Saghalien difficulty if possible, and though it failed to get satisfaction for Japan in that respect, it nevertheless had a very great effect on the develop- ment of the country when its members, three years later, returned to Japan with the news of all that they had seen and heard. The same year saw another event which was destined to have unlooked- for results : a great conference of barons held in Tokyo for the purpose of coercing the Shogun to break faith with the foreigners, under the guise of giving him counsel in his difficulties. This council was attended by all the great barons, among others by Shimadzu Saburo, the guardian and representative of the Prince of Satsuma, who was a minor. Satsuma lies in the extreme south of the island of Kyushu, fully a month's journey in those old days from Tokyo or Yedo, and the traveller has to travel through Kyushu to Moji, where he crosses the Straits of Shimonoseki, and thence proceeds along the northern shores of the Inland Sea to Osaka and Kyoto, and so along the Tokaido to the present capital. At Hakata, in Kyushu, Shimadzu fell in with a band of Ronin* under the leadership of a man named Hirano Jiro. In the confusions that had befallen the country, Hirano had found the true solution, though he did not yet understand the truth in all its bearings. He saw that the whole difficulty of the situation lay in the fact that Japan had two legally constituted Governments the Emperor's and the Shogun's each practically independent of the other, and that no satisfactory arrange- ment could be made until the Emperor was reinstated in his proper place as the sole and responsible head of the State. He therefore spent the long days during which they rode together along the beautiful shores of the Inland Sea in persuading Shimadzu to make a sudden raid upon Kyoto with his forces, seize the person of the Emperor, and rouse the country to rally round the rightful Sovereign and depose the Shogun, * A Ronin was a samurai who belonged to no clan, and owned allegiance to no prince. Sometimes a man was expelled from a clan for disgraceful con- duct, but sometimes he would leave it for honourable reasons. For instance, if a man engaged in an enterprise, in which failure would seriously incon- venience or injure his clan, he would first become a ronin, and then go as an unattached unit into the enterprise, knowing that failure would involve only himself. 362 APPENDIX whose power was, after all, only a usurped one, though the usurpation was hallowed by the use of two centuries. If Shimadzu would do this, continued Hirano, there would be no difficulty in driving out the foreigner, for the sole obstacle in the way of abrogating the treaties would be removed with the fall of the Shogun. Shimadzu listened, and hesitated. When the two parted company at Kyoto he had not quite made up his mind, though enough had been said to inflame the minds of his followers with a very strong and unreasoning hatred of the foreign merchants. Meanwhile, the Shogunate authorities at Yedo had felt considerable anxiety about the great Council of Barons, which, at the suggestion of the Emperor, was to meet at Yedo to counsel with the Shogun. A great baron could not travel in the feudal days without a large escort of men-at-arms, and the presence of these men-at-arms, loosely disciplined, turbulent, and excited, was a great menace to the public safety. They were especially concerned about the safety of the foreign community at Kanagawa (it had not yet been removed to the safer location at Yoko- hama, across the bay), and had issued earnest warnings to the foreign merchants to avoid anything at all calculated to irritate the men-at-arms attached to the trains of the great barons that would pass through Kanagawa on their way to Yedo. But their precautions were foiled by a party of ladies and gentlemen, who were riding innocently enough along the Tokaido, where they met the cavalcade of the Prince of Sat- suma, with his samurai, on their way to Yedo. Etiquette required that they should dismount and kneel while the great man passed ; they knew nothing of etiquette, and neglected to do so. The men-at-arms, full of hatred to foreigners and inflamed by the fiery speeches of Hirano and his Ronin^ attacked them promptly with their long swords, and, in the confusion, Mr. Richardson, who unfortunately fell from his horse, was killed. This incident effectually broke up the council. The foreign Powers were justly incensed and held the Shogun's Government responsible for an outrage which really it was powerless to prevent. The British Government demanded an indemnity of ; 100,000 from the Shogun's Government, and ,25,000 from that of the Prince of Satsuma, and when the latter absolutely refused to pay his share ships were sent to bombard his castle town of Kagoshima, in 1863. It was a very sharp lesson, and the reader will easily understand that it did not serve to allay the anti-foreign spirit throughout the country. Nor did it serve to render more easy the task of the Shogunate, which, knowing that Japan was no match for the foreign Powers, knew also that Japan's only hope of safety lay in strictly fulfilling her treaty obligations and securing for the country a breathing space in which to develop her own immense but latent strength. The Richardson affair, together with the bombardment of Kagoshima, delayed the Imperial Restoration by several years. Perhaps it was well for Japan that it did so. A restoration in 1862 or 1863 could only have APPENDIX 363 taken place on strictly anti-foreign lines. The American treaties would have been repudiated, troubles with foreign Powers would have ensued, and Japan would have lost a large slice of territory to Russia, England or France, perhaps even have forfeited her autonomy altogether. National disasters are often blessings in disguise. For the moment everyone's thoughts were turned to the question of how to get rid of the foreigner as quickly as possible. The Council of Barons, whose sittings had been rudely broken up by the Richardson affair, was resumed the following year (1863) at Kyoto, when it was unanimously resolved that the Emperor and Shogun should together undertake the expulsion of the intruders. The Emperor was to commit to the care of the Shogun the great sword of State, with which to drive them out, the sacred sword preserved in the shrine of Hachiman, and the Shogun was to fix the day on which the work of national deliver- ance was to take place. But the Shogun knew better. He knew, what none of the great barons knew, that it was impossible to do so with the forces at Japan's disposal, and so his Government delayed and procrastinated, until at last it became clear to the nation that he had no intention of putting into execution the decrees of the great Council of Barons. Then the indigna- tion of the men-at-arms throughout the country knew no bounds. Riots, tumults, insults to foreigners, became the order of the day. The British and American Legations at Yedo were attacked and burned, and it re- quired the appearance of a British fleet off Shinagawa to bring the Shogun's capital to something like quiet. In the south things were worse. A quarrel broke out, in the precincts of the Imperial Palace at Kyoto, between the hot-headed men-at-arms of