OLD COURT COSTUME

Jinrikisha Days in Japan

BY
ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE

“Waga kuni no Yamato shima ne ni idzuru hi wa;

Morokoshi hito mo, awoga zarameya.”

“In the ancient Yamato island, my native land, the sun rises;

Must not even the Western foreigner reverence?”

Ancient Japanese Poem.

“I cannot cease from praising these Japanese. They are truly the delight of my heart.”

St. Francis Xavier.

REVISED EDITION

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902

Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers.

All rights reserved.

PREFACE

This book has only attempted to present some of the phases of the new Japan as they appeared to one who was both a tourist and a foreign resident in that country. No one person can see it all, nor comprehend it, as the jinrikisha speeds through city streets and over country roads, nor do any two people enjoy just the same experiences, see things in the same light, or draw the same conclusions as to this remarkable people. Japan is so inexhaustible and so full of surprises that to the last day of his stay the tourist and the resident alike are confronted by some novelty that is yet wholly common and usual in the life of the Japanese.

The scientists, scholars, and specialists, the poetic and the political writers, who have written so fully of Japan, have omitted many little things which leave the pleasantest impressions on lighter minds. Each decade presents a new Japan, as the wonderful empire approaches nearer to modern and European standards in living, and, in becoming one of the eight great civilized world-powers, Japan has put aside much of its mediæval and Oriental picturesqueness.

Bewildered by its novelty and strangeness, too many tourists come and go with little knowledge of the Japan of the Japanese, and, beholding only the modernized seaports and the capital, miss many unique and distinctly national sights and experiences that lie close at hand. The book will have attained its object if it helps the tourist to see better the Japan that is unchanging, and if it gives the stay-at-home reader a greater interest in those fascinating people and their lovely home.

Unfortunately, it is impossible, in acknowledging the kindness of the many Japanese friends and acquaintances, who secured me so much enjoyment and so many delightful experiences, to begin to give the long list of their names. Each foreign visitor must equally feel himself indebted to the whole race for being Japanese, and, therefore, the most interesting population in the world, and his obligation is to the whole people as much as to particular individuals.

Since the first edition of this book was published, the treaties have been revised, extra-territoriality and the passport system have been abolished, and a protective tariff adopted; the railway has been extended to Nikko, to Nara, from end to end, and twice across, the main island; foreign hotels have multiplied in seaports and mountain resorts; the guide-book has been modernized, made more companionable and interesting, and a vast literature has been added to the subject—Japan. The fall in the price of silver, the adoption of the gold standard, and the increasing army of tourists have more than doubled the cost of living and of all the products of art industry. Japan has twice sent victorious military expeditions to the mainland, and in the relief of the legations and the occupation of Peking has proved her soldiers first in valor, discipline, equipment, and in humanity to the conquered, and there was abundantly displayed that high passion of patriotism which the Japanese possess in greater degree than any other people.

Japan, six times revisited, is as full of charm and novelty as when I first went ashore from the wreck of the Tokio.

E. R. S.

Washington, D. C., March, 1890.

” ” March, 1902.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

JINRIKISHA DAYS IN JAPAN

CHAPTER I
THE NORTH PACIFIC AND YOKOHAMA

All the Orient is a surprise to the Occidental. Everything is strange, with a certain unreality that makes one doubt half his sensations. To appreciate Japan one should come to it from the mainland of Asia. From Suez to Nagasaki the Asiatic sits dumb and contented in his dirt, rags, ignorance, and wretchedness. After the muddy rivers, dreary flats, and brown hills of China, after the desolate shores of Korea, with their unlovely and unwashed peoples, Japan is a dream of Paradise, beautiful from the first green island off the coast to the last picturesque hill-top. The houses seem toys, their inhabitants dolls, whose manner of life is clean, pretty, artistic, and distinctive.

There is a greater difference between the people of these idyllic islands and of the two countries to westward, than between the physical characteristics of the three kingdoms; and one recognizes the Japanese as the fine flower of the Orient, the most polite, refined, and æsthetic of races, happy, light-hearted, friendly, and attractive.

The bold and irregular coast is rich in color, the perennial green of the hill-side is deep and soft, and the perfect cone of Fujiyama against the sky completes the landscape, grown so familiar on fan, lantern, box, and plate. Every-day life looks too theatrical, too full of artistic and decorative effects, to be actual and serious, and streets and shops seem set with deliberately studied scenes and carefully posed groups. Half consciously the spectator waits for the bell to ring and the curtain to drop.

