Jinrikisha days in Japan

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

CHAPTER XXXIII
OSAKA

Osaka, the great commercial city of Japan, with its population of over 361,000 souls, stretches out its square miles of gray-roofed houses at the edge of the plain, where the waters of the Yodogawa reach Osaka Bay. Bars and shallows prevent large vessels from reaching the city, and Kobé-Hiogo, twenty miles across the arc of the bay, is its seaport. The branching river and the innumerable canals intersecting the city have given Osaka the name of the “Venice of Japan;” as if a trading city, built on a level plain, with canals too wide and houses too low and dull in color to be in the least picturesque, could be considered even a poor relation of the “Bride of the Sea.” The “Chicago of Japan” is a fitter title, for if no pork-packing establishments exist, the whole community is as energetically absorbed in money-making, the yen, instead of the almighty dollar, being the god chiefly worshipped, and Osaka’s Board of Trade the most exciting and busy one in the empire.

Osaka has been prominent in the history of Japan from the very earliest times, and at the time of the Restoration the rebel Shogun made his last stand and fought his last battle at Osaka castle. The next great event in Osaka’s annals was the flood of 1885, which was without parallel in this country of floods. During the last weeks of the rainy season of June the rain fell in torrents for more than a week, and a typhoon, sweeping the region, deluged the adjoining provinces. Lake Biwa rose many feet above its usual level, the rivers doubled and redoubled their size, and the whole Osaka plain was a lake. The rivers having been raised artificially above the level of the surrounding country for the irrigation of the rice fields, their banks and levees melted away before the rush of waters, and the plain was scoured by swift currents running eight and fifteen feet deep over the rice fields. Farm-houses and villages disappeared in a day, and the wretched people saved themselves and their few effects by taking to boats and rafts or seeking refuge in trees. After two weeks of high-water and continuing rains, the flood subsided and the wreck was more apparent. A few farmers, by replanting and careful tending, obtained crops that season, but hundreds and hundreds of the homeless and destitute were sheltered and fed in the unused barracks at Osaka castle.

In the city itself only the castle and a few business streets were left above water, and thousands of houses and godowns were ruined; the mud-walls under the heavy tiled roofs collapsing like card-houses in the current. One hundred and forty-six bridges were carried away, and, for a time, boats were the only vehicles and means of communication. The suffering and destitution were terrible, and Osaka’s many industries were paralyzed. But in the shortest time after the subsidence of the waters temporary bridges and ferries were established, embankments patched up, houses rebuilt, and the city returned to its busy ways. Except for the mud-stained walls and the heaps of drift and débris on roof-tops, little reminded one of the disaster as we sped through the stone-paved streets. House-boats went up and down the river each evening with geisha and maiko singing happily, and koto and samisen ringing on the air till midnight. Jiutei’s queer hotel, a foreign inn up-stairs and a Japanese tea-house below stairs, was the scene of as much feasting as ever, and the recuperative power of Osaka’s people surprised one at every turn.

The castle is the great show-place of Osaka, and although the palace, which was the heart of the great fortress, was burned in 1868, much remains to be seen. The area enclosed by the massive outer walls and the great moat is immense, and the clustered towers, and buildings, crowning the one elevation on all the Osaka plain, show commandingly from every point. The angles of the walls are sharpened and curve inward like the bow of a battle-ship, and on each corner remain quaint white towers with curving black roofs piled one upon another. The castle walls are wonders of masonry; single stones forty-six feet in length and ten or twelve feet square being built in on either side of the main gate. Other stones, twenty feet in height, and roughhewn as they came from the quarry, stand at angles of the walls like miniature El Capitans. Nearly all these titanic blocks are known to the Japanese by particular names, each with its legends attached; but the foreigner puzzles long to decide how those primitive builders brought such masses of granite from the quarries on the island of Kiushiu and placed them in these walls without the aid of steam or modern appliances. Three massive walls of defense, one within another, separate the castle proper from the surrounding barracks and parade-ground, and the headquarters are within the third enclosure. A dapper little lieutenant in spotless white uniform received our party at the temple-like headquarters building, one scorching August morning, and conducted us through a fourth wall, and up broad stone stair-ways to the lookout of the old citadel. His orderly ran ahead with field-glasses, and from that airy perch, three hundred feet above the city, we could look over an immense stretch of country and down upon the city roof-tops, from which the air rose quivering with heat. At eight o’clock in the morning at that high point the air was intensely hot, and the stones seemed to scorch our feet; yet up there was a well of deliciously cool water, an unfailing supply for the garrison at all times and through many sieges.

Returning to headquarters we met the commandant in such a beautiful snow-white uniform, covered with so many fine lines of white braid, as must make any man regret having to lay it aside for the dark and sombre winter regimentals. The bowing and interchange of conventionally courteous greetings between the commandant and the two Tokio officials whom we accompanied was a charming exhibition of the old etiquette, just a little modified by the new. The cool, shady room, where tea and cake and wine awaited us, had been built on the foundations of the old house where Hideyoshi lived, and its interior was panelled and ceiled with wondrous paintings and carvings brought from one of the Taiko’s distant castles. Before it stood a pine-tree, planted by the daughter of that Napoleon of Japan, and there had been enacted the brilliant drama of feudal life which Judith Gautier has immortalized in The Usurper, a story which invests Osaka’s castle with romance.

Then we spent two scorching hours in the gun-foundery and arsenal outside the castle walls, where the machinery was German from Chemnitz founderies, and the guns were made on Italian models. No foreigners were visible about the place, and the machinery was managed by Japanese workmen.

Next to its arsenal, Osaka takes pride in its mint, which is larger and better supplied with machinery than any of the Government mints in the United States. An army of workmen and workwomen in uniform tend the machines, and melt, cast, cut, stamp, weigh, and finish the coins, which, under the values of yens and sens, correspond exactly to our coinage of dollars and cents. The mint possesses a fine collection of coins, including the coins and medals of all countries, as well as a complete set of Japanese coins from the earliest days.