Newfoundland to Cochin China / By the Golden Wave, New Nippon, and the Forbidden City

by Ethel Gwendoline Vincent

In the afternoon, somewhat satiated with buying, we drove out to Shugaku—one of the Mikado's summer villas. It was an intensely hot afternoon, but the first disagreeably warm day that we have had, as our weather has been perfect, with no rain and sunny skies day after day. October and November are always delicious months in Japan.

The villa consisted of an absolutely bare, undecorated, matted, tea-house, of modest, you might in the case of this, its royal owner, say mean dimensions, but the garden is a gem. From it there is a near view of purple hills, all in little crinkled edges, running in lines one below the other, made nearer to us by the warm still atmosphere, whilst behind the garden rises a formal hill; truly Japanese in its conical structure, covered with pine trees, whose pink and purple stems gleam out from the dark fir needles. There is the usual figurative mile upon mile of winding paths, the steep hills to descend and climb up by stone steps, the familiar bridges, one with pagoda-covered roof, and the other of bamboo and turfed, crossing the neatly devised harbours and bays of the artificial lake, whose banks are covered with palms, but it is the hedges that are worth coming to see. They are of azalea and camellia, and honeysuckle, cut low, so that they spread out to an enormous thickness, to a breadth of twenty feet, and it is over these green open ramparts, that you look out on the lovely view.

We refused in coming home, though we had time to spare, to visit any more temples, and we spent the last evening in going to a fair, given in honour of the God of Water. As at Tokio, where we saw a similar festival for the God of Writing, it was held in a special quarter. The dark, narrow streets are outlined in coloured lamps, with arches, the light glowing through the paper, and the varieties of colour—red, green, blue, and pink, forming a soft and effective illumination, not surpassed by many more elaborate Jubilee ones. Many of the houses are decorated with wonderful marine representations of blue waves, with fishes and dolphins, and fir trees placed at intervals, with more lanterns and red paper devices. The locality is en fête, and the entire population is thronging the streets, which we wander delightedly through. There are performances of monkeys and dogs proceeding, and a crowd outside trying to look over the partitions; geishas, with the accompanying twang of the Samisens, are going through their slow performances behind the open bars. Children are flattening their noses against the glass cases of the confectioners', with their sweetmeats and temptingly sugared cakes, or group round the vendors of paper toys stuck on pieces of wood, whilst the women gaze as longingly at the cheap combs, tawdry hair-pins, and gaudy flowers, laid out under the hawkers' glaring oil lamps. There are booths for the sale of cheap soap, cutlery, sandals, glass, jewellery, and candles. The tea-houses are doing an enormous trade, and the naturally contented people look supremely happy.

We left Kioto to pay a flying visit to Osaka on our way to Kobe. Each town seems prettier than the last, and Osaka is no exception. Our chief object in going there was to visit the Arsenal, and according to the special instructions of the Minister of War, we were most courteously received by the chief, Colonel Ota, and given tea at his official residence before being conducted over the arsenal.

We are much struck that instead of having to teach Japan, there is something that we can learn from her. Her civilization, coming, as it has, so late in the decade, breaking in suddenly upon centuries of dark ages, she has benefited by the experience of other nations, and constructed her civilization on the best systems of other countries. Here in this arsenal we see the newest improvements of science in machines of every nation. Some are from England, some from Italy, France, or Germany. The Arsenal is in beautiful order and keeps employed a large number of workmen. They manufacture their own cannon, and we passed through the large workshops, the smelting furnaces, and saw mouldings and castings, the making and filling of cartridges. The arsenal is inside the outer moat or glacis of the castle, and, with canals and rivers, has through water communication to the sea and to the forts on the coast.

It is this rapid civilization, of which the arsenal is only an example, that fills the traveller with admiration. Japan was only opened to foreigners in 1868, and with the fall of the last Shogun and the beginning of the present Mikado's reign European customs rapidly spread. Some say that Japan has gone too fast, and has absorbed and not digested sufficiently the forms of civilized life. The Japanese went to Prussia for a constitution, and call their Parliament the Diet; to England for their railway system, which was built, organized, and worked at first by English engineers and firemen. They went to France and Germany for an army organization, borrowing their blue and scarlet infantry uniforms with white leggings from the French, and their artillery uniform of blue and yellow from Germany. To France again for their culinary art; for which these Japanese have a latent talent, making excellent cooks. To England again for her model of Court etiquette and nobles' titles, and then again to Germany for medicine. The great reaction that followed naturally in the course of this rapid innovation is not yet dead. The struggle is still going on, as one can easily see, but a few years hence the revolution will be complete, and Japan will cease to be so intensely fascinating to foreigners. It presents, perhaps, the most wonderful page in the history of the world: this deposition of the Shogun, the reinstatement of the old dynasty, a great revolution in a remarkable intelligent country, perfectly bloodless, of short duration, and changing the whole face and destinies of the land.

But these Japanese civilize so fast, that now there is scarcely a European employed in their State departments. They are very proud of this, and gradually European agents for their steamships, companies, the managers of banks and commercial houses are being dismissed, or superseded by Japanese, who take the management into their own hands.

But to return to Osaka. If the castle at Nagoya is so well worth seeing, this one of Osaka is equally so, for it is the exact counterpart of the other, only minus the keep and the dolphins. There are the same outer and inner moats, the same white plaster walls edged with crenellated bronze tiles, resting on stone walls, guarded at the four corners with those square towers, loopholed in several storeys; but I think that the perfectly gigantic stones of the walls are even more colossal than at Nagoya, for there are several opposite the entrance by the gateway and the guard-room, that measure at least twelve feet square. It will always remain one of the wonders of Japan, how these stones, with the primitive appliances of the earlier Shoguns, were ever placed in position. The open square of the inner moat is now a garden, and the palace has been used to accommodate the General and his staff. It is worth climbing up to the top of the walls for the splendid view over the plain, always bordered by those chains of mountains, that run as a prickly backbone from north to south of Japan.

Osaka is a charming town. It is called the Venice of Japan, and with its flowing rivers and canals intersecting the streets, its high, arched bridges thrown across on a single sweep, its grassy banks and avenues of weeping willows, it is fitly likened to that Queen City of the sea. The houses are built on piles projecting over the water, and narrow passages in between, lead down to the stone steps, where there are multitudes of boats.