Queer Things about Japan THE mNDINQ There is also an edition bound in a folding case of the pattern fastened with curious fingernail tags, used in Japan for choice books. The cloth used in the binding and the paper used for the pic- tures are both of Japanese manu- facture. IN CHERRY-BLOSSOM-TIME. Queer Things about Japan By Douglas Sladen Author of "The Japs at Home," "A Japanese Marriage," "In Sicily," and "On the Cars and Off" With Seven Coloured Pages and End Papers and Thirty Full-page Illustrations by the celebrated HOKUSAI^ never before reproduced in England Second Impression London ! Anthony Treherne & Co., Ltd. 3 Agar Street, Strand, W.C. | 1904 I J r- ■' BeOicateD TO F. E. SIDNEY OF FROGNAL AS A TOKEN OF PERSONAL AFFECTION AND OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIM AS THE WRITER OF ONE OF THE MOST INTERESTING BOOKS OF TRAVEL IN THE LANGUAGE 255221 Preface Ridentem dicer e verum quid vetat ? — What is there to prevent a jester telling the truth ? I am so fond of Japan that I should not have cared to criticise the Japanese seriously. But it is a different thing to describe the humours of Japanese life in the vein in which my artist, the Japanese Phil May, has drawn them. Here I am only chronicling the sights of Japan. I am putting off, until I have visited Japan again, the book which I mean to write about the proud history, the glorious art, and the national life of the great people who have, without any parallel in the annals of Asia, made themselves one of the Eight Civilised Powers. Japan is no longer the hermit of the East, but the most Western of the nations of the West. The brief sketch of Japanese history which forms vii PREFACE Appendix V. is based on Keeling, and brought up to date by JNIr G. Uchida of Oxford. When I apphed to His Excellency the Japanese JNIinister, in the matter, his secretary, JNIr C. Koike, referred me to Mr Uchida as the best authority in England. DOUGLAS SLADEN. Authors' Club, London, November 1903. Vlll Contents CHAP. THE INTRODUCTION .... 1. HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE 2. JAPANESE WOMEN . . . . 3. JAPANESE SERVANTS : MEN-HOUSEMAIDS . 4. STREET SCENES AND COMEDIES OF EVERYDAY 5. THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN 6. THE HUMOURS OF JAPANESE SHOPS 7. THE CHINESE MEN-DRESSMAKERS OF JAPAN 8. JAPANESE FESTIVALS .... 9. JAPANESE FAIRS ..... 10. ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE IN JAPAN 11. JAPANESE BOOKS ..... 12. TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS 13. THE GARDENS OF JAPAN 14. JAPANESE WRESTLING AND JUJITSU 15. THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS 16. THE SMART SET IN JAPAN . 17. TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES . LIFE PAGE xiii I 16 27 41 53 67 78 85 107 125 138 149 167 180 192 214 241 ix CONTENTS CHAP. PAOK 1 8. WILL ADAMS, THE FOUNDER OF THE JAPANESE NAVY 272 19. LANDING IN JAPAN . . . . . .278 20. THE HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS . . . 288 21. YOKOHAMA, THE SEAPORT OF JAPAN . . . 3O3 22. MIYANOSHITA, THE BRIGHTON OF JAPAN . . 317 23. TOKYO, THE NEW CAPITAL OF JAPAN . . . 32/ 24. THE SACRED CITY OF NIKKO, AND ITS GOLDEN SHRINES 341 25. KYOTO, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF JAPAN . . 379 26. KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, AND NAGASAKI . . . 393 27. MY JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON . . . 4O7 Appendices 1. HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE, IN KEELING . 2. A girls' FESTIVAL SET, EXHIBITED BY H.E. THE JAPANESE MINISTER IN LONDON 3. THINGS TO COLLECT, SUCH AS NETSUKES . 4. A BOOK WRITTEN IN ENGLISH BY A JAPANESE 5. THE PRINCIPAL DATES IN JAPANESE HISTORY . 416 427 434 438 List of Illustrations THE END-PAPERS REPRESENT A THUNDERSTORM ON FUJIYAMA, THE SACRED MOUNTAIN, BY HOKUSAI. Coloured Pictures THE FRONTISPIECE IS CALLED " IN CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME '■" THE NEW YEAR FESTIVAL WITH MOCHI IN THE TOKONOMA THE FEAST OF DOLLS OR GIRLs"* FESTIVAL A JAPANESE BANQUET IN A TEA-HOUSE Uiicoloured Illustrations by Hokusai JAPANESE WOMEN AND GIRLS (mOUSMEEs) ENTER JAPAN ...... THE PICKPOCKET ...... A TOYSELLER AND FISH-HAWKERS THE FLOWER-HAWKER AND 0-DAIKON, ITIE HONOUR ABLE GIGANTIC RADISH TO BACK PAGES ON lO- II 92- 93 I50-I 51 18-19 42 43 46-47 48-49 xi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS TO BACK ON A STREET RESTAURANT AND AN OPEN-AIR TEA- pages HOUSE ....... ^^-dj THE JAPANESE MAKESHIFT FOR IRONING, AND A HUMBLE TEA-PARTY AND PLAYING GO-BANG . lOO-IOI O-CHA, THE HONOURABLE TEA AND SAMISEN- PLAYERS, OLD STYLE . . . . . IIO-III THE SCHOOLMASTER: GOOD AND BAD BOYS . . I36-I37 THE OLDEST PROFESSION IN THE WORLD, AND THE KAGO OR JAPANESE PALANQUIN . . . I58-I59 THE AUDIENCE LEAVING A WRESTLING MATCH ; AND JUJITSU THE GRIP ..... I 84- I 85 JUJITSU THE THROW ; AND JUJITSU BREAKING HIS FALL 186-187 THE CLOAK-ROOM OUTSIDE THE THEATRE WHERE YOU LEAVE YOUR SHOES, AND THE STREET- COBBLER 196-197 YOKOHAMA, THE SEAPORT OF JAPAN . . . 280-28 1 THE ISLAND OF ENOSHIMA . . . . -31 4-3 1 5 KYOTO, THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN PAVIIJON . 384-385 xu Introduction One used to look upon Japan as a kind of dolls' house, or, at the best, as a sort of Feast of Girls, where they had wooden images in gorgeous, medi- aeval Oriental dresses, and wonderful miniature sets of every kind of curious furniture and utensils used in an odd country. It is a very tragic dolls' house — much more tragic than Ibsen's. The few who did not regard the Japanese as children took no interest in the country, except for its topsy- turviness ; their interest might have been called paradoxical. The idea that Japan would ever be a factor in the world's politics was too absurd to contemplate — their role M^as to be absurd, and supply the suburbs with cheap decorations. If I do not seem to take the Japanese seriously in this book, it is because the book itself is not serious. As the pictures by the great Japanese artist will indicate, I have chiefly tried to depict the humours of Japanese life — one might almost say the humours of Japanese street-life. Except when xiii INTRODUCTION I am quoting from the Japanese themselves, I do not attempt to give any ghmpses of the Hfe of ladies and gentlemen. Japanese great people are more dignified than other great people ; they are not a legitimate subject for comedy. For the same reason, I say little of Japanese progress. The Japanese are a first-class Power ; there is nothing funny about their army, or their navy, or their pohtics. Their great national institutions are desperately in earnest, because from the moment they were conscious that they were a first-class Power they have been conscious that they may suddenly be called upon to make a life-and-death struggle for their existence. They stand in the path of Russia, and, if Russia can crowd them out, she will. I fortunately knew Japan before she knew that she was a first-class Power, in the days when the foreigners were so ignorant as to suppose that Japan was a nation at play ; so I was chiefly on the look-out for the humours of the country ; and the servants, small shopkeepers, riksha boys, and workpeople, among whom the foreigners lived and moved and had their being, were intensely humor- ous, in spite of a poverty that almost amounted to tragedy, in Japan as I knew it. The vast majority of the Japanese liave never heard of .Japan. They call their country Nihon, or Nippon, and even that name lias only been in xiv INTRODUCTION use for thirteen or fourteen centuries. Before that, says Mr Chamberlain, it was called Yamato, which is properly the name of one of the provinces. Since the Japanese have traced a resemblance between the position of their islands off Asia, and the British Islands off Europe, and have determined on founding an empire like the British Empire, they have called their country Dai Nippon — Great Japan, as we call ours Great Britain. Probably Marco Polo is responsible for the Japanese Islands never being called by their own name in foreign countries. He heard the Chinese talking about a country which, being still further East than China, they called Jih-Pen — sun-Origin, a Chinese way of expressing the place that the sun comes from, and rounded the name into Zipangu — which be- came Cipango — at least that is Mr Chamberlain's account of it ; and one can take anything that he says, or that Sir Ernest Satow says, about Japan as gospel. He quotes another name for Japan, which means The-Luxuriant-Reed - Plains - the - land - of- Fresh-Rice-Ears-of - long - five - hundred- Autumns ; but I have forgotten how to spell it in Japanese. It is rather long. In any case, it is comforting to know that Land-of-the-Rising-Sun is the literal meaning of the word Japan. Otherwise it would sound rather hackneyed. Another curiosity of Japanese nomenclature is that the chief island, which contains all the important cities, has no XV INTRODUCTION name; its nearest approach to a name is when it is spoken of as the mainland. As the geograpliies say : Japan consists of a large number of islands. There are over three thousand, if you count un- inhabited rocks. The area of the empire, not in- cluding Formosa, is a little less than a hundred and fifty square miles, which support about forty million people, twelve thousand towns, and nearly sixty thousand villages. But these statistics mean nothing at all, unless you notice how mucli of the population the plains in the main island absorb. That is practically Japan; for the big Northern island, Yezo, is mostly given up to the hairy Ainu. The coast-line is very irregular, and has numer- ous bays ; some of them, such as the bays of Tokyo, Sendai, and Osaka, are of considerable size, but few of them are of any great deptli. But the few there are make good naval ports, just as the few lakes of any importance, Lake Biwa, Chiusenji, and the Hakone Lake, are very fine. The climate of Japan is healthy. It is the great catch of the British Consular Service, because it counts as an unhealthy climate for leave and pensions. In the north the winters are cold and long; tliat is one reason, and saving paint is another reason, why snow scenes are so popular with artists. Every- thing is in the artist's favour in Japan; the materials of a valuable kakemono only cost the painter about eighteenpence, and when they are xvi INTRODUCTION done they are as easy to take about as umbrellas. There is not much snow in the south ; but as no globe-scorcher ever goes south of Nagasaki, and comparatively few go south of Yokohama, or at anj-Tate Kyoto, this does not signify. Earthquakes are like cash in Japan — it takes a great many of them to amount to anything. The Japanese are a good deal more afraid of the Taifu (which we call typhoons), which mean strong winds — an epithet which is rather under the mark. In general features Japan is extraordinarily like Italy. For atmosphere, photographers give it the first place. It is very rich in minerals, such as gold, silver, iron and copper, amber, sulphur, coal, nitre, lime, and marble. It has mountains of porcelain earth. One of the chief features of Japan is the number of hot sulphur springs ; the whole country is a sort of volcanic saucepan. So as to get full use of them, the economically-minded Japanese are par- ticularly rich in skin diseases. Europeans would probably waste the springs. As you never get a fire in Japan, except when your house is on fire, they might have been short of hot baths if Nature had not provided them. The Japanese could not be called ungrateful to the elemental powers who heat his water ; he takes his baths hotter than any other human being ; he can take them as hot as a lady takes her tea, which has to be made with xvii INTRODUCTION boiling-water, and is drunk almost the moment it is poured out. Perhaps blisters are only a matter of habit. Rice is the bread of Japan, and two hundred million bushels a year are grown. Only two per cent, of the country is capable of cultiva- tion, and two-fifths of this is under rice. Most temperate and tropical fruits would grow somewhere in Japan ; but the Japanese are not great fruit- growers, considering what good gardeners they are. It seems absurd that such a practical and economical people should sacrifice the fruit to the blossom ; but they persist in growing cherry and plum trees for the flower, though they allow the loquat (Nespoli) and the persimmon to come to fi-uit. I have forgotten what the persimmon flower is like. It may be as ugly as the loquat flower. Among the most important trees are the cryptomerias, which form the groves for the temples. One of the most charming features of temples is the grove ; but they have it because they are built of wood, and it is convenient to grow their own building materials. Another important tree is the Pawlonia, which the Japanese call Kiri. They used to employ its leaf and blossom for the Shogun's crest. They still employ the wood for clogs and portable wardrobes on account of its lightness : the wood is like willow. The Campliorwood grows into a noble tree. You often see it near temples, though it could be no good for building, except xviii INTRODUCTION to keep the moth out. Camphorwood is very pretty, and takes a good deal of pohsh, but it breaks hke cork, so they generally let the trees go on growing until they get very large, when they become sacred, and have a straw rope tied round their trunks. The mulberry trees naturally are not grown for their mulberries, but to please the silk-worm ; the bamboos, which are ubiquitous, seem to be grown for all purposes. They even help the shoemakers, and perhaps the doctors, because the stumps they leave when they are cut down are sharper than most carving-knives. The guide-book says that most of the animals native to temperate climates are found in Japan, but it is only in homoeopathic doses. Horses are only used by foreigners and the army and the highest officials. Donkeys and sheep are as rare as honesty, and only lately introduced. The only dogs you see often are the black-and-white toy spaniels, with water on the brain, known as Chins ; and rats and mice avoid Japan as much as they can, because they know they would get eaten them- selves. To make up for this, Japan has monkeys even in its temperate parts, and they are quite an asset as an attraction to globe-scorchers. A forest is so much more the real thing when there is a chance of seemg troops of monkeys. It was a wise child who said that the monkey was the missing Kipling. You do not often see them, xix INTRODUCTION except in temples, where they are chained to perches Uke cockatoos, and amply justify the title the Indians give them of the Wicked People. I believe that there are wolves and bears in Yezo ; the Japanese would tell you that there were lions and tigers also, if you would believe him. Oinne ignotum pro magnifico is his motto about Yezo. He could believe anything of a place where the inhabitants have so little difficulty in growing beards and moustaches. Yezo is inhabited by the hairy Ainu, whose origin is even more puzzling than that of the Japanese themselves. The princi- pal manufactures of Japan are silk, cotton, porcelain, paper, and lacquer. The principal exports are silk, tea, and rubbish ; and the principal imports are kerosene and manufactures which the Japanese intend to imitate. It would not be like the Japanese not to have the decimal coinage. They call their cents sen, and their dollars yen. The sen looks like a half- penny, but it is only worth about a farthing. They also have a coin which looks like a penny, and a coin called a rin, which is only worth the tenth of a sen — that is a farthing, practically ; and there is a coin called a mon, which is only worth the tenth part of a rin, I do not know what a jnon is like ; perhaps it only exists in theory as a purchasing power. But there is a kind of coni made of some base, brassy-looking metal, with a XX INTRODUCTION hole in the middle, of which you get a hundred strung on straw for some impossibly small sum. I once saw a Japanese gold ^ye-yen piece, but generally you use paper for dollars and upwards. The half and quarter dollars and the smaller coins of silver are pretty, but not half as pretty as the ridiculous, oval-shaped coins formerly in use. Some of these, which are just about the right size, would always have been worth more than their face value for making silver links. There were also gold and copper oval coins of all sizes up to that of the human hand, but they were found inconvenient. Riksha boys reckon distance in ri, which sounds hke the singular of rice, but is really a short measure league, half a mile short — 2 '44 statute miles. A ri contains 36 cho, which makes a cho about the fourteenth part of our mile. A cho is 60 ken ; a ken almost exactly corresponds with our fathom, that is to say, with two yards. And a ken is six artisan's shaku, or feet. The artisan's shaku is 11^^ English inches ; a pretty good shot for the English foot. But you get a much better foot's worth if you happen to be buying silk by measure instead of by the pound, for a draper's foot is almost 15 inches. Japanese silks are generally a draper's foot wide ; the square measure you always hear about in Japan is the tsubo, which is about 4 square yards. More than 1200 of them go to an acre, which is eloquent of the minuteness of c xxi INTRODUCTION Japanese plots — plots of land ; but the Japanese have square cho as well as hnear, just as they have measures of capacity called sliaku as well as linear sJiaku, and koku weights as well as koku measures of capacity. The Japanese talk a good deal about koku. I think they generally refer to the weight, which is just over the 132 pounds. Formerly incomes were reckoned in koku of rice. One Daimio had as much as a million of koku ; the equivalent, I am told, to about two millions sterling a year for an American. But he had to support out of this his entire tribe, and keep up his army, so that it was really a sort of tribal revenue, ad- ministered by the chief, for which we could find a parallel in the Scottish Highlands not so many generations ago. The list of the various ranks in Japan, when incomes were reckoned in rice, as given by Keeling in his admirable little guide, is rather interesting : — The Mikado. The Shogun (Coniniander-in-Chief). THE MILITARY CLASSES. Dahiiio or Buke. The Go-Sanke (the Three Exalted FamiHes), with a revenue from 350,000 to 610,500 koku of rice. Kokiishiii (Lords of Provinces), eighteen in number, with revenues of from 5200,000 to 1 ,000,000 Koku. Kamon (Members of the Family, i.e.^ the Tokugawa), eighteen in number, with from 10,000 to 5^00,000 koku. xxii INTRODUCTION Tozama (Outside Lords, i.e., not of the Tokugawa family), with from 10,000 to 200,000 koJcu. Fudai (Successful Races), about 115, with from 10,000 to 200,000 koku. Samurai. Hatamoto (banner supporters), with revenues of 500 to 9999 koku of rice. There were about 80,000 families, forming principally the functionaries (Yakunin) of the Shogun. Gokekenin, the common soldiers of the Shogun's army, with revenues up to 500 kokics of rice. HEIMIN {or Cominon^ People). Hiaksho or farmers. Shokunin or artisans. Akindo or commercial class, the keeper of the smallest stall being called a merchant. Besides these five classes there were, not worthy of classification, being considered as pariahs : — The Eta (" unclean "), leather-dressers and grave-diggers. The Hinin (" not men "), paupers. The Geisha (dancing and singing girls) and Joro (prostitutes). The Yamabushi, a lower order of mendicant monks. After the abohtion of feudahsm in 1869, the population was thus classified :— • The Tenshi or Kotei (Emperor). The Shinno or Imperial Family, The Kazoku, the nobility of Japan, consisting of the former Kuge and Daimio, without reference to previous rank. The Shizoku, formerly Samurai. The Heimin, or commoners. xxiii INTRODUCTION In 1884 the old nobility was rehabilitated and distributed in five ranks : — Princes, Marquises, Counts, Viscounts, and Barons. The following is the order of precedence observed at Court : — 1. The Order of the Chrysanthemum. 2. Officers of Shinnin rank : the Minister President, the President of the Privy Council, Ministers of the Departments of State, Generals, Admirals, the Military Councillor-in-Chief, the Lord Chamberlain, the President of the Senate, the Vice-President of the Privy Council, Privy Councillors, the Military Controller-in-Chief. S. Princes. 4. The first order of the Rising Sun and Paulownia, the Rising Sun and the Mirror. 5. First-class Chokunin rank. 6. Second-class Chokunin rank. 7. Peers attending the Jakonoma. 'to The order of precedence may be altered now (I am quoting Keeling s Ghiide as revised in 1889 by Mr Farsari, the genial Italian who was a sort of agent-general for all the foreigners in Japan, besides selling them his photographs and de- veloping their own). Farsari or Keeling gives an interesting table of Japanese wages and expenses of living. The rate per day at which artisans and laboin-ers were paid in 188.5 in Tokyo will give an idea of the remuneration of labour in Japan : — xxiv INTRODUCTION Stone-cutters from 60 to 70 sen Carpenters from 40 to 60 sen Blacksmiths „ 30 „ 50 „ Roofmen . „ 65 „ 75 „ Mat-layers . . 50 „ Cartmen . „ 35 „ 45 „ Painters . from 25 to 35 „ Wood-cutters „ 50 „ 70 „ Coolies . „ 20 „ 30 „ Paper-hangers „ 30 „ 60 „ Gardeners „ 25 „ 50 „ To show the bearing that the style of living has upon wages, the following table is appended, which shows that the outlays for starting house-keeping need not amount to over 5*14 yen : — 4| mats . A long hibachi A hearth for boiling rice An iron pot for boil ing rice An iron pan . An iron pot for boil ing water A gotoku (a tripod) A long iron tong A brass tong . A fire shovel . A charcoal basket A tea-pot A water jar A water-barrel A rice-cleaning basin A small barrel A wash-basin . A dipper 90 sen 40 50 43 20 25 5 2 1 2 4 3 28 10 8 3 15 9 A cutting-board A table knife . A basket A large basket Smidries (hikesh tsubo, suribach surikogi) A skewer A rice box A wooden spoon A tray Tea-cups Wooden bowls Chop-sticks A lamp . Brooms . Bottles . Quilts Two pillows 7 sen 4 „ 3 „ 10 3 20 1 5 4 3 2 10 6 3 75 2 Total, 5*14 ?/^n The daily expenses of the miners at the Taka- XXV INTRODUCTION shima coal-mines, whose wages are from 23i^ to 25 .sen per day, and who hve in a style far above the average of their class in any other part of Japan, are : — Board Bath Waraji (straw sandals) Clothes . Tobacco . 9 sen 6 rin 2 rin 7 sen 9 r'ln Percentage to contractors . 1 sen 5 rin Tools, wear and tear, sharpen- ing, etc. . o ., Total, 1 5 sen 8^ rin The board as above consists of: — Rice, cooked — 8 go measured uncooked = 2*6 lbs. raw rice ....... Cooked vegetables and pickles — koko, meniboshi, etc., also includes tea, shoyu, etc.. Cooked fish — J kin = § lb. Beef soup — 1 ^o = 12 fluid oz. . Beef — ^ lb. occasionally . 6 sen 5 rin 8 rin 2 sen 3 rin gratis or about 10 sen per day. It will be seen that out of a pay of about 25 sen per day, a miner can clear about 10 sen above expenses. Three 7in may be added for the bath. According to Keeling, who of course got his ideas from some one else, the Japanese race appears to be an amalgamation of different races, the INlongolian predominating. The cave-dwellers, according to Professor Milne, may be the true aborigines of Japan. The Ainu, of whom there are now l.'J.OOO, xxvi INTRODUCTION also seemingly of Mongolian origin, are supposed to be the descendants of the aborigines of the country, and to have been driven towards Yezo, which they now inhabit, by the ancestors of the present Japanese. The following ethnological notes are taken from Dr Baelz : — The Japanese " of quality " is of a slender build, and often with a finely-formed Roman nose ; and the " lower type " is of a thick-set frame, broad and muscular, with a flat nose. Both have the same complexion, mostly of a light yellow colour. The Japanese are undersized from our point of view, the adult male being about 5 feet high, and the adult female only 4 feet 8 inches ; in other words, the male in Japan is hardly as tall as the female in Europe. The weight of the members of the working classes is about 110 lbs., that of the higher classes about 114 to 120 lbs., while the European adult averages 154 lbs. The weight of the woman of the higher classes averages 100 to 110 lbs. and that of the lower classes 100 lbs. According to Mr Takei, the Japanese mind is deficient in the qualities of attention and con- ception; though exceptionally strong in verbal memorising, it is weak in the much more important memorising of principles, truths, and ideas ; it has plenty of fancy, but is distinctly lacking in rational xxvii INTRODUCTION imagination, while the spirit of inquiry may be said to be practically non-existent. Mr Takei, of course, knows ; but one would liave thought that the demand for aUqnid novi was quite as strong in modern Japan as at ancient Athens. One may say a word or two about religion or rather religions here, though they will form the subject of a separate chapter. " The two religions in Japan are Buddhism and Shintoism (Way of the Gods). JNIost Japanese belong to both, but nominally the former has more adherents ; it is divided into many sects ; the latter is the original religion, in which nothing is found indicative of a belief in a future state or of the subjection of the soul. Another remarkable feature of Shintoism is the divine honours paid to the Kami, the spirits of famous princes, heroes, and scholars. With the appearance of Buddhism in Japan many of the deities of the latter were intro- duced into Shinto worship ; while Buddhism itself took root, and spread itself by adopting in its pantheon the deities of the indigenous religion. In consequence, the number of pure Shintoists or pure Buddhists is extremely small, even at the present day, notwithstanding the attempt of the INIikado's Government to restore the form of Shinto worship to its former purity. " The official priesthood (Kiyo-do-shoku) was abolished in 1884, but the superintendents of xxviii INTRODUCTION various sects of Shintoist and Buddhist are ap- pointed by the Government, or elected subject to its approval. "The names of the Buddhist temples (Tera or Dera) always end in ji, as Zojoji at Shiba, Tokyo ; and those of Shinto temples (Miya) end in gu, as To Sho Gu in Nikko. Buddhist priests are called Bozu (Bouzes), and are recognised by their shaven heads, while Shinto priests are known as Kannushi. A Shinto temple, generally built on elevated ground, and surrounded by groves of trees, con- tains no idols ; but looking-glasses representing the feminine deity, paper-lanterns, and gohei (strips of white paper taking the places of offerings of cloth) are found in their stead. Occasionally a sword is seen, representing the male deity. Before the temple there is always a gateway, called torii (bird- rest), through which the temple-courts (yashiro) are entered. A good example of a Shinto temple is the Shokonsha, at Kudan, in Tokyo. " Hotoke is the general name of the divinities worshipped by the Buddhists ; and the divinities of the Shinto religion, of whom there are more than a million, are called Kami." The heyday of Christianity is over in Japan. I am not speaking of the good work done by good men, but adventitious prosperity. Japan used to be flooded with American missionaries belonging to all sorts of religious sects, who enjoyed fine xxix INTRODUCTION incomes, with an additional grant for every child tliey had. That is long since a thing of the past. The missionaries are now hard-working and not overpaid. There was a time when wily Japanese thought that the adoption of Christianity might be made the means of extracting the Treaty Revision, which the Powders were then so unwilling to concede. That Japan would ever be a first-class Power did not enter the foreigner's head. The nation was regarded by Americans as a " notion counter " and by Europeans as a tottering Oriental power, like Siam, which could be made another sort of counter in their own game of politics. Now that Japan has become a first-class Power, it is unlikely that the national self-respect would permit the formal adoption of a foreign religion by the Government. However, no obstacle is placed in the way of missionaries, except that of the rising tide of tlie Buddhist revival. Japan knows that she has no more to fear from Christianity than we have from Christian Science ; but the Buddhist liierarchy are Jesuits for intrigue. One of the great difficulties tliat Christianity has in contending with Buddhism and Shintoism for the favour of the lower classes is that every temple is made a sort of popular play- ground. In the temple garden, as Keeling observes, " There are always booths, selling refreshments of various kinds, and often comic masques and theatrical performances, conceived in the broadest, XXX INTRODUCTION and not often a little coarse, humour. There the boys can fly their kites, play ball, or indulge in boisterous games secure from interference. The steps leading up to the temple porch form con- venient seats for nursery-maids and tired pedes- trians. Even the porch itself is public ground, and the children run up and down it as if any- thing of a sacred association was farthest from their minds. There is no room for veneration, no sense of sublimity, no feeling of the holiness of one's surroundings. In point of fact, there is very little of the sense of the sublime in the Japanese nature : certainly no trace of it in their literature. This people has — at least in so far as the lower classes are concerned — to be amused in order to be attracted, to have its sentiments aroused in order to be interested. " Religious festivals (matsuri) take place at fre- quent intervals. Some are in honour of Gongen- sama (lyeyasu), the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns, others are in honour of Inarisama the fox goddess, while many others, too numerous to mention, perpetuate the memory of princes, heroes, and celebrated scholars. It has been stated that, ' roughly speaking,' the peasantry are rather Shintoist than Buddhist, the Samurai and town people rather Buddhist than Shintoist, in their faith ; while the literates are mostly indifferentists." xxxi INTRODUCTION As religious festivals form a large part of the attractions of Japan, it may not be out of place to give here Reeling's list of the most important. The names of the places at which they are held refer to Tokyo only, except where otherwise speci- fied, but the dates stand good for any part of the country. Lists are also given of popular, national, and legal holidays : — RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS (MATSURI) Jan. ] and 16. Shinmei,* the God of Happi- ness .... Shiba. Jan. 5 and 15. Suitengu,* the Water God . Hamacho. Jan. 8 and 12. Yakuski,* the God of Medi- Arai (sub- cine .... urbs). Jan. 10 . . . Kompira,* an ancient Kuge Tora no (noble) deified . . . Mon. Jan. 14 and 24. Jisosama,* the God of Mercy . Nihonibashi. Jan. 16 . . . Emmasama, the Lord of Hell . , . . Shinjiku. Jan. 17 and 18. Kwannonsama,* the God who hears Prayers . . . Asaksa. Jan. 21 . . . Daishisania,* the Inventor of the Kana characters . . Kawasaki. Jan. 24 . . . Atagosama, the Fire God . Atagovama. Jan. 25 . . . Tenjinsania, the God of Vushinia ^ Writing .... Kanie Ido. Apr. 8 . . . Oshaksama, Birthday of Buddha .... All temples. Apr. 18 . . . Rioshisama (Sanja Gongen) . Asaksa. May 15 . . . Dai) ingu, Sun Goddess , . Noge in Yo- kohama. xxxii INTRODUCTION May 31 to June 2. Kuma no Jinja, Bear, Field God, held once every three years .... June 3 . . . Kuma no Jinja June 3 and 14. June 16 . . . Aug. 7 to 15 . Aug. 9 to 15 . Aug. 15 to 16 Aug. 15 to 16 Aug. 18 to 20 , Sept. 13 . . Oct. 15 . . Oct. 25 . . Nov. 24 . . Nov. 28 . . Dec. Suga no Jinja Emmasama. See Jan. 16. Suga no Jinja Nakabashi no Tenno Hachiman, the God of War . Sannosama, a deified Kuge Nakabashi no Tenno Miojinsama, held once every two years Miojinsama . . . . Tanjinsama, God of Writing Rio Daishisama O Komairisama (Shin - ran Sho-nin) .... Torinomachi .... From Igura to Aka- bane. Igura and Awoyama. Shinagawa. Nakabashi. Nihombashi. Ichigaya. Kojimachi. Fukagawa. Kanda. Kanda. Kameido. Ueno. (Those marked witli "^ are held on the same day of every month.) NATIONAL AND LEGAL HOLIDAYS Jan. 1. Shihohai. On this day the Emperor makes his first prayer to heaven and all his ancestors for a peace- ful reign. Jan. 3. Genjisai. The Emperor makes offerings to heaven and all his imperial ancestors. Jan. 5. Shin-nen-en-kwai. On this day all government officers make official calls. Jan, 17. Gongensama, the founder of the Shogunate. Festi- val held at Ueno and Shiba on the 17th of every month. Not a legal holiday. xxxiii INTllODUCTIOX Jan. 30. Komei - Tenno - sai. Anniversary of the death of Komei-Tenno, father of the present Emperor. Feb. 11. Kigen Setsu. Anniversary of the accession of Jimmu Tenno (the first Mikado) to the throne. Mar, 21. Shunki-korei-sai. Spring festival of the imperial ancestors. Apr. 3. Jimmu-Tenno-sai. Anniversarv of the death of Jimmu Tenno. Apr. 17. Toshogu. lyeyasu, the first Shogun of the Toku- gawa family ; held also on June 1st at Ueno and Shiba. Not a legal holiday. May 14, 15, and 16. Shokon-sai. In memory of those who fell in the civil war of 1868 ; held at the Shok- onsha. Sept. 23. Shiuki-korei-sai. Autumn festival of Emperors in Yokohama ; celebrated at the Temple of Ten- shoko Daijin on Iseyama. Oct. 17. Shinsho-sai. Harvest festival. The Emperor offers the first crop of the year to the divine ancestor, Tenshoko Daijin. Nov. 3. Tenchosetsu. The present Emperor's birthday. Nov. 23. Nnname-sai. Early rice is offered to the Gods. Dec. 25. Holiday only observed by the Custom House De- partment for the accommodation of foreign employees. Dec. 31. Observed as a day preparatory to New Year's Day. POPULAR FESTIVALS. Jan. 1, 2, and 3. Sanga-nichi. New Year's holidays. Jan. 15. Little New Year's Day. Mar. 3. Oshinasama. Girls' festival or dolls' festival. Mar. 21. Spring festival. May 5. Osekku. Boys' festival, or festival of flags. xxxiv INTRODUCTION May 6. Shokonsha races in Tokyo. June 28. Opening of the Sumidagawa in Tokyo. July 7. Tanabata no Sekku. Festival of stars. July 13, 14, and 15. Bon Matsuri. Feast in honour of the dead. Aug;. 1. Autumn festival. Sept. 9. Choyo. Farmers' festival. Sept. 9. Kikku no Sekku. Festival of chrysanthemums. Sept. 13 and 15. Full moon festival. Nov. 20. Ebisuko or Ebis, God of Wealth. Festival held by merchants. I have quoted these tables, which may seem dry to some people and absurd to others, because it is from a nation's holidays that one can best judge its character. Compare the Italian festa with the English bank-holiday, and you have in a nut- shell the strongest contrast between the two nations. With this I shall pass on, to give the Queer Things about Japan which came under my own observation. XXXV Queer Things about Japan CHAPTER I HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE A Japanese house is the simplest thing in the world. It consists of a post at each corner and a roof. The roof may or may not be covered with enormous purple tiles. It makes little difference in the long run. For if it is not, the first typhoon that comes along transfers it to somebody's garden quarter of a mile away ; and if it is, it may resist the typhoon ; but woe betide its inhabitants when the first genuine earthquake happens. They will be caught like sparrows under a sieve, only more so. But the odds are that it will be burnt down before either happens, as the Japanese use very cheap lamps and very nasty petroleum, and are regular children about fires. Of course something else is done for the four posts and the roof before they become a house in 1 1 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN which births, deaths, and marriages can take place. But remarkably little is necessary. Cross-beams are added, not to support the roof, but the walls, which are made of paper, and slide between the beams and the platform raised a foot above the ground, which does duty for the floor. A .Japanese house is generally all on one floor ; in fact, one might say it is all one floor. And in the daytime it is all one room if it is a small house. The number of rooms in it depends on the number of bedrooms the owner requires. They are divided for the night by paper shutters fixed in grooves like the divisions of an old-fashioned workbox. There are no doors or passages. Your bedroom acts as a passage, and when you want a door you slide back the nearest panel. It does not matter having handles in every shutter frame, because the handles go in instead of sticking out. A Japanese handle is nothing but a hole with a metal lining. Two sets of shutters go round the outside ; the inside set are of paper on the ofF-chance of the owner using them for privacy during the day, and the outside are of wood. These outside shutters cannot be slid in the same promiscuous fashion as the others. Each is held in its place by the next, and the last one is secured mth a bolt — of wood. There are plenty of Japanese houses which, when secured for night, would hardly stand a drunken man leaning against them. An Knghsh- 2 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE man's house may be his castle, a Japanese's house is his bedroom, and his bedroom is a passage. Better-class houses are divided into permanent rooms for a foot or two down from the ceiling, by wooden frames filled with plaster to hold the tops of the shutters. Some go so far as having windows, made of glass, too, which is veiy un- Japanese. The ordinary native is quite satisfied with the light that filters through paper. The houses which have windows generally have walls too, outside ; though they put up the paper shutters inside. It is necessary to put up with this shutter arrangement when sons become hus- bands and fathers under the paternal roof. The houses of rich natives, hke that occupied by Sir Edwin Arnold at Azabu, are European houses in Japanese fancy dress. The Japanese love air: unless it is too cold or too wet the poor Jap takes down the whole front of his house in the daytime. If it is too sunny he hangs a big blue or brown curtain in front of it, like the sheet for a magic- lantern, with a huge white ideogram taking the place of the picture. An ideogram is a Chinese monogram. Every self-respecting Japanese house has a guest-chamber, and always in the same corner. I have an idea that it is the north-west corner. There is the recess, which contains the celebrated Tokonoma and Chigaidana, the principal stage S QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN property of Japan. The Chigaidana is a sort of chest of cupboards, and is often the only bit of real furniture in the room, unless there is a sword rack standing on the top of it. But sword racks are going out, as it is no longer legal to wear swords. Formerly every Japanese gentleman wore two, but they were forbidden a generation ago, and that is why the one thing you are sure of getting genuine at a second-hand shop is a Japanese sword. They are splendid swords ; and if it was not safer for an officer to go without a sword than with one, our War Office might do worse than buy them up. A Japanese room sometimes contains other furniture, but, as a rule, the Japanese is satisfied with the floor, to which he pays extravagant adulation. He uses it for everything, and covers it with mats too good to use. It is a wonder that he does not put them on the ceiling instead ; then he would not have to take his boots off to enter his own house. Japanese furniture is like economy — it consists mainly of doing without. What distinguishes one country from another, is not so much what you find, as what you do not find. This is another way of saying that there is nothing new under the sun. The Japanese have to do without many things without which civilised exist- ence would seem impossible unless you had seen it with your own eyes. They have no bread, no beds, 4 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE no fires, no boots and shoes, no trousers for the men, no petticoats for the women. This sounds alarming, but both sexes wear instead several dress- ing-gowns, one over the other — the kimonos of commerce. In their houses they have no windows, no doors, no walls, no ceilings, no chests of drawers, not even a washing-stand, and the wardrobe is only a lot of boxes piled one on the top of another. In the kitchens they have no range, no pots, no pans, no flour-bins, no flour, no kitchen tables. But then they have no tables or chairs in the drawing- room, and in the real native house the drawing- room itself is only a lot of bedrooms with their walls taken down. There is no reason why you should find anything in a Japanese house except mats and a charcoal stove for warming your fingers and the teapot and committing suicide. These, and a cushion or two and a quilt to sleep on, with an elaborate conventional politeness, constitute the furniture of a Japanese house, except the guest- chamber. And the articles in the guest-chamber are not wildly useful towards reproducing the comforts of an English home ; for they consist of a screen and a kakemono and a flower-vase ; and, if the house has been existing for thirty years, a sword rack. Japan is full of cherry trees and plum trees, but they do without fruit. The cherries are used for blossom, and the plums for hanging poems on. Japanese ladies have been known to do with- 5 \ QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN out any stockings to maintain the harmony between beautiful French sUppers and magnificent French evening dresses. I have been served by a Japanese hosier who did without everything he did not supply himself — he had a shirt, a collar and tie and scarf- pin and studs, but he had no trousers. And the effect of their absence was heightened by his wear- ing braces because he sold them. This is keepmg the old adage, " the cobbler should stick to his last," with a vengeance, when the outfitter will not go beyond his outfit. The Japanese baby never cries for Pears' soap, but he never gets it any more than kisses. The Japanese do not know how to kiss — if a Japanese girl knows how to kiss it shows the work of a foreign instructor ; she does it as an accomplish- ment, not as an enjoyment. The Japanese have no pens and no ink, but they make a very good shift with a paint-brush. Their writing is so lovely that a poet is judged by his handwriting and not by his compositions. It is no wonder that the Japanese think so much of poets. The Japanese houses have no chimneys, and you are never warm enough till the house catches fire. The Japanese tradesmen do without consciences, at any rate towards the people they buy from. To make up for it they have no swear words, and their cliildren have no tempers. The Japanese have beef and no mutton ; the Chinese have mutton and no beef. 6 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE Japanese bells, like Japanese belles, have no tongues : you ring them by swinging a beam against them. When Japanese cherry trees have cherries, they have no stones — I think the oranges have no pips ; this is no doubt part of the national politeness. Japanese snakes have no poison ; Japanese music has no harmony. The Japanese alphabet is not an alphabet, but a selection of seventy useful ideo- grams to dispense with the thirty thousand in ordinary use by the Chinese. Japanese theatres have no actresses, except one at Kioto, which has no actors. The Japanese have no forks or spoons or table-cloths ; they have no sheets, no wine- glasses, no tumblers. Is it any wonder that a Japanese is sweet- tempered ? When a missionary undertakes to go and live in the country in native style, she undertakes to do without all the ordinary comforts of life. She can console herself by having so much less to talk to the servants about. A bird might find it easy to accommodate itself to the short commons of Japanese food and the airy nature of Japanese dwellings, but a dog would miss the meat, and a cat the kitchen fire. Japanese ladies lose one of the great excitements of life — the pleasure of buying a hat and pulling it to pieces ; but that does not prevent them from wearing hatpins in their hair. It must be a great 7 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN comfort to a woman to satisfy mankind with her figure without benefit of corsets. Any satisfaction that the Japanese women give their husbands is independent of whalebone, and unless he is a Cabinet minister or a busman, the Japanese does without horses. There is no civil service for horses in Japan. The Japanese in his native state did without hats. He had coal, but did not know how to use it. He had lamps, but only burnt candles in them ; he had no matches, but this did not signify, because the fire had never been let out since a relation of the sun founded Japan. The Japanese, before Commander Perry with his American guns made them taste the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, was as good at doing without things as the Mexican discovered by Cortez, who depended for food and intoxicating drinks and clothes and house on the American aloe. " Ridentem dicere verum quid vetat." This wonderful power of doing without is an essential source of military strength to our ally ; it enables his armies to march preternaturally light, and in a case of blockade or national disaster it would be almost impossible to starve him into suiTcnder. The Japanese is rich, because, as the witty Frencliman observed, " It is our wants that make us poor." There is often no furniture in a Japanese room, and a room which has a flat cushion each to squat 8 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE on and a hibachi each to warm the fingers at, is very well furnished. The Japanese are never warm beyond the tips of their fingers in winter. Each person ought to have, besides the finger stove, a tabakomono, or smoker's stove, with pipes, tobacco, and live charcoal for lighting the pipes. As Japanese pipes contain only two or three whiffs, the smoker divides his time between re-lighting and knocking the ashes out. The most familiar sounds in Japan are the tap-tap of the pipe having its ashes knocked out, the klop-klop of the clogs on the flagged roads, and the toot-toot of the blind shampooer on his double bamboo penny whistle ; and when it is windy, instead of the door banging, you hear the kakemono's flap-flap against the wall of the tokonoma. The tokonoma is a pious fiction. It means literally the place where you lay the bed. In theory every Japanese house reserves a space, which no other person is allowed to occupy, for the bed of the IMikado in case he should happen to drop in. This wonderful visit does not often take place, because the Mikado hardly ever drops out of the tabernacle of secrecy in which his domestic hfe is veiled. This is lucky ; for it is so long since he used a tokonoma in this very promiscuous fashion, that most of the places reserved for spreading his bed on are not more than two or three feet long and a few inches wide. Fancy King Edward having a shelf put up for him to sleep on in every 9 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN effort of the jerry builder. A Japanese bed gives one a good idea of the bed in the New Testament which the cured man was bidden to take up and walk : it consists of one or more thick padded quilts. When you only have one you use it as a mattress, and your pillow is made of wood the size and shape of a door-scraper. Over the tokonoma hangs the best kakemono the house can afford, in front of which, usually on one of the low, lacquered, spindle-legged tables, is a vase containing two or three twigs of tree blossom, aiTanged with parti- cular regard for etiquette and allegorical meaning. The arrangement of flowers is a science, almost a religion, in Japan. Much the most important feature in a Japanese household is the private warehouse where the furni- ture is kept till it is wanted. The Japanese does not leave his furniture about the room ; he just brings it in as we bring in whisky — when it is required. He sometimes leaves a screen about — not the sort you see at London drapers', but a low paper screen a couple of feet high painted by some good artist ; and there may be a little low table supporting a choice vase. If he has a hundred or a thousand vases, he only brings out one or two at once, and changes them like cut flowers. There are other tables a foot high, used for eating your dinner or drinking your tea, or even for writing a letter. You write with a paint brush, and a foot is not a 10 > » ' > At the New YEAKb Festival with MOCHI IN THE TOKONOMA. HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE bad height for a table if your only chair is the floor. Tea-tables are round or square or octa- gonal, the size of a stool. Dining-tables are a yard long and half a yard wide. Brought in also, when it is required, is the Japanese reading-lamp, a square paper box with a red lacquer stand. In order to make the light which filters through the paper from a rush candle go as far as possible, the servants are allowed to come in and sit along the sides of the room. They enter into the con- versation — there is not light enough for an5i:hing else. I have even heard of a Japanese using fire- flies for light ; but this can only be done in the season. The beautiful and idiotic reading lantern is, I regret to say, being replaced by petroleum lamps — the kind you buy in the "all articles in this window 6jd." shop. The nakedness of the land is a little less apparent during the New Year's Festival ; for then the guest-chamber contains the mochi — a sort of three- tiered wedding-cake made of rice flour in tubs without bottoms by peripatetic cooks, and a vase of flowers placed in front of it. The godown is one of the most picturesque features about the house. It is supposed to be fire-proof as well as burglar-proof, and is about as much one as the other. It looks like iron, but is only made of compressed cement and black polish with a huge crest or monogram in white. The 11 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Japanese put their crests on everything— even their servants' clothes. Gardens are a feature in Japan. In the suburbs they go in for regular landscapes; in the cities, where building plots might almost be measured by inches, they get in a garden effect somehow — if it is only a bamboo trellis with a gourd trailing over it like it does on Japanese picture frames at Liberty's. These gourds, with a pinch in the middle like a lady's waist, are dried and hollowed out and fitted with stoppers, for pilgrims' water-bottles, and export. You get the same thing at Florence, where the fishermen use them for the fish they catch in the Arno, which are of a suitable size. If he can do nothing more, every Japanese who can afford them will have a row of blue and white pots with dwarf fruit or fir trees. The fir trees are taught floral gjTnnastics, and the fruit trees are let off bearing fruit on con- dition of having double blossoms. Fir trees are expected to grow smaller as they grow older. The Duchess of Connaught, when she was leaving Japan, had one given her which had been growing so long that it was no bigger than a stockbroker's buttonhole, and not so tall as a Jew's cigar. Give a Japanese a backyard ten feet square, and he will have a Chinese garden with any quantity of paths of glittering white quartz. Rut give a prosperous Japanese a few acres — one acre 12 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE — round his house in the suburbs, and he will make a landscape garden worthy of Kubla Khan. A lake is a si7ie qua non, and if there are any un- dulations he will manage a cascade and a mountain river a few feet wide and a few inches deep, for bridges are his principal devices — bridges of ancient mossy stone, now a straight slab, now a hog's back with a stone hand-rail, wonderful for its combina- tion of simplicity and elegance. His lake will be full of islands partly to have more bridges, partly as pedestals for little stone torii, and votive lanterns with broad brims, and lighthouses and pagodas and fantastic rock-work, and fir trees trained to the shape of a ship in sail or a peacock's tail ; while round the water's edge will be variegated maples of every conceivable colour, and arbours of wistaria with blossoms three or four feet long trailing down to the water. If there is an eminence in the garden, a little artificial Fujiyama will be cut out of it, with a path winding to the summit occupied by a quaint stone seat. Here the owner will sit with his mother ; the Japanese do all their flirting with their parents. / In the mere matter of flowers the Japanese rely partly on very fine individual blossoms, as in the case of the tree-peony or the chrysanthemum, partly on the great masses of colour obtained by close beds of the same flower. The big purple iris is popular for this purpose, and the azalea. 13 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN In all branches of gardening, except fruit- growing, the Japanese display the highest skill. It has been said that they make animals of their flowers, they have such an instinct for divirong the sympathies of the vegetable creation. But one thing does strike the visitor — the way in which they sacrifice the fruit to the blossom. They grow some fruit trees, such as the double-blossomed cherry, entirely for flower. They cut the blossom off the fruit trees for sale ; indeed, I am not quite sure that I ought to allow them the credit of being even skilful in the matter of fruit-growing. They will travel immense distances to see a garden famous for a particular kind of blossom in its prime, such as the park at Nara when the scarlet azaleas are in their glory, or the temple at Kame-ido when the old gnarled plum trees of the Sleeping Dragon are covered with their living snow. In the same way they will travel immense distances to see some famous piece of scenery, generally occupied by a temple, or a teahouse, or both. The poor Japanese is the Italian of the East. He lives on next to nothing, and thrives on it. He always has a smile. He works whenever he can get any work to do. They are all week-days to him. Instead of a seventh day, Sunday, he has his festa, a national holiday or a temple-festival. In either case he goes a-fairing in some temple and takes his children or a female friend. He is never 14 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE too poor to have money to treat them. He only- gives himself a holiday when he is out of work, and his holidays are inexpensive. He just walks a hundred miles to see some famous garden in its glory ; he carries his luggage in a stay-box wrapped in oiled-paper, and gets a bed at an inn for a half- penny. His food is almost as cheap, and when the last turn in the road shows him the irises of Horikiri or the thousand cherry trees of Yoshino on the day of all the year, he would not change places with the King of England. 15 CHAPTER II JAPANESE WOMEN Japan is the Antipodes as much as Australia. If Austraha has its Christmas at mid-summer and its cherries with stones outside the fruit, Japan has its oranges without pips and its screws which work the reverse way, and does most other things upside down from our point of view. Take the women, for instance : they carry their babies on their backs instead of in their arms, and black their teeth instead of trying to keep them white, and the lower they are in class the more consideration they receive from their husbands. There is generally, it must be confessed, method in Japanese madness, but it does look very mad to the unreasoning globe-trotter. Take, for instance, the matter of the woman carrying her baby behind instead of in front: that is because girls begin carrying babies so very young in Japan that it becomes a second nature not to remember the baby at all, but to go on doing whatever one is doing without regarding 16 JAPANESE WOMEN it ; in other words, by this new patent way of carrying a baby a woman can work as well as mind the child — which she does not mind. In fact, unless it is her first, the mother does not generally carry the baby ; the last baby, if it is a girl and weaned, carries it. Little Japanese girls are weaned unconscionably late, and begin their duties as women unconsciously early. The first duty of woman, says the Japanese proverb, is obedience ; the first duty of a Japanese woman in home life is, when she looks about four years old, to carry the next baby in a haori (shawl) on her back. The baby is fastened so securely that its little mothering sister can play ball or shuttlecock in spite of the pick-a-back. The baby does not cry or laugh — Japanese babies are very solemn — but nods its head and runs at the nose. If all the succeeding babies are boys she will do her courting and her house work with this pick-a-back encumbrance. The Japanese woman does not blacken her teeth under any mistaken idea that it makes her at- tractive ; she does it to make herself unattractive. Her husband is supposed to know her value ; if he does not, he divorces her. He makes no provision for her, and she has no dowry from her family, but divorced women in Japan nearly always marry again. She brings him nothing but a gentle and obedient slave, and takes nothing away with her 2 17 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN but the same valuable commodity. The reason why lower-class women receive more consideration from their husbands than their upper-class sisters, is that they are capable of earning their own hvings, which Japanese ladies are not. So thoroughly is this recognised, that a lower-class woman divorces her husband if she is not satisfied — a tiling which never happens in more select circles unless the woman is an heiress, when the husband is of as little consideration as a lady. It is only when she has no brothers that a Japanese woman may expect money from her parents. If they have only a daughter to leave their money to, the son-in-law has to take her name — and the consequences. In households which are uncorrupted by foreign influ- ences, a woman, of whatever class, is only a servant, unless her husband chooses otherwise. She is expected to wait on him, brush and mend his clothes, only speak when she is spoken to, and always give place auoo hommes. It is she who slides back the shutter for him to pass through, and she is expected to walk a pace or two behind him, even when there is plenty of room for them to go side by side — a most laudable custom in the old days of free trade in murder to prevent the man being surprised from behind, but a trifle out of date now. It makes no difference if she is a duchess ; the only thing that makes any diflerence, unless her husband is an Anglomaniac, is her dress. If a Japanese 18 1 1 », » » * To h'-k o.i }>. 18. iJr. 0-Daikon — the honourable gigantic radish. STREET SCENES nichi-do at Nikko is let for lodgings. But these glorious umbrellas which could be let as market stalls in Paris are disappearing, because one of the cheapest forms of swagger in Japan is carrying a Sarah Gamp. It does not really signify if it is only a Japanese imitation : it is fashionable, and therefore must be worn, just as a really stylish Japanese student thinks it necessary to spoil his charming native costume by wearing a dirty grey bowler resting on his ears, though a Japanese head was never meant to be covered. The coolie's idea is much better, — when it is hot he takes his hat off, and ties a towel round his forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes. It is now against the laws to go naked. Japanese interpret laws very literally. Theatres and baths go together in the Japanese mind ; and I went into a bath- house in Theatre Street one day, and saw a number of persons of both sexes bathing stark-naked. *' I thought it was against the law for men and women to bathe together, Mr Mayeda," said I. "They are not bathing together," he said. There was a bamboo floating on the water, and the women were all on one side of it. It is no use keeping the law in Japan. If a policeman wishes to lock a man up he does not wait for him to be guilty, so what does it matter ? The Japanese do not keep the laws, they obey the police. But they are a law-abiding people ; they do not go in for having rights — they 4 49 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN had not even the right to H\e thirty years ago. You cannot understand Japan until you understand that it exists for its two milhon patricians — people of Samurai birth and upwards ; they do the ruling and the fighting and the writing, and the people do the rest without even a button being touched. The globe-trotter conies very little into contact with this ruling class, unless he is a representative man, or breaks the laws. The Japanese whom travellers see and photograph and misrepresent in literature are the unconsidered thirty-eight millions of plebeians, who don't change any more than other things where there is no money to spend. May they never have any money, because they are madder on improve- ments than Americans. The one thing that mortal man can never under- stand about Japan is that though the Japanese never seem to leave off working, the streets abound in travelling shows, and anything like a fair or festival is always crowded with people, all of the poorer classes. The Japanese have a craze for massage, which they call shampooing in Japan. They don't go to the massager — the massager comes to them. Their sensitiveness about the privacy of their home-life is not outraged, because massaging is the monopoly of the blind. The toot-toot of the massager's twin penny whistle, and the clop-clop of his staff are the most familiar sounds after dark. The massager waits till night to go his rounds, partly because the Ja[) Hkes 50 STREET SCENES to take a bath in boiling water and be shampooed at the end of his day's work, partly because, as he sagely observes, no one can see in the dark. You may see a Japanese do almost anything in the street, except blow his nose. It is not good manners to be seen blowing your nose in Japan, but you may belch in any company ; it is bad manners not to belch if you are dining with a Japanese ; it looks as if the dinner was not good enough to make you overeat yourself. When the Japanese is having a night out, he gets drunk before dinner, and not after. Tooth-picks are only used with a hand covering the mouth, and they should, by rights, be inscribed with a poem. Meals are served a la Russe. The Japanese have not only a language of flowers, but a language of hair and fans. Improper proposals are made with the fan, and a woman's hair tells a man of the world whether she is an unmarried woman, or a wife, or a widow. In the case of the last, it even tells you whether she is willing to marry again. Large ears are a mark of beauty in Japan, and fat people are much admired. In the words of Griffis : " A rotund physique is considered a good gift of nature " ; and a Japanese, who was once lunching with me, asked, before the whole table, if it was permissible to inquire whether an English friend of mine, who was one of the company, and had what we consider a good figure, led a very bad life. 51 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN It is cheap to set up a laundry in Japan. You do your washing in the street, witliout soap, and you do your ironing, without irons, by stretching the wrung-out garments on boards in the sun. Tlie Japanese even write their letters in the street. They write with a paint-brush on a roll of wTapping paper which is about forty feet long when it is born. When they have written all they want — the wrong way — from right to left, they tear it off, fold it up, and push it into an envelope about six inches long and two inches wide ; the address is written up and down, beginning Avith the name of the country — the last thing on tlie envelope is the person's name. IMiddlesex, Southgate, Osidge, Lipton Thomas Sir. The Japanese have no tables worth speaking of, the nearest approach being an article about three feet long, a foot wide, and nine inches high, off which you are occasionally allowed to eat a meal, and which is more like a tea-tray standing on nine-pins. It is at the New Year Festival that you see the Japanese streets in their glory, when the whole city is decorated, at the cost of about a shilling a house, with grass ropes and bamboo leaves and lobsters and Japanese flags. The streets are full of mous- mees in their temple best, and firemen doing acrobats' tricks, and the smell of sesame oil goes up to Heaven. But that is another story which I slinll tell in a later chapter. 5S CHAPTER V THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN " For his heart is in Japan, with its junks and Fujlsan, And its tea-houses and temples, and the smiling Rikshaman." The Musume. The Japanese cabman is his own cabhorse. The other chief difference between him and his London brother is that the latter could not be called smiling. I can never understand myself why only four-wheel cabmen are called growlers. The riksha boy has a smile that outchristians Christianity. Like the sun, he smiles on the just and the unjust, including those who put justice before generosity. The Japanese themselves think so meanly of jin- riksha men that they are not allowed the honour of being servants at all, but have to put up with being mere tradesmen. I have read in a Japanese book that " there are jinriksha men who seem to have sunk so low in their calling that they seem to have lost all feeling of loyalty to their employer, 53 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and only care selfishly for the pittance they gain. Such men are often found in the Treaty Ports, eagerly seeking for the rich foreigner from whom they can get an extra fee." The writer is horrified by the depravity of the picture. But as the jinriksha man is only entitled to 15 sen, i.e.^ ji^ of a dollar, worth 2s. Jd. per hour if he is moving, and only y-^-^ if he is waiting, and may have to do anything up to thirty or forty miles in any kind of weather, there is some excuse for his selfishness ; but even that pittance is reduced to a lump sum of 50 cents if he be taken for the half-day, and 70 cents if he be taken for the day. The riksha boys are the sons of peasants who come into the cities for their financial advantages and to see life. They are, therefore, like the bettos, accused of all the drinking and gambling and dissipation that their means allow ; and, coming from the country, of course, they cannot have any manners. This is not the riksha boy most foreigners know. Your riksha boy is more than your guide, philo- sopher, and friend ; he is yom* protector too, if there is no policeman by. If anybody luistles or insults his employer, he charges into him with his riksha, or drops the shafts and goes for him ; and no Jap but a policeman or a wrestler would care to try conclusions with the riksha boy, who nuist be in training, and would not draw a riksha unless he 54 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN had first-rate strength and endurance. I don't know if the Mikado made much use of his scores of thousands of unmounted cavalry in the Chinese war, but these trained runners could travel as far in a day as the Boers on their ponies, and it would be all in their day's work ; they would be ready to do it again the next morning. If you want to enjoy Japan you must win the approbation of some riksha boy. You can stay on in the same place to do it, or you can take him with you wherever you go. He is not very exact- ing in the choice of his employer, and when he makes it, he takes you in and does for you as you have never been done for before. He is your horse, your valet, your interpreter, and will turn cook or waiter at a moment's notice. If you tear your clothes he will drop the shafts (it doesn't matter if he shoots you off the seat, because you have to come off before he can get to his " boot " — the place where he puts his needle and his apparatus for making tea, his lacquer box full of boiled rice, and his lantern during the daytime, and his clothing down to his drawers if it is hot and he is beyond the eagle eye of the city policeman). I had such a riksha boy at Kyoto. He could even read, as events proved. We took him as chief riksha boy to make our expedition to Nara, where they keep all the artistic treasures collected by the Mikados in a thousand years, and have a goggle- 55 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN eyed bronze Buddha seventy feet high, and old parks full of great stone lanterns which cannot be lighted, and deer which walk up to be fed, and wdld scarlet azaleas by the acre, as thick as heather in the North. Riksha boys draw the line at luggage — you have to squeeze your belongings into a telescope basket. I pleaded hard for my bag as well, but O-San was inexorable. Quern dcus perdere vult .... We raced off in great style ; each riksha with a human tandem. The front horse is taken off to push behind when you go uphill. The god of rice's temple, with its stone foxes ; the Phoenix temple at Biodoin, with its wooden walls older than our Norman Conquest ; the gardens of Uji, where they grow the tea which fetches a guinea a pound, flew behind us, and we congratulated our- selves on the prospect of a long and happy after- noon at Nara. Post hoc diluvies ; it was the rainy season, and the deluge began. The riksha hoods were drawn over our backs and their aprons up to our noses, and the human horses steamed like meat taken out of the oven ; and the hotel — a native one — had only one room between three men and one lady, who was not their sister, and a Japan- ese policeman made his appearance to demand our passports. We were the only food for his note- book that the day had brought. Oiu- passports were in that rejected bag. He said we nuist go to 56 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN the police station — not for lodgings, but to see tJie head. Japanese always talk about the head. When we got there, the riksha boy, who was our guide and comforter and friend, went in with us. There is an eternal feud between policemen and riksha boys. They ordered him out. " Can you speak English ? " he asked of them haughtily. Silence means dissent in Japan. He proceeded, '• Then I must interpret for you." He didn't really know much English, except the numerals, but he and I had patched up a pigeon language out of shreds of English and Japanese. The head was appalled by his learning, but he said we must go back to Kyoto at once. " Might not we stay for a single day ? " I asked. " We could stay as long as we liked, only it must be at the poHce station." But the riksha boy had the last word. The policeman is his natural enemy, and he was going to turn the tables. He requested permission to bring in a notice-board that was outside. On it was a resplendent new notice, stamped with the government chrysanthemum. He requested the head to observe that everyone, high and low, was cautioned against doing anything to annoy the English Prince and his party. I, he said, was one of the Prince's party. He had himself driven me at a picnic with the Prince yesterday. I must be a very gi'cat personage, because I had sat next to the Prince's wife at tiffin. Was the honourable head 57 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN able to calculate the consequences of what he was doing ? The honourable head was very badly dis- turbed. He asked me, with profound salaams, if what the miserable riksha boy had said was true. I said it was true. I allowed myself to take his question to refer to the riksha boy's account of the picnic. The Duke and Duchess of Connaught were staying in our hotel ; and the Duke, knowing my connection ^\dth the Press, very good-naturedly invited me to accompany his party on a picnic down the Rapids ; and the Duchess had placed me, as the only stranger, next to her at tiffin. It was marvellous the change wrought in that head. He said it was too late to send us back to Kyoto that night ; it would do if we went back the next day, and he gave the genius of the riksha to understand that the police would not notice what time we went back, which allowed us to stay as long as we ever meant to. The hotel accommodation did not encoinage a long stay. The riksha boy's achievements did not stop there. He lingoed me to excuse him for an hour. AVhen lie came baqk he had had a hot batli, and entered a bran new suit — of doublet and hose. He was going to be our waiter. Then we found out why I had to leave the bag with the passports behind — the tal)lecloth, the china, and cutlery, and all the civilised portions of the meal had come from tlie Kyoto liotel. He liad caught and killed fowls l'(L)r 58 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN us, and commandeered chairs from somewhere or other. There was a man at Nara who made a hving out of letting chairs to the foreigners who came to the hotel. It must have been a mighty poor living. That boy taught us what to do in a Japanese hotel. He had brought soap from Kyoto, and took us in turns out into the yard to wash. He waited on us at table much better than any of the Kyoto hotel servants, and, after dinner, wanted to know how many bedrooms we would have the dining-room turned into, showing us the grooves in the floor and ceiling made to take the paper shutters. We decided that one room would do between the three gentlemen, so only one lot of tissue-paper shutters were run across the rooin. Then he brought in the kind of beds that were used in the miracle — quilted mattresses an inch or two thick. The advantage of this kind of mattress is that, though it is not much good to lie upon, it is excellent to lie under. The bed is spread on the floor, and you get into whichever layer of it you please. I got under all, except one. I did not find the shape of the floor concealed by any number of them, and it was cold sleeping in that paper room on such a wet night. In the morning he walked into both bedrooms, before we were up, to wake us. The worst of a combination bedrooin and dining-room is that you cannot possibly be late for breakfast. We told him to lay the table on 59 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN our side of the paper wall, and took turns to go out into the yard and wash in a brass basin scarcely large enough for a beef pudding. He had brought Chinese tea and sugar with him. Japanese tea, without milk or sugar, does not pull you together much after a bad night ; and your first night in a Japanese hotel is always a bad one — it's too much like going to the theatre — as an actor. The pro- prietors and servants are the audience. Everything you do is a performance. That blessed boy (I speak literally) gave us our breakfast, and packed for us, and paid the bills, and fee'd the servants, and showed us the sights of Nara, and took us back to Kyoto unmolested by further police. The riksha boy makes the best guide in Japan. So long as he has interesting things to show you, you go on hiring his riksha. He is not called a guide, or paid as such. He is competing with his over- numerous brothers of the craft — -I mean shaft. He adapts himself to his patient, though his diagnosis is not infallible. There was, for instance, an old missionary who ai-rived in our sliip from America in a top hat. He was a very well-fed looking person — -perhaps his appearance was in favoin- of becoming a Christian to the ill-fed skinny-looking coolies. The riksha boy, to whose guidance he entrusted himself, thinking that he must be a noble- man — no Jaj)anese would wear a top hat unless he was — took him straight to the Vosliiwara. Finding 60 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN the old gentleman scandalised, he thought he might have been a little precipitate, and asked where he should take him. He was told to go to a tailor. The tailor, after taking his measure in rather a perfunctory way for clothes, fancied that he had taken his measure in another way, and wished to take his order for a Japanese wife. In every order that unfortunate man gave, his riksha boy read a double entendre. Outside every hotel and pubhc place there is a riksha stand, where the little men in their dark blue tunics and hose, and white basin hats, let their rikshas rest on their shafts, and stand smoking tiny brass pipes hardly big enough to take in the end of a cigarette. They only take about three whiffs. The constantly refilling prolongs the agony, and makes smoking in Japan very economical. Nothing is spent in matches — the Swedish matches they make in Japan go to America — there is always some smouldering charcoal handy to blow into a flame. And the moment a pipe is smoked through, the ashes are knocked out against the wheel — the tap-tap of the kiseru (pipelet) and the clop-clop of the clogs make up for the absence of hoof-clatter. The moment anyone steps out of the hotel all the riksha boys run towards him, holding up their fingers like boys in class at school, and crying out Riksha-sha ! In winter your boy offers you the Red Indian blanket, which he has worn as a cloak 61 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN while he was waiting, to go over your knees ; and if he is poor for a riksha boy, may have his head tied up in a red pocket-handkerchief, Hke a workman's dinner. When you begin your first riksha ride, you say it is the very poetry of motion, whatever that is. You run to metaphors, and talk about land- gondolas or spider hansoms, but at the end of a thirty-mile ride the poetry is blank verse — blank, blank verse. It takes you in the back, as a char- woman would say, till you wonder if the sake- baka (rice-beer-befuddled) Japanese who rides in a riksha, with his head over the back and his tongue standing up like a flag-post, may not be a bond fide traveller, who has taken an anaesthetic to disguise the horrors of miles of riksha jogging. One could make a whole album out of the humours of riksha riding. To begin with the occupants : if they are Europeans, they seem to inhale a kind of laughing gas as they step up into the little " man-power vehicle," which is what "jinriksha " means. Old and fat, young and slender, if tliey are not residents with appearances to maintain, grin as if they were going to have their photographs taken, and shout as if tliey were bathing. They persist in regarding the perform- ance like going on a switchback instead of going in a cab. This is quite wrong ; rikshas in Japan are a stern reality — a very stern reahty, if you have to 62 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN go far and often. There is the fat old man who frightens the riksha boy, and the fat old woman who is frightened of him, the practical joking young man who finds it hard to keep from whip- ping his horse, the girl who giggles, and the pretty girl who has found a fine fresh way of making a picture of herself, and the child who is old enough to be allowed in a riksha by himself He is the happiest of all ; for the riksha is the apotheosis of the perambulator. " Big babies in running prams," was a witty Frenchman's definition of riksha riding ; and he might have observed, with equal truth, that it was trying to accommodate yourself to the pro- portions of the country. Amusing as it is to stand in the club windows at Yokohama and watch the types of foreigners as they riksha along the Bund to the silk pocket- handkerchief shop, it is much better fun to watch Japanese riksha riders going to Shiba on a holiday. A foreigner often takes two riksha boys — one riksha boy is much oftener expected to draw two Japanese ; sometimes an old Darby and Joan in sad-coloured silk kimonos ; sometimes a black- toothed duenna escorting a geisha with whitened face and as brilliant as a butterfly ; sometimes two gay little mousmees, though they cannot always afford it ; more often, as Mr M. J. adroitly puts it, " Rich worshippers on their way back resorting to a grand restaurant with their mistresses or intimate singing 63 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN girls to drink and have sweet talks " ; and the moralist, evidently a Christian, adds, " such is the condition of most of the worshippers of heathen gods." To see a brilliant geisha, or two sweet little mousmees bowling along under the cherry-blossom avenues, is as pretty a sight as it is revolting to see the sake-baka with his head tumbling off. You do not meet many drunken people, considering that the Japanese see no harm in it. A riksha boy would think it far more indecent to see a sober foreigner walking than a drunken Japanese in a riksha. Like the gondoliers in Venice and the cabmen in Paris, he thinks that a foreigner has no right to be in the streets without paying for it. There is one great comfort about jinriksha boys — they have no connection with Heaven ; the first riksha boy was not a nephew of the sun ; you have not got to learn anjdhing about them from art books. The jinriksha is of low origin : it is doubt- ful if there was such a thing in tlie old Japan, which dated froin the Flood to 1868. They are even said to have been invented by an American cobbler, who was also a missionary, and started a modified per- ambulator ; but they are more generally ascribed to a paralytic old gentleman of Kyoto, who found his palanquin uncomfortable. The first application for a licence to manufacture them was made in 1870. The })athchair and the British perambulator might claim to be the grand-parents of this busy 64 THE SMILING RIKSHA MAN little go-cart ; it looks like a perambulator, and is drawn like a bath- chair— a donkey bath-chair. The riksha boy, like the Italian cabby, likes anything better than driving. Shopping, for which he will have his commission from the seller, comes first ; and if you don't want to shop or take Kodaks, or see a temple, or a new Buddha being made out of old mirrors, at decently short intervals he asks, with engaging politeness, if he may stop and have a smoke, or pull up at a riksha boys' tea-house. A riksha boys' tea-house is like the thatched stable, with the front off, in which the Holy Family received the congratulations of the Three Magi in mediaeval pictures. When the Japanese does not want to sit upon the floor, he raises part of it and sits on the edge, like the Chinaman who burnt his house down to roast the pig. But the riksha boy sits side-saddle ; and with the aid of two chop-sticks, no thicker than Bryant and May's matches, shovels a slop basin full of rice or macaroni down his throat in less time than the ordinary male could swallow a cup of hot tea, looking like a jackdaw all the while. He makes a perfect beak of his lips while he is putting himself outside the macaroni. The chop-sticks are worked with a bird's beak movement, and the food is washed down with douches of rinsy-looking Japanese tea. He gives a few belches — the Japanese way of returning thanks — fills his pipe, empties it in three whiffs, taps 5 65 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the ashes out — much the longer process — mops himself, uses the back of his hand as a pocket- handkerchief, and is ready to go on. The riksha boy is said to be short-lived, which is put down to long runs, foreigners' fat, and all weathers. They do die of heart-disease — who wouldn't, if he took his meals like that, and ran ten miles afterwards with a bath-chair behind him ? The riksha boy is his own horse, and when he is away from his lynx-eyed enemy — the policeman — has the horse's ideas of decency, and no more. Apart from his ignorance of decency, he is a sore trial to betrothed Europeans. Two Europeans cannot go in one riksha, and two riksha boys cannot be induced to run side by side— they prefer to go like a train of camels led by a donkey ; which has other disadvantages besides unsociability, because, if this Indian file is brought to a sudden halt, half the riders are thrown out. But they have calls for going round corners and suddenly stopping like the Venetian gondoliers. It is not the native they upset, but the foreigner, who will not give them their heads. As we were going from Kyoto to Lake Biwa, we passed a curio shop. I spied a Daimio lantern for sale — a thing I liad been lumt- ing for for months. I stopped my man so suddenly that the rest of my party were shot out of their rikshas backwards, like the contents of a dust-cart. 66 To hack on p. 66. A stii'i't n'sUiUiiiil ami To oack on f. b/. ail open-air teahouse. CHAPTER VI JAPANESE SHOPS To start a Japanese shop is also the simplest thing in the world. You take off the front of your house, and arrange any of your worldly possessions you are disposed to part with on the floor. Japanese floors are raised off the street, though nothing is raised off" the floor. The transient customer sits on the edge of the floor, side-saddle. A real shopper, who means to do the thing properly, like peasants buying jewellery in Italy, climbs up on the floor, which is also the counter, and squats on his heels. Unless compelled by foreign influence, Japanese shops do not have doors or windows or counters. Shop windows in New York do not leave much opening — or, perhaps, I should say closing — for anything else in a twelve-foot frontage ; but even an American shop window does not give such opportunities as taking the whole front off" your house. The Japanese do not have many formal shops. 67 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN There are very few streets of shops even in a city Uke Tokyo, which is as large as Berhn. Foreigners never buy anything but curios and knick-knacks at Japanese shops ; if they are fools, they deal with the shops kept by Europeans ; if they ^vant a good bargain, they deal with a Chinaman. (There are many Chinese shops in Treaty Ports.) The China- man is cheaper and more reliable than tlie Japanese. European shopkeepers do not set up in Japan for philanthropic reasons only. The reason why Japanese shopkeepers have such a bad name is that they are the lowest class of the population, except the outcast. Servants and labourers take precedence of them in society, and precedence is the favourite amusement of the Japanese. You have a different bow and a different salutation for a man who is below you, or your equal, and several different kinds for the people who are above you ; you have even a different language for each, and can be dreadfully insulting to people of no con- sideration, by applying to them the set of numerals which are properly reserved for animals. This is the Japanese way of calling a man a beast. Just as debutantes have to learn how to bow and kick their trains away before they are presented at our Court, the Japanese infant learns his alpliabct of salaams. It is the only alphabet there is for liim to learn, but lie has to learn that well ; for to the Japanese all the world is a Court where he has 68 JAPANESE SHOPS ^^ j to practise presentation etiquette. This cere- j moniousness makes it a serious matter going to a ' Japanese shop, unless you are going to buy silk handkerchiefs — the only thing foreigners buy often enough to spoil the manners of the shopkeeper. You get out of your riksha, and the riksha boy explains your high-and-mightiness. Then all the attendants in the shop salaam till you wish they would get up and let you catch their eye, and explain what you want. When they do get up, the Japanese equivalent of the shop-walker and three or four counter-jumpers in rotation asking you to repeat the same order is to offer you five cups of tea. It is Japanese tea, and there is no milk or sugar ; but you can have salted cherry- blossoms if you want, if it is a good shop. This is the Japanese way of offering the customer a drink. Good Japanese shops contain nothing, except the attendants. When you have got as far as explaining what you want, the proprietor gives orders to attendants, who hiss as if they were brushing a horse and trying to keep the hairs out of their mouths, while they rub their knees and bob their heads. Off they go at a run — good servants always run — and bring back goods tied up in faded green silk handkerchiefs, or green cotton cloths. The goods are kept in the godown, but the customer is never taken there, for there he 69 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN would choose right away, and have done with it, instead of being etiquettically worked up for half a day with enough tea to take his bath in. A Japanese godown is the most extraordinary looking thing; it has no windows and only one door, and looks like an enormous black or white plaster coffin, with a heavy gabled roof and a gigantic crest which fills the whole gable. Its thick walls are made of very tightly compressed plaster, covered with lacquer, and the Japanese consider them fire and burglar proof The plaster looks like meerschaum or ebony. All Japanese houses of any importance have godowns. The Japanese keep all their things put away, and bring them out one at a time (except their wives) for a short period to admire — ^they even apply the godown principle to their wives. This method of shopping is very tiresome, and as I was not buy- ing many Quaritchy books or choice curios, I soon got tired of it. The right way to use these shops would be to have an etiquette servant, like a prison editor, to start an hour before you, and get through the gymnastics before you arrived. You could choose one who held plenty of tea, because you are charged more, if you don't drink tea, as a worthless person or a barbarian with no knowledge of busi- ness. It might, however, be better for the health of members of the Stock Exchange if they sat on their heels and drank cups of Japanese tea instead 70 JAPANESE SHOPS of standing about bars drinking whiskies ; it would be a safety in numbers. If you have a good riksha boy, he goes in with you to tell you how you ought to behave yourself In the end I made up my mind only to deal with pawnshops, unless I was buying such things as camphor-wood boxes or paper umbrellas. When you buy direct from the manufacturer, things are simplified a bit, as his whole stock may be under twenty pieces and under twenty shillings' value. I do not know if the Japanese really have pawn- shops, but the places which look hke pawnshops are the only shops where it is any fun buying things. To start with, the things you buy are worth so much more when you get to England, because they were made in the days when the Japanese did not go in for shops, but all lived in big families, which sometimes ran into thousands, in the establishment of a noble whose income was reckoned in rice, which sounds as bad as having your name writ in water, but is not really, for the Daimio of something or other would have had two millions a year if it had not been written in rice. The Daimio paid salaries, also in rice, to every kind of artificer, and he took proper leisure over making a tea-cup or whatever it was. It is not easy to compute how much time a Japanese would take over anything under those favourable cir- 71 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN cumstances ; the only thing he hurries over is fetching a thing, which he does at a run. In the humble second-hand shops, which abound round Shiba at Tokyo, and behind the Theatre Street at Yokohama, one buys for coppers little gems of articles of domestic use which are the most lovable things in Japan. They were made in the old Daimio days, when a thing had to be perfect of its kind, and, though chipped and worn and discoloured, their elegance of form and in- genuity of design make them little masterpieces of art. I do not only refer to the buttons which they do not use for buttoning {netsuke) ; the four- trayed medicine-chests, which would go inside a cigar-case {inro) ; the pipe tubes and tobacco purses, which, as they are all the Japanese has in the way of jewellery, are naturally ornaments ; but the folding and telescoping candlesticks of bronze and iron, the finger bells and gongs priests take out for walks, chop-stick and amulet-cases, solemn tea-caddies, dressing-cases for carrying in your sleeve, looking-glasses made of bronze, and ivory card-cases for holding lip-paint. The Japanese do sell some things that a lady could not put in her muff; they are just as beauti- ful. For mere songs one can pick up wonderfully elegant and decorated finger- stoves; smokers'-stoves ; kitchen ranges made of wood, which you can put in your portmanteau ; antique screens a foot and 72 JAPANESE SHOPS a half high, which are only meant to look at ; Daimios' trunks, with lids which come off like those of biscuit-tins, and chased brass corners and brass loops for slinging them on bamboos ; tea- baskets, without any sides, made of old red lacquer, with fine metal fittings ; fine tea-cups galore, often with metal or wooden or even cocoa-nut shell saucers ; square iron kettles as decorated as temples ; rich old lacquer writing-cases used, not for containing the writing materials, but the letter when it is wiitten ; temple banners ; images of Buddha ; and countless other objects of great age, high beauty, and imperishable solidity, sacrificed for coppers at the first chip, for the old Japanese workmanship is so good that the lacquer lost its value with one chip. Another favourite Hne among second-hand goods are pieces of silk which have been used in priests', or actors', or geishas' dresses— ladies and gentlemen do not use gay materials. The Japanese second-hand shop, like other shops, has no doors or windows or counters, but it differs from other shops in needing to display all its goods to catch the passing riksha. For this the Japanese use receding shelves, hke we use for flower-pots in our green-houses ; you see some tit-bit, and call out *" Stop a little " to your riksha ; then, if you are new to it, and have an hour to spare, you say " Ikura ? " (How much ?). A fancy price is named 73 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN — say three times the value. You reply, " Amari Takai " (Far too high). He comes down a little. You name a price for which you have no hope of getting it. He raises you, as if you were playing poker. You refuse to be raised, and you both bluff till you are tired, and split the difference. All the time you are paying your riksha boy sevenpence halfpenny (worth only threepence three farthings in debased dollars) an hour. Of course, if you understand the soroban — the abacus or frame of moving beads on which he does his counting— you have him at your mercy. The Japanese always calculates what a thing cost him on his soroban ; and if you watch that, you know where his bed-rock comes in — he thinks that a foreigner is too big a fool to understand it. I was too big a fool ; but Mr Landor, the Thibetan traveller, could follow a Japanese counting on his soroban. I had an alternative method — not to ask the price of a thing. I computed the ridiculous sum at which an article would be an impossibly good bargain, took it up, and offered my price. If the proprietor said no contemptuously, I put it down, and told the riksha boy to drive on to the next second-hand shop. I returned by the same route as I went out on these shopping ex- peditions, and on the drive back was saluted the whole way along by little boys running from tlieir masters to say "Yoroshii, yoroshii ! " (Good, 74 JAPANESE SHOPS good ! ), which is the Japanese way of saying yes. They have no proper words for yes and no ; it is not pohte to be too definite, and the Oriental never knows when he may regret a direct answer. If, however, the proprietor showed a wiUingness to do business by only raising me a moderate amount, I sometimes made him one fresh offer, supposing I really wanted the thing. Before I had been living in Tokyo a month, all the shops in my favourite haunts knew me for a man of my word ; and also knew, with Oriental intuition, if I really desired it or would merely take it as a bargain. In this way purchases were made like lightning. If my price paid, they jumped at it ; if it did not, they told me their lowest price for the article, and shook their heads sadly when I would not be raised. Shopping in a riksha in this fashion was fresh air and poker combined. Those were the most exhilarating days I have ever spent. I adorned my sitting-rooms at Tokyo and Yokohama while I was living there with my trophies, and when I left Japan sent them all to England, in five cases large enough for me to stand in, to await my arrival there a year later. I have every one of them now furnishing my Japanese room. Whether you are a lady or gentleman, if you live long in Japan you have yourself refitted by a Chinese tailor on the model of your own or your most recently arrived friend's garments. But I must 75 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN not discuss the humours of deahng with Cock Eye & Co., who keep their word and excellent materials ; nor those of the camphor-wood box and basket- chair makers. If a foreigner has only one day in Yokohama, and goes to only one shop, it will be to the silk handkerchief shop of one Shobey, who, if you can believe the scurrilous foreign residents, was so impressed by the importance which the EngKsh attach to well-known brands that he used to label his boxes of handkerchiefs Crosse & Blackwell ! He sells excellent handkerchiefs at fairly moderate fixed prices, also silks by the piece ; but foreigners in the know do not buy silk by the piece, or buy it in a shop which has a door and counter ; they buy it by weight from a Chinaman, if they want white or natural-coloured silk ; or from Nozawaya, if they want the gay light Japanese silks. Nozawaya, who lives in the street of the Japanese Venus, has most of his shop taken up with the floor, of which he is inordinately proud. He uses it as a counter ; so you take off your boots instead of your hat when you go into his shop. He does not go in for well-known brands, such as " Glen- livet's Genuine Scotch Wine," or "American Preserved Milk— Heagler Brand " ; the Eagle brand of halfpenny lead pencils and sixpenny fountain-pens, which is so popular in Japan. Next to silk shops, transient foreigners are most likely to patronise the Kwankoba, or bazaar, where 76 JAPANESE SHOPS they see rubbishy lacquer and sham soap, new pipe-cases, and geisha girls' hairpins that no geisha would be seen in. These are generally in the Theatre Street or the grounds of a popular temple, the hugest of all being in the Ueno suburb of Tokyo. The Japanese holiday-maker is always buying their cheap knick-knacks for his baby or his best girl. Only a certain percentage of foreigners discovers the charm of Japanese paper shops, where you buy envelopes a foot long and two inches wide, with cranes straggling across them, and unfolded note- paper of absurd shapes, with a whole landscape or theatrical scene printed on them in colours almost as faint as water-marks. They write to all their friends on this, and think they are desperately Japanese, whereas they are stamping themselves " new chums " of the deepest dye. The Japanese writes his letters on a roll of white wrapping-paper six inches wide and many yards long. He starts at the right-hand top corner of the end, and begins to write on it with a paint-brush before it is unrolled. As he proceeds, he unrolls the part he has written on, and when he has finished tears it off. His letters are literally a yard or more long ; that's why his envelopes are such a funny shape. The large curio shops where you buy costly and beautiful articles are the same in Yokohama as they are in Bond Street. 77 CHAPTER VII THE CHINESE DRESSMAKERS OF JAPAN "^ The Chinese man-dressmaker has no parallel in England : he can catch everything except the spirit of what he copies ; he misses this, because he has no more idea of its meaning than a Kodak film would have. He photographs it — often extremely well. How he produces anything in such a den as he inhabits is a miracle. There is a proverb of the East, which says, " It is not wise to see where your pie is cooked " ; and, to do Ching-Lee and Ah- Sing justice, they do not encourage their patronesses to visit their ateliers, though sometimes, when peculiarly faithless about time, they have to be traced to their lairs. Time is the only respect in which the Chinese tradesman is not as good as his word. When you wish for their ministrations, you tell your bedroom boy or your riksha man ; and a * This chapter, changed from the first to the third person, to make it fit in with the rest of the book, is a reprint of an article by Miss Norma Lorimer in an American Magazine. 78 THE CHINESE DRESSMAKERS lady whose nerves are not strong, and who is un- acquainted with their habits, may get a hideous nightmare. Pretty Miss Aroostook, who was then about twenty, determined to employ Ching Lee. Sada, the socialist riksha-man, was to tell him on his way home. The next morning Miss Aroostook was awakened from her slumbers by the feeling that something oppressive was hanging over her. She rubbed her blue eyes to be certain that the gigantic Chinaman almost touching her bed was not born of a Welsh Rarebit, and then screamed for help. Fortunately, the most mountainous Marquis, as Mr Huntley Wright would have called him, re- tained his presence of mind, and did not move, but melted into a Celestial smile. " Me come welly good time," he cheerfully remarked. " Me d'less-maker ! " The padded coat of pale lavender silk, the apple- green silk padded trousers, the wonderfully em- broidered slippers of rose-coloured silk which adorned his six feet and a half of obesity, were non- suggestive of burglary. " One piecee lady Number Five send for Ching Lee ; welly good d'less-maker. Me allee samee d'less-maker, you allee samee lady." Miss Aroostook persuaded him to retire until she was dressed, before he could get through his apologies for having wakened her. When she let 79 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN him in again, he finished his apologies before he would untie the silk handkerchief in which the materials for a silk evening-dress, all done up in tight rolls like maps, were enclosed, with fashion- books from ten to twenty years old. He put his nail, a talon several inches long, which showed that he never took any menial exercise, on a pattern. " Me makee one piecee d'less for one welly nice big lady seven years ago ; welly good, you like me makee allee samee for you." Fortunately, Miss Aroostook had surreptitiously borrowed a newly arrived friend's ewe lamb of an evening-dress for him to copy — the friend had gone on a riksha tour up the Tokaido. It needed lace. " Me go catchee two piecee lace, you makee choose, me go welly quick ; me get welly good lace." He brought back the dress the next morning, such an exact copy that you could not tell one from the other, till you looked into the grain of the white china silk. But he saw a difference of folds in the loose draperies quite invisible to the naked European eye, and put the dainty white confection back into his silk handkerchief authori- tatively. " It no all belong p'loper ; to-morrow morning me comee allee samee time, me makee welly good fit. Gooda morning ! " It must have been a decidedly queer feeling for 80 THE CHINESE DRESSMAKERS Miss Aroostook to have Ching Lee's aristocratic finger-nails wandering over her neck and arms as he fitted her. The tips of his fingers she never felt, for his nails were at least an inch long. The Chinaman is far too polite to ask you to turn or move for his convenience ; he wanders around you in silent dignity ; and, no matter what trouble you have to put him to — over alterations— he has only one answer, " Welly good, can do. Me savee." Before she left Japan, her entire wardrobe was made by Asiatics. Her boots, which were worthy of a Fifth Avenue bootmaker, were made by a Japanese * who never wore a boot in his life, and who used to kick off his straw sandals at her door when he came in with his bundle of kid and leather for her to select from ; he also required a model, and copied as exactly as Ching Lee. There was a bootmaker in New York to whom all the smart women went and paid two or three pounds a pair, because lie made very beautiful kid boots with a specially graceful cut of peaked patent leather toe-caps. Miss Aroostook had a pair of these, which she was very proud of, and got them copied by the Japanese bootmaker for about fifteen shilUngs. He copied them so exactly that she put on the right foot of one pair and the left of the other without being any the wiser, till she * Miss Lorimer's article expressly states that the bootmaker was a Japanese. 6 81 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN unlaced them and saw Konishi stamped on the hning of one ankle and Neill on the lining of the other. A Chinese tailor charges from 12s. to 15s. for making a dress, including all the findings, as the American dressmaker calls the linings and little et ceteras with which she runs up a bill of a couple of pounds. Of course, there are some drawbacks to dressmaking in Japan. One day Miss Aroostook went out to buy some silk, and could not find the shop where she had dealt for some time, and become quite an institution. It was a humble native shop. After searching about for some time she noticed a bare space in the street where she had thought it stood ; she had visited it only the day before. A man and a woman were busy tying up bundles. The woman presently went off, carrying hers on her back, tied up in blue cloths. The man, whose bundles were composed of wooden frames and paper shutters, carried his on the two ends of a long bamboo pole across his shoulders. She learned from " my boy " that this was the entire shop and stock being removed to another quarter, and that in a few hours' time there would be nothing to remind one of the silk shop of yesterday. Her tailor also changed his shop ; but as he lived in the foreign settlement in Yokohama, he could not, like the snail, take his house on his back. 82 THE CHINESE DRESSMAKERS He put a large notice outside his deserted shop to tell his customers where he had set up his new establishment ; but, as it was all written in Chinese characters, it did not help much. However, as all Chinamen know about each other's affairs, she had no difficulty in finding him. A Chinaman will make a dress in two days, and is absurdly careful about returning every inch of goods over. Ching Lee often brought back spools of silk with scarcely more than one needleful of silk on them, ends of braid, scraps of tape — all of which he could buy cheaper and better than any European — and yet he had his " squeeze " out of every button or hook he bought for his customers. When he brought her " two piecee silk to makee choose," as he said, she invariably chose the inferior quality, much to his amusement ; and then he would show her her mistake by weighing both pieces on his curious little brass scales, with long ivory handles, which folded up into a wooden case like a large spoon. It was the first dress she had ever bought by weight. The Chinese always sell their silk by weight, and have one great virtue — they never go back on their bargain ; no matter how long your bill may be, or how long you may be over settling it, every item is exactly correct. Not so with the Japanese, whose promises are bland, and whose manners are persuasive: your orders are sure to cost just a little more than the 83 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN bargain, and the Jap has the most inconvenient way of losing the pattern of the stuff, and sub- stituting a shghtly inferior one in its place. But there is no country where a lady, who knows what she wants, can dress well so cheaply as in the land of the rising sun. Miss Aroostook had a white straw sailor hat which was the envy of all the Englishwomen in Yokohama. It was copied from a well-worn-out Enghsh one that had cost her two dollars in New York, and was made in a basket- maker and fancy straw -worker's shop in the Honcho Dori — the main street in the native city of Yokohama— for thirty cents. The man who made it had only a blue coolie towel tied round his head ; he had never had a hat on his head. In Yokohama, where silk is absurdly cheap and English tweeds are sold by the Chinese (who are contented with almost nominal profits on the cost price), you see charmingly dressed women — women who do not pretend to wear " imported gowns," but are a standing recommendation to Americans to have an outfit made by Wo Sing and Ching Lee. 84 CHAPTER VIII JAPANESE FESTIVALS The Japanese live for festivals, and the poor people get the best of them. Not having Sundays, they can afford to have holidays (rice and festivals are the Japanese version of the Roman panem et circenses — bread and circuses — only Roman circuses were such deadly earnest things — a kind of human sacrifice). They may take their pleasures badly, but they cannot be accused of taking them sadly. A Japanese at a festival is as happy as a child at a pantomime, or a terrier in a poultry-yard. His gods do not wish to restrain his pleasures ; like the old Greek gods they enter into them. They don't ask him to refrain from doing anything, except taking animal life, and therefore his idea of a holiday is to go to a temple to play games and look at peep- shows. They can be practical about their holidays too. The great holiday of the year is the New Year Festival. They hold it on the foreigners' New Year, not their own ; and as the foreigners set so 85 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN much store on Christmas, usually put up their decorations in time to do for that also ; all except the white flags, with the red suns on them, which are crossed over every door on the days decreed by Government. The European calendar did not make much difference to their New Year's day ; but as it involved having the chrysanthemum festival in September, when there were no chrysan- themums out, they keep that date old style. The festivals which interest foreigners most are the two just mentioned, the Girls' Feast, the Boys' Feast, and the Feast of the Dead. There is no mistaking when any festival is going on, least of all the Boys' Feast or Feast of Flags, which is held on the fifth day of the fifth month. On it all houses which contain sons have huge gaily- coloured paper carp floating from tall flag-posts, and bellying out to the wind. They look more like sea-serpents. If a son has been born during the year, they have extra large ones. The wind fills the body of the fish, and makes it wriggle its tail and fins in the most natural fashion. In Japan it is a reproach to a young married woman not to have a paper carp floating outside her front door. The Japanese tell you that the fish is a carp, which is chosen because it is able to swim swiftly against a current, and to leap over waterfalls. That is not our idea of a carp, which is popularly supposed not to have sufficient leap in it to get out of a glass 86 JAPANESE FESTIVALS bowl without the aid of the lodging-house cat. The carp is typical of a young man surmounting all difficulties to success and quiet prosperity. As they share their festival with Hachiman, the Japanese God of War, the boys, like the girls, have their historical dolls — the effigies of heroes and warriors and great commanders ; but, instead of having toy dinner-services and furniture, they have Murata rifles and flags and toy samurai swords and toy armour. The flags are used for a sort of Balaclava melee, as they call it at the Military Tournament. There is a very close resemblance, though the boys wear on their heads, not red or white plumes, to be knocked off in the battles, but earthenware pots to be cracked, which must be a most unpleasant form of fencing. These fights for the flag (or the flower-pots) are called Genji and Heike, in honour of the long civil war between these celebrated clans. There is no outward and visible carping at the birth of a girl, or at the Girls' Festival — the Feast of Dolls — which takes place on the third day of the third month. The birth of a girl is not anything to boast of If they did any- thing, the parents would go into white, which is the Japanese mourning. But they are very good to their little girls ; they will grow up into the best of servant-wives, and are also needed for producing sons. They really spend more on the Girls' Feast than on the Boys' : it takes the 87 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN form of a gigantic dolls' house, which teaches history. There are Japanese dolls and Japanese dolls ; many English girls know that. Their heads are mostly up to a certain level of excellence, but the bodies of cheap ones are most inadequate affairs. Japan is full of dolls — human and otherwise ; and it is really the cheap dollies that come to England which enter most into the lives of the Httle Japanese girls. For one thing, the cheap dolls are most like themselves. The life-size Japanese babies you buy at London linen-drapers are hardly distinguishable from the real baby, which has a head, stolid, as smooth as ivory, with a lock of horsey hair over each ear and in the middle, and with two slits for dark, bright, glassy eyes. These are the dolls they really have to play with, who are put to bed like Enghsh children's dolls, but not slapped or scolded, because their little mothers have had no experience of that, though you may be sure that they are taught manners for long hours, at a stretch. I have seen dots of five practising court bows on their dolls by the hour. These common or nursery dolls one may take for granted ; I am going to talk about the aristocracy of dolls. The Japanese might have been trusted to make a science of dolls ; like everything else, they have made etiquette and a religious ceremony of them. 88 JAPANESE FESTIVALS When a girl-child is born into a decent family, a pair of historical dolls are produced for her. This sounds rather like the presents so often bought for little English children to be put away in a cup- board till they are grown up. The Japanese are born grown-up, and remain children all their lives. As soon as the baby can hold its historical dolls, it can be trusted with them ; they will be quite perfect, when, between ten and twenty years later, the baby has to buy historical dolls for a baby of its own. There are famihes in Japan which have been accumulating these dolls for several centuries. They are not left about, of course ; light and air would destroy them much quicker than the Japanese children. The Japanese child knows everything, and does not have to break the doll open to find out what it is made of. For fifty-one weeks in the year historical dolls are packed away in the godown, or fireproof warehouses, which every well-off Japanese has on his premises. The Japanese does not use his furniture ; he warehouses it in his godoMTi, and brings it out one bit at a time for exhibition. The O-Hina, or honourable images, as they are called, remain in the godown all the year, except on the third day of the third month and a day or two afterwards : that is the O-Hina Matsuri — the Feast of Dolls, the Paradise of Japanese girls. Like the men in armour in Sicily, these images are only 89 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN exhibited in the shop for a week before the festival to which they belong. The greatest formality is observed in bringing out these beautiful images ; they form an almost sacred part of family life. It is not only a historical kindergarten, but part of the kind of ancestor- worship which is the backbone of Shinto, the native religion of Japan. I do not mean that it is confined to people of the Shinto religion. The Tokugawa family — chief patrons of Buddhism — are noted for their magnificent Hina ; and, as a matter of fact, most Japanese belong to both religions, and there would be far more Christians if they were allowed to keep their own religions on at the same time. They do not care to take the risk of belonging to a religion which might be ineffectual. The Japanese like to ensure their future life in many offices. Why shouldn't they ? Insurance is the keynote of all religions. When a woman marries, she takes her Hina with her to her husband's house. The Hina Matsuri is one of the most interesting things in Japan. One of the highest marks of favour a Japanese can show foreigners is to allow them to come and see the Hina Matsuri in his house. The Hina reproduce with the utmost fidelity the life of the old feudal Japan, which only came to an end a generation ago. And the ex- hibition at the Matsuri consists not only of dolls 90 JAPANESE FESTIVALS in the old court dress, but of dolls' houses and imitations of all the articles used in the domestic life of old Japan. At the Whitechapel Exhibition a year ago, there was a marvellously beautiful set in lacquer of all the articles used in the household of the Daimio or feudal princes of Japan. These, of course, had formed part of the Hina of some Japanese girl of long ago. Very formal families, like that mentioned by Miss Bacon, keep their Hina Matsuri on the third day of the third month of the old Japanese year, instead of the third month of the Gregorian calendar, i.e., March, though even the New Year is kept on the English- man's first of January. For several days before the Hina " Feast of Dolls," the shops are full of the little images used for this occasion, which are only on sale first hand at this time of the year. They vary from an inch to a foot in height, and are of a pecuhar make, which enables them to be recognised at a glance. The small ones are generally made of earthenware, with their clothes painted on ; the larger ones are of wood, dressed in the richest fabrics with the greatest care. As shown in the picture, these little historical dolls and their furniture are arranged on broad red-covered shelves, twenty feet or more long. Most prominent among them always, says Miss Bacon, are the effigies of the Emperor and Empress, in antique court costumes, seated, in 91 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN dignified calm, each on a lacquered dais. Near them are the figures of the five court musicians, in their robes of office, each with their instrument. These details would be dry if they did not explain the little groups of inch-high earthenware figures, sold at a huge profit at a halfpenny each, which are beginning to find their way into London toy-shops. I have better sets which I brought with me from Japan, and also tiny earthenware imitations of trays and bowls and sake-pots and the fruits of the earth. These are important, because the chief joy of the Japanese girl during the Feast of Dolls is to prepare feasts for the dolls, which are not make- believe at all, but the choicest viands. Even a kind of liqueur sake is used. If you happen to have a model Japanese house, it is great fun arranging the tiny Emperor and Empress, their tiny musicians, their minute feasts in a circle on the matted floor ; but this is a very poor imitation of what happens in a Japanese noble household, where they have hundreds of elaborately dressed and costly carved wooden images, representing, not only the Emperor and his musicians and attend- ants, but all the chief personages in Japanese his- tory, from the Thirty-Six Poets to the Forty-Seven Ronin. The toy furniture used for these images is worth a small fortune, for many of the articles are of silver, or the rarest gold lacquer, or the finest 92 B (7) 15 n* _» T^ — ^ JAPANESE FESTIVALS porcelain, and they are arranged in the finest room in the house. In the house which Miss Bacon describes there were lacquered palanquins ; lacquered bullock carts, drawn by bow-legged black bulls, which were the carriages of the great in Old Japan ; tiny brass and silver fire-boxes complete, even down to the tongues of the charcoal boxes ; whole kitchens with everything required for cooking the finest of Japanese feasts, as elaborately made as if for Japanese use ; and all the necessary toilet apparatus, such as combs, mirrors, and utensils for blacking the teeth, shaving the eyebrows, reddening the lips, and whitening the face. Little Japanese girls go as mad as the Japanese child can with excitement over devoting all these exquisite little Japanese articles to their proper use. In the picture may be seen at the top the Emperor and Empress, with the five court musicians, and an archer at each end. In front of the Empress is a travelling palanquin— one of the broad sets of Japanese book-shelves, which are also used for writing-boxes and the like ; and a Japanese ward- robe, which is only a box whose front lets down. In front of the wardrobe is a black lacquer writing- box, while in the very foreground are two little girls carrying trays of tea, one of whom has also a tray of the bean flower sweets stamped in the shape of maple leaves. In the other half of the picture, in front of the Mikado, is another set of shelves, 93 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN on the top of which stands a Japanese mirror in its lacquered case, and one of the boxes used for conveying letters or presents. Between the two sets of shelves are the delightful Japanese chow boxes, used for carrying cooked food, and consisting of a quantity of trays, each of which acts as the cover of the one below it, fitted into a chased metal frame. They are on the same principle as the Japanese medicine chests, which, being small enough to go into your waistcoat-pocket, are more frequently imported here than chow boxes as big as coal-scuttles. In front of these again are one of the little square tables, standing on a box without a bottom, used for holding a tea-tray. But the most characteristic part of the picture lies in the pair of children carrying tea-trays, and the pair of women enjoying an afternoon call ; for they, like yourself, are supposed to be spectators of their Feast of Dolls. Which is in the style of the best Old Masters, who, in painting the Nativity or the Crucifixion, used to insert the picture of the man who had paid for the picture, and other spectators of their own day. Queen Victoria had some historical dolls of this kind ; not those which are exhibited in Kensington Palace, but those which formed the subject of a book. With the help of her governess she used to dress them to represent the great Court people of the day, and often she got into trouble for making 94 JAPANESE FESTIVALS the characters too close. The Hina are as carefully made as the waxworks of Nelson and William the Third and Queen Elizabeth in Westminster Abbey, to represent ancestors or historical char- acters. These the baby plays with till she is old enough to marry, when she takes them with her to her new home ; about the only thing she does take, except her clothes. Old famihes have splendid collections of these dolls and the proper furniture. They make capital history lessons. Toys seem to be just the right collection for a Japanese. The Japanese do not have much furniture ; and, though their dinner- services are very large, they have no knives and forks, and do not provide chop-sticks. One advantage of being a Japanese is that they do not use forks, so that you are not expected to give services of plate as wedding presents ; but it costs just as much to give sets of lacquer bowls to take soup out of, if they are good ones, —there is so much gold in them. There are houses which have dolls dressed up as every important personage in Japanese history, with the proper furnishings for them to go through every domestic and ceremonious detail. The prettiest festival is the Bon Matsuri, or Feast of the Dead, in July. On the first night the tombs of all those who died in the past year are decorated with Japanese lanterns ; on the 95 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN second night all the tombs who have any re- lations left are decorated, and they have fireworks, and it is the proper thing to get drunk ; on the third night, at two o'clock in the morning, everyone who has any dead he cares for goes with a coloured paper lantern to a river or bay and launches little ships of plaited straw, laden with fruit and money (they have very cheap kinds of money in Japan), and the lanterns. They hoist matting sails on the little ships, and the dead get on board and sail back to oblivion till next August. Their ships take fire on the way ; the thousands of little fire-ships on the winding waters of Nagasaki Bay are reckoned the prettiest sight in Japan. At the Chrysanthemum Festival those intelUgent flowers are made to grow into living pictures of historical scenes. The New Year is the time to see Japan. You want to have your fur coat and a fur rug too, if you have one, in your riksha. But the New Year Festival is the great holiday of the year. There is no other time at which the Japanese is such a complete Asiatic ; even he does no work for several days at the New Year. It is not his own New Year, but the Englishman's : that is of no consequence ; he puts up Christmas decorations outside his house, and determines to be jolly. Jollity takes various forms — one is the odious smell of sesame oil, and it must be rancid as soon as it is made. Another is 96 JAPANESE FESTIVALS paying calls, and using his whole dictionary of bows to his superiors, inferiors, and equals. He is very free with his name-paper, which is Japanese- English for visiting-card, at this time of the year. But it means more than a name-paper. Much ceremony is exercised at this propitious season ; beggars cannot pass each other without a battery of bows. Even other people, who have not so much time on their hands, stop to go through this slow torture with every acquaintance they meet. It is not torture, perhaps, to a Japanese, whose tastes differ from other people's. Every street becomes an arbour, though it is in the middle of the severe Japanese winter. Two Japanese flags are crossed over every door, while on each side of it are organ pipes which are not really organ pipes but cut bamboos. The chief foliages used are bamboo and fir. On the left hand of the door is the red-trunked fir known as the Me-matsu, on the right hand the black-trunked fir known as O-matsu. O- means honourable ; it is hardly necessary to say that this is the mascuhne symbol and the other the feminine. As fir trees are trees that do not have genders, they can call them what they like. Behind each fir rises a bamboo. Its knots mean old age, which is popular in Japan, because then your descendants do your work. The principal decorations are a lobster, meaning bent old age ; 7 97 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN an orange, which means generation ; and a piece of charcoal, which means home. It is the nearest approach to a hearth in Japan. All these are hung in a big grass tassel, wherever there is a break in the grass rope which runs from house to house the whole length of the street. The rope is to keep out evil spirits who would not do half as much harm as the good sake laid in such goodly store. Crossed Japanese flags are added in compliance with the police regulation for public holidays, and often festoons of leaves, like they put up in Piccadilly when they expect Presidents, and feathery branches sticking out at high angles. No city can compete in fresh vegetable decorations with a Japanese city. On some particular day, I forget which, of the festivals, pleasure is varied with very hard work and a sort of carnival. Carnivals mean a lot of trouble anywhere, but it is multiplied when the cars are drawn by human beasts of burden. " The Homing of the Rice" reminds you of a Fulham Carnival. What the Japanese have in the way of drays are decorated with flags and paper curtains and draperies, and above all with branches hung with paper toys ; and the mikoshi, for that is what it amounts to, is piled up with painted kegs of sake and matting bales of rice, and as many coolies in new blue tunics with preposterous devices in brilliant colours as there is room for. The rest of the coolies in the same preposterous doublets and 98 JAPANESE FESTIVALS hose drag the ear to a sort of chanty hke sailors use when they are hauUng. I do not know what sort of an estabHshment they are homing their rice to, unless it is a tea-house, which is the Japanese for public-house ; but the streets are full of them on the certain day. During this only idle period of the year they go, I believe, to each other's houses and play games. At this time of the year the Japanese is like the man who had his honeymoon alone ; he leaves his wife to her domestic virtues in their paper house, and consoles himself with geishas at the tea-house. He is capable of great sacrifice in this way. He spends more in proportion to his income in treating a friend to dinner and geishas than anything else. New Year's presents are as much in request in Japan as in France. Most of the people you meet at the New Year are carrying a squashed salmon, with a piece of paper tied round its waist by a paper string which holds a little gold paper kite ; that kite means that the thing is a present, and has not to be paid for. The Japanese do not give you a present which you are sure to keep, but one you are sure to be able to give away, for which these dried salmon come in handy. Everybody eats them, and they will keep. The very poor give each other towels. It is much more disappointing to get a present from the rich — a grand gold lacquer box containing 99 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN something you do not want in the least. You do not keep the box. Those who are not carrying crushed salmon, or taking up the street with giving correct New Year's salutations, are playing battledore and shuttle-cock. Everything which is made in Japan is made for use. The gaudy battledores are portraits of popular actors and geishas, as well as the small girl's stand- by while she is carrying the next baby on her back. The baby must feel it a positive rehef when she is playing ball instead of battledore and shuttle-cock, for the Japanese way of playing ball is only to see who can bounce it the oftenest and say a rhyme at the same time. In either case, the baby's head threatens to fall off backwards at every stroke. The poor little Japanese girl's nursery is the road, where it performs the duties of nurse from the time it can walk. This is all very well when you want subjects for your Kodak, but bad for star- gazing ; for sometimes it is a shuttle-cock in your eye and other times a string round your neck from a kite going strong. Japanese streets would be as bad as a motor-car race, if the children did not go to work at four years old. But the introduction of motor cars may do something. The Japanese like to try every new fashion. I should not be surprised to hear that, after the postponement of King Edward's Coronation, the Japanese doctors 100 1 > ;' .•■i'U''i i/'\ i Tc lacv on 7>. 100. The Japanese make-shift for ironing, and To ba-ik on p. iCl. a humble tea-party, and j)laying go-bang. JAPANESE FESTIVALS were doing a roaring trade in producing artificial appendicitis. On another day, I think it is the fourth day of the festival, the Japanese fireman is in great evidence. It is the only day on which he is of any real use ; he is no use for a fire, except to carry the house and its contents away. How could he be, with a cotton uniform, with a wooden engine about the size of a calf-trough which will not always squirt but may only carry a few gallons of water which is to be dispensed with a wooden dipper ? There is nothing so paradoxical as the Japanese firemen of our day ; the thing he was really best at was climbing up a tall bamboo ladder held upright by his friends while he stood on his head at the top, for he was an acrobat by profession, not a fireman. And his acrobatic agility was perfectly useless, because the houses on which he had to perform were seldom much taller than himself. Not that he was a giant — about five feet nothing was his high-water mark, and that was high enough for him to be able to throw water out of a dipper on any part of the roof of the burning dwelling. He learnt to climb on the ladder at the hansho — the only useful part of the fireman's profession. This ladder was very tall, and fixed bolt upright against a pole which had a barrel or a little platform, and a bell with a Uttle roof over it, at the top. Here the fireman perched on the watch, and when he saw 101 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN a fire, rang his tocsin. Signalling by bell is as well understood as signalling by flag in Japan, so the fire could be instantly located. The fii-emen went off with their old water-box on wheels and their mattoi — the pride of their hearts — a huge paper ball, with paper fringes, mounted on a pole. It looked like a huge bon-bon, and was painted with the crest of the Guild. No regiment was ever prouder of its standard than the Japanese fireman of his paper crest. It was planted at a decent distance from the fire. A fire which is unsafe for paper crests is unsafe for firemen ; and if the fire was a very bad one, they waited till it moderated, and I believe on occasion pulled down a belt of houses a little way off as the easiest way of stopping the fire spreading. On the New Year's Festival they did the astonishing acrobatic feats which justified their existence, though, to be sure, they were always handy for Kodaks. Fires are of frequent occurrence in Japan, especi- ally in winter ; and owing to the inflammable materials of which houses are built, hundreds, and sometimes thousands, are consumed in a few hours. I daresay that nowadays Tokyo has fine brigades that rival Chicago's. The Japanese have more natural aptitude for the business than Americans. But in our day there was only the hansho system, thus described by Keeling : " Towns are divided into districts. In each is an alarm bell, called hansho. These are fixed 102 JAPANESE FESTIVALS on the tops of perpendicular immovable ladders. On the first discovery of a conflagration, a police- man immediately ascends the ladder, and strikes the outside of the bell with a wooden mallet. The exact quarter in which the fire is raging is notified by the mode of ringing. As soon as the alarm is given, which is repeated by other hansho far and near, hikesho (firemen) hasten from all directions, intent on being the first upon the scene, to receive the reward to which they are then entitled. Each company is distinguished by an ensign, or matoi, carried and planted in a conspicuous position on arrival at the fire, and is held there frequently until scorched by the advancing flames ; this being looked upon as evidence of having done good service. The officer in command carries a metal baton, which is often used freely on the heads of the offending coolies. The firemen are dressed in ordinary clothes, but with characters on their backs, to distinguish them from others ; and are armed with firehooks. Pull- ing one or two hand-engines between them, thej; rush along, yelling frightfully, possibly to cheer each other to renewed exertion. The engines are of simple and primitive construction. They have no service-pipe, and the water is supplied by buckets, the contents of which are poured into the square box enclosing the pump. The hose is merely a few lengths of hollow wooden piping ; 103 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and the quantity of water thrown is little greater than that of a good-sized squirt. In fact, the means for extinguishing fires are singularly im- perfect. Fire insurance is unknown in Japan ; and no sooner is a street, or sometimes a whole quarter of a town or a village, destroyed by fire, than the burnt-out inhabitants, with an elasticity of temperament which is admirable to contemplate, quietly, rapidly, and good-humouredly set about rebuilding their houses, almost before the embers of their late homes are cool." The motto of Japan, small and good, does not apply to fires any more than it does to firemen. They tell you about fires which have burnt a mile or a hundred thousand people ; one in particular destroyed the whole Asakusa quarter, and it would be a good thing for the morals of Japan if it did it again, for life there is a little more than gay — what with the ladies of the Yoshiwara and the wrestlers at the Ekkoin Temple, which had its origin in that same fire. Though most Japanese belong to two religions, they could not be called a religious people. They live as Shintoists, because their priests do not bother ; and die Buddhists, because they do not wish to run the risk of having another life. The real use of priests, they think, is to say prayers for the dead. The priests like them to think this, because the prayers have to be paid for. But when that wholesale fire 104 JAPANESE FESTIVALS took place, everybody was killed, so there was no one to pay for the dead. This was an intolerable state of things, so it was determined to raise money for the temple of the helpless — Ekkoin — - by organising visits from the popular gods. The images are accustomed to it. That of Inari — the Rice-Goddess at Kyoto — and Toshogu — the deified founder of the Tokugawa Shoguns at Nikko — have their regular jaunts every year. It was a great success ; such vast crowds came (and paid their Peter's Pence) that the wrestlers thought it would be a good occasion for their annual championship matches. Most of the people who go to Ekkoin nowadays have forgotten all about the fire and the gods. They go to see the wrestling, and because the Japanese love anything in the nature of a fair. Wresthng matches are the football of Japan — in the matter of drawing crowds. What I have to viTite about fairs I must put into another chapter. This is so long that I can barely mention two highly interesting festivals — that of Temma — the King of all the Devils — which is held in one of the suburbs of Tokyo ; and the Toshogu Festival, held at Nikko on the 1st of June. At the Feast of Temma the apprentices are always given a hohday. This is not so ironical as it sounds. Neither Japanese apprentices nor Japanese devils are such devils as one might suppose. The Toshogu is not recognised by the Government ; 105 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN this is only natural, as it is in honour of the deified founder of the fallen Tokugawa Shoguns ; but the procession is immense, and the mediaeval cars and costumes produced fi'om the temple treasuries are magnificent. The Buddhist Hierarchy — the spoilt child of the Shoguns — is out of touch with the present Government. And so the Toshogu Festival is its greatest day in all the year. J 06 CHAPTER IX JAPANESE FAIRS Most Japanese fairs are like German fairs — cheap rubbish for the young and fooUsh. The Japanese a-fairing always buys his girl or his babies some pre- sent, however trifling, so the sellers of paper flowers and wind-mills, plaster white mice and dough toys, battledore-bats, and lacquer articles that make you weep that such things should be seen in Japan, flourish. The cheap leather cases, whether to con- tain tobacco or looking-glasses, are really rather fascinating. Fairs do not live by stalls alone, but by tea-houses and shows, from no-dancing to the woman with the flexible jaw who can swaUow her face up to her eyes, the woman who can wipe the floor with her tongue, and the woman who can stretch her neck the length of her arm, and the sea-serpent (of the seal tribe) in booths ; while the conjurers, fire-eaters, posturers, charade actors, medicine seUers, and dentists have rings formed for them in the open. 107 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN The most distinctive fair in Japan is the fair in the Ginza of Tokyo on the last night of the old year. The Japanese must pay their debts (to Japanese) on the first day of the year, or they lose their credit. The poor Tokyoite packs everything in his house in boxes slung on a bamboo, and goes off to the great fair, which stretches for a couple of miles in the Ginza — a double avenue of stalls lit by oil flares. Among the more saleable articles are old beer bottles, vidiich fetch 3d. each ; and worn- out sham European shoes — the hallmark of native curiosity shops. I always suspected the genuine- ness of a shop that was without these mementos of the down-trodden. The Ginza Fair is the paradise of the netsuke hunter, and it was there that I bought the little bronze temples and pagodas and bell towers and bridges and daimio lanterns for my toy Japanese garden, the only set I ever saw for sale, except in a landscape, all complete in a dish a couple of feet square. It was Henry Savage Landor, the intrepid traveller, whose name will always be associated with Thibet, who told us about the fair in the Ginza, and made us come up to Tokyo in time for it. It was our first night in that great, dim, mysterious city. Our hotel was in a pahsaded Daimio's Yashiki, in the Castle of Tokyo. The vast sloping walls and deep down black moats of the castle were most awe-inspiring, seen for the 108 JAPANESE FAIRS first time in darkness trebled by a few feeble lamps. After dinner we sallied forth together, with a hundred dollars' worth of small change. Rikshas were impossible in the crush, though the booths are spread over at least a couple of miles in four long avenues. Each stall was lit with oil flares, to help the poor little electric lights. Here one could make every imaginable kind of humble purchase. What were curios to us, and household odds and ends to the natives, predominated, especially objects in old metal, lacquer, and porcelain. We plunged at once into buying the most delightful little inros ; netsukes ; miniature temple ornaments — censors, candle-sticks, and flower vessels ; little pocket mirror-and-comb cases, which had been carried by the mousmees of old time in their graceful hanging sleeves ; fantastic hair-combs and hair-pins, old some of them, and mostly more or less battered, but of exquisite workmanship and materials ; the queerest little china boxes, some of them only an inch across, holding the red or black pigments used for the seals, which every Japanese carries to im- press where we give a signature ; the seals them- selves generally of brass ; exquisite little bronze and silver charms ; fine old brass or bronze ends for paper lanterns ; and little ivory boxes, hardly bigger or thicker than a gentleman's visiting-card, used for the lake paint with which they brighten their Ups. 109 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN It was like fairyland, jostling one's way among quaint and mirthful Orientals, and also some very anxious Orientals, up the long avenues of torch-lit stalls, piled with outlandish wares. Most notice- able of all were the tall tea-houses, with triple festoons of huge red paper lanterns, and fluttering strings of flags ; and the whole of their ground floor fi'ont blocked up with tiers and tiers of sake kegs, looking Hke half barrels sewn up in yellow matting, decorated with staring red or green dragons or Tai fish, piled up like the sandbags of a redoubt. From behind these came sounds of revelry and the tinkle of the samisen, or Japanese lute, and, too often, the smells of feasting, in which the sesame oil, worse than a blown-out candle, but beloved of the humble Japanese, dominated. Some- times the samisen playing would come from the beautiful little geisha, or singing girls — little fairies, with shaved eyebrows and whitened faces, and gilt and crimsoned lips, decked out like butterflies — the proper adjunct of a Japanese banquet. But more often in these common tea-houses, looking out on the popular fair, the playing would be done by one of the strolling samisen players belonging to the eta, or pariah class. Occasionally, one would meet a curiously masked man-samisen- player — reminding one of Carnival night at Rome. But, after all, the main business of this fair was selling, not junketing. We felt inclined to buy 110 To hack on p. 110. 0-Ulia — the honourable tea, and To hack on -p. 1 ] I . samisen-players — old stylo. I 'I J' < '( \< JAPANESE FAIRS everything ; everything was so funny— the mats, cushions, kimonos, obis, tabi (the queer Japanese socks, with divided toes, white, for wearing with sandals ; blue, studded underneath, for wearing without) ; the straw and rope sandals ; high wooden clogs ; takara bune, the little plaited grass ships of wealth, with the seven Gods of Riches seated in them, used for hanging over the bed to bring one lucky dreams ; lantern boxes, made of white card, almost covered with a gorgeous black crest the shape of a knapsack ; pipe-cases ; hibachis — the finger-stoves you see in every Japanese room ; quaint old musical instruments ; embroideries very much soiled ; and swords galore. Almost the only things in the fair which were not fiftieth hand, and going at what you liked to give for them, were the gardeners' stalls ; they were there for the fortunate to provide themselves with the flowers, without which no Japanese house is con- sidered decent on New Year's day. The chief of these were the dwarf plum trees, blossoming at Christmas time in pink, red, purple, or white, whose little gnarled boughs are curled round like the tendrils of a rambler rose. They were only a foot or two high, and grown in blue or white china pots. Their closest rivals were the dwarf fir trees, which had no special significance at that season ; and Japanese hhes, gi-owing in water in flat china dishes, which were in full blossom. The fair closed at 111 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN midnight. We were the only foreigners there- about the only people who had come to buy, and were offered many curious wares, including one box in which I carried round my purchases all night before I discovered that it had held the ashes of some human being, and must have been lost, stolen, or strayed from a graveyard. That is the only curio 1 bought in Japan which I did not send home. When we had bought as many things as we could carry, and saved about a hundred stall-holders from bankruptcy on the morrow, we turned to the tea-houses fronting the Ginza. From the yard of one came uproarious laughter. A posture-dancer was surrounded by a crowd of riksha boys and servants and children. He was imitating a China- man ; his mask bore a faint resemblance, but beyond that the performance was invention, not caricature ; and yet there are hundreds of Chinamen to copy in Tokyo, going about Tsukiji, the foreign quarter. When he saw us, he leapt towards us with simulated fury, changed into the mildest affability by the present of a halfpenny. He was really very funny, though not a bit like a China- man. We looked about in vain for dragon-dancers, but could not see any till the next day. The great feature of this dance is the dragon's or lion's head, made of red or green pasteboard, fastened to a cloth cloak of the same colour, reminding one of 112 JAPANESE FAIRS the mysterious black velvet garment in which the village photographer envelops his camera when he is making you his victim. This is long enough to allow the head to be elevated on a pole when the dragon vidshes to crane his neck. The dancing is only posturing. The dragon is invariably accom- panied by a kettle-drummer or a fifer, usually by both. Japanese street performers are as fond of the (bamboo) fife and drum as the British grena- diers. The picture of this performance is from a rare old Japanese book. There is another kind of dance in which the performers are boys, the leader carrying a curious sort of scarlet banner, like the canister-headed umbrella carried in front of the Taotai (mayor) in Chinese cities. This dance is very popular. The boys do it with such a zest. The children and mousmees, or young girls, are always dressed in brilliant colours for holiday- making. Nothing much daintier can be imagined than the little coffee-coloured idols, with black beady eyes, and clean shaved heads, except the mousmees. The children, whose little dark cheeks are as round as if they were cut out of ivory, and as rosy as apples, play round hke puppies. There are others whose charms are interrupted by catarrh or eczema. The poor do not blow their children's noses, and they think running sores carry off" evil humours from the body. Both children and mousmees are dressed in beautiful flowered stuffs, 8 113 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN plentifully relieved with scarlet, and the most gorgeous sashes. Oh ! those mousmees ! their beauty is much more in accordance with European than with native ideas. What exquisite complexions are those clear brown velvety skins, showing the rich blood through in a way which would have thrilled the great Venetians of Giorgione's day ! What little rosebud mouths, with full red lips and tiny teeth, as pretty and regular as pearls ! What sweet little snub noses ! What eyes unaristocratically unoblique ! They ought to be called Greuzemees. Their figures, it must be admitted, are only little bunches of drapery — pretty from their petiteness. But this is not a type which the Japanese epicure admires. He prefers the stork-necked, long-faced type, with a thin, hooked nose, slit eyes, and a complexion hke old ivory. Both types have masses of dark brown hair, which they work up with a pomade of fat into a hair-dough, and mould into butterfly coiffures. Their hair takes a whole day to do, and lasts a week. For Japanese ladies do not use a pillow, but lay their slim necks on little blocks, which remind you forcibly, every time you see them, of Mary Queen of Scots being beheaded on a door-scraper, face upwards. None of them wear hats ; but mousmees, when they are going a-fairing, wear paper flowers, and other gorgeous hair-ornaments made of tortoise- 114 JAPANESE FAIRS shell, coral, mother-of-pearl, or gold and scarlet lacquer. My wife and I followed three little beauties up the long lane of booths which leads to the great temple of Asakusa — the most popular temple in Japan — on one of the days of the New Year's festival. It was a regular forest of palms and bamboos and the banners of Dai Nippon. When they first saw that they were followed, they ran away ; but they were not much frightened, for they kept bo-peeping at us round corners in the most roguish way, and soon allowed themselves to be caught. The Japanese mousmee's idea of fair- ing is to have somebody to buy her sweetmeats and knick-knacks, and frank her to all the shows ; nor does she stand, as a rule, upon introductions. We could speak no Japanese, and they could speak no English ; and Taro, my riksha boy, who was as good as most guides, had disappeared, hav- ing fish of his own to fry. They had possibly met other foreigners similarly disposed, for they knew by instinct what we wished to do, and had not the least objection to doing the fair, carte-blanched by people to whom the trifling Japanese expenses would be no object. They could not, of course, explain anything, so we simply followed them past a tall scarlet pagoda and the fire station with its look-out pole and big white Mattoi, which is really a crest, but looks like a huge sugar-plum. Out- 115 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN side the temple was a row of low booths in which they sold refreshments. The mousmees stopped; and with a charming expression, half appeal and half mischief, gave us the idea that they would Hke to go in. We nodded assent, and all sat dowai on a kind of bench, the mousmees with their clogs off and legs tucked under them in some mysterious way. Our restaurant was made of fresh pine, without paint or varnish. Its open fi'ont had a festoon of fluttering flags and baby Chinese lanterns. We made signs to them to take whatever they hked. First came the inevitable tea — tiny trays, with tiny blue-and-white cups on little bronze leaves for saucers, and watery-looking green tea, without milk or sugar. The sweetmeats which followed were impossible. Some looked so chalky, and dyed such poisonous-looking reds and greens ; others so messy. But the mousmees liked them, and munched away and smoked their kiseru — tiny pipes, with brass bowls, not so large as a fair-sized acorn. It was we who got tired, and, motioning them to fill up their pockets — that is their sleeves — handed in one of the bright blue paper dollars, with the figure of one of the gods of wealth squatting on it, worth somewhere about three shillings. We got back quite a pile of the small change so indis- pensable at Japanese fairs. They hardly gave a glance to the great scarlet 116 JAPANESE FAIRS temple, swinging with gigantic lanterns, and sweating with worshippers, at whose very gate we had tea'd. They evidently thought more of the social side of temples. First they took us to the Zoological Gardens, which are not particularly zoological, being much more devoted to the training of fir trees in flower- pots than the exhibition of animals, though they have a few of the rapidly dying out storks which monopolise paper fans and fire screens, and a mangy little Corean tiger, and some bears from the Hokkaido. They were anxious that we should ascend the famous Cock Tower. But the curator made signs that we must take our boots off, so, as it was a cold day, we took ourselves off instead. I do not know yet what its attractions were. We treated them to all their hearts desired : the waxworks of the Ainu, or hairy inhabitants of northern Japan ; the bloodsheddy Dioramas ; the sea-serpent and what not, at the cost of about half a halfpenny each ; climbed the plaster counterfeit of Fujiyama ; and allowed them to go upon the swinging bamboo bridge. The plaster Fujiyama, a hundred and twenty feet high, was ascended by inclined foot- paths circling round it as they did round the hapless campanile of St Mark's. From its top one could see the real Fujiyama, the Parthenon of mountains, fifty miles away, with the snowy 117 I I QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN i shoulders of its matchless cone, the most beautiful | in the world, fired with the low winter sun. The little women were as affected by its beauty as the most sentimental artist, though they hardly seemed . to have two ideas in their heads. Love of beauty j and love of nature are the birthright of the humblest Japanese. But they were not as inter- ested as we were in the quaint Oriental crowd spread out at our feet, surging in and out of the various shows in such numbers as to be almost indistinguishable from our height, merely convey- ing a general impression of masses of dark blue, with flashes of gay coiffures, a tumult of earth's strange voices, a shuffling of multitudinous clogs, and a tinkling of samisens. When the little women were in the middle of the swinging bamboo bridge, hanging like a hair over the temple lake, Japanese hobbledehoys jumped on its ends until it swung like a skipping-rope. The mousmees shrieked a good deal, but they seemed to like it, and would on no account have me lay my cane about their tormentors. It began to grow dark and cold, and I thought I had better look about for Taro, who, of course, had left our other riksha boy outside to look after the "machines," while he came in, nominally to interpret for us, but really to do the ftiir. I discovered that he had been following us for some time, but he had evidently thought it a 118 JAPANESE FAIRS delicate matter to intrude. I told him I thought we had better be going home, and that we wished to say good-bye to the little mousmees. He had a long discussion with them in Japanese; you would have imagined, from his earnestness, that they were threatening me with breach of promise, or at least blackmaihng, but they were only giving us an invitation, which Taro translated into very unsentimental language " These women say you want to go see their shops ; not so far from hotel, not so far from Hakubunsha, shop you go yesterday, not so far from market — I take you some time, any time — curio shop same you go every day — I think very good." I told Taro to ask them if they would not like to go to a good tea-house in the evening after dinner. He said two of them, who were sisters, would come ; they would be at the bridge leading out of the castle an hour after dinner. As we went out of the temple, and passed down the avenue of booths, I invited them through Taro to buy some little knick-knacks for themselves, as the Japanese, how- ever poor, always buy presents for the mousmees and children at fairs. They were rather puzzled what to choose in a hurry out of the preposterous German fair of rubbishy pipe-cases, hair-pins, combs, pocket mirrors, sham European cutlery, scents, and soap. I dare say they would have liked to spend an hour or two over such a tempting 119 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN offer ; but they finally chose soap that had no more wash in it than a pebble from the beach, on which Pears was spelt Spiers (any big firm does equally well for a Japanese ) ; and little boxes of the red pigment they use for crimsoning their lips, and little pocket-books of gold leaf for adding the dab of gilt. And then we parted from them, and jumping on our rikshas bowled off* on the long drive from Asakusa to the Tokyo Hotel, on the way passing one procession after another of lusty coolies in their brilliant New Year dresses, pushing and towing handcarts heavily laden with the supply of rice for the year. As I have said, these coolies, with their tight-fitting doublets and hose and spindley-legs, looked like the varlets in one of Shakespeare's plays. Their clothes, made of dark blue cotton, were ornamented for this occasion with all sorts of brilliant patterns, from a sprinkling of white moons to a big red catherine-wheel in the middle of the back. Tall bamboos, pliant as fishing-rods, rose from the carts, decorated with Japanese flags, Chinese lanterns, and so on. The drive home was much more picturesque than the outward journey, for in the deepening dusk the tall black godowns, or store-houses, with their heavy, white-crested gables, the long, low, black yashiki, once the palaces of the Daimio (feudal princes), though now fallen to barracks and tenement houses, and the broad moats and vast walls of the 120 JAPANESE FAIRS castle loomed out doubly oriental and mysterious. With a glimmering through the houses' paper windows, and the twinkling of the riksha boys' lanterns, night fell. After dinner, when we got to the bridge, we found the little mousmees waiting for us in one of the rikshas made for two, so dear to the native, looking like a couple of overgrown children in a perambulator. Taro led the way to a wonderful tea-house in Shiba, which had a most malarious -looking lake, broken up by fantastic little islands and bridges and artificial waterfalls. These Japanese or rather Chinese gardens, such as this tea-house had, are marvellously picturesque, for the islands and the shore are dotted with little red shrines to the God of Rice (who is really a goddess), guarded by the faithful stone foxes, and little stone lighthouses, pagodas, votive lanterns, and torii. Of course, they have all manner of little summer- houses, with paper shutters, scattered about on the brink of the water ; and in the early summer, arbours overgrown with superb wistaria, buzzing with the tamest possible bees. The Japanese love to sit by the water-brink, and constantly build tea- houses on piles in rivers or lakes. We allowed Taro to do the ordering, but told him to order food for the mousmees only, while we had a bottle of the excellent beer made in Tokyo. Would we have geisha (singing girls) to sing whilst the mousmees ate their banquet? It was the proper 121 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN thing, he explained, and this was a cheap house ; they would not cost much here. We said we would. (It was necessary to his complete enjoy- ment at any rate.) For a long time the entertain- ment consisted of nothing but a tall, black, iron candlestick, planted in the middle of the floor. The candle, which was stuck on a spike, was lit by a box of Bryant & May's matches. Taro had brought white linen bags for us to slip over our boots, so that we could keep them on without soiling the beautiful primrose straw matting of the floor. The mousmees, of course, kicked off* their sandals, and squatted down in the native fashion. The banquet I shall not describe, as it was only an inferior edition of the banquet at the Maple Club. The mousmees ate everything, and were im- moderately pleased, and it was much more amusing than a Japanese theatre to watch these exquisite little creatures whipping the strange viands into their dainty little mouths with chop- sticks. The geisha were very sober little moths, after the gorgeous butterflies of the Maple Club ; but they made a pretty picture for all that, as they tummed away at biwa and samisen. Played on these tinkling instruments, their plaintive .Japanese airs sounded tuneful enough, but the singing was mere sparrows' twitter, with the poorest little cracked voices. I could not help pushing back our 122 JAPANESE FAIRS shoji (paper shutters) to look at the other Httle summer-houses, with then- ghmmering paper sides. I wished I could, by rubbing a ring Hke Aladdin, have them all suddenly thrown open for glimpses of the Oriental life within. The Japanese is thor- oughly Oriental in his pleasures, however he may follow the West in his ambitions. It was pretty late by the time that we got home, but time is of no consequence in Japan. Next day my wife and Miss Aroostook went to see the little curio shop in the street where they make the white wooden boxes, with black iron mountings, which are piled one on top of another to be used as wardrobes. There was a little sister, seemingly about four years old, carrying the last baby slung in a haori (shawl) on her back. The baby was fast asleep, though the little nurse was, after the manner of Japanese girls at holiday time, playing battledore and shuttle-cock in the street, while a little brother was on the roof trying to find air enough to fly a kite. The baby was waked to make his bow to the ladies. He did not appear in the least put out, but went through the whole performance, down to touching the ground Avith his little forehead, without a mistake. The baby was given a new nickel five cent piece, of which he appeared to know the value ; and then tea and sweets, and the little pipless Japanese oranges were brought by the mousmees. The room and its matting were, of course, exquisitely 123 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN clean, but they would not hear of the ladies un- lacing their boots. In front of the window in the sunshine stood a little round table, with legs six inches high, carrying a large white mochi, or New Year's cake, built in three tiers, like a wedding- cake. There was a vase beside it, containing a sprig of plum-blossom. But the sacred cake would be eaten after January 11th. There was hardly anything else in the room, beyond the cushions for sitting on, and a hibachi (finger-stove) and tabakamono (pipe-stove) to each person, except a handsomely painted dwarf screen, and the kake- mono and flower- vase of the Toko-no-ma, and the sort of sideboard in the Chigai-dana, as the other half of the recess is called. Unfortunately, I had to be at a function that afternoon, but I often visited the shop afterwards to buy small curios of the mother — a very pleasant- looking woman, in spite of her blackened teeth. It was there that 1 bought my queer ugly little tea- cups, with real shells let into the pottery, and a funny little brass kettle, which I always keep with my Turkish brass things, because it resembles them so closely. But the mousmees never came into the shop, unless one or other of the ladies was there. They must have been corrupted by Western ideas. 124 CHAPTER X ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE The Chinese talk pidgin-English, the Japanese talk pie-Enghsh — like the resurrection pies they used to have at schools on Saturdays, made of the scraps of the week. Browning would be easier to translate into Japanese than any other English author — -the Japanese always speak in enigmas, so they would find his poems child's-play. Once upon a time, I tried a Japanese guide. His name was Shundo, but he reminded us so of Robinson Crusoe that we called him Man Sunday — his ministrations too began on a Sunday. He knew nothing about Tokyo, but he knew English. He had learnt it helping an Englishman to learn Japanese out of Mr Chamberlain's book. Mr Chamberlain gave the literal English transla- tion of Japanese phrases. Man Sunday preferred this to colloquial English ; it was, of course, easier for him to understand. Most Japanese speak English that way — most English speak Japanese 125 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN with only verbs and substantives, though they are not aware that in theory Japanese consists of nothing else ; that the postpositions which the Japs have instead of prepositions are really verbs, and that the words which pass as adverbs are really nothing of the kind. This is how Man Sunday used to talk. Of Miss Aroostook, who was very pretty, he used to say, " Very good countenance is." If he wanted to go and wash his hands, he said, " Hands having washed will probably come." When I had not seen him for several days he saluted me with this triumph, learnt by heart from Chamberlain, " That after, lengthly honourable eyes in hang - not always augustly robust being." Which meant, " It is some time since we last met; I am delighted to see you looking so well." If he thought I looked ill he opened his conservation with " Bodily feelings bad ? " And if he considered it time for me to have a snack, he would say, " Honourable inside become empty ? " or " Honourable throat has dried ? " "Still plenty interval" (there is no hurry) was a great expression of his. And he had one killing expression ; when you asked him about some article you were buying, " A little adoring look," which was just his way of saying, " Please let me see " ; which was fully equalled by the polite way of asking you to sit down, " A little honourably- 126 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE to-place dowii." " How shall probably do ? " was his way of asking where we were going to ; and "august trouble mister," his way of saying thank you. If he thought you had caught cold, he said, " Wind have-drawn." " This by, plenty," was his way of saying enough. There was one phrase of his which 1 never could make head or tail of, till he pointed it out in Chamberlain. He was always using it, picking up this or the other article to show us. " This as-for, what eventually is." He meant "What is this made of?" Another great phrase of his was, " Countenance isn't," which ineant " You embarrass me." If I had been out with him alone, he always said, before I went away, " All Messrs to please well," which meant " Please remember me kindly to your party." His way of saying " I am sorry," was " Honourable poison of spirit " ; and he was always saying " So is. So isn't," meaning " There is not time, there is no use," and so on. He used to speak of a " bull ox " and a " cow ox." But he was not really funnier than any other Japanese trying to speak book-learnt English. One of his specialities was changing the letters in words he found hard to pronounce, as the Chinese say " gillingeach " for greengage. I cannot remember his accomplishments in this line, because he varied them, but they were in the style of the instances quoted by Mr Chamberlain. 127 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Garasu for "glass," hoko for "fork," Igiiisu for " English," hame for '* come here," kara for " collar," penshiru for " pencil," rampa for " lamp," ramune for "lemonade," shatsu for "shirt," zen- torumen for "gentlemen." Shundo's conversation was like that interview with the Japanese reporter in Sara Jeanette Duncan's Social De'parture : — " The reporter asked : ' Did the radies arrive to the " Duke of Westminster " ? ' looking from one to the other of us. ' We believe they did ! ' gasped Orthodocia, and immediately looked out of the window again. I edged my chair towards the other window. Then the cloven hoof appeared in the shape of a note-book. He produced it with a gentle ostentation, as one would a trump card. The simile is complete when I add that he took it from his sleeve. ' How old is rady ? ' calmly, deliberately. ' I — I forget,' falsified this historian ; 'forty-five, I believe.' The reporter put it down. ' Other rady, your fiiend — not so old ? Older ? More old ? ' 'I am twenty- two years of age,' said Orthodocia, gravely, with a reproachful glance at me ; ' and I weigh ten stone. Height, five feet eight inches. In shoes I am in the habit of wear- ing fives ; in gloves, six-and-a-half.' The reporter scribbled convulsively. ' Radies will study Japanese porryticks — please say.' ' I beg pardon ? ' ' Yes.' Fills another page. Orthodocia, suavely : ' Are they produced here to any extent ? ' ' We have 128 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE here many porryticks — ribarer, conservative, monarchist.' . . . " ' You will acquire ranguage of Japan ? ' ' Not all of it, I think. It seems a little difficult, but musical — much more musical than our ugly English,' interposed Orthodocia. ' Yes. Will you the story of your journey please say ?'.... "He came back the next day with a copy of the paper, and read out this translation for the ladies to take down. " ' Yesterday,' translated the reporter, solemnly — I must copy the document, which does not give his indescribable pronunciation — 'by Canada steamer radies arrived. The correspondent, who is me, went to Grand Hotel, which the radies is. Radies is of Canada, and in-the-time-before of England. They have a beautiful countenance. . . . Object of radies' locomotion to make beautiful their minds. Miss Elder-Rady answered : " Our objects is to observe habits, makings, and beings of the Japanese nation, and to examine how civilisa- tion of England and America prevails among the nation. And other objects is to examine the art and drawing and education from the exterior of the confectionery. In order to observe the cus- toms of Japan we intend to ream a private house." . . . Miss Younger-Rady-measuring-ten-stone-and- wearing-six-shoes-and-a-half, continue : " The rai- road between the Montreal and Canada is passing 9 129 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN . . . And if by the rai-road we emproy steamer, the commerce of Montreal and Japan will prevail." Correspondent asked to Miss Younger-Rady : " May I hear the story of your caravansey ? " . . . She answered : " From Montreal to Canada the distance is three thousand mires. . . . While we are passing the distance between Mount Rocky I had a great danger, for the snow over the mountain is falling down, and the rai-road shall be cut off. Therefore, by the snow-shade, which is made by the tree, its falling was defend." Speaking finish. The ladies is to took their caravsery attending among a few days. Ladies has the liability of many news.' " It is in advertisements that the Japanese shine. They are the Bacon's Essays of Japanese English. Mr Chamberlain collected some beautiful examples : — " NOTIES " Our tooth is a very important organ for human life and countenance as you know ; therefore when it is attack by disease or injury, artificial tooth is also very useful. I am engage to the Dentistry, and I will make your purpose." "Fragrant Kozan Wine " If health be not steady, heart is not active. Were heart active, the deeds may be done. Among the means to preserve health, the best 130 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE way is to take in Kozan wine which is sold by us, because it is to assist digestion and increase blood. Those who want the steady health should drink Kozan wine. The wine is agreeable even to the females and children who can not drink any spirit because it is sweet. On other words, this pleases mouth, and therefore it is very convenient medicine for nourishing." " Fuji Beer " The efficacy of this Beer is to give the health and especially the strength for Stomach. The flavour is so sweet and simple that not injure for much drink." "Notice — Yokohama Coolie Contracted Company, Limited " The object of this company is to evacuate an evil conducts of the coolies which have been practised during many years, while we will reform their bad circumstances, and solicit, we hope, the patronage of the Public generally, having already had the permission of the Government for the institutions of the Company. As the object is the above, we will open the works very quickly and kindly as we possible, without any measure more or less, the coolie being dressed in the same cloth and same hat as the sign. We should establish the same branch offices in the important 131 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN places for our Customers' convenience, and some- times will send an officer as an examiner, in order to engage the works very more attentively. Now we will write down the outline of the Business as following/' One of the special businesses of this company was to send " a Accompanying Man in going and coming of funeral rite and Marriage ceremonies." The Japanese essayist is as good as the adver- tiser. " The Character of the Englishman " The England which occupied of the largest and greatest dominion which can rarely be. The Enghshman works with a very powerful hands and the long legs and even the eminenced mind, his chin is as strong as decerved iron. He are not allowed it to escape if he did seized something. Being spread his dominion is dreadfully extensive so that his countrymen boastfully say ' the sun are never sets on our dominions.' The Testamony of English said that he lost the common sense, he never any benefit though he had gained the com- plete world. The English are cunning institu- tioned to establish a great empire of the Paradise. The Englishman always said to the another nation 'give me your land and I will give you my Testimony.' So it is not robbed but exchanged as 132 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE the Englishman always confide the object to be pure and the order to be holy and they reproach him if any them are killed to death with the con- tention of other men. I shall continue the other time." The writer of a recent novel made Japanese characters talk pidgin-English. They would be just as Hkely to wear Chinese clothes as to talk Chinese English. The Japanese is a professional imitator, though he imitates so badly ; the Chinese, who is a born imitator, only exercises his talent for others — nothing that is not purely Chinese is worthy to enter his private life. Finding the Japanese unable to pose successfully as European tailors and dressmakers, he carries on these businesses for Japan, stocks excellent materials, and reproduces exactly the models which are given him. But for his own costumes he adheres to the pyjama fashions of his native land. Most Japanese men wear one or more articles of European dress, but, except when they have bought their clothes in Europe at expensive shops, the article is comically unlike its European original. Their English is like their clothes — even more ambitious and less successful. Not a word of it is based on the pidgin-English they hear in ports and understand ; that would be beneath the dignity of the subjects of a civilised power. They 133 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN are taught English in the schools and by the missionaries, but that does not content them. They like to take sporting expeditions into diction- aries and grammars and Shakespeare. Even Herbert Spencer has his pursuers. But the English they use sounds like Japanese. Bulwer Lytton is their favourite author ; he reminds them of their own curio-shop romances. The Japanese thinks out what he is going to say in his own language, and starts on it with a grammar and dictionary like a schoolboy doing Latin prose. Before writing down the results he repeats them to himself, and when he writes them down, writes them as he has repeated them, not as he has found them in the dictionary. That is how he achieves penshiro for pencil, shatso for shirt, and zentoruinen for gentlemen. Even the porter at our hotel in Yokohama, who spoke English quite fluently, put up notices such as : — " Notice. — Please wish to came to Hall whoever have change a black hat on wiiting table of up- stairs in last night dinner time. Because that is keeping in Hall." The only time the Japanese use pidgin-English is when they are talking to Chinese. There is nothing funnier than to hear the inhabitants, of the two great Oriental empires conversing in a patois 134 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE of a little island the width of the world away, unless it is to hear two Chinamen belonging to ports as little distant fi-om each other as Swatow and Canton talking pidgin-English, because they cannot understand each other's Chinese. Pidgin- English is a marvellous tongue ; it is based on English, with ' ee ' added to every word, and vowels put in between double letters too hard for Chinese tongues to get round, and all ' r's ' are pronounced ' I's.' I heard a pidgin-English sermon once de- livered by a French evangelist ; he spoke of Christ as " Ki-li-tse, and described him as " one piecee welly good man — No. 1 man — gone up top side." This is a fair specimen of pidgin-English. " No. 1 " means good, but that marvellous language is also full of words belonging to other languages, chiefly Portuguese, such as Comprador, Cumshaw, Man- darin, Amah. " No belong p'loper " is a very useful phrase, because it means wrong. Some of the funniest Japanese comes of there being no Yes or No in Japanese. " Is-so," " Can do," " No-can-do," " Can have," " No can have," are great Japanese expressions. Translations of their own phrases, "Where-go," "What-do," " Suppose-rain," are natural to people whose own language is supposed to contain only verbs and substantives. If it was not for honorifics, Japanese is just the kind of language I should like to learn. " Bring beer, pass mustard, give change," is the way I usually speak 135 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN a foreign language, but it is not the way a Japanese speaks any language. " Honourably having-cause- to- wait-truth in mutually-is-not-pull " is the Japan- ese for " I do not know how to excuse myself for keeping you waiting." How different from the pithy Enghsh of the Chinaman who calls the Japanese lie-Europeans ! The result of learning their English from mission- aries stamps itself on their conversation. Mr Mayeda, my publisher's foreman, as I mentioned in my The Japs at Home, brought a dear little boy to say good-bye to us when we were leaving Japan to spend a couple of months in China. When we came back, I asked how he was. " Ah ! it is very sad ; he has gone to hell. But the little boy he has loved the stamp book so much that he has taken it to hell with him. It is on his grave, do you call it ? " Mr Mayeda was a Christian. A few weeks alter he came back very drunk one evening. " What's the matter ? " I asked. " It is very sad ; my other little boy has gone to heU too, and I am so poor, and I have to keep my wife's uncles, and my father-in-law is very silly, and so I get drunk every night. But it is no matter, because my wife will give me another." One word about Japanese books. Our literature must seem very inadequate to them. Our novels have so few volumes nowadays. One Japanese 136 ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE romance, The Tale of Eight Dogs, is in one hundred and six volumes ; and the man who wrote it, whose name was Bakin, wrote two hundred and eighty- nine other books, though none of them were so popular. One wonders if they have public libraries in Japan, and how many copies they take of a popular work, and whether you take out one volume at a time, or all. The hbrarian could probably keep the register in his head or by cutting notches in a stick. They have good memories in Japan. The short or Japanese alphabet of ten thousand words is used in telegraph offices as it is in newspaper offices. " Books of the Words " are issued to operators to refresh their memories, but I never met anyone who had seen an operator using one. IS"; CHAPTER XI JAPANESE BOOKS Japanese books fully maintain the national reputa- tion for upside-downness. Many a Japanese book is no longer than a magazine article. A properly constituted Japanese book is not bound. It is folded like a shilling book of views of Brighton, or a penny panorama of the Lord Mayor's show ; its two ends being gummed to oblong cardboard covers, enclosed in silk made of hemp in these degenerate days. A Japanese book begins at the end, and the pages read from right to left instead of from left to right, like a decent Christian book. They are not even content with this, but read vertically instead of horizontally. I have said above that many a Japanese volume is no longer than a magazine article, but what they lack in volume they sometimes make up again in the number of volumes. I mentioned that TJie Tale of Eight Dogs, of Bakin, the great Japanese novelist, is in a hundred and six volumes, and that this is only one of the novelist's two hundred 138 JAPANESE BOOKS and ninety works. The veteran Hungarian novelist and politician, Maurus Jokai, is popularly supposed to hold the record as the most prolific writer of all time ; up to the time when he celebrated his jubilee, some years ago, he had written over three hundred works, but I doubt if any of them were in a hundred and six volumes. No individual, of course, could hope to rival the Buddhist scriptures of Japan. They fill between six and seven thousand volumes, which means that even if the enthusiast could read these Bibles at the rate of one a day, they would preoccupy him for twenty years. To obviate this, the Japanese, who has his practical, as well as his poetical side, has invented a special sort of circulating library. This library is a huge cylinder, generally made of red lacquered wood, and revolving on its basis hke a ship's capstan ; it even has capstan bars. The six thousand seven hundred and seventy-seven volumes are arranged on its shelves, and then the pious who wish to have the merit of having read all these scriptures without the physical labour of turning over their pages and mumbling their words, presses against the bars, and makes the library circulate three times. He is then considered to have read them, just as he is considered to have said a prayer of which he has bought a printed copy from the priest to be dropped through a grating in front of a god. 139 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN A great deal of Japanese literature is poetry, and more importance is attached to the handwriting of the poet than the subject matter and literary value of his writings. This is perhaps necessary, or the Japanese might do nothing else but wi'ite poetry. Japanese poems are Hke the leaves of the SibyUine books, or the prophecies of Old Moore ; they are Sphinx-like remarks, with an air of wisdom, which are capable of meaning anything, but to the European mind generally mean nothing. I pub- lished a book in Japan. I was only thirty then, so there was some chance of the book coming out in my lifetime. The publisher's foreman wrote a poem for me ; it ran : Dust of Light at the Back of Ocean. He did not write all this by himself ; he got his partner, a strolling photographer, to help him. He said that it was a poem to the dawn. Knowing that the Japanese attach great value to a play on words, I said that it had not dawned on me till he mentioned it. He was satisfied that 1 too was a poet in my way. He was more con- vinced of my being a poet by the brilliance of this pun than by the fact that the book his firm were printing for me was what I considered a poem in hexameters upon the founding of New Brunswick by the United Empire loyalists. I had been so impressed by what one may call the intoxicat- ing beauty of Japanese books that I determined to have this poem published in Japan. It had 140 JAPANESE BOOKS appeared in the Christmas number of the leading Canadian weekly, so it was in type ; and Mr Nagao, the publisher, assured me that his compositors could copy the words like pictures. He said " copy the pictures." Making the contract for that book was a delightfully picturesque process, though it was slow combustion. We were taken up into a long, low Japanese room over the shop. When we went into it, its furniture consisted of three round white cakes, made of rice flour, rising in pyramidal tiers, and crowned with a lobster ; a valuable old four-leaved screen, about two feet high ; a flower-vase with a branch of a plum tree stuck in it ; a charcoal fire-box for warming the fingers ; and three or four flat cushions for squatting on. The foreman who took us upstairs was sufficiently versed in our ways to know that this was an un- comfortable way for Europeans to transact business, so attendants appeared with a round kitchen table and some kitchen chairs. The head of the fii-m then made his appearance, and saluted us with exquisite and elegant Japanese politeness. He could speak no English, but he knew how to sit in a chair ; so my wife and I, and the foreman and he, sat down, and I thought business was going to begin, but it was not, for a screen was pushed aside to the middle of the wall — the Japanese do not use doors ; they push aside w^hichever piece of the wall comes handiest — the walls beinsf made of slidiner 141 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN paper panels. Through the aperture came a dainty Httle mousmee, carrying a straw tray with five tiny cups containing the straw-coloured Japanese tea, which, having a delicate flavour but no milk or sugar, tastes rather like hot beer and water. My wife drank it nobly, but I really could not. I was relieved when another mousmee, with a different sort of tray, brought some Mandarin oranges and bean-flour sweets of the shape and flaming colours of autumn maple leaves. These tasted something like marzipan, and proved rather a stand-by in Japanese negotiations. To my alarm, they were succeeded by more tea ; the host believing that the first lot was not up to my fastidious standard. I started the foreman on an explanation that I did not like Japanese tea ; I thought it might expedite business, as I remembered at that point having heard alarming accounts of the number of cups of tea one was expected to drink when transact- ing important business with a Japanese. But it did not. At length we got as far as inspecting models. The heirlooms of the household, ancient books of poetry, each tied up in a separate pocket handker- chief, were brought, and at length we got down to details. A delicate silky rice paper was pro- nounced quite the thing for a work of such poetical importance to be printed on. It was decided that the book should have its leaves bound with the 142 JAPANESE BOOKS edges inwards, like a Japanese book. Then it was thought that the pages should be decorated with a conventional design. " What conventional design?" I asked. That depended on the subject of the poem. I gave the foreman an outline of the story, of the wrongs of the United Empire loyahsts at the hands of successful revolters from the United States, and of their sufferings in the first winter, when they went to found new com- munities in Canada. 1 do not know what form it took in the translation, but the head decided that the proper emblematic device for decorating the pages was water. I inquired what form water took, and found that it was a sort of Cambridge blue worm, wriggling. I decided that accuracy would have to be sacrificed to the effect upon the undiscerning European mind, and various other suggestions were made, until my eye fell upon the dish of maple leaves which had been brought in for us to eat. Why not have these ? T asked. The maple is the badge of Canada. I forget why they were not right, but I determined to have them. I imagine that they were printed in grey, on account of the sombreness of the subject ; for the same reason, perhaps, the covers were to be of grey crepe. On the covers an allusion was made to the cheerful ending of the story by having the beautiful little maple leaves we had been eating reproduced in all the glowing tints of autumn. I 143 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN have often told the story of the days I spent with Mr Mayeda, the foreman. The book took a month or two to print, and Mr Mayeda came at least once every morning and every evening to see me about it. My idea is that the firm considered it a cheap way of teaching him more English, for he often accompanied me a whole day, when 1 went out, merely to repeat at the office my august directions. I called in on my way to the Exhibition at Ueno, to ask when 1 might expect some proofs which had been due for a month. I had to go upstairs and take tea on the floor, and eat an orange and some bean-fl.ower sweets, before I could ask the question, lest I should hurt the publisher's feelings ; you cannot approach such a vulgar thing as business without something to take the taste out of your mouth. It took more than half an hour, but the time was not wasted, because the publisher sent his foreman to the Exhibition with me to get a free lesson in English, of which he had an elementary knowledge. We went away to China for a good many weeks. The book was to be published before we went, but, of course, it was not, and when we came back I went to reproach Mr Mayeda. What followed I have already told in The Japs at Home, but it is good enough to bear repeating. As I was going to say disagreeable things to him, I 144 JAPANESE BOOKS began by asking how his dear little boy was. " Ah," he said, " it is very sad ; he has gone to hell." "And how is the other one?" I asked "And he has gone to hell too." The poor little chaps were dead, and this was the view their father had formed of what awaited them from the teachings of the missionaries. In those days Bulwer Lytton and Herbert Spencer were the most popular of the English authors translated into Japanese — Bulwer for his large historical style, and Spencer because his philosophy is just the pabulum which the Occidental-Oriental mind of the Japanese craves for. I also have a history of Napoleon trans- lated into Japanese, which has intensely comical pictures. In one of them he is marrying Josephine, with a number of cups of sake, in the orthodox Japanese style. In another, looking extremely like John Bunyan, he is watching an umpire with a fan put his soldiers of the Army of the Rhine through their Japanese single- stick drill. He makes a voyage in a steamer, with a junk in the distance. The most reasonable picture in the book is the representation of Paris ; one of the most unreason- able represents him seated on a throne, between the Pope, called the Bishop of Rome in the label, and the Emperor, called Francis of Austria. Other persons named in this picture are the " Empress 10 145 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Eliza," " Joseph " (presumably Joseph Buonaparte), the King of Holland, and Piombino. This work is in three volumes. In the second, a man in Japanese armour, with a Japanese matchlock, is going to shoot Napoleon in his carriage, seemingly on the road from Lake Biwa to Kyoto, except for a few church towers. In the next picture the cruelty of Napoleon is shown : he is roasting a slave alive ; it is labelled tersely, " Napoleon burns a slave." " The Attack on Moscow " is the chef- d'ceuvre. Moscow is a mediaeval city ; both sides wear armour. On the left of the picture are the high seas, with the French fleet on them, and on the right the Russian general having Moscow set on fire. In order that he may be more easily seen, the general is represented outside the walls. The third volume is pitifully tragic. Napoleon, still looking like John Bunyan in Puritan cap and dress, but with bare arms and legs, is seated on an anvil, under a palm-tree, jeered at by English soldiers, in Japanese armour, carrying large pikes, and curling the lip and pointing the finger in scorn. There is no picture of his death ; but at his funeral in St Helena, which is given, an enormous car, like the Mikoshi of lyeyasu, with images of the Virgin Mary dangling from its corners, is drawn by twelve horses. Its wheels are taller than men. I also have another old Japanese work on European history, in which the Russian Emperor, 146 JAPANESE BOOKS in Japanese armour, on horseback, is pursuing Charles XII. of Sweden, who is likewise on horse- back, past a group of palm-trees, which seem a trifle out of place in any encounter between those Northern monarchs. This is a new Pultawa. These books you buy at curio shops rather than booksellers'. I never found the booksellers' shops in Japan half as interesting as the bookbinders', which are fascinating. You can get books de- lightfully bound in hemp boards, in the native fashion, for a few pence. I had a quantity of Kodak albums made in this way. What a dream that binder's shop was, with its rope-tasselled Japanese account-books and its bamboo leaves full of the rice-paste with which the Japanese is always sticking things ! The books were bound on the floor, with hardly any appliances, by tiny boys who looked about four years old. I used to have my manuscripts bound in paper quite prettily for about a penny each. I have them still. Besides the purely English bookseller's shop of the great firm of Kelly & Walsh, famous throughout the East, and the purely native shops like the Hakubunsha, which published my poem Lester the Loyalist, there was an excellent native bookseller, named Z. P. Maruya, who had shops both in Tokyo and Yokohama, and kept a very representative stock of Enghsh books with which he grossly undersold Kelly h Walsh. I expect Japan is full of shops 147 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN where they sell English books now, because I constantly come across books written by Japanese in capital English. One I cannot help mentioning, The Ideals of the East, by Mr Kakasu Okakura. An account of it will be found in Appendix IV. 148 CHAPTER XII TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS Tea-houses and geisha girls make up that wonderful comedy, a Japanese banquet ; the food is of no consequence — to a European. Taken separately, they are not bad ; your own dinners at the foreign hotel would be much enlivened by the performances of geishas while you were eating and drinking — they would do as well as a yeomanry band. And tea-houses are not so bad, if you do not take their tea, though their teas are not so bad as their dinners, unless you do the correct thing, and take salted cherry-blossom with them. Japanese dinners are a refined kind of torture ; you are expected to sit on your heels and eat off the floor. Lovely little mousmees, with scarlet petticoats, come and kneel before you ; but what is the use of it, when you are kneeling yourself, because, not being a Jap, you cannot sit on your own knees. Besides, your mousmee spends all her time in playing hide-and-seek with your sake bottle. No 149 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN good restaurant will let you drink sake that is not of a certain temperature ; and as you do not drink it at all, it soon gets below the proper point, and your mousmee goes for more. This is very bad behaviour ; the Japanese never keeps the sake waiting. The food is a worse trial. Live fish might not be so bad, if you could persuade yourself to treat it like an oyster ; but seaweed soup, and lard sweetmeats, and custard made with pickle, and fish juice, are novelties too striking for the male European stomach. When you are drown- ing you catch at straws, and when you are having a Japanese banquet you hail with gratitude the appearance of anything you know by sight, like a plum or a potato ; but it is only a fresh form of torture, for the plum is sure to be salted and the potato cooked in syrup ; and even if the things were good to eat, you could not help yourself with chop-sticks — it's too like eating soup with a fork. Undeterred by your not eating any, the dinner goes on for hours, while you wonder which will happen first— your knee -hinges burst or your calves go flat. If you have been to a Japanese banquet before, you bolt to a wall directly you get into the room, and prop yourself up against it. That is the only way you can sit on the floor for hours. The mousmees are so pretty and so nice that if you do get up to go in the middle, they always persuade you to kneel down again. When 150 <7) A Tvs. UOTTCTT TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS it is aU over comes the unkindest cut of all. Polite- ness demands that you should make a separate excuse for each dish that you cannot eat. This is not the slightest use, for, as you are getting into your riksha, the mousmee who has waited on you hands you a pile of white wooden boxes in which she has carefully packed everything that you could not eat, for you to take to your family, and etiquette demands that you should take them, though you give them to your riksha boy as soon as you are out of sight. Etiquette is the Kaiser of Japan. It is no good having a geisha while you are going through these tortures ; you are not in a state of health to make allowances for their voices or their music, and their wit is lost upon you, which is perhaps just as well. The geisha, except in the kind of ballets you get at the Maple Club, is not suited to the European market. She does not, as the unco guid assert, belong to the oldest profession in the world — not necessarily ; her real function is to console the dissipated Japanese for the absence of actresses in his country. Madame Sada Yacco is a Japanese actress, but she is a Western idea, and, besides, she used to be a geisha. Japanese ladies have actors to fall in love with, and are said to use them freely, but the Japanese man has to fall back upon the geisha. The ancient Greeks did not have actresses either ; perhaps their plays were as dull (on the stage only, 151 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of course) as Japanese plays, which run their banquets close. The ancient Greek was as wise as the modern Jap ; he did not want to be separated by the foot-lights and the cat-gut tortures of the orchestra from his goddess ; the wisest of the ancients, Mke the wisest of the moderns, did not hang about stage doors, or send jewellery on the off chance to actresses they did not know. The best people do not go .to the theatre in Japan ; the theatre goes to them in the form of the geisha, dancing and singing girls. In Leicester Square it would not be called dancing or singing. But Mr Edwardes might make a fortune beyond the dreams of avarice if he introduced this " ladies and gentlemen waited on at their own residences " idea. You can have them sent to your own house ; but you get a better article by finding out the house which has the choicest geishas on its staff. This is a recognised line of business : the geisha comes half way between the yaksha (actors) and the yoro (ladies of pleasure). Geisha are often no better than they should be (even the title of D.D. will not always bear looking into), but prostitution is not part of their profession — it depends on the attractions and ambitions of the individual. They are generally a most innocent- looking little people — mere children in appearance ; they are very young, as well as very small, comical rather than beautiful, with their shaved- 152 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRI.S off eyebrows, pipe-clayed faces, and cochinealed lips. They are most accomplished as well as beautifully dressed. The Japanese looks to the geisha for the delights of female society, just as the Athenians of Pericles' day looked to the Hetaira. The ancient Greek and the modern Jap are alike in only looking for domestication from their home circle. Japanese wives, like Greek wives, are not taught accomplishments ; they are taught virtues, and it is doubtful if they find virtue a reward. The Japanese man wants something more than an actress ; she is expected to be excellent in that way, and to be at his beck and call besides. When he is too idle to attend any more to her dancing and singing, he beckons her to come closer and entertain him with her personal attractions. If a Japanese gentleman could run London on his own lines, he would pick out the actress he liked best, and tell a cabman to take him to the hotel she was connected with, order her and one or two other actresses connected with the same establishment, and a private room and a dinner, and ask one or two friends whom he wished to " do well." She would perform her best ; and when he and his friends grew tired of it, he would tell her to come and sit beside them and talk to them ; that is what happens to the geisha. The Greeks had their geishas like Aspasia — lovely and brilliant 153 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN women, whose profession it was to entertain men by their accomplishments and personal charm. The geisha dances not with her feet, but with a tambourine or a veil. She sings well, according to the cracked Japanese standards, and accompanies herself on the samisen. The European enjoys watching her, though it is only going through tricks to him ; she is such a gentle, gracious little thing. He misses all the points of her performance, and misses much more than that. Like the British barmaid, her chief attraction is her wit. Conversation is a fine art with her, and she uses her wit sometimes for pleasing, and sometimes for repelling the advances of, her temporary employers. A geisha does not generally perform alone, and she is accustomed to have a chaperon ; but, unless a tete-a-tete is desired, it is usual to order two or more geishas. No one is so extravagant as a geisha in the richness of her silks and crepes. A popular geisha is loaded with presents. She is trained to the profession from childhood, and retires from the active pursuit of her profession young ; then, if she is not married, and often if she is, she keeps a school for training others. Mr Osman Edwards, as usual, hits the nail on the head about geishas. " Etymologically a geisha is an accomplished person ; socially, she is an enter- tainer who has been trained from the age of seven 154 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS or eight to dance or sing for the amusement of guests at a dinner-party. ... Her social status corresponds more exactly to that of a Parisian actress than that of an Athenian Hetaira. Conven- tion having banished the actress fi-om the Japanese stage, the geisha takes her place as the natural recipient of masculine homage." . . . Nekko, or cat, is her nickname, says Mr Edwards, which enables the reader to form conclusions. " The Japanese, heedless of theology, and harassed by no conviction of original sin," lightly turns to thoughts of geisha or love, while he is at a religious festival. You often find a house of pleasure oppo- site a temple, or a row of them, if the temple is popular. Not a few Japanese plays have for their motive the buying off a geisha or pleasure-lady from her indentures ; she is leased for so many years to a manager. In Japan, if a family is poor and has a beautiful daughter, the most \drtuous thing she can do is to sell her virtue for so many years. This sounds Irish, but it is also true ; because when her term of years is over, she is still regarded as a virtuous and marriageable woman. This example of filial piety is almost the best situation in the dramatist's repertoire. The party of European reform in Japan is anxious to abolish geisha at dinner-parties. But a Japanese banquet without geisha would be like Japanese tea to a foreigner — most foreigners 155 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN miss the milk and sugar, and hate the taste of the tea. But the Japanese might still enjoy his seaweed soups and ragouts if, instead of the dear little geisha, he was waited on by men in European evening-dress. A brief digression here is all that I shall give in this book about the mueh-talked-of Yoshiwara question. The Japanese do not accept the view of the Non- conformist conscience about pleasure-ladies. What we call a house of ill-fame is to them hardly more remarkable than a restaurant ; in fact, it is not a house of ill-fame, but a well-conducted institution under police supervision. In Japan such houses are grouped together in the pleasure quarter, like the Yoshiwara at Tokyo, and they are constantly made the scenes of plays. Temples apart, they have the most beautiful pleasure-grounds in Japan ; the gardens of some of them, when lit up at night, are fairy-lands. There is one above all on the shore of the Gulf of Tokyo as beautiful as anything in the Arabian Nights. The women are gentle and well-behaved ; the Japanese see no indecency in the profession. There are no bullies, no violence, no extortion ; these houses, in fact, are almost like restaurants. But they have one highly dramatic feature : the ground-floors are cages, behind whose bars the 156 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS women sit, gorgeously dressed, and with their hair full of brilliant hat-pins. You hardly ever see these women outside the bounds of the Yoshiwara (except at European fancy-dress balls, for which the dress is a very favourite one : the huge tortoise-shell-headed hairpins are so effective, and so is the wearing of the rich brocade obi, or sash in front, instead of at the back — the official mark of the profession). To return to the geisha proper. Mr Clarence Ludlow Brownell, in his The Heart of Japan, puts her on quite a pedestal. " The mission of the geisha is to make life merry. Her whole edu- cation is to that end. She can dance and sing, and play on all sorts of instruments ; she knows the best stories and the latest jokes ; she is quick at repartee : the games she doesn't know are those that have not as yet been invented. She is as graceful and frolicsome as a kitten, her manners are exquisite, and she is as beautiful as — well, as beautiful as a geisha. Only dead folk can with- stand her charms, and it is doubtful about them. Her mirth is the best of tonics. It will mend one when anything ails the health. She cures every- thing; that is to say, but diseases of the heart. These the geisha has been known to aggravate. In truth, she doesn't need more than half a chance to put a heart in a terrible way." Mr Brownell gives a category of things the 157 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN geisha of Leicester Square ought to have left undone to be Japanese, and one which she ought to have done — a most effective httle touch. The ridiculous little Japanese pipe, which looks hke a doubled-up acorn, and only holds enough for three whiffs, would have made splendid business, and every geisha carries one down her sleeve, which she uses to refresh herself as one of our women would use a fan. As she dances with it instead of feet, a fan is no relief to a geisha. Geisha are usually associated with comedy. They came very near being associated with tragedy for me. The Maple Club in Tokyo is famous for its geisha. There are hardly any more charming or accomplished to be found in Japan. It is also the correct place for strangers to try a Japanese banquet. A banquet with the best geisha was arranged for us. It was extremely interesting, though we could not manage the chop-sticks and could not have eaten the food if we could have got it to our mouths. It was served by beautiful girls, with every picturesque detail of Japanese etiquette. The geisha were perfection — exquisite little women, marvellously elegant, and most gorgeously dressed. They performed the No-Dance for us as well as ordinary geisha songs and dances. I was enchanted. They were told that I was writing a book on Japan, and, wishing to be immortalised, excelled them- selves ; and in the interval they noticed that I had 158 To hack on p. 158. The oldest profession in the world, and • To Ofu-k on p. 159. the Kago — or Japanese palanquin. TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS a Kodak, and asked if I would photograph them. As it was evening and winter, I had to use a flash hght. I Ut the fuse. A minute passed. Nothing happened. I picked up the charge to see what was wrong, and it happened at once. There was an explosion, and my right hand was minus its nails and most of its skin. Immediately there was a most perfect geisha performance. They flew to hold me up ; to restore me, to heal my hand — anything, to show their sympathy. I was not too bad to lose my heart to them all ; in fact, I was not bad at all, beyond my right wrist. It was lucky that I kept cool, for I was the only one who knew what to do — having burnt the inside out of my left hand when I was a child. The danger lay in letting the air — especially the cold — get to the wounds. Flour and oil had saved my other hand, and the Maple Club was cosmopolitan enough to have flour and oil on the premises, so that the geisha covered up the hand with a paste of flour and oil, and tied it up with portions of their attire. What portions I never found out, but not their handkerchiefs probably, which would have been made of paper. It was something white and soft, at anyrate, and I was soon sufficiently patched up to take the riksha drive from Shiba to the railway station at Shimbashi to train it home to Yokohama. There was a clever English doctor there, named Wheeler, who cured my hand in a matter of weeks, 159 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN chiefly with iodoform — a brand-new drug in those days. I should have preferred hospital geisha, though doubtless the cure would have taken longer under those delightful circumstances. I made a discovery that night. My thumb, being uninjured, was not tied up in the splint, but left free. I found that I could hold pencil and pen between the thumb and the splint, and write with ease almost in my ordinary handwriting, and I wrote an article that same night on Japanese geisha, which I sold to a San Francisco newspaper for more than the cost of the doctor's bill. The kindness of the dear little mousmees was wonderful, for they were terrified to death by the explosion. There was such a shuffling and a screaming. I can see it yet, fourteen years afterwards — the bare maple-waUed, matted room ; the ring of astonished English people trying to squat on their hams like Japanese, with the ruins of a Japanese banquet in front of them ; the lovely little butterfly women first shuffling away in terror and then flying back to help ; and myself thinking, " What a rum go ! I wonder if it's going to incapacitate me for my whole trip in Japan " ; — for it came at the very beginning. The geisha are not always beautiful, but they are always elegant and clever ; they are the best- dressed women in Japan — the Japanese do not think it ladylike for their wives to dress well. They wear a sort of half-mourning, and no wonder. 160 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS The Japanese geisha is said to be the most accom- pHshed person in the world in the art of conver- sation. She must find it very useful, for she has constantly to be bandying wit with sake-fuddled admirers, and to switch her lovers on or off. She is expected to sing and dance and play. Any music-hall artist in London would promise to shoot herself if she could not do better in either with less than a week's practice ; but, as a matter of fact, the training of these geisha extends over four years, and is as perfect as any dramatic training in the world. The popular geisha, like the popular actress, is much courted. She often makes a brilliant marriage, and is often no better than she should be, but she is not a professional courtesan. A Japanese could not understand the plot of "The Second Mrs Tanqueray"; ladies with pasts get married every day ; their pasts are not considered any objection, but they have to he pasts when they marry. In that divorce-mongering land Caesar's wife ceases to be a wife if she is not above suspicion. It is hard for Europeans to take the geisha seriously for all their accomphshments. They look like children, and are children — when they are not cats. It is easy to detect them from women of the older profession ; the geisha is dressed in marvellously rich and brilliant brocades, as stiff as curtains, her face being made impossibly white, 11 161 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN her lips impossibly crimson, and she wears flowers in her glossy black hair. The profession have big tortoise-shell pins sticking out of their hair, like the keys of a fiddle, and are made to wear their sash bows in front instead of behind. It may not be a sign of disgrace. The profession is not a disgraceful one in Japan ; no virtuous act is more extolled in Japanese fiction than that of a beauti- ful woman selling herself to a house of ill-fame for so many years to relieve the poverty of her parents. But she has other humiliations besides having her sash reversed. She is made to live inside the licensed-quarter stockade in each town, and is shown nightly in the cage in front of the house to which she is attached. But the profession has its consolations, such as the approval of her religion and an undiminished possibility of marriage. If she makes the sacrifice for her parents, she is sure of going to heaven, such a heaven as the Japanese have between their two religions, to both of which they most of them belong. In Japanese stories women of rank sell their persons if they are in need of money, or wish to regain their liberty, or to win the lover they desire. When a woman is hard up, she is expected to sell her honour like anything else. Like most other Japanese customs, this has the imperial sanction ; the Emperor Komatsu sent forth his eight daughters to various provinces to set the fashion of becoming women of pleasure, as 162 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS the mediasval princes made their daughters abbesses. One popular courtesan, at any rate, has received divine honours, and houses of ill-fame have a habit of being opposite temples. The geisha may often be seen driving about in rikshas with their duennas ; the others are not supposed to go out at all. The houses in the Yoshiwara are glorified tea-houses, and may be used as such. They remind me of the glories of the Arabian Nights. But tea-houses are apt to be rowdy ; it is their business, except those which go in for the dull respectability of being inns. A tea-house is not teetotal. It is a public-house ; perhaps the reason why it is not called a public-house is that its business is of too private a character. It generally could hardly be called a house at all ; it is a garden, full of summer-houses, and quite often consists of nothing but a roof and a view. You can never get to a view in Japan without passing through a tea-house, such as it is ; and your way is blocked by gay little mousmees, who rub their knees together, and bow and hiss their obeisance, and give you tea. They do not sell it, but you give them a tea present — three halfpence, worth only three farthings, for five cups of tea, and you need not drink it. One often wonders what they do with the tea that is not drunk in Japan. It does not seem to go back in the pot for the next person who will not drink it either. JMr Colman, or whoever it was that 163 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN made a fortune by the mustard people left on their plates, ought to go to Japan and establish a corner in tea-leavings. Perhaps the tea-plants are kept in a good humour by having the tea put back into the soil. As the tea-shed is built across the path, this pretty performance is practically a toll. Some tea-houses are as beautiful as dreams of coming into fortunes. They may be in the Chinese style, with masonic — I mean masonry — ornaments like that described below ; they may have exquisite old wooden terraces overhanging a lake, like that of Hakone, with the sacred mountain Fujiyama staring at them like a house to let ; or they may be overhung with fragrant lavender wistaria blossoms, four feet long, which sweep the waters of the river into which they are built in the midst of a gay capital ; they may be dear little dolls' houses, built of sweet-scented pine wood, and planted in a retired corner of paradise, like the point of Tomi-Oka. In any case, the dolls are always there — the pretty little mousmees, who take off your boots to prevent you spoiling the deep, soft, primrose-coloured matting ; it also prevents your kicking the house down when you grow im- patient. There is a tea-house to nearly every temple — it is run by the priests ; and, if Europeans ever go there, they sell other things stronger than tea. There are also riksha boys' tea-houses, with hardly a break along the great high roads. Almost any 164 TEA-HOUSES AND GEISHA GIRLS house may turn tea-house, as almost any house may turn shop among the lower-class Japanese. Delightful as all those thatched belvederes are, where you pay your tea money and look at the view, there is nothing a foreigner enjoys so much as the tea-houses which have Chinese gardens in the large towns. Those who live in tea-houses should not throw stones against the tea-house inns. I have nothing to say ; they are respectable places enough for a land which has no arbitrary rules about decency. It is the restaurant tea-house at which the Japanese defies our conventionalities. If a banker asks his family lawyer to dinner, the invitation does not embrace their wives ; he asks him to dinner at a restaurant, and engages geishas — singers famous for their beauty and their wit, but not necessarily for their morals, to make themselves agreeable to him. The wives of both regard this as a natural feature of hospitality. As you drive through Shiba at night, you will know where the Japanese gentleman is enjoying himself in his primitive way, by large wooden lanterns, with paper glasses and projecting eaves, and by the riksha boys smoking, and doubtless scandal-mon- gering, at its gates. And you will hear the tinkle of the samisen, and the poor little tinkle of the geishas' voices. Sometimes, if the night is hot, and the banqueters have reached a drunken stage, the shutters will be taken down, and you will see 165 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the party enjoying itself. The Japanese take their pleasures badly ; the host and his guests sit in a semicircle, more or less drugged with gorging and sake, and the geishas are ranged in another semi- circle opposite them, if they still have a soul for music, or come closer and enchant them with their prettiness and their wittiness. The Japanese do not laugh for pleasure any more than they kiss for love; they have a derisive laugh to show anger, and they giggle at wit, but the hearty English laugh of enjoyment is unknown to them. 166 CHAPTER XIII JAPANESE GARDENS Japan is rapidly being recognised as the land par excellence of gardening. The Japanese seem to be able to talk to their plants as the people in Mr Kipling's jungle stories talk to their animals. At all events, the trees and flowers tell their secrets ; and the Japanese listen to what they say, and humour them — with marvellous results. At pre- sent, when the English hear of Japanese gardening, they think at once of dwarf trees ; but I shall leave the consideration of them to a later chapter which deals with the miniature Japanese garden which I have in my house, merely mentioning one instance to show what constant care it requires to keep the dwarf trees from resuming their ordinary pro- portions. There is in the temple of lyeyasu, at Nikko, the most beautiful of all the temples of Japan, a tall fir tree, which was once a dwarf, growing in a blue- and-white china pot, carried by lyeyasu in his 167 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Jcago (palanquin) in all his campaigns. When the hero died and became a god, it was planted outside the stable, where the white horse was kept always ready for him, in case he should return to the earth ; and at once resumed its habits and powers of growing. There are certain features common to most Japanese temple gardens — to wit, water, stone pagodas, votive lanterns (zVw-iforo), lighthouses, cross- arches {torii), and endless terraces and stairways, fo- trees {Matsuji) trained into all manner of fantastic shapes, maples {Momi-ji) trained into all manner of fantastic colours, wistaria {Fuji) trailing four feet long, racemes of pale lilac blossom over arbours built at the edge of the water, groves of blossoming trees, and a ridiculous stone or plaster travesty of Fujiyama. That there are brilliantly blossoming flowers goes without saying. The temple gardens are the pleasure-grounds of the Japanese ; their fairs are held in them, people use them as parks. The patronage of a temple depends a good deal on the Crystal- Palace sort of attractions it has to offer. At Asakusa, the most popular temple garden in Tokyo, there is the loftiest artificial Fujiyama, with a pathway going right up to the top, and at the season of the year they have the tableaux of scenes from ancient Japan made out of growing chrys- anthemums. At Shiba and Ueno, where they have golden tombs and splendid temples of the 168 JAPANESE GARDENS deified Tokugawa Shoguns, they rely on the shou' of cherry-blossom in spring, and the lotus lakes in which no water can be seen when the flower is at the height of its glorious blossoming. At the Temple of the Tortoise Well they have a little lake surrounded by the most glorious trailing wistarias in the world ; and in the Garden of the Sleeping Dragon they have old, old plum trees as covered with lichen as a neglected cider-orchard. When an inhabitant of Tokyo writes a poem of which he is particularly proud, he goes and pins it to one of these plum trees. I have mentioned that the Japanese in poetry attach more importance to the beauty of the handwriting in which the verse is transcribed than to the beauty of its composition. Japanese poems often have the merit of consisting of only a single verse. The most characteristic temple gardens are to be found at Kyoto, the ancient capital of the INIikado, and Nikko, the sacred city of the shoguns. There are two temples at Kyoto, on opposite sides of the city, called the Temple of the Golden Pavilion and the Temple of the Silver Pavilion. The pavilions, which are very ancient, and built of wood, lacquered inside with gold and silver respectively, are the least important features of the gardens to the European eye, but both have exquisite lakes, and one of them has a fir tree trained into the shape of a junk in full sail. 169 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN One of those pavilions, however, I forget which, is among the most sacred spots in Japan, for here one of the great national heroes, whose name would only worry English readers, instituted the solemn tea-ceremony of which so much has been written. The temple gardens at Kyoto are regular parks which go in for large landscape effects, just as the temple gardens of Shiba, Uyeno, and Nara are apt to be noble courtyards, full of enormous stone votive lanterns which look like little lighthouses in garden hats. At Nikko there are two temples which have very ornate little gardens — that of INIangwanji, which has an exquisite lake of some size, surrounded by the choicest dwarf maples ; and that of Dai Nichi Do, which has the elaborate decorations in stone work which are reproduced in bronze, an inch or two high, for the miniature gardens the Japanese have in their houses. Its dear little lake has dear little islands connected with dear little stone bridges like you see on willow-pattern plates ; and every vantage point is occupied by a five-storied pagoda, or a votive lantern, or one of the torii, the myster- ious double cruciform arches of Japan, whose origin and meaning are alike unknown, and whose shape is almost exactly that of the little wooden rests which the Mashonas use as pillows. Certain temples are famous for the cultivation of certain flowers. All the Japanese world, for instance, goes 170 JAPANESE GARDENS to see the cherry-blossom at Ueno in April and the iris at Horikiri in June. Some of this Japanese world is extremely funny, and some quite pathetic. It is rather funny, for instance, to see prosperous tradesmen and their families arrive from a distance with sufficient articles for a night or two done up in corset-boxes wrapped in oil-paper, tied up with paper string ; and quite pathetic to find paupers who have not enough to eat, or any employment, walking a couple of hundred miles to see some famous temple gardens in blossom. The temple gardens have formidable rivals in some of the tea-house gardens ; for the Japanese gentleman, who is going out for an afternoon's or an evening's enjoyment, is extremely particular about his surroundings. Tea-house gardens may always be known by their tall wooden lanterns, with paper transparencies. They fre- quently have the same furniture of votive lanterns, pagodas, and so on, as temple gardens. The line between the sacred and profane in Japan is more puzzling than in Titian's famous picture of Sacred and Profane Love at Rome. It is so uncertain that the priests will often take in summer boarders at a temple, or let the temple holus-bolus as lodgings, as in the instance of the exquisite little temple of Dai Nichi Do at Nikko. There is a very favourite restaurant garden at Kobe. The Japanese who was with us took us 171 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN straight to one of the little summer-houses, sealed up with shutters, in which their orgies take place, .md seemed perfectly contented to find one vacant. It was absolutely uninteresting ; hardly even picturesque. I wanted to stay in the garden, about the size of a back-yard, which contained a river and a waterfall and a lake, and ever so many little islands connected with hog-back bridges, garnished (like a tipsy-cake with almonds) with pagodas and the mushroom-topped lanterns which are never lit, and shrines and lighthouses all of mossy old masonry. The lake did not seem to have any water in it, though I was assured that this was the case. Its top was paved with broad lotus leaves, from which sprang, like crowns standing on sceptres, the huge rose-coloured blossoms, and all round the lake were freaks in maples (not BlundelFs). The tou7^ de force, a fir tree taught to grow in the shape of a junk in full sail, looked as like a ship as any other junk. The whole scene looked like a willow-pattern plate, converted by the moon into a garden, and big enough for a toy nation. It made me feel quite like a poet, though our host had not taken us there for poetry, but for a spree ; we were sad dogs. Our little summer-house was only lit by two rush lights in tall candlesticks of wrought- iron ; I was sorry to observe that they were lit with Bryant and INIay's matches, but they were very 172 JAPANESE GARDENS likely not real. Then some little mousmees came and brought us Japanese dishes which we could not eat, and geishas who could not sing like the Leicester Square geisha, and sake which we could not drink, or we might have warmed to our work. It was a cold night as well as cold cheer, and it was not even risque. It seemed impossible that it could have been unconventional even if we had not had ladies with us. There are moments when picturesqueness fails ; but we went through it as one goes through a masonic installation, realising the adage that blessed are those who expect nothing. The most beautiful tea-house garden I remember was that of Ya-ami's Hotel, at Kyoto, where the Duke of Connaught spent most of his time in Japan. I have described it in my chapter on Kyoto. I must mention two pretty adjuncts to the gardens of Japan. The bamboo what-nots in which cut flowers are carried about the streets for sale, and the gigantic scales used for carrying growing plants, both of them slung, like everything else in Japan, from a shoulder bamboo, reminding one of the milkman of one's childhood. The great show-flowers of Japan are the cherry, the plum, the lotus, the wistaria, the azalea, the chrysanthemum, the common cameUia, the iris, the beautiful calamus, the tree peony, the hibiscus mutahilis, peach blossom, the Eulalia Japonica, the Camellia Sasanqua, and the maple and tea 173 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN are added to their number for the purpose of marking months. Roughly speaking, the plum blossom {unie) marks January ; the peach blossom {inomo), February ; the cherry-blossom (sakura), April ; the wistaria {fuji) and azalea {fsutsuji), and the tree peony {botan). May ; the iris [ayame) and calamus (shobu), June ; the lotus {renge), July ; the fnyo, August ; the susuki, September ; the chrysanthemum {kiku) and maple {momiji), October ; the sasankwa, November ; and the tea {cha), December. March is not marked very precisely in the Japanese scheme of month flowers. It is covered by both the peach-blossom and the common camelha. The common red camellia (tsubaki), which strews the ground with its single scarlet blossom, is a plant (or rather a tree, for it grows forty feet high) of ill-omen. Its fallen blossoms signify decapitated heads. The best place in Tokyo to see the azalea is JNIukojima, on the river banks, which is also famous for its camellia, plum, and cherry-blossom. But foreigners appreciate best the acres and acres of wild scarlet azalea which grow in almost impenetrable thickets near the famous temples of Nikko and Nara. The chief iris and calamus beds are at Horikiri, and the maple groves at Shinagawa, the port of Tokyo. And finally, the tea, the choicest in the world, is to be found best in little low shrubs, protected with high matting screens, or even sheds, at Uji near Kyoto. 