Otherwise the market in Japan is in the hands of Japanese now in good social standing, men who before the opening of the country numbered among those not much above the outcasts. To be in trade was worse in Japan than in England, and when one watches the behavior of men at markets, one is not surprised. One who takes the average trader at his word in Japan—not the big concerns, to be sure—deserves to cry, wee! wee! wee! all the way home.
While all over the world woman goes to market, in Japan the market goes to her. She has had to have most of her daily supplies brought to her door by the cobbler, the bean-curd-maker, or the fisherman. In consequence, except when she has servants, she has been deprived of the educational advantages of market gossip, and has been kept in her sphere more easily. She will be the last to come forward to freedom.
Not so the men. All the social advantages of barter and exchange are theirs. They communicate their experiences to one another at four o'clock in the morning over the fish-tub. They test their wits and their eyes with the auctioneer who starts them running in competition with one another over an attractive specimen from the sea. Or the more imaginative resist confusion in the pit of the stock-market, where they keep in touch with their entire country and with the world. They are becoming, in consequence, more efficient and more practised in world-wide ethics of business.
Yet within the last few years public markets have sprung into vogue in Japan, and I look toward a revolution in the relations of the sexes, for no woman who goes to market remains long an obedient and submissive little soul. This is obvious to any one who wanders into the market of Shanghai. There one can see the status of the various women who replenish their household supplies and the most humble, it seemed to me, was the woman of Japan. She moved about like Priscilla suddenly brought back to life and sent to compete with the modern American woman.
5
In ancient Greece, of course, no woman of refinement went marketing herself. She sent her slaves. But in modern New Zealand not only are there no slaves, but there is no one to do any personal service of that nature. In the old days, in Europe, the market was the general rendezvous where life played its pranks at all levels. The religious festivals also afforded dramatic pageantry, and sometimes the two interplayed with each other. But in our modern times, when the public market is largely supplanted by the great department store, shielded, protected, organized into a minimum of human interest and a maximum of efficiency, the charm of the market is no more. So, too, our festivals have surrendered much of their artistry. This was somewhat revived during the war. New Zealand, because of the still evident atmosphere of pioneer life, the lack of interlocking systems of communication, and its distance from the most advanced places in the world, still affords some of that simple charm of a life one reads about. The streets of the main cities nightly resemble something one has dimly heard of and never hoped to see. The people have laid aside all thought of business or barter. There is in their attitude something of that suppressed amazement that revealed the thoughts of the South-Sea islanders when asked to thrill to an alien band conducted by the Catholic priest. Both the whites and the primitives seemed to recall that once they knew how to celebrate.
Queens Street of Auckland was decorated one day, and booths were erected on which simple products were offered for sale. A parade of two fire-department machines, a number of men in Chinese costumes, others painted and foolscapped, boys with enormous masks, and girls in dominoes, marched through the city, and in their wake was a rush of just plain pedestrians. Other than that nothing happened. From five to ten thousand people jammed the street. The crowd was essentially like every other crowd in the world,—the same in gregariousness, the same in hunting after pleasure that abideth but a moment.
One evening the events were more thrilling. Sulky races, men driven by girls, and May-pole dances round the street lamps that stand between the tram-lines gave a suggestion of antiquity to the city. The only difference between these performances and those in the upper regions of the tropics was in the absence of palms and green arbors. In place of wide spaces were narrow streets, lined with brick buildings and studded with iron poles whose only blossoms were glowing electric lights, and whose only branches were pairs of stiff arms holding the trolley wires.
So, too, the market side of this carnival was a sharp contrast to the fairs and markets in more modernized communities. Britons are essentially traders, but they trade by rule. Even when they play trading, as at this carnival, they are more constrained. What little was done to allay the sober spirit was revived by the element of barter. The gambling spirit, checked in normal times, was stimulated. Raffles, wheels, and rings were employed to extract coins from the under-zealous. The only abandon was in the confetti, which was scattered generously about in the throngs.
In the booths conservation was the key-note. Everything, from motor-cars to potatoes, was auctioned and raffled. A man from Coney Island, accustomed to that hysterical release of emotion, would have felt that he was attending not a carnival, but an open market in which only the basic necessities of life were in demand.