Jinrikisha days in Japan

by Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore

Another interesting Government institution is the bazaar for the exhibition and sale of goods of Osaka manufacture. All Japanese cities have these hakurankwai (exposition), but no other is on so great a scale and so crowded with beautiful things as this one. There one may see all that any workshop turns out or any dealer has for sale without the tedious process of bowing, taking off one’s shoes, and sitting in tailor-fashion for an hour before the desired articles are shown. All the goods are marked in plain figures, and the fixed price obviates the bargaining and the rattle of the soroban. There is an admission fee of a few coppers, and a percentage is charged on all sales to support the institution. One may spend a day in the labyrinth of rooms studying Osaka’s many industries; and everything, from gold and silver ware, crapes, brocades, lacquers, enamels, porcelains and carvings to food preparations, patent medicines, and imitations of foreign goods, is to be found there. There is even a department of plants and flowers, a hall of antiquities, a section of toys, acres of china shops, and specimens of everything made, sold, or used in that bustling city. Evening brings electric lights and a military band, and this industrial fair is made popular and profitable all the year round.

Osaka is the centre of great iron, copper, and bronze industries. Its artists decorate the finest modern Satsuma in microscopically fine designs, and the mark of Gioksen, of Osaka, on tiny vase or koro stamps the piece as the best example of the day. The soft yellow and richly-toned wares of Idzumi kilns find their market through Osaka, and the carving of blackwood into cabinets and stands, or mounts, for vases and tokonoma ornaments, is held almost as a monopoly by a great company of Osaka artisans. Its book trade and dry-goods trade are very great, and its chief silk-store, which is still purely Japanese, displays the choicest fabrics of Kioto looms, and stuffs that only after much searching are seen elsewhere. The straw goods trade is an important one, and its paper industries are on an even greater scale. Fans are exported from Osaka by millions, the United States taking one fan for each inhabitant of the great republic.

Stamped leather is another product of Osaka, but is chiefly exported to Trieste, to be made up there and at Vienna into the pocket-books, portfolios, card and cigar cases that cost so much in American jewelry and stationery stores. At Toyono’s, the largest leather factory, squares of stamped leather were shown us in more than a hundred designs of bugs, birds, and fish, covering the ground, each piece of leather being about twenty-four inches square, and selling at one or two dollars for the single piece. Larger pieces, stamped with large and elaborate designs in gold or colors, and used for the foreign trade as panels for wall decorations, mounted to ten and fifteen dollars each, the size and quality of the leather and work of the artist enhancing the price. The cost of one of the large square brass dies from which the impressions are made averages one hundred and fifty dollars. In the old days the two-feet-square surface of brass could be engraved in the finest all-over designs for half that sum. The leather is stamped from these dies by a hand-press, and after the stamping workmen sit on their heels and color the designs.

An industry peculiar to Osaka is the manufacture of floor rugs of cotton or hemp. These Osaka rugs were much esteemed in feudal days, when the daimio had the monopoly and sent them as gifts; but in these prosaic days a stock company and a large factory supply the home market and the great foreign demand for these inexpensive and pleasing articles.

Half the kairos sold in Japan are marked with an Osaka manufacturer’s name, and in cold weather or in illness the possessor of the kairo calls Osaka blessed. For be it known that the kairo is a little tin box with perforated sides and a sliding top covered with cloth. Kairo zumi are three-inch paper cases filled with the finest persimmon-leaf charcoal. You light one end of a paper, drop it in the kairo, and blow it until it glows; slip the cover in and wrap the kairo in a handkerchief or special bag. The little charcoal stick will burn for three, or even six hours, giving a steady, even heat all the time. It comes in many sizes, is curved in many ways to fit closely to the body, and its weight is almost nothing. The commonest kairo, about four inches long by two inches high, costs three or five cents, according to the quality of cloth pasted over it, and each package of the zumi costs a cent and a half. On winter days one often sees the Japanese holding kairos in their hands, tucking them in their obis, and slipping them down their backs. They are serviceable in keeping dampness out of the piles of linen in house-keeper’s closets, and at night they assume the function of the ancient warming-pan. In America it has been considered only as a toy, a muff-warmer, or a pocket-stove. But its best use is in the sick-room, where it will keep a poultice or hot cloth at an even heat for days. A chill, a cramp, or a rheumatic pain is charmed away by its steady, gentle heat; and in neuralgia, bound on the aching nerves, it soothes them. Headaches have been known to yield to it, and in sea-sickness the kairo overcomes the agonizing chills and relieves the suffering. Our heavy rubber hot-water bags, that are always leaking and suddenly cooling, may well be superseded by the little kairo.

Osaka has curio-shops that are small museums filled with the choicest industrial art of old Japan, and this rich commercial city rivals Tokio and Kioto in its amusement world, and has a theatre street a mile long. Its theatres, its wrestlers, its maiko and geisha are as well known as its industries, and its jinrikisha runners are reckoned the swiftest in the empire. The latter spin over the stone-paved streets and bridges and round corners at a terrifying pace, all for six cents an hour, and usually speed the departing guest to the station early enough to allow him a half-hour at the little tea-houses in the park, to eat cubes of the superlative Osaka sponge-cake. The maiko and geisha of this southern capital are renowned for their grace, beauty, and wit; their taste in arranging the obi and dressing the hair; their cleverness in inventing new dances; and the entertainments in which they figure, under the lanterned awnings of the house-boats as they float up and down the river at night, are unique among such fêtes.

There are many rich and splendid temples in Osaka that seem to have suffered little since the protection of the Shogun and the court were withdrawn. Osaka, Tokio, and Kioto, the three capitals, are the three religious centres; and the Buddhist establishments, the extensive yellow-walled monastery grounds in the district beyond the Osaka castle are worthy of a capital. The numbers of priests in the streets, the thousands of summer pilgrims, and the scores of shops for the sale of temple ornaments, altar furnishings, rosaries, and brocade triangles for the shelf of household images, give a certain sacerdotal aspect to the busy town. One temple possesses many relics of the Forty-seven Ronins, and at its annual matsuri, when these are exhibited, the surrounding courts are almost impassable with the crowds and the merry fair. The twin Monto temples are splendid structures, and priests from the Kioto Hongwanjis often assist in their ceremonials.

As one approaches Osaka from Nara, Tennoji’s roofs and pagoda are seen at the same moment with the castle towers. This pagoda is one of the few in Japan which visitors are allowed to climb, and contains enough wood and rough timber to build twenty like it after occidental methods. Such steep and clumsy stairs and ladders are harder to climb than mountains; for the climber crawls over and creeps under heavy beams, and fairly twists himself upward, getting an occasional peep down the dark well-hole, where the builders’ secret is hidden. Visitors wonder how pagodas are made to stand in an earthquake country, and why these spindling edifices should be built up without regard to the inevitable tremble, until they see in the hollow chamber, or well, an exaggerated tongue or pendulum hanging from the topmost beams.

This tongue, made of heavy beams bolted together in a mass, is equal to about half the weight of the whole structure. It descends nearly to the base of the pagoda, and at the shock of an earthquake the large pendulum slowly swings, the structure sways, and settles back safely to its base.