How well I remember the scene! The sun was sinking like a ball of fire into the purple sea, tinging the mountains, the islands, and the yellow sand a delicate rose colour.
As far as the eye could reach numberless little figures were hurrying to and fro on the beach, fitting out their tiny crafts ready to launch into the water. As the sun sank behind the horizon the murmur of many voices broke the stillness, gradually resolving into a weird incantation, which echoed from hill to hill. This was the signal for the lighting and launching of the boats; a few minutes later, when night had fallen, the sea seemed ablaze with countless flickering lights; and on the shore, thousands of little figures, fast disappearing into the darkness, could be seen kneeling on the sand offering up their prayers and petitions for the welfare of the little ones they had lost, in whose memory the festival had been celebrated.
Since the opening up of the country to foreigners and the introduction of Western civilization, many of the quaint manners and customs in Japan are fast disappearing, and the Japanese children, especially in the Treaty-port towns, cannot be said to have benefited by the change.
Nothing can be more delightful than a Japanese child with Japanese manners; nothing, I grieve to say, more objectionable than one with European manners. Why is it, I wonder, that bad habits are so much more easily learnt than good ones?
In spite of all this, however, one must admit that much still remains, especially amongst the girls, of that grace, that gentle politeness and courtesy, which has ever given such a charm and attracted one so much to the children of Japonica.
CHAPTER VIII
SERVANTS IN JAPAN
Their politeness--Frequency of their baths--Always ready for a nap--Mrs. Peter Potts.
The Japanese make good servants--willing and obliging and quick to learn English ways. They cost very little to feed, living chiefly on rice and vegetables, although they are fond of European food when they can get it. Their honesty depends chiefly on their masters and mistresses. Where they attach themselves they are faithful and trustworthy. On the other hand, an unpopular English house is often servantless, and many are the stories I have been told, especially in the English settlements in Yokohama and Kobé, of the extravagance and theft of the Japanese ‘boy’--a word always employed in the Far East for all male servants.
The head boy of our establishment in Tokio, where we had a house for some time, was a Japanese who in more prosperous days had been a samuri, or two-sworded man. He had a fair knowledge of English, was responsible for the payment of the weekly bills, looked after the other servants, and always accompanied us when travelling in the interior. Yami was a little shrivelled-up-looking man who might have been any age between thirty-five and sixty. He possessed a father and mother as well as a wife and large family, all of whom lived together in two small rooms in the Japanese quarter of our house. Except on the occasion of a shock of earthquake, when the garden seemed full of small quaintly-robed figures running in every direction, I saw little or nothing of some of the members of our household; and on those unpleasant occasions I was much too agitated to think of anything but my own safety.