The voyage across the North Pacific is lonely and monotonous. Between San Francisco and Yokohama hardly a passing sail is seen. When the Pacific Mail Steamship Company established the China line their steamers sailed on prescribed routes, and outward and homeward-bound ships met regularly in mid-ocean. Now, when not obliged to touch at Honolulu, the captains choose their route for each voyage, either sailing straight across from San Francisco, in 37° 47′, to Yokohama, in 35° 26′ N., or, following one of the great circles farther north, thus lessen time and distance. On these northern meridians the weather is often cold, threatening, or stormy, and the sea rough; but the steadiness of the winds favors this course, and persuades the ship’s officers to shorten the long course and more certainly reach Japan on schedule time. Dwellers in hot climates dislike the sudden transition to cooler waters, and some voyagers enjoy it. Fortunately, icebergs cannot float down the shallow reaches of Bering Strait, but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian Islands.

Canadian Pacific steamers, starting on the 49th parallel, often pass near the shores of Attu, the last little fragment of earth swinging at the end of the great Aleutian chain. The shelter which those capable navigators, Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, had the luck to find in their memorable journey, mariners declare to be Midway Island, a circular dot of land in the great waste, with a long, narrow, outlying sand-bar, where schooners have been wrecked, and castaways rescued after months of imprisonment. The steamer’s course from San Francisco to Yokohama varies from 4500 to 5500 miles, and the journey takes from twelve to eighteen days. From Vancouver to Yokohama it is but eleven days.

When the ship’s course turns perceptibly southward the mild weather of the Japan Stream is felt. In winter the first sign of land is a distant silver dot on the horizon, which in summer turns to blue or violet, and gradually enlarges into the tapering cone of Fuji, sloping upward in faultless lines from the water’s edge. One may approach land many times and never see Fuji, and during my first six months in Japan the matchless mountain refused to show herself from any point of view. Cape King, terminating the long peninsula that shelters Yeddo Bay, shows first a line of purple cliffs, and then a front of terraced hills, green with rice and wheat, or golden with grain or stubble. Fleets of square-sailed fishing-boats drift by, their crews, in the loose, flapping gowns and universal blue cotton head-towels of the Japanese coolies, easily working the broad oar at the stern. At night Cape King’s welcome beacon is succeeded by Kanonsaki’s lantern across the Bay, Sagami’s bright light, then the myriad flashes of the Yokosuka navy-yard, and last the red ball of the light-ship, marking the edge of the shoal a mile outside the Bund, or sea-wall, of Yokohama. When this craft runs up its signal-flag a United States man-of-war, if there be one in port, fires two guns, as a signal that the American mail has arrived.

Daylight reveals a succession of terraced hills, cleft by narrow green valleys and narrower ravines; little villages, their clusters of thatched roofs shaded by pine, palm, or bamboo; fishing-boats always in the foreground, and sometimes Fuji clear-cut against the sky, its base lost now and then behind the overlapping hills. In summer Fuji’s purple cone shows only ribbon stripes of white near its apex. For the rest of the year it is a silvery, shining vision, rivalled only by Mount Rainier, which, pale with eternal snows, rises from the dense forests of Puget Sound to glass itself in those green waters.

Yokohama disappoints the traveller, after the splendid panorama of the Bay. The Bund, or sea-road, with its club-houses, hotels, and residences fronting the water, is not Oriental enough to be very picturesque. It is too European to be Japanese, and too Japanese to be European. The water front, which suffers by comparison with the massive stone buildings of Chinese ports, is, however, a creditable contrast to our untidy American docks and quays, notwithstanding the low-tiled roofs, blank fences, and hedges. The water life is vivid and spectacular. The fleet of black merchant steamers and white men-of-war, the ugly pink and red canal-steamers, and the crowding brigs and barks, are far outnumbered by the fleet of sampans that instantly surround the arriving mail. Steam-launches, serving as mail-wagon and hotel omnibus, snort, puff, and whistle at the gang-ways before the buoy is reached; and voluble boatmen keep up a steady bzz, bzz, whizz, whizz, to the strokes of their crooked, wobbling oars as they scull in and out. Four or five thousand people live on the shipping in the harbor, and in ferrying this population to and fro and purveying to it the boatmen make their livelihood. Strict police regulations keep them safe and peaceable, and the harbor impositions of other countries are unknown. On many of these sampans the whole family abides, the women cooking over a handful of charcoal in a small box or bowl, the children playing in corners not occupied by passengers or freight. On gala days, when the shipping is decorated, the harbor is a beautiful sight; or when the salutes of the foreign fleets assembled at Yokohama are returned by the guns of the fort on Kanagawa Heights, and the air tingles with excitement. Since the annexation of the Philippines the American Asiatic fleet has been fully occupied in that archipelago, and the vessels seldom visit Yokohama, or remain for any time. The acquisition of Wei-hai-Wei gave the British fleet a northern station, and that, with the perpetual break-up and crisis in China, keeps those ships and the fleets of all nations closely to that coast. Nagasaki’s coal-mines make it the great port of naval call and supply in Japan.

