“There are a number of temples near Shimoda,” writes an officer of the “Susquehanna,” “and attached to each is a graveyard. At one of these, situated near a village, there is a place set apart for Americans. Here Dr. Hamilton was buried, being laid by the side of two others who had died on the second visit of the ships. Each grave has its appropriate stone, as with us, and by many of them are evergreens set in vases, or joints of bamboo, containing water. Cups of fresh water are also set by the graves, and to these, birds of dazzling plumage and delightful song come and drink. The graves of the Americans were not forgotten.”
The officers were permitted to go into the country any distance they wished, and the country people were found pleasant and sociable; but upon this second visit the advantages of Shimoda as a place of trade, or the prospects of traffic under the treaty, do not seem to have struck the visitors very favorably. “The harbor,” writes an officer of the “Susquehanna” to the “Tribune,” “is a small indentation of land, running northeast and southwest, about a half-mile in extent, and is capable of holding five or six vessels of ordinary size. It is, however, entirely unprotected from the southwest winds, which bring with them a heavy sea, and which renders the anchorage very unsafe. With the wind from the north and the east, the vessel rides at her ease at her anchorage. Good wood and sweet water, as well as a few provisions, were obtained from the authorities, for the use of the ships, at the most extravagant prices. Numerous articles, such as lackered and China ware, of a very fine and delicate quality, and far superior to that manufactured in China, were purchased by the officers; but every article had to pass through the hands of the Japanese officers, and the amount due the merchants had to be paid, not to them but to the Japanese officials who had been appointed for that very purpose by the mayor of the city and the governor of the province. This article of the treaty will be most scrupulously enforced; and this is decidedly its worst feature.”
“Shimoda,” writes another officer, “does not appear well calculated, upon the whole, for a place of trade, and it can never become an active commercial town. Neither is it a manufacturing town. This, added to the fact that the harbor is a bad one, will make it appear evident that the Japanese commissioners got the better of us in the treaty, as far as this place is concerned.
“The surrounding country (wherever nature will permit it) is highly cultivated. The valley of the creek is broad and well tilled, yielding rice, millet, Egyptian corn and maize.[129] The ears produced by the last are very small, being not more than from two to four inches in length. Sweet potatoes and the eggplant are also raised in great abundance. There are no horses about Shimoda, and bullocks are made to supply their places. Provisions, with the exception of eggs and vegetables, cannot be obtained here. The shark and bonito are the only large fish found in the harbor. Small fish are plentiful, and they seem to form almost the only article of food of the inhabitants, besides rice.”
The following description of the houses at Shimoda, by Mr. S. Wells Williams, will serve to illustrate the descriptions of Japanese houses already given from Kämpfer and Thunberg, and will show how little, as to that matter, Japan has altered since their time:
“The houses in Shimoda are built merely of pine boards, or of plaster thickly spread over a wattled wall of laths, the interstices of which are filled in with mud. In some cases these modes of construction are combined—the front and rear being of boards, or sliding panels, and the sides of mud. When thoroughly dried, the mud is whitewashed, and the plain surface worked into round ridges, three inches high, crossing each other diagonally from the roof to the ground; the ridges are then washed blue, and give the exterior a checker-board look, which, though singular, is more lively than a blue mud wall. The plaster is excellent, and these walls appear very solid and rather pretty when new; at a distance one would even think them to be stone; but after a few years the ridges loosen, the rain insinuates itself beneath the outer coating, and the whole begins to scale and crack off, disclosing the mud and rushes, and then the tenement soon falls to pieces. Still the progress of decay is not so rapid as one would think, judging only by the nature of the materials, and the walls are well protected by the projecting eaves. No bricks are used in building, nor are square tiles for floors seen; and the manner of making walls common in southern China, by beating sanded clay into wooden moulds, is unknown.
“Some of the best houses and temples have stone foundations, a few only of which are made of dressed stone. Half a dozen or more storehouses occur, faced entirely with slabs of stone, and standing detached from other buildings, and are doubtless fire-proof buildings. There are no cellars under the houses; the floors are raised on sleepers only two feet above the beaten ground, and uniformly covered with straw mats stuffed with chaff, or grass an inch thick. The frames are of pine, the joists four or five inches square, and held together by the flooring of the attic, as well as the plates and ridge-pole. The houses and shops join each other on the sides, with few exceptions, leaving the front and rear open. There is no uniformity in the width of the lots, the fronts of some shops extending twenty, thirty, or more feet along the street, while intermediate ones are mere stalls not over ten feet wide.
“The shops succeed each other without any regular order as to their contents, those of the same sort not being arranged together, as is often the case in China. The finer wares are usually kept in drawers, so that, unless one is well acquainted with the place, he cannot easily find the goods he seeks. The eaves of the houses project about four feet from the front and are not over eight feet from the ground; the porch thus made furnishes a covered place for arranging crockery, fruits, etc., for sale, trays of trinkets on a movable stall, baskets of grain, or other coarse articles, to attract buyers. The entrance is on one side, and the path leads directly through to the rear. The wooden shutters of shops are all removed in the daytime, and the paper windows closed, or thrust aside, according to the weather. On a pleasant day the doors are open, and in lieu of the windows a screen is hung midway so as to conceal the shopman and his customer from observation, while those goods placed on the stand are still under his eye. A case, with latticed or wire doors, to contain the fine articles of earthen ware, a framework, with hooks and shelves, to suspend iron utensils or wooden ware, or a movable case of drawers, to hold silks, fine lackered ware, or similar goods, constitute nearly all the furniture of the shops. Apothecaries’ shops are hung with gilded signs and paper placards, setting forth the variety and virtues of their medicines, some of which are described as brought from Europe. The partition which separates the shop from the dwelling is sometimes closed, but more usually open; and a customer has, generally speaking, as much to do with the mistress as the master of the establishment. When he enters, his straw sandals are always left on the ground as he steps on the mats and squats down to look at the goods, which are then spread out on the floor. A foreigner has need of some thoughtfulness in this particular, as it is an annoyance to a Japanese to have his mats soiled by dirty feet, or broken through by coarse shoes.
Scene in the Harbor of Uraga