Choshu and the men of the Aidzu clan, who were from the north, and whom the policy of the Shogun had placed on guard at the Imperial capital to watch over his interests there. The Aidzu men succeeded in driving the Choshu men from the palace, whereupon the latter returned in high dudgeon to their own province in the west of the main island, and declared war on their own account by firing on foreign ships as they passed through the Straits of Shimonoseki. This daring piece of folly brought upon Choshu a double punishment. A fleet composed of vessels of different nationalities bombarded Shimon- oseki and exacted a heavy indemnity, which it took many years to pay off, and a punitive expedition was sent by the Shogun to vindicate the injured dignity of the central Government. But it also marked the beginning of better things. Many young men from Choshu had been sent (or had escaped) abroad to see the world, and the earlier ones were beginning to return, men like Ito and Inouye, and others who may be called the makers of Young Japan. The embassy to Europe, to which we have already alluded, also returned. All came with the same story. It was hopeless, they said, for Japan to try to measure swords with foreign nations, for Japan was 364 APPENDIX in truth centuries behind the world in all kinds of material develop- ment and progress. The only thing was to do what li Kamon had always advocated to make treaties with the foreigners and strictly to adhere to treaty obligations. This would give to the country an invaluable breathing space, which could be utilised by learning in the Western schools of Western material science, and by this means Japan would be raised to the level of other nations. Thus everybody in Japan gradually came round to accepting the position for which li Kamon, ten years before, had been abused, assassin- ated, and branded with disgrace. Then, in the Providence of God, the chance came for carrying out the thought which was now in everybody's mind. A new Shogun (Keiki) came into power in 1866, and a new Emperor, his present Majesty, ascended the throne in 1867. Two new men could do what their prede- cessors, under the influence of old associations and prejudices, could not have done. At a meeting of great barons, held in the autumn of 1867, the Prince of Tosa proposed that the office of the Shogun be abolished, and that all executive power of government be once more exercised by the Emperor, as it had been in the palmy days of antiquity. To this the Shogun generously agreed, and on November 19, 1867, re- signed to the Emperor all the powers which had been conferred on his ancestor lyeyasu, in 1603. But there were still some troubles to be borne before the Restoration was entirely accomplished. Pending the transfer of power from the Shogun to the Emperor, the Shogun consented temporarily to carry on the government for a little while longer. But the Choshu men, thinking that the Shogunate was dead, and burning to have their revenge on the men of Aidzu for the insults they had received in 1863 and 1864, made a sudden attack on them in Kyoto, and drove them from the Imperial Palace. At this the Shogun and all his men were terribly enraged, and the Shogun, considering that he had been dealt with treacherously, revoked his resignation and took up arms to defend his rights. A civil war ensued, which was fought with stubbornness and courage on both sides. But fortune was on the side of the Imperial House, and the Imperial troops drove back their adversaries, step by step, from Fushimi, near Kyoto, and along the Tokaido, to Hakone, to Yedo, where a decisive battle was fought in Uyeno Park, to the mountains of Aidzu, and to the roadstead of Hakodate, where the Shogun's navy made a last stand in a defeated cause. Thus at last was worked out the unification of Japan. Eight years previously Italy had worked out for herself her problem of unification; three years later, in the palace of the French Kings at Versailles, was completed the work of German unification, which had begun so sadly in the civil war of 1866. The unification of Japan presents many of the same features that are to be found in Italy and Germany. To-day we see the results of the work accomplished in 1867, and as we look APPENDIX 365 back we scarcely know which to admire most, the unmistakable traces of the hand of Providence in shaping the destinies of the sturdy nation of Japan, or the wonderful tenacity of purpose which the nation itself has displayed in working unceasingly and indefatigably for the attain- ment of its great object. APPENDIX C A FEW WORDS ON JAPANESE RELIGION To discharge adequately the task I have undertaken in this section would require volumes. The reader must, therefore, kindly understand that I can only give him here the very barest outlines. There are many religions in Japan, but the Japanese sits lightly to them all. Unless he happens to be a priest or a Christian, in either of which cases he will have made a definite profession of his faith, he will be puzzled to tell you which of the great religions of his country claims his allegiance. He belongs in a sense to them all. Shintoism will bestow its blessings on his birth and his marriage, and will mix itself more or less in all the joyous events of his life; a Buddhist priest will bury him, and say masses for his soul after death; whilst, so far as his daily life is led under religious sanctions, it will be guided by the pre- cepts of Confucius and his great followers Mencius and Shushi. And, inasmuch as there is not much of religious ceremony exacted from the disciple of Confucius, he will tell you that he has no religion at all. And yet Japan is very far indeed from being an irreligious country. Shinto, or the Way of the Gods, is in part a worship of the powers of Nature. Every tree, every mountain and river, possibly even the well in your back yard, has its tutelary god, and you cannot take a walk into the country without coming across a Shinto shrine or two in a tiny grove of trees, or even it may be in the hollow trunk of an aged elm. " So did he feel, who pulled the boughs aside, That we might look into a forest wide, To catch a glimpse of Fauns and Dryades, Coming with softest rustle through the trees." Had Keats lived in Japan he would certainly have been a Shintoist. Shinto is not concerned only with inanimate Nature. The "eighty- eight thousand w gods of Japan are mostly invisible, but there are animals that are their servants and act as intermediaries between gods and men. In the north of Japan for it must be remembered that the aboriginal inhabitants of these islands were the Ainu the bear is the great servant of the gods ; in the more civilised south, where the bear has long since disappeared, the fox has taken its place in the popular imagination, and is accredited with many mysterious powers. The goddess Inari, whose attendants are foxes, can bless the crops, can bewitch those that offend 366 PRIESTS ON A BRIDGE AT IKEGAMI. A BUDDHIST TEMPLE, SHOWING THE GALLERY CONNECTING IT WITH THE PRIESTS' HOME. APPENDIX 367 her, can assume human forms, can predict the future; and the whole countryside is accordingly dotted over with tiny shrines and images of this redoubtable deity and her messengers. Even in Buddhist temples, especially