FUJIYAMA

A mole and protected harbor with stone docks has been built with the money finally returned to Japan by the United States, after being shamefully withheld for a quarter of a century, as our share of the Shimonoseki Indemnity Fund. The outer harbor lies so open to the prevailing south-east winds that loading and unloading is often delayed for days, and landing by launches or sampans is a wet process. The Bay is so shallow that a stiff wind quickly sends its waves breaking over the sea-wall, to subside again in a few hours into a mirror-like calm. The harbor has had its great typhoons, but does not lie in the centre of those dreaded circular storms that whirl up from the China seas. Deflected to eastward, the typhoon sends its syphoon, or wet end, to fill the air with vapor and drizzle, and a smothering, mildewy, exhausting atmosphere. A film of mist covers everything, wall-paper loosens, glued things fall apart, and humanity wilts.

Yokohama has its divisions—the Settlement, the Bluff, and Japanese Town—each of which is a considerable place by itself. The Settlement, or region originally set apart by the Japanese in 1858 for foreign merchants, was made by filling in a swampy valley opening to the Bay. This Settlement, at first separated from the Tokaido and the Japanese town of Kanagawa, has become the centre of a surrounding Japanese population of over eighty thousand. It is built up continuously to Kanagawa Bridge, two miles farther north, on the edge of a bold bluff, where the Tokaido—the East Sea Road—leading up from Kioto, reaches the Bay. In diplomatic papers Kanagawa is still recognized as the name of the great port on Yeddo Bay, although the consulates, banks, hotels, clubs, and business streets are miles away.

At the hatoba, or landing-place, the traveller is confronted by the jinrikisha, that big, two-wheeled baby-carriage of the country, which, invented by an American, has been adopted all over the East. The jinrikisha (or kuruma, as the linguist and the upper class more politely call it) ranges in price from seventeen to forty dollars, twenty being the average cost of those on the public stands. Some thrifty coolies own their vehicles, but the greater number either rent them from, or work for, companies, and each jinrikisha pays a small annual tax to the Government. An unwritten rule of the road compels these carriages to follow one another in regulated single file. The oldest or most honored person rides at the head of the line, and only a boor would attempt to change the order of arrangement. Spinning down the Bund, at a tariff so moderate that the American can ride for a week for what he must pay in a day at home, one finds the jinrikisha to be a comfortable, flying arm-chair—a little private, portable throne. The coolie wears a loose coat and waistcoat, and tights of dark-blue cotton, with straw sandals on his bare feet, and an inverted wash-bowl of straw covered with cotton on his head. When it rains he is converted into a prickly porcupine by his straw rain-coat, or he dons a queer apron and cloak of oiled paper, and, pulling up the hood of the little carriage, ties a second apron of oiled paper across the knees of his fare. At night the shafts are ornamented with a paper lantern bearing his name and his license number; and these glowworm lights, flitting through the streets and country roads in the darkness, seem only another expression of the Japanese love of the picturesque. In the country, after dark, they call warnings of ruts, holes, breaks in the road, or coming crossways; and their cries, running from one to another down the line, are not unmusical. To this smiling, polite, and amiable little pony one says Hayaku! for “hurry,” Abunayo! for “take care,” Sukoshimate! for “stop a little,” and Soro! for “slowly.” The last command is often needed when the coolie, leaning back at an acute angle to the shaft, dashes downhill at a rapid gait. Jinrikisha coolies are said even to have asked extra pay for walking slowly through the fascinating streets of open shops. If you experiment with the jinrikisha on a level road, you find that it is only the first pull that is hard; once started, the little carriage seems to run by itself. The gait of the man in the shafts, and his height, determine the comfort of the ride. A tall coolie holds the shafts too high, and tilts one at an uncomfortable angle; a very short man makes the best runner, and, with big toe curling upward, will trot along as regularly as a horse. As one looks down upon the bobbing creature below a hat and two feet seem to constitute the whole motor.

The waraji, or sandals, worn by these coolies are woven of rice straw, and cost less than five cents a pair. In the good old days they were much cheaper. Every village and farm-house make them, and every shop sells them. In their manufacture the big toe is a great assistance, as this highly trained member catches and holds the strings while the hands weave. On country roads wrecks of old waraji lie scattered where the wearer stepped out of them and ran on, while ruts and mud-holes are filled with them. For long tramps the foreigner finds the waraji and the tabi, or digitated stocking, much better than his own clumsy boots, and he ties them on as overshoes when he has rocky paths to climb. Coolies often dispense with waraji and wear heavy tabi, with a strip of the almost indestructible hechima fibre for the soles. The hechima is the gourd which furnishes the vegetable washrag, or looffa sponge of commerce. The snow-white cotton tabis of the better classes are made an important part of their costume.