174 JAPANESE GARDENS To see the lotus in all its glory one must go to the lake at Ueno and the moats of the Castle of Tokyo. The longest flowered wistaria in all Japan is at Kameido, the Temple of the Tortoise, within the Mukojima suburb of Tokyo. The chrysan- themums are seen best in the Imperial gardens at Tokyo and at the Asakusa Temple ; the camellias at Kameido and at Mukojima ; the plum-blossoms in the garden of the Sleeping Dragon ; and the cherry-blossoms in the temple parks at Ueno and Shiba and in the famous avenue on the river at Mukojima. It is not always possible to distinguish between tea-gardens and temple-gardens in Japan. There are, it is true, temple-gardens which are not regular refreshment places for tourists, and there are many tea-gardens constructed without reference to temples. But, as a rule, before you have been in a temple -garden two minutes a gay little mousmee, with a scarlet sash round her waist, comes and bows low before you, rubbing her knees and hissing as if she were grooming a horse. These are signs of respect, and you are expected to take tiny cups of the clear, pale Japanese tea off her tray, and not pay her (oh, dear no), but give her a goodwill offering of three halfpence. You have to go through this performance before you are allowed to see any- thing in peace, and you will find a bench in the position which commands the best view. The 175 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Japanese squats on the top of the bench, and the European sits on its edge, with his legs hanging down. One feature is universal, whether your tea- garden has anything to do with a temple or no — either the garden itself or the view, often both, will be of a nature to satisfy the very soul of beauty. As this is not to be a globe-trotter's description of his gentle adventures, but a lesson how to get Japanese gardening effects at a low cost, I will say a word or two about blossoming fruit- trees and lily-growing in bowls, and leave the Chinese garden to occupy the bulk of another chapter. One December day, in 1889, we went over from Yokohama to Tokyo to have a Japanese banquet and see the famous dancers at the celebrated Maple Club at Shiba, the garden suburb of Tokyo. At Shiba are to be found the best dancers in Japan. The Maple Club is a delightful little place. It is built entirely of maple wood, un- painted and unpolished, and every one of its decorations, from the door-handles to the flat princess cushions {fu-ton) on which you squat at the banquet, is made of, or decorated with, some representation of the maple. The shoji, or paper shutters, which divide up the rooms and come out when they are wanted — you can turn the whole of 176 JAPANESE GARDENS a Japanese house into one great room, or divide it up into a multitude of small ones in a few minutes— were decorated with glorious old paint- ings of the maple tree in its autumn glory. But what tickled me most were the maple trees in china flower-pots, and the tiny Chinese garden with dwarf maple trees growing in it. The flower- pots were fascinating. They were mostly much taller and slenderer than our flower-pots, mostly four-sided and not round, and mostly of blue-and- white china, or, rather, earthenware. The httle trees, some of which had red leaves, and some white, and some pale green, and some delicately variegated, ought, I suppose, by rights, it being December, not to have had any leaves at all ; but the Japanese can coax their plants into obeying almost any wish of their kind and indulgent masters. They varied between six and eighteen inches or even two feet high. It is the fir-tree {Mat su), not the maple, which the Japanese take such pains to dwarf. But this was the Maple Club, and everything had to be maple here ; and lovely they looked, these slender, feathery, little pink, white, and apple-green maples, so elegant that one knew how the legends of tree-nymphs had arisen in ancient Greece. I have some of them in my house now, bought at a florist's in the Kensington High Street. I must confess to having received rather a shock when, from the 12 177 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN top of the red 'bus, I saw displayed on the pave- ment the quaint httle trained maples of Japan, at prices from one-and-ninepence upwards. I am not in the least likely to forget that winter afternoon, for it was in the course of that banquet that I had my accident. It is this which enables me to remember that it was on that day that I first saw the fragrant Japanese (narcissus) lilies growing in water out of little heaps of choice pebbles. The Japanese grow them in flat blue- and-white dishes, with perpendicular rims about two inches high. The dwarf blossoming fruit-trees did not make my acquaintance till a week or two later, on the last day of 1889. We had been told that the great fair held in the Ginza at Tokyo on the last night of the old year was one of the sights of Japan. No Japanese household is complete on New Year's day without a dwarf gnarled plum- tree growing in a blue - and - white earthenware pot, and covered with blossom. How they get plum-trees in full blossom on the 1st of January is a mystery known only to the Japanese gardeners. But they certainly do ; and these quaint little plum-trees, with their white, pink, crimson, and purplish blossoms, are generally twisted round and round like the crimson-rambler roses in pots used for table decorations in England. The plum- blossom is one of the favourite and most signifi- 178 JAPANESE GARDENS cant flowers of Japan. It is the emblem of poetry ; its sprigs are used more than any other for putting in vases in front of the images of the gods, or standing in the httle recess called tokonoma^ which is on the north side of the guest-room of every house. These little trees generally stand about a couple of feet high (not including the pot), and, in Japan, you can buy them for a shilling or two in quite handsome pots, and covered with blossom. So far they have not reached England. Their presence at the fair in the Ginza was for people who had sold more than enough to pay their debts, and were able after all to indulge in a plum-tree for New Year's day. 179 CHAPTER XIV JAPANESE WRESTLING The Wrestling Championship is the Derby of Japan for the crowds it draws and the betting it causes. It is a wonderful sight : you can hardly get near the sort of theatre beside the Ekkoin Temple where it is held ; the excitement reminds you of a bull-fight. The building is in the old- fashioned style, made of a light wooden framework and coarse matting. An emeritus professor of wrestling — a forbidding-looking fat giant — sells you tickets. They are about the size of a hymn-book, and made of wood. The Japanese go there at daybreak, if not the day before ; so when you enter by creeping through a hole, like the man-hole of a drain, you are apt to fare as we did, and find every square inch of the floor packed with compressed human beings squatting on their haunches. We simply turned tail, when an amiable-looking giant who had been put out of the competition in the earlier stages, because he was not ugly enough and 180 JAPANESE WRESTLING fat enough or could not wrestle well enough, came to our rescue. He ordered the crowd to squeeze out a bare space for us in which we stood. Foreigners were as rare at wrestling matches as Italian gentlemen in church, and he thought we ought to be encouraged. That man was a picture ; he was very sun-burnt, but his face and his beauti- fully formed feet, on which he wore fine straw sandals, were miraculously clean and smooth. He was plainly but richly dressed, like the ordinary upper-class Japanese, except for his sandals, and the fact that his hair was arranged in the old feudal style, and not cut short in the bottle-whisk style of the Continent of Europe. I forget where the wrestlers come from ; but they are an entirely different race, a foot or two higher than the ordinary Japanese, and enormously fat. Except as a popular Japanese institution, wrestling is not interesting. Keeling gives a succinct account of it. "The wrestlers (sumo) are a sight well worth seeing. Instead of being trained down until nothing is left but bone and muscle, they are fat and flabby, with overhanging paunches ; and during a contest they are naked, with the exception of a loin cloth. The arena is a small hillock, about twenty feet in diameter and two feet high, built of sand, sawdust, and sods, surrounded by a straw saucisse. When the wrestlers enter the ring they squat upon their haunches and await the coming 181 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of the umpire. When that functionary puts in an appearance, dressed in the height of Japanese fashion, the wrestlers throw their bodies forward, rest upon their fingers and toes, and eye each other until the signal for combat is given ; then they tackle one another just as the wrestlers do in the Greco-Roman matches, observing 'the forty-eight legal grips or positions.' To win, however, a throw is not necessary ; but one of the com- batants must be pushed outside the limits of the ring, when the umpire drops his fan and de- clares the victor. Then he who has won must fight others until he is conquered himself or comes out at the end the champion of the day. These matches are usually held in the open air, and the space set apart for the wrestlers and the audience is barred off from the unpaying public by mats fastened on to bamboo poles." The weak point in Reeling's account is that he does not give you the atmosphere ; he does not make you see the thousands of spectators packed as close as sardines and bursting with excitement, nor the brilliant gay silk canopy of the ring, nor the antics (to the European eye) of the com- batants. We noticed every little detail in that weird scene, down to the extraordinary little slips of tissue-paper with which the giants wiped the sweat off their bodies between the bouts. This is the Japanese equivalent of sponging your man, J 82 JAPANESE WRESTLING That the umpire should use a fan for signalling to the combatants in such a struggle of Titans is typically Japanese. Keeling is wrong about the umpire's dress too ; the umpire at the wrestling matches, like the performers in the Miyako Odori, another famous Japanese show, dresses in the court- dress of the feudal period, with enormous shoulder wings and his hair done in a mild chignon. When there is a popular and unexpected win, the audience rise to their feet and yell like lunatics and hurl their hats at the ring. Actors, too, get hats instead of bouquets thrown at them, but not in the same quantities. They prefer the hats, because they can take them back like lost dogs and claim the reward. The Japanese have so recently taken to hats that perhaps they imagine that this is the use the English put them to when they are really pleased. I never discovered whether the Japanese takes care to wear an old hat when he goes to a wresthng match as Italians do when they go to a carnival — the hats are redeemed in cash the following day. Arthur Roberts could make a whole play out of a shower of hats. Since I have seen the displays of Jujitsu in Mr Barton- Wright's School of Arms in Shaftesbury Avenue, I have often wondered if an elementary knowledge of that wonderful science does not enter into Japanese wrestling. This might account for 183 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN its unutterable tiresomeness to a European. The combatants often spend half an hour in feinting and parrying feints. You wonder when on earth they are going to get to business. Then suddenly they close, and the whole affair is over like a flash of lightning. This always happens, like a wicket going down at a cricket match, when you are not looking. Polo is a better game, because it does not matter how the game is going, you need only look at it when you have nothing better to do. The actual wrestling takes such a very little time that it hardly seems worth the trouble of undressing for it. They seem no more in earnest than a Chinese dress- maker ; but, of course, the little they know of the noble art makes them play for safety. They must avoid laying themselves open to a knock-out grip. If a man obtains any of these gi-ips the umpire de- clares him victor at once. What bores the foreigner about these wrestling matches is that there is hardly any real scrimmaging ; it is more like fenc- ing. Nor is there any of the wonderful throwing of human bodies which makes Judo and Jujitsu so thrilling. They are wildly exciting. Judo, according to Mr Barton-AVright, is the science of throwing by yielding and not by resist- ing, and is confined to standing wrestling. Mr Kano, he said, was the founder of that particular style, which he considers the most scientific and graceful of any style of wrestling, European or 184 To hack on p. 184. The audience leaving a wrestling match. To back on p. 186. Jujitsu — the grip.' JAPANESE WRESTLING Asiatic. The wonderful part about it is that weight and strength play such a minor part in it, whereas in European wrestling only men of tremendous physique have any chance. This, according to INIr Barton- Wright, is unknown in Japan. A man, if he wants to be considered a man, must be prepared to meet all comers. This is their idea of championship. As a matter of fact, the professional wrestlers in Japan are, as 1 have shown, enormous men. Jujitsu he explained to be the science of wrestling when on the ground, and one of the rules of this style is that a man is not considered down until he holds up his hands. There are various ways in which a man who under- stands Jujitsu can hold another man so that the least movement on his part will break or dislocate some limb. At a demonstration of Jujitsu there was a Japanese boy, only eighteen years old, and weighing only eight stone, who had issued a challenge to the world which none of the great wrestlers of Europe would accept. Even the lead- ing English pugilists, he declared, had refused to try their strength with him for fear of getting their necks broken. This sounded a little incredible, until one had seen the display of Jujitsu. It then resolved itself into the question whether Mr Tani was sufficiently conversant with boxing and the use of the foot to be able to come to close quarters 185 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN with a prize-fighter or a French kicker. If once he got to close quarters with them you could see that they would be at his mercy. As they would not know how to fall scientifically, they would run a first-class chance of getting their necks broken, not to mention the other parts of their body. I could not make out what was Kata and what was Jujitsu ; but Mr Kano's system of self-defence was founded on a minute knowledge of anatomy, combined with wonderful quickness of eye and hand, and wonder- ful presence of mind. One of the weakest points of a man's body is the foot. If a Jujitsu wrestler has caught hold of the other man's foot, he can break it like a rotten stick. There are numerous grips known to him ; if he can effect any of them, the whole of the leverage of the other man's body is at his disposal. Mr Yamamoto, who weighed fourteen stone, was tremendously powerful, and was himself one of the leading exponents of Jujitsu, kindly allowed Mr Tani to operate upon him. Mr Tani took him by the wrist and walked him off the stage, which is made of thick, soft Japanese mats, about twenty- four feet square, as easily as if he had been a child. With another grip he threw the big man over his head a dozen feet away, and then in a dozen other ways he threw him about as if he had been a boy of eight. The audience were breathless ; for several minutes they could not enjoy the mar- 186 I 1 To hack on p. 186. Jujitsii — The throw, and To back on p. 187. Jujitsu — breaking his fall. H '.I i< 11 JAPANESE WRESTLING vellously exciting display of science for fear that Mr Yamamoto's neck would be broken ; but Mr Yamamoto knew how to make himself into a ball, like a hedgehog, so as not to pitch on a vital part. You can see that if instead of being a trained Jujitsu man he had been a prize-fighter, accepting Mr Tani's challenge to meet all comers, each using his own method of attack, and had been flung about like that, his neck would have been broken in two minutes. The audience were very amused by JNlr Barton- Wright's statement that whereas in an English wrestling-match a man was very liable to get seriously hurt, the Japanese style was of such a nature that he might quote the case of a certain school in Japan, where, out of four thousand pupils who had studied " the wrestling," there was not a single case of accident. One of the principal reasons of the Japanese being such good wrestlers was that there was little " animal power " in Japan, which necessitated gi-eat manual labour, and, there- fore, increased the strength of the legs. Strengthen- ing the neck against throttling was another form of art with them. It took, he said, three months to strengthen their necks so that they could not be strangled. . . . Mr Yamamoto then submitted to be laid on his back, with his hands tied, and a pole placed across his throat. On either side of the pole three gentlemen held it rigidly, two stood on Mr Yamamoto, whilst two held his legs in 187 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN position, making ten altogether. At a given signal they pressed downward, with the one intention of strangling the man lying on his back ; but, within the space of twenty seconds, Mr Yamamoto was a free man, whilst the others looked on in amazement. Mr Yamamoto also stood against the wall and allowed several men to press a pole against his neck as hard as they could, and suddenly threw them down by exerting the muscles of his neck. I should have called the grips, with which Mr Tani threw Mr Yamamoto about, locks. When a Jujitsu man gets a lock on the arm or leg of his opponent, the slightest movement will dislocate or break the limb. An enormous German officer, a very soldierly, well set-up man, allowed himself to be experimented on, and proved absolutely helpless against IVIr Barton- Wright. Someone asked him if Jujitsu would help in the case of a violent drunken man who required about six men to hold him down. He replied that a lock could as easily be put on a drunken man as on a sober, to make him move as you like, and instanced the way in which big, powerful foreign sailors were handled by the Japanese police in Japanese ports. He said that the art of Judo and Jujitsu were not com- monly or indiscriminately taught in Japan. He knew people who had lived there thirty years, and had never seen anything of it. When he began to find out something about it, he 188 JAPANESE WRESTLING tried to persuade some of its professors to come over to England and appear on the platforms. They absolutely refused ; neither would they teach him the higher forms ; they were suspicious of his intentions, and they are punished severely if they let the knowledge of these sciences go to people who will use them for wrong purposes. They never wrestle for money, only for honour or trophies of no intrinsic value. I understood him to say that the matter was not in the hands of the Japanese Govermnent, but a system inaugurated by a Japanese gentleman, named Kano, who had pro- mulgated the knowledge without any fee, paying the expenses out of his own pocket, purely from philan- thropic motives. Mr Kano desired the orderly classes to have a means of checkmating the assaults of the violent class. Jujitsu is a really noble art of self-defence. I must confess that I never even heard of it when I was in Japan ; but I see now that it was some knowledge of this sort that made Japanese wrestling such a very dull affair. The wi'estlers were always afraid of giving the other wrestler a lock. Jujitsu and Judo are not mentioned in such mines of infonnation about Japan as Chamberlain's Tilings Japanese or Griffis' Mikado's Empire. When on the subject of wrestling and Jujitsu I ought to say something about the alhed subjects of fencing and quarterstafF, but it bores me to go 189 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN to fencing clubs, so I must rely once more upon Keeling. " Fencing," he says, "is a favourite exercise among all classes, even at the present day, and is practised to give proficiency in the use of the two- handed sword. Previous to commencing, the per- formers invariably salute each other with true Japanese ceremony, such as ' Will you do me the favour to teach me the art of fencing ? ' ' How can I, when I am about to have the pleasure of profiting by your superior knowledge ? ' At the same time they bow with their heads to the ground. After engaging each other and battering each other with untiring energy, the same cere- mony and politeness are repeated, and mutual thanks expressed. Each pass is accompanied by theatrical attitudes and expressive gestures ; each blow provokes from both sides passionate exclama- tions. In fencing, the head is protected by a strong mask, with iron bars over the face, and thick quilted curtains down the neck round the ears ; the body also has a cuirass of bamboo and leather, and the hips a sort of kilt of the same material. Notwithstanding all this armour, severe blows, unless warded, inflict considerable pain, and occasion loss of temper, which sometimes results in fierce hand-to-hand grappling ; in which case, the one who first tears the mask from his adversary is deemed the victor. 190 JAPANESE WRESTLING "There is also a kind of fencing for Japanese ladies. Their weapon is a lance, with a bent head, somewhat similar to a scythe. They carry it with the point toward the ground, and handle it, accord- ing to rules, in a series of attitudes, passes, and cadenced motions, which would furnish charming motives for a ballet." The Japanese have some uncanny knowledge about fencing as well as Jujitsu. 191 CHAPTER XV THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS The most the ordinary globe-scorcher has to say for Japanese theatres is that they please the Japanese — common Japanese. The good- class Japanese do not go to them. They go in for No-dances, which strike the scoffing European as very well-named ; not being dances at all, but a sort of religious play, with posturing and singing and declamation. After reading the book of Mr Osman Edwards, one of the few Englishmen who understand Japanese, and therefore have a reason- able chance of knowing what they are talking about, I am aware that I have not seen the white- label kind of No-dances, but only the inferior sort, which go on like the band at the Criterion while you eat your dinner. I should not appreciate the real article as a Japanese nobleman would. He does not expect to be amused by the No-dance ; he takes pleasure in the minute fidelity to tradition with which every word and gesture is given. The 192 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS utmost excitement I should get out of it would be in looking out for mistakes, as I used to check with my Bible the texts which Canon Webb- Peploe gave from memory in his sermons. To me it would be an awful penance to have sat, like Mr Edwards, through a performance of five religious plays and three " Mad-words," which is Japanese- English for farces. The five religious plays were called A High Priest in Exile , A Burden of Love, The Sick Wife, Benkci at Sea, and The Earth Spider. The three farces were Possession by Foxes, The Six Jizo, and The Owl-Priest. I have forgotten how long they took, but the poor Japanese used not to be satisfied unless their plays lasted the whole day and night ; and it required an Act of Parliament to limit them to the mere nine hours, which they take at present. But there is this great difference between the East and the West in theatre-going. The Japanese makes a picnic of it. He takes his family and his meals, and a charcoal stove to cook his tea or any other trifles, and his pipe. " During the performance," says Keeling, " everyone smokes, eats, and drinks ; criticisms are very audibly expressed ; conversation and chaff" are very general ; people come in and go out when they like ; and if the weather be hot, superfluous raiment is laid aside. On the stage the same nonchalance is apparent. If an actor be not word- 13 193 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN perfect, the prompter follows him about with a book, without the slightest attempt at disguise ; a stage carpenter, wanting a light for his pipe, does not hesitate to crawl in front of the actors and take one from the stage-candles ; men who are killed during the play are allowed to make their exit behind a piece of black cloth, boldly brought and held up by a boy ; and no hitch or accident ever justifies the drawing across of the curtain. If the actor perspires, a man will come out A\qth a cloth and wipe the perspiration while the actor is speaking. Applause takes the form of wild shrieks, most frequently the name of the actor ; dissent and disapprobation are invariably expressed by loud and long-continued chaffing and hooting. ' Taicho ' stands for our ' bravo,' ' bene.' " The floor of the theatre, where the poor people sit, is divided into little boxes like the divisions in a drawer for birds' eggs. One of these boxes only costs a trifle. Here he squats down with his family, and makes himself at home — literally. His children play and crawl along the divisions between the boxes, and on the stage itself between the acts ; and all sorts of hawkers and food-vendors wander along them. He smokes or eats or drinks, while his other senses are regaled with murders. Murders are the standing dish in Japanese plays. Less scenery is needed when there are plenty of murders. For still 194 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS poorer people there is a gallery worse than you get at the English Opera. There you pay a few pence to see the whole play, and can see one act for less than a penny if you are hard up. At a Japanese theatre you do not take off your hat, but your boots, which you leave outside the door in exchange for a wooden ticket. You can always tell how a piece is going by the number of shoes and clogs and sandals outside the door. If you lose your ticket, which is too large to go in your pocket — the Japanese put them down their sleeves — you have to wait till all the ticket-holders are accommodated before you can take your choice. Foreigners, when they are ignorant enough to be charged the price of a box for each seat, are allowed to keep their boots on, and chairs are brought for them from some store-room and placed in their box, which is in what we should call the dress-circle. The higher the seat, the higher the price, is the rule in a Japanese theatre. The boxes not having been constructed for chairs, or the weight of Europeans, threaten to collapse the whole time. The theatre is the only place where foreigners are not regarded as a theatrical performance themselves — the Japanese get so desperately interested in their plays. Mr Osman Edwards says that it is the sawing of the stringed instruments which does it, as the Scotch are thrilled by the bagpipes. It is hard for a foreigner not to laugh in the 195 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN wrong place. There are so many eccentricities, like the " This is a wall," in the Midsummers Nights Dream, As it is inconvenient, for instance, for a messenger to skid across the stage on his knees to a shogun, the respect is shown in his trousers, which trail half a yard behind his heels. The prompter and other stage attendants are dressed in black, and considered invisible, though they are always in evidence. You always know which actors are stars, because they are attended by imps carrying candles stuck at the ends of long bamboos. And you always know with what part of their face they are going to try and put on expression, because the candle is held in front of it. The orchestra, whose sawings and tummings are just as distracting to the play as the tune played on a frying-pan at a swarming of bees would be, are kept in a cage at one end of the stage. Mr Brownell says that their singing is something between the squealing of a pig and the wail of a lost soul. They really are most important. They are a Sophoclean chorus, whose philosophisings hint the denouement. If an actor has to change his clothes on the stage, a paper diving-bell is let down over him. When he is dead, a sheet is held in front of him while he walks off. The Greek plays, which are con- sidered the highest kind of training for future Prime Ministers in England, must have been the 196 To hack on p. 1 96, The cloakroom outside the theatre, where you leave your shoes, and To ha:k on p. j9; the street cobbler. M fl THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS dullest things on record, with their huge, hideous masks, and voices shouting through megaphones ; but the Japanese play runs them hard in one important particular. Until Madame Sada Yacco defied convention, men and women never acted in the same theatre. The Greeks had no women actors, nor had old English theatres ; but the Japanese go one better than the others, as Mr Edwards points out, for men are specially trained to take women's parts by wearing women's clothes all their lives, and being brought up like women, which makes them perfect in their parts in every- thing except the voice. But the voices of Japanese actors are so governed by convention that this does not signify. A child, for instance, on a Japanese stage, always has to scream, and everyone on the stage has to yell shrilly enough to drown the orchestra. There is one thing in which Japanese theatres excel — in making the blood flow. This kind of detail is kept true to life, which is strange where every- thing can be expressed by convention. The audience like their plays " bluggy." The posters of a really popular play look as if they had been pelted with bottles of red ink. The Japanese theatrical poster is superior to Nestle's Milk or Dewar's Whisky for covering blank walls. Blood- curdling incidents are printed in high colours on large paper shutters which are hung in rows all 197 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN over the front of the theatre, leaning forward Uke pictures. The Japanese divide their plays into comedies and histories, not comedies and tragedies. Japanese history was always sufficiently tragic to serve the purpose. Well might the Japanese of feudal days have exclaimed, " Happy is the nation that has no history." The only interest of a Japanese theatre for foreigners is as a dictionary of antiquities. If they want to understand Japanese customs and etiquette, they must go to the theatre ; they need not go to be amused, except in the wrong place. Japanese theatres rely more on costumes and pro- perties than scenery. But they have lightning changes in scenery, for they have revolving stages, so that the next scene is ready the moment the present scene is finished. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun. The ancient Greeks had their eccyclemata working on wheels ; but the philo-Jap must not claim that the Greeks took this idea from the Japanese, because everything is as old as the nephew of the sun in Japan. As a matter of fact, plays only came in three or four centuries ago, just in time for the Japanese to take the credit of having produced Shakespeare, as the Irish produced Kitchener. Japanese theatres have intervals, though they do not need them for scene-shifting — this is part of the picnic. Most Japanese theatres are submerged 198 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS in tea-houses. You do not even trouble to take a ticket at the box-office ; you order it with drinks and banquets at the tea-house, and spend the in- tervals in the tea-house. Tea-houses are the public-houses of Japan, and the Japanese spend half their lives in them. But, in spite of the name, the patrons are constantly inebriated as well as cheered. Sake-baka — a fool with sake — is a pro- verb in Japan. Getting drunk with sake does not make them feel jolly ; it drugs like opium, but its effiscts wear off surprisingly soon. When the sake- baka is put into his riksha, his head hangs over the back as if it was going to drop off*; but if the drive is a long one — and Tokyo is a city of magnificent distances— he will have recovered by the time he gets home, and the Japanese are not sufficiently civilised to have headaches. Sometimes, as at the house of the Miyako Odori at Kyoto, the theatre consists of nothing but the stage, the pit, and a tea-house ; the front and sides being given up to the stage, and a racquet-court gallery at the back to the tea-house. The poor people are packed like birds' eggs in the pit. I never saw a Japanese play that interested me. Madame Sada Yacco's performances in London were not real Japanese plays. The actors and their dresses, and the subjects of the play, were Japanese, but they were on foreign lines. They even had actresses on the same stage as actors at Notting Hill. 199 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN It was Netting Hill pushing the thin end of the wedge into Japan ; and it was delightful, because it was not purely Japanese. I have seen Danjuro, the Irving of Japan, often ; but his plays did not interest me, except to help me understand the brilliant designs on the backs of Japanese battle- dores. The first plays were written for marionettes — this may account for it. But the Japanese are so moved by them that some theatres have "tear- rooms," to which the women in the audience may retire when their feelings are too much for them. In his Heart of Japan, the best recent book upon the country, Mr Clarence Ludlow Brownell is an unsparing critic of the Japanese theatre. He says that the garments in Japanese plays conceal effec- tively all outline of the human form ; that the distorted pictures on fans are portraits of theatrical stars, which anyone familiar with the native theatre would recognise immediately. But he puts in a good word for Danjuro, and gives his real name, Horikoshi-Shu, and says that his ancestors have been actors for ten generations. He points out that, before 1887, the theatre was not respectable. In that year, Inouye, the minister for foreign affairs, gave his famous garden-party to elevate the stage, and got the Emperor to attend it. Prior to this, a Japanese gentleman could only go to the theatre in disguise. In those days, to show them 200 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS their places, actors were counted with the set of numerals reserved for beasts, Ippiki, Nihiki, Sam- biki, instead of Hitori, Kutari, and so on, which are the general numerals for human beings — a most ingenious classification. Mr Brownell says that a " half-minute's attempt to imitate the sounds that native actors produce would give a Westerner bronchitis. The throat is contracted, the veins swell, and the blood seems ready to burst from every pore in the tragedian's face. Then the eyes roll, individually and independently, one up, the other down, one to the east and the other to the west, or only one gyrates and the other rolls, until only the white shows. The iris disappears entirely. This is done especially when the eye-wriggler wishes to demonstrate that he is bold and bad. When you see him you will believe that he is. The bearing of the actors, cast for kings and queens, is comical. It brings to mind descriptions of the old miracle plays. To walk like ordinary mortals would not do for royalty or for personages of any sort. They must strut like a German recruit breaking in. It is something to remember the entrance of a Chinese Emperor as he comes down the aisle through the audience. At each step his foot rises quite to the level of his chin, while his revolving eyes appear to be two inches in diameter. All this seems childish enough to ruin the effect of the most excellent acting, but it does 201 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN not. In battle scenes, particularly, the exaggera- tion is extreme. Japanese actors die hard— on the stage. It is appalling to see how long they last. They stagger about, still slashing at each other, after they are shot as full of arrows as a porcupine is fuU of quills. The first arrow would have done for them anywhere, but in the theatre. Stage blood is over everything, but the audience delights in gory scenes, and the actors must be 'an uncon- scionable time a-dying.' Arms and legs are lopped off. The wounded roll about, making terrible grimaces ; and dummy limbs, appearing through the floor, twitch and jerk about the stage in a way not pleasant to weak nerves." Japanese audiences do not clap ; they shout the actor's name if they like him, and, if they do not, volley him with chaff. But Mr Brownell is harder still on Chinese plays. He says that when once a Chinese play is fairly started, it runs until the theatre is burnt down or the actors die of old age, which reminds one of Mr Frederick Upton's story of a stationmaster, named Brown, at a Kentish station, who tried to commit suicide. He had, for the moral improvement of the railway servants, been in the habit of sewing in lobelias every year such axioms as " Honesty is the best policy." They got tired of this, so they rooted out the lobelia seed and planted instead, in sage or some other strong growing plant, " Brown is a goose." ^02 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS He was so mortified that he determined to commit suicide, and lay down on the hne just before an express train was due. But the express was so long in coming that he died of starvation. You would expect a Japanese play to be bad, but popular with the gods from the way in which it is written. The most successful plays seldom bring their author more than a £50 note. Our actor- managers demand plays which are written down to their own personalities. A Japanese manager goes further ; he sends for a dramatist like you send for your tailor to measure you in Japan. He chooses the kind of play he wants, like a suit, and the dramatist measures him for it. When the play is cut out and tacked together, the manager, and the actors, and the man who writes the music, and everyone else connected with the theatre, suggest alterations, which are made. As the play is written down to the managers, actors, and audience, it is often a huge success ; and though the author is not likely to make £50 out of it, the chief actor is likely to make a hundred times as much out of it in a few weeks. Nobody is paid so well in Japan as a popular actor — not even a prime minister. The law of coinpensation comes in even in a Japanese theatre. There is a theatre at Kyoto where the actors are all women, who take the inen's parts even better than the men take women's parts. 203 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN But it is not so popular as the other theatres, because the Japanese play, like the English novel, depends for its success upon a flighty woman audience. The Japanese are nothing if they are not modern. Their popular actors have as great a fol- lowing as actors with well- cut trousers have on the Enghsh stage ; and the Japanese woman's admira- tion is worth having, because from time immemorial it has been the custom for an audience moved by enthusiasm to give substantial proofs of it, as I have mentioned elsewhere. When the wrestling championship is decided, the winner is pelted with the hats of everybody who is grand enough to have one. An attendant comes round and picks them up like bouquets, and the champion keeps them till their owners redeem them with handsome presents. Most foreigners enjoy the Miyako-Odori at Kyoto better than any other Japanese theatrical performance, as the Japanese do not have plays like the Mikado and the Geisha. It is not strictly a play ; it is more like the ballets at the Empire. It has scenery of a kind, hardly ten feet high, and poor. At the last performance we went to they had English scenery in honour of the presence of the Duke of Connaught ; one scene representing the Thames Embankment, and another the Crystal Palace. You felt like the man at a hotel out West, who asked the haughty Irisli waitress 204 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS whether he had been drinking tea or coffee. The main feature of both the Embankment and the Palace was a row of Japanese lanterns. When the curtains rose — there were three of them, because the stage occupied every side except that required by the tea-house — you saw a row of geisha girls tumming drums at the back of one side and another row twanging kotos and samisens at the back of the other side ; and that narrow strip of scenery which might, like the original skene of the Greeks, have been the wall of a tent, in front of you. From under the gallery on which you sat, the dancing geisha came running up, and the ballet began. I shall not describe it at length. I do not think 1 could. Its interest lies too deep for any know- ledge less than Mr Edwards's. It differs from other geisha performances in having scenery of a sort ; and is that much nearer IVIr Edwardes's (Mr George, not INIr Osman, this time) ballets in Leicester Square. Also there is the cherry motive running all through it as the maple pervades every- thing at the JNIaple Club at Shiba. But if I knew as much as Mr Edwards (Mr Osman, not JNIr George this time), I should devote a volume to it, for I beMeve that ancient tradition is more faith- fully observed here than in any performance which foreigners witness. To me it was only an exquisite and hyper- Oriental picture. I prefer to quote from Mr Edwards's description of a ballet which he saw 205 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN at the Miyako-Odori, because he has some know- ledge of the inwardness of it all : — " The next scene represented Hideyoshi's garden. It is no ordinary garden, whatever foreigners may think, who merely see in it an appropriate back- ground for the swaying flower-like bodies of the dancing-girls. It is a masterpiece of the celebrated aesthete, Kobori Enshu ; and the artful disposition of lake and lantern, pebble and pine, may symbolise, for all I know, a divine truth or philosophic pre- cept. My neighbour (a Buddhist neophyte, whose enthusiasm is tempered by erudition) points out to me the Moon- Washing Fountain, the Stone of Ecstatic Contemplation, and the Bridge of the Pillar of the Immortals ; but it seems that the exigencies of scenic space have so fatally curtailed the Mount facing the Moon that the exact meaning of the parabolic design is made obscure, if not heretical. It is not in my power to reassure him ; so I welcome with relief the reappearance of the dancers, who, bearing flowers in one hand and a fan in the other, step gaily out of the garden, and, posing, perching, pirouetting, flutter with deliberate grace through a maze of correlated motions. I do not dare to ask if their gestures point a moral : it is wiser to assume with Keats that ' beauty is truth, truth beauty ' ; and to follow with un- distracted eyes the solemn prettiness of these human dragon-flies. For their gauzy kimono 206 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS sleeves and red-pepper-coloured obi recall the Mdngs and hue of a giant dragon-fly, which dominates in its pride of national emblem the principal bridge over the Kamogawa. And, whether they poise flower on fan or fan on flower, or revolve with open fan extended behind their triple-tressed coiffure, they dart here and there with almost the unconscious automatic smoothness of bird and insect. Proximity destroys this illusion. Watched from the subjacent vantage of the floor, the features of these tiny coryphees are seen to wear that fixity of resolute attention which few children when engrossed in a performance are able to repress. The art of concealing art is hard to learn. Their elder sisters smile continually behind taiko and samisen, but the gravity of the childish troupe is more in keeping with the poet's retro- spective vision. T hope the stage-carpenter atoned for his unorthodox abbreviation of Enshu's lesson in landscape by the exquisite view of the monastery of Uji Bridge. Nestling in the lap of pine-forested hills, this ancient temple of Byodo-in has been for at least six hundred years the protective centre of vast tea-plantations, where is grown the finest tea for native taste, called Gyokuro, or Jewelled Dew. But Uji Bridge is famous also for its fire-flies, which on warm nights flash like living jewels beside the stream, to the joy of countless sightseers, eager to catch and cage them. Throughout the ensuing 207 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN dance many eyes were diverted from the geisha to the sparkling play of emerald motes across the mimic Ujigawa. This time the girls wore kerchiefs such as peasant women wear when, with heads thus guarded and skirts rolled upward to the knee, they toil among the tea-plants. Then, unfolding and waving the kerchiefs, while a soloist intoned a rhapsody in honour of 'the great Councillor, whose memory lives for ever in the fragrant sweet- ness of the Jewelled Dew,' they moved in pairs along the platform, alternately kneeling and rising, with arms extended or intertwined, their gradual retrocession signifying, as I learn, the reluctant withdrawal of summer. "Autumn succeeds. Momiji-Yama, or Maple Mountain, deeply mantled in myriads of reddening leaves, gives the cue to the now melancholy, almost stationary languor of gliding figures : no longer dragon-flies or humming-birds, they drift slowly, one by one, into tlie crimson gorge, and are lost among the maple-leaves. At this point the floral march of the seasons is abruptly broken, as if to forbid too hasty interpretation, by the fall of tri- colour curtains, richly embroidered in scarlet, blue, and gold, with Hideyoshi's crest, the large fan-like leaf of the Pawlonia Imperialis. " The five-storied pagoda of Omuro Gosho, out- lined in snow against the wintry landscape, signal- ises an ascent from temporal to eternal beauty. To 208 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS this monastic palace ex-INIikados came after abdica- tion ; it had no abbots but those of imperial blood. And the next scene, presenting the Daibutsu, or great Buddha of Hideyoshi, is elegantly illustra- tive of the Buddhist teaching of permanence in transition. " Resurrection — the recurrence of spring and the renovation of fame — crowns the final movement of this transcendental ballet. The Hideyoshi monu- ment, as it partly is and wholly shall be, rises tier above tier on heaven-scaling stairs, approached by temples and groves which will one day vie in splendour with the carven gateways, the gigantic crytomerias of Nikko. In a joyous finale the dancers pose, wreathed about the central summit of the monument, while cascades of red and green fii-e play on them fi-om the wings ; then, strewing the steps with cheiTy-blossom and waving provocative clusters in the faces of the spectators as they pass, the double stream of geisha flows back with grace- ful whirls and eddies between banks of deafening minstrelsy; the curtains rustle down, the fires flicker out ; the Miyako-odori is no more." It did not begin directly we got into the theatre. The managers of the tea-house were far too clever for that. Wishing to rake in all the foreigners, and knowing that every foreigner, when he gets home, will be asked if he has seen the Solemn Tea-Cere- mony, a performance of that was included in the 14 209 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN ticket. It was not, of course, given in full, or the foreigners in the audience would have left before the ballet began ; but it was a tolerable imitation, and, after all, the main thing about the Solemn Tea- Ceremony is that you drink, not tea, but tea- soup, which looks like pea-soup. The irresponsible foreigner makes it into water-ices. The expensive tea used in the process is bought in a powder. There is a thicker kind called koi-cha, and a thinner kind called usu-cha. The former is used in the earlier stage of the proceedings, the latter towards the end. The best account I know of the Solemn Tea- Ceremony is that in Mr Marcus B. Huish's Japan and its Art, based on that given in Mr Frank's Catalogue of the Ceramic Collection in the South Kensington Museum. " Two modes of conducting the ceremonies were observed — the winter and summer modes. In the former the garden was strewn with fir leaves, the guests retained their shoes, and the furnace for the kettle was a pit in the floor, filled with ashes. In the latter, the garden was decked with flowers, the guests took off their shoes, and a portable earthen- ware furnace (furo) was used. " The inside of the room was as plain as possible, though costly woods might be employed if the means of the host admitted it. The hours fixed for the invitations were 4 to 6 a.m., noon, or 6 p.m. 210 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS The guests, assembling in a pavilion (machi-ai) in the garden, announce their arrival by striking on a wooden tablet or bell, when the host himself or a servant appears to conduct them into the chamber. The entrance being only three feet square, the host kneels and lets the guests creep in before him. They being seated in a semicircle, the host goes to the door of the side-room in which the utensils are kept, saying : ' I am very glad you have come, and thank you much. I now go to make up the fire.' He then brings in a basket (sumi-tori) containing charcoal in pieces of a prescribed length, a brush (mitsu-ba) made of three feathers, a pair of tongs (hibashi), the stand of the kettle (kama-shiki), iron handles for the kettle, a lacquer box containing incense (kobako) and some paper. He again leaves the chamber to bring in a vessel with ashes (hai-ki) and its spoon. He then makes up the fire and burns incense, to overpower the smell of the charcoal. While he is thus occupied, the guests beg to be allowed to inspect the incense-box, generally an object of value, which passes from hand to hand, and the last guest returns it to the host. " This closes the first part of the ceremony, and both host and guests withdraw. The second part commences with eating, and, as it is a rule that nothing should be left, the guests carry off, wrapped up in paper, any fragments that remain. The 211 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN utensils used in this part of the ceremony are as follows : — "1. An iron kettle (kama) with a copper or iron lid, resting on a stand (kama-shiki). " 2. A table or stand (daisu) of mulberry wood, two feet high. " 3. Two tea-jars (cha-ire) containing the fine powdered tea, and enclosed in bags of brocade. " 4. A vessel containing fresh water (mizu-sachi), which is placed under the daisu. "5. A tea-bowl of porcelain or earthenware (cha- wan), or, when of large size, temmoku, simple in form, but remarkable for its antiquity or historical associations. " Besides these, there is a bamboo whisk (cha-seu) ; a silk cloth (fukusa), usually purple, for wiping the utensils ; a spoon (chashaka), to take the tea out of the cha-ire ; and a water-ladle (shaku). All these objects are brought in singly by the host in their prescribed order. " After solemn salutations and obeisances the utensils are wiped, and some of the powdered tea is placed in the tea-bowl, hot water is poured on it, and the whole is vigorously stirred with the whisk until it looks like thin spinach ; a boy then carries the bowl to the chief guest, from whom it passes round once more, that the guests may admire it. The utensils are then washed by the host, and the ceremony is at an end." 212 THEATRES WITHOUT SEATS The Solemn Tea-Ceremony was invented by a clever priest to cure a shogun of the Minamoto family of getting drunk. This might be called the origin of teetotalism. It was established about the same time as the Dominican and Franciscarj orders — it was an age of reforms. It became such a craze that Yoshimasa in the fifteenth century resigned the shogunate in order to be able to give more time to it. And a much greater shogun, Hideyoshi, gave a party to which everyone, who practised it, was invited. His Master of Tea- Ceremonies, Sen-no-ri-Kyu, is the authority for its rules, like the M.C.C. at cricket. They are very elaborate, but the one the European remembers best is that the room must be nine feet square — four and a half mats. As Sen-no-ri-Kyu had the pre- sumptuousness to use his unique knowledge of curios to enrich himself, Hideyoshi crucified him. 213 CHAPTER XVI THE SMART SET IN JAPAN The smart set in Japan does not know its own mind. The Japanese are arrogant enough to prefer their own institutions to those of other countries ; at the same time, they wish to join the Great Powers Club, for which they have to accept the fashions of the hated West. The Japanese in their hearts do hate the West, but they are sharp enough to see that no nation can be a first-class power which does not wear trousers. So there are two " smart sets " in Japan — the breeched and the unbreeched ; and as there are many Japanese who practise both rehgions, there are many who live both Uves. The official " smart set," which embraces am- bassadors and cabinet ministers and politicians and civil servants generally, wear trousers in public. But follow the immaculate field-marshal or pompous courtier home ; and inside of five minutes you will find him, minus breeches or knee-breeches, com- fortably enveloped in a kimono, and most likely 214 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN squatting on the floor. The Japanese who do wear European dress only flaunt it in public ; they are as anxious to be shelled as a stout woman in corsets. In Japan the tailor makes the woman. The Japanese in a top hat or a cocked hat treats his wife in a bonnet and boots as his better half; he lets her walk beside him, and pays her all sorts of lofty compliments ; though there are no doors to hold open, and it is no use offering her a chair. But once back in kimonos and clogs, the new order changeth, giving place to the old. He is the lord of creation, and she is the Asiatic wife, who follows him, like a maid, in the street ; mends and washes his clothes ; wakes him in the morning, and makes a cup of tea for him before he leaves his august bed on the floor ; and generally plays the devoted slave to him and his father and his mother and any elder brothers he may have about the house, and their wives. It is a comfort that none of his brothers can make him divorce her ; his father or mother can, and often do, if she is unsympathetic as a domestic. The houses of the smart set also are of two kinds — both town houses. The noblemen's seats in the castle-towns need not be counted ; they are chiefly used for sulking-in by those who are out of touch with the present court. One sort of town house is more or less like the dwelling-house which was the centre of the old daimio's yashiki ; the other is 215 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN more or less in the style of a wealthy man's villa in the suburbs of Boston. The native sort con- tain hardly any furniture at all, as the strict Japanese sit on the floor, if they can be said to have even a floor, for they do without boards or carpet on the strength of the mats, an inch or two thick, which furnish the aesthete with so much conversation. These, a yard wide and two yards long, are made of very fine straw. You gauge a man's taste for luxuriousness by his mats just as you give the dimensions of his house in mats instead of square feet, which is really rather like measuring a bedroom by the number of half-testers it would contain if they were packed as close as they would go. In the guest-room to which foreigners are admitted, the furniture is a vanishing quantity, confined to a kakemono hanging up in the Toko- noma, with a vase in front of it, containing a sprig or two of a flowering tree ; a chigaidana, or cabinet, built at ridiculous and severely picturesque angles in the recess beside it ; and a sword rack, though no swords have been worn by civilians for thirty years. There may be a valuable low screen which a man could straddle over, even a table a foot high ; and a fire-box for warming the fingers — the hihachi of literature; but these would most likely only be brought in when they were required. When you go into a cottage in England they often send in next door for a chair. When you go into a guest 216 THE SMAKT SET IN JAPAN chamber in Japan, a futon, or flat princess cushion, is brought for each visitor to squat on ; a fire-box is brought for each to warm the tips of his fingers ; a smaller fire-box, with a pipe-drawer attached, for him to have a smoke out of a pipe the size of a monkey-nut ; and an afternoon tea-table at any hour of the morning, noon, or night. Japanese tea-tables may be round, or square, or octagonal ; they are sure to have a rim hke a tray, and to be only a foot high ; and they stand, not on legs, but on boxes without bottoms. When you call upon a proud nobleman, he may, as a stiff compliment, have the first lot of tea, which looks as innocent of tea as it is of milk and sugar, brought in by his wife. The wife will withdraw, but the tea-nuisance will go on as long as you are there ; the Japanese theory being that you never cease drinking tea, except when it gets cool. And this is as far as most foreigners get. The bedroom arrangements are marked by even greater simplicity. The strict Japanese have no bedrooms during the day ; the beds, being only quilts, are rolled up and hidden. The boxes which open the wrong way, and do duty as wardrobes, take refuge behind sliding doors ; and the paper shutters which are used to divide the house into as many bedrooms as are required are removed to allow the whole house to be aired. The Japanese carries the ventilation craze to such a degree as to almost kill the foreigner 217 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN with draughts. But pulmonary diseases were practically unknown among the natives until they gave up their system of draughts. I suppose any- body who could not stand this combination of east wind and frost, and an inch of draught under the | door, used to die at once, and that survival in Japan , is now no longer confined to the fittest. The i survival of the unfit is assuming alarming dimen- ! sions ; the Japanese of to-day wear such hats and , such comforters and such flannel shirts in combina- tion with their native dress ; whereas they used < never to exceed a leather overcoat. j The Tokonoma is that recess about four feet i long and a few inches wide, with a dais a few inches j high, on which, in theory, the Mikado would sleep, ■ if he suddenly knocked at the door and asked for ; a night's lodging. It represents an alcove large j enouffh to contain his bed. In a land where i etiquette and allegory play such a part as they do i in Japan, even the Mikado's bed cannot be abolished. , The chigaidana may represent his wardrobe — at ■ any rate, a kakemono is kept hung up in the ' Tokonoma for his benefit, and a vase of tree flowers ! in his honour. I much prefer this kind of noble- j man's house to the new style, with its staring \ foreign carpet, dyed with harsh aniline dyes, and ' its hideous and rubbishy foreign furniture. The ; one shows the Japanese's good taste, the other shows his limitations. 218 ^li THE SMART SET IN JAPAN In matters of taste the Japanese never can grasp the Western standpoint. The worse the colour, the more worthless the material, the better they like it ; though the Chinese, who despise foreign things for their own use, provide their shops for Western customers with admirably chosen articles. When a Japanese aristocrat furnishes his house in foreign style, he even crowds his rooms. There is one exception to the Japanese incapacity for imitating foreign fashions. The wealthier Japanese who spend a long time in England or America often dress in the height of English fashion ; but though they are slaves to the crease of the British trouser and the colour of the British tie, they are honourably conservative in their dissipations. No foreign hell was ever popular in Japan except a public-house, and the Japanese do not get drunk in that, though they quite grasp the merits of champagne and whisky ; they get drunk in their own way, off their own sake, which has the advantage of working off quickly and leaving no headache behind it — to a Japanese. But when it comes to wines and spirits it gives one a headache to think of the mixture that might underlie the best-known label in Japan ! There are three kinds of Japanese nobles. The old daimio, or feudal prince of the Tokugawa regime, received foreign titles in exchange for their territorial titles ; the old Kuge, or court nobles, 219 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN who had shared the puppet existence of the Mikado for so many centuries, received equivalent titles, and were treated with peculiar honour ; they were on the winning side, and there have since been created a number of new court nobles selected for their ability to govern the country, and rewarded with titles. From these three the smart set of to-day is drawn. Success in commerce is not recognised in Japan, where the merchant in theory is lower than the labourer, and only one degree above the outcast. No one has a word to say on behalf of the Japanese merchant. He has not, as in China, his position with the foreigner to fall back upon, for the foreigner would almost as soon do business with a burglar. Those who only know the Court would imagine that Japan was far more foreignised than it is. The principal politicians and a few great noblemen who live in foreign houses use foreign furniture and give dinner-parties in the foreign style, and eat with knives and forks, and sit in chairs, and dress like Christians on Sunday. Silk hats and frock-coats are de rigueur at the Emperor's garden parties, of which he has two, at least, every year — a cherry-blossom party and a chrysanthemum party. The guests are invited to see the Emperor's cherry- blossom and the Emperor's chrysanthemum-blossom at their very best. In the latter, at any rate, the Imperial gardens are unequalled. Mr F. H. 220 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN Balfour, when he was present at one of these parties, saw one plant with over seven hundred huge blossoms on it. Guests are drawn up in lines, down which the Emperor passes. A few, including the principal foreign representatives, are presented to him, and then the Emperor and the Princes of the blood royal and the Empress and the Court ladies sit down to a champagne lunch. Less exalted people have to take their lunch standing. The foreign foods and wines are excellent. In Tokyo and Yokohama the foreignisers even have meat on their tables, but in other places fish makes the meal, and fowls are the limit. I have never been able to find out if any Japanese are smart enough to eat bread regularly when they are by themselves. Boiled rice is the bread of Japan. You can never get bread away from the Settlements. Those who have been in Japan since I have tell me that the Court ladies now dance a great deal ; but in my day for a Japanese lady to waltz round with a man to whom she had only been introduced a minute before would have produced Harakiri. They left the dancing to the foreigners, but they were always good at suppers. At a ball I went to, one of the prettiest young Japanese Court ladies went in a very smart French ball-dress, and with very smart French slippers on her dear little brown feet, but you could see that her foot was brown, because she had 221 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN not realised stockings. In those days it had not been recognised as the law of the Medes and Persians that no one in European dress should sit down till he knew how to use a chair. A Japanese of very high rank was sitting on the floor in the supper-room, endeavouring to negotiate a chicken without recognising knife and fork. This could not happen nowadays any more than the exhibition which greeted my wife when she went to a newly- established hosier to buy pearl buttons for my white silk waistcoats. Japanese pearl buttons part with their shanks as easily as their owners part with their wives. It was an ambitious shop ; it had a counter, for which native shops always use the floor. The hosier got up on the counter to reach the box of buttons, which was in a pigeon-hole near the ceiling. He was an independent sort of man, who wore European clothes, but dressed himself entirely from his own stock. On that occasion he wore a white shirt, a high collar, a blue satin tie, a Paris diamond pin, a pair of braces, and a pair of scarlet socks — red socks were the rage in Japan. He considered himself faultlessly dressed ; and my wife came away without the buttons. Even in my day the Japanese who aspired to high diplomatic and political posts used to practise using chairs and knives and forks, and they succeeded a great deal better than I did when I tried to eat rice with chop-sticks and sit on my heels. One day 1 was 222 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN out in Tokyo with the foreman of the Japanese pubhsher who was printing a book for me. He sauced his conversation with Enghsh which he had learned with the rudiments of Christianity, and was therefore of some use as a guide, and the firm looked upon me as a tutor who was giving him lessons in English gratis. He had imbibed some religious instruction also ; for it was he who, meaning to imply that his little boy was dead, said that he had gone to hell. Somewhere far beyond the Nihombashi, which is regarded as the centre of Japan, and is very much the heart of native Tokyo, we came upon a huge restaurant conducted in the foreign style, but there were no foreigners, only crowds of Japanese sitting up at cafe-tables on Austrian cane-chairs, eating European dishes with knives and forks. " What is all this ? " I asked ; and learned that this was where the Japanese who meant to represent their country before foreigners learnt to eat like Christians. It was a sort of university of manners, and I can fully beheve that it had its examinations and its degrees like the University of Tokyo, which was called the Daigaku, or Greater Learning. It was rather like the idea of eating your dinners at the Temple. The smart Japanese with European pretensions go in chiefly for dinner-parties. They cannot give afternoon teas, because in a country where the teas 223 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN go on all day long, one would never know which was the afternoon tea. A busy Japanese household may have a hundred teas a day ; and as the price of tea at a restaurant is three halfpence for five cups (which is given as a present to the servant, because the tea is not worth charging for), the com- pliment would be slight. If you have much to do with the Japanese in their own houses, you feel inclined to wear a card round your neck, like the blind men use in London — " Tea poisons me ! " because whenever you have to look down, there is a servant kneeling before you with the Honourable Tea, O-cha. But the Japanese can give dinner-parties. I suppose the host has a foreigner in to teach him, just as a London debutante before she is presented at Court learns how to curtsey and move backwards without tumbling over her train. However they manage it, the food and wines are always very good, and the dinner served in perfect form — the Japanese are wonderfully quick in picking up etiquette. It is at dinner-parties more than anywhere else that you meet Japanese ladies. There is no occasion for their husbands to be jealous, because they can hardly ever talk any English. You go through your dinner as if you were dining at a restaurant with ghosts ; though after dinner there are sure to be some Japanese gentlemen speaking English well, and embarrassingly attentive. The Japanese dinner- 224 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN party fills you with admiration for their savoir-faire and dignity. I asked a Japanese gentleman if wearing Euro- pean clothes and playing the European had any effect upon the player. He told me, not so boldly as Mr Basil Hall Chamberlain puts it in Things Japanese, that the ladies were treated with more deference, which he thought was a good thing. Though a man of high family, and a very patriotic Japanese, he did not think it necessary for Japanese ladies to remain under their almost menial feudal disabilities. But there was one very bad effect, he said. The smart young man who tried to be as European as possible generally began with dis- regarding the rather oppressive family discipline of Japan. The Japanese ideal for the son is that he should be a cipher saying his prayers. He has to consider himself of no consideration, and to ap- proach his earthly father with the same servility as a Christian approaches his Heavenly Father^—" I have left undone that which I ought to have done. I am a miserable sinner, and I am not worthy to be called thy son." He does not marry a woman to be his wife, but her mother-in-law's maid ; and if she is the prettiest and most tempting creature in the land, he may be required to divorce her, because she lets his parent's sake get cold. The first European idea these depraved young men imbibe is a distaste for the filial relation as 15 225 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN prescribed by Japanese moralists. Even now the smart Japanese house-father — house-master is the actual phrase, and he is unpleasantly like the house-master of a public school in his goings-on- occupies a position almost analogous to that of the Roman house-father ; the genial tyrant who gave us our word "paterfamilias." His word is absolute in his house, and his Spartan character may be gathered from two facts mentioned by Consul Daigoro Goh in the admirable address on the family relations in Japan which he delivered before the Japan Society. The Japanese child calls its father "gempu" and its mother "jibo"; which mean "strict father" and "benevolent mother": and Mr Goh quoted a Japanese boy who classified the Japanese father as one of the " Four Fearful Things of the World "— " Earthquake, Thunder, Conflag- ration, and Father " ! But there were checks, Mr Goh naively informed his audience, on the brutality of a Japanese father. The flrst controlling power, he said amid the smiles of his audience, was that of his ancestors ; the second that of his relatives ; the third that of society ; and, last of all, that of the law. When a Japanese father is cruel to his children, his neighbours do not sympathise with his children, but with his ancestors. It is considered a disgrace to them if the children are ill-treated or neglected, because this is not keeping the ancestral name in honour. The social control seemed to lie 226 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN in the fact that the father is afraid of being called "a fiend-like parent," which is worse than our word " bully." In cases of trouble between parents and children, it is quite usual for relatives to hold a family council and interfere ; and, finally, there are certain ancient Roman privileges which the Japanese house-master does not enjoy, such as physical cruelty, infanticide, and manslaughter generally. But the Japanese father and the Euro- pean son and daughter have different ideas about the worst form of cruelty. In Japan it is horribly cruel not to send a child to school, and you are very neglectful if you do not settle for your children whom they are to marry. " They might not get married at all," says the Japanese sage — a disgrace too awful to contemplate. Like the Roman father, the Japanese performs the sacrifices to the Lares and Penates— these eternal ancestors. The Japanese, whether they belong to the smart set or not, are desperately aristocratic. They have primogeniture with such a vengeance that not only does the eldest son succeed to all the property, but it is a distinct irregularity on the part of his brothers to wish to set up separate establishments, even at the expense of their own earnings. They are expected to stay under his roof, and obey him like a father. All this is Chinese, and it has only been the custom in Japan for thirteen hundred years. The lower 227 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN classes, in their ignorance of imported etiquette, have to do without it. The head of a house, whether he is father or eldest brother, is expected to hand on the property and reputation of the family undiminished to his successor. If the eldest brother is wild or incapable, the inheritance is handed on to the brother who will be the greatest credit to the family. The most original thing in Japanese smart society is the mother-in-law. She acts up to her reputation of keeping things lively, but it is not for her son- in-law, nor does she bring the stock accusations. She is much more likely to blame her daughter-in- law for conjugal fidelity than infidelity ; for if that wicked woman is devoted to her husband, she cannot devote sufficient attention to her duties as lady's-maid to his mother. A woman in the smart set in Japan does not marry for a husband, but to be unpaid servant to his family. No wonder that they make it a disgrace for a woman not to marry ; for, without some moral suasion, they never would marry in a land where immorality can be a virtue. Perhaps the parents choose for a girl, because she would take her time if they did not. You may resist a parent's choice, but it is bad form to marry against a parent's will, and you are not allowed to join in family worship if you elope. That seems to be a deterrent in Japan. The other way on might 228 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN be more effective in England. But it makes a difference if you belong to a country where every woman marries as a matter of course. The Japanese are so economical that their economy extends even to husbands. They make enough to go all round by divorcing one woman out of every three who are married ; that is the literal percentage of divorces. The daughters in a really smart Japanese household have a very fine trousseau, but receive no portion of the family fortune, unless there is no son, in which case an unhappy male being is introduced into the household to marry the heiress, and is treated as a wife. It is he who plays the lady's- maid, and may be discharged like a cab for no other reason than that he is not wanted any longer. The Japanese carries his frank decency even into mourning, for he puts on mourning for so long, and abstains from sexual relations for a third of the period. This is real mortification of the flesh. AVhen a Japanese man of property dies, the younger children receive nothing but personal keepsakes ; the eldest son takes the whole of the property, but he is bound to support the others, unless they make money and start separate establishments. One of the favourite instances of degeneration which strict Japanese quote is the growing tendency to give daughters dowries and leave legacies to tlie younger children. This is considered very bad form. Japanese girls are also disgracing themselves 229 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN by declining to marry at seventeen, and there is nothing they consider so immoral as the Christian marriage service, in which the man is exhorted to forget his father and mother and cleave to his wife. This is sheer vice in a country where it is virtuous for a woman to sell herself into prostitution, and give her parents the money if they need it. Christianity can never become the religion of Japan till the marriage service is expunged. The Japanese Empress wears very pretty French dresses and hats, and weai's them well. Her ladies dress to match her, but do not match their dresses. The Japanese female figure goes in and out at the wrong places — it has been said that they really look better in German dresses, which have no particular fit ; but the Empress has a good foreign figure, which was always most displeasing to her step-mother-in-law, the Dowager Empress — a lady with the pristine virtues. First among the reforming influences of Japan comes the Rokumeikwan, or Nobles' Club, in the castle of Tokyo. This is the property of a few noblemen like the Marquis Nabeshima, who founded it as a mixed club for foreign gentlemen and Japanese aristocrats, so that Japanese going to foreign clubs might know the etiquette. A Japanese will die for etiquette. It is a very well appointed club. All the leading foreign newspapers and reviews are there; the food arrangements are good ; and it has billiard- 230 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN tables and other club accessories. I remember one winter afternoon being introduced to a benign- looking old Japanese gentleman who wore fairly good English clothes, and spoke fairly good English, and exchanged the usual club small-talk with me. When he left the room to play a game of billiards, the Englishman who had introduced us said, " That man was formerly the Daimio of B ; he had an army and a prime minister, and ruled as many subjects, and very likely as many acres, as the Queen of Holland. When he went a journey it was in a closed kago, so that no profane eyes should light on him ; and if you did not make yourself scarce or kow-tow when his kago passed, the samurai of his army used their long swords on you, and the incident was not worth taking to the courts. That's the man who asked you to take a vermouth cock- tail, and he is now one of the few Japanese who really meet foreigners on their own ground." In my time there was no Japanese lady who did this with complete success, except the beautiful Countess Kuroda, who led the foreignising section of Japanese Society ; her husband being one of the most prom- inent politicians in Japan. She caught the spirit of foreign entertaining from the first. She was essentially the great lady, by position, birth, beauty, and manners, and always allowed herself the privi- leges allowed to Western ladies. She was an exception, it is true ; but she would have been an 231 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN exceptional woman anywhere. She received foreign gentlemen as well as foreign ladies, but she retained her Japaneseness none the less. She received at any hour, even early in the morning, and she went through the form of herself bringing tea to her guests the first time it was offered to them. She was Japanese enough for them to be offered relays of tea the whole time they were there. A favourite form of entertaining a guest in a smart Japanese household is to bring the artistic treasures from the "godown" one by one. A whole staff of servants carry them wrapped up in innumerable green cotton or green silk cloths, according to the delicacy of the article. The cloths are knotted round them as the English workman's wife knots her handkerchief round the basin which contains her husband's dinner ; and as soon as the article has been sufficiently admired, the servants tie it up again while the guest is admiring the next piece. You have to admire everything ; the sin- cerity of your tone is graduated to express how much or how little you care for it. In the best Japanese houses only one object of art at a time decorates each room, however many the family possesses. The rest are kept in the " godown " or fire-proof strong-room. They are changed weekly ; but a Japanese would no more think of having two specimens of an article out than he would of wear- ing two hats at the same time. 232 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN What are the amusements of the Japanese smart set? They are for men only, judged from the giddy Western standpoint. A lady has no carriage, because nobody who is not a cabinet minister at least keeps a horse. She can, it is true, be pulled about in a perambulator (called in Japan jinriksha), but she is not expected to wish it, except as a means of getting somewhere. She does not, like the brazen-faced foreign ladies, drive just to take the air in Cherry Street, beside the finest piece of the Castle of Tokyo ; and there is very little she is ever taken to see, except a flower blossoming at its best, or the maples turning crimson in autumn. She is not encouraged to pay calls ; in fact, in the Onna Dai Gaku, which is the moral code for women, she is particularly warned against being regular in paying calls or going to church, i.e., temples. Being religious is regarded as a sign of flightiness in Japanese women. They got this idea from the Chinese, who had it from Confucius. Some- times as a great treat they are taken on a fishing excursion, but this is on a sort of house-boat, into which no men are admitted except their relations. Consul Daigoro Goh does not think that Japanese women have been the victims of this Oriental exclusiveness for more than the thirteen centuries alluded to above. They do go, of course, to the theatre ; but though ordinary females go a great deal, and duly fall in love with the actors, well-bred 33 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN women are not expected to go until they are old and ugly, and there, too, they are in a box with no men but their relations. They do call on each other, and take more tea together than would be considered credible in any other country. They must have surprisingly little to talk about, unless their husbands keep mistresses in their homes, which is no longer countenanced by law, though it must have been a perfect godsend for conversation, with the limited horizon of a Japanese woman. It has often struck me that the only really happy moment in the Japanese woman's day must be when she is talking to her servants, who are allowed a good deal of liberty in entering into conversations. The well-bred Japanese woman is expected to find enough to do in attending to her children, and in giving them hints how not to offend their father's sense of rectitude, and in superintending the work of her servants, which in theory is an honour she only surrenders to them on account of physical weakness. It is her privilege to perform every kind of menial service for her husband. Any odd time she fills up in actually doing things for the husband, such as making his clothes ; but the wife of the Japanese dude is probably not allowed this honour, though his attempts at European clothes often look as if she had been. The question of what a daughter should do in a 234 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN smart household does not arise, for she goes on being educated until she is married, and the wonder is that any Japanese or Chinese ever ceases going to school. They have so much to learn, though anyone who can learn his alphabet and learn to read in Japan ought to find everything else easy. Learning the etiquette of arranging flowers so as to express sentiments and allegories would last most Europeans a lifetime. JMusic, until recently at anyrate, was hardly thought proper for a lady to know. I am speaking of the upper classes, of course ; a girl of the lower classes can submit to the degradation of knowing something of music. But how does the smart young man amuse himself ? One might have thought that foreign music would have had its attractions, but it is not so ; though, once upon a time, an opera company drew crowded houses, because the Japanese mistook its performances for broad farce. He does not care for foreign theatrical companies ; he has no music-halls ; and he has a positive prejudice against foreign courtesans, though courtesans enter more into the everyday life of the nation in Japan than any other country under heaven. Without doubt, the principal amusement of the man of the Japanese smart set is entertaining himself with women of pleasure and geisha or singing-women — who are not necessarily immoral. For the former he goes 235 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN to the local Yoshiwara, or pleasure quarter — a place shut in with walls and gates, where they are com- pelled to reside. The fantastic Oriental beauty of the gardens and the buildings is difficult to exaggerate. One can get everything that tickles the five senses there ; and the establishments are remarkably orderly and well kept, because they are regarded as part of the everyday life of the country, and not regarded as abandoned to vice. The geisha are mostly attached to some famous tea-house. The Japanese does not hurry through his dinner or miss the first act when he wants to see a performance. He does not go to the theatre — the theatre goes to him. He orders the best dinner he can, according to his hghts, at his favourite tea-house, and a performance of geisha to accom- pany it. They do not begin till he has taken the edge off his appetite, and they adapt themselves to his intervals. They sit quite close to him, so he has all the pleasures of the green-room in addition to the pleasure of the performance ; and he has the pauses between the acts, just when he pleases, and introductions to the actresses as a matter of course, without offering diamonds or hanging round the stage-door. When I say actresses, I am misleading the reader. The Japanese dude does not go in for actresses ; he goes in for singing-girls, who also dance^ — ^with everything but their feet. In Japan they reserve 2S6 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN actresses for religious performances, such as those which are very appropriately named " No-dances " ; and the dude does not go to the theatre, except, it may be, to Danjuro's. He prefers geisha and dancing. In Tokyo he goes a little to the Rokumeikwan, or Noblemen's Club. If he plays games at all, except billiards and cards, they are children's games, and he is too dignified to play them in public. He is, in fact, an Oriental at games ; and the want of good horses in Japan has prevented him from cultivating the only active sport in which the East meets the AYest — polo. He does not hunt ; he does not, as a class, shoot ; and though he fishes and catches fish, it is not with tackle that would qualify him for an anglers' club in America. He is a splendid fighter, and brilliant at anything that touches engineering or science ; but the fact is that he makes no profession of games like the Anglo-Saxon nations : he seeks his relaxation in civilised editions of the harem. In Japan an aristocratic dude is not such a fool as he looks, or as other dudes mostly are. Being unintelligent is not part of his swagger, as it is with the same class here. There was a lord of many acres at Oxford with me, who spent his whole time in trying to be taken for a fool — with considerable success, and yet he was no fool ; and if he had gone to Balliol, where debating societies were fashionable, 237 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN he might have been in the Cabinet by this time. But the race for Japan to take her place among the Powers is so keen that no Japanese can afford to be thought a fool. Nor does the fit of his frock- coat, or the shininess of his hat, ehminate in the Japanese the artistic cravings with which he was born. He will still go great distances to see a particularly fine peony blossom, or the iris beds at Horikiri, when every head is in bloom ; he will still go back half a dozen times to look at some old kakemono by a famous master, if he has not been able to understand some particular motive in it ; and yet the artist may have dashed it off in a few strokes. In Japan you are not considered an artist if you have to take pains or time over a picture ; and the kakemonos have to be painted so as to command admiration as you unroll them. Nowadays the dude is very apt to go into politics as the best avenue to promotion, in spite of the atmosphere of deadlock in which they are im- mersed ; for the Cabinet consists of the leaders of the great clans, like Satsuma and Choshiu, and the Diet is full of people who resent the domination of the clans. The clans have the best of it, because the Diet sits for so few months ; while the Cabinet has a free hand for most of the year, and takes no more notice of want-of-confidence votes than flies. Another avenue for the smart young man is the army. 238 THE SMART SET IN JAPAN The oddest thing about the Japanese smart set is that they do not seem to have any particular hour for getting up or any stated breakfast. They just happen to leave their beds, and begin the eternal tea-supping. The idea of taking exercise never occurs to the Japanese. They ask scornfully what fun an English gentleman can find in going out to sweat and get in a mess ; though all Japanese are very enduring when they are driven to it. They do not use European servants, because they cost so much, and the best Japanese servants only cost about six shillings a month. You can buy the most beautiful " wife " in the market for £5 a month, and she will be cook and housemaid as well. A Japanese swell with £1000 a year is rolling in money. There is only one man in Japan whom an American would call rich. He owns copper mines, which are wanted for electric fittings, and electricity is the rising sun of Japan. But the Japanese can live in good style on surprisingly little. The only thing in which they are really extravagant is in the parties they give at tea-houses, with the best geisha girls to perform. There their extravagance has no bounds. Japanese have been known to spend as n^uch on one party of this kind as they spend in the entire year on their homes. But it is not possible to generalise even about the smart set, for there is a disturbing element : the ministerial aristocracy practise Western ideas 239 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN so as to meet foreigners on equal ground. The old-fashioned aristocracy, especially the Daimio, who have been changed from feudal princes with armies into puppets with foreign titles, are hostile to the introduction of foreign ideas. I must conclude with a word of apology to the Japanese, the most remarkable people in the history of human progress. I have not been trying to make fun of them, but to amuse my readers with contrasts. Even the vagaries of their smart set achieve an end. Their playing at European usages enables them to be at their ease before foreigners when they are called upon to represent their country in its Embassies and Cabinet. They show much cleverness, tact, and dignity in acquiring at a minute's notice customs which, for the most part, are diametrically opposed to all their notions of good sense, and even decency. 240 CHAPTER XVII TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES The ancient Greek, the fifteenth- century Florentine, the modern Japanese — these are the people whom the gods have loved and who have died young because they never grow old, inside. A study of the three shows that one can have a reliction inextricably interwoven with one's everyday life without being in the least religious in our sense of the word. The Japanese is the best of the three. The philosophy of the ancient Greek had no such moral effect upon the people at large as " the Way of the Gods " has on the Japanese people, who are, at any rate, models of filial piety, loyalty, and patriotism. The Japanese pays less respect to his gods than he does to his parents. He is very chummy with Heaven. He just as readily invokes the aid of his household gods in the pursuit of his amours as in less illegitimate aspirations. He regards them as kind friends who will help rather than as severe censors who have to be propitiated. The poor Japanese, like the poor Italian, always 16 241 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN has a little shrine in his house, often excessively picturesque, in which he enthrones one of the Seven Gods of Riches, or a family saint. Every morning he makes an offering of a cake, a little rice, and a sprig of green, and every night he lights a little lamp in front of it — no small expense in the land Avhere the tenth part of a halfpenny is a coin in ordinary use. Japan is rich in kami — a sort of cross between saints and demi-gods. The Mikado, as head of the national religion, from time to time makes official canonisations of persons who deserve well of their country. There are at least a million of these saints who have in their day done their best to invent an alphabet, or been mighty warriors, or made improvements in ship-building like Will Adams. Added to this, the poor Japanese makes kami on his own hook out of his ancestors. Religion is very mixed in Japan. Shinto, the Way of the Gods, has no proper gods, and Buddhism is like the Roman Pantheon : when it makes converts it does not take away their own gods ; it declares what Buddhist gods they are impersonations of. It made room for the gods of the Brahmins and the gods of the Japanese. Nothing shows the delightfully mixed notions of the Japanese about religion better than the fact that the Seven Gods of Wealth, who enter more than any other deities into the life of the people, are four of them Buddhist in origin and three Shinto. ^42 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES The wise Roman admitted any gods into his Pantheon. When out of the ashes of the Roman Empire the spiritual empire of the Roman Church arose, this humane and wise pohcy was preserved. The great churches of ancient Rome stand on the site of still more ancient temples. Ara Coeli, the Altar of Heaven, stands on the rocky plateau crowned all through the days of Roman power with the temple of the Capitoline Jupiter, the King of Heaven. S. Maria Sopra Minerva tells its own tale. The only way to prevent the people from harking back to their old rites was to merge their temple and their worship in the new explana- tion of religion. The lily springs from the mud. The pure white flower of Christianity would not have rooted so strongly and flourished so exceed- ingly in Italy if wise and skilful gardeners had not recognised the necessity of soil at the bottom. The early Roman missionaries were a little daring in their identifications. To turn a Virgin Goddess Minerva or a Virgin Goddess Diana into the Virgin Mother had its excuses ; but when it came to the Laughing Lady of Eryx, a Venus who was there as a Roman impersonation of Ashtaroth, it showed their broadmindedness. At Enna the people fought hard for their goddess, Ceres, the mother of Proserpine. The cult of the corn goddess had made the little city of Enna, the very navel of the Sicilian mountains, a pilgrimage place for all the 243 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN world. The proposal of the missionaries that the people of Enna should abolish the importance of their city met with little favour, till they allowed the worship of Ceres and her daughter Proserpine to melt into the worship of the Virgin Mother and her Uttle son. In Castrogiovanni, the city on the site of Enna, there is to this day an ancient image of the Virgin carrying a girl child instead of a boy, which had previously done duty as Ceres. Enna had to be bribed recklessly to consent to the transmutation of Ceres. Its inhabitants show you the spot where the Virgin received the Annuncia- tion, the stove at which she was cooking, the Crown of Thorns, and the cave where our Lord and his Twelve Disciples were in the habit of meeting. Christianity came very near winning China and Japan in the same way, while the missionaries were allowed to absorb the native religions. Until a Papal bull put a stop to the embodiment of native religions in the Roman Catholic Pantheon, there were an immense number of Christians. But when the Japanese were expected to give up the religions, upon which they had relied for a satisfactory ending from time immemorial, for a new rehgion which might, or might not, be more efficacious, but denied them the support of their own religions, the prospect of the Christianisation of Japan was set back for many generations. It was the more honourable course, and from the 244 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES artistic point of view one cannot help feeling intensely grateful. Japan without its temples and its friendly profane gods would not have been Japan, but an Italy without a single church old enough to be beautiful. Christianity could not increase the loyalty and patriotism of the Japanese, and it could only decrease the finest trait in their national character — their filial piety. Christianity cuts at the very basis of Japanese morals, when it says, " Forsake your father and mother, and follow Christ." That doctrine abolishing the fifth com- mandment must be expunged before Japan can become Christian. I pray that Japan may never become Christian. The Japanese may be dishonest in business, but as sons and daughters, and more particularly as wives, they work out their salvation in the most satisfactory manner. I know of no people to whom the word good is more applicable than to the Japanese. Until foreigners are concerned their unselfishness is marvellous. Devotion is almost a monoply of the Japanese. But I am selfish : I am not so much concerned with the happy ending of Japanese lives as with my own £esthetic pleasure in wishing the Japanese to remain outside the pale of Christianity. I have never been in India, but though their architecture is so glorious I should not expect the Indian temples and priests to do for me what the Japanese have 245 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN done. The Indian temperament is too severe. The Japanese, mercurial as the Italian and ancient Greek, has made a religion of Nature. To enjoy the summer, to invest it with dreams ; to erect buildings which look as if they had grown, so harmonious are they with Nature's most beautiful handiwork ; to people woods and streams and mountains with graceful or kindly presences breathing the life into romance : this was ancient Greek, this is Japanese. The Japanese are the modern Epicureans, the people who best understand the carpe diem, the making the aesthetic best of life. The humours, the little human touches of the Japanese religion, are chiefly Shinto ; the aesthetic beauties are principally Buddhist. As Christianity was the great inspiration of Italian Art, Buddhism is the great inspiration of Japanese Art. On the surface of things the Buddhist ritual of Japan reminds one very much of the Roman Catholic ritual in Italy. The vestments are extremely alike ; the priestly expression is the same ; there is incense ; there are altars ; there are tinkhngs of bells ; there are monks and nuns and monasteries. But the likeness is only skin-deep, though the origin is probably the same. In a couple of thousand years Christianity has adopted the characteristics and ideals of the pushful West. Buddhism has become the expression of the passive East. The pictui-es of a Buddhist hell in Chinese 246 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES temples, the pictures of saints on Japanese kakemonos, remind one irresistibly of Italian art in the days of Fra Angelico and Orcagna Mr Chamberlain was quite right when he wrote : — " Superficial writers have often drawn attention to the resemblance between the Buddhistic and the Roman Catholic ceremonial : the flowers on the altar, the candles, the incense, the shaven heads of the priests, the images, the processions. In point of dogma, a whole world of thought separates Buddhism from every form of Christianity. Knowledge, enlightenment, is the condition of Bud- dhistic grace, not faith. Self-perfectionment is the means of salvation, not the vicarious sufferings of a Redeemer. Not eternal life is the end, and active participation in unceasing prayer and praise, but absorption into Nirvana (Jap. Nehan), practical annihilation. For Buddhism teaches that existence is itself an evil, springing from the double root of ignorance and the passions. In logical conformity with their tenet, it ignores the existence of a supreme God and creator of worlds. There are, it is true, gods in the cosmogony which Buddhism inherited from Brahmanism ; but they are less important than the Hotoke or Buddhas — men, that is, who have toiled upwards through successive stages of existence to the calm of perfect holiness." For the time Buddhism has been shorn of its ^ glories ; as the Mikado was the Pope of Shinto, . 247 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the Buddhist hierarchy was naturally the spoilt child of the Tokugawa Shoguns. Under then* segis were produced the finest Buddhist temples, the finest wooden architecture the world has ever seen. Even now, when deprived of their revenues, deprived almost of the right to exist, the temples of Nikko and Shiba and Ueno are among the most lovely pages in the book of Art. The Buddhist hierarchy is partly to blame. Japan is going through now what England went through in the Middle Ages — the struggle between the Government and a crafty, well-organised priesthood. After the Revolution Shinto was made a national religion, and the Buddhist temples, except where they were spared for some particular reason, were stripped of their pomp to make them suitable for the bare Shinto ritual, just as in the Protestant zeal of the seventeenth centuiy, we broke the statues and whitewashed the frescoes in our old cathedrals. Since the Revolution of 1868 there has been a confiscation of Buddhist property, more parallel to that which took place when King Henry VIII. dissolved the monasteries, than to the confiscation of monastic property since Italy became a kingdom. That is why curio-shops are flooded with exquisite little pieces of Buddhistic art, such as temple services, vestments, kakemonos, and images of the Buddha. When the Italian turns a convent into a barrack, he makes a museum or public monument 248 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES of any artistic features it may possess. The road to Kamakura is strewn with desolated monasteries, and Nikko is slowly yielding to the weather. Shinto, moreover, has not done well as a national religion. It was eminently suited for a popular religion ; its demands are so simple that every man can be his own priest. It is a religion of Lares and Penates. But when it came to gor- geous ceremonies to inflame the imagination and be the expression of national success and splendour, the plain white wooden temples, with their empty halls and ignorant unsacerdotal priests, could not get hold of the people. There are Shinto endow- ments, there are annual festivals at certain cele- brated temples, but Buddhism is gradually getting back its wealth and influence, and sooner or later the Buddhist hierarchy will see some opportunity for identifying itself with the voice of the nation, and go forth and conquer. From the point of view of art, for all the glory of their carvings and colours, the Buddhist temples are not the equal of the pure Shinto temples, the most interesting architecture which has survived from the ancient world. Jimmu-Tenno, the founder of the long line of the Emperors of Japan, was a connection of the Sun, which is a goddess, not a god, in Japan. I have forgotten the exact connection, but she was his aunt or his grand- mother, or something of that kind ; and a temple 249 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN was built in her honour at Ise, which is of unique interest ; for everything in her temple, like the works of the clock of St Paul's, is duplicated, and as soon as any piece shows the slightest sign of decay, it is replaced by an exact copy. The result is that we see the buildings exactly as they were devised in the time of the first Mikado. Sir Ernest Satow is extremely funny in his introduction to the religions of Japan. The cosmogony and mythology of Shinto are looked upon by the Japanese as forming a part of their own national history. Japan was the first country created, but how the rest of the globe came into existence forms no part of the tradition. The world began, according to the Japanese account, with the evolution of three gods who came successively into existence in heaven, " Deity- master-of-the-centre-of-Heaven," " August - high August-producing-Deity," and " Divine-producing- Deity." Satow dismisses them as mere epithets of the sun followed by a series of deities in pairs, personifying successive stages in the process of creation, ending with Izanagi and Izanami, the parents of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon, and all living creatures. These two met upon the floating bridge which spanned the waste of waters, and the drops of brine which fell from Izanagi's spear congealed into an island. They took up their abode there and begot the numerous islands 250 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES of Japan, the gods of Wind and so on. In giving birth to the god of Fire, Izanami died. Izanagi killed him for it, and followed her to Hades. She warned him not to enter, and said that if he waited she would persuade the god of Hades to let her return. Orpheus-like, he forced his way in, and found her putrid corpse. He rushed back to earth, pursued by legions of evil spirits, and washed himself clean in the sea. As he flung off each piece of clothes like a geisha in the Jon Kina dance, a new god sprang from it. Lastly, in washing his left eye, he produced the sun, called the " Great - August - Deity - which - shines - from- Heaven," and as he washed his right eye, the Moon, called " His Augustness-the-moonlight- Night - Possessor," and from his nose the god called "the Impetuous Male." It is curious that these gods, like Jupiter and his brothers, ruled heaven and hell and the sea, but took no particular account of the earth. "The Impetuous Male " ascended boisterously to visit his sister the Sun-Goddess, who required him to enter into a trial by wager with her to prove that his intentions were peaceable. He behaved in such a disorderly manner that the Sun-Goddess retired into a cavern and left the earth in complete darkness. The other gods enticed her out again at length by fastening a mirror, rolls of blue, red, and white cloth, and jewels to the branch of a tree stuck in 251 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the earth in the front of her cave, while a merry goddess performed a dance, and the wisest of the gods read a prayer. This was the origin of the Shinto service and regaha ; the sword added being that with which the Importunate Male rescued a Japanese Andromeda from an eight-headed serpent. I will be merciful and not trace the descent of Jemmu-Tenno, the first emperor, from the jewels of the Sun-Goddess when they were chewed and spat out by the Impetuous Male : it is sufficient that he was the grandson of a princess, who was delivered of a son on the seashore in a hut half- thatched with the feathers of a cormorant. Her husband was warned not to look in, but was unable to control his curiosity, and discovered her to be a dragon. At this point, says Satow, most of the native chroniclers draw the line between legend and history ; but even while we were in Japan, a newspaper editor was sent to prison for seeing the humours of the situation. The Shinto temple is in theory the original Japanese house. It is made of uncoloured wood, the bark being left on sometimes, and roofed with thatch. Everything about its exterior is ostenta- tiously simple down to the lashed forks on which the roof-poles rest, and the boulders slung across them to keep the roof on in a gale. The temple is entered by a flight of steps about a yard high leading into a little railed balcony. The interior is 252 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES even simpler than the exterior. The buildings are generally in pairs connected with a covered passage, called the Ainoma. The front building is the Haiden, where the faithful pray. There is a gong or bell by the entrance to ring the god up when the worshipper is going to begin, as you ring the girl up at the central office when you are tele- phoning. When the prayer is finished he throws a few small coins on the floor, rings the god off again, and takes his departure. Washing the hands before worshipping is a feature in both the Buddhist and Shinto religions. Besides the main temple, the precincts often contain a number of chapels to the Kami, or Shmto saints. Both kinds of temples are surrounded by groves, whose value is not only aesthetic, for they are mostly cryptomeria, a valuable timber-tree handy for the repair or re-erection of buildings. But camphor- trees and camellia trees are also very common ; and as they attain great size and antiquity, trees of any kind are apt to be encircled with a grass rope, which shows that they are sacred. The temple proper, or Honden, of Shinto, contains nothing except a rod hung with a few strips of coloured paper or cloth, called Gohei, and sometimes a mirror. But this mirror has nothing to do with the sacred mirror of the Sun, one of the three great emblems of Shinto which is usually among the articles preserved in the Holy of Holies behind the Honden, wrapped in cloths 253 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and boxes innumerable, and hardly ever seen even by the priests themselves. Tt is a Buddhistic innovation, of which there were many examples during the predominance of the Tokugawa Shoguns. In the same way the Buddhists adopted from Shinto the torii or double cruciform wooden arch, which is the most striking distinctive architectural feature of Japan. The shape derives from the etymology, or the etymology fi'om the shape, the idea that the torii was a perch for sacred birds. This may or not have been so ; that is neither here nor there. No one has ever given a satisfactory explanation of the origin or the name of the torii, the mystic arch of Japan. As regards the name, Mr W. G. Aston, one of the two chief English authorities upon the Japanese language, says it is simply a thing to pass through, in which case we are confronted by the interesting phenomenon of a Turanian language lighting upon the same root to express piercing as that which runs through all the Aryan languages, a fresh proof that the roots which express the commonest ideas in all languages are evolved — that the idea coins its own form of expression. The other theory favoured by so great an authority as Sir Ernest Satow is that the ety- mology of the word suggests the meaning of bird-rest. In vol. ii. of Asiatic Transactions, he says : — " The torii was originally a perch for the fowls offered up to the gods, not as food, but to 254 TEMPLES AND REEIGIOUS RITES give warning of daybreak. It was erected on any side of the temple indifferently. In later times, not improbably after the introduction of Buddhism, its original meaning was forgotten ; it was placed in front only and supposed to be a gateway. Tablets with inscriptions (gaku) were placed on the torii with this belief, and one of the first things done after the restoration of the Mikado in 1868 in the course of the purification of the Shinto temples was the removal of these tablets. The etymology of the word is evidently ' bird-rest.' The torii gradually assumed the character of a general syinbol of Shinto, and the number which might be erected to the honour of a deity became practically unlimited. The Buddhists made it of stone or bronze, and frequently of red-painted wood, and developed various forms." Sir Ernest might modify his opinions if he were writing upon torii nowadays ; recent explorers in Asia have found arches resembling the Japanese torii in countries as far west as Sir George Robertson's Kafiristan, and at various points in Central Asia. They are very fine in China. Therefore one must learn as much as one can from local traditions and the etymology of the names in all these places where the modified forms of the torii exist. But nowhere are they so universal or so elegant or so mixed with the national fife as in Japan, where they are more particularly associated with the Shinto religion, 255 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN though many fine specimens are to be found in the most sacred spots of Japanese Buddhism, such as the great temples of Nikko, so closely identified with the Tokugawa Shoguns in life and death. The shape, of course, varies a good deal ; but the torii evidently belongs, hke Ama-Inu and Coma- Inu and the rose-hke conventionalisation of the peony, to some primitive and very widespread symbohsm. The Shinto priest does not, like the Buddhist bonze, or our own clergy, wear a distinctive dress in the street, though he has his form of surplice for the morning and evening sacrifices — a long loose gown, with wide sleeves, fastened at the waist with a girdle, and a black cap with a broad white fillet. The priests are not bound to celibacy like Buddhists, or prevented from pursuing other professions at the same time. At some temples they have young girl priestesses, but they are chiefly used for the kagura dances. They maiTy like the rest. The services consist, according to Sir E. Satow, " only of the presentation of offerings of rice, fish, fruit, vegetables, the flesh of game, animals, and rice-beer, and in the recital of certain normal addresses, partly laudatory, and partly in the nature of petitions. The style of composition employed is that of a veiy remote period, and would not be comprehended by the common people, even if the latter were in the habit of taking any part in the ritual. With moral 256 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES teaching Shinto does not profess to concern itself. ' Follow your natural impulses, and obey the laws of the State,' would seem to be the suin of its theory of human duty. In a word, the sermon forms no part of its institutions, nor are the rewards and punishments of a future life used as incentives to right conduct. The continued existence of the dead person is believed in, but whether it is a con- dition of joy or pain is nowhere said or left to be inferred. He is simply a disembodied spirit, who, according to his natural disposition, inay be power- ful for good or evil to those who remain behind, and is, therefore, to be propitiated or prayed to according to the estimate formed of his actions and character while he was still on earth. There is neither a heaven nor hell for him to dwell in, but he inhabits the dark world (Yomi no Kuni). On all these points it was left for Buddhism to afford whatever measure of satisfaction is possible in such matters." The only matter in which he finds any trace of a moral code is in the purification, which is partly by water and partly of course by offerings. The Shintoist, like the ancient Greeks, sometimes buried clay figures, but only in the case of very important people. I have mentioned the Seven Gods of Wealth, the most popular of all Japanese deities, as belong- ing partly to one religion, and partly to the other. 17 257 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN These seven gods are, Fuku-Roku-jiu, the god of Wealth, Prosperity, and Longevity, who, accord- ing to Mr Huish, is at once known by the sugar- loaf shape of his head necessary to contain his vast brain. He usually carries a twisted knotted stick from which hangs a manuscript roll. Above him floats a crane, at his side are a deer and a tortoise, and in his hand is a sacred gem. Juro, another god of longevity, who also has a sugar-loaf head, has for his emblems the bamboo, the plum, and the pine. Ebisu, the god of daily food, is a cripple ; but that does not have any effect upon his jocu- larity, for he is termed the smiling one. He is generally represented with a fishing-rod and a basket struggling with a tai-fish, which typifies that the Japanese, more than any other nation, derive their food from the sea. They eat all kind of seaweed and sea-monsters. Hotel is always very fat (fatness is admired in Japan), half-clothed, enveloped in a big bag, after which he is named hotel, meaning cloth bag, and accompanied by children, of whom he is supposed to be very fond. His bag may also contain the precious things, but it is used indiscriminately for sleeping in, catching children in, and other purposes. Daikoku is a purely Japanese god, but adopted by the Buddhists. He is the most important of the gods of wealth, for he is the god of prosperity. On a sword-guard — I still quote JNIr Huish — he is holding the miner's 258 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES mallet used for the acquisition of mineral wealth, and the bag which contains the Takara-mono. Beneath his feet are rice bales, indicative of wealth arising from products of the soil. His broad cap, too, painted black, has its meaning ; his long-lobed ears are a mark of beauty. On another sword-guard he is represented as a merchant looking through a satisfactory balance-sheet ; the lid of the box, which contains the ledger, bears the title, "This is the prosperous shop." He is often accompanied by a rat. Bishamon Ten is the God of Wealth itself, and those he favours receive fortune, wisdom, long life, and pleasures. He is generally represented in armour, carrying a halberd. Benten is the Japanese Venus. She usually wears on objects of art a small tiara and a flowing robe, and carries a samisen. On her crown she has a white snake, which is a woman condemned to pass one thousand years in that guise for her sins. She is generally made as good-looking as possible, because the Japanese has only about half a dozen goddesses. No scholar has ever been able to define the sennin or Japanese rishi. Un- intelligent Christians find a parallel for them in the angels ; but Mr Huish, basing his remarks on Mr Anderson, calls them a very numerous and fre- quently depicted set of personages who can neither be properly called spirits or genii or divinities. This puts the whole thing in a nutshell. He says : — "According to one authority they are persons 259 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN who do not die, but who, when they reach old age, retire from the haunts of men for contemplation and to practise austerity. According to another, they are beings who enjoy rest for a lengthened period after death, being for a time exempt from transmigration. JNIr Anderson traces the originals of the majority of those favoured by Japanese artists to a Chinese work which was reprinted in Japan in 1657. These most commonly repeated are Chokwaro, who conjures miniature horses out of a gourd ; Tekkai, a beggar, who emits his spirit, also in miniature, out of his mouth ; Kanshoshi, who floats on a hollow trunk ; Roshi, a little old man who rides an ox ; Gama Sennin, the commonest of all, a beggar, accompanied by a toad, which usually sits on his head ; Oshikio, who rides a white crane ; Kanzan and Jitoku, also one of the most usual, two boys laughing over a roll, the latter usually carrying a besom ; Rihaku, gazing at a waterfall ; and Kinko, reappearing to his disciples, rising, as he had foretold, from the river on the back of a winged carp or koi. Actualities who resemble some of the foregoing are the mendicant priests, who are frequently introduced into popular prints. They may be recognised by carrying a pole covered with little bells, and a lacquered vessel for rice. Sometimes they have on their backs a paper shrine about a yard high in which is an idol." 260 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES These begging priests come into every kodaker's collection. They are admirable for that purpose. There are splendid painted carvings of rishi on the famous Yomeimon Gateway at Nikko. Their principal use is to furnish the models for bronze incense burners and netsukes and kakemonos. They and the seven Gods of Wealth are the artist's standby. The various kinds of devils and demons come in handy too. The Oni, or imps, so constantly depicted as peeping round the corner or perched out of reach, are mischievous little Robin Good- fellows who do no real harm. The Japanese devils are never really very bad. You hear of saints being waited on by faithful red and green devils who do not look a bit more like devils than the two gods who have a shed to themselves in almost every Japanese temple. The Japanese are not possessed by demons but by foxes. Marvellous tales are told of what one might call demon-foxes. Dr Baelz, quoted by Chamberlain, gives some very interesting instances of fox-possession, one of which was highly original. In 1889 a fox took the shape of a railway train on the Tokyo and Yokohama line. The phantom train seemed to be coming towards the real train, which happened to be running in the opposite direction, but never got any nearer to it. The engine-driver of the real train, seeing all his signals to be useless, put on a tremendous speed, and when the phantom was at 261 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN last caught up there was no collision, but a crushed fox was found on the line at the place where it had happened. " Possession by foxes (kitsune-tsuki) is a form of nervous disorder or delusion not uncommonly observed in Japan. Having entered a human being, sometimes through the breast, more often through the space between the finger-nails and the flesh, the fox lives a life of his own, apart from the proper self of the person who is harbouring him. There thus results a sort of double entity or double consciousness. The person possessed hears and understands everything that the fox inside says or thinks, and the two often engage in a loud and violent dispute, the fox speaking in a voice altogether different from that which is natural to the individual. The only difference between the cases of possession mentioned in the Bible and those observed in Japan is that here it is almost exclusively women that are attacked— mostly women of the lower classes. Among the predisposing conditions may be mentioned a weak intellect, a superstitious turn of mind, and such debilitating diseases as, for instance, typhoid fever. Possession never occurs except in such subjects as have heard of it already, and believe in the reality of its existence. The ex- planation of the disorder is not so far to seek as might be supposed. Possession is evidently related to hysteria and to the hypnotic phenomena which 262 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES physiologists have recently studied with so much care, the cause of all alike being the fact that, whereas in healthy persons one half of the brain alone is actively engaged — in right-handed persons the left half of the brain, and in left-handed persons the right — leaving the other half to contribute only in a general manner to the function of thought, nervous excitement arouses this other half, and the two — one the organ of the usual self, the other the organ of the new pathologically affected self — are set over against each other. The rationale of possession is an auto-suggestion, an idea arising either with apparent spontaneity or else from the subject- matter of it being talked about by others in the patient's presence, and then overmastering her weak mind exactly as happens in hypnosis. In the same manner, the idea of the possibility of cure will often actually effect the cure. The cure-worker must be a person of strong mind and power of will, and must enjoy the patient's full confidence. For this reason the priests of the Nichiren sect, which is the most superstitious and bigoted of Japanese Buddhist sects, are the most successful expellers of foxes. Occasionally fits and screams accompany the exit of the fox. In all cases — even when the fox leaves quietly — great prostration remains for a day or two, and sometimes the patient is un- conscious of what has happened. To mention but one among several cases, I was once called in to a 263 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN girl with typhoid fever. She recovered ; but during her convalesence she heard the women around her talk of another woman who had a fox, and who would doubtless do her best to pass it on to some- one else, in order to be rid of it. At that moment the girl experienced an extraordinary sensation. The fox had taken possession of her. All her efforts to get rid of him were in vain. ' He is coming ! he is coming ! ' she would cry, as a fit of the fox drew near. ' Oh ! what shall I do ? Here he is ! ' And then, in a strange dry, cracked voice, the fox would speak, and mock his unfortunate hostess. Thus matters continued for three weeks, till a priest of the Nichiren sect was sent for. The priest upbraided the fox sternly. The fox (always, of course, speaking through the girl's mouth) argued on the other side. At last he said : ' I am tired of her. I ask no better than to leave her. What will you give me for doing so ? ' The priest asked what he would take. The fox replied, naming certain cakes and other things, which, said he, must be placed before the altar of such and such a temple at 4 p.m. on such and such a day. The girl was conscious of the words her lips were made to frame, but was powerless to say anything in her own person. When the day and hour arrived, the offerings bargained for were taken by her relations to the place indicated, and the fox quitted the girl at that very hour." 264 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES There remain the very numerous kami, saints, and demi-gods of Shinto, and the Rakan of the Buddhists. Mr Huish, following Dr Anderson, speaks of the sixteen Rakan, a series of ugly and uninteresting divinities who become quite weari- some by their similarity. They are each seated with shaven polls surrounded by a nimbus, and are merely distinguishable from one another by having some appendage, such as a tiger, or dragon, or fly-brush. But there is one temple in Tokyo, the Go-hyaku-rakan, which has five hundred of them, and the Japanese guides explain them as the five hundred disciples of Buddha. In China, if not at Tokyo, the five hundred are made to include representatives of all the nations known to the priests. The English Rakan in the big temple at Canton, with red mutton-chop whiskers, is in- expressibly funny, but in Japan they are all clean- shaven, and look like the late W. J. Hill as the uncle in The Private Secretary. The foreigners who have achieved special distinction in the East, such as Marco Polo, are also liable to become Rakan, and judging by the offerings, Marco Polo was the most popular of the whole five hundred at Canton. I forget whether Will Adams has ever been a Rakan, but he enjoys great considera- tion as a kami, and has an annual festival in the street named after him near the railway station at Tokyo. His title of divinity is English- Anj in. 265 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN The Shinto temples standing up in their splendid simplicity against the sky are god- like and Greek, but all the romantic side of religion in Japan is Buddhist. It is the Buddhist temples to which you go for sensuous effects, though the solitariness and homeliness of certain Shinto shrines, such as the poor little chapels of Inari, the rice goddess, guarded by stone foxes dotted about the rice fields, are often very touching. But when you come across great temples which are a riot of colour and carving, hardly to be inatched elsewhere, they are Buddhist. The scarlet in the landscape is Buddhist. I don't think that I ever felt quite so exalted from the commonplace as in my first visit to the great Buddhist temples at Shiba. Here at last I was part and parcel of the ancient world ; I was in the midst of pagan temples, still in full flower, with services going on ; carried back by an unbroken apostolic succession to the Golden Age. It mattered little that Buddhism had reigned on Japanese soil scarce fifteen hundred years, time and place make little change in Asia ; and when Buddhism came to Japan, it had been rooted more than a thousand years in India. When Buddha died, Rome was young on its seven hills, and the Greeks were little more than barbarians at Athens, and pilgrims and sojourners in Sicily. There were no roses and no temples at Paestum, not a stone laid of the longest-lived temple of 266 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES Athens. The rehgion of the Greeks, the mother of Western art and hterature, came and went, leaving not a wrack behind. We hardly even know if their temples were used for worship. But the gods of Greece left behind them in all the lone places of the classic world an inspiration. If you wander alone in the glens of Sicily and Greece, you feel that they are peopled with the nymphs of wood and stream and mountain still, that Pan is always lurking within call ; then you go back into the city, perhaps, and find a temple two thousand years old. You are lucky if it is deserted enough for you to people it with your imagination. It is more than likely that there will be some unreformed custodian to prate and cadge for tips. In Japan it is different. You find the temple- service, which the Buddhists of India were celebrating before the Parthenon was built, proceeding before crowds who nurse the same belief as the Indian worshipper nursed in the days before Pericles. The worshippers wear quaint, unmodern gar- ments, the priests wear flowing robes of white. As you listen to the service, you are listening to an unbroken tradition of twenty-five centuries. When you enter the great red gate of the temples of Shiba you feel as if you had been touched by the wand of a magician, and carried through the air to the kingdom of unfamiliarity and the court of Kubla Khan. You wander through courtyards 267 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of huge stone and bronze lanterns, like sun-dials, with broad-eaved hollow heads to contain the sacred fire, and come to temple after temple, each the shrine of a dead ruler of Japan, of the mighty Tokugawa house. The temples are rare pieces of carving without, and glowing with precious lacquer within. Here you see all the pomp of Japanese Buddhism, shrines of the most gorgeous gold lacquer, Buddhist Scriptures laid out in rich lacquer boxes on low lacquer tables, and a silent, spotless, clean-shaven priesthood gliding about in pure white costumes. Besides the temple there are the glowing little shrines of the dead Shoguns, and stately flights of steps leading to their gold- bronze tombs on the height above. All these buildings, set in exquisite gardens and backed with solemn cryptomeria groves, form the great Zojoji temple, the headquarters in Tokyo of the Jodo sect, and one of the most splendid Buddhist founda- tions in Japan. The buildings are crowded with awestruck and curious natives in the national dress. There is not one touch of Western lands or modern times. You are in the heart of the ancient world. Presently the priests begin their service of sensuous beauty. You recognise that you are present at a temple service unchanged in its character since the day when all the world was full of temples. It would be an evil day if ever Japan were con- verted from its ancient faiths. As a moral and 268 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES political code, Christianity could not keep the Japanese as patient and self-sacrificing as they are now, and the glory would go out of hill and dale. To-day Japan is a fairyland, because all the most beautiful spots are shared with the gods. In every great wood you come upon stone causeways leading to lonely shrines or vast monasteries and temples. Every beautiful mountain is made more beautiful by climbing stairs and hanging terraces of antique mossy stone ; and, wherever its slopes yield a level lawn, rise temple buildings, exquisitely graceful and exquisitely in harmony, whether their colours are sober brown melting into the surrounding woods, or gold and scarlet and green and white standing out against dark cypress foliage. The exquisite island of Enoshima, a hill rising out of the water, looks like the grounds of one great temple. JVIiidera and Ishiyamadera, terraced above Lake Biwa, the pride of Japan, make the lake their own. Kyoto is a city of half a million, filling in the central space between a girdle of vast temples, whose grounds have hardly any equal in architec- tural landscape. Nikko is the marriage of Heaven and Earth, of Art and Nature, so perfect are the temples of lyeyasu and lyemitsu amid the perfec- tion of mountain, wood, and water scenery. The parks which contain the mortuary shrines of the dead Shoguns at Shiba and Ueno make Tokyo unique among capitals. The marvellous beauty of 269 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Japan depends, as the marvellous beauty of ancient Greece depended, on the beautiful homes erected for the gods at every vantage point. The Japanese, like the ancient Greek, hardly thinks about his own home : it is simple, small, and cheap. For splendid surroundings he goes to public buildings and pleasure resorts. But, as I shall explain below, the Buddhist religion in Japan is not all show. It is active in education, active in politics, active in pro- pagandising. There are four Japanese Buddhist missions in America who have made a good many white converts. They have prepared in English a quantity of information about Buddhism compared with Christianity, which they distribute free. The great Hongwanji temples of the Shinshiu sect, especially at Kioto, have become almost universi- ties by their interest in education. Politically the Buddhists head the opposition to the spread of Christianity. In Japan they have the same character for intrigue as Jesuits have in Europe. At present they are out of Government favour, but when some turn of the wheel brings them in line with some great national movement, their power will be gigantic. The Shinto is, by Pro- clamation of the Emperor, the national religion ; but it is really no religion at all. It does nothing to satisfy the emotions. The ordinary Japanese is said to live a Shintoist and die a Buddhist. That is because, being careless of religion till his end 270 TEMPLES AND RELIGIOUS RITES draws near, he prefers the laissez-faire Shinto priesthood. He dies a Buddhist, because his Ufe has been a hard one, and he prefers the idea of extinction to that of spiritual distinction. But though one loves Buddhism in Japan for the exquisite buildings with which it has decorated the country, for the inspiration and patronage which it has given to lacquering, and carving, and metal- working— the beauty of Japan is Buddhist — the Shinto religion is, in a way, the more interesting. There we have, still surviving, still the rule of life to a nation, the religious use— one can hardly call it a creed — ^of Greece and Rome. Dogma, doctrine, seem to have been foreign to all three. Ancestor worship, the rule of the house-father, good citizen- ship, the shrine in the house, the humble daily offering, certain national rites at intervals, the making the gods one's confidants even in one's pleasant sins, the deification or canonisation of those who have been great influences among their fellows — these all belong to the family religion which once spread over most of the earth. It is not such a very far cry from the demi-god Hercules to Michizane. The prime charm of Japan is that there, as in Sicily and Greece, the gods are still on the earth. 271 CHAPTER XVIIl WILL ADAMS, THE FOUNDER OF THE JAPANESE NAVY Many people at the present juncture, when Japan conies almost next to Great Britain in naval power, will be interested to learn that the founder of the Japanese navy was an Englishman of the name of Will Adams, who sailed to the Eastern seas with a Dutch trading fleet of five vessels in the year 1 598, and was forced to put into Bungo, a port in Japan, in 1600, by his vessel being short- handed from sickness. The Jesuits, who exercised vast influence and had a great number of converts in Japan, and who hated the English and Dutch, accused his ship of piracy. So he was cast into prison, and, if they had had their way, would have been " crossed, as the custom of justice is in Japan, as hanging is in our land," for any offence from stealing upwards. But the "■ Emperour," as Adams calls him, who was no less a personage than the mighty Shogun 272 WILL ADAMS Tyeyasu, remarked, with the usual sagacity of that prince, that he had not been proved guilty of any offence against Japan, and that the quarrels of European nations had nothing to do with him. So, far from executing Will, he gave him first a more honourable and commodious prison, then released him altogether, and finally took him into his confidence as constructor of his navy and adviser in his dealings with foreigners. The one thing lyeyasu would not do for him was to let him return to his wife and family in England. After he had been in Japan ten years or more, he suddenly thought of letting his wife know, and wrote a letter to certain English merchants in Java on the chance of news of him reaching her. It begins : — " Hauing so good occasion by hearing that certain English marchants lye in the island of laua, although by name vnknowen, I haue ymboldened myselfe to wryte these few lines, desiring the Worshipfull Companie, being ynknowen to me, to pardon my stowtnes. My reason that I doe write, is first as conscience doth binde me with loue to me countrymen and country. Your Worships, to whom this present writing shall come, is to geve you vnderstand that I am a Kentish man, borne in a town called Gillingham, two English miles from Rochester, one mile from Chatham, where the King's ships doe lye ; and from the age of twelue years 18 273 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN olde I was brought vp in Limehouse neere London, being apprentice tweue yeares to Master Nicholas Diggines ; and my selfe haue serued for Master and Pilott in her Maiesties ships ; and about eleuen or twelue yeares haue serued the Worshipfull Companie of the Barbaric Marchants, vntill the Indish traffick from Holland (began), in which Indish traffic I was desirous to make a lettle experience of the small knowledge which God had geven me. So, in the year of our Lord 1598, 1 was hired for Pilot Major of a fleet of five sayle, which was made ready by the Indish Companie." They were about two years getting to Japan, when lyeyasu finally took the whole crew into his service, giving the captain, pilot, and common sailors all the same wages— eleven or twelve ducats a year — and adding a daily dole of a couple of pounds of rice apiece, as if they had been Japanese. Things moved slowly in Japan in those days, but in process of four or five years the Emperor " called Will Adams, as he had done diuers times before," and suggested that he should build him a ship :— " I answered that I was no carpenter, and had no knowledge thereof. ' Well, doe your endeavour,' saith he; 'if it be not good, it is no matter.' Wherefore at his command I buylt him a ship of the burthen of eightie tunnes or there about, which ship being made in all respects as our 274 WILL ADAMS manner is ; he comming aboord to see it, liked it very well ; by which meanes I came in more fauour with him, so that I came often in his presence, who from time to time gaue me presents, and at length a yerely stypend to line vpon, much about suentie ducats by the yeare, with two pounds of rice a day, daily." But when at the end of another five years he " made supplication to the King to goe out of this land, desiring to see my poore wife and children, according to conscience and nature," lyeyasu distinctly declined. He had no idea of allowing the only shipbuilder in the whole East to slip through his fingers for a mere sentimental con- sideration like wife and children. So he made Will Adams Lord of Hemi, with a hundred vassals ; and the new lord, as other Englishmen compelled to reside in Japan have done since, tried to console himself with a Japanese wife and family. But he was never really consoled. Though he lived in Japan twenty years, his thoughts were with Eng- land and his wife and children to the day of his death, and he left them half his fortune. Twice he went for long voyages for lyeyasu, and he built him another ship of 120 tons ; but when, " in the year 1609, was cast away a great ship called the S. Francisco, being about a thousand tunnes, vpon the coast of lapon," lyeyasu lent his new ship to the ship-wrecked Governor of Manila to sail to 275 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Acapulco. A year afterwards the grateful Gover- nor sent another ship in her " roome," besides her value in goods and money ; and Will Adams's ship " the Spaniards haue now in the Philippinas." The spot selected for Will Adams's grave is one of the most happily chosen sites conceivable. It is in his own lordship of Hemi, on a high green hill, commanding a triple view of all that would have interested Will Adams most. Right below, in a maze of inlets and islands, lies Yokosuka, the arsenal of Japan. Here, doubtless, Will built some of his ships, and here is the headquarters of the Japanese navy, of which he is the deified founder. Looking south by east you can see almost to the mouth of the Gulf of Tokyo, with a volcano smok- ing in its jaws. Many a longing glance poor Will, home-sick for the white cliffs of Kent, must have winged in this direction ; and looking up the gulf, you make out the smoke of a great city, and on the steely-looking bay in front of it fleets of lordly merchant steamers, nearly all of them flying the red flag of Will Adams's beloved England. While anywhere up and down the crowded Gulf of Tokyo grim little Japanese destroyers — Thorney- croft's latest devilry — may be dashing up and down at their four-and-twenty knots, past tlie tomb of the founder of their proud traditions, and threading their way between multitudinous white- winged junks, which might have done duty in 276 WILL ADAMS Will's time for all the difference there is in their construction. The people have made a Shinto god of the English founder of their navy. On the tomb where he lies, with his Japanese wife beside him — which every coolie in Hemi or Yokosuka knows as "English — Anjin-Haka" ("the English pilot's tomb") — one may often see offerings of fresh flowers. And every year in Tokyo there is a sort of saint's day festival held in his honour in Anjin- street, named after him because he resided there in the days of his " sorrowful pilgrimage." 