A Voyage round the World / A book for boys

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Our friend having procured Japanese clothes for us, as he had done at Loo-Choo, told us that he might venture to take us on shore and show us something of the mode of life among his countrymen. I have no doubt that Chin Chi considered it far superior to that of the English, as far as he was able to judge of them. The Japanese gentlemen were, generally, finer men than those of Loo-Choo. Their dress also was different. One of the chief people in the place, if he was not the governor, wore a gaily-coloured robe of rich silk, with the back, sleeves, and breast, covered with armorial bearings. He wore a very short pair of trousers, with black socks and straw slippers. His hat, something like a reversed bowl, shone with lacquer and ornaments of gold. I must say, however, that Europeans have no right to quiz the head covering of any nation in the world, as ours far surpass all others in ugliness, and in the want of adaptation of means to an end.

Our friend could not take us publicly into the town, so he had us conveyed to his country-house in kagos, such as were used at Loo-Choo. On every side, as we passed along, the people were busily employed; some were lading their packhorses with bags of meal, others with heavy mallets were pounding grain into flour, while others were hoeing in the rice grounds up to their knees in water. There was no sign of poverty, and even the lowest people were well and comfortably clad in coarse garments, shorter than those of the more wealthy classes. All wear the hair drawn up and fastened at the top in a knot. In rainy weather they wear cloaks made of straw, so that a person looks like a thatched roof. The same sort of garments, I hear, are used by the Portuguese peasantry. The upper classes cover their robes with a waterproof cloak of oiled-paper. All, like the Chinese, use the umbrella as a guard from the sun and rain.

The streets are thoroughly drained, for not only are there surface gutters, but deep drains which carry all the filth into the sea. Here, again, they are in advance of many civilised people. Some of the best houses are built of stone, but they are usually constructed of a framework of bamboo and laths, which is covered with plaster painted black and white in diagonal lines. The roofs are composed of black and white tiles; the eaves extending low down to protect the interior from the sun, and the oiled-paper windows from the rain. They are, generally, of but one story. Some of the residences stand back from the street with a court-yard before them, and have gardens behind. The fronts of the shops have movable shutters, and behind these are sliding panels of oiled-paper or lattices of bamboo, to secure privacy when required. In the interior of the houses is a framework raised two feet from the ground, divided by sliding panels into several compartments, and spread with stuffed mats; it is the guest, dining, and sleeping-room of private houses, and the usual workshop of handicraftsmen—a house within a house. When a nobleman

travelling stops at a lodging-house, his banner is conspicuously displayed outside, while the names of inferior guests are fastened to the door-posts. The doctor made a capital sketch of a scene we saw when looking into the interior of a Japanese house—a servant apparently feeding two children.

A Japanese has only one wife, consequently women stand far higher in the social scale than among other Eastern people. They have evening parties, when tea is handed round; and the guests amuse themselves with music and cards. Japanese ladies have an ugly custom of dyeing their teeth black, by a process which at the same time destroys the gums. The more wealthy people have suburban villas, the gardens of which are surrounded by a wall, and laid out in the Chinese style, with fish-ponds, containing gold and silver fish, bridges, pagoda-shaped summer-houses and chapels, beds of gay-coloured flowers, and dwarf fruit-trees.

A large portion of the people profess the Buddhist religion. We visited a large temple at Hakodadi, full sixty feet high. The tiled roof is supported on an arrangement of girders, posts, and tie-beams, resting upon large lacquered pillars. The ornaments in the interior, consisting of dragons, phoenixes, cranes, tortoises, all connected with the worship of Buddha, are elaborately carved and richly gilt. There are three shrines, each containing an image, and the raised floor is thickly covered with mats. We were shown a curious praying machine covered with inscriptions. At about the height easily reached by a person was a wheel with three spokes, and on each spoke a ring: turning the wheel once round is considered equivalent to saying a prayer, and the jingle of the ring is supposed to call the attention of the divinity to the presence of the person paying his devotions. The Sintoo worship is practised also among the Japanese, but its temples are less resorted to than those of Buddha.

We saw a number of junks building. In shape they were like the Chinese, but none were more than a hundred tons burden. Canvas instead of bamboo is used for sails.

The Japanese are decidedly a literary people. All classes can read and write; and works of light reading appear from their presses almost with the same rapidity that they do with us. They print from wooden blocks, and have wooden type. They have also long been accustomed to print in colours. The paper they employ is manufactured from the bark of the mulberry, but is so thin that only one side can be used. They have sorts of games, some like our chess, and cards, and lotto, and we saw the lads in the streets playing ball very much as boys do in an English country village.

As we did not go to the capital, I cannot describe it. We understood that there are two emperors of Japan—one acts as the civil governor, and the other as the head of all ecclesiastical affairs, a sort of pope or patriarch. The laws are very strict, especially with regard to all communication with foreigners. If a person of rank transgresses them and he is discovered, notice is sent to him, and he instantly cuts himself open with his sword, and thus prevents the confiscation of his property. The people exhibit an extraordinary mixture of civilisation and barbarism; the latter being the result of their gross superstitious faith, and their seclusion from the rest of the world; the former shows how acute and ingenious must be their minds to triumph over such difficulties.