Those coolies who pull and push heavily loaded carts or drays keep up a hoarse chant, which corresponds to the chorus of sailors when hauling ropes. “Hilda! Hoida!” they seem to be crying, as they brace their feet for a hard pull, and the very sound of it exhausts the listener. In the old days people were nearly deafened with these street choruses, but their use is another of the hereditary customs that is fast dying out. In mountain districts one’s chair-bearers wheeze out “Hi rikisha! Ho rikisha!” or “Ito sha! Ito sha!” as they climb the steepest paths, and they cannot keep step nor work vigorously without their chant.

CHAPTER II
YOKOHAMA

The Settlement is bounded by the creek, from whose opposite side many steep hill-roads wind up to the Bluff, where most of the foreigners have their houses. These bluff-roads pass between the hedges surrounding trim villas with their beautifully set gardens, the irregular numbering of whose gates soon catches the stranger’s eye. The first one built being number one, the others were numbered in the order of their erection, so that high and low numerals are often side by side. To coolies, servants, peddlers, and purveyors, foreign residents are best known by their street-door numeration, and “Number four Gentleman” and “Number five Lady” are recurrent and adequate descriptions. So well used are the subjects of it to this convict system of identification that they recognize their friends by their alias as readily as the natives do.

Upon the Bluff stand a public hall, United States and British marine hospitals, a French and a German hospital, several missionary establishments, and the houses of the large American missionary community. At the extreme west end a colony of Japanese florists has planted toy-gardens filled with vegetable miracles; burlesques and fantasies of horticulture; dwarf-trees, a hundred years old, that could be put in the pocket; huge single flowers, and marvellous masses of smaller blossoms; cherry-trees that bear no cherries; plum-trees that bloom in midwinter, but have neither leaves nor fruit; and roses—that favorite flower which the foreigner brought with him—flowering in Californian profusion. A large business is done in the exportation of Japanese plants and bulbs, encased in a thick coating of mud, which makes an air-tight case to protect them during the sea-voyage. Ingenious fern pieces are preserved in the same way. These grotesque things are produced by wrapping in moist earth the long, woody roots of a fine-leafed variety of fern. They are made to imitate dragons, junks, temples, boats, lanterns, pagodas, bells, balls, circles, and every familiar object. When bought they look dead. If hung for a few days in the warm sun, and occasionally dipped in water, they change into feathery, green objects that grow more and more beautiful, and are far more artistic than our one conventional hanging-basket. The dwarf-trees do not stand transportation well, as they either die or begin to grow rapidly.

The Japanese are the foremost landscape gardeners in the world, as we Occidentals, who are still in that barbaric period where carpet gardening seems beautiful and desirable, shall in time discover. Their genius has equal play in an area of a yard or a thousand feet, and a Japanese gardener will doubtless come to be considered as necessary a part of a great American establishment as a French maid or an English coachman. From generations of nature-loving and flower-worshipping ancestors these gentle followers of Adam’s profession have inherited an intimacy with growing things, and a power over them that we cannot even understand. Their very farming is artistic gardening, and their gardening half necromancy.

On high ground, beyond the Bluff proper, stretches the race-course, where spring and fall there are running races by short-legged, shock-headed ponies, brought from the Hokkaido, the northern island, or from China. Gentlemen jockeys frequently ride their own horses in flat races, hurdle-races, or steeple-chases. The banks close, a general holiday reigns throughout the town, and often the Emperor comes down from Tokio. This race-course affords one of the best views of Fuji, and from it curves the road made in early days for the sole use of foreigners to keep them off the Tokaido, where they had more than once come in conflict with trains of travelling nobles. This road leads down to the water’s edge, and, following the shore of Mississippi Bay, where Commodore Perry’s ships anchored in 1858, strikes across a rice valley and climbs to the Bluff again.

The farm-houses it passes are so picturesque that one cannot believe them to have a utilitarian purpose. They seem more like stage pictures about to be rolled away than like actual dwellings. The new thatches are brightly yellow, and the old thatches are toned and mellowed, set with weeds, and dotted with little gray-green bunches of “hen and chickens,” while along the ridge-poles is a bed of growing lilies. There is an old wife’s tale to the effect that the women’s face-powder was formerly made of lily-root, and that a ruler who wished to stamp out such vanities, decreed that the plant should not be grown on the face of the earth, whereupon the people promptly dug it up from their gardens and planted it in boxes on the roof.

The Japanese section of Yokohama is naturally less Japanese than places more remote from foreign influence, but the stranger discovers much that is odd, unique, and Oriental. That delight of the shopper, Honchodori, with its fine curio and silk shops, was once without a shop-window, the entire front of the cheaper shops being open to the streets, and only the old lacquer and bronzes, ivory, porcelains, enamels, silver, and silks concealed by high wooden screens and walls. Now glass windows flