As if the differences between the polite and the common idioms and names for things did not make verbal complications enough, the imperial family and their satellites have a still finer phraseology with a special vocabulary for their exclusive use. Saké, or rice brandy, becomes kukon at court; a dumpling, which is a dango in the city, becomes an ishi-ishi when it enters the palace-gates; and a shirt, or juban, is transmuted to a heijo on an imperial back. Well-bred women say o hiya for cold water, and men always call it mizu. A dog not only gets the honorific prefix o, but if you call him, you say politely o ide, just as you would to a child; while the imperative koi! koi! (come, come,) is polite enough for the rest of the brute creation. Children say umamma for food, but if you do not say omamma instead, nesans will giggle over your baby talk.
Dialects and localisms contribute still further to confusion of tongues. A hibachi in Kioto is a shibachi in Yokohama, as a Hirado vase is a Shirado one. When you inquire a price, you say ikura for “how much” in Yokohama, and nambo in Kioto. All around Tokio the g has the sound of ng, or gamma nasal, and this nasal tone of the capital is another point of conformity with the modern French.
Everywhere in Japan an infinity of names belongs to the simplest things. Twenty-five synonyms for rice are given in Hepburn’s smaller dictionary, all as different as possible. Rice in every stage of growing, and in every condition after harvesting, has a distinct name, with no root common to all. Endless mistakes follow any inexactness of pronunciation. The numerals, ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, ku, ju, are easily memorized, and learning to count up to one hundred is child’s play compared to the struggle with French numerals. It is not necessary to say “four times twenty, ten, and seven,” before ninety-seven is reckoned; that is simply ku ju shichi, or nine tens and a seven. Twenty is ni ju, thirty is san ju, fifty is go ju, and so through the list. The ordinal numbers have dai prefixed or ban added, and “fourth” is then yo ban. That ichi ban means “number one,” and ni ban, “number two,” surprises people who had supposed that Mr. Ichi Ban and Mr. Ni Ban owned the great Japanese stores that used to exist in two American cities. After learning the plain cardinal and ordinal numbers, the neophyte must remember to add the syllable shiki when mentioning any number of animals, nin for people, ken for houses, so for ships, cho for jinrikishas, hai for glasses or cups of any liquid, hon for long and round objects, mai for broad and flat ones, tsu for letters or papers, satsu for books, wa for bundles or birds. Any infraction of these rules gives another meaning to the intended phrase, and the slightest variation in inflection changes it quite as much. If you want three kurumas, you say “kuruma san cho,” and five plates are “sara go mai.” To say simply saiyo (yes), or iye (no), is inadmissible. The whole statement must be made with many flourishes, and frequent de gozarimasus adorn a gentleman’s conversation.
If a curio dealer asks whether you wish to see a koro, and you look for the word in the lexicon, you find that koro means, according to Dr. Hepburn’s dictionary, time, period of time, a cylindrical wooden roller used in moving heavy bodies, the elders, old people, tiger and wolf, i.e., savage and cruel, stubborn, bigoted, narrow-minded, a road, a journey, a censer for burning incense, and the second or third story of a house. So, too, kiku may mean a chrysanthemum, or a compass and square, a rule, an established custom, the moment or proper time; fear, timidity, and a score of other things. The chief compensations of the language are its simple and unvarying rules of pronunciation, every syllable being evenly accented, every vowel making a syllable, and, pronounced as continental vowels are, giving music to every word.
The written language is the study of another lifetime. Having the Chinese written language as its basis, the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans can all understand one another in this form common to all, though not in the spoken tongue. It is common to see Chinese and Japanese coolies writing characters in the air, in the dust, or in the palms of their hands, and seeming to make themselves intelligible in this classical sign language. The written language has the katagana, or square characters, and the hiragana, or “grass” characters, the latter simpler and more nearly corresponding to our script or running hand.
The efforts of scholars are now turned to Romaicising or transliterating the Japanese sounds and characters, and expressing them by the common alphabet of Latin and Anglo-Saxon people, basing it on phonetic spelling. Volapuk, the new universal language of all nations, offers great difficulties to the Japanese, for although Schleyer, its inventor, kindly left out the r, which the Chinese cannot pronounce, he left in the l, which is a corresponding stumbling-block for the Japanese, who is seldom a natural linguist.
CHAPTER XXX
SENKÉ AND THE MERCHANTS’ DINNER
It required an elaborate negotiation extending through two weeks, as well as the tactful aid of an officer of the Kioto Kencho to arrange for me a cha no yu at the house of Senké, the great master of the oldest school of that art. Senké was about going to Uji to choose his teas; he was changing his teas; he was airing his godowns, and he sent a dozen other excuses to prevent his naming a day. Not until it had been explained fully to this great high-priest of the solemnity that I had studied cha no yu with his pupil, Matsuda, and that, knowing that Matsuda had first studied the Hori no Uji-method, I was pursuing the art to its fountain-head, to make sure that no heterodox version of the Senké method had betrayed my inexperience, would he consent to receive me.
Senké is a descendant of Rikiu, the instructor and friend of Hideyoshi, the Taiko. For years they practised the “outward” rites together, and wrote poems to one another, until Hideyoshi admired Rikiu’s beautiful daughter. Rikiu refused her to him, and estrangement followed. Rikiu had built a splendid gate-way for the Daitokuji temple, within which, as was the fashion of the time, he had placed a small wooden statue of himself. Taiko Sama, riding through with his train one day, was told of the statue overhead. He declared it an insult to him, the Shogun, and sent to Rikiu the fateful short sword, the wakazashi, and the great master died the honorable death of seppuku, or hara kiri.