277 CHAPTER XIX LANDING IN JAPAN I LANDED in Japan on a December morning, and felt that I had hit upon a Kodaker's paradise. As our ship, battered out of recognition by gales, had steamed up the Gulf of Tokyo, we had passed great junks looking like the ships of the ancient Romans with their pufFed-out galley-sails striped with black ; and we had hardly dropped anchor in Yokohama Hatoba before we became the centre of a swarm of sampans shaped like paper boats, rowed like gondolas by wiry little men who showed nearly all their mahogany persons. In a minute our deck was a mass of colour — nearly everyone, Uke ourselves, had a coolie showing a great round crest, which reminded one of a Waterbury watch, on the broad of his blue back as he touched the planks upon which he was standing with his forehead. And one embarrassed person was met by a geisha in her best finery, which almost stupefied eyes unaccustomed to Japan. Her 278 LANDING IN JAPAN dress, which blazed with scarlet, was made of such stiff brocade that it stood out like angel's wings ; her face was snow-white, her mouth painted crimson, and her hair moulded with pomade into a great black butterfly full of flower-hairpins. With her duenna and her man-servant, she took up half the width of the deck. The Waterbury watch coohes and sampan runners were begging in dumb show for the honour and pay of putting passengers ashore ; but, as there were no Yokohama residents among us, the passengers all went in hotel launches and were landed at the Custom-House for a perfunctory examination, and stepped out to find that the first thing which salutes you on landing in Japan is the much-talked-of riksha boy. Everybody has a kodak, and everybody kodaks him, as he stands at attention in front of rikshas resting on their shafts. The riksha boy in December is much smarter than when he strips for hot weather. In winter he wears a white sun- helmet and close-fitting dark blue cotton tunic and skin-tight hose and rope-sandals at three halfpence the pair. He looks like a servant in a Shakspearian play, or an acrobat dipped in navy-blue. The moment we appeared at the door, every riksha boy on the stand sprang towards us, holding up his hand for engagement. We climbed, while the shafts were on the ground, into these dwarf two- wheel buggies, and were soon flying along at the 279 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN rate of five or six miles an hour, leaving the hotel porter to bring all our worldly possessions. Travellers in Japan have a beautiful trust in Providence and in the honesty of servants — with impunity, the Japanese does not steal ; his form of robbery is cheating. Until recently no respect- able person would trade in Japan : before the revolution, thirty years ago, the Japanese noblemen had servants who were tailors or makers of vases or anything else they might require. A vase- maker or lacquerer was an artist with a salary from the noble, not a maker of vases to sell ; and as the noble liked things thoroughly good, the second-hand articles which you buy for a penny or two to-day would be quite costly to manufacture. At the hotel there were fresh swarms of servants dipped in navy-blue, all of whom were called boys whatever their age. And these boys come into your bedroom whether you are there or not, whatever your sex, if you do not lock the door. Not that they are lacking in respect ; on the contrary, they never address you without drooping their heads and hissing and rubbing their knees together. In hotels used by foreigners it has been found impracticable for servants to touch the floor with theii- foreheads — the foreigner is in too great a hurry to get waited on. A Japanese, even in a hotel, takes possession of you ; he is monstrously cheerful and obliging, 280 To hack on p. 280. ^- : ^%' j^% f OTi I. Yokohama, the To hack on p. 281. seaport of Japan. LANDING IN JAPAN and, as he cannot speak much English, he has a number, and all the courses at table have a number, and you say "Number Five, bring me some Number One ! " (or Number Ten as the case may be). He would undress you if you would let him in his eagerness to be obliging, and generally wants you to have a bath directly you arrive. A Japanese bath of the best class is a hole in the floor lined with wood and fed by pipes like ours. The Japs themselves have all sorts of deadly devices for warming round washerwomen's tubs with charcoal. The natives seldom go in for fires voluntarily — their involuntary fires are on such a gigantic scale. As many as a hundred thousand people have perished in a Japanese fire, so the Japanese contents himself with leaving hardly any- thing uncovered in cold weather except the tips of his fingers, and warming them over some charcoal ashes in a hibachi, which is only really large enough for incense. The stove over which he cooks his food is hardly larger, but he increases the heat with a pair of bellows. In the colder parts of Japan he lights a fire under his bed like a Corean ; the bed is, of course, adapted for the purpose. We thought the furniture in our bedrooms limited, but found out that it was limited by earthquakes, which are as common in Japan as sunshine in England. Electric light is much in vogue ; the fittings are better for this purpose. I 281 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN shall never forget how I woke up with a swing one morning and saw the gaselier, which was of a flexible nature, trying to touch the ceiling with its burners (globes were not thought safe), and the photographs falling off the mantelpiece. People do not notice earthquakes much till they are bad enough for things to fall off the mantelpiece and chimney pots to fall off Yokohama, but residents are more afraid of typhoons than they are of earthquakes. They remember how, once upon a time, a typhoon in one of the Eastern ports made a wave which lifted an ocean-steamer over the Bund, which means the Esplanade ; while earth- quakes of the worst order are generally in out-of- the-way parts of the country. The instinct of the Japanese, which is shown by the way in which they make themselves understood by vegetables as well as animals, extends even to earthquakes. They have, as it were, catalogued the earthquaky parts, and avoid them for the kind of cities foreigners go to. They call lunch " tiffin " in Japan, and the first thing that struck us about tiffin was the welcome observation that there are no duties on drinks in these Islands of the Blest. I have bought drinkable whisky — at a shop, not a hotel — for eighteenpence a bottle ; the same whisky that the Duke of Con- naught drank all the time he was in the country. It was rather like a pantomime, that first meal : as 282 LANDING IN JAPAN Japanese servants take off their shoes in the house, and weigh about six stone, they would move about Uke ghosts if they walked, but they always run. As most of them are undersized and have no hair upon their faces, but an expression of childish happiness and amiabihty, they look like little boys. " Boy," you always call them, unless you want to distinguish them — then you use a number. The dishes are written on the menu one underneath the other, with a number attached. If you want beef, potato, and cauliflower, you may have to ask for 1, 13, and 14, The boys know the numbers in English, and a foreigner soon learns the numbers in Japanese — he cannot get on without. Every house in the town has not only its street number but its general number, like a soldier in a regiment. No. 5 at Yokohama is the Club Hotel. No. 200 is the office of Canadian Pacific steamers. When you want to go anywhere, you tell your riksha boy the Settlement number. When you want to buy anything, you take hold of it and say how many cents you will give for it, if you know your way about. If you ask how much it is, you will be told three times its value, and have to bargain till it gets down to only 50 per cent, above its proper price. If you want your food, and the waiter is fresh to the job, you may have to give the number of the dish, as the Japanese equivalents of English words are apt to be vague. Milk, for instance, in 283 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Japanese takes the form of "juice of the cow "or "mother of the beef" or something of the kind. But it is surprising how few words of Japanese you can go on where no Enghsh is spoken. " Make- haste," " Wait-a-httle," " Enough," the numbers, and the names of money will carry you through with your riksha boy. The numbers, money, " How- much," " Too-much," and " Good," will carry you through your shopping ; and " Thank-you," " Good- mornmg," and " Good-evening " will do for the rest. On this much Japanese you can go from end to end of the kingdom ; the Japanese know by your eyes what you want, and the only questions are how soon you want it and how much you are willing to pay for it. It is better if you under- stand also the Japanese words for " Can-do " and " No-can-do," "Do-want" and " Do-not-want," " At- home " and " Gone-out." Any average foreigner who knows this much considers that he can speak Japanese. The food is good and very plentiful in Japanese hotels, and when you are not eating and sleeping you go out in a riksha. Generally, unless he is taking you to some well-known sight a long way off, the riksha boy ekes out his profit by taking you to buy something. You begin with silk handker- chiefs — I suppose because there is a good commission on them — unless you are aware that silk in Japan, like jewellery in China, is sold by weight if it comes 284 LANDING IN JAPAN to a close bargain. In the old days the Japanese, observing that the foreigners at foreign shops generally asked for things by special makers, used to do their silk handkerchiefs up in boxes bearing well-known names. The riksha boy is like the Italian cabman, he always goes in to do your shopping with you. Hotel riksha boys can often speak a good many words of English, and, when they can, they make the best guides, because they know what foreigners want ; whereas the professional guide takes you to what he wants you to see, till you feel like the American girl who did not inind being kissed, but wished to be kissed by the men she wanted to kiss and not by the men who wanted to kiss her. You seldom take a Japanese guide without wishing to kill him at the end of five minutes. You might just as well take a Bodley Head poet. After you have bought inore silk handkerchiefs than you want, the riksha boy takes you to the kind of stalls they have in the theatre street or inside a temple, where they sell rubbishy lacquer and leather goods, boxes and pipe-cases, and tobacco-pouches, and pocket looking-glasses, and wooden pillows, and sham European soap, and gaudy hatpins which geishas use for their hair. You have to go through buying some of this rubbish just as you have to eat a peck of dirt in your lifetime, and when you be- come attached to this or the other servant, they 285 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN make nice presents for his children. Poor as he is, the Japanese never takes his children to any fete without giving them presents. Stalls of cheap presents form part of every show except the theatre, and there is a cheap-jack bazaar opposite every theatre. More rubbishy presents are sold in Japan that in any country under the sun ; they go so low as branches stuck with paper flowers, or even paper flowers without branches. But the Japanese are so very pohte that you are constantly presented with a paper flower, or a bean-meal sweet, or a mandarin orange. And if you are patient and buying much, there is no reason why you should not be given a hundred cups of tea in a day — Japanese tea, with which there is no expense of milk or sugar. You always feel as if you were playing in Japan. To a European, who has seen nothing of the Japanese upper classes, noble, official, or professional, but been thrown in contact entirely with servants and shopkeepers and the poor, it is almost impossible to take things in earnest. The whole thing is one prolonged lark ; you are on the other side of the world from every- thing serious; you forget even Lord Rosebery's good intentions. But though you naturally do nothing, you are never hard up for something to do : you have only to make up your mind to study one subject in the life of the Japanese poor to have endless anmse- 286 LANDING IN JAPAN ment and interest. Give one day to the study of Japanese houses, a second to tea-houses and restaur- ants, a third to gardens, a fourth to theatres, a fifth to temples, a sixth to curio-buying, a seventh to shops, an eighth to women, a ninth to children, a tenth to street scenes, and be all the time on the look-out for funerals and religious services and fairs and holiday festivities, and ceremonies, and superstitions, and, if you happen to hit the right season, wrestling matches, and you will find enough to write a book about and use all the films in your kodak over any one of them. 287 CHAPTER XX THE HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS There are hotels and hotels in Japan. Those which are kept by foreigners for foreigners can be very alluring places. There are quantities of servants, most obliging and affable ; and the best foreign wines and tobaccos are refreshingly cheap. They are kept by foreigners, it is true, and they have foreign furniture and foreign food, but the Japanese servant Avill make anything Japanese. He is so childlike and bland. A European hat on a Japanese head ceases to be European, or a hat ; it is merely a fashionable extinguisher resting on the ears. If you are a man and single you may soon realise that you are in an Oriental country. When we riksha'd up to the Club Hotel at Yokohama, we were received by an affable English manager, and shown into a delightful sitting-room with a bay-window looking on the sea, and bed- rooms leading off it. He went out to send us some hot water, which was brought by a man-housemaid 288 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS in a blue serge district messenger's suit, with breeches so tight that you could not tell where they ended and the stockings began. Japanese servants do not wait like waiters, but like district messengers — not like real district messengers, but like the district messengers who are running on the adver- tisement. They do everything at a trot. As they wear no shoes, they sound like dogs. Even the foreign hotels have very few English-speaking ser- vants, not enough to go all round. It does not signify — any Japanese can be taught in a few hours to recognise the sound of a few essentials like " hot water," and " whisky," and " matches," and " bath " ; and at meals you go by numbers. Every article on the menu and every article on the wine list is numbered, and the Japanese seems to be born with a knowledge of English numerals. The bedroom in a foreigner's hotel is fairly ordinary, except that the furniture may be arranged with a view to earthquakes. But the bathroom often has spirited variations. A Japanese bath stands in the floor and not on it, and its sides are made of wood. It is, in fact, a sort of wooden grsLve—Jacilis descensus. If it is still more Japanese it will be a round tub with a heating apparatus in the bottom for red-hot charcoal. With this instru- ment the foreigner takes a one to two chance. He is sure to burn himself with the heater, and is in danger of being smothered by the fumes. Sex is 19 289 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN not considered in a Japanese bathroom. A woman housemaid will come in to a bathing gentleman, or a man housemaid to a bathing lady, on pretexts trivial to the European mind, but without any indecent curiosity. If you do not wish to share the fate or appearance of a lobster, you should look before you leap in a Japanese bath. The Japs make their baths, if not their tea, with boiling water. To the Japanese there is nothing excep- tional about seeing a member of the opposite sex naked — they have never forgotten that we were created naked. As the poet said : " They do you very well In a Japanese hotel." At the Club Hotel, Yokohama, we had a choice of sixteen dishes for breakfast. As chops and steaks, and curries, and bacon, and ham and eggs, and fried fish, and kedjeree, and porridge, and chicken were included, there was no reason why you should not dine at eight o'clock in the morn- ing like Louis XII. of France, whose death was accelerated by his wife declaring that this was a ridiculous hour for dinner, and putting it off so near bedtime as six o'clock in the evening. There was very little difference between breakfast and tiffin, as they call lunch in the East, except that at the noonday meal you had vegetables and free claret. And dinner was a glorified tiffin. There was 290 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS enough to eat at every meal to last you for the next twenty-four hours, and Japanese cooking is as good as you get on a mail steamer. 1 wonder that the French, who like gorging by contract, do not emigrate to Japan as a nation. There is nowhere where you get such food for your money. Foreigners laugh all the time they are in Japan. It is impossible to keep serious for half an hour, except when you are the victim of an outrage. A Japanese servant takes every order as a joke. He regards every foreigner as a lunatic who has to be humoured, and regards his orders as symptoms. He is very good-natured and obliging, but does everything his own way — he refuses to understand your way. It is a fine art to know when a Japanese understands you. He says yes to everything. His gestures tell you a little, but by his deeds you know him. If you leave him to himself, he will rack his brains to anticipate your wishes. He is not idle, but he enjoys disobedience, and thinks that every foreigner is too big a fool to know his own mind. The globe-trotting foreigner who wishes to find everything done for him when he comes back late for meals from sight-seeing or curio-hunting, thinks the Japanese servant perfec- tion. The white woman living in Japan, and desirous to be mistress in her house, finds it a stable full of mules. Apart from the servants, foreigners' hotels in 291 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Japan are fairly ordinary. It is when you go to a native inn that you feel as if you were living in a cinematograph or a fairy tale. There is neither rhyme nor reason in what happens. A cat would think very highly of a Japanese hotel ; the tiles are on a much grander scale than anything else. Under a splendid curly roof of inch-thick purple tiles you observe a paper cottage which is encased in wood at night. When your riksha pulls up, the landlord and the landlady and all the servants come out and kowtow, and rub their knees, and hiss their welcome and respect. As a foreigner you may be expected to pay the top Japanese price — from Tjd. to Is. a day for two meals and a bed. "You have come very quickly, sir," says the landlady, as her forehead touches the ground. You don't exactly understand what she is saying, but her smile is reassuring, and you submit to being deprived of your boots and enter Wonderland. If you have the faculty of enjoyment, you are delighted with the novelty and strangeness of trying to sit without a chair on the deep soft mats of dazzlingly clean straw. The walls look all right, because we paper our walls, but you soon learn the difference, because we have something at the back of the paper of our walls, and the Japanese do not have anything at the back of theirs, except the eyes of the village to watch you dressing and undressing, through peep-holes. You soon take a dislike to 292 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS paper windows, which are not hke our windows, made to let in the hght and keep out the air. They give mighty httle Hght, and much more air than you like, except when you are afraid of being smothered with charcoal fumes. While you are trying to learn how to sit on your heels, they bring in the fire — two or three bits of live charcoal in an ornamental dustpan full of ash. This is the far- famed hibachi, whose powers for evil are so much greater than its powers for use. It is first cousin to the Italian scald'mo, and, like it, refuses to warm you beyond the tips of your fingers, though it can suffocate a whole family. In summer they bring you a smaller one, which is called the tabakomono. The Japanese lights his pipe so often that he could not afford matches even in a land where you can buy twelve boxes, supposed to be imported, for Id. Imitations are the soul of Japan : it is the only country where the inirror is sacred. I have bought German pencils on which the inadvertent Japanese maker had put the words Faber and Nuremberg in Japanese — like the man who made ancient Roman coins and put B.C. on them. I bought them at Naples, where, with a high duty, they could be sold for four a penny. This was because the Japanese, knomng that you do not MTite wdth the wood, hardly gives any wood in his pencils. But to return to the Japanese hotel, where you are squatting without any boots in a room -without 293 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN any furniture, an object of almost royal respect to everybody but yourself, trying not to feel like a poodle who has been shaved for the first time. Part of the wall slides back, and servants bringing trays prostrate themselves on the mats before you with the trays on the ends of their hands. Com- pared with this, dying in a Drury Lane play must be easy. The trays contain Japanese tea and Japanese cakes, equally nasty to the stranger's palate. You may be afraid to take any, but you put on a great appearance of cordiality and present the servant with his tip. The Japanese for pour- boire is " tea-money," and the tip is from 2jd. to 4d. AVhen you have shown yourself a person of liberality, the host and hostess and all the servants come in in succession, and lay their foreheads to the floor, saying, " You are very welcome, sir." You make a slight inclination of your head, and say " Thank you." You have to show dignity, or they think you do not know how to behave. All this takes place at inns untrampled by the uncloven foot of the foreigner. The Japanese foot is literally cloven. AVhere the foreigner goes often, his reception is not such a theatrical performance ; but in a native inn a properly-mannered servant never brings anything or says anything ^^ ithout squatting, however many foreigners go there. By a native inn I mean one where there are no chairs. Chairs play the dickens with .lapanese manners. 294 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS It does not signify whether the inn is kept by a European or a native, so long as there are no chairs. You will probably have to eat off the floor, though they may bring in a dining-room table — a yard long and a foot high. Your dinner will be full of trials : it is not easy to believe that boiling soup tastes better for being in a lacquer bowl, or to eat macaroni with chop-sticks. (Macaroni has become quite a Japanese institution. ) The Japanese are marvellously fond of condiments, and use them in the same upside-down fashion as they do every- thing else. They take sugar with potatoes, and salt with plums, and when they want to be particu- larly complimentary, give you a slice cut off a live fish. They bring you in enough sake — rice-beer, which tastes like beer and water— for a hot bath. It is heated, and as fast as it cools, fresh relays are brought. Seaweed is to the Japanese a sea- vegetable. They will eat anything that comes out of the sea. Before dinner is over, you begin to long for your bed. You ask to be taken to your bedroom, but your bedroom is taken to you. Its walls and the bed are brought in. The walls are paper shutters which make a slice of the sitting-room your own ; the bed is a quilt. " Take up your bed and walk," is an everyday occurrence in the East, where a bed is a spread. The only way a European can get any comfort out of a Japanese bed is to sleep on about half a dozen at once, one on top of the other. 295 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN If you want to wash, you must do it outside. The Japanese will not allow a basin of water on their precious mats. You are then free to rest in the happy conscious- ness that if anybody wishes to help themselves to your privacy or possessions, they can push back any of the shutters and come in with the silent tread of a savage. You are protected by their sense of honour, which is equally strong in its feeling of respect and its hatred of stealing with the hands. No brutality is too great for a pick- pocket or a burglar. When a thief is caught, he stands meekly to have his hands tied, which the policeman seldom condescends to do before he has thrashed him about the head, and the bystanders have nearly murdered him with their umbrellas. Nothing is more noticeable than their hatred of actual stealing in a country where the shopkeepers have no commercial morality to the merchant who supphes them. If you are robbed in a Japanese hotel it will only be by a burglar. The Japanese fails in one respect where you would not expect him to fail — in his summer battles with fleas. He keeps his rooms spotlessly clean, and you would expect him to catch fleas with his fingers as easily as a swallow catches flies. He very likely does ; but give a flea a decent climate, and he is like love, which laughs at locks. Native druggists keep powdered camphor to exercise 296 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS fleas, and it is better than boxes of Keating without a pedigree. When the Japanese imitates Keating, he thinks of the purchaser and not of the flea. If it looks and smells all right, its insecticidal qualities do not signify — in fact, the less good it is, the more fleas there will be, and the more powder will be wanted. Old hands look at the label. The one thing a Japanese cannot imitate is a label ; and this is because he imitates words like pictures, not as combinations of letters. If you read through a Japanese imitation label, you will find something inexpressibly foolish staring at you, like the sauce which was supplied "fuUsale or retail" by Crosse and Blackwell. " FuUsale " is a very expressive word for wholesale, but it is not used, by the English, in Soho Square. Mosquito curtains you can always have in Japan, where no stuff ever wears out except the coolies' clothes. Warm baths are prepared every afternoon at native inns. Foreigners are invited to enter first — a privilege in a land of cutaneous troubles, where the water in the baths is changed only once a day. Massage, alias shampooing, is as common as eczema in Japan ; and as the blind do all the shampooing, you do not mind being shampooed naked, which is much the best way. Japanese houses have no bells. You cannot fix a bell in a wall which is made of paper, but all you have to do is to clap your hands. The difficulty is, not to make the 297 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN servants come, but to make them go away. You are a sort of free theatre to them. You always ask for a receipt ; you mean to paste it in your scrap-book as a curiosity, and your guide, if he is worth his rice, means to show it to the pohce if it is dear, and to the next hotel if it is cheap. If mine host has been extortionate, the police make him refund ; and if the landlord is pleased, you get him to give you his name-paper for the next landlord. Name-paper is the Japanese- English for a visiting-card. In very out-of-the-way places you may have to invoke the police for a very different purpose. The landlord has not got over the Japanese hatred of feudal days towards foreigners — he says there is no room. Now this is almost an impossibility in a Japanese hotel, where rooms can be divided up to any extent with paper shutters. There would be room for you long after the place was so full that you would rather not enter it. The sight of one of the tiny policemen is sufficient to bring the landlord to his senses. In Japan the police are all gentlemen privates, which adds greatly to their authority. If he has no money, there is nothing much a Samurai can do, except go into the police or become a journalist, though sometimes he becomes a servant in hotels. In the good old days of Daimios, literature and fighting were the only occupations for gentlemen. The more literary have drifted to journalism, and 298 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS the more bellicose to the police. Our bedroom boy at Yaami's delightful hotel in Kyoto was a Samurai. The bill is called in Japanese-English " fare for lodging," and includes the evening and morning meals, and the room for the night. The noonday meal costs a Japanese traveller from 2jd. to 3d. extra, when he does himself well. We did not have much experience of such inns, but in the more interesting places in the interior there are semi-foreign inns, and at some places inns as good as the foreign in every respect, though kept by natives. Such an inn is Yaami's Hotel at Kyoto. While we were there the Duke of Connaught came to it and stayed for a fortnight. It stood high on the hill of INIaruyama, and had lovely views and gardens in the classical Chinese style. I have described it in the Kyoto chapter. Another such inn is the Fujija, described in the chapter on IVliyanoshita. An inn where we spent many a happy day was the old Tokyo Hotel in a yashiki, or Daimio's com- pound, in the Castle of Tokyo. It had a feudal palisade and moat, into which a pretty girl in our party fell in the small hours of the New Year as we were returning from the great fair in the Ginza ; but inside the palisade was a new building in the foreign style, made of brick and plaster, very httle thicker than the wood and paper of a tea-house. 299 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN We spent months there, with much insight into things Japanese. When they were enlarging the hotel, for instance, Miss Aroostook found, to her horror, one December night, that one side of her bedroom had been taken off, leaving a patch of sky about fifteen feet long by ten feet high ; and this in Tokyo, where you have to sleep with a stove in your room and make the bedroom boy pile coals on till the chimney is red hot before he goes to bed. But the next day there were several rooms between it and the sky. The waiters wore blue yachting suits, but they were coolies underneath, and usually stripped, the minute the meal was over, behind the screen in the dining-room. Once the screen fell down during this operation before the ladies had left the room, but as they were fully dressed underneath, the loss of trousers had only an Academic impropriety. Tora, the waiter who was caught untrousering, was a very funny fellow. His real name was " Tiger," but as he had a big head with a shock of hair, the other boys always called him " Cauliflower." The waiters and bedroom servants in Japanese hotels are called "boys," whatever their age, and they always run while they are waiting on you. Nothing comes amiss to a Japanese bedroom boy. He will mend the lock of your trunk or the leg of a lame bird. Fortunately, waving the hair was not the fashion in those days ; they would have 300 HUMOURS OF JAPANESE HOTELS done it so well, that ladies would have seen nothing in Japan except their own faces and the bedroom boy's in the looking-glass. In the rainy season they would have had their hair done for every meal. Our bedroom boy took a wild interest in our curio-collecting ; he was always stealing fresh tables and what-nots from the other rooms for our sitting-room, so as to display some new treasure. He had no time for other people, because he was always mending our curios. The Japanese have such a rage for perfect specimens that you can buy lovely damaged things for next to nothing. We have many a bit of china that he mended still. He was always smiling, and in high spirits from the early hour in the inorning, when he came along to say, " Bath riddy, please come to examine," to the very late hour at which he made my chimney red-hot for the night. We kept a lot of the flat- headed Japanese canaries and majiros ; he spent his odd time in becoming their friend. There seems to be a sort of Volapuk between the brute creation and the Japanese and Italians ; and the Japanese can talk to plants as well. The proprietor of the Tokyo Hotel was also a character. He was a young Japanese who spoke English and French, and cultivated the appearance of an EngUshman. If I came out in any article of dress which struck his fancy, he used first to ask if 301 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN I was quite sure that it was fashionable, and then borrow it to get it copied. He had an ingenious way of getting rid of people he did not like, such as a bumptious Australian who drank : he made his servants boycott them. Wine was not included at the Tokyo Hotel, so we used to drink Kirin beer — the Japanese Lager — and excellent stuff it was. Life in a Japanese hotel is uncommonly like life in a Sicihan hotel. At such a place you meet nice friends and stay on. For the tune being the whole hfe of the natives in the neighbourhood depends on that merry party of foreigners, with its pretty, healthy young girls, and its men full of cameraderie for each other, and vying mth each other in finding fresh expeditions, sights, and shoppings, to win the smiles of the fair. The meals are picnics. The chance friends go about like a family. At last they go away — perhaps never to see each other again ; and the natives resume the common round and trivial task, and, if any of the party comes back, will be found treasuring all the worn-out things, which were left behind, among their household gods not for sentiment, but because in Italy and Japan the poor have no such word in their dictionaries as "discard." 302 CHAPTER XXI YOKOHAMA, THE SEAPORT OF JAPAN It was the fashion to scofF at Yokohama even in our day. Japano-maniacs assured us that it was not a Japanese town at all ; and even globe-trotters fell into the snare of complaining that it is made up of hotels and shops for foreigners. It showed how little they knew about it. They knew the Yoko- hama of the settlement, and one or two of the broad streets leading into it. We spent months in Yokohama, and spent our time in streets as Japanese as Tokyo's. The Japano-maniacs forgot that where there are many foreigners there are many Japanese waiting on them. The Japanese waiting on a foreigner is a prosperous person. It is well worth catering for his amusement. We spent a good deal of time in the Honcho-dori and Benten-dori, like other foreigners, for we were fond of curio-shops in which the Benten-dori abounded. Benten is the Japanese Venus, and by all accounts ought to be one of the most important 303 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN divinities. The two most important curio-shops were in the settlement ; but they were kept by Enghshmen who, of course, want to be paid in pro- portion. Shops in the Benten-dori knew how to charge the inexperienced, but were always willing to come down to the margin of profit for the knowing ones ; and they made it their business to collect the kind of curios that foreigners like best. They really were very entertaining places, those shops in the Benten-dori, where you could buy charming netsukes for a tenth or twentieth part of what you have to give for them in London ; and inros, the Japanese medicine-chests, which you could carry on your watch-chain ; and nice little bits of bronze and ivory and inlaid iron, such as sword-hilts and temple services. You can often buy beautiful old pieces there — they may be both beautiful and old, and yet suit the pocket of the Benten-dori shoppers, if they are chipped or stained — the Japanese attach so much importance to perfect condition that small defects bring down prices with a run. But shopping, even in the Benten-dori, was tame. There were streets behind the theatre street and in the neighbourhood of the creek where you could make discoveries. We took in these streets most days, on our way to or from our expeditions, to see what was offering ; and one day in a carpenter's shop found the two superb temple banners, twenty feet long, which I 304 YOKOHAMA have in my Japanese room now. I found Yoko- hama, except that it had no old temple, just as full of native life as Tokyo. In the street where the principal theatres stood in a row, with their pictures of battle and murder and sudden death displayed on huge paper shutters hanging at an angle of 45 degi-ees, the Japanese child and the Japanese hawker maintain their wonted supremacy. Dear little girls, who looked about four years old, each with some bit of scarlet to liven up the striped kimono, darted in front of you, each with the next baby hung in a shawl on her back, and generally with a ball or battledore. The solemn babies took no notice of the way they were jerked about ; they were too busy running at the nose — Japanese children always have a cold. But it does not de- tract from their wonderful damask complexions. Female mites get off cheaply in Japan — they only have to carry the baby all day, and can play. Boys of the same age are already at work, making imitation Satsuma ware, very likely. From their earliest years they colour photographs, which you can buy coloured for three halfpence each in the back streets. But just as the Japanese man has always the leisure to go to a festival, the Japanese children find the leisure to patronise the street- hawkers who cater for them, such as the man who has a tremendously hot stove where they can buy half a farthing's worth of raw paste to play at 20 305 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN cooking, and the man who makes dough toys by blowing them hke glass. The Japanese street- hawker's motto is small profits and many customers. The man who cleans and mends pipes must need about a hundred customers a day. The flower- hawkers are better off, because they bring out flowers in full blossom in beautiful pots, and foreigners buy them, so that there is always the chance of meeting a fool who will pay four times the value. They carry their flowers in a sort of huge scales, a hundred-weight or two at a time. There is nothing — not even a tree-fern or camellia in full blossom, in a wonderful pot, for which they will not take eighteenpence ; the depreciated quarter which varies between sixpence and a shilling is their ordinary ambition. In the theatre street you meet the street-hawker, or perambulating baker, or brush-maker, or shoe-seUer at every yard. The Japanese are very great on imitations of German shoes of the walnut-shell pattern. They like things that belly out and stick up at the toes, and prefer German clothes, because they have no fit. The Japanese figure sticks out where the European figure sinks in. The theatre street at Yokohama is one of the best in Japan, after those of great old cities like Kyoto. It has the bazaar, where the uninitiated globe-scorcher can buy leather pipe- cases and tobacco-pouches and cheap lacquer boxes and cabinets ; but, if he has intelligence enough to 306 YOKOHAMA go into the native town at all, he soon finds that he can do better in the shops which front on the Creek — a most entertaining place, for there the junks, unaltered in their appearance since the time of Jimmu-tenno, tie up and have a sort of barge life. In Creek Street you can buy really charming things that make no pretence of being old, and very often make a pretence of not being Japanese. The adroitness of the Japanese workmen in imitating European knick-knacks like compasses in a metal that looks like gold, to sell at a few pence each, is marvellous. If you bought up the whole street, and brought its contents to Westbourne Grove, you might make a fortune. And it is there that you get the prettiest pipe and mirror-cases. We bought presents there for our Mends. We soon found much more fascinating shops round the corners for ourselves, where you could buy old Japanese mirrors — the magic mirrors which reflect the patterns upon their backs through their faces on the ceiling ; fine old bits of bronze ; and mousmees' pocket dressing-cases, with scenes from Japanese life woven into their ancient silk or stamped on their ancient leather. That was a real second-hand street, where people sold their household gods when they were hard up. And when we were tired of shopping, we could find our way to the hundred steps, and climb to the dear httle temple at the top. 307 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Round the Creek you found the clever people who made camphor- wood boxes and anything you liked in basket-ware from a reasonable thing hke a deck-chair to a bookcase, or, if you wanted it, a bath. The Japanese weave so closely that they can make a basket to hold water. At first this sounds unimportant, but what will keep water in will keep water out ; and if you are going to travel much in rikshas you soon find yourself reduced to basket portmanteaux. The Japanese portmanteau, consisting of two flat baskets which fit into each other, has travelled far, and, being of an expanding nature, soon wins favour with foreign ladies. You know how long a person has been in Japan by her views about camphor- wood boxes. If she is new to it, she sings their praises, and goes on ordering them. They are cheap and fragrant, and abhorred of insects ; but when she has been in the country a little time, the bottom is knocked out of the camphor-wood boxes— as it often is knocked out of them actually ; the camphor is unfortunately a short-grained wood, very liable to crack and to have its knots drop out. Near the Creek live people far more interesting to the female mind than camphor- wood box-makers — the Chinese ladies' tailors I have described as so marvellously clever in following a pattern and so marvellously cheap. A smart and wealthy woman, before she has been in the hotel a week, may find that 308 YOKOHAMA a Chinaman with a bundle in the hall has been taking notes of her pet garments, and has reproduced them faithfully for her dearest friend at a few shillings beyond the cost of materials. It is a perfectly fascinating amusement to pay Chinamen to steal your friends' copyright in clothes. The Chinese men's tailors are as economical. I remember buy- ing an imperishable blue serge suit for nine de- preciated dollars, worth about three shillings a piece then, and suits of good English striped flannels for a dollar or so less. You could not wear out those suits. Suits and shirts and sleeping-suits of yellow Chinese silk, and shirts of Japanese crepes, were as cheap and as indispensable ; for the damp summer heat in Japan is almost tropical. In Yokohama, when you are not sleeping, or shopping, or eating, you are taking riksha drives. Few people drive out into the country, and yet the environs of Yokohama are charming and typically Japanese. It is quite within a day's drive with two runners to go to Tokyo, or Kamakura, or Yokosuka, and you learn much of the country with going by riksha instead of going by train. But you do not generally take such long riksha drives ; you just go out to see the race-course at Mississippi Bay or the Point of Tomioka ; or drive round the Bluff, as they call the high ground upon which the European colony have their villas. Tomioka is a heavenly place, with a little temple on a point 309 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN jutting out into the sea, like Beaulieu in the Riviera, and delightful tea-houses where you can entertain in the Japanese style. The Cape is beautifully wooded, and in its arm incloses shining sands where gangs of barebodied fishermen draw in nets for hours for such very few and little fish. In Mississippi Bay there is a delightful little hamlet called Negishi — a tiny Japanese farming village, with tall sugar-loaf roofs of the smooth Japanese thatch on its tiny houses — technically, the Bluff is part of Negishi. All primitive peoples festoon their house walls with drpng food — the artists' treasure-trove of colour ; and in Japan they have mats in front of their houses, where they thrash or dry the rice grain. The Japanese is his own beast of burden. On a glazier's frame on his back he can carry about as much hay or faggots as a cart, and his long, two- wheeled hand-cart holds as much as a waggon. The only place where he fails to be picturesque is in the rice-fields, and there are plenty of them round Yokohama and Negishi. In the rice-fields he does so much tail upwards, like a fishing swan, and he makes himself so muddy, and more often she makes herself so muddy ; and she must be very poor and ill-clad before she goes into the malarious and muddy paddy-fields to thin-oiit and plant-out rice roots, though it may be very good fun to push the sod in and out which regulates the flow of water in the little irrigation 310 YOKOHAMA canals. Rice-fields are mostly laid out in terraces, so that the irrigation is more or less automatic when once the sod is out. But round Yokohama the paddy-fields are laid out like oyster-beds, threaded by a narrow, metalled path for rikshas, single file. Not content with running in front of his riksha all day, my favourite riksha boy had a final run home every night, for he lived a few miles out on the road to Yokosuka. They said at the hotel that he was a bad boy — a sos/ii ; but that implied his being educated, and I found his advice most valu- able when I was purchasing objects of art and literature. Of course, if you have got a degree, it must be tiresome to be running about all day dragging a big, fat foreigner in a riksha; but it doubtless pays better ; and this boy had such a little picture of a wife, such a little picture of a house — it looked as if it had been stolen from a fan. Its neat, little, split bamboo palings, overgi'own with a huge gourd, inclosed a tiny, paved courtyard in which stood a little two-storey house. His wife was charmingly pretty and affable, and treated us as old friends, because I hired her husband's riksha every day. The Japanese poor are always dignified and well-mannered. It was no good our going inside, because there never is anything inside a Japanese house until there is somebody to be waited on, when fire-places, or beds, or anything else that may 311 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN be required, are produced from goodness knows where — perhaps the "godown." You often see a cottage with all its walls put away and nothing left but the roof and a post at each corner. Tomioka is a favourite place for bathing and tea-houses. Near Mississippi Bay they have races ; but, unless you are going right on to Kamakura or Yokosuka, the Tokyo road is more interesting for long riksha drives ; for, putting aside Kanagawa, of which Yokohama is a suburb, with its delightful tea-house, one soon gets into classic ground among ancient monasteries, culminating in the Temple of Nichiren at Ikegami. The drive to Yokosuka takes you through de- lightful woods, full at the season of the year of blooming tiger-lilies, which scent the whole air. Yokosuka itself has a double interest : it is the principal Japanese arsenal ; and at Hemimura, about half a mile outside, is situated the tomb of Will Adams, the shipwi'ecked English pilot, who became head of the Japanese navy, and a god. Kamakura is, however, much more historical and interesting. Kamakura was the capital of Japan for four hundred years under the Mina-moto dynasty, founded by Yoritomo, the first Shogun. All round the valley in which Kamakura stands, the land is drenched with the blood of civil wars, and studded with ancient monasteries ; and high on a hill stands the vast and famous Temple of SI 2 YOKOHAMA Hachiman Sama, the god of war, a relation of one of the Mikados. A whole book might be devoted to its history, and a month to the exami- nation of its buildings. The globe-scorcher passes it all without a glance. He seldom notices even Hachiman's Temple, for he is taken up with one of the wonders of the world — the great bronze Buddha, fifty feet high, which has a temple in its head, and is the most beautiful of all the giant idols of the earth. You can climb up into its head, and buy lager beer from the priests. Having given as long as possible to the beer, and as short as possible to the Buddha, the scorcher flies on in his riksha to Enoshima, the Capri of Japan — a lofty island linked to the shore with a sandspit. Its heights are in- finitely picturesque — one huge garden of gracious groves, full of temples and terraces and stairways, which are the gem of architectural landscape gardening. The scorcher cares for none of these, though he may, because it is a cave like the grottoes of Capri, inspect the shrine of Benten, the Japanese Venus. What he really looks for at Enoshima are none of these, nor the steep, Clovelly-like streets. Enoshima had a race of monstrous crabs ; you never see a large one now, except in museums, but they were once the terror of bathers. There is one preserved on the island, which measures fifteen feet across to the extremities of his claws. His body is no larger than the seat of an armchair. 313 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN The scorcher always thinks that he might see one of these crabs crawHng from the sea on to the sand- spit as he dashes across to Enoshima, and knock it on the head, and carry it back to America with him. These picnic drives are most deUghtful ; but the people, who neither take them nor know the curio - shops well, can easily find Yokohama dull, for there was a feud between its merchants and the Japanese in our time, and it most likely goes on still. The merchant has suffered by Japanese trade-duplicity, and hates the name of the Japanese so badly that he cannot enjoy anything in the country. In his business he hardly meets them, but transacts every- thing through a Chinese shroff, or compradore. In his house his wife has the same feud over again, because the Japanese servant refuses to understand the orders he does not wish to obey, though he is willing to serve you well, if you let him take the bit between his teeth, and let his entire family take bits of another kind in their teeth. The merchant's great aim is to be as English as possible. He goes in for English sports, and entertains his friends with English meals ; so that if you are tired of tennis, and there is no fiftieth-rate play going on in the impro- vised theatre, you have nothing to do but to buy photographs, unless you can afford to buy curios from the English shops. If you once get into the hands of the resident grumbler, there is nothing for you to do but get out of Japan. 314 To hack on p. 314. The island of To back on p. 315. .jr-. iSF? ^<-s^!:sjfy:^ Enoshima. YOKOHAMA Yokohama had a good club, with an excellent library, and a recreation ground, where the residents met and played tennis ; but it had only a single resident who could write Japanese, and very few who could speak it any better than the globe- scorcher. You can buy things in any language in a week. The most exciting occupation the residents have at Yokohama, except when one of them has com- mitted a murder or some less serious crime, is recognising earthquakes. You soon get into this ; the more you get to know of earthquakes, the less you like them, said Otori-san, Miss Arnold's little maid, to me. Earthquakes enjoyed small considera- tion at Yokohama until they grew violent enough to shake down chimney-pots. The things they always threatened to shake down were the chande- liers. Quite stiff chandeliers used to try and hit the ceiling with the gas-jets, and even I have seen a clock and candlesticks make the facilis descensus from the mantel-piece. Typhoons, too, helped to break the monotony. They would sometimes take a steamer a short cut into or out of the Hatoba over the harbour wall. But Yokohama is outside the worst belt. In our time Yokohama had an impos- ing branch of the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Bank. They did things in a large way. Rather than I should miss the Hong-Kong races, the manager lent me a thousand dollars without any security, 315 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and I do not suppose that it went into the bank- books until I paid him back. There were also some Japanese banks ; but depositing money in a Japanese bank was not a popular form of amuse- ment with foreigners ; they were never sure that the bank would not walk off. Even at Tokyo, where foreign banks were not allowed, the foreigners did not patronise the Japanese banks. We got very fond of some of the residents during our long stay ; they were such charming people, and so kind to us in every respect ; but when you go to Japan you cannot see much of people who spend most of their time in trying to persuade you that there is nothing worth seeing in the country. It makes you feel as if you had made a mistake in going there. 816 CHAPTER XXll MIYANOSHITA THE BRIGHTON OF JAPAN MiYANosHiTA is the Brighton of Japan ; not that it is in the least Uke Brighton in any respect, except that of being the hoUday resort for week-ends and Whitsuntides and Easters. Between Easter and Whitsuntide you get it at its loveHest, and words will not paint that to the stay-at-home European. In scenery, Miyanoshita is more like the valley of the upper Teign on Dartmoor than anjrthing else in England. It has just such a clear, brown river rippling over a bed of mossy stones through gorges, with wooded sides, in the folds of the hills. It has an incomparable position, for its valley has Fujiyama above it at one end and the sea below it at the other. The whole thing is a picnic. We went from Yokohama to Kodzu in the train, changed into the horse-tramway for Yumoto, and there got into rikshas for Miyanoshita. It was not all so pat as it sounds, for the horse-tramway ran off the rails 317 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN at short intervals ; and, as it had nothing but the soft sand to run into, the passengers as well as the employers had to help to put it on the rails again. And when we started from Yumoto, we were not allowed the smallest article of baggage with us — that had to be carried by porters, some or most of whom were women, on frames like glaziers use for carrying glass. It was, we were told, because the climb was so steep, which seemed an odd reason for making a woman carry a Saratoga on her back. It was an exquisite gorge, full of bamboo-groves and clumps of camellias, azaleas, and other flower- ing trees ; and for about four miles the path wandered through woods and glades overhanging a brown moorland river which leapt over mossy boulders. We found that JNIiyanoshita stood almost at the head of the gorge, and consisted of a couple of Europeanised hotels and various native buildings likely to be required by foreigners. Down in the gorge were most heavenly Japanese villages — Dogashima and Kiga — with conical roofs of super- lative thatch. All round Miyanoshita they carry on the home-manufacture of articles of inlaid wood. Foot-stools, cabinets, paper-boxes, nests of pill-boxes, even plates, are made of this ware. And you cannot help buying the things ; they are so neat. If they only knew it, these peasants of Miyanoshita could make easy and rapid fortunes in London by 318 MIYANOSHITA imitating Chippendale. Why has nobody thought of importing them ? Down in this happy valley, woodland paths lead to waterfalls ; but only lovers go there : the rest of the world hires Hong-Kong chairs — a sort of library chairs slung on poles ; or the torturing Japanese sedans slung underneath poles and known as kago, in which the Japanese get excellent practice for their funerals, sitting with their knees drawn up to their chins. You wonder that it does not give them the creeps as well as the cramp. In these they are carried over Hell to Hakone, and back by the healing springs. Hell, or rather Big Hell, for that is what Ojigoku means, is a volcano which, instead of being in active eruption, is a mass of boiling mud under a thin crust. In it the water is warmed for the hotel baths and carried down in bamboo pipes. Bamboo pipes leak, and nice little pools of hot sulphureous water form underneath the leaks. Ladies who are squeamish have something worse than snakes to be frightened of at Miyanoshita ; for in the evening, when the riksha boy as well as the warrior puts off his harness, relays of naked Japs take these free baths which Nature and defective pipes have provided for them. If you step where the crust is too thin, you go through into boiling mud, and scald your feet horribly. The paths between these boiling quicksands are often so narrow that the guide has to indicate where you 319 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN have to put your feet. Much of Ojigoku is a sort of Dead Sea thrown up into a mountain ; but it has its woods and its bamboo-groves in parts, especially on the Hakone side. The sight there is to see the Japanese woman gather faggots big enough for an ordinary wood-cart, and carry them on her back on her glazier's frame. If you are a merciful man, and do not like using human beings as beasts of burden on a hot day, you will have had more than enough of Hell before your chair is carried to the top ; but when you stand upon the mountain's bare forehead you are almost stunned by the vision that greets you. For Fujiyama stands before you like the naked Venus rising from the foam. It rises from the blue Hakone Lake, chosen for its beauty to be honoured with the Mikado's summer palace. Fujiyama reigns over the whole life of the Japanese, visible to nearly the whole of the country from one capital to the other. It is one of the most sacred of mountains : one of the great pilgrimage places : and it is incomparably beautiful : a vast pyramid, with palm-leaf curves rising from the very sea, and spurning all buttressing from the surrounding mountains. Only on the south-east side is there any break in the majesty of its contour, as it towers for the best part of the year in a pure priestly vestment of snow — the monarch of truncated cones, the Parthenon of volcanoes. The vision quite takes your breath 320 MIYANOSHITA away, and at your back is a vision only less lovely — the gorge which runs from Miyanoshita to the sea, filled to the brim with woods of flowering trees. We knew that we should never see anything more lovely. If we had been properly constituted students of the picturesque, like the Japanese, we might, in our despair of having such a moment again, have committed Hara-Kiri on the spot by disembowelling ourselves. As it was, we risked suicide by taking our lunch on that great bald head of Ojigoku, with the sun flaming upon us fi*om above, and only a thin crust of mud separating us fi'om the fiery bowels of the inountain. The coolies who carried us and our lunch, and acted as guides and waiters, produced an armful of spotless white wooden boxes, like coin- collecting trays. One might have thought that they were waiters who had taken the job of sedan-carriers for the day. They spread the lunch so very daintily, with little cloths and napkins, and mustard and salt and pepper, and butter in chemists' china pots, to garnish a sumptuous feast, carried, besides ourselves, over the top of a mountain. We ate our food in silence, engaged in an auto- matic worship of Fujiyama. When we had lazed through lunch, we strode down to that lake through bamboo-groves that would have rustled like ladies' silken skirts if there had been a breath 21 321 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of wind to break the silent sweltering heat of the semi-tropics. We did not think about the heat, the lake looked so cool and blue. Strange sights there were by the way : an eminent authoress of uncertain age was climbing the mountain with riksha boys' rope sandals on her feet, and a dress cut with the classic severity of the garments of the White Queen in Alice in Wondei'- land. She might have warned us, for a little afterwards we came to a beautiful white wooden building, which looked like a variety of a Shinto temple. Miss Aroostook led the way into it with a little scream of pleasure, and charged back into us as we were making our entry. It was a bath sufficiently far from the majesty of the law for both sexes to be bathing in it together in perfect nudity. It was not so easy to be wrapt in Fujiyama after that. And so we came to the shores of the lake, where Japanese lake boats, looking like Thames punts, were waiting to carry us and our chairs to the Hakone village. The Japanese, like other primi- tive races, row forward ; they like to see that there is no one waiting to kill them. It argues an immense advance in civilisation when a man rows as hard as he can with his back exposed to missiles. If he has not far to go, the Japanese uses his yulo or gondolier's oar over the stern as yachtsmen do in their dinghies : but if there is more than 322 MIYANOSHITA one rower, they row like Venetian gondoliers. We had two stout rowers rowing us over the reflection of Fujiyama, whose snowy form seemed to fill the whole lake. Then we landed and sat down in an exquisite tea-house, with a roof of ancient thatch built out over the lake. The after- noon was drawing on, but who cared for time ! You can help yourself to time with a ladle from eternity in Japan, where every European eats the lotus. Hakone is one of the loveliest villages in the world. Its thatched roofs are as graceful as Fujiyama. Their reflections almost meet in the blue lake. Close by the shore is a famous and lovely temple, Hakone-no-jinja, whose torii enter into nearly every picture of Fujiyama. The artist could demand no more graceful combination than this teinple and Fujiyama and the wooded lake. We could have lingered there for hours, but the sun was failing, and we had five miles left to go. As the heat was over, even the ladies forsook their chairs and climbed past the tombs of the Kill- Dragon-Men and the great image of Jizo-Sama carved under an overhanging rock. Jizo has a beautiful face : few rock images are so natural in their postures, and he is so huge that we looked like dolls as we stood below his knees. The sunset was flooding the reedy, sulphur pools of Ashinoyu — the most healing springs in Japan. 323 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN The commons, as usual, were curing themselves outside the bath-house. We sped on through the bamboo-groves for Miyanoshita, hoping to reach the shelter of our hotel before bathing in the street became general ; but every leak had its queue, so the only thing to do was to laugh and hurry on to order baths for ourselves. Oh those baths of INIiyanoshita ! The Duke of Connaught said that the baths of INIiyanoshita, and shooting the rapids below Kyoto, were the two best things in Japan. It was a little sweeping, perhaps ; and there is nothing royal about the bath- room apartments — the rooms are mere cubicles, the baths are holes in the floor about the size and cut of an ancient Greek gra\'e. They are lined with planks, and, whether you are male or female, the mousmees are equally persistent in coming to see whether you have everything you want. The only thing you ever do want is that the bath should get cool ; the water is heated about a mile away in the bowels of Ojigoku by Nature herself, who impreg- nates it with sulphur and other virtuous minerals, and sends it spanking down through the absurd bamboo pipes put up by man. I do not k«ow what temperature the water is when it enters the pipes, but it is still too hot to face when it leaves them. A boy brings pails of cold water to temper it. JJe hangs about too, so that whether you are male 324 MIYANOSHITA or female you are sure to be seen in your bath by the wrong sex. The particular child of Eve from whom the Japanese are descended escaped the mauvaise honte of fig-leaves. Miyanoshita is a place for lovers. Nice young people with European lovers go sentimental walks into the glen, where those willow-pattern villages are suspended in the woods above the river. Madame Chrysantheme is there also, but not in evidence. The lessee of the principal hotel was like- wise the lessee of the principal yoshiwara estabhsh- ment, and knew a thing or two. The cloven-foot had no chance with him. Everything in its place was his inexorable motto. He kept what he called a native inn in the glen underneath the whited sepulchre hotel. When the young men and maidens went out for walks in the enchanted nights of a Japanese spring, with the fire-flies and mosquitoes, I bought photo- graphs — for some reason or other everyone was selling off photographs. I believe I bought every photograph that had ever been taken in Japan, cabinet size, coloured, for a halfpenny each. The wiseacres told me they would not last, but thirteen years afterwards they do not look any worse than they did ; and no matter what subject in Japan I am writing about, my photographic museum never fails me. This was after I had bought all the inlaid wood Miyanoshita-ware cabinets, and foot-stools 325 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and little boxes that I could carry anyhow to Yokohama. You were rather dependent on your party at Miyanoshita, like most heaven-born honey-mooners' places, and people going there with their parties made stuck to them. The inspiring members of our party, Miss Aroostook and a popular Enghshman from China, went walks through the scented woods of the glen ; and when my wife and I were not buying photographs, she went to bed, and I fell back on a clergyman, with a red beard, and an exquisite fair- haired child, born in Japan, whose mother was the centre of every social distraction. In process of time they went back to their homes — to die. The night he got back to Tokyo, the clergyman was murdered by Japanese burglars ; and that exquisite child, with its rosy face and golden hair and blue eyes, swallowed a nespoli stone and died of inflammation. But Miyanoshita at Easter time is like the Happy \^alley at Hong-Kong. Though the city of the dead may only be across the road, men eat, drink, and are merry, like the world on the night before the Flood. 326 CHAPTER XXIII TOKYO THE PRESENT CAPITAL , Tokyo — the Yeddo — which, when Hideyoshi, the sixteenth-century Napoleon of Japan, detected its strategic advantages, was a fishing village at the mouth of the Sumida, is said to cover a space as large as London. This is not so bad as it sounds, because it is a city of gardens and distances, and most of its houses are one-storied. Besides, neither Chicago nor London can come up to Ongchor the magnificent, whose ruins in the hinterland of Siam fill a square twenty-four miles long on each side, inclosed in lofty walls. In a way, Tokyo rivals Ongchor (was there ever a city so appropriately named ?), because it has a castle with thick walls and moats which are several miles in circuit. Superb and poetic is the castle of Tokyo; no country that I have ever visited has its rival. It was built three centuries ago as the residence and political edifice of the Tokugawa Shoguns. With- in its vast outer precincts were the yashiki (fortified 327 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN town-mansions), in which the Daimio (feudal princes) were compelled to live beside their master for half the year, while, to keep them out of mischief when they were out of sight, they had to give the most precious members of their families as hostages. A few of these yashiki are still in existence— palisades of heavy black timber, with the quarters for the retainers built against them and the Daimio's house in the centre. He lived surrounded by his army. To-day these old man- sions of feudal nobles follow the example of the houses of the departed great in Western lands : it is even easier to make tenement-houses in a land where you can alter the number of the rooms in your house with paper shutters. But the castle itself stands marvellously perfect and beautiful, though it may have lost the pomp of its mediaeval guards. Its walls are built of huge polygonal stones, some of them as large as a good-sized room, and on account of earthquakes they slope from bottom to top, like the ram of an iron-clad. They are immensely thick, and in parts of great height. In colour they are of a fine iron grey, sometimes capped with turf, and sometimes fringed with the writhing branches of the Japanese fir. Their wide moats are a great feature in the beauty of the city. At the season of the year they are covered with pink lotus blooms, and they are always the haunt of wild ducks and cranes, which S'28 S. TOKYO find sanctuary here, and sailed over by the count- less crows and hawks which you see at every turn. Inside the third moat stands the new palace of the Mikado — the old palace of the Tokugawa Shoguns was destroyed by fire. The palace of the Mikado is full of the masterpieces of present-day Japanese art, though the European furniture is said by those who have seen it to be poor. Very few have seen it. An English peer, who was a secretary in our legation when I was at Tokyo, told me that he could not gain admission, even as an official of the British Legation, but that he had been over it disguised as a workman of Messrs Liberty, to whom the Euro- pean part of the decorations were entrusted. The castle is naturally the centre of public life in Tokyo ; the legations are in it, near the principal gateway and palace ; the nobles' club is in it ; the university and the museum of arms and Shokonsha temple are in it ; — but I must not linger here, for Tokyo is immense, and full of interesting things. The English who pay a flying visit to Japan, and go up to Tokyo only for a few days, seldom like it ; they prefer Yokohama, with its excitements and its flesh-pots ; but to me Tokyo is, like Rome, one of the most delightful cities 1 was ever in. It is wonderfully beautiful ; so undulating, so full of magnificent temples and groves, so full of Japanese land and water life. It is intensely Japanese. If we wandered off the beaten tracts, we often did not 329 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN run across a foreigner for days together. We had not even the Germans wdth us. At the Tokyo Hotel there was a veneer of Europe. For meal- times the waiters slipped blue serge ship-stewards' suits over their own indigo cotton doublets and hose ; while, if you wished to see the manager at an unusual hour, there was always a sound of shuffling into English clothes behind the screen in his office. But the hotel was inside an old Yashiki, and the hotel carpenter sawed with his feet instead of his hands, and that backwards ! The Japanese themselves never tire of talking of the poeticality of Tokyo. Mr Mikiteichi, the author of a native guide to Tokyo, writes : " The thickly larded blossoms or flowers, keeping the sun off", appear like so inany leaves of white clouds, under which both men and women, old as well as young, run about or sit down, some drinking wine, some composing verse, some playing, some singing. The view of the willows weeping in the evening mist, and the sight of the towers bathing in the fogs, together with the appearance of flying herons and floating ducks, are so incomparably beautiful and picturesque that the pen could do no more than merely hinting it." These are the Japanese author's own words, both of them written about Ueno. Ueno and Shiba are the twin glories of Tokyo ; both owe their origin to tlie same cause — their 330 TOKYO parks surrounded the temples and mortuary shrines of the Tokugawa Shoguns. At Shiba the temples are finer and more numerous. Ueno is the more favoured by nature, the more famous in history, and is richer in colour both in the temples and in its blossoming cherry orchards. It was at Ueno that the forces of the Shogun made their last stand against the Southern Daimios who had revolted to restore the temporal power of the ]\Iikado. Some of the most glorious temples were burnt, and the temple palisades are to this day riddled with bullets. They were fighting for a lost cause. The Shogun himself had no heart for the struggle, but they fought with the chivalrous devotion of Japanese gentlemen. And romance is all on their side ; it is kept alive not a little by the Buddhist priests, for Buddhism was under the special protection of the Shogun, perhaps because the Mikado was the official head of Shinto. Every year at Shiba and Nikko, the headquarters of Buddhism in Japan, the festival of the Toshogu, the deified founder of the Tokugawa, is kept up with great splendour by the Buddhist hierarchy, the sacred image being carried in the centre of a gorgeous procession in a vast scarlet and gold mekura on the backs of scores of coolies. This is the Carnival of Japan. I do not propose to describe at length the ex- quisite beauties, the architectural glories of Ueno 331 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and Shiba. Exhibitions are held in the Ueno park — the most famous spot for cherry-blossom in all Japan. It has also the finest lotus lake — an exact copy of Lake Biwa near Kyoto — with an island in its centre, surmounted by a picturesque temple. Here, in August, the lotus is so luxuriant that the water is entirely concealed by its broad leaves and royal crowns of white or rose-coloured blossoms. There is a popular restaurant over- looking this lake, and a popular race-course in the park ; but to me the charm of Ueno lies in its deserted temple-groves ; and the temples standing in these dark, solemn woods are almost as lost to the world as the fortunes of the Tokugawas. Shiba, on the other hand, is full of life and colour — the gayest spot in Japan. Its chief features are ostensibly the temples, from what remains of the mighty Zojoji do^\'n wards ; and they are marvellous. Those at Nikko may be more chaste, more choice in their beauty ; they are gems in an absolutely perfect situation. But the temples of Shiba are sumptuous and beautiful enough for the Bagdad of the Arabian Nights, and they are full of holiday-making Orientals. It is always holiday at Shiba ; there are days when its precincts are hung with Japanese flags and grass- roped tassels and boughs of bamboo and the mad temple banners ; but with or without festi^■al decorations, there are always crowds of Japanese 332 TOKYO taking their children and their sweethearts to the shows and the gardens of Shiba. The moment that you have passed through the great red gate of the Zojoji Temple you are plunged into the mysterious east. You pass through stately courtyards, decorated with hundreds of the great stone or bronze votive lanterns erected by the princes of Japan when such a Shogun died, up to the temple whose quaint up-turned, over- hanging roofs are a riot of carving and colour, and whose interiors are lined with polished and precious lacquer. You see the Buddhist hierarchs gliding through their stately rites, and temple furniture matchless for graceful simplicity. Behind the temples rise the shrines and mausoleums of the dead Shoguns, with bronze the finest. All around are the flower gardens and beds of perfect blossoms, and at the back of everything are the solemn spires of the cryptomeria groves. The very taking off of shoes, which is done for every Japanese interior, helps to say : " for this is holy ground " ; not that it is as necessary where perfect beauty reigns in the midst of perfect peace, and the air is full of perfume, and the skies are of rarified blue. It is almost too much, this feast of beauty and colour. You might sigh relief when you get away to visit the matchless temple in the wood, which contains the tomb of Hidetada ; or climb to the five-storied pagoda of scarlet lacquer whicli 335 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN looks across the land-locked bay ; or join the gay- crowd of Japanese sight-seers standing round the terraced lake, where tortoises ride on lotus leaves ; or hurry between the booths of knick-knack sellers and conjurors and contortionists to see the dancers for whom Shiba is famous. At Shiba you can see the best geisha and the best no-dancing. No-dancing is, as the American said, no dancing at all ; it consists of posturing in prodigiously fine dresses in a sort of prehistoric drama. It is worth seeing, to get an idea of the richness of old Japanese brocades, for those who cannot appreciate the historical and aesthetic side. Anybody can appreciate the geisha of Shiba. You get soine member to take you to the Maple Club if you can ; and if you cannot, you go to one of the admirable tea-houses, and order a Japanese banquet with geisha. The performance goes on while you dine. It consists of singing and elegant motions of the body and hands. The delightful little creatures are elegance itself, and are beautifully dressed ; but their music and singing is poor to foreigners, who also miss the wit and charm of conversation for which they are famous. The Maple Club is worth visiting also, as one of the most conspicuous examples of the elegant simplicity of the Japanese. Everything about it is made of or decorated with designs from tlie maple ; its banqueting chambers of unstained and 334 TOKYO unvarnished wood are a revelation to the European. For some mysterious reason the Church of England Bishop of Japan is established in the purlieus of Shiba— one of the gayest and most dissipated spots, as it is one of the most beautiful. Shiba Park is an ideal place for medita- tion, but the policy of establishing missions so near a Buddhist headquarters seems doubtful. Shiba is not, however, so popular with the riot- ous as the Asakusa district. The Yoshiwara, the wrestling - booths of Ekkoin, and the Asakusa Temple between them, form the Soho of Tokyo. The great Temple of Asakusa, the most popular in Tokyo with the lower classes, is dedicated to Kwannonsama, the sweet-faced goddess of mercy. The wrestling is hard by, because of the crowds attracted by the principal procession of the gods to Tokyo. But the Japanese of to-day does not go to Asakusa for gods, but for a lark. It is a wonderful sight, the vast temple, with its long rows of stalls with knick-knacks for sweethearts and children, its booths of conjurors, its living pictures made of growing chrysanthemums, its artificial Fujiyama a hundred feet high, and its crowds of holiday-making Japanese. I should like to have described the slightly Europeanised theatre of Danjiro, the most famous actor of Japan ; the temple of the five hundred dis- ciples of Buddha, so curiously assorted ; the groves 335 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of cherry-blossom along the river bank at Mukojmia, which is the Rotten Row of the Japanese when they go for a drive in a riksha ; the Kameido Temple, with its tortoise well and its horse-shoe bridge for penance, and its marvellous wistaria bowers which sweep the lake with yard-long clusters of delicate lilac blossom. But I must leave off describing temples and festivals, and get down to the ordinary street and student life in Tokyo. Besides the schools of the peers and peeresses, and numerous other educational establishments, Tokyo has a magnificent university. All things considered, perhaps there is no capital which has such an astonishing university. It is called the Daigaku, or Greater Learning, possesses splendid buildings and appliances, and has a large staff of very able foreign professors and foreign- trained Japanese professors ; the only complaint about it is that it gives too much education. There are such quantities of educated people in Japan who cannot make enough to eat that the turbulent soshi are a by-word. The Japanese student is very much in evidence in the streets, and the temples are full of them ; and it is sad to see that most of them wear spectacles and some stray article of European dress. I'he Japanese student is very eager to learn, and when he is very young, and very well off, is rather a fascinating personage ; but he is not to be compared 336 TOKYO in that respect with the small people who are too poor to learn anything but a trade — dear little Japs who lie on their stomachs in the street, in the front of their masters' shops, painting paper umbrellas and lanterns. Tokyo contains a million and a half of people, but has seemingly no industries to support them. It is not overrun with beggars ; but outside of the public buildings, within the castle precincts, and the semi-foreign shops and offices in the Ginza, and the theatres and inns, the buildings are very humble. The houses are mostly of one story, and tiny, and their inhabitants subsist on next to nothing for a European. They are built of wood, roofed with heavy channelled tiles ; their walls are only made of wooden shutters, the fronts of which are taken off during the day, if it is warm enough, and replaced with a dark blue or chocolate-coloured curtain if it is too warm. These curtains, marked with big white Chinese characters, are the only bit of colour in a Japanese town, except the scarlet of temples and the dresses of the children and a flying kite, unless a geisha flutters past like a butterfly. We saw very few horses in Tokyo, because the 37,000 rikshas and half a million hand-carts leave next to nothing to do ; but occasionally the ghost of an omnibus, or an apology for a tram, used to pass along, preceded by a runner blowing a horn and bundhng aside people too foolish to get out of 22 337 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the way of such a strange wild beast. In Japan the streets were always full of people wearing dark- blue hose and doublet, if they were doing manual work, and a kimono otherwise. If it was cold, a coolie tied his head up in a handkerchief and wTapped himself in a blanket when he had time to. Richer people put on European hats and extra kimonos. A coolie would be dragging or pushing on a hand- cart as much as a horse would negotiate in the degenerate West. Now and then the crowds were suddenly dispersed by a regiment of soldiers in Italian uniforms, or a buzzing swarm of firemen in cotton tunics with a paper standard. Now that I know my Venice so well, I feel that I did not realise how Venetian Tokyo is — that busy quarter of the town which centres around the Nihom-bashi, the bridge of Japan, which is con- sidered the heart of the capital and the heart of the country. It has the same hog's-back bridges, the same busy water life. I know bridges in Venice that would pass for Japanese, and it was there in Tokyo that one was brought face to face with the great qualities of the race that loves to call its islands Great Japan (Dai Nippon), as we call ours Great Britain. In those wide, dusty streets of lowly houses, one saw the uncomplaining endurance of the yoke of poverty ; the wonderful thought and intelligence ; on the broad spaces in the castle one saw the soldiers patiently assimilating the lessons of 338 TOKYO Europe ; in the university one saw the marvellous thirst for knowledge, and its successful grappling with the almost superhuman difficulty of grasping a highly complex education, arranged on a different plane of thought from that to which the mind was habituated by previous bringing up and by heredity for two or three thousand years ; and in the Diet, Orientals, who had a few years before lived under the feudal conditions of the Middle Ages, debated in a parliament modelled on that of a people who had been self-governed for centuries. One did not realise then what a miracle it was that in every station on the railways of a free and unconquered people 10,000 miles away, and speaking such an utterly alien language, there was an official who could understand English, that in every decent post-office there was an official who could under- stand English, that your tickets were printed in English as well as Japanese. And the greatest marvel of all was that no one could tell you what human beings directed the policy which had carried Japan along the paths of progress with a rapidity which is unsurpassed in the history of the world. Any educated Japanese could tell you that it was not the Emperor, nor his Prime Minister, who made and unmade policies and Cabinets ; many intelli- gent Japanese could tell you that the spokesmen of the great clans, like Choshiu and Satsuma, imposed their wishes on the Government, but none of them 339 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN could tell you anything about the way in which the spokesmen of Choshiu and Satsuma received their mandates, though I have heard hints about wire-pullers holding no official position, and of no more than Samurai birth, whose advice was sought and taken, and who were the real rulers of Japan. 