Each section or ward has a high tower or ladder, with a long bell, and from this lookout the watchman gives the alarm or the near policeman sounds the fire-bell. Pandemonium follows, for a more excitable being than the Japanese does not exist, and the fire-bell’s clang is suggestive of many sad and terrible experiences. Besides the municipal fire brigade with their ladders and hand-pumps, each ward maintains private watchmen and firemen. These watchmen roam their beats from dusk to daylight, jingling the loose iron rings on the tops of their long staffs. Throughout the night the watchman’s clinking rings are heard at half-hour intervals or oftener. The policemen, on the contrary, go about quietly, lurking in shadow to pounce upon malefactors; and foreigners, mistaking the fire-guardian for the constable, have pointed many jokes at his noisy progress.
When the alarm-bell clangs, friends rush to help friends in saving their effects, and thieves make the most of the opportunity. Blocks away from the fire agitated people gather up mats, screens, bedding, clothing, and cooking utensils, and hurry from the neighborhood. Then does the simplicity of Japanese life justify itself. No cumbrous furniture is rolled out, to be broken in the transit; no tables, chairs, or clumsy beds are ruined in the saving. One small hand-cart holds the roll of wadded comforters and gowns that compose the bedding of the family, their clothing, and their few other effects. The sliding paper-screens are slipped from their grooves, the thick straw-mats are taken from the floor, and the household departs, leaving but the roof, corner posts, and rough floor behind them. Processions of these refugees stream away from the burning quarter, and the heart of the spectator goes out to the poor people, who, with so little, live so cheerfully and suffer so bravely.
The emblems or rallying banners always carried by native fire-companies astonish foreign eyes. Glorified drum-majors’ sticks, gigantic clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds, balls, crescents, stars, or puzzles, are borne aloft by the color-bearer of the detachment, who stands in the midst of smoke, sparks, and the thickest of the hurly-burly, to show where his company is at work. Thrilling tales are told of these Casabiancas remaining on roofs or among flames until engulfed in the blazing ruins.
Sometimes carpenters begin to build new habitations on the still smoking ground, stepping gingerly among hot stones and tiles. The amazing quickness with which Japanese houses rise from their ashes defies comparison. In twelve hours after a conflagration the little shop-keepers will resume business at the old stand. Fire insurance is not suited to this country of wood and straw dwellings; but thatched roofs are giving way to tiles in the cities, and brick is more and more used for walls. Stone is too expensive, and, in this earthquake country, open to greater objections than brick. The stone walls sometimes seen are a sham, the stones being thin slabs nailed on the wooden framework of a house, like tiles or shingles, to rattle down in a harmless shower when the earth heaves and rocks. Steam fire-engines are unknown, and hand-grenades are inevitably forgotten in the excitement of a conflagration.
Earthquakes, though frequent, are fortunately not severe, and only one catastrophe has been suffered since the convulsions of 1854 and 1855, which the malcontents attributed to the wrath of the gods at the spectacle of foreign barbarians entering the country. The old myth, that the earth—meaning the islands of Japan—rests upon the back of a huge fish, whose writhings cause these disturbances, places the head of the leviathan beneath Yezo, its tail under the southern island, and its vital and active body below Yokohama and Tokio. Now the Government has a seismologist on its university staff, and each tremor or palpitation is accurately recorded, the average number reaching four hundred annually. Kobé and Kioto seldom experience even the slightest motion, but in the vicinity of the capital one becomes fairly accustomed to the unpleasant visitation. A slight disturbance sets lamps and chandeliers vibrating; with a heavier rock all bric-à-brac not wired fast to cabinets, mantels, or tables, slides to the floor; and a harder shock loosens tiles, wrenches timbers, and sends brick chimneys, not boxed in wood or sheet-iron, crashing through the roofs. A small house rattles as if the earthquake fish had come out of the sea and seized it as a terrier does a rat. Pebbles grate in garden paths, tall evergreens snap their tops like switches, bells ring, clocks stop, and people rush frantically to open spaces or streets.
