These are Americans,
They are as restless as the ocean,
In one day they will learn more of a city
Than an inhabitant will in a year.
Are they not extraordinary persons?”
All the legations are now on the high ground in the western part of the city near the castle moats. All legation buildings are owned and kept up by their respective governments. The Japanese Government, having offered to give the land if the United States would erect a permanent legation, finally built and rented the present structure to the great republic before it was purchased.
The English possess a whole colony of buildings in the midst of a large walled park, affording offices and residences for all the staff. Germany, Russia, France, and the Netherlands own handsome houses with grounds. The Chinese legation occupied part of an old yashiki until a beautiful modern structure replaced the “spread-out-house” of such picturesqueness, and iron grilles succeeded the quaint, old pea-green and vermilion gate-way.
The show places of Tokio are the many government museums at Uyéno Park, the many mortuary temples of the Tokugawa Shoguns at Shiba and Uyéno, the popular temple of Asakusa, and the Shinto temple at the Kudan, with its race-course and view of the city; but the Kanda, the Kameido, the Hachiman temples, many by-streets and queer corners, the out-door fairs, the peddlers, and shops give the explorer a better understanding of the life of the people than do the great monuments. Here and there he comes upon queer old nameless temples with ancient trees, stones, lanterns, tanks, and urns that recall a forgotten day of religious influence, when they possessed priests, revenues, and costly altars.
An army of jinrikisha coolies waits for passengers at the station, and among them is that Japanese Mercury, the winged-heeled Sanjiro, he of the shaven crown and gun-hammer topknot of samurai days. His biography includes a tour of Europe as the servant of a Japanese official. On returning to Tokio he took up the shafts of his kuruma again, and is the fountain-head of local news and gossip. He knows what stranger arrived yesterday, who gave dinner parties, in which tea-house the “man-of-war gentlemen” had a geisha dinner, where your friends paid visits, even what they bought, and for whom court or legation carriages were sent. He tells you whose house you are passing, what great man is in view, where the next matsuri will be, when the cherry blossoms will unfold, and what plays are coming out at the Shintomiza. Sanjiro is cyclopædic at the theatre, and as a temple guide he exhales ecclesiastical lore. To take a passenger on a round of official calls, to and from state balls or a palace garden party, he finds bliss unalloyed, and his explanations pluck out the heart of the mystery of Tokio. “Mikado’s mamma,” prattles Sanjiro in his baby-English, as he trots past the green hedge and quiet gate of the Empress Dowager’s palace, and “Tenno San,” he murmurs, in awed tones, as the lancers and outriders of the Emperor appear.