340 CHAPTER XXIV THE SACRED CITY OF NIKKO, AND ITS GOLDEN SHRINES A SACRED city in Japan need not be taken au grand serieux, as it must in some countries. It is even less serious than an American Methodists' camp, where social reunions are more than a feature. Nikko, doubtless, had to be taken more seriously by other people while it was the royal reHgious estab- lishment of the reigning Tokugawas ; but nowadays it is like so many great Italian monasteries — a show-place, with monks as care-takers. But this does not prevent it from being a wholly delightful place. It would be perfectly beautiful, even if there were no temples or tombs. Nikko is generally admitted to be the finest sight in Japan. The Japanese proverb says: Nikko wo minai uchi wa, kekko to iu-na, — until you have seen Nikko, do not say kekko, i.e., grand or splendid. It is right. Nature and art and history have alike been prodigal to Nikko. It is throned in 341 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN the midst of mountains, forests, and solemn mag- nificent cryptomeria groves. Right through it courses the turquoise mountain river Daiya-gawa, spanned by the sacred bridge, with its perfect arch of glittering red lacquer. In every street, in every hollow, through the Toshogu Temple itself, runs a rill of water as clear as glass ; and, wherever there is a bare patch in spring, it will be afire with azalea blossom, almost as scarlet as the sacred lacquer bridge which leaps the river to connect the town of Nikko with the city of temples round the two great tombs. Its woods hold thickets of hydrangeas, while a little beyond it are the great mountain Nantai-zan and the beautiful lake Chiuzenji. Historically, Nikko is interesting as containing the ashes of three of the greatest of the Shoguns — Yoritomo, lyeyasu, and lyemitsu. But it is with art that one naturally associates its name, for it contains the most magnificent Buddhist temples in the world. Beside the glorious mortuary shrines and tombs of lyeyasu, the first, and lyemitsu, the third of the great Tokugawa Shoguns, there are the ancient Shinto foundation, Futa-ara-no-jinja ; Jogiodo, the burial-place of Yoritomo ; the quaint tomb of Jigen-daishi, the Abbot who buried lyeyasu ; the great monastery of Mangwan-ji, with its three great Buddhas, and its exquisite garden ; the beautiful little temple 342 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO and garden of Dainichido ; Kamman-ga-fuchi, the whirlpool, with its regiment of Buddhas ; the sacred red lacquer bridge, INIihashi ; Toyama, the sugar- loaf hill, with its templed top and sweeping views ; and the walk to Takinojinja, past the three-storied pagoda to the Kaisando and Temmangu temples ; the milk-white cascade ; the shrine of Takino-jinja itself, with the exquisite ruins at its back ; and, on the way home, the queer little shrine Gioja Do. This sounds Hke a catalogue of Japanese curios, but they mean to me the most exquisite ensemble in my world of four continents. To picture Nikko, he who knows Italy but not Japan must recall some chef d'oeuvre of frescoes by a fifteenth-century artist, such as Benozzo Gozzoh's masterpiece in the Riccardi Chapel at Florence. For Nikko is an enchanted wood which has in its glades fairy palaces of art. And not one enchanted wood, but many, swathe the tops of mountains under the blue Japanese sky. Before lyeyasu died, and the wealth and power of the magnificent dynasty he founded were la\'ished in making Nikko the most incomparable burial-place on earth, the scene was strikingly lovely. The grandeur of high places in the old Bible sense, with solemn groves overhanging a swu'ling turquoise river, fabulously deep, was always there. But never was Nature more skil- fully yoked to art ; never were the glories of art 343 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN divulged with more virginal reserve. Temples and tombs are veiled in the groves on the further bank. When you come to the river from the town you see only the scarlet arch, of rainbow lightness and sureness, of the sacred bridge,* and one little scarlet shrine half-buried in the opposite gi'ove. The bridge, resting at each end on gigantic stone torii, the mystical arches of Japan, is the most elegant ever conceived by man. The rest of the great buildings of Nikko will have to be unravelled in their groves, like the secrets of Rosamond's Bower and the Minotaur's lair. Your first impression is one of deep mystery behind the noble cryptomerias which sweep up the mountain-sides to where they meet the sky. But within the groves are many glades, each containing some glory-piece of art, which is a feast of form and colour, miraculously adapted to its surroundings. Here superstition rears an honoured head. Out- side the temple, the ancient Shinto temple of Futa- ara-no-jinja, there stands a demon-lantern, dreaded still by the people poor enough to be religious, though those who can read know that since a man dealt the demon's forehead (he met him face to face) the blow which is deep-dinted into the cap of the lantern, the spirit is imprisoned in its iron form. Thousands come to Nikko every year in a pleasant flutter of excitement that the * For the moment swept away, but it is being restored. 344 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO hero lyeyasu may be returned to earth to lead his Adctorious armies, I suppose against the progress of Japan — if the ghost of lyeyasu be not for ever laid by the responsibilities of a First-class Power. The finest landscape garden in the world is Nikko ; even now, when the revenues assigned to the upkeep of this miracle of art have been sequestrated lest the glory of the Tokugawas should be immortalised by an artistic perfection which the world cannot hope to rival in these hurrying latter days. There are not many bare spots in Nikko. It is all woods. There is only one place where you can see the sky except by lying on your back. They are the most delightful woods one ever dreamt of. I felt sure that I should come across the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, and I came across many of them, but they did not contain princesses, for there is no kissing in Japan. It is not forbidden any more than spitting ; but it simply has not occurred to the Japanese, though they are perpetually breaking the 12th commandment,— TAo?^ shalt not spit. They do not even have love stories, because it is wrong to show affection to your fiancee or your wife. You may only flirt with your parents. But those palaces which should have contained sleeping princesses were far more beautiful and fantastic than any which ever illustrated a fairy-tale, and contained inmates far more picturesque than 345 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN princesses — venerable yellow monks, with their heads shaved as well as their faces. They wore pure white robes, and moved about like ghosts, doing nothing. Sometimes they went so far as to seal a ticket for you. The ticket was made of tissue-paper, and it was sealed with red ink instead of wax, and the signet was made of wood. All the fandango of Japanese writing made the ticket so pretty that you felt inclined to buy two — one to take you round the temples and one to take home and keep. The priest who sold the tickets and the priest who sold the prayers were the only two who did anything in the whole city. If you did not know how to say your prayers for yourself the priest said them for you, as indeed he does in some other countries. But in Japan he does it differently. You tell him the sort of prayer you require for present desires, and he hands it to you, written out, for a sen, which is a halfpenny, sealed, so that the god may know that it is genuine and not the work of the professional letter-writer at the post-office. The tickets cost eighteenpence, but they were not a bit prettier ; so I bought prayers to keep and only the ticket I was going to use. The prayer-priest, however, had every confidence in the honourable- ness of my intentions ; for when I had bought a prettily-assorted collection of prayers, he took me to a temple to show me what to do with them. He showed me a number of gods, and pointed out 346 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO that each image had in front of it a trough, with a sort of beetle-trap at the top, Hke they use to take the tickets at the Tuppenny Tube. Some of these troughs were commoner, and had merely grated tops. He made signs that I was to put the tickets into the trough of whatever god I decided to worship. I told the guide to explain to him very politely that I had no particular god in my mind just then ; but I wished, as I did the round of the temples, to be in a position to put in a prayer to any god who particularly impressed me. This seemed to please him. Some foreigners evidently did the round of the temples without doing any praying (or paying). When the priest had left us, the^uide, who was a low kind of man, formerly in the jinriksha business, showed me another way of praying, which the priests had forgotten. He asked me for one of my prayers, and when I gave it to him, ate it. This seemed quite a new way, only I felt that I should not care to practise it, unless it was extra efficacious ; but he had not really eaten it ; he had only reduced it to pulp with the saliva with which the Japanese seems to be more gifted than other races. He led me to a large red gate-way, which had gods on each side of it, shut up in hutches with netting over the front, like rabbits. The gods were formidable-looking red creatures, with pufFed-out 347 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN cheeks, goggle eyes, and turned-up eyebrows. In spite of appearances, they were said to be very kind gods, if you succeeded in propitiating them, and he invited me to try my tongue at it. I was to take the pulp to which he reduced the prayer in my mouth, and stand a yard off, and spit it at the god as though I were a pea-shooter. If any of the prayer went through the grating, and stuck to the god, it would be granted. I pretended not to understand, and got him to spit it himself I should not have had any luck in any case, for it hit the grating, and expanded like a soft-nosed bullet. Perhaps this species of worship is confined to the unintelligent classes — jinriksha boys aU have a profound faith in it ; but I never saw them doing it to any gods except the Ni-o — the two kings who have hutches one on each side of temple gate-wavs. The other monks did not work so hard. They squatted behind praying-books, with their eyes downcast — the most spotlessly clean things. But you never saw them doing anything towards keeping the temples clean— that was done by coolies ; though sometimes they were holding very beautiful services, extremely like the services in Italy. The beauty of those buildings in the woods was almost indescribable. Site and form and colour were selected with superlative taste. From Nikko town you see nothing of them. Nikko town is one long street, with indifferent houses 348 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO and shops, which cater for the inferior Japanese pilgrims. The Nikko Hotel, where foreigners go unless they have the special reason for patronising a native inn, is in the woods near the temples. The temples, like the museums of Italy, close at four — the time when most people would go into them ; and as travellers naturally arrive in the afternoon (Nikko being that far from Tokyo), you have to leave the temples till next morning and go for a walk. Fortunately, walks take rank among Nikko 's numerous specialties. I could live at Nikko for nothing but the walks. They are more beautiful and mysterious than the wildest parts of Regent's Park, and there is one blessed bit in Regent's Park which can make me forget that I am in London — a place which I abominate, apart from its events and its parties, because year by year it drives the virgin country back to remoter distances. At Nikko you have the best Art, but it is side by side with the best Nature. Such gracious walks I never knew in Greek Sicily or medieeval Tuscany. Can I forget that day in May upon the Daiya river ? I went to Nikko, armed with Farsari's guide. Japan would have been nothing without Farsari — a versatile and happy-hearted Italian, who took some of the most charming photographs in the world, and acted as intermediary between the 349 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN English mind and the Japanese. His mind alone seemed to work on both planes, for, familiar with the guileful guilelessness of Italy, he could interpret the guileful guilelessness of Japan. The gods seem to have come to Nikko, which might have been the Olympus of Japan, as a kind of after-thought ; at all events, their late arrivals are registered. Perhaps some Japanese Virgil furnished Nikko with a past when the founder of Japan's most splendid dynasty (that of the Toku- gawa Shoguns) had chosen it for his permanent headquarters. The Virgilian method was to coin a hero's name from that of a city existing in later times, and add this hero to the staff of iEneas. The Japanese method is to make a god or a very holy man go on a pilgrimage to a place which needs a past. Shodo-Shonin was most useful in this way at Nikko. According to Farsari, and therefore to Satow, from whom he usually borrows : " When the holy Shodo-Shonin \dsited Nikko for the first time, and arrived at this spot, he found the rocks so steep, and the flood that passed between them so full of whirlpools, that it seemed impossible to get across. Appalled at the sight, he fell on his knees and prayed earnestly to the gods and Buddha for help ; when, in answer to his petition, there appeared on the opposite bank the faint outlines of the god Shinsa Daio, holding two green and red snakes, which he cast into the abyss. In an instant a long 350 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO bridge was seen to span the stream, like a rainbow floating among the hills. Shodo-Shonin and his disciples passed over in safety." The sacred red-lacquer bridge Mihashi typifies the baseless fabric of the rainbow, which was sufficient for the saint, who, of course, did not know that he was poaching from the Northmen's Valhalla. There never was anything so typical. It bridges the chaotic river which runs between Nikko town and the Holies of Nikko, with a curve so perfect that the word " rainbow " rises to your lips. It is an arc of scarlet lacquer— not a base materialistic bridge. In the respectful days before the Revolution, when respect sat on the keen edge of Samurai swords, the bridge was open only to the Tokugawa house, and to pilgrims at the two great Tokugawa festivals. Now it is only open to a fee, though the Mikado might use it if he liked. The ends of the rainbow rest on two vast grey stone torii. This is as it should be. They are mightily majestic, and their origin and significance are as misty as the ends of a rainbow. The bridge is scarlet ; the torii are grey ; the river is turquoise ; the grass is rice- green ; the groves are cypress green ; the sky is sapphire. Japan is all brights or all duns. When we had done moralising on Mihashi, we rambled on to Kammanga-fuchi — a sky-blue whirl- pool. The Daiya has enough water in it to make a better river than any in Japan ; but it is so 351 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN hemmed in that, hke the rivers of the Rocky Moun- tains, it had to dig to find room, and grew mon- strously swift and deep. Over one side of it we saw an overhanging rock, with a Buddha standing on its brow, and a Sanskrit character carved on its face above the raging flood at a place no mortal man could ever get to without a scaffold — ill-omened word for such a break-neck spot. So they brought in Kobo-Daishi, who was deified for inventing the alphabet — and it was no mean task to invent an elaborate affair like the Japanese alphabet. Ham- mam is the meaning of the Sanskrit characters which Kobo-Daishi wrote. We fortunately were not able to read his writing, or it would have been difficult to have resisted a pun about the Turkish bath into which the Buddha above looked as though he were going to dive. It is customary to make this joke when you hear that the writing spells Hammam. One should have been most serious, for anything more gracious than the avenue of the Buddhas is as rare as charity. There are hundreds of them, carved out of grey granite as simple in outline as mummy-cases. Mosses and lichens have velveted the stone. The peace of God is in the calm beauty of the faces. There they rest, looking not on the green pastures and still waters of the Psalmist, but on a grass path on the edge of Eternity, represented by that fierce blue whirlpool into which one step 352 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO would mean death. The " trimmings," as Artemas Ward would call them, of vegetation were perfect. Grass and fern and flower and tree thrust in be- tween, or over-arched, the venerable images. There seem to be hundreds of them. Nobody has ever been able to find out how many, though an American once made a bet on the subject and nearly pulled it off. He relied on a set of the paper numbers they give you in cloak-rooms at balls, and stuck them on the Buddhas. But the powers of the air, or perhaps one should say of the water, intervened, and made it rain so heavily — the Japanese summer-shower — that the labels would not stick, and he kept think- ing he had missed one. It is a good thing that it rained, for no Japanese would have disturbed the labels, and in dry weather the Buddhas would have looked like an auction-room for months. We did not try to count them ; we tried to think we were in Nirvana among the Buddhas on that languorous afternoon as we mooned along. The air was heavy with azaleas : there were acres of them, wild, in full scarlet blossom, between us and the Murderer's Temple, which was our goal, when we had left off lotus-eating. It is built upon a boulder on a steep hillside, tangled with vegetation. Climbing up to it through the luscious lavender-flowered wistaria- lianas was, like virtue, its own reward. For the temple was a poor little affair, with nothing to it except that it was small enough to stand on a stone, 23 353 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN and had a collection of votive swords offered by homicides — not the real swords which had done the business — they w^re reserved for future use — but wooden make-believes. The Japanese has original ideas about the favour of Heaven. Instead of a god, or even a saint, this temple has a red- handed murderer leaning on his spear. Across the river is what many a foreigner has thought the best thing in Japan — a temple which is let for lodgings, usually with a "wife." This shrine of the Scarlet Woman is appropriately coloured, and a dream of elegance. It is cheap, and you may do anything you like there, except wear your boots. The mats are kept immaculate. It is a gem of a temple, and its setting is a Chinese garden of the sort they used as a pattern for soup- plates, with a complete set of the stage properties. In a patch the size of a backyard it has a lake and groves and islands and bridges and torii and votive lanterns — even a pagoda ; put together like a Chinese puzzle, without any squeezmg. You could not tell from the photographs that it was not as big as the garden of the Golden Pavilion at Kyoto. In warm, dry weather, with a mosquito-curtain thrown in, to live here would be as lovely as a lotus-eater's dream. But the Japanese have no idea of excluding draughts or damp. The temple, or perhaps I should say lodgings, for its religious 354 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO uses are of minor importance, is called Dai- nichi-do. There are more acres of scarlet azaleas behind it through which you pass when you go to the seven waterfalls and the Lake of Chiusenji. This takes a whole day ; but no one grudges it, for the path lies through camellia woods, and the seven waterfalls come in right for rests, and only the men need walk ; ladies with nice ankles and smart boots ride Japanese ponies ; the Japanese side-saddle is not often honoured with a habit, but the Japanese mosquito has an eagle eye for sHppered feet. They seem to expect tourists at Chiusenji, for the hotels are built over that exquisite lake ; but only Japanese tourists, because, though geisha-girls are provided, bread is not — and a European cannot live by geishas alone. But this does not signify, because the guides know their shortcomings, and carry your lunch from Nikko. A Japanese guide will carry anything short of a piano for you. One day, when we were walking from Nikko to Chiusenji, we came across a burnt temple. The poor little Buddhas were lying about, with their heads knocked off, as if they had been murdered. I picked up the best head, weighing several pounds, and told the guide to carry it home for me. He pointed out some more, and seemed astonished that I did not intend him to carry the whole lot. I felt inclined to say yes. It is so easy to collect curios if you 355 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN pay nothing for them, and do not have to carry them. I have that Buddha in my London flat ; and when we first came home, we used to burn joss-sticks in front of him to make him feel that his deity had not departed. Our supply of joss-sticks has run out, and so has the novelty. But I cannot look at him without a train of memories of those laughing walks of globe-trotting young men and maidens through the Nikko woods. I have known globe-trotters go to Nikko without seeing the temples at all. The majority of them only see one, and say it will do for the rest. The British barbarian glories in going to a place whose sights a student would give a year of his life to visit, and when he gets there not seeing any of them. Norma Lorimer was quite right when she observed in one of her books that the best people never look at what they go to see. She was speaking of the Oxford and Cambridge match, but it is true all round the world. Quite half the people who were with us at the Nikko Hotel hated the temples. They did not under- stand them in the least, and were always being asked questions about them. They would not have gone on staying there if there had not been trout the size of sticklebacks to catch, and walks where marriages were made more easily than in Heaven. You can be such a cheap hero at Nikko. AVomen fly to men as their natural defenders at 356 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO every step when they go out for walks in the woods. There is a splendid supply of snakes. They are perfectly harmless, which a man with any nerve remembers ; but few Englishwomen can help screaming and clutching at a male companion when a snake, a yard or two long, dashes across their path. On a suitable summer day there are places round Nikko where you could comfortably kill a snake a minute. Mr Gladstone said the Americans disliked the Chinese for their virtues, not for their vices. Globe-trotters abuse the temples at Nikko, because there is too much to see, not too little. They are perfect specimens ; but you want to take a guide who is short of breath, or he ^^dll tire you to death, for every lantern in a Japanese temple has its story, and the lanterns make Japanese temples look like gigantic skittle alleys. When an important man dies, his friends each send a pair of bronze or stone-lanterns bigger than themselves, and bear- ing a strong resemblance to nine-pins, though they are often miracles of workmanship. Where was one to begin ? There is such an embarras de I'ichesse at Nikko. First, of course, comes the princely pair — the great twdn brethren of temples, the shrines of lyeyasu and lyemitsu. The chief thing in Nikko is the temple built to receive the body of lyeyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns. It is the finest 357 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN wooden temple, the finest monument of Buddhist art in existence. The campo santo, the spot made sacred with the dust of lyeyasu, is the more superlative ; that of lyemitsu only less superlative. The sacred way leads naturally to the shrine of lyeyasu the first ; but then the shrine of lyemitsu must pale, if ever so little, in the contrast. Never was there such a pair of miracles in wood — miracles of form, miracles of carving, miracles of colour — in the most ex- quisitely trained groves. While I was making this momentous choice of how I would take the supreme vision of beauty that has come even into my wandering life, I found myself at Futa-ara-no-jinja — a Shinto temple, with much magnificent Buddhist decoration. This tangle of the two religions is significant of Japan. Most Japanese who have any religion belong to both ; and, as I have said elsewhere. Christians would be multiplied if the missionaries would but comply with the reasonable requests of the natives that they should not be required to imperil their salvation by abandoning their ancient sheet anchors of faith, but should be allowed to make a superior future life more secure by making it fast to a third anchor. There is, at any rate, one kind of much Buddhized Shinto ; but the tangle of religious emblems at Nikko is due less to this than to the fact that the Mikado, the Pope of Shinto, overcame 358 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO the Buddhist Tokugawas, and appropriated such as he desired of their temple property for the ancient creed, which is hardly a creed, but an unwritten law of life — a noble morality. The Koya-machi, the sacred tree of the Tokugawas at Futa-ara-no- jinja, shared the decay of its house behind an old stone fence of exquisite beauty. I gave a passing look at the wounded head of the demon lantern presented to this temple six himdred years ago by Kanuma Gonzaburo, and then passed on to the linked red-lacquer shrines of Hokkedo and Jogiodo. I was so interested in the career of Kishibojin, who shares the dedication of the former, for, in the words of my Japanese-English guide, she " was very wicked, and afterwards not so wicked." Her wickedness consisted in having five hundred children, and eating them one a day. She was converted by Sakya-Muni, and entered a nunnery, and is now worshipped as the protectress of children. In Jogiodo rest the ashes of the mighty Yoritomo, brought there when the men who were rearing the Niomon Gate of lyeyasu's shrine hap- pened upon them nearly three centuries ago. The Jogiodo and Hokkedo served also for what the Japanese guide called the performance of ecstatic meditation. He must have got it from some book, and perhaps transmuted it in his alchemical mind. The Jogiodo, he explained, was the constant walking- hall \ and the Hokkedo, the 359 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN hall of the Flower of the Law, used for reciting an indefatigable number of times, Oh the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wondeiful Law, which appears to be a Japanese form of Christian Science. (Why science ?) We went under the gallery which linked these halls, over a little bridge, and up over a beautiful winding path, over-arched with Osmunda Regalis, until we came to an elegant little chapel, with interesting paintings and decorations, standing in front of the tomb of the Abbot of Nikko, who held this sacred office when Nikko received the over- whelming honour of being chosen as the burial- place of lyeyasu. Six stone figures stood round it, and on a knoll to the left were the grenadier- bonneted tombs of the thirteen prince-abbots of Nikko, who followed him till the Tokugawas were shorn of their divinity in that earthquake revolution of 1868. Then we retraced our steps till we found our- selves on the threshold of one of the great twin mausolea, Daiyuin, the mortuary shrine of lyemitsu. Mausolus, who gave the world's chief tombs their title of mausolea, and has his own preserved from further injury in Bloomsbury, at the British Museum, was not more worthily buried. Yet comedy dogged the footsteps of tragedy in the funeral pomp at Nikko. The two kings who gave its name to the Ni-o-mon, the gate which admitted us, were as 360 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO nobbly and red as boiled lobsters. I turned im- patiently from these Gog and Magog monsters to a vision of perfect beauty — an exquisite copper maple, shadowing a canopy with the fantastic grace of Japan, reared over the magic fountain given by the Prince of Hizen in 1618. Its basin was cut out of a plain block of stone, two yards long and a yard high and wide, hollowed like a Roman sar- cophagus, and levelled so perfectly that the water slipped equally over every side at once. It looked like a block of water, and the canopy above re- minded one of the never-to-be-forgotten fountains of Constantinople. Behind this, a bronze dragon in the grass spouted clear water, and above a row of quaint mossy stone lanterns rose the terraced monastery. To the left was a little flight of steps which took us to a second gate, the Ni-ten-mon, and another cold shock ; for the niches at the gate, back and front, contained yet more preposterous wooden gods, painted green and red— insults to Japanese intelligence. The statues outside meant nothing to me when I heard their Japanese names ; but the green statue on the inside was the God of the Wind — an iEolus who carried on his back a long sack, tied at each end, with the ends brought over his shoulders. He had only two toes on each foot, and was one finger short on each hand. His companion, the God of Thunder, painted red, was equally badly off for toes, with two fingers short 361 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN on each hand. He carried a fairly obvious thunder- bolt. I turned my back upon comedy, and climbed three more of the picturesque stairways which are the keynote of Japanese landscape architecture, to the third gate, the Yasha-mon, the four niches of which contained four other monsters explained to me as the four Deva kings. I was happily dis- tracted by the glory of the foliage, for, directly opposite was the Hotoke Iwa, in which stands the mausoleum, veiled to the summit with trees of various tints, glimpsing behind the avenue of cryptomerias that arch the last stairway. I felt that this vista alone would have repaid the journey to Japan. The magnificence of the oratory and the chapel were not dimmed. I had obeyed my guide's artistic sense, and was to see the more magnificent hills of lyeyasu later. The Oratory of lyemitsu is in one respect superior, for it still teems wdth the religious furniture of Buddhism, such as the beautiful " prayer-book " boxes, arranged on a row of little lacquer tables. How wonderfully elegant the gate was, with its glorious brasswork. And there were great horn lanterns, which the guide declared Korean and the guide-book Dutch. I waived the point ; I was so taken up with the exquisite gold lacquer of the walls and the dragon on the ceiling. All foreigners talk glibly of the dragon by its Japanese name of Kirm — they know it from the Kirin beer. On the right of the chapel 362 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO was yet another gate, this tune of white lacquer, so hard and fine that it looked like a bit of an iron- clad. Through this, at the top of a hill, made almost dramatically beautiful with stately steps of ancient stone, was lyemitsu's tomb, shaped like the tombs of dead Shoguns at Shiba, of that pale bronze attained by the infusion of gold. The fine gilt Sanskrit characters on the beautiful bronze gate in front struck the top note. From the shrine of lyemitsu to the shrine of lyeyasu is only a few hundred yards, but my guide was almost tearful at the bare thought of going the back way ; and as sight-seeing at Nikko is as exciting as champagne, I wished to make the most of it, and yielded. He took me right back to Mihashi, the sacred red lacquer bridge, but not before I had returned to the hotel for lunch. When we went out again, summer had laid her sleepy spell upon the land. One could almost dream as one walked along. The atmosphere was so languorous and caressing. Heat is no more to a Japanese than time. He may discard more clothes than is compatible with our notions of decency, but he never goes quite naked under any circumstances ; he retains a cloth round — his forehead, to keep the perspiration out of his eyes. But this was child's play, and he wore all his garments — his Japanese tunic and hose, his German bowler and boots — at least, he thought they were German, though I sus- 363 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN pected them of being creditable native imitations. But that was neither here nor there, for we had crossed the other bridge, and were at the far end of Mihashi — poor Mihashi fallen from its high estate, for it is being shorn of its lacquer by the elements and its importance by the enemies of its house. But as long as it stands it will be a most beautiful note in the landscape, from its rainbow curve, from the Egyptian grandeur of the mighty stone torii which act as its piers, and from the contrast of its brilliant scarlet against the dark cryptomerias above, and the foam and turquoise river below. In the piping days of Nikko, when the Tokugawas reigned in Tokyo, its gates were only opened to the Shogun himself and to pilgrims who thronged twice in the year to the Tokugawa festivals. Now it is only open to fees. I paid so as to don the spectacles of a Japanese Chaucer. From Mihashi we took the pilgrims' climb past the little red shrine of Jinja Daio up the stately Nagasaka, through a magnificent cryptomeria avenue, and past the south wall of the great monastery of Mangwanji. From this, by broad steps between two rows of cryptomerias planted on stone-faced banks, we came to the great torii, presented in 1618 by the Prince of Chikuzen, with its monolith uprights twenty-seven feet high and almost four feet through, and stood between the five-storied pagoda and the beautiful little temple 364 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO at the top of some crumbling, mossy steps. The ffuide raved over its decorations and the size of its bell. I liked its air of abandon. It was only built to be used during repairs of the main temple, and had its base buried in a meadow with an astonishing depth of flowers and grass. Your first-class Buddhist temple must have Honden and Haiden, oratory and chapel, drum- tower and bell-tower, five-story pagoda circula- ting library, fountain of lustration, treasury, and dancing-stage ; and if its god happens to be a demi- god who has served his time on earth, there will be a sacred stable, with a sacred horse, mad for a choice, and a palanquin for use in processions. The temple of lyeyasu has all these primary features. But they form only a small part of a Japanese temple. Each of them would be a gem of wooden architecture, and for each is provided the proper aesthetic setting. Each temple has its park in which avenues of cryptomerias, groves of camellias, and camphor- wood, and bowers of cherry- blossom play their part. I avoid the word orchard, because the best Japanese fruit-trees are not ex- pected to bear fruit. The various parts of the temple are divided by groves and gates. The Japanese are great on gates, especially on compli- mentary gates, which do not keep anyone out, but are reserved for the use of great people, like a private car on a railway. These gates are often 365 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN immense, and generally painted red. At Nikko they are not very large, and may be any colour. The Japanese also build their temples on hills, and take full advantage of the different elevations, with picturesque stairways and terraces of mossy stone. At Nikko the pilgrim mounts by more than two hundred steps from the temple to the tomb of lyeyasu, and the steps are broken up with terraces and avenues— the very perfection of land- scape gardening. At lyeyasu's Temple the five- storied scarlet pagoda rises by the entrance, the gateway known as Niomon, which should be adorned with the two lobster-like kings in their rabbit-hutches, but is surrounded with all manner of strange beasts instead. I had to submit to my guide's description of the pagoda : how it was given by a person with a very long name more than two hundred and fifty years ago, and what animals the various members of the Duodenary Cycle were intended for. It was perfectly obvious to anyone that they were rat, bull, tiger, hare, serpent, dragon, horse, goat, ape, cock, dog, and pig ; for they were carved and painted with the most life-like fidelity. I let him have his say while I took in the easy symmetry and rich colouring. I could not, an' I would, describe the Temple of lyeyasu at Nikko. It is indescribable. One can only give glimpses of it. Mythology and art arrest one at every step. From the gate of the 366 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO Two Kings, where you enter the hallowed precincts, glare two strange gilt monsters, like Corean lions — one has a horn in the centre of its forehead. They are Ama-Inu and Coma-Inu, far-off cousins of the lion and the unicorn ; and, as if that was not enough, the peony is conventionalised round the building' hardly distinguishable from the roses conventional- ised on the Palace of Westminster. Clearly these be the beast and flower emblems of royalty, borne in a Central Asian myth, and carried West and East like seed to perpetuate their species in shapes altering according to conditions. A wiseacre in the JEncyclopcedia Britannica says that these glorified poodles — Ama-inu signifies heavenly dog — are of Eastern origin, and represent Spirit and Matter — as if kings troubled their heads about such matters. Round the corner are carried representations of the Taku-jiu — a beast indued, like Balaam's animal, with human speech, which only appears when vir- tuous monarchs are on the throne. We did not see any alive, though it would be as much as a Japanese's life is worth to say that his Emperor was not virtuous. I wondered how they got out of this difficulty. Or was it a sarcasm levelled by the Tokungawa Shoguns against their titular sovereigns, the Mikados ? The gate has also tapirs, whose long noses frighten away pestilence, according to the Chinese. Once through that gate the East burst upon my 367 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN eyes in full glare. I stood in a vast courtyard, surrounded by a scarlet palisade, and filled with the paraphernalia of a god. I stood right under a gigantic koyamachi tree, and was told that it was once a dwarf in a flower-pot carried about by lyeyasu in his palanquin like a toy terrier. The clothes and armour worn by the demi-god, and the furniture used in his annual procession, filled three tall scarlet treasuries, curiously carved, and glittering with chased brass. The building which balanced them — the Japanese are as fond of balance in their temples as they are averse to it elsewhere — had elaborate carvings of monkeys. They were called the monkeys of the three countries, my guide informed me. " What three countries ? " I asked. "Japan, China, and India," he replied in a tone which showed that there were no others ; and he proceeded to inform me that they were called the kika-zaru, iwa-zaru, and the mi-zaru — the not- hearing, not-speaking, and not-seeing monkeys. I asked which country had which. The idea had not occurred to him : he met it with the motto of Japan : " No can say." It was the stable, this monkey-house, where a mad white pony was kept for the use of the demi-god. When the divinity was not using it, the priests used it to create a demand for beans among the faithful. The sale of beans brought in quite a revenue. Then came a guard-room, guarded no more, and then another 368 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO block of water under an exquisite canopy, with twelve stone columns, and fed with pure water from the fall behind the hill. So lovely it was amid the gleaming scarlet and brass that I could have sat there all the afternoon listening to the bubbling sound insatiable in my feast of form and colour. But there was the Kiozo beyond — a Buddhist library — an exterior of perfect beauty, which was a scarlet cousin of the whited sepulchre, for it contained a copy of the seven thousand volumes of the Buddhist scriptures, never to be read, but arranged for consumption in a different way in an octagonal revolving bookcase of red lacquer, with gilt pillars, fitted with capstan bars. The faithful breasting those bars, and making the library revolve three times, enjoy the same merit as if they had read it — though a task almost beyond human endurance, apart from the fact that not one worshipper in a thousand could read it. When the faithful are illiterate but confiding, purchase goes on as briskly between them and Heaven as it does between them and Heaven's vicars upon earth. I have already told how the priests wrote the prayers and sold them for fractions of a halfpenny, and the humble faithful bought them and dropped them into slots. It is as necessary to prevent prayers getting out the way they went in as it is to prevent beetles and Tube tickets. They might be used again, and no Japanese would credit the gods with 24 369 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN knowing the difference. As I bought some for curios, and no virtue went forth from them, perhaps they would make up for a few frauds. The key of the hbrary was kept at the monastery of Mangwanji ; it was as undesirable that the faithful should attain salvation without paying for it in Japan as elsewhere. There are some people who could not appreciate salvation which they get for nothing any more than they appreciate enter- tainments which they get for nothing. But the Japanese are different ; they like getting anything for nothing, and always used us as a free theatrical performance. I sent for the key, and enjoy the merit of having read the Buddhist scriptures. Coming out of that library, we found ourselves in a forest of bronze torii ; bronze lanterns, reared by princes at the threshold of lyeyasu's grave ; bronze candelabras ; and the exquisite bronze bell which had to be taken down because it was worn through at the top. The Japanese call it the moth- eaten bell. Some of the lanterns and candelabras were ordered from Holland three centuries ago — an unheard-of piece of extravagance ; but in the main, they are of Japan, Corea, and Loochoo, Oriental workmanship, quaint as it is exquisite. I soon lost count of gates and terraces and stair- ways, of drum and bell towers, beautiful though they were. Like so many Japanese temples, that 370 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO of lyeyasu rises terrace upon terrace as Canterbury Cathedral rises step by step from the nave to Becket's Crown. The Dutch workmanship of the candlesticks was betrayed by their having sockets. Orientals thrust the candlesticks into the candles, not vice versa. My guide counted the lanterns. He said there were a hundred and eighteen, but I had not much confidence in his arithmetic, for he had not brought his counting machine with him, and the Japanese would work out the change for a shilling on his soroban. We passed under the great bronze torii, and over stairways and terraces to Yomeimon. Yomeimon is the real heart of Nikko ; it is the most exquisite thing in Japan. From its white columns to its golden-mouthed dragons it is a miracle of Japanese skill and richness of fancy — a vast coloured gateway, supported on pillars of such inimitable carving that one was erected upside down to prevent the gods being jealous. If there had been no evil-averting pillar, Yomeimon would have been too perfect. Even in such a monument, the natural grain of the wood was made to do the work of the sculptor for the fur of the tigress and her cub. Yomeimon is like a great jewel of gold and white and scarlet and green. Its carvings are like gold- smiths' work. Pillars and beam-ends and dragon heads stand out like its gorgeous, gold-laced, 371 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN cocked hat of a roof, and in between are groups of children playing, and Chinese sages and rishi. What rishi exactly are, no scholar has ever been able to find out. The man who said that a rishi was a sort of Buddhist mermaid came as near as the rest. Anyhow, Yomeimon is the most exquisite bit of colour in Japan. It stands at the top of steps, and lets you into a Japanese cloister, which means nothing more than a yard with an orna- mental wall. The Japanese sense of artistic fitness will not allow Yomeimon or any of the major buildings to come too near the chief temple. The Karamon, by which you enter the Tamagaki, or cloistered terrace on which the temple stands, is quite small, and depends for its effect on the wonderful Chinese carvings which give it its name. It is a sort of glorified netsuke. It is so small that they might well have been done in ivory. The Tamagaki is the world's best wooden wall — a gilt and coloured trellis, with extraordinary carvings of birds and fruit. Inside this stands the temple — a riot of colour and carving. The scoffing European is annoyed that it has mostly been boarded up : now that money is scarce at Nikko, prevention is con- sidered better than cure against the ravages of the weather. When you get to the Karamon, you have to take off your shoes, not because it is holy ground, 372 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO but because you have to take off your shoes in any decent house in Japan, whether it belongs to God or man. The globe-scorcher generally casts an irreverent eye about him and walks out again. He may notice the strips of paper called gohei, which are gold here, and comment on their foolishness, or make a joke about the mirror which typifies the Mikado's relationship with the sun. He will not be disappointed at the absence of the fine prayer- books and other paraphernalia of Buddhist worship purged away to make the Temple Shinto, any more than he will notice the pictures of the Thirty-Six Poets, or the priceless gold lacquer and carvings which are the chief glory of Nikko, and make you understand for the first time in your life what the golden temple of Solomon was like. But he is pretty certain to notice the Kirin or dragon — the only thing (for a reason explained) likely to interest the average man in Japanese mythology, which does not, like the mythology of Greece, uncover a multitude of sins. Haiden and Honden are all one to the globe- scorcher. He will hurry out of the temples, because he has forgotten to see the sacred dancing in the Kagura-Do as he came in. The last Holy Emperor resigned that title, observing that it was no longer Holy, or Roman, or an Empire. The sacred dancing might well be 373 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN given up on the same grounds. You pay a hand- ful of coppers to see an old woman with black teeth go through a series of postures less interesting than a tarantella performed by the hack at Capri. But this is one of the points to which the scorcher looks back gratefully in his perambulation of the temple. And he likes the sacred palanquins, kept in the Mikoshido — grand affairs of scarlet and gilt and black, about the size of bathing machines, and wdth roofs like miniature temples. It interests him to know how many coolies it takes to carry them ; and he laughs to split himself, as my Japanese guide said, when he is told that nothing is carried round in them but the spirits of lyeyasu, Hideyoshi, and Yoritomo. The bare mention of Hideyoshi sends him off into fits. It sent the whole Far East into a different sort of fits in the great warrior's lifetime. These Mikoshi, or sacred palanquins, are a feature in Japan. They are the gods' carriages in which they ride in processions or go and pay each other visits. One visit of this kind is carried out most solemnly every year. Inari, the rice-goddess, is the Ceres of Japan. The whole population lives on rice. To secure her favour, she is taken to stay with the ancestress of the Imperial family, the sun goddess, in the primeval temples of Ise, the Mecca of Japan. What a tissue of ancient myths and elemental worship Mr Lang might find here. The ice goddess has to go and stay with the sun as the 374 SACRED CITY OF NIKKO spring goddess, Proserpine, had to go and reign below the earth in the dark months when the seed was in the earth. To get to lyeyasu's tomb you have to pass through the gateway of the Sleeping Cat. Most of the scorchers hke that better than anything in the temple. Those who went with me would have sat down and looked at its stolid likeness and not gone near the tomb, but the Japanese do not have seats : they do not know how to use them. They would have missed one of the loveliest walks in the world, for one minute you are climbing antique steps and the next pacing along a hanging terrace, always of mossy stone and always with balustrades of simple grace. Stairway and terrace are avenued alike with soaring cryptomerias — the cypresses of the East. At the top of the mountain of groves is the tomb of the dead High-and-Mightiness, with a temple to share its loneliness. A great bronze gate towering above the low balustrade, and cast in a single piece, keeps out no one and admits the princes of the House. The emblems of eternity — stork and tortoise and candle and lotus-flower — made of gilt brass and inch-thick bronze, rise in front of the tomb. The tomb of bronze, half gold, wears the shape of the Five Elements. Two little doors, high up, close the meagre orifice sufficient to con- tain a hero's ashes, reduced by fire. Ama-inu and Coma-inu guard the gate that need never be opened. 375 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN But dearer than all the temples to the heart of the scorcher are the walks up Toyama and through the Takinojinja woods. Toyama is a mountain of wistaria, with little grey Buddhas seated round its top like gods on Mount Olympus. You cross a river at its foot. You might cross it a hundred times, and not know that it was anything but an unmended road. In Sicily they use the rivers as cart-roads : perhaps they would in Japan, if they had any carts. The hundred-and-first time you would find it as wide as a lake and as fierce as a cataract. The walk through the Takinojinja woods is the most poetic thing I ever remember. Under the tall trees is a paved causeway of mossy stone between thickets of hydrangeas pampered by little brooks full of microscopic trout. You go to Nikko in June, for the greatest Buddhist procession in Japan — that of the deified lyeyasu ; and in June, as you walk along that causeway, it seems alive with beautiful snakes darting in front of you, but none of them offering to bite. In the depths of the wood you hear the fantastic " pooh-pooh," and are always passing between shrines or sacred spots. The little scarlet shrines shine out of the wood like the waratah on the hills of New South Wales, and there are tall waterfalls and wishing-wells. There is the San-No-JNIiya — the little red chapel where pregnant women may procure safe delivery file SACRED CITY OF NIKKO by offering up pieces of wood with the Chinese characters for "fragrant chariot." There are the scarlet shrine and tomb of Shodo-Shonin, who bridged the river with a rainbow ; there is the httle scarlet shrine of Temman-Gu, the name under which Sugawara-no-Michizane was deified as god of writing — purely a Japanese idea, A large stone close by was touched by Kobodaishi. Chips of it are sovereign against noxious influences, such as the little stone Emmas which stand in a row opposite. Emma is the king of hell in Japan, and a recording devil. Not far off is the tombstone of the horse which was set free after carrying lyeyasu to his decisive victory, and roamed about these mountains for thirty years. At the end of the wood is a sight never to be forgotten— the buildings of a scarlet temple grouped along a winding, hilly path. They mark the holy spot where the three gods came to Nikko. An exquisite stone balustrade hedges off the sacred enclosure where each had his tall cryptomeria. They have fallen many a year ; and forest trees, a foot in diameter, are growing out of their decaying trunks. A few steps down is the well from which sake flows when the world is good ; and close by is another stone touched by Kobo Daishi, or some other saint, for the relief of sterile women. It is difficult to imagine anything so beautiful as is ancient haunted wood, with its clear streams 377 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN crossed by arcs of mossy stone, and its deserted temples under forest giants tottering to their fall. The vegetation is absolutely perfect — the very nettles are marvels of geometrical beauty, and there are such tangles of fallen tree and thicket harbouring old images of Buddha or faded shrines. As you cross the ridge on the way home you come to a Uttle temple, which shows the practical nature of Japanese reUgions. It is dedicated to Enno-Sho-Kaku, a saint whose intercessions are sought by people who wish to have good legs. He has enormous calves himself, and is supported by a red and a green devil named Zenki and Goki. The offerings mostly consist of iron sandals, with thongs of twisted wire, or gigantic straw sandals. It is called the Temple of the Sandals. Even Italy has no such haunted wood. 378 CHAPTER XXV KYOTO, THE ANCIENT CAPITAL Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, was mercifully deserted by its Emperor before he began to Westernise the national institutions. Having been left behind the door, it loses its feudal characteristics only by fires. But fires are fatally frequent in Japan ; and though Kyoto covers half as much again of ground as the county of London, a very few years will suffice for every inch of it to be visited by conflagrations — every inch, that is to say, except the temples. They go in for Gingko trees, which no self-respecting fii*e will face, lest they should protect themselves by discharging showers of water, as they did in the old divine days, though the aboHtion of the feudal system has made the gods a little huffy. Kyoto is Hke Rouen : each occupies a river basin and a crescent of low hills. Standing on the terrace of Ya-ami's Hotel, on the hill of Maruyama, I thought of that earlier day, when I stood on the 379 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN hill of Bois-Guillaume looking over the city on the Seine, which was the cradle of the Norman Conquest. From the city which was the home of the Mikados for eleven centuries, the vast masses of the two Hongwanji temples rise like the two great churches of mediasval Rouen — the Cathedral and St Ouen. I shall not plunge into history ; the English reader rather resents Orientals having a history. I shall deal rather with Kyoto as the typical Japanese city. Even Tokyo has so many large foreign buildings that it reminds one of the Japanese who spoils the grace of his costume by wearing a European hat. Even Tokyo has too many foreigners and Japanese officials dressed up as foreigners. In Kyoto you do not see much of foreigners or foreign customs. In Kyoto you see the Japanese idea of enjoying one- self. Most foreigners think nothing of Kyoto — except for kodaks. To the uneducated eye there is a sameness about its attractions. But if you have an eye for aesthetic beauty you find Kyoto a regular treasure-trove, and you find it out just as soon as you step into the hotel garden at Ya-ami's — whether you step into the little courtyard garden, with its family of life-sized bronze storks dodging about between superb azaleas, or out into the Chinese garden below. The azaleas — great hives of perfect blossom — are at their best at the beginning of the rainy season. They are watched day and 380 KYOTO night by a coolie, who puts up an umbrella over them the moment it begins to rain. The Chinese garden is a whole landscape in petto. It has a river six inches wdde, and a water- fall six feet high, and a lake that would go in a green-house, studded with islands and pagodas and lighthouses and toiii and great stone lanterns. It has azaleas even more superb, hovered over by black butterflies several inches across the wings, and the usual educated Japanese shrubs, such as maples as variegated as Fuller's shop-window, and tortured fir-trees. It has an artificial mountain and a landscape of wild rocks that would go into a good-sized cupboard. But the chief charm of the garden lies in the fact that it is in a dozen little terraces, chmbed by the mossy, stone stairways which are the backbone of Japanese landscape gardening. And at the end of the lawn is the crowning touch — a little scarlet shrine, guarded by white stone foxes, raised to the honour of Inari, the rice goddess, when these same terraces, which now have enough decoration for the whole of Kew Gardens, were so many little paddy-fields irrigated by the rivulet which makes the waterfall. Kyoto has marvellous temples : those of Nishi Hongwanji and Higashi Hongwanji are amongst the largest and most typical in Japan ; they play a great part in technical education as well as rehgion. But they are not the most picturesque 381 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN or the most lovable of the noble temples of Kyoto, like those of the Gold and Silver Pavilions — Kin- kaku-ji and Gin-kaku-ji ; San-jiu-san-gen-do, with its 33,000 images of Buddha ; Kiyomidzudera, built out on vast antique trestles down the side of a mountain ; or the Temple of Inari, the rice god- dess, with its wild mountain at the back full of sacred foxes, and its interminable avenues of scarlet- lacquered torii. The Japanese themselves go for toy torii as well as toy foxes to the Temple of Inari at Kyoto. It is not that it is of extreme antiquity — it was built in 1822 — but other temples have stood there for more than 1200 years. On that wild hill, behind the temple, the Sage, Kobo Daishi, the father of Japanese literature, met the rice goddess dis- guised as an old man carrying a sheaf of rice on his back. Inari is the Japanese Ceres ; for what corn is to Europe, rice is to Japan. Her temples are in thousands all over the country. Her little scarlet shrines, guarded by two white stone foxes, are in the paddy-fields of almost every rice farm ; and farmers in Japan are nearly all rice farmers. The goddess Inari enjoys a reputation among the pious heathen of Japan second only to that of Ama-terasu, the sun-goddess, whose nephew was the first Mikado, and whose temple at Ise is the Japanese Mecca. The connection between the two goddesses is closely sustained. At Inari's 382 KYOTO Temple in Kyoto there is a magnificent litter kept, in which, borne upon the shoulders of scores of proud coolies, the sacred image of Inari is taken every year in triumphal procession to visit Ama- terasu at Tse. Kyoto is the city of temples. Sen-yu-ji contains the tombs of the Mikados for seven centuries ; but, unlike those of the Shoguns at Nikko and Shiba and Ueno, they are not shown to visitors. Every- thing connected with the Mikado — the palace he inhabits, his gardens, his treasury at Nara, as well as the tombs of his ancestors — are secret as well as sacred. But this is not of so much consequence, because the Mikados for so many generations were mere puppets, treated as gods to console them for being treated as children. The romance and the history of Japan hang round the Shoguns of half a dozen great dynasties. They were the real rulers, and fought countless wars, and were always ready to slay themselves when they could no longer live with fame. With two of the most famous Shoguns two of the most famous temples in Kyoto are inseparably connected, those of the Gold and Silver Pavilions — Kin-kaku-ji and Gin-kaku-ji — which stand on opposite sides of the city in delightful parks. Gin-kaku-ji was the country- house of the Ashikaga Shogun Yoshimasa, to which he retired towards- the close of the fifteenth century, 383 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN when he laid down his office without abandoning his aspirations. It gets its name from the Gin-kaku, or Silver Pavilion, so-called from the silver panels of its Shoji — the dividing shutters of its rooms. The garden is exquisitely beautiful ; and the original design of So-ami is maintained, though, of course, none of the original trees and plants are left. This temple is of historical interest, not only to the Japanese, because it was here that Yoshimasa and his friend, the Buddhist Abbot Shuko, originated the solemn tea-drinking ceremony. Yoshimasa was nominally abbot ; and his effigy, in his priestly robes, is preserved, together with his favourite image of Buddha nearly a thousand years old. There are some very fine ancient kakemonos in the monastery. The garden of Kin-kaku-ji — the temple founded by his ancestor, Yoshimitsu — is far finer ; it takes its name from its golden panels. Yoshimitsu, though he had shaved his head and assumed the garb of a Buddhist monk, continued to exercise his powers as Shogun. He bequeathed all his palace buildings to his monastery, but none of them remain, except his Golden Pavilion. The garden is exquisitely laid out, with a lake in the centre, containing two small stone islands in the form of tortoises, particu- larly admired by the Japanese. The pavilion stands at the water's edge, and the whole garden is a beautiful specimen of the fantastic Chinese gardens 384 To oack on p. oS4» -'^^ ^-•^._ -^■■\'^. ^■'^'.r-^ "'^'^ •# /■ -'•■•■r .-.>...^-"^^. •••' **^^ syij^ .r ..^-V, ^^^^SW^HESBwh — — ■ Kyoto, the Temple of -.1 i To back on p. 385. the Golden Pavilion. KYOTO which are so appreciated in Japan. Another of its glories is the fir-tree, trained in the shape of a junk in full sail ; and another, the little rustic cottage for the solemn tea-drinking ceremony, which the great Tokugawa Shogun lyeyasu had erected for his own use on a little wooded hill. Like other Kyoto temples, it contains magnificent ancient kakemonos. The temples of Kyoto are legion ; but the Gion and the Chi-on-in must be mentioned, though to the tourist, at all events, they have lost their sacred character almost as much as the Asakusa Temple at Tokyo. They stand immediately below the Ya- ami Hotel, and remind one rudely of the way in which the Japanese are beginning to regard Kyoto now that it is no longer the seat of the Mikado. Where we talk of going to Paris, the Japanese talk of going to Kyoto. Not that it is as fashion- able as Tokyo, which enjoys the combined patron- age of Court and Cabinet and University, but because it is the capital of native dissipation and art. You can get magnificent temples and mag- nificent dancing at Shiba ; but for the real thing in full swing you go to Kyoto — and the pufFed-up potters and silk-weavers, who only make to order like our first-class tailors and bootmakers, congre- gate most thickly in the ancient capital of the Mikado. Kyoto is a city unspoiled by Europe. There you can practise archery, and, for the matter of 25 385 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN that, horse - archery. Monkeys, sacred or per- forming, can always be found in one of the great temples. If you have a bone to pick with Fortune, you can play the Japanese Aunt Sally, which takes the form of throwing things at the Seven Gods of Wealth. You can have a jinriksha at old-fashioned rates. You can see conjurors and acrobats, wrest- lers and other mountebanks, and, of course, the in- evitable plays and no-dances, not to mention the famous cherry-blossom dance at the season of the year. Theatre Street in Kyoto is, after that of Osaka, the most famous in Japan. You know that, because it is such a rare place to buy rubbishy knick-knacks. The Miyako-odori, or cherry-blossom dances, are the most famous in Japan. They are Grand Opera to the Japanese. The ballet is extremely limited — in the number of its performers. The scenery also is hmited. The night I went the Duke of Connaught was there, and in his honour the scenery was English. We had the Thames Embankment represented by a row of Japanese lanterns, probably to indicate lamp-posts in the Whistlerian style ; and the Crystal Palace, painted in an archaic style, without perspective, which made it look hke a bird-cage for breeding canaries. The dancing was all of superlative excellence in the Japanese way, which is not dancing at all. But every detail of the glorious costumes, every motion of the dancers at Kyoto, has historical significance ; 386 KYOTO and the dresses of the dancers themselves, and the orchestra who twang-twang on samisens and tum- tum on httle toy cavahy drums, all belong to the gorgeous feudal era. Gentlefolk do not go to the theatre to see this dance ; they go and take refresh- ment in the tea-house, which has one side entirely open to the dancing-hall, and are waited on by gay little butterflies of mousmees. The tout ensemble is one of the prettiest sights conceivable. You can get most kinds of performances in the Gi-on and Chi-on-in Temples. In one of them, I forget which, there are a number of the great ugly Japanese monkeys which still range the wooded hills above Kobe, though I have never been for- tunate enough to see them in their wild state. Both these temples are always full of holiday- makers, and holiday making is one of the most serious occupations in the life of the Japanese. However poor, however hard-worked he may be, he never fails to take his mousmees and his children to the fairs at the various temples. The Chi-on-in Temple is very large and splendid, and contains one of the world's largest and finest bells, seventy-four tons in weight, which is nearly three hundred years old. It is hung Japanese fashion, just raised from the ground in a low, open bell-tower. It contains, of course, no bell clapper. Japanese bells do not have clappers. It is rung by slinging a beam against it, like an ancient Roman battering ram. 38T QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN It is very sweet and mellow in tone. The \dbra- tions it causes are extraordinary. One can feel the shaking in the air a furlong away. One can under- stand a huge cannon causing vibrations, because of the enormous rush of imprisoned gas when the projectile leaves the gun ; but it is not so easy to understand the mere striking of a hollow bronze causing such tremors in the air. Kyoto is delightful even when, as in our time, it rains every day. It is so full of unspoiled Japanese life, has such fascinating shops, not only the potters and silk- weavers, whose fame has reached Europe, and the great dealers in curios, but the small dealers who sell anything second-hand. I loved them better than anything in Japan. I found Kyoto the best place for collecting old-fashioned picture-books, in- cluding illustrated manuscripts. Kyoto is as good as Glasgow for excursions. You can riksha out to Lake Biwa, famous for a race of salmon which never visit the sea, except in a dried and flattened form in the holiday larder of Japanese sailors. Lake Biwa is the capital of Japanese water-life. Your Japanese adores water excursions, and will sit all day in a verandah built over the water, trailing a line fatuously for a guile- less carp, which is eaten alive minus its consciousness and its backbone, the latter extracted from a hole no larger than a schoolboy makes for blowing an egg. Japanese pictures of water picnicking are 388 KYOTO generally painted from Lake Biwa, whose temples, like Ishi-yama-dera and INIii-dera, are hardly sur- passed as architectural landscapes. Here too are the bridge, like the loops of a sea-serpent, and the great fir-tree, which grows like a ban van, and is two thousand years old. The finest picnicking expedition imaginable is that which leads past the tea-gardens of Uji and the Temple of Biodoin to the heavenly city of Nara. Biodoin is a gem, standing on a beautiful lotus pond : an exquisitely airy temple, representing a phoenix, with body and head above and wings and tail below, typified in the architectural plan. The Hondo is surmounted by bronze phoenixes, and though built of wood is actually older than our Norman Conquest. It contains most interesting frescoes. The beautiful garden in which it stands is situated on the bank of the broad Uji-gawa, as wild and deep and blue as the Limmatt, where it enters Lake Zurich, and is the scene of the famous ha?'aki?i or suicide of Yoshimasa after his disastrous defeat at Uji Bridge. His arms and other relics are kept here. Nature, art, and history combine to make Biodoin a gem. Biodoin is surrounded with the best tea-planta- tions of Japan. The most noticeable feature about a first-class tea-plantation is that you cannot see it at all, because it is surrounded, even roofed, with screens of the same kind of matting which makes 389 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Canton, with its million and a half of inhabitants, all under one roof. A Japanese tea-plantation, when you can see it, looks like a kitchen garden of full, round privet bushes. In the distance it is not unlike those vineyards where the vines are grown like gooseberry-bushes. In the tea-picking season the gardens are very picturesque with the little rosy-faced women in their Chinese blue cotton kimonos and flapping sun-bonnets. They make rather a picnic of the tea-picking. All the mousmees we saw going out tea-picking were very spick-and-span, though the tea-pickers are the hoppers of Japan. Tea- plantations, when they have their wind screens up, look like enough to hop gardens. Another favourite expedition from Kyoto is shooting the rapids of the Katsura Gawa, which are thirteen miles long and run between the most exquisite scenery. It is the most exciting thing in the world, except shell-fire, which Rear- Admiral Lambton, after his months in Ladysmith, said, combined the maximum of excitement with the minimum of danger. Shooting the rapids runs it very close, because, though there have been quantities of wrecks, no one, at any rate no European, has ever lost his life in the process. Kyoto is the Western capital of Japan, and was the only capital from the eighth century to the 390 KYOTO nineteenth. Its specialty lies in the festivals which are the Japanese equivalents of the Continental saints' days. There is one for nearly every day in the year in some part or other of Kyoto. You know a festival from a public holiday, because, in- stead of the crossed national flags, you have the far more picturesque temple banners, twenty feet long, which are not hung from yards, but laced down one side to the flag-staff — I should say bamboo, and often have a whole history painted on them. In any case, there will be rows of huge red lanterns at night, and decorations of cut bamboo foliage — the primary Japanese ideas of decoration. The finest festival at Kyoto, as at other places in Japan, is the Feast of the Dead, which they call Bon Matsuri. At Nagasaki it takes the form of little straw fire-ships sent down the winding harbour. At Kyoto there are letters — Chinese letters — of fire on all the sea of hills which surround the imperial city. There are few places I have been so sorry to leave as Kyoto, amphitheatred with mountains full of great temples and antique stately groves. It is so full of Japanese life, from the wrestlers in the theatre street to the pilgi'ims from Ise crowding the Tokaido — ^the great high road to Kyoto from Tokyo, down which once rode the Shogun in vast feudal array to render a hypocrite's homage to his puppet Emperor. Here are the immemorial palace 391 \ QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN of the Mikado and the castle once brilliant with the Court of the Shogun. As for sights, there are temples in hundreds; the palace of the Mikado with its gardens and famous decorations, and that castle of Nijo, built by the mighty lyeyasu to be the Kyoto palace of the Shoguns — a unique specimen of Japanese feudal architecture, with its picturesque shoji and ceilings and its peerless inner gateway. You go to Kyoto to revel in feudal Japan. 