MANY foreigners think that Japanese women must lead a pretty dull life as they can have little to do in a house bare of furniture. But whether their lives be dull or not compared with the lives of women in other countries, they certainly are not idle. They do not, it is true, go out much; it is a red-letter day with them when they visit a public place in the flower-season or betake themselves to the theatre. But at home they are kept all day to their work. The very scarcity of furniture in a Japanese room implies constant sweeping and tidying; and what with the care of children, making and unmaking of clothes, and superintending of the kitchen, the Japanese housewife has by no means an easy time of it.
But to begin with the early morning. In Japanese houses there are, as has been already stated, no rooms exclusively set apart for sleeping. The beds can be laid anywhere on the mats. The bed consists of one or two thickly-wadded mattresses of cotton or silk, usually three feet wide by about six feet long, that is, nearly the size of a mat. These are laid on the mats and over them a large, thickly-wadded cover of the shape of a winter kimono with open sleeves and a quilt, also heavily wadded, of about the same length as the bed but wider. They are both of silk or cotton, figured or striped, with linings of a dark-blue colour. They both have a black velvet band where the sleeper’s face touches them. The two are used in winter; but in spring and autumn only one, usually the kimono-like cover, is thrown over the sleeper. In midsummer, even that is too hot, and is replaced by an ordinary lined kimono or a thinly-wadded quilt. The pillow for men is a long round bolster filled with bran; but women, whose coiffure would be deranged by such a pillow, lay their heads on a small bran bolster, two inches or so in diameter, which is wrapped in paper and tied on the top of a wooden support. It is very uncomfortable at first, though most women are used to it. As the bolster soon gets hard, the skin about the ear often becomes red and rough if one sleeps all night on the same side. Though the beds may be spread anywhere, their places are always fixed for the members of the family. The master and mistress sleep in the parlour or some other large room with the youngest children, the mother with the baby in her bed and the father sometimes with the next youngest in his. The rest of the children sleep either in the same room or in another and with some other member of the family, unless they are quite grown up. The sitting-room is usually left unoccupied. The servants sleep in a room next to the kitchen and the house-boy in the porch. It is important to group the sleepers as much as possible; for in summer when mosquitoes are out, nets are hung over the beds by strings attached to the four corners of the room, and to economise these nets the beds are brought together wherever practicable.
THE FAMILY IN BED.
The servants get up at five o’clock or later every morning according to season. They first open the shutters of the kitchen; the cook sets at once to boil rice and then to make the morning soup. The housemaid opens the shutters of all the other rooms, sometimes even of those in which people are still sleeping. Where there is a verandah, the maid reaches it by a vacant room; but if all the rooms are occupied, she does not hesitate to pass by the beds. In winter the opening of the sliding-doors at the same time as the shutters would be enough to give a cold to any one unused to our way of life. He would sneeze and dive into bed; and when he goes dozing again, the servant begins to sweep the unoccupied rooms and dust the sliding-doors and shelves in them. The noise would startle him as the partitions between the rooms are thin; and the servant, usually a country-girl who has hitherto been wading in rice-paddies and carrying loads of grain and faggot, walks about on the mats as heavily as if she were on hard ground, and the shock of her stamping he would keenly feel through the bed. It is therefore but a dog-sleep that he would get after the shutters are opened. This is pretty hard as in all probability he was awakened at dead of night by the rats careering on the ceiling, which, being open between the outwalls of the house, is their happy hunting-ground. In fact, the Japanese house, with its thin walls and sliding-doors, is extremely noisy, sounds from outside being heard as clearly as if they came from another part of the house. Happily for us, however, having been habituated to them from childhood, we are able to close our ears to such customary noises.
The family rise an hour or so after the servants. In that time the breakfast is got ready, and the sitting-room has been swept and put tidy; and that is all we want for the while. We go out upon a verandah, generally one close to the sitting-room, or into the bath-room if there is one, where the servant has already laid on the sink a brass basin for washing our faces and a bowl also of brass for cleaning our teeth. Though the common bristle tooth-brush is now largely used, the old form made of a little bit of willow-wood, pointed at one end and frayed into a tuft at the other, is still found handy. As it is very cheap, it is thrown away after a few mornings, and is especially convenient when we have a visitor who stays only for a day or two. The family wash one after another, the servant bringing a fresh supply of cold or hot water each time. As we are exposed to the cold in winter, we do not bare our necks and shoulders or wash our hair, but dip our faces only; however, as we take baths daily or every other day, this does not matter much.
Now breakfast is ready. Before, however, the family sit down to it, the first offerings of the morning’s rice and tea are set before the family shrine, in which are recorded on tablets or in a book the names of the ancestors and other deceased members of the family. If the children go to school early, they sometimes have breakfast before the rest of the family; but as the father, if a government official or a man of business, has also to leave home, the whole family generally take their morning meal together. Breakfast over, the children are packed off to school, and their father, after looking through the papers, also makes for his place of business. When he gets up, he always wears Japanese clothes; and when leaving for his office, he puts on a hakama if he goes in the same clothes; but if he prefers European clothes, he has to dress over again. Before he leaves home, he is given a cup of tea, as it is said to protect him from accidents abroad. His wife and servants see him to the front door and speed him.
The wife who has been getting the children ready for school and helping her husband to dress, has now a little respite, during which she may glance through the papers and take a few whiffs of tobacco. Smoking is a general custom among Japanese women; but tobacco is smoked in homœopathic doses in tiny bowls. The Japanese pipe consists of a bowl, about a quarter of an inch in diameter and depth, bent into a tube, and a mouthpiece, both of metal, which are connected by a bamboo stem. The metal is brass for common pipes, while better sorts are of nickel, silver, or gold. The bamboo stem is five or six inches between the metal ends for pipes which are taken abroad, and not unfrequently a foot or more for those used at home. Among the lower classes the wife uses the long-stemmed pipe to emphasise her speech by beating the mat with it when she gives a piece of her mind to her truant husband; and a blow with it is pretty painful, as many an idle apprentice knows to his cost. A small pinch of tobacco is put into the bowl, and two or three whiffs are all that can be got from it. A Japanese does not merely smoke, that is, get the smoke into his mouth only, but actually swallows it and then slowly emits it from his mouth or nostrils. Women generally emit it from their mouths only. The tobacco smoked is dried leaves cut into fine slices. The filling and emptying of the bowl takes about as much time as the smoking of it, so that one cannot smoke while doing something else; but it is an excellent time-killer, as day-labourers will testify.