in those of the Nichiren sect, whose founder is said to have kept tame foxes to wait on him, the stone foxes may sometimes be seen. The badger also is credited with similar powers, though to a less degree than the fox. I do not remember ever to have seen a badger temple, but the beast plays a large part in folk-lore. All the Shinto shrines connected with the worship of Nature, or of animals, are small. In many villages and towns the traveller will, on the other hand, come across quite large Shinto temples, generally in the midst of some sombre grove of cryptomerias. These larger temples have, in almost every case, been dedicated to the memory of some national or local hero, who has been deified after death, and become the patron-god (uji-gami) of the place. Shintoism is fully persuaded of the continued life of the soul after death. It takes no heed of the fate of other nations, but it is fully convinced that every Japanese man lives on in perfect bliss, and that if he has died in the noble cause of patriotism he has been enrolled among the gods. Each war that Japan wages adds to the numbers of the celestial powers from the year 1907 the Japanese will have three English divinities, for the names of three British sailors, who died during the war with Russia in the transport service of the Japanese, have been added to the list of righteous souls to be worshipped at the Kudan shrine. The deified heroes or demigods are of many ranks and grades. There are family deities, the ancestors whom the family honours, with incense lamps and prayers, before the domestic kamidana or god-shelf. There are the gods whom the village or town worships, the uji-gami or tutelary gods; there are national deities, such as Hachiman, the god of war, who lived in historic times and has since been deified ; and the " gods " of new creation who are worshipped at the Kudan. Above all these are the Gods of the Imperial House, the Divine Ancestors, whose wisdom presides over the fortunes of the Sovereign and people of the country and resides in the reigning Sovereign. As in every other nation, so in Japan, there have been many popular tales relating to the creation of the heavens and the earth; and just as Greece had its " Theogonies," or attempts at systematisation of different myths and legends, so Japan possesses at least one such book, the weird, repulsive, fascinating work known as the " Kojiki " or " Record of Ancient Matters." The book has had a strange history. Composed apparently about the ninth century A.D. for the purpose of strengthening the dynastic interests of the Fujiwara family and the reigning House, it has strung together the various legends connected with the first origins of Japan and the Japanese people in such a way as to trace the divine descent of the Imperial House, through Jimmu Tenno, the Conqueror, to Amaterasu-O-Mikami, the Sun Goddess, and the other gods of the Highest Order that rule in the Japanese Pantheon. The Emperor of 3 68 APPENDIX Japan is therefore, according to this ancient book, divine; in other words, the author of the " Kojiki " set himself to do just what Virgil did for Augustus when he wrote his " .Eneid " to demonstrate that the Julian House was descended from ^Eneas, the son of Venus. During the civil wars the book seems to have been forgotten; it was dug up and edited in the seventeenth century by Motoori and Mabuchi, and became in their hands a potent instrument in working up the restoration of the Imperial power. Shinto has no moral teaching at all, except the inculcation of patriotism. It allows its followers the utmost liberty of action, and never troubles them " to hear sermons " or learn a Catechism. It has always, during historic times at least, " hung on," as it were, to some other form of religion, to which it has looked to supply ethical and, to a certain extent, doctrinal teaching. It has thus connected itself first with Buddhism and then with Confucianism; in the nineteenth century it became independent. During the long period from the eighth to the sixteenth, and indeed in some ways even down to the nineteenth, century, Shinto was thus connected with Buddhism. The Buddhists recognised that the Shinto gods were incarnations of some of the many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas whom they had brought with them from India and China, and then the two faiths amalgamated, and for centuries comfortably shared the same places of worship. In considering Japanese Buddhism we must remember that it has very little resemblance to the Buddhism of Ceylon and Burmah. Nor is it all one and the same kind of Buddhism that is professed, for the Japanese have varieties of doctrine and practice as great as those which separate one Christian sect from another. I will try to describe this most complicated subject as clearly and as succinctly as I can. Buddhism was introduced into Japan in A.D. 552, forty-five years before St. Augustine landed in England. During the next three hundred years various forms of Buddhism were brought over, all of which served to sow the seed of the doctrine, but which all failed to take proper root and grow up as healthy organisations properly acclima- tised. From A.D. 800 to A.D. noo sects newly imported into the country became, as it were, naturalised, though they still preserved many of the traces of the land from which they came. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were specially vigorous in the propagation of the faith. One sect, based on Indian and Chinese models, was founded during this period, but it was an era mainly of native production. At least three powerful organisations, entirely Japanese in character, were founded about the same time, and these sects are still the largest and most powerful in Japan. With the beginning of the fourteenth century the creative period of Buddhism ceased. Buddhism, allied with Con- fucianism, fought and drove out the Christian faith brought in by the Spanish missionaries, but the alliance was not of long duration. Bud- dhists and Confucianists soon fell out ; the former remained faithful to the Tokugawa Shoguns, to whom they owed so much, whilst the Con- APPENDIX 369 fucianists (of whom I shall speak presently) made common cause with the loyalists who were fighting for the restoration of the Mikado; and when the civil war came the Buddhists were, for the most part, on the defeated side, losing heavily in wealth, dignity, and prestige. Practically speaking, the Buddhists of to-day may be divided into three groups : the Ritualists, the Pietists, and the Quietists. The Ritualistic sects are the Tendai and Shingon denominations, the former much akin to many forms of the faith professed in China; whilst the latter, the sect of the "True Words," is doctrinally connected with the Buddhism of Tibet and apparently with Manichaeism. Both these sects deal with many mysterious doctrines and rites; they also deal in amulets and charms, and worship a number of Buddhas unknown to the Buddhism of Ceylon. The historical Buddha, whom the Indians call Gautama and the Japanese Shaka, is of very little account in these bodies. Modern Japan has, however, little use for ritual and magic formulae, and the Ritualistic sects do not flourish; but there is a purely Japanese adaptation of the Tendai, the sect of Nichiren, which has many and most zealous adherents. The Pietists (Jodo and Shinshu), who are by far the most important, are those who have concentrated their faith on the one Buddha, Amitabha, of whom they say that " His Name, through faith in His Name," saves men from their sins. These men are in many points very much like Christians, by whom they have been much influenced; for they put their trust in a saviour and look forward to the bliss of Paradise, and some of them are very earnest in the propagation of their tenets. The Quietists (the Japanese call them the Zenshu) are not unlike the Quakers. They do not believe in oral teaching, but in the illumina- tion of the mind by the contemplation of the truth in other words, by a sort of "inner light." The Zen believers are often men of grave deportment and serious lives, their temples are as a rule most simple, they take very little notice of the many fanciful Buddhas which are worshipped in northern Buddhism, and they make much of the teach- ings of Shaka, the historical founder of the religion. They claim (and I think with justice) to be the truest representatives of primitive Bud- dhism in Japan. Just as the Tendai and Shingon sects, with their readiness to accept the Shinto gods as incarnations of one or another of the numerous Buddhas, formed a bridge between Shinto and Buddhism, so the Zen sects, with their gravity and love of philosophy, have been the bridge between Confucianism and Buddhism. Confucianism came into Japan about the same time as Buddhism, like which it had but little influence until it was taken in hand by native scholars, such as Fujiwara Shokwa and Hayashi Razau, from the latter part of the fifteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth centuries. Con- fucianism troubles itself very little about metaphysical speculations, but insists earnestly on practical virtues, such as filial reverence, loyalty to the head of the State, benevolence, and justice. The Confucianist Y 370 APPENDIX condemns Buddhism as lacking in moral strength ; he does not condemn Shintoism, because Shintoism makes no profession of ethical teaching, and is content to appropriate the teaching provided by other systems of faith. Confucianism, allied with the cult of ancestors, and especially that of the deified ancestors of the Imperial House, has produced bushido, the " Way of the Knight," of which the highest exposition is the famous Imperial rescript on education. The allies cut themselves definitely adrift from Buddhism at the Restoration, and all the modern efforts at the revival of Shinto the worship, for instance, of the spirits of deceased patriots at the Kudan shrine are due to the alliance of Confucianism with Shinto. That Japan is not altogether satisfied with what she has hitherto received in the way of religious teaching may perhaps be seen in the great number of new sects that have arisen during the last few years. All these sects have rested their claims on " revelations " which their founders have professed to receive, and most of them have received from the common people a welcome which showed that they have felt the need of some assurance of the presence of God in their midst. The Tenrikyo, for instance, a perfectly modern " prophetic " sect, ran up to a million followers in the course of one or two years. These modern sects come and go, they rise and they fall, but the very fact of their coming into existence at all shows the way in which the wind is blowing. Meanwhile Christianity is standing at the door, and has knocked so vigorously that it may be said to have already gained something more than a footing in the land. Japan sees and recognises the practical value of the Faith of Christ; in the metaphysical speculations of Christian theologians she takes little or no interest; of ritual controversies she is positively scornful. Shinto has had no ethical teaching at all ; Bud- dhism has provided a practical teaching for the monk, but little except incantations and oft-repeated formulae for the ordinary man of the world ; bushido, which is the best fruit of Co"hfucianism, mixed with Shinto, is, as its name implies, "the Way of the Knight? but not of the common man. What Japan wants, and what she is at last getting, is a " Gospel that is preached to the poor." She is in mortal terror of "political Christianity," but has received General Booth with open arms; she has welcomed the work of the Young Men's Christian Association among her soldiers and young men, and I have never known any well- planned and well-executed work of Christian benevolence that has not met with the help and sympathy of the Japanese. But they have no use for inefficient benevolence ; they can supply that for themselves, and they want something better. In stepping out into the open, and taking their place among the leading nations of the world, they feel they have assumed a very heavy burden, and they are anxious to take hold of any religion that can reasonably promise to give them real, solid strength. Here lies the hope of Christianity, and Christianity is exercising a far wider influence than superficial observers are apt to imagine an influence which cannot be represented by numerical statistics. There APPENDIX 37i are thousands of non-Christian Japanese who, without making any out- ward profession are, nevertheless, fashioning their lives according to the principles of. Christ's teachings. I have read numerous articles, speeches, YictYiles, in all of which Christ's morality is quietly accepted as \^e 'highest form of morality the world has known. I have even come across Buddhist sermons which have invoked Christ's authority as a court of appeal which men are ready to recognise as final. It is true that the writers have not been Christians, but that they should still thus have invoked the authority of our Master is surely full of significance. Perhaps no better test can be given of the influence which Christianity is exercising at this moment in non-Christian Japan than that which is given to us by the observance of Sunday. Japan is officially committed to a partial recognition of Sunday. On that day all Government offices are closed, all schools have a holiday, the larger banks suspend their business, and there are even one or two mercantile houses which take a day of rest. There is no compulsory rest, but the advantages of Sunday are fully appreciated by many of the more thoughtful people. Christian preachers h'ave an advantage in this country which they do not enjoy to an equal e.xtent in any other non-Christian land, and even Buddhist preachers have leaped an advantage from the institution. In prisons, for instance, there are always sermons on Sundays by Buddhist chaplains. Country people, artisans, labourers, etc., etc., as a rule observe no weekly day of rest. There are a good many business houses and factories which keep the first and fifteenth days in order to give their workpeople a chance to look after their own business and to have a little recreation, but by far the greater portion of the working world of Japan has no day off. When a Christian is having a house built, he will sometimes, especially if he is a missionary, stipulate that no work is to be done on the Sunday. The contractor will always agree, and