Pretty as she is on a pictured fan, the living Japanese woman is far more satisfying to the æsthetic soul as she patters along on her wooden clogs or straw sandals. The very poorest, in her single cheap cotton gown, or kimono, is as picturesque as her richer sister in silk and crape. With heads elaborately dressed, and folds of gay crape, or a glittering hair-pin thrust in the smooth loops of blue-black hair, they seem always in gala array; and, rain or shine, never protect those elaborate coiffures with anything less ornamental than a paper umbrella, except in winter, when the zukin, a yard of dark crape lined with a contrasting color, is thrown over the head, concealing the whole face save the eyes. A single hair-pin of tortoise-shell, sometimes tipped with coral or gold, is all that respectable women of any class wear at one time. The heavily hair-pinned women on cheap fans are not members of good society, and only children and dancing-girls are seen in the fantastic flowers and trifles sold at a hundred shops and booths in this and every street.
The little children are the most characteristically Japanese of all Japanese sights. Babies are carried about tied to the mothers’ back, or to that of their small sisters. They sleep with their heads rolling helplessly round, watch all that goes on with their black beads of eyes, and never cry. Their shaven crowns and gay little kimonos, their wise, serene countenances, make them look like cabinet curios. As soon as she can walk, the Japanese girl has her doll tied on her back, until she learns to carry it steadily and carefully; after that the baby brother or sister succeeds the doll, and flocks of these comical little people, with lesser people on their backs, wander late at night in the streets with their parents, and their funny double set of eyes shine in every audience along Isezakicho.
JAPANESE CHILDREN
These out-of-door attractions are constantly changing. Native inventions and adaptations of foreign ideas continually appear. “Pigs in clover” and pot-hook puzzles followed only a few weeks behind their New York season, and street fakirs offer perpetual novelties. Of jugglers the line is endless, their performances filling interludes at theatres, coming between the courses of great dinners, and supplying entertainment to any garden party or flower fête in the homes of rich hosts. More cunning than these gorgeously clad jugglers is an old man, who roams the vicinity of Yokohama, wearing poor cotton garments, and carrying two baskets of properties by a pole across his shoulders. On a street corner, a lawn, a piazza, or a ship’s deck, he sets up his baskets for a table, and performs amazing feats with the audience entirely encircling him. A hatful of coppers sufficiently rewards him, and he swallows fire, spits out eggs, needles, lanterns, and yards of paper-ribbon, which he twirls into a bowl, converts into actual soba, and eats, and by a magic sentence changes the remaining vermicelli into the lance-like leaves of the iris plant. This magician has a shrewd, foxy old face, whose grimaces, as well as his pantomime, his capers, and poses, are tricks in themselves. His chuckling, rippling stream of talk keeps his Japanese auditors convulsed. Sword walkers and knife swallowers are plenty as blackberries, and the phonograph is conspicuous in Isezakicho’s tents and booths. The sceptic and investigator wastes his time in the effort to penetrate the Japanese jugglers’ mysteries. Once, at a dinner given by Governor Tateno at Osaka, the foreign guest of honor determined to be cheated by no optical delusions. He hardly winked, so close was his scrutiny, and the juggler played directly to him. An immense porcelain vase having been brought in and set in the middle of the room, the juggler, crawling up, let himself down into it slowly. For half an hour the sceptic did not raise his eyes from the vase, that he had first proved to be sound and empty, and to stand on no trap-door. After this prolonged watch the rest of the company assailed him with laughter and jeers, and pointed to his side, where the old juggler had been seated for some minutes fanning himself.
CHAPTER III
YOKOHAMA—CONTINUED
In the Settlement, back of the main street, the Chinese have an ill-smelling corner to themselves. Their greasy walls and dirty floors affront the dainty doll dwellings across the creek, and the airy little box of a tea-house, whose lanterns swing at the top of the perpendicular bluff behind them. Vermilion paper, baggy clothes, pigtails, harsh voices, and vile odors reign in this Chinatown. The names on the signs are curiosities in themselves, and Cock Eye, tailor, Ah Nie and Wong Fai, ladies’ tailors, are the Poole, Worth, and Felix of the foreign community. Only one Japanese has a great reputation as dress-maker, but the whole guild is moderately successful, and prices are so low that the British and French houses of Yokohama cannot compete with them.