At sunset we saw the towers of Nagoya castle in the distance, and after crossing the broad plain of ripening rape and wheat, the coolies sped through the town at a fearful pace and deposited us, dazed, dusted, and weary, at the door of the Shiurokindo, to enjoy the beautiful rooms just kindly vacated by Prince Bernard, of Saxe-Weimar.
The Shiurokindo is one of the handsomest and largest of the tea-houses a foreigner finds, its interior a labyrinth of rooms and suites of rooms, each with a balcony and private outlook on some pretty court. The walls, the screens, recesses, ceilings, and balcony rails afford studies and models of the best Japanese interior decorations. The samisen’s wail and a clapping chorus announced that a great dinner was going on, and in the broader corridors there was a passing and repassing of people arrayed in hotel kimonos.
As the wise traveller carries little baggage, the tea-houses furnish their customers with ukatas, or plain cotton kimonos, to put on after the bath and wear at night. These gowns are marked with the crest or name of the house, painted in some ingenious or artistic design; and guests may wander round the town, even, clad in these garments, that so ingeniously advertise the Maple-leaf, the Chrysanthemum, or Dragon tea-house. All guides, and servants particularly, enjoy wearing these hotel robes, and travellers who dislike to splash their own clothing march to the bath ungarmented, assuming the house gowns in the corridor after their dip. These ukatas at the Shiurokindo were the most startling fabrics of Arimatsu, and we looked in them as if we had been throwing ink-bottles at each other.
Until the long jinrikisha ride was over we had not felt weary, as each day beguiled us with some new interest and excitement; but when we stepped from those baby-carriages at the door of the Shiurokindo we were dazed with fatigue, although the coolies who ran all the way did not appear to be tired in the least. Their headman, who marshalled the team of ten, was a powerful young fellow, a very Hercules for muscle, and for speed and endurance hardly to be matched by that ancient deity. At the end of each day he seemed fresher and stronger than at the start, and he has often run sixty and sixty-five miles a day, for three and four days together. He led the procession and set the pace, shouting back warning of ruts, stones, or bad places in the road, and giving the signals for slowing, stopping, and changing the order of the teams. On level ground the coolies trotted tandem—one in the shafts, and one running ahead with a line from the shafts held over his shoulder. Going downhill, the leader fell back and helped to hold the shafts; going uphill, he pushed the jinrikisha from the back.
The jinrikisha coolies make better wages than farm laborers or most mechanics. Our men were paid by the distance, and for days of detention each man received twenty-five cents to cover the expense of his board and lodging. They earned at an average one dollar and ten cents for each day, but out of this paid the rent of the jinrikisha and the Government tax. Where two men and a jinrikisha cover one hundred and eighty miles in four days they receive thirteen dollars in all, which is more than a farm laborer receives in a year. As a rule, these coolies are great gamblers and spendthrifts, with a fondness for saké. Our headman was a model coolie, saving his money, avoiding the saké-bottle, and regarding his splendid muscle as invested capital. When he walked in to collect his bill, he was clean and shining in a rustling silk kimono, such as a well-to-do merchant might wear. In this well-dressed, distinguished-looking person, who slid the screens of our sitting-room and bowed to us so gracefully, we hardly recognized our trotter of the blue-cotton coat, bare knees, and mushroom hat. He explained that the other men could not come to thank us for our gratuities because they had not proper clothes. In making his final and lowest bows his substantial American watch fell out of his silk belt with a thump; but he replaced it in its chamois case with the assurance that nothing hurt it, and that it was with the noon gun of Nagoya castle whenever he came to town.
CHAPTER XXI
NAGOYA
In this day of French uniforms, Gatling-guns, and foreign tactics, it is only in Nagoya that the garrison occupies the old castle; the fortress, with its gates and moats, remains unchanged, and the bugle-calls echo daily around the quaintly-gabled citadel. In the great parade-grounds outside the deep inner moat rise foreign-looking barracks and offices, and dumpy little soldiers in white-duck coats and trousers and visored caps stand as sentries on the fixed bridges, and in the portals of the huge, heavy-roofed, iron-clamped gate-ways. Of course these guards should be men in old armor, with spears and bows, and the alarms should be given on hoarse-toned gongs or conch-shell bugles, as in feudal days. Instead, the commandant of Nagoya has on his staff young nobles of old feudal families, who speak French, German, or English, as they have been taught in foreign military schools. A dapper little lieutenant, in spotless gloves and an elaborately-frogged white uniform, conducted us along the deep moat, over the bridge, and under the great gate of the citadel, whose stones, timbers, and iron clampings would defy a dozen mediæval armies. Gay chatter about la belle Paris, which the little lieutenant had learned to adore in his student-days, echoed under the yet more ponderous inner gate, and the ghosts of the old warriors must have groaned at the degeneracy of their sons.
Below the frowning citadel is an old palace, wherein the son of Iyeyasu, the first Prince of Owari, lived in state and entertained the Shogun’s messengers. The empty rooms are musty and gloomy from long neglect, but the beautifully-carved and colored ceilings, and the screens and recess walls, decorated by famous artists with paintings on a ground of thinnest gold-leaf, remain the sole relics of his splendor.
The great donjon tower of the citadel, rising in five gabled stories, is surmounted by two golden dolphins, the pride of Nagoya. Made over two hundred years ago, each solid goldfish is valued at eighty thousand dollars, and many legends are attached to them. A covetous citizen once made an enormous kite wherewith to fly up and steal the city’s treasures, but he was caught and put to death in boiling oil. The golden pets were never disturbed until one of them was taken down and sent with the Government exhibits to the Vienna Exposition in 1873. On the return voyage it sank to the bottom of the sea with the wrecked steamer Nil. Like the old lacquers and porcelain, the golden dolphin suffered no sea change, and, after a few months’ immersion, was brought up and returned to its high perch on the tower, while all Nagoya rejoiced to see it flashing in the sun once more.
The donjon tower is a fine example of the old architecture, and the massive joists of keyaki would build barracks for twenty regiments. Inside the tower is an inexhaustible well, called the “Golden Water,” which, in time of siege, would enable a rice-provisioned garrison to hold out for years. Up a stair-way of massive timbers one climbs, half in darkness to the top, to look down upon the broad Nagoya plain, the blue bay, and the busy port of Yokkaichi opposite, in the sacred province of Ise.