will charge a little extra for the inconvenience involved by such an arrange- ment. Then he will set his men to work on another job elsewhere. So the workman gets no Sunday rest, and the contractor draws double profits. The Japanese workman has very long hours, and works every day in the year. He makes up for it by working leisurely all the time, with many a rest for pipe and tea, and a scrupulous limitation of output which makes the cost of labour very high, in spite of the lowness of the individual wage. He does not always quite know what to do with a day off when he gets one. His cottage is too miserable and too small to offer him the attractions of a home, amusements are few, the universal provider of mischief is at work here as elsewhere, and there are but few churches for him to go to. Christians are but a handful in the land as yet, and the native religions have nothing akin to a weekly day of rest, though there are Buddhist temples in which sermons are preached on that day, but only in the larger towns. I have known a case in 372 APPENDIX which workmen actually asked to be allowed to knock off a weekly day of rest which a conscientious Christian employer b-ad provided for them. They said they did not know what to do wi/h it. It is not just a Sabbath that man wants, but the " Sabbath of the Lord his God." When one rises higher in the social scale one finds that SunuVr is almost invariably kept more or less by people of the middle classes. Schools are, as I have said, closed on that day, and so are also the principal banks and a few of the business offices. The ordinary shops are not closed; to put up the shutters would be to leave the family inside in complete darkness, and when the shop is open and a customer comes in it is but human nature to serve him. Keen business men work o,n one day as on another, but the soldiers all have a holiday, and on a Sunday afternoon you may see them by the thousand walking quietly about the streets of Tokyo. Sunday is spent, as a rule, very harmlessly. When the weather is fine, there are always the parks to stroll in, and the river for pleasure excursions. The railway companies run cheap trains on Saturda f ys and Sundays for those who wish to spend their day of rest at Kamaku^a, Oiso, or other seaside place; in the summer months the Imperial Bajnd plays in the Hibiya Park, and in the autumn and winter there are occa- sional concerts at the Academy of Music. Athletic meetings and scho ol entertainments are often held on a Sunday, so as not to interfere wi A the week's work. Sunday is also a day much used for public lectures on literary and social topics; indeed, it is almost the only day on which such lectures can be delivered with success. With the exception of Saturday (the afternoon of which is also much used for such purposes), the routine work of school or office goes on till about four, in business houses till five or later. Then the Japanese asks for his supper, and after supper he does not want to turn out for a lecture, be the orator never so eloquent. The case is different with a workman, or even with a poor student. In their cases the home offers no attractions, and the warm brightness of a lecture-room or church is generally attractive. In the highest classes Sunday is a great day for calling and the per- formance of other social duties, which sometimes press very heavily upon the Japanese gentleman and lady. Visits begin at a very early hour, and sometimes take a great deal of time. Family anniversaries, such as the death-day of a common ancestor, are frequently held on a Sunday when most of the family are free to assemble for the purpose, and wed- ding feasts very often take place on the same day. I have said but little of the Christian Sunday in Japan. It is neither so strict as it used to be in England, nor so gay as it has been in France. A Japanese Christian likes to go to church early, and half-past nine is a favourite hour for the principal service of the day. He will fre- quently (not always) appear again for a second service in the afternoon or evening, but he will not consider himself barred from indulging ir any form of legitimate recreation or amusement. INDEX Actors, income of, 159 Adam , Will, a " worthy " of Yedo, IS" 54 Agitt tors, deportation of, 94 Agri Cultural districts, life in, 5, 126-30 ; di stress in, 292-94 ; woman's work ir , 317 Ag iculture, present position of, 131, seq Ai au, the, 340 AUita, 117, 119 A ips, Japanese, peaks of, 7 * America, treaty with, 360 Amida, prayers to, 202, 228 ; followers of, 355 Ancestor worship, 19-20 ; decline of, 314 ; association with Confucianism, 370. (See also Shrines, Festivals) Aoyama, cemetery at, 328 Apprentices, 35-36, 140-41 Arai Hakuseki, 155 Architecture, influence of natural dis- turbances upon, 337 Area, actual and proportionate, I Aristocracy, the, 81 Arisugawa, Prince, 25 Army, development of, 39 ; constitu- tion and training, 40, et seq Art, "boom" in, 53; the school of, in Tokyo, 238 Artisans' wages in villages, 135 Arts and Crafts, 49-60 ; the classical school, 49-50; the Chinese style, 51; the popular style, 52; the ukiyo-ye y 52 ; effect of Meiji restora- tion upon, 53 ; designing, 53 ; origin of ceramic arts, 54 ; potteries, 55; cloisonn^ 55~56; the sword- maker, 57 ; teacher of swordman- ship, 58 Asabuki, Mr. Y., 92 Asakusa Park, 226 ; temple, 228 Asama, height of, 8 Aso, height of, 8 Atami, 8 Athleticism in the schools, 272 Bandai San, height of, 8 ; eruption of, 143, 293 Banking Regulations of 1872, 65 Banks, establishment of, 62, 64 ; heads of, 92 Barbers' shops, 136-37 Barons, council of, 361-62 Baths, hot, at summer resorts, 8 ; in houses, 309 Beer-brewing Company, the Sapporo, 227 Benten, the god, 224 Bento, 206 Beriberi, 45, 308 Binzuru Sama, prayers to, 228 " Bird's Fair," 112 Biwa, in Boarding houses for students, 276-77 Bookstores, 114 Boshu pilgrimages, 335 British indemnities, 362 Buddhism, support of Shogunate by, 77 ; Kyoto, the Canterbury of, 117 ; and prayer, 228 ; introduction of, into Japan, 353-54; history of Japanese, 368-69 Buddhist monasteries, 9 ; temples, New Year ceremonies in, 138 ; in Shiba Park, 222 ; at Asakusa Park, 228 Buddhists ; sects of, at Yedo, 361 ; Otani sect of Shinshu, 82 ; excluded from Nikko mausolea, 215 373 374 INDEX Bureaux, Government, 97 ; historio- graphical, 118 ; police, 161 Bushido, 14 ; the " way of loyalty," 1 5 ; and Socialism, 240 ; in schools, 264, 269 ; debt to Shushi Confucian- ism, 285 ; example of, in a play, 344 Cabinet, the, 66 Calendar, the old, 131 Capitalists, " sweating " by, in agri- cultural districts, 128 ; taxation of, 133-34 Catholic missionaries, 356, 359 Census, errors in, 10 Ceramic Art, legendary origin and development of, 54, et seq Chamberlain, Prof., 42 Characteristics of the Japanese, 181, 337-46 Children in the home, 301-5 ; in popular regard, 323-25 China, art of pottery brought from, 55 ; early trade with, 61 ; students from, 281-82 Chinese influence on Japanese art, 51-52 ; on samurai, 86 ; on law, 102 Christianity, notices prohibiting, 29, 37 ; criticism of, 286-87 .' proscrip- tion of, 37, 356; Japanese will adopt, 332 ; influence upon Sho- gunate downfall, 359 ; place and influence of, 370-71 Chrysanthemum party, the, 333 Cities, names of principal, n