The Japanese seldom drink water, although they splash, dabble, or soak in it half the time; yet men who are working in moats or lotus-ponds, grubbing out the old roots or stalks, and dripping wet to their waists and shoulders, will quit work on rainy days. In Yokohama harbor, coolies who load and unload lighters, and are in and out of water continually, often refuse to work when a shower begins; but a wet day brings a new aspect to the streets, and fair weather has no monopoly of picturesqueness. The unoccupied women with babies tied on their backs, an apparently large leisure class, are always gadding about the town with the aimless unconcern of hens, taking no account of the weather, and enjoying the open air regardless of the barometer. Children are equally indifferent, and jinrikisha coolies, although they draw the hoods and tie their passengers in snug and dry with oil-paper or rubber aprons, trot along cheerfully, with their too scanty cotton garments more abbreviated than ever. They substitute for an umbrella a huge flat straw plate of a hat, and instead of putting on galoches, they take off even their straw sandals and run barefooted, tying up the big toe with a bit of rag or wisp of straw, apparently by way of decoration. Those pedestrians who wish to be stately and dry-shod thrust their bare feet into a half-slipper arrangement of wood and oil-paper, perched on two wooden rests three inches high, adding this cubit to their stature.
When the rain-drops patter the shops are a delight, and the great silk bazaars of Echigoya and Dai Maru, the Louvre and Bon Marché of Tokio, are as entertaining as a theatre. Both occupy corners on great thoroughfares, and have waving curtains of black cloth, with crest and name in white, as the only wall or screen from the street. The one vast open room of the first story is revealed at a glance. The floor proper of this great apartment, raised a foot and a half from the stone walk surrounding it, is covered with the usual straw-mats, the uniform glistening surface extending more than sixty feet either way. Here and there salesmen and accountants, the book-keepers being also cashiers, sit at low desks, where they keep their sorobans, money, and curious ledgers. There are no shelves nor counters, and in groups on the mats sit women with beautifully-dressed hair, and men in sober silk garments, inspecting the heaps of rainbow fabrics strewn about them. Small boys bring out arm-loads and baskets of silks from the godowns, for no stock is ever in sight until the purchaser asks for it. It is etiquette for these small boys to hail and cheer the arriving and departing customer, and they drone out some nasal chorus. We once lifted the street curtain at Dai Maru’s on a rainy day to find the whole matted area deserted of customers. Immediately the battalion of small boys sprang to their feet, and, deafening us with a chanted canticle, hurried to the corner where a steaming bronze urn, various tea-caddies, and a shelved box full of tea-sets provide patrons with cups of amber-tinted nectar. For an hour these myrmidons ran to and fro, baskets were carried back and forth, and gold brocades supplied sunlight and rainbows for a gloomy day. All these precious brocades come in lengths of four and a half yards for the broad obis or sashes that are one secret of her looks in the toilet of a Japanese woman. Those woven of silk alone are as thick as leather and soft as crape, and the massed gold threads, while glistening like plates of chased metal, give stiffness but not hardness to the fabrics. When the woof threads are left in thick, shaggy loops on the under side, not cut away in any economical fashion, these are yesso nishikis, the choicest of all Japanese stuffs, and valued from sixty to one hundred and twenty dollars for the single obi length.
The Nakadori is a half-mile-long street of curio and second-hand shops, which just before the New Year contain their best bargains, and no one can hold to the safety of his jinrikisha through that straight and narrow path, beset by every temptation of old porcelains, lacquer, and embroideries. Peddlers will gather from these shops and carry packs twice their own size, to spread their contents out in the room of a customer. Their wares are so tempting and cheap that the beholder cannot resist them, after a reformation of prices, and that peddler who comes twice has marked his victim for his own. On certain days of the week a rag fair is held on the Yanagiwara. Vendors in rows half a mile long sit under the willow-trees on the canal bank, with neat piles of old clothing, scraps of cloth, and ornaments for sale. Between Shiba and the railway station is a rag alley, a Petticoat Lane of old clothing, but most of it is foreign and unpicturesque, even in the flying glimpses to be caught from a jinrikisha.
In curio-hunting the experienced buyer invariably replies takai, “too much,” to whatever price the dealer names. If intent on the bargain he may add takusan takai, “altogether too much.” Osoroshi takai, or tohomoni takai, “inexpressibly, unspeakably dear,” sometimes serves to abate the price by reason of the dealer’s amazement at hearing those classic and grandiloquent words brought down to common usage.
Once I visited the most charming of old-clothes shops, one where theatrical wardrobes were kept; but Sanjiro could not, or would not remember it, and I never returned. The shopmen were sober and serious automata, whose countenances were stolid and imperturbable, and one might as well have bargained with the high-priest for the veil of the temple, as have offered them less than they asked. They sat, smoked, and cast indifferent glances at us while baskets of gorgeous raiment were borne in, and affected to look up the prices in a book of records. After baiting me long enough, and bringing me to raise my offer, the trio of partners would suddenly clap their hands, say something in concert, and deliver me the article. It was all as precisely ordered and acted as a set scene on the stage, and I longed in vain to assist at other acts in the unique drama.