392 CHAPTER XXVI KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, AND NAGASAKI Plenty of foreigners go to Yokohama and Tokyo and Miyanoshita, a good few get to Nikko and Kyoto ; but if business reasons do not take them, or the fact of their ship caUing there, few would go to Kobe or Nagasaki. Very few do go to Osaka, or Nagoya, or Nara; yet four of them are among the most splendid of Japanese cities, and Kobe-Hyogo stands on that marvellous Inland Sea. Of them all, I think that Nara went straightest to my heart, though the fates were so against us. Neither the powers above, nor the powers repre- sented at the police-station, wished us to see our fill of the glories of Nara. What a lovely picnic it was to have been. We and one of the nicest of men riksha'd down from Kyoto. There was not a cloud in the sky as we bounded down the hill of Maruyama past those tit-bits of the Orient, the Gion and Chi-on-in Temples, through the great city of Kyoto into the famous road to Nara, which 393 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN was for seven reigns the capital of the JNIikados more than a thousand years ago. The accumulated treasures of the Mikados, which have no parallel in the world of art, are still kept in the ancient treasury at Nara. The road lies past some of the greatest temples in Japan, marvellously old and quaint, including the unique Phoenix Temple of Biodoin and the tea-gardens of Uji, described in the last chapter. The tea-gardens of Uji, with their high fences and high-matting screens, are not so picturesque as the open tea-gardens nearer round Kyoto, where little women, with pale-blue head-towels for sun - bonnets, chatter over their tea - picking ; but Uji is the fire-fly-catchers' happy hunting- ground. We lingered too long in wistaria-bowered Biodoin ; the clouds seemed no bigger than a man's hand then, which drove us under the aprons and hoods of our rikshas long before we drew up at our inn at Nara. The more's the pity — almost every inch from Kyoto to Nara is classic ground ; and when hood meets apron on a riksha, you might as well be shut up in a coal-scuttle for all you can see. Our inn was a real native inn, where you were not allowed to wash inside the house, but had to go, one by one, to a brass pudding-basin in the verandah. It was one of those inns where you have your dining-room made up into as many bedrooms as you require, with sliding shutters — an 394 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI excellent plan to make people early risers, because there is no breakfast till the bedrooms are taken down. As I have told in an earlier chapter, we came very near spending a night in the police-station for forgetting our passport. Our head riksha boy, a magnificent liar, saved us. He was also a good waiter, and insisted upon acting in that capacity. It was no wonder that we had no room for the passport, for he had brought a clean suit and white cotton gloves to wait in, and table linen and bread, and other amenities of the table dliote^ from Kyoto. We had to pay extra for our chairs, because, being a native inn, the hotel did not have any, and somebody else made a modest living by hiring them out to the foreigners who paid angels' visits. The only person in Nara who used a chair was the policeman who so nearly sent us back for not having a passport. It is part of the majesty of the law in Japan to have to sit on a chair. It means the new constitution for Japan in more ways than one. What a bad quarter of an hour we spent, when we got to that inn at Nara, trying to sit without chairs, and wondering if we should have to go straight back through the pouring rain to Kyoto. However, the riksha boy said that in any case we should be allowed to sleep at the police- station, and I do not suppose we should have been any more uncomfortable than we were in seeking 395 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN our first night's rest on a Japanese futon in that draughty inn on that pouring night, in the middle of the dripping wood. The morning was finer, but not ideal weather, and the understanding was that we were to start early for Kyoto, and see anything we wanted to see on our way. That could not be construed into spending a day or two at Nara, which is a wonderful place, with its vast and ancient temples, and deer wandering through glades full of votive lanterns, and parks scarlet with wild azalea. We went to see the great Buddha, of course ; much bigger than the Dai Butsu of Kamakura, but hideously ugly. The temples of Nara are very ancient, and the parks singularly beautiful. As one sees Nara from Kyoto, one sees Osaka from Kobe. Both merit visits of more than a day, but the globe-scorcher does not know it. Osaka is not a beautiful city, but it is one of the largest in Japan, and contains many interesting features, the chief of them to foreigners being that it is the gayest city in Japan for actors, and geisha, and the like. The theatre street is famous ; and transparent lamps, painted with the images of ladies of pleasure, are very much in evidence after dark. Osaka is called the A^enice of Japan, because it is broken up with canals, but it is an unsesthetic Venice. Most foreigners go to see the Mint. The castle is better worth seeing — one of the vast old feudal 396 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI castles of Japan, with gigantic walls, in one of which is a stone as big as the side of a room. There is also a very fine temple ; but Osaka is regarded more as a place where junks collect pro- duce for the port of Kobe than in any other light by foreigners. But Kobe people go to Osaka as their Paris for pleasures of a certain kind. Kobe is a little white town between the mountains and the Inland Sea, unvexed of cold or heat — the lotus land of a contented little colony of English traders, and the source of roast-beef for all the English settlements in the East. Just after we left Kobe the dreaded typhoon tore up the Bund, flooded the town for several streets back from the sea, deposited the steam- launches and sampans used for conveying passengers to the mail steamers in various yards and gardens, and threw a large German steamer right on the top of the native wharf. When we were there, Kobe had a fine esplanade, with a gravel road and walk, and, along one part, green lawns. On it stand, or stood, some of the principal merchants' godowns, the offices of the great steam-ship companies, the banks, and the Hyogo Hotel — one of the finest in Japan, "with electric light and every modern convenience " ; but after the typhoon came an earthquake, and Kobe must have been under the weather for a while. Kobe is the name of the foreign city — the 397 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN native city divided from it by a river is Hyogo. I used to think that river one of the most unique in the world ; but ever since I have seen the rivers of Sicily, I see nothing peculiar in the fact that the river generally contains no water, and has a bottom higher than the surrounding country. Its channel is kept for emergencies, hke those of the torrents that run through Messina. Hyogo is not a very interest- ing town, but Kobe-Hyogo has its advantages, for it is right on the Inland Sea, and has boating and a boat-house and charming picnic places, such as the walk past the famous waterfalls to the Temple of the Moon. It does not signify that the temple has nothing to do with the moon, which is merely a sailor's corruption from Maya-Bun, the mother of Buddha ; or that you never see the wild monkeys which are so useful in descriptions. What a lovely walk it was ! Even Miss Aroostook admitted this after she had got caught in a sudden storm which utterly ruined the pale silk dress she had had made for the Hong-Kong races. But it was hot; the native women toiling up the zigzags turned their kimonos down over their shoulders to air their brown bosoms. There were beautiful waterfalls at intervals, of course guarded by tea-houses, where you were presented with five cups of tea, which you did not drink, and the mousmee had her present of tea-money — three sen, which should have been three halfpence, but were only really 398 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI about three farthings. You climb up and up, round rather bare hillsides, with lovely sea views, until at last you find yourself at the foot of the stately steps which lead up to the notable temple of Buddha's mother, massed round with cherry- trees, whose double white blossoms are almost like roses. The priests, good people, have found out that cool drinks of English bottled-beer con- duce the spirit of true content in the breast of the foreigner; and on the screens where the lists of the benefactors of the temple are hung written on wooden tablets, they hang also the red triangle of those benefactors of the whole human race — Bass &; Co. of Burton. They are content with small profits and quick returns, and will also sell you an umbrella or allow you to break a bough of cherry- blossom off any of the sacred trees. They are a most obliging lot of priests, not more sacerdotal than you would expect in a thirsty spot near a Treaty port. But what are paper umbrellas against such a storm as we experienced on the way down ! about as much use as my pointing out the blue gentian to Miss Aroostook in a vain effort to console her for the loss of her race dress ; but the rain made the waterfalls in better working order, and it was quite fine by the time we reached the bottom. We were taken to see the boat-house of the sport- loving English of Kobe, and the iron ship-building 399 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN yards, and the oil godowns, and the sake-breweries which seemed to cover the foreshore. In the centre of the picture arose the dark trees round the noble Ikuta Temple, and in the background were the mountains which we had just descended. I know of no Shinto temple more impressive than the solemn Ikuta Temple at Kobe, standing in its dark groves of camphor-woods and scarlet-flowered camellias, thirty or forty feet high. The curves of its heavy thatched roof, smooth and mossy with antiquity, are the acme of the simplicity and grace so happily combined in Japan ; and it is full of the quaint superstitions of Shintoism, such as the mad, blue-eyed pony, fed with sacred beans, and kept always ready for Hachiman, deified as God of War, in case he should return to the scene of his former triumphs. He was the son of the Empress Jingo, who founded this temple, and was the only Japanese monarch to conquer a foreign nation — Corea. The present Mikado did not lead his armies in China. Between the Ikuta Temple and the mountains lie some of the best hot-spring baths for which Kobe enjoys repute among the Japanese, who disport themselves, gods and goddesses together, in the same pool, divided only by a light bamboo floating on the water, to satisfy the letter of the law which forbids promiscuous bathing. Here also are some of the delightful tea-gardens — Japanese Tivolis, studded with summer-houses, closeable for privacy 400 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI with paper shutters (shoji), scattered about in typical Chinese gardens, which are a labyrinth of tiny pools and waterfalls spanned by toy-stone bridges, and surrounded by little stone pagodas and lanterns amid dwarf maples and fir-trees trained into all sorts of fantastic shapes. The foreign residents of Kobe are much con- cerned with athletics and yachting in the ordinarily calm waters of the Inland Sea, which is overlooked by many an old daimio's castle and quaint village and temple, untrampled by Western feet. And then there is that marvellous Temple of the Moon, two thousand feet up a mountain, carpeted in spring with wild azaleas, violets, and gentians, and a nameless blue flower yet more vivid, and crowned, at the top of flight after flight of mossy steps, by venerable buildings at a dozen eleva- tions, crowded with reverent, if ridiculous, pilgrims, and embowered in a cherry orchard with double blossoms as large and fragrant as roses. Kobe, I believe — or is it Hyogo? — has several curio shops of the better kind, but is not the equal in this respect of Nagoya — a city we visited while the Mikado was there. Nagoya plumes itself on its ancient and gigantic castle. It is on the main line from Yokohama to Kyoto. The castle, the finest in Japan, was built in 1660 by the command of lyeyasu, at the expense of twenty of his barons. The keep is five stories high, and a splendid 26 401 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN example of the internal arrangements of a Japanese feudal castle. It has magnificent paintings on its wall screens — they are among the finest in Japan ; and at the ends of the roof are a pair of dolphins, eight feet high, covered with pure gold and valued at 100,000 dollars each. To show how enterprising the Japanese are, I may mention that one of these dolphins was taken down and sent to the Viennese Exhibition. On the way back it was shipwrecked in the Messageries Maritime steamer " Nil," happily named to show the folly of risking such an ancient and valuable article, and was only recovered by superhuman efforts. Nagoya is the seat of the cloisonne and fan trade, and has the best curio shops in Japan for buying first-class articles at moderate prices. For the rest, it is a very busy Japanese inanufacturing town, third in population after Tokyo, and has a great Higashi Hongwanji teinple. It is the natural starting-place for those who wish to visit the temples of Ise, which are the Mecca of Shinto. There remains Nagasaki, the most picturesquely situated city in Japan, built along the shores of a winding harbour three miles in length, and notable for its long connection with Christianity — which had a most abrupt termination. It was at Nagasaki that Europeans had their first foothold in Japan, for it was there that the Dutch, who had sup- planted the Spanish and Portuguese, were allowed 402 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI to establish a factory at Deshima — a mud island, shaped like a fan. This was the only place where foreigners were allowed to reside before the coming of Commodore Perry in 1854. Nagasaki is one of the most romantic spots in Japan. Its long, narrow firth winds in among mountains terraced down to the water's edge. On one side are the pleasant bungalows of the living ; the other side is taken up with the magnificent city of the dead — an ancient cemetery containing the bodies of far more people than are alive in Nagasaki to-day. Tier upon tier rise terraces of tombs and rows of little stone Buddhas with benevolent faces. In that moist climate lichens and ferns spring from every crack in the masonry. The city of the dead is a paradise of ferns. Here the men of Nagasaki are still gathered to their forefathers ; and you will see not a few of the white wooden hearses, about the size of an ordinary hamper, in which the bodies of the dead are caiTied to the crematories to be burned. The Japanese is cremated for the same reason that he dies a Bud- dhist : he is in such a mortal fright of immortality that he wants to make extinction as sure as possible. The hearse is left beside the tomb for so long, and in front of any newly made grave you may see little offerings of rice and cakes. I am not sure if the Japanese go as far as to put a coin in the deceased's mouth for the Charon of the Oriental 403 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN Hades. They do make some provision of the sort at Bon Matsuri. May their superstitions never grow less, or that peerless city of the dead will lose half its charm. It was at Nagasaki, three hundred years ago, that many thousands of native Christians were thrown into the sea from the island of Takaboko (Pappenberg), after suffering horrible tortures for refusing to trample on the cross. With this shibboleth it was hoped that Christianity might be stamped out ; but when missionaries were per- mitted to return in the present enlightened reign, several communities of native Christians, though their creed had been corrupted almost out of recognition, were discovered. Nagasaki is honoured by having been made the scene of one of the most famous and beautiful modern works of fiction — Pierre Loti's Madame Chrysantlicme. Those who have read it are prepared for the exquisite little native houses and gardens retired along the green sides of the harbour, and for the quaint native shops and temple. The Temple of the Bronze Horse is familiar to the foreigners of half a century. It is a fine temple, with plenty of notable features, surrounded by a grove of scarlet camellia trees, and more than usually subject to the incursions of the tea-house. Here the gay, little, scarlet-sashed mousmees pester you while you sit looking down on the harbour and dreaming of Madame Chrysantheme. The " Trionfante," Pierre Loti's ship, which comes 404 KOBE, OSAKA, NAGOYA, NAGASAKI into the famous novel, was lying in dock there again when we were at Nagasaki. Incorrect as it may be in detail, that exquisite romance breathes the very atmosphere of the place. The crowning glory of Nagasaki is seldom witnessed by foreigners, for it takes place in hot and steaming August. Here, even better than at Kyoto, you may see the Bon Matsuri — the Feast of the Dead — whose description is one of the best things in Keeling s Guide. " Every year from the 13th to the 16th of August the whole native population of Nagasaki celebrate the feast in honour of the dead (Bon Matsuri). The first night the tombs of all who died in the past year are illuminated with bright coloured paper lanterns. On the second and third nights all graves, without exception, are so illuminated ; and all the families of Nagasaki install themselves in the cemeteries, where they give themselves up, in honour of their ancestor, to plentiful libations. The bursts of uproarious gaiety resound from terrace to terrace, and rockets fired at intervals seem to blend with the giddy human noises — the echoes of the celestial vault. The European residents repair to the ships in the bay to see from the distance the fairy spectacle of the hills, all resplendent with rose-coloured lights. " But on the third vigil, suddenly, at about two o'clock in the morning, long processions of bright 405 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN lanterns are seen to descend from the heights, and group themselves on the shores of the bay, while the mountains gradually return to obscurity and silence. It is fated that the dead should embark and disappear before twilight. The living have plaited them thousands of little ships of straw, each provisioned with some fruit and a few pieces of money. The frail embarcations are charged with all the coloured lanterns which were used for the illumination of the cemeteries ; the small sails of matting are spread to the wind, and the morning breeze scatters them round the bay, where they are not long in taking fire. It is thus that the entire flotilla is consumed, tracing in all directions large trails of fire. The dead depart rapidly. Soon the last ship has foundered, the last light is extinguished, and the last soul has taken its departure again from this earth." With this I take my leave of the cities of Japan. 406 CHAPTER XXVll MY JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON In this chapter I fly from Japan to the flat in Kensington, where I keep my Japanese treasures, none of which interest my friends more than my Japanese toy-garden. The Japanese have given the phrase "home- gardening" — a new meaning for us — with their dwarf blossoming fruit trees, their lilies growing in bowls, and their toy Chinese gardens. I may mention at once that the Japanese always call the fascinating little gardens — Hke the design on a willow-pattern plate which we associate with Exhibitions of the Japan Society — Chinese gardens. I made the acquaintance of toy " Chinese " gardens a week after landing in Japan, when I went over to Tokyo to see about printing Lester the Loyalist, which was printed and published at the Hakubunsha — at that time the leading publishing office of Japan. The head of the firm always received me in his private apartments. 407 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN The special feature of his house which fascin- ated me most was his toy Chinese garden — a wonderful little affair, about two feet long by eighteen inches broad, which contained dwarf trees, temples, dwelling-houses, pagodas, bridges, lighthouses, votive lanterns, torii^ bell-towers, dancing-stages, tea-houses, and I cannot remember what more, with a river and a lake and little sanded paths. I made up my mind from that instant to have one of these gardens. Where could I buy all the little bronze ornaments for them ? I asked of my publisher. He could not say — his had been in his family for generations. They were the kind of things you inherited. He really did not know where you could buy them, unless it might be at the great fair in the Ginza, which would be held in the following week, on the last night of the old year, which he said we certainly ought to see in any case, as it was one of the sights of Japan. The Japanese, he explained, settle all debts (among themselves) on the first day of the year, which they keep on our New Year's day. Anyone who fails to do this has no more credit ; so they make tremendous efforts and sacrifices to avoid being posted. The great fair in the Ginza is held to enable those, who are still short of the money they owe, to sell enough to supply it. Small house- holders will bring almost everything in their 408 JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON possession to see what chance article may tempt purchasers. But all that belongs to another story. I am not going to relate here how I spent a hundred dollars among those poor people on that memorable night, but merely to mention that it was there that I bought the little bronze ornaments for fitting out a toy Chinese garden, which has been the en^^ of the Japan Society itself I bought them from an old man, in a brown leather cloak, who was the very embodiment of respectable poverty. I forget what I gave for them, but more than I should have felt inclined to give if it had not been for the head of the Hakubunsha's telling me that I should only be able to buy them by chance, and that no one would part with them, unless he was driven by great want. All the pieces I bought from him figure in both pictures ; and I have added a few pieces to them, including the most important piece in the whole collection — the beautiful little Japanese farm-house, with a steep-pitched, thatched roof, and one of the distorted Japanese fir-trees growing up it. This is a valuable old piece of fine bronze, deUcately wrought — very different from the little moulded pieces of zinc-like bronze which con- stituted the old man's garden furniture. The rock on which this stands is really a temple washing- fountain cut out of a single block ; but I use it for a rock, from its resemblance to the celebrated 409 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN rock at Nikko, carved with the device of Kobo Daishi, the canonised father of Japanese learning, which faces the avenue of the Hundred Buddhas. The explanation of the various toy bronzes used in the garden is as follows : — No. 1 is the farm- house mentioned above ; No. 2 is a bell-tower, such as is usual in Buddhist temples ; No. 3, closely- resembling it, is the stage used for the kagura dance ; No. 4 is a tea-house, built on piles as you have them built out on the side of a mountain or into a river ; No. 5 is a little octagonal belvedere ; No. 6 is a pier and pier-house ; No. 7 is a torii — the mystic Japanese arch referred to above ; No. 8 is an ishi-doro — one of the huge votive lanterns made of bronze or stone, which it was customary to present in pairs to a temple when a great man was buried there. This I had to model myself from a drawing by Hokusai. I never could buy one small enough for a toy-garden. No. 9 is a five-storied pagoda — most Japanese pagodas are five-storied ; No. 10 is one of the rainbow ark bridges so typical of Japan ; No. 1 1 is a garden paling, with a ^o?'M-pattern gate in it ; and No. 12 is the monarch of mountains — Fujiyama, which I also modelled myself, after a picture by Hokusai, because in all my ramblings among the old curio shops in Tokyo and Kyoto, I was never able to come across a second-hand Fujiyama. Miss Margaret Thomas, the illustrator of my article, 410 JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON who took a silver medal at the Royal Academy in Sculpture, very good-naturedly made a cast from this model for my garden. I did my modelling in ordinary modelling wax ; and anyone with a taste for modelling will find it quite easy to model the furniture of the exact size required for a Japanese toy-garden if she goes to the South Kensington INIuseum, and makes drawings from Hokusai's illustrations of Japanese life. Now that I have labelled the pieces I bought from him, I wish to explain certain features which occur in most of these gardens, and the Avay in which I had my garden constructed in England. Several different kinds of ornamentation enter into these gardens. In the first place, there are dwarf trees. The Japanese do not dwarf their trees on purpose for these gardens. In fact, you see them more often in choice flower-pots used as indi\ddual ornaments ; but the best toy-gardens must have dwarf trees, and the trees par excellence for dwarfing are the Japanese firs, with queer little pompons of dark green leaves, which enter into so many of their pictures. Next in importance to the trees come the little bronze models of temples, houses, bridges, pagodas, lanterns, and so on. Then comes the ornamental stone-work. For the gi'ounds attached to their mansions, the Japanese go to great expense in buying rare or fantastic pieces of stone-work. Huge sums, for instance, are paid 411 QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN for large pieces of coral. They insert the same kind of stone-work on a smaller scale into their toy-gardens. But stone- work forms a very import- ant feature in their toy-gardens in another way : they choose pieces whose natural bumps and hollows make them look (and photograph) like mountains, or cliffs, or rocky hills, and with these they constitute a miniature mountain landscape, as shown in the large illustration, upon whose plateau the little buildings rise, or the little inch- high figures are grouped. So essential do the Japanese consider choice stones for these toy- gardens that the foreman of the Hakubunsha, who acted as interpreter in my printing arrangements, and accompanied us to improve his Enghsh on any of our expeditions for which he could spare time, brought me a collection of the proper stones for such a garden in a quaint, faded, green bag, which I have still. The stones, of course, constitute the rocks of my garden. His name was Mayeda San. Quite as important a feature as any of the fore- going is the introduction of water into the gardens, which, to be complete, must have islands and bridges. The ingenious introduction of water, therefore, is of great moment. The prime object of every tiny garden is to produce a thing which, when it is photographed or drawn, looks exactly like a real landscape. I set 412 JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON to work on my garden knowing this. First of all I had a mahogany frame, 2 feet long, 18 inches broad, and 2^ inches deep, made, with battens screwed across the bottom instead of a single piece, that it might be easier to lift the zinc out of it, if ever it should be necessary. The garden itself is constructed in a zinc basin of exactly the dimen- sions to fill the mahogany frame. In one corner of this zinc there is a tap for letting off the water. The mainland of the garden is in two portions at opposite ends of the zinc, and is made by bending strips of zinc, 2^ inches wide, into uneven coast- lines, and soldering them to the bottom so that they are water-tight. These are filled with soil, and covered with tough, deep moss, selected on account of its resemblance to a range of gentle hills. This gave me two ranges of grassy hills for erecting my Httle bronze buildings on. About half the space of the garden is devoted to these two pieces of mainland ; the other half lying between them, rather in the shape of an hour-glass, is filled with water. In that water are introduced several pieces of stone, which give the effect of rocky islands, and di\dde the water up into a lagoon in the front part of the garden, and two wdnding rivers in the back part. The longest island is connected with the two pieces of mainland by little bronze bridges. As I found the perfectly straight line of the 413. QUEER THINGS ABOUT JAPAN mahogany frame a little severe, I added a shallow tray on a higher level behind, with fresh ranges of hills made out of moss, and a still higher plat- form, faced with stone- work, and crowned with a model of Fujiyama. The frame is kept out of sight by a covering of thin, split bamboo cut off a fine blind, which gives exactly the effect of the split bamboo fences so common in Japan. The attempt to introduce dwarf trees gave me a great deal of trouble, as there was no drainage to the land portion of the garden, and the moss had to be kept very wet. The trees invariably died, so I had to cast about for substitutes. Violets in their season I found very good — perhaps the size of the buildings can best be brought out by saying that the violet leaves towered over them. 1 found, to my surprise, that the violets blossomed freely in spite of the gasiness of the room at night. I knew that the effect would be more realistic if I nipped the flowers off; but I had not the heart to do it, after the violets had shown such pluck. Forget-me-nots, while they are young, make ad- mirable miniature trees ; they, too, are more realistic if the flowers are nipped off, but they flower so provokingly well. Finally, I fell back on that indestructible vegetable — the Michaelmas daisy. People who are constituted as I am will not be satisfied unless they can have their mimic and miniature trees growing ; but a better effect is 414 JAPANESE GARDEN IN KENSINGTON really secured by buying little branches of ever- greens, of the right appearance, from your florist, and trimming them into trees of the desired shape and size. These last a very long time. The effect of paddy-fields can be secured by sowing seeds like cress, and it is easy to introduce variety into your garden by dividing your hills and meadows of moss with paths of white sand. Obelisk-shaped pieces of coral form very appropriate ornaments on jutting capes. And always remember that, allowing for the distorted drawing of native artists, you can get quite a good idea of the Chinese gardens, so popular in Japan, from the ordinary willow-pattern plate. 415 APPENDIX I HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE There is nowhere where one can get a more concise notion of how the Japanese Hve than in Keehng's Guide. " Strangers," he says, " are struck by the neatness and order which prevail in Japanese houses, and by the extreme simplicity of the furniture ; and except that the workmanship of that used by the better class is superior to the cottar's, there is little difference in the appearance or material used by all classes. The palace of the prince and the cottage of the peasant are alike made of pine, and, with few exceptions, roofed with thatch ; tiles are occasionally made use of, and also thin shavings of pine or cedar, not unlike cedars in America (perhaps shingles) ; but by far the greater pro- portion of all buildings are thatched, and the weight and thickness of some of the temple roofs, as well as the neatness of finish, are particularly striking. The floors are covered with large straw mats, 6 feet in length by 3 feet in breadth and 1|- inches in thickness. The doors to the rooms are formed of sliding screens, of wooden framework, covered with paper. The ceilings are of thin boards, with slender cross-beams laid over them at intervals. The front of the dwelling is generally left entirely open during the day, and during the night is closed by a kind of wooden grille of slender bars. Few dwellings are erected of more than one story. 416 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE "Almost every house of any pretension has its small artificial garden ; and little corners and small spare bits of gi'ound are carefully ornamented. In all their gardens there is a great similarity of ornament — miniature lakes of more or less capacity, well- trimmed lawns of smooth green turf, varieties of quaintly trimmed shrubs and trees tortured into queer shapes, imitating junks under full sail, candelabra, tortoises, cranes, and other objects abound. The graceful bamboo, the more stately forest trees, shrubs with variegated leaves, alternate with clusters of azaleas, and bright flowers in profusion. Pretty little tea-houses, bridges spanning artificial ponds where gold-fish are kept, platforms also projecting into these little lakes where anglers may amuse themselves, and trellis-work arbom's, with vines and creepers trained over them, are not wanting in these quiet retreats. "The castles (almost all now crumbling to ruin) of the daimio, generally at a distance from cities and villages, were composed usually of a great quadrilateral enceinte of high and thick crenelated walls, surrounded by a ditch and flanked at the angles, or surmounted from distance to distance on all their length by small towers with highly curved roofs. Inside the walls were the gardens, the park, and the residences of the daimio and his family and attendants. Sometimes an isolated tower, of the same form as the rest, rose in the middle of the domain, surpassing by two or three floors the level of the encircling wall. Each floor was surrounded, like a pagoda, by a roof, the diminution in size from the one below to the one above being very rapid, so that the whole pile was somewhat pyramidal in shape ; but the gabled roofs and overhanging rafters at each floor produced an eminently graceful effect. A spreading tent-like roof crowned the whole, with the harmonious curves and sweeps of the eaves and ridges that one sees in the temples of the land. One of the few castles kept in good preservation, and the largest, is that of Nagoya. 27 417 APPENDIX I " The dress of* the Japanese, both for man and woman, is light and comfortable. In its main feature it is much alike in cut as well as in colour in all classes and throughout the whole empire. The dress is a succession of loose m rappers, open at the chest, and allowing a portion of the bosom to be seen. The wrappers are confined at the waist by a band, tied in a bow at the back. This girdle (obi) worn by the women is very broad, and forms their principal ornament. The process of dressing the hair is a long and troublesome one, and no woman can go through it without assistance : consequently the humblest are obliged to have the aid of a tirewoman. The hair often remains untouched for several days; and as Japanese use a wooden pillow fitting the hollow of the neck, and lie on their sides when sleeping, it is seldom disarranged at night. The mode of dressing the hair is by no means unbecoming. Hairpins, not unlike tuning- forks in shape, made of various metals, or even of horn or wood, are used, and a pad of paper supplies the place of a chignon, covered occasionally with crapes of bright colours, or carefully concealed by the natural hair combed over it. "There is no country where the female conveys a more pleasing impression both in appearance and manners, but for a repulsive custom happily gradually disappearing. Women, after marriage, stain their teeth black, and shave or pluck out their evebrows. To this, the excessive use of cosmetics on their faces and necks, especially when very young, and the immoderate frequency of warm baths, are in great measure ascribed the premature look of old age remarked among women who at twenty-five look at least ten years older. It has been remarked that girls in Japan are either young and blooming, or else have the appearance of extreme age. " Musume is the Japanese word for a female from birth to marriage — equivalent with our word ' girl.' The condition of a musume, presuming her to be of respectable parents who are not in straitened circumstances, is by no means a hard 418 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE one. She is taught to read and write, as well as to play the samisen (banjo) and sing, if her taste lies in that direction. And as the houses of the commonality are always more or less open, and they may be said to live in public, a freedom and openness is engendered that seems to set every scandalous thought at defiance. When the time comes for her maiTiage, her parents, through man'iage agents (nakodo), make the needful an'angements on her behalf, with the parents of the swain who desires or is willing to take her as a wife ; and a favourable day having been named by the priests or diviners, the happy couple are united with no further ceremony than the acceptance of each other in a general assemblage of their friends, who make them such presents as they can afford, and then feast and di'ink sake to their hearts' content. " Both sexes are very partial to bathing, and consequently public baths are numerous. In large towns they may be counted by hundreds. Until lately, men and women, boys and girls, bathed together indiscriminately. But now, in Tokyo and other large towns, a railing divides the males from the females. This is only sufficient to prevent the mixing of the sexes, but not to screen them from being seen by each other. The hot water is contained in oblong wooden vats, 8 to 10 feet in length, 3 or 4 feet wide, and 3| feet deep. These are heated from behind, by burning wood in large brass cylinders, the closed end of which communicates with the water. There are two of these vats in every bath-house, one being used by men and the other by women. The water has a temperature between 100° and 113° Fahr. The women do not enter the bath at once, after disrobing ; but throwing a few pailfuls of hot water over the body, squat on a low square flooring, and scrub themselves well with bran, con- tained in a little cotton bag. This being done, they again throw hot water over themselves, and enter the bath. This is performed twice or thrice. The operations of the male bathers are of shorter duration. The greatest objection to 419 APPENDIX 1 this mode of bathing is that sometimes as many as three hundred wash in the same water. The latter is only changed once daily. " In houses of the better class there is a room having a wooden bath-tub with its stove to heat the water. When the bath is ready, the whole family utilise it successively ; first the father, after that the mother, then the children, and then the rest, including the servants. Very often after bathing, and almost always after toilsome work, the Japanese resort to ' shampooing "" (momu), which is a system (by us called ' massage "") they have of kneading the muscles with their fingers and knuckles, and the effect produced on a tired frame is most soothing. Shampoo men and women are often blind, and the former generally have their heads (like bodzu) com- pletely shaved. The poor creatures walk about the streets generally after dusk, whistling plaintively on pipes made of bamboo, and picking their way slowly and carefully along, with the aid of bamboo-poles, until called to exercise their profession. " Rice is the staple food of Japan, and is eaten at every meal by rich or poor, taking the place of our bread. It is of particularly fine quality, and at meals is brought in small bright-looking tubs, kept for this exclusive purpose and scrupulously clean ; it is then helped to each individual in small quantities, and steaming hot. " The humblest meal is served with nicety, and with the rice, various tasty condiments, such as pickles, salted fish and numerous other dainty little appetisers, are eaten. To moisten the meal, tea without sugar is taken. A hibachi, or charcoal basin, generally occupies the central position, round which the meal is enjoyed, and on the fire of which the teapot is always kept easily boiling. "Till lately, religion, prejudice, and, in large measure perhaps hereditary tastes, opposed the eating of flesh, and even eggs and milk ; millet replaces rice to some extent as food for the aged and poor. Fish, vegetables, esculent roots, 420 HOW THE JAPANESE LIVE and fruits are used as supplementary articles of food. The poverty of rice in nitrogenous elements is made up partially by pickled vegetables, sauces, and fish. Almost everything caught in the sea is used as food, but animal oils and fats are scarcely, if at all, employed. " Another of the principal articles of diet is a large kind of radish, called daikon. It grows to an extraordinary length, being often seen fully a yard long. A species of seaweed is largely utilised also, and a brown bean is made into a substance known as miso, and is also the base of a soy, in which most of their food is cooked. Miso and soy are staples in all the economy of living in the country. In fact, the soy of Japan is the base of all the East Indian sauces so much used by the epicirres of the Western world. " The Japanese are temperate. Water is largely replaced by weak tea, which is the national beverage. Sake brewed from rice is the national stimulant. It is of the strength and general appearance of a light sherry, is usually drunk warm from small cups, and the excitement produced by it in the foreigner is evanescent. In the Japanese the effect seems greater. " The fiery distilled spirit from rice is not in common use. The drunken Japanese is merry or stupid rather than quarrelsome or destructive. There is no reason to believe that the use of stimulants is exercising any deleterious influence on the Japanese race. " Sake and rice heated together, making a sort of sake and rice gruel, called Nigori sake, is hawked about on all the roads. It is sold in quantities of about two gills, or a little more perhaps, for a cent and a half. The coolies seem to relish it very much, and no doubt it has very strengthening qualities, as it is so much used by them, and they do not put their funds into trifles that have no value as renovators of their tired system. Another drink is called amazake (sweet sake). It is made by fermenting rice with a little 421 APPENDIX I yeast, until a part becomes changed into sugar. The process is then discontinued, and the substance boiled in large iron kettles, from which it is served warm to customers. It is not, as its name would imply, of a spirituous natui-e, as it contains no alcohol. " There is no lack of amusements in Japan. Irrespective of the many places to be seen and admired, the traveller may visit one of the theatres (shibai) and see some native acting ; or he may go and witness the fencing matches (kenjitsu). The wrestlers (sumo), acrobats (karuwazashi), and some clever tricks performed with large tops will not fail to interest him ; or, as a last resource, he may call an unlimited number of singing and posturing girls (geisha) to entertain him and his friends during their repast."" The wrestlers are, as Keeling says, one of the sights of Japan, but I have treated them separately in another place, and though travellers see but little of it, fencing is a good deal practised. "The courtly demeanour of the people is a matter of remark with all who visit Japan, and so universal is the studied politeness of all classes that the casual observer would conclude that it was innate and born of the nature of the people ; and probably the quality has become some- what of a national characteristic, having been held in such high esteem, and so universally taught for so many centuries — at least, it seems to be as natural for them to be polite and formal as it is for them to breathe. Their religion teaches the fundamental tenets of true politeness, in that it inculcates the reverence to parents as one of the highest virtues. The family circle fosters the germs of the great national trait of ceremonious politeness. Deference to age is universal with the young. The respect paid to parents does not cease when the children are mature men and women. It is considered a privilege as well as an evidence of filial duty to study the wants and wishes of the parents even before the necessities of the progeny of those who have households of their own." 422 APPENDIX II THE SET OF FURNITURE BELONGING TO THE O-HINA MATSURI, OR girls' FESTIVAL, EXHIBITED BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE JAPANESE MINISTER TO GREAT BRITAIN AT THE WHITE- CHAPEL EXHIBITION IN I9O2. Exquisite little lacquer models of all the articles of furniture and household utensils used in the house of a gentleman of the old school, which belonged to the Hina of some lady of his family. There were the present-boxes, made of the finest gold lacquer, and tied up with a thick cord of crimson silk, in which presents of however little value are sent — the packing- cases to be returned ; the gold lacquer boxes, secured with a similar cord, and tied in the graceful daimio knot, which make such charming glove-boxes, but were constructed to contain letters when every man kept his own postman ; and the writing-desks, also of the finest lacquer, referred to in the book. With these must be mentioned the lacquer writing-tables, about a yard long and a foot wide, and a foot from the ground, with ends turned up like the roof of a temple. The French call this the toiture retournee. There were the Japanese bookcases so unlike ours. The Japanese does not put his books in these cases upright, showing their backs ; but flat, showing one end. The book- cases are apt to be a yard high, a foot wide, and a foot deep, and look like the shelves in which our stationers stock note- books. 423 APPENDIX II Almost every object in the Minister's collection of lacquer models was to be found life-size in this very well-chosen exhibition. If, for instance, the Japanese is reading or writing at night, he uses a tall lacquer lamp made with tissue-paper panes to contain a rush candle, the lamp part being almost in the shape of our street lamp. When the Japanese does not eat his dinner off the floor, he eats it off the same kind of table that he uses for writing ; but for tea, he uses a square, round, or octagonal table, with a deep rim, which stands on a sort of hollow box instead of legs. This, as the collection in the Exhibition showed, admits of consider- able variety, but only five tea-cups. However many you are, the Japanese always brings five tea-cups on a tray ; that is etiquette, and he never reasons with etiquette. What Europeans call chow-boxes are fascinating alike in the Minister s models, and life-size. They consist of a lacquer frame, like a mangle without its legs, into which are stuck a pile of fascinating lacquer trays, each of which fits into the tray underneath it as a lid, and two white metal sake bottles standing up side by side. These stands are made extremely handsome. Then there were models of the eternal hibachi, or charcoal finger-stove, which is like the scaldino of the Italian ; of the lacquer cages, used for drying clothes, which slip over the hibachi ; of Go-bang tables ; of the boxes used for holding the shell opercula used for Go-bang pieces ; of the candlesticks, shaped like the tripods laundresses stand their irons on ; of the folding dinner-sets, used for travelling, in which the plates, looking like photographers'' developing- dishes, the bowls used for liquid foods, and dishes of all sorts are made of lacquer, and square instead of round. Then there were models of the little circular mirrors of silver bronze, with straw-covered handles going into neat laccjuer boxes of their own shape, and the lacquer easels on which they stand ; the lacquer stands for arrows, and the lacquer stands for two-edged swords, which remain articles of furniture, 424 LACQUER MODELS though not of use ; tiny lacquer pillows six inches high ; and two feet high lacquer towel-horses recalling with their turned- up ends the inevitable torii. The pillow is even more like a door-scraper, and is used because the fashionable Japanese women's coiffure takes a day to arrange, and has to last for a week, which reminds one of royal funerals in Siam, where no public business is done for nine months after the demise of any member of the very numerous Royal Family, The principal French troubles in Siam were caused because the Royal Family died with such alarming regularity just when the period of mourning was up, that at the end of about five years the French patience was exhausted. But to return to lacquer. The lacquer salad-bowls had their flat, brass paper-knives laid across their tops ; and there were lacquer models of Japanese musical instruments: the long, slender samisen, with its ivory twanger ; the mandoline- shaped biwa; and the koto, which resembles nothing on earth but a cross between a fender-stool and a lace manu- facturer's pillow. There was a lacquer Japanese clock in which a brass cock slides down a groove registering twelve hours of really two hours each ; and there were a Japanese chest of drawers, with cupboard doors outside the drawers, and a top with tui'ned-up rims like a tray — a feature most women would welcome on their own Maples \ lacquer- framed dwarf screens ; and lacquer-handled dwarf brooms. There were other objects in the Minister's collection too minute and numerous to mention. I have given the leading articles, partly to catalogue an unusually complete set, partly to guide the wise collector who wishes not to purchase the articles made for the Western market, but actually the articles that have been used in a Japanese gentleman's household of the old style, which he may pick up one by one in out-of-the-way curio-shops in St Giles's or north of Oxford Street. Almost as interesting as the Japanese articles themselves 425 APPENDIX II was the East End foreign Jew's way of looking at a collection. He did not greet it with the careless or com- prehensive or sentimental stare of the ordinary Christian, but bent right over it as if he were a watchmaker looking through a magnifying-glass to see what part of your watch- works was broken. He was doubtless picturing to himself the processes of manufacture. What the article was used for probably did not interest him any more than the lady in the suburbs who uses an hibachi for a flower-pot holder with or without a tissue-paper frill. 426 APPENDIX III THINGS TO COLLECT, SUCH AS NETSUKES One of the best things to collect is the netsuke, or Japanese button. It is not really a button — the Japanese do not use buttons. They are against buttoning as a principle, and when they are driven to employ it, use tags and eyes. The netsuke is really a boss or toggle used for thrusting through the sash to balance the fan, tobacco-purse, pipe- case, medicine-chest, or pen and ink, to which it is attached by a silk cord, or more rarely a little chain, as in fig. 2, attached to a bamboo pipe-case. This is made of walrus ivory, and is decorated ^vith a beautiful incised figure of one of the Thirty-Six Poets of Japanese legend, contemplating a lotus growing in a bowl. Netsukes are good things to collect, because, though expert knowledge of them is tedious and difficult to acquire, anyone can quickly apprise herself of two or three primary rules. There are also many genuine specimens to be picked up in London itself, since most people who go to Japan bring some home and lose them. What constitutes a netsuke ? The presence of something to fasten a cord to, generally two small holes, bored to meet each other in some projection at the back. But if the figure which forms the subject of almost every netsuke has any natural hole, such as a space between the arm and the side, they use that. I have about a hundred specimens ; the majority have artificial holes, because compactness is the essence of an ordinary netsuke, it being a canon of Japanese 427 APPENDIX III art to have an object suitable for the function it is intended to fulfil. Holes for stringing are the distinction between the netsuke and the okimono, which is a mere ornament. The Japanese have no furniture suitable for standing small objects on; the netsuke is, therefore, much more popular with them than the okimono, though the latter comes to Europe in large quantities. Mr Huish, in his admirable book, Japan and its Art, has a very interesting note as to why such unsuitable things as figures so commonly form the design for netsukes. In 1614 the Shogun Hidetada issued an edict that every house was to possess an image of a deity. Most people made shift with a very little one (the smaller the better is the motto of Japan), so in a very few years' time the claims of religion were satisfied, and the makers of images, like the Yorkshire plushmakers, had to strike out a new line. With character- istic irreverence and ingenuity, they turned their gods into buttons. The netsukes which are most popular in English drawing- rooms are the worst from the collector's point of view. As Mr Huish observes, they are apparently chosen for the amount of ivory they contain, and for their perfect edges. A netsuke, to be of artistic value, should have been used, and should have its edges gently rubbed into beautiful soft lines by contact for many years with the silk of sash and kimono. No Japanese Avould wear a piece of ivory weighing a pound or two slung through his sash, and if the edges are as sharp as a Dresden china rose the netsuke could never have been used, and is likely to have been manufactured for the European market. Netsukes are generally made of ivory, bone, horn, metal, or wood, the last sometimes being painted. The Japanese value fine wooden netsukes by great masters above all others as a class, which is natural, because they carry out in their construction a Japanese principle, which is to follow, not to 428 THINGS TO COLLECT force, nature. The artist chooses a root or a core of hard wood or a nut, notes what it reminds him of most, and with patient study and deft strokes helps the wood to tell its own tale. Bone is treated in the same way. The favourite metal is iron, on account of its suitability for taking patterns inlaid in gold, silver, and copper. Ivory and ebony are employed because their hardness and durability make them capable of fine effects. The wooden netsukes painted with lacquer, which are called Nara-Ni, because the best were made at Nara, should, when they look genuine, always be purchased, as they are apt to be of great age. There is generally little difficulty in deciding the genuineness of an old netsuke made of wood or bone ; they are almost always impossible to imitate. The imaginativeness of their con- ception and the indescribable softness given to their outline by long friction of silk garments tell their own tale. The little lacquer-painted Nara-Ni have generally some connec- tion with mythology or religion. The golden rule about collecting netsukes is that which applies to any other collection — buy them at the wrong shop. All netsukes which are old and attractive are worth buying if you can get them at a moderate price. From 2|d. to 5d. was, in my day, a moderate price in Japan, and, unless the netsuke is quite worn out with friction, anything up to half a crown is dirt cheap in England. Some of the netsukes I bought for a few coppers in Japan are worth a good many pounds. Neither the people who sold them, nor I, knew the value. "We could not read the master"'s signature. I am not writing for people who can read the signatures of those makers who are most sought after — " Shiuzan, Miwa, Ikkan, Masanao, Tomotada, Tadatoshi, Deme-Uman, Deme-Joman, Minko, Tomochika, and Kokei " — (Huish). I bought netsukes in Japan when they seemed good bargains at Japanese prices, and when I see netsukes in England which look good bargains at English prices I buy them in technical ignorance, and when 429 APPENDIX III I show them to friends who have a technical knowledge of the subject often receive tempting offers of twenty times the price. It is needless to say that I buy them at second- hand shops at which they arrived by accident, not curio shops. I never part with them ; I love these little bits of Japanese mythology and zoology, the chief motives of the art of Japan. Figure No. 1, which is made of bone, is one of the mythical beings called Rishi or Sennin. This particular Sennin is always represented with a toad on his back. No. 2 I have already described. No. 3, also of bone, is a pilgrim. No. 4, which is carved out of hard wood, is by a famous master, and comes second in value of all my netsukes. The sage, whose very teeth are carved separately, has on his shoulders a monkey, and is employed to suspend an inro (medicine-chest) in four compartments made of red sealing-wax lacquer, which has the cord, on which its trays play, secured at the bottom with a solid iron cylindrical bead inlaid with gold. No. 5 is another bone netsuke, Chinese in design, bearing a strong family likeness to the White Queen of Alice. No. 6 is one of my most beautiful and valuable specimens. It is an ivory representing a Venus's Ear shell, with its limpet-like inhabitant carefully carved underneath, and two beautiful little rats reclining on the top with clasped hands in an attitude which follows the lines of the shell. Rats are commoner than mice in Japan ; the Japs could never do any- thing like other people. No. 7, which suspends another inro of hard wood, very beautifully carved with crabs, is a horn monkey embracing a huge pumpkin. His fur is well curved, and he has a very expressive face. No. 8 is a boar's tusk carved into the shape of one of the Gods of Wealth, Fuko- Roku-Jiu, who had a very high forehead because his brain was so vast. No. 13 is the favourite of the Seven Gods of Wealth, Hotei, of whom Mr Huish says : " He is always very fat (fatness is admired in Japan), half clothed, enveloped in a big bag, after which he is named (ho-tei, cloth bag), and 430 (1) A rishi made of bone. (2) Bamboo pipe- case, with silver chain and ivory netsuke. (3) A pilgrim, of bone. (4) Figure of sage, with inro of sealing-wax lacquer. (5) Bone netsuke, like the "White Queen." (6) Rats on Venus' Ear shell, in ivory. (7) Horn monkey, suspending inro of carved hardwood. (8) A boar's tusk, carved into one of the Gods of Wealth, Fuko-Roku Ju. (9) Hardwood, unpainted. (10) A cat biting its hind leg, In hard- wood. (li; A man rubbing a sore knee, made of hardwood. (12) Juro, a God of Wealth, of wood, not painted. (bV) (13) Figure of Hotei, a God of Wealth, a painted Nara-Ni of wood. (H) Another painted Nara wood caivin.u— a countryman carrying a little red Oni (demon). (15) Another painted Nara wood carving. (16) A green demon, painted Nara wood carving. THINGS TO COLLECT accompanied by children, of whom he is supposed to be very fond. His bag may also contain the ' Precious Things,' but it is used indiscriminately for sleeping in, catching children in, and other purposes." He is one of the delightfully carved Nara-Ni, made of wood painted with lacquer. No. 12 is another of the family, Juro, the god of longevity, with his rugged staff, also of wood, but not painted. Nos. 14, 15, and 16 are likewise all of them lacquer-painted wood-carvings from Nara, No. 14 representing a countryman who is carrying on his back a bag into which one of the little red demons called Oni has crept. These demons are mischievous, rather than malicious. No. 16 is a green demon. Nos. 10 and 11, both of hard wood, much polished by wear, represent a cat biting its hindleg, and a man rubbing a sore knee and writh- ing mth agony. It is characteristic of Japan that some of the best netsukes should be known to have been carved by dentists. Their subjects may be anything but political, and some of them, it must be added, anything but proper ; but they are mostly derived from mythology, zoology, legends, standard literature, and the incidents of everyday life. The nearest parallel to them we have in Europe is to be found in the carvings with which fifteenth century monks decorated the pew ends and bosses and capitals of their churches. Another good thing to collect is hairpins, which ' are eloquent for social distinctions in Japan and one of the favourite forms of penny presents in the bazaars of Japanese temples. Every temple has its fairs, and every Japanese who goes a-fairing takes his mousmee or his child with him, to whom he never fails to give a present. There was a good show of them at the Whitechapel Exhibition. The large tortoise-shell hairpins, which look like the keys of a fiddle, but are only a key to the immodest profession of the women who wear them, were absent from the Whitechapel Exhibition, perhaps as a result of a laudable desire to keep Whitechapel in ignorance that such professions exist. But 431 APPENDIX III there were plenty of specimens of the gay, cheap hairpins worn by the mousmees — the grisettes of Japan — and in more expensive materials by geisha girls. Here they were made of bone with shell tops, bone with mother-of-pearl fans, bone with flowers, even bone with crimson silk tassels, the climax being a number of specimens in which the ornament was a Japanese soldier dragging a Chinaman by his pigtail. In the same case were various humble Japanese desks, each containing its pen made of camel's hair tied up in a bamboo shoot, its stick of Indian ink gay with Cliinese characters in gilt setting forth its virtues, its rubbing stone of slate with a well like the dish which is almost wholly linked in matri- mony with roast-beef, and its tiny water-bottle of silver or white metal representing a flattened lotus bud with a tiny hole in the centre for the brush point. These were the furniture alike in the poor little desks of this case and the magnificent gold lacquer writing-boxes contributed by Mr Martin- White. It was a pity that there was not more of Japanese stationery with it, for Japanese stationery is very interesting, whether it consists of the ordinary six-inch wide rolls of buff' wrapping-paper on which they ^vrite their letters, sometimes several yards long, or of the fine rice-paper with whole landscapes or scenes from Japanese life, or con- ventionalised storks, delicately water-marked or printed from wood-blocks in colours which are manufactured for the guile- less foreigner. These are about the size of a piece of fools- cap. The envelopes are the same in either case — about a quarter of a yard long and two inches wide, made of flimsv paper, plain for natives and illustrated for foreigners. The Japanese do not use blotting-paper, but black sand, for Indian ink dries very quickly, and they have no sealing-wax, though they are using seals all day long. They seal with thick red or black ink, and do the sticking part with rice paste which they keep rolled in a bamboo leaf Unlike Japanese food, it looks as if it were good to eat. 432 THINGS TO COLLECT it Typical collections of things easy to acquire, and worth acquiring, may be made of the various kinds of pipes, pipe- cases, and tobacco-pouches ; of clogs and sandals ; of teapots, tea-cups, tea-saucers, tea-trays, and tea-kettles. Japanese saucers of the old school might be made of almost anything except china. I have seen them of iron, wood, lacquer, horn, cocoa-nut shell, and goodness knows what else. The Japanese make even teapots of lacquer ; and in the recess behind the Japanese house at the Whitechapel Exhibition there were all sorts of little treasures of Japanese domestic art, such as the fine cages made so delicately of split bamboos for pets, varying in size from crickets and glowworms to canaries and the little bright-eyed majiros. The Japanese breed many canaries of a curious flat-headed type, and the cages are as fine as combs. 28 433 APPENDIX IV A BOOK WRITTEN IN ENGLISH BY A JAPANESE The title of this work is The Ideals of the East, with Special Reference to the Art of Japan, by Kakasu Okakura. (John Murray, 5s, net.) The pubHsher informs us in a prefatory note that it was written in Enghsh by a native of Japan. It is in every way a remarkable book. Better English could not be wanted. Its subject matter is of the highest interest, and could only have been handled by a man of vast erudition. We are told something about the author in an introduction signed Nivedita of Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, 17 Bore Para lane, Bagh Bazaar, Calcutta. Mr Nivedita (who is a native of India) also writes unexceptionable English. He informs us that Mr Okakura has been long known to his own people and to others as the foremost living authority on Oriental archaeology and art. Although then young, he was made a member of the Imperial Art Commission sent out by the Japanese Government in 1886 to study the art history and movements of Europe and the United States. Far from being overwhelmed with this experience, says Mr Nivedita, Mr Okakui'a only found his appreciation of Asiatic art deepened and intensified by his travels. And since that time he has made his influence felt increasingly in the direc- tion of a strong renationalising of Japanese art in opposition to that pseudo-Europeanising tendency, now so fashionable throughout the East. He is now "the William Morris of his country." 454 BOOK m ENGLISH BY A JAPANESE Mr Nivedita is presumably not writing sardonically. But if he were European he would be open to the suspicion, for the one weak point in the admirable book is that Mr Okakura cannot allow that any good art has come out of Europe, not even if one goes back as far as Phidias and Praxiteles and Ictinus. Michael Angelo and Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci he simply does not consider at all. But, after all, to the English reader of the book the art side is of less importance. He will value the book partly as a history of Japan, partly as an attempt to prove the interdependence of all the Asiatic religions and philosophies upon each other. In achieving this the book is most readable, at once terse and picturesque. Mr Okakura strikes a high note from the very beginning. " Asia is one. The Himalayas divide only to accentuate two mighty civilisations, the Chinese with its communism of Confucius, and the Indian with its individualism of the Vedas. But not even the snowy barriers can interrupt for one moment that broad expanse of love for the Ultimate and Universal, which is the common thought-inheritance of every Asiatic race, enabling them to produce all the great religions of the world, and distinguishing them from those maritime peoples of the Mediten-anean and the Baltic, who love to dwell on the Particular, and to search out the means, not the end of life.'" Mr Okakura should have left Europe out of the book. While he imagines that he is proving the superiority of Asia, he is laying bare the inherent weakness which has made her the easy prey of the Anglo-Saxon and the Slav. But his book is none the less interesting, and it is con- vincing also so long as he preaches from the text " Asia is one." As the reader will soon find, the ke3niote of Mr Okakura's book is to prove that the religious and philosophical systems of Japan, India, and China are inextricably interwoven. 435 APPENDIX IV He proves his case most convincingly, but he will probably arouse a storm of criticism among the religious people ot this country by his inference that Christianity is only a form of Buddhism. Many reasons conduce to one's admiration. If Mr Okakura is a trifle arrogant towards Europe, one can forgive him ; he is so sincere in preaching the Gospel of Asia, so learned in his collatings of many philosophies and religions, so terse and clear in his methods of expressing himself. Of tit-bits the book is full. The description of the temples of Ise and Idsume, the differentiation between Northern and Southern Buddhism, the eloquent little outbm-st about the Buddhist sculptures at EUora, the explanation of the semi- articulate Nature sounds in the No-dances of Japan are fine. To many English readers the account of the Kano Academies will be novel as well as interesting. There were twenty of them, four under the direct patronage of the Shogun, and sixteen under his government, constituted on the plan of regular feudal tenures. Each academy had its regular hered- itary lord, who followed his profession, and, Avhether or not he was an indifferent artist, had under him students who flocked from various parts of the country, and who were, in their turn, official painters to different daimios in the country. Such a condition, as Mr Okakura observes, could not but be detrimental to originality and excellence. I have observed above that the book contains much fine writing. Nothing could be more charming than the descriptions he gives of the pilgrim and peasant travellers of India and Japan. I have not often opened a book which brought Buddhism home to me more than the short essays contained in this volume. They are really most remarkable in the amount of informa- tion they contrive to convey in such a light, brief, elegant form. They make the book a brief history of Japan, a brief history of Buddhism, a clear analysis of the various schools of Japanese art. The principle on which they are put together and the style are alike very good. And, apart from 436 BOOK IN ENGLISH BY A JAPANESE the tilt which he runs against European art, Mr Okakura can be very impartial, as where he infers, though he does not express, the superiority of the Chinese to the Japanese in commercial probity. The most remarkable thing about the volume is the heights of real eloquence which a Japanese writing in English attains in passages such as the following : "The Glory of Asia. " But the glory of Asia is something more positive than these. It lies in that vibration of peace that beats in every heart ; that harmony which brings together emperor and peasant ; that sublime intuition of oneness which commands all sympathy, all courtesy, to be its fruits, making Takakura, Emperor of Japan, remove his sleeping-robes on a winter night because the frost lay cold on the hearths of his poor ; or Taiso, of Tang, forego food because his people were feeling the pinch of famine. ... It lies in that woi'ship of Freedom which casts around poverty the halo of greatness, impresses his stern simplicity of apparel on the Indian prince, and sets up in China a throne whose Imperial occupant — alone amongst the great secular rulers of the world — never wears a swor d. This is really very good indeed. These essays would be worth reading for their style alone, even if they were not so packed with erudition, so pregnant with thought. It would not be too much to say that no foreigner ever wrote better EngHsh. 437 APPENDIX V LEADING DATES OF JAPANESE HISTORY Keeling gives rather an interesting chronology of the principal dates in Japanese history which is not appar- ently taken from Satow, and is not, therefore, particularly accessible. From the introduction of Buddliism the dates may be taken as fairly historical, because the Buddhist priest- hood are great on archives. By the kindness of Mr C. Koike, of the Imperial Japanese Legation, I was put into communication with Mr Ginzo Uchida of Oxford, the great authority upon the subject in this country, and submitted to him the dates prior to 1854, about which it is impossible for foreigners to speak with precision. The list is now really of very great value, as this great Japan- ese scholar has tested the accuracy of the dates and statements with the minutest care in every respect. He has consulted the best authorities on each subject, and sometimes the original sources, and tried to elucidate some questions in the light of the latest historical research both of Japanese and European scholars. JAPANESE CHRONOLOGY Japanese history begins. Jimnui Tenno, the first Mikado «.c. 660 First relations with Korea ...... B.C. 33 438 DATES OF JAPANESE HISTORY Partial conquest of Korea by the Empress Jingu Kogo A.D. 200 Introduction of letters and writing, according to the accepted tradition ...... 285 Introduction of Buddhism ...... 552 Kioto made the residence and capital of the Mikado . 794 Chinese calendar reckoning introduced . . . 602 Great political reforms, with the object of increasing the power of the Mikado, commencing about . 645 Kamatari (founder of the Fujiwara family) begins to be influential ....... 645 Period of the Fujiwara family ""s influence . . 645-1167 Office of Kwambaku, or Regent, established . . 888 Taira family influence paramount . . . 1167-1183 Yoritomo, the first Shogun, makes Kamakura his mili- tary capital. Commencement of the dual system of Government . . . . . . .1185 Minamoto family rules ..... 1185-1219 The Hojo family (Tokimasa, the founder) holds the governing power ..... 1219-1333 First invasion of the Mogols ..... 1274 Second invasion of Mogols repelled by Hojo Tokimune 1281 Kamakura destroyed by Nitta Yoshisada . . . 1333 The Ashikaga family (Takauji, the founder) rules from 1392-1574 Mendez Pinto (not the first European to land in Japan) lands at Tanegashima .... 1542 Xavier lands at Kagoshima ..... 1549 Nobunaga, suppressor of the temporal power of the Buddhists, holds the power . . . 1574-1582 Hideyoshi (Taikosama) holds the power . . 1582-1598 An embassy sent to the Pope in 1582 by three Kiushiu princes, arrives at Lisbon in 1584, and returns to Japan ........ 1590 Expedition to Korea ....... 1592 439 APPENDIX V Commencement of the Tokiigawa line of Shogun. lyeyasu makes Yedo his capital . , . a.d Edict against the Christians by lyeyasu Persecution commences ...... Will Adams, an English pilot, lands at Bungo, Apr. 19th, 1600 ; dies All foreigners, except Dutch and Chinese, banished, and the Japanese forbidden to leave the country ....... A several years' massacre of Christians commenced, The Dutch factory removed from Firando to Deshima ....... Rising of Shimabara. Christians hurled from Papem berg ........ Cholera introduced into Japan by a Dutch ship . Arrival of Commodore Perry in the Bay of Yedo July 8th . . . " . Treaty with the United States signed Mar. 31st Townsend Harris concludes a treaty of foreign resid- ence and commerce, Aug. .... Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Hakodate open to trade July 1st ....... First Embassy to the United States, Jan. . The Regent li Kamon no Kami assassinated. Mar. 3rd Mr Heusken, the interpreter to the United States Legation, assassinated in the streets of Yedo, Jan. 14th ........ Attack on the English Legation, July 5th First Embassy to Europe ...... A party of English attacked near Yokohama, and one (Richardson) killed by the followers of Shimadzu Saburo, father of the Daimio of Sat- suma, Sept. 14th. .£'100,000 paid by the Govern- ment and d?25,000 by Satsuma as indemnity 440 1603 1613 1614 1620 1636 1641 1677 1822 1853 1854 1858 1859 1860 1860 1861 1861 1862 1862 fl DATES OF JAPANESE HISTORY I 1 An American steamer and French and Dutch corvettes fired upon by two men-of-war of the Prince of Kiusiu, and by the shore batteries at Shimonoseki, : June 1863 i The U.S. corvette "Wyoming" engages the two men- of-war, July ....... 1863 Two French war-steamers soon after land a party and destroy a battery ...... 1863 Bombardment of Kagoshima by the English, Aug. . 1863 American and English Legations burnt . . . 1863 Shimonoseki bombarded by nine English, three French, four Dutch, and one American men-of-war, Sept. j 5th and 6th 1864 Japan forced to pay an indemnity (" the Shimonoseki Indemnity ") of $3,000,000 in all, which is after- wards reduced to one-half ..... 1864 Major Baldwin and Lieutenant Bird murdered at i Kamakura, Nov. 21st . . . . . . 1864 I Attack on the guard of Sir H. Parkes while going to 1 an audience with the Mikado, Mar. 23rd . . 1866 ' Mutsuhito, at sixteen years of age, succeeds his father ' as 121st (or 123rd) Mikado, Feb. 3rd . . 1867 ' Hiogo, Osaka, and Yedo opened, Jan. 1st . . . 1868 , The Mikado restored to full power, Jan. 3rd . . 1868 j An officer and ten French sailors murdered at Sakai, J near Osaka, by a detachment of Tosa troops ; I $150,000 paid as indemnity, and eighteen men i condemned to death by Hara-Kiri ; seven of these j reprieved after eleven had died, Mar. 8th . . 1868 Battle of Fushimi, Jan. 28th 1868 ' Battle of Ueno, July 4th 1868 First year of Meiji (Enlightened Rule), Nov. 6th . 1868 The Mikado removes to Yedo, which changes its name | to Tokyo, and is made the capital of the Empire, J Nov. 26th 1868 ' 29 441 I APPENDIX V Hakodate taken ; war ended, June 8th Abolition of the feudal system ; the Daimio relegated to private life, and retired on pensions of one- tenth of their former revenues, July 5th First appearance of newspapers ..... Embassy representing the National Government make the circuit of the world .... 1871 First railway in Japan opened, Oct. 13th . Attempted assassination of bvakura, Jan. 14th . Adoption of the Gregorian Calendar . Officials obliged to wear European dress when on I duty ........ Insurrection at Saga, and its suppression by Okubo, Feb War against Formosa, May .... Exchange of Saghalien for Kurile (Chishima) Islands Revocation of the edicts against Christianity Treaty between Japan and Korea, Feb. 27th Commencement of the Southern Rebellion at Kuma moto, Oct. 24th ..... End of the Southern Rebellion and death of Saigo Takamori (the leader), Sept. 24th Okubo assassinated. May 14th .... National Exhibition in Tokyo opened, Mar. 11th Rescript promising the opening of a Parliament in 1890 Oct. 14th ....... Outrage on the Japanese Legation in Korea July 23rd Friendly settlement of Korean trouble, Aug. 30th The United States return the "Shimonoseki Indemnity' Rehabilitation of old nobility, July 9th Official priesthood abolished, Aug. 11th The Japanese troops in the capital of Korea attacked by Chinese and Koreans, Oct. Eruption of Bandaisan, 500 people killed, July 15th 1869 1869 1870 -1872 1872 1873 1873 1873 1874 1874 1875 1876 1876 1876 1877 1878 1881 1881 1882 1882 1883 1884 1884 1884 1888 442 DATES OF JAPANESE HISTORY To which I may add : — The Constitutions granted by the Emperor promul- gated, Feb. 11th 1889 First Imperial Diet meets, Nov. .... 1890 International Exhibition in Tokyo .... 1890 The Great Earthquake— 10,000 people killed, 20,000 injured, 130,000 houses destroyed, Oct. 28th . 1891 Attempt on the life of the Czar when travelling in Japan in the summer of .... . 1894 Japan declares war on China, Feb. 12th . . . 1895 Surrender of Chinese navy, and suicide of Chinese admiral, Feb. 14th 1895 Surrender of Wei-hai-Wei 1895 Treaty of Peace of Shimonoseki between Japanese and Chinese. Acquisition of Formosa . . . 1895 Tidal wave destroyed 7475 houses, killed 26,990 people, injured 25,137 people .... 1896 Adoption of gold standard in Japan .... 1897 Treaty revision. End of exterritoriality . . . 1899 Japan joins the Powers in war against China . . 1900 Alliance with Great Britain ..... 1902 THE END. PRINTED BY NKILL AND CO., LTD., EDINBURGH. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. im 29 1948 tNTERUBRARY LD 21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 I L/ H^OU f UNIVERSITY OF CAUFORNIA UBRARY