Climate, effect of Ocean currents on, 3 ; of Japan, 6 Cloisonne enamel, 55 Clothes, 308 Coal, ii Coastline, proportion of, to area, 2 Code Napoleon, model for law, 103 Colleges, Naval, 42-44 ; Medical, 45 ; Paymasters', 46; Higher Commer- cial, 46, 10 1 ; Engineering, 46; Nautical, or Mercantile Marine, 47, 101, 227; Great Waseda, 92, 262; Keiogijuku, 259-63, 272; Okuma's, 262 ; strike at Keiogijuku, 272-73 Commerce, 61-64 ; effect of Constitu- tion upon, 62 ; foreign control of, 63-64 ; characteristic " defective integrity of," 64 Confucia,"-^ tue traming of children, 325 ; influence upon Japan- ese langua t^e, 340 ; contribution to early develop^ it of Japan, 352; introduction of, 369-70 Connaught, Prince Arthur ot, 1^. Tokyo, 83, 234 Conscription, 40 Constitution, granting of the, 16, 96 effect upon commerce, 62 ; drafted by Prince Ito, 66 Council of the Emperor, transformed, 66 Country towns, 116-20 County Councils, 96 ; bye-laws c \ 102 Cremation, 328 Crown Prince, the, 23 Currents, hot and cold, effect on climate, 3 Czarewitch, attempted assassina of, in Tokyo, 234 Daibutsu, 202 Daikon, 5, no, 129, 134 Daikon-Gashi, no Daimyos, resignation of, 14; mansions' and castles of, 28, 39, 84 ; position of, 8 1 ; hi the Upper House of the Diet, 97 ; avonues planted by 211 ; at Hakone, 220 ; gifts to the Zojoji Temple, 223 Daishi, Jigen, 238 Dakyu, 83 Dancing of naval \.. Seers, 47 ; re- ligious, no vivls a- ' Maple CMib,' 225 ; teaching oi, Dead, service in honour of the, 329 Death. (See Funerals) Degree Day at Imperial University 274 Deification of the dead, 76 Designing, 53 Diet, the Imperial, 96-99 ; constitution of the, 97 ; parties arising in the, 97-98 Dietary, national, no, 167 Dinner, a Japanese, 225 Divorce, conditions of, in Japan, 297 ; granted for childlessness, 323 Dixon, Professor W. Main, 207 Doctor, the, 165-68 ; fees of, 166 ; the village, 137 INDEX 375 Domestic life, 188-89, 301-9; ser- vants, wages of, 136 Drama, popular, 52; styles of, 159; association for elevation of t\ie, 160, 342-46 Dressmakers, 319 Dutch, at Nagasaki, 55, ? 59 ; books, influence of, 70, 88, ? jg ; medical books, 165 Earth quakes, 293, 337 Editofs, dummy, 177 Educa tion. (See Schools, Colleges) Egg pi ant, 5 Ekoin ' Temple, 29, 183-84 Emper >r. (See Japan, Emperor of) Empre ss. (See Japan, Empress of) Empre.ssses, in early days of Japan, 352 Enomoto, a rebel, 13 Enosh'ima island, 204 Eta, outcast class of the, 184, 211 Examinations, Medical College, 45 ; Na.val, 42-44. (See also Schools) Fairr, in, 142 Family, the, 256-58, 301-9, 323-25 Far' jers, industry of the, 129 ; diffi- c alties of the small, 132-34 Farmhouses, description of, 134-35 Farming districts, 5 Father, the, 303, 314, 323 Festivals, Shokonsha, 77-78 ; local, 130; New Year, 138-39; O Bon, 139-41- Shi to, 141-42; Higan, 142-43 ; special, 143 Firemen in ancient Yedo, 34 Fires, 33, 184 Fisheries, importance of the, 4, 203 Fish market, 109 "Fleshly School," Japanese, 181 Foreign countries, trade with, 62-63 Forests, 1 1 Formosa, i, 7, 24, 67 Fox, belief in possession by a, 143, 195 Fox-God, the oracle of the, 192 Franchise in Japan, 241 (note) Friends of the Constitution, Associa- tion of, 97 "Frost Pilgrims" at Tokyo, 190 Fruit-growing, uo-n Fudo shrines, 190 Fuji, 6 ; pilgrims at, 146 ; excursion to, 218-19 Fujiya Hotel, the best in the Far East, 217 Fukagawa district, 29 Fukiage, gardens, 8 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 93, 259, 260-63 Funeral games, 78, 183-87 Funerals, 326-32 Fushimi, Prince, 24 ; military career of, 25 ; national representative at St. lyouis Exhibition, 25 Games in the schools, 271 Garden-party, a, 334 Geisha, 169, 254 Genro. (See Senior Statesmen) Genro-in, 70 German influence, 103-4 Godaigo Tenno, 149 " Gods' Shelf, The," 302 Gongen-Sama, 141 Gotemba, 218 Graduates, salaries obtainable by, 314 Graveyards, Buddhists', 328 Guilds, 34 Gulf streams, 3, 9 Hachiman, Temple of, 202 Hair-dressers, women, 304, 319-20 Hakone hot springs, 8 ; as a summer resort, 216-21 Hammond, Mr., Instructor of Gunnery, 42 Hanayashiki, a zoo, 230 Haneda, the shrine at, 193 Harakiri, 59, 87 Hayama, winter at, 3 ; Imperial chateau at, 204 Hemimura, 154 Hibiya Park, 31 ; riot in, 164, 234 222, 233-36 Hidetada, 213 Higan festivals, 142 Higashi Fushimi, Prince, 25 Hirado, 154 Hirosaki, 117 Hiroyasu, Prince, 25 History; of present reign, 13, et seq; legendary, 339-40; early, 351-57; influence of Confucianism upon, 352 ; of Buddhism, 353-54 376 INDEX Hitotsubashi, 151 Ho jo Regents, 84, 199 Home life, 301-9 ; changes in, 313-16 Homestead, a provincial, 289 ; a city, 301-9 Honjo district, 29 Hospitals, private, 166 ; public, 167 Hot springs, 8 Hotels, 194-95, 2I2 > 2I 7> 2 39 House, a Japanese, 301-9, 337; house- cleaning, 8, 74, 310-12; rent, 313 Household expenditure, 313 Houses in agricultural districts, 128- 29 ; of Parliament, 96 Hyogo, ii li Kamon, assassination of, 1 50 ; political career of, 118, 151, 359-60 Ikao spring, 8 Imari porcelain, 55 Inari, the Rice-Goddess, shrines of, 195, 366-67 India, students from, 281-2 Indian influence on Japanese art, 51 Ingles, Adm., R.N., 42 Inkyo, 256-58 Inns, 120, 127, 136, 146, 194-95. 220 > 335 Inouye, 71 ; with Prince Ito, 71-73 ; public services of, 74 ; retirement of, 74 Ise, shrine at, 19 Ishikari river, 9 Isuzu, stream, 20 and note Ito, Prince, 65-68 ; member of Prince Iwakura's mission, 1871,65 ; founded Banking Regulations and financial system, 65 ; Minister of Public Works, 65 ; creator of Government bureaux, 65 ; codification of laws by, 66 ; drafting of the Constitution by, 66 ; succeeded to Premiership, 66 ; negotiations with Li-hung-chang, 66 ; President of the Privy Council, 66 ; Resident-General in Korea, 66 ; as citizen of Tokyo, 67 ; his two daughters, 68 ; as pupil of Yoshida, 71 ; smuggled to Shanghai with Inouye, 71 ; " before the mast " to London, 71 ; returned with Inouye, 72 ; conducted negotiations with Foreign Powers, 72 ; in danger from suspicious fellow-countrymen and sav ed by a tea-house girl, whom he maiTies, 73 Iwaku.-a, Prince lyemitsu, 212. 236 lyeyasu, the Shogun, 28, 55 ; policy of, 89, i 1-8, 154 ; monument to, 211, 212, 237 '. JAPAN, area of, i ; recent acquisi- tions of , i ; coastL>- of 2 ; varieties of climate in, 3 ; importan .ce if*, fishing industry to, 4, 203 ; con- formation of, 5 ; climate of, 6 ; its name Nippon, the " Origin of the Sun," 6 ; mountains of, 7; active volcanoes of, 8 ; summer res N >rts of ^ 8, 205-8 ; waterfalls of, 9 ; sacred villages of, 9 ; rivers of, 9 ; in fluence of natural beauties of, upon Ja panese character, 10 ; population of, 10 ; principal cities of, n ; roads t if, u ; mineral products of, n ; Govern- ment encouragement of agricultural pursuits in, n ; nationalisation of railways in, 31 ; mediaeval customs in, 32, et seq; state of, before the Restoration, 32, et seq', irreligic i of rulers of, 67 ; comparison of, w ith Rome of first century, 107 ; woman's work in, 317-22 ; preservation o* national spirit in, 348 ; inevitable de- struction of old institutions in, 348 ; early history of, 351-57 ; introduction of Confucianism into, 352; of Bud- dhism, 353-54 ; establishment of Sho- gunate in, 356-57 ; restoration of Im- perial power in, 358-65 ; unification of, 364-65 ; religion of, 366-72 ; in- fluence of Buddhism upon, 368-69 ; influence and growth of Confucianism in, 369-72 ; Sunday in, 371-72 , the Crown Prince of, 23 , the Emperor of, 12-16; char acter of, 12-13 ; influence upon in- stitutions, 14 -, the " way of loyalty " of, 15 ; establishment of Constitu- tional Government by, 16, 62 ; the palace of, 17-20; poems by, 15, 20, 176 ; his rdle of demi-god, 19 ; com- mencement of reign, 21 ; birthday festivities of, 333 ; his restoration to Imperial power, 364 INDEX 377 Japan, the Empress of, character of, 21-23; poems by, '1-23 , Imperial Family of, 2_, t military and naval, 39~4& ', posi- tion of samurai under cor.tr cription, 40; military training, 41 , training of naval officers, 42-48 " Japan Year Book," 91 Japanese, never a great sea-faring nation, ; taste in summer 8 ; character influenced by aery, 10 ; numbers living abroad, 10 ; grea" travellers, u ; conception of ' ' ~o ; contrasts in charac- ter, 181 ; poetry, 179-82 ; senti- mental, sin, 10, 276; religious in- stincts, 332 ; characteristics, 337-46 Alps, 7 Archipelago, washed by two gulf streams, 3 no jility, 81-83 Jigen D lishi, an abbot, 238 Jimrau Tenno, the first earthly Em- peror, 13, 19, 339; his successors, 354 Jinrik -ha, invention of, 1 1 Jinshjct, 220 Jiu-jitsu, 78, 163, 271 Judges, 107 ; strike of, 107 Kagoshima, 117 Kaigane, height of, 7 Kakke. (See beriberi) Kamaboko, 206 Kamakura, winter at, 3 ; as a holiday resort, 198-204; statues at, 228 Kanin, Prince, 25 Karuizawa, a summer resort, 8, 205-9 Kato, Mr., 91 Katsura Cabinet, 66, 91 Keiki, the last Shogun, 13 Keiogijuku, the, 259, 05, 70, 92 Kirishitna, height of, 8 Kishiu, 151 Kitashirakawa, Prince, 24, 236 Kiyo-mizu, the oldest potteries, 55 Kobe, u, 113 Koishtkawa, gardens at, 30 Kojiki, the Japanese ^Eneid, 368 Kojimaeb?, ward of, 30 Korea, 63 ; problem of, 66-67 '> students from, 280-81 ; influx into Japan of arts and sciences from, 352 Koyokwan, or " Maple Club," 224-25 Kudan, park at, 31 ; shrine, Tokyo, 77 Kuge families, 81 Kumamoto, 117, 121 Kuma no taira, 207 Kuni, Prince, 25 Kuroshiwo, or Black Current, 3 ; in- fluence on river navigation, 9 Kusatsu spring, 8 Kutani ware, 55 ; Kwannon, a female Buddha, 228 ; pilgrimage to shrines of, in Boshu, 335 Kyoto, the " Western Imperial Resi- dence," ii, 27, 116; tea-cultivation at, 121 Kyushu, mountains in, 4 ; hot springs of, 8 j Labourers, country, 135 ; town, 371 I Lakes, names and locality of, 9 ! Landlords, 133, 288-94 Land-tax, 133, 292 Language, printers' difficulties with, 174-76 ; early influences on, 340 Law, the Courts of, 100-8 ; Prof. Chamberlain on, 100 ; contrasted with English, 101 ; Chinese in- fluence upon, 1 20 ; codification of, 66, 103 ; revision by German Im- perial Code, 104 ; theory of accused person, 105 ; preliminary investiga- tion, 105 ; remuneration of judges, 107 Library, in towns, 1 19 ; the Imperial, 238 ; circulating, 320 Li-hung-chang, negotiations with Prince Ito, 66 ; attempted assassin- ation of, 234 Literature, classic school of, 49 ; popular school of, 52 Looms, 124, 128 "Makers of Japan, The," 90 Makino, Mr., 92 Manchuria, 63, 67 " Maple Club," 224 Markets, and fairs, 109-12 Marriage, 295-300 ; the law of Imperial, 21 ; in Old Japan, 35 ; 378 INDEX arrangement by parents, 277-78 ; legal aspects of, 295-97 ; a new spirit regarding, 278-79 ; conditions of divorce, 297 ; the ceremony, 298-300 ; some local customs, 299 Marunouchi, 17 Masako, Princess, 24 Masashige, history of, 149 ; statue to, 149 Matsukata, 91 Matsuri, festival, 141 Medical College, 45 Meiji Restoration, effects on art, 53; on commerce, 61-62 ; early legal difficulties of, 102 Mercantile Marine College, 47, 227 Merchants, in Old Japan, 36 ; in New Japan, 247 Middleman, foreign, 62-3 ; in agricul- tural districts, 128 Mikado, 72 Military Japan, 39, et seq Mime-dances, 142 Minerals, 1 1 Mito, description of, 117-20 Mito Yashiki, old gardens of, 1 8 Miyanoshita, 8, 217 Miyasama, relationship to Emperor, 24 Miye, Prefecture of, 121 Monasteries, 199 Money-lenders, 128, 132, 288-94 Mori Arinori, assassination of, 92, 234 Morrison, Mount, renamed Niitaka, 7 Mountains, distribution of, 5 ; of volcanic origin, 6 Mulberry trees, 123 Musashi, the plain of, 5 Museum, Tokyo, 238 Music, in Buddhist temples, 142 ; Academy in Tokyo, 238 ; 318 Mu-yen-ji, 184 Nagasaki, city of, n Nagoya, city of, n Nara, Prefecture of, 121 Nashimoto, Prince, 25 Nasu, Mount, hot springs of, 8 NaMo, 1 88 Naval College, the Imperial, 42 ; training of officers, 42, 47 ; Higher, at Tokyo, 44 ; garden party at, 334 Navy, food supplied in, 46 News -papers, the first, 176; deposit required by Government for, 177; contents of, 177; English, 177-78; the fiji, 262 New Ye;ar in the country, 137-39 New Year's Day, reception on, 17; varying dates of, 131 Nichiren, sect, 36, 143 ; Buddhist reformer, 200 ; on the stage, 345 ; historical influence of, 369 Nihonbashi Bridge, the topogr.ajjkical centre of Japan, 29 Niigata, 207 Niitaka, 7. (See Morrison, Mount) Nikko, waterfalls at, 9 ; pilrjrims at, 146; description of, 210-15 Nippon, meaning of, 6 Nippon Yusen Kaisha, 63, 74 Nishiki-ye pictures, 52 Nobility, the, 81-83 Norikura-take, height of, 7 Novels, style of, 292 Oarai, 120 O Bon, feast of, 139-41 Oiso, favourite resort of Prince to, 68 Okubo, assassination of, 65, 70 Okuma, Count, 92, 262 Omiya, life at, 127 Ontake, height of, 7 Ooka, the Solomon of Japan, 154 Osaka, 1 1 ; commercial importance of, 116 Oshima, or Vries, Island of, 8, 198 Oyama, 234 Ozaki, Mr. Y., sketch of career of, 93-94 Painting, affinity to literature, 49, 51; classical school of, 50 ; at Vienna Exhibition, 54 Palace, the Emperor's, 17, et seq Paper folding and twisting, 321 Parks at Tokyo, 222-39 Parliament, institution of, 96 Patriots' shrine, 77-80 Patterson, Commander, 42 Pawnbroker, in Urawa, 128 Paymasters' College, 46, 334 Peer, a spiritual, 82 Perry, Commodore, 151, 174 Philologists, some native, 88 Pietists, Japanese sect of, 369 INDEX 379 Pilgrimages, village, 145; " frost- pilgrims." 190 ; to Boshu, Poem, a, and interpretation, 179-82 Poetry, classical school of, 49 ; struc- ture of Japanese, 179 Police, 105, 161-64 ; demonstration against, 164, 234 Political parties, 97 Population, statistics of., 10 ; decline of, 34 "Port Arthur, Tne Fall of," poem, 79-80 -Vestal arrangements in Old Japan, 33 Pottery, (See Ceramic Art) Prayer, Buddhists and, 228 ; wheels, 36, 22$ Press, influence of, 1 76. (See also News- pap Priests, i Old Japan, 37 ; Shinshu, 125; in villages, 137; daily begging of, 189 Printing office, earliest established, 174 Prison, visit to a, 244-48 Prostitutes, regulation of, 231-32 ; re- as slaves, 249 ; new regula- tions concerning, 250-51 ; life of, 251-52; recognition of, in popular , 252-53 Quietists, Japanese sect of, 369 Railway, electric, in Tokyo, 31; natic inalisation of, 51 ; *.vorks at Oini-ya, 127 ; travelling by, 206 Religi on, Buddhist sects, 36 ; in the villages, 145 ; Japanese, 366-72 Ren** of houses, 313 Restoration, 18, 358-65. (See Meiji) Preserves, Army, 40 JBi, length in English miles, 9 Rice, fields, locality of most important, 5, 123 ; harvest, 129 ; price of, 133 Richardson, Mr., death oi Rivers, names and length of, 9 Roads, quality of, n Rokugo river, 194 JRonin, 85, 269, 361 (note) Russia, < fleet on trade of war with, 63, 132 Sacred M Satiako. Ladv Sada Yakko, the leading actress, 160 Saghalien, seizure of, by Russia, 360-61 Saigo, a rebel, 13, 149 Saikyo. (See Kyoto) St. Andrew, church of, 225 Sake industry, 124 Sakurada Gate, the, 17, I49~5 2 Sakura Soguro, champion of the poor, 237 Salaries of University graduates, 314 Salt, manufacture of, from brine, 4 Samurai, vendetta of the, 1 3 ; resigna- tion of the, 14 ; visits to Yedo, 38 ; the brains of military Japan, 40 ; establishment of Satsuma potteries by, 55 ; attitude towards the nobility, 82 ; history of, 84-90 ; religious tendencies, 86 ; women, 87 ; marriage customs, 87 ; studies in Dutch and ancient Japanese books, 88-89 ; division into two parties, 89 ; story of an old, 201-2 ; in prison, 245-47 ; poverty of the, 338-39 ; attitude towards foreigners in 1862, 360; as Ronin, 361 (note) Sanitary regulations, 74 ; enforcement of, 167-68 Sanjo, Prince, 12 ; resignation of Premiership, 66, 70 Satsuma, potteries at, 55 Satsuma Rebellion, The, 13 ; British indemnity demanded from the Prince, 362 Schools, Mr. Fukuzawa's, 259 ; Gov- ernment, 264-67 ; examinations for Government, 270; games in, 270-71 ; village and provincial, 275 (note). (See also Colleges) School-teachers, women as, 322 Sekigahara, battle of, 203 Sendai, city of, n, 119 " Senior Statesmen," 69 Servants, domestic, 136, 306 Seto, potteries at, 55 Seven Gods of Fortune, The, 36 Sexual morality, conception of, 253 Shampooer, the, 165 Shaw, Archdeacon, 207 Sheep, impossibility of rearing in Japan, 238 ; as an exhibit, 238-39 Shiba Park, 222-25 > temple of Jodo in. 222 380 INDEX Shidzuoka, Prefecture of, 121 Shiga, Prefecture of, 121 Shikoku, mountains in, 4 Shimonoseki, bombardment of, 72 Shinano river, 9 Shingon, sect, 36 Shinshu, hot springs of, 8 Shinshu priests, 125 Shinto, 77 ; support of Imperialist cause, 77 ; gods, worship of, 138 ; care of Nikko mausolea given to, 215 ; outline of, 366-67 Shiobara, hot springs at, 8 Shirane-san, 8 Shoguns, the last of the, 13 ; true position of, 72 ; mausolea of, 223, 237. (See Tokugawa Shogunate) Shokonsha, shrines, 76 ; festival, 77 Shooting, 144 Shops, 113-115; in Old Japan, 35; barbers', in villages, 136 Shoyu district, life in a, 121-25 Shrines, Imperial, at Ise, 19 ; guardian of the Imperial, 25 ; Patriots', at Tokyo, 76; village, 137-38; house- hold, 139, 141-42, 145-46, 190, 192, 195, 211-13, 224, 367 Shushi, teachings of, 284-87, 346 Sidotti, Giovanni Baptista, Jesuit mis- sionary, 156 Signboards, curious, 115 Silk districts, importance of women in, 121 ; situation of, 123 industry, number of households engaged in the, 123 ; growth of the, 124 Silkworms, care of, 123-24, 135 Singing, 318 Socialism, increase of practical, 31, 99, 128, 242 Socialists, 164 ; meeting of, a, 240-43 Soy, 124 Spinning-wheels, 124 Sports, in Hibiya Park, 235 ; in schools, 271. (See Funeral Games) Springs, hot water, 8 Stage, the Japanese, 157-60; associa- tion to reform the, 342 ; description of four plays, 343~46 Story-teller, the, 169-73 Straw-plaiting, 194 Strikes of judges, 107 ; in schools, 273 Students, self-supporting occupations of, 2(56-67 ; development of , 268-73 ; strikes of, 272 ; lack of moral code among, 273 ; the boarding-house system, 277; the Korean, 280-81 ; the Indian, 282 ; the Chinese, 282 Suicide, 5 -59 ; among the samurai, 85 . Sumida river, 9, 226 Sunday, observance of, 371-72 Suyematsu, Baron, 8 Sweating, 128 Sword-smith, the, 57-58, 60 TanTca, explanation of, 49 Taxes, the land-tax, 133, 292 Tea, where it is grown, 1^1 ; cere- mony of drinking, 122 ; O f dis- pensing, 318 Tea-houses, catering for pilgrims, 194, 239 Temples, Hachiman, 202 ; Zojoji, 222 ; Jodo, 222; Yema, 224; Asakusa, 227 ; The Great, in Uyeno Park, 236-37 Tendai, sect, 36, 228 Tenno, Godaigo, 149 "Ten Province Pass," 220 Theatres and theatre-going, i 57 et seq Thieves, 163 ; smart practice of, 230 ; guild, 231 Tidal waves, 293 Tobacco, nationalisation of monopoly i n > 3i Togo, Admiral, at the Shrine at I se, 19 ; at Sasebo, 90 ; 234 ; performa jice of Service at Aoyama, 329-3 1 Tokugawa Shogunate, 27 ; repres, sive nature of, 34, 39; trade restrictions by, 36; overthrow of, 61, 360-64,; usurpers, 89 ; tombs of the Shoguns, 212, 222, 237 ; establishment of, 356 ; proscription of Christianity by, 356-57 ; causes of overthrow, 358- 59 ; British indemnity demanded from, 362 Tokyo, winter climate of, 3 ; the Imperial residence, n, 17, et seq , the city of, 27-31 ; history of, 27-28 ; rivers of, 28 ; districts of, 29-30 ; the Nihonbashi Bridge of, 29 ; suburbs of, 31; electric rail- INDEX ways of. 31 ; national rail- w^ iant classes of, 35-36 I religion fo f "the mercb Christ. - 371 Hl S h - Naval College at, 44; Mercantfe Marine School at, 47; School of \rt at, 54; compulsory annual destruction of dust-heaps in, 74; P-t riots' Shrine a t, 76 ; markets aru* fairs of, 109 ; trade of, 113 importance of, 116; Univ 1 16, 238 ; sights and in streets of, 188-91 ; four -jarks of, 221-39; water supply Zoological Gardens, 238; >ay in, 274-75 ;;aWa river, 9 es, Japanese, 97-8 193 i school of painters, 50 ~>gu, .'14 115 iiips, 43, 47 clling, methods of, n, 205 836 192 , Prince, 24 'ures, 52 -es, Kyoto, 116, 275 (note); 58; Degree Day at, 'ays, some, 298 >ry and description of, preaching at, 128 ; prison -48 8-94 10 Park, 30, 236-39 ; battle at, 236 Vegetables, 134; markets,, 109 Vegetarianism, no, 167 Vegetation, areas of, 5 Vice, State regulation of, 231-32, 250-51 ; a palace of, 249-55 Village life, 131-44; the old calendar in, 131 ; classes in, 132 ; the land- tax, 133; the doctor, 137; the priests, 137; festivals, 138-43; children's amusements, 144 - pilgrimage, the, 145-48 Villages, sacred, 9 Volcanoes, names and heights of, 8 Vries, Island of. (See Oshima) Wada Kura Go Mon Gate, 17 Wages, 135, 371 Watanabe Noboru, suicide of, 85 Waterfalls, names and locality of, 9 Waterworks, the City, 225 Weaving, silk, 124; cotton, 128 Weddings. (See Marriage) Western Influence, 89, 102, 347 Williams, Bishop, 175 Winter in Japan, 3 Who's Who in Tokyo, 91-95 Women, suicide among, 59 ; samurai, 86-87 ; m tea and silk districts, 121 ; labour and wages of, on farms, 128, 135; on the stage, 159, 160 ; as prostitutes, 249-55 ; in family life, 257, 290 ; becoming inkyo, 257 students, 277 ; wedding-garments and marriage customs of, 298-300 (see Marriage) ; in the home, 301-9, 317 ; " granny," 307 ; under modern com- petition, education of, 315; occupa- tions open to, 317-22 Wood engraving, art of, 53 Wrestling match, a, 183-87 Yamagata, 91, 245 Yamashina, Prince, 25 Year periods, regulations of, 260 "Year's Feast," 112 Yedo (see Tokyo) ; meaning of the name, 28 ; ancient, the life of, 32-38 ; trade guilds of , 34 ; localities in, 34; Three Worthies of, 153-56 Yema, temple of, 224 Yokohama, n, 120 Yokusuka, Engineering College at, 46 ; naval dockyard at, 199, 204 Yoshida, the inspiring genius of the elder statesmen, 70 Yoshihito, Prince, 23 Yoshitsune, mediaeval warrior, 203 Yoshiwara, the great, 231, 249-55 Yugahara, hot spring, 8 Zen, sect of, 86 Zojoji Temple, 222-23 Zoological Gardens in Tokyo, 238 or THE UNIVERSH PRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.G. 5-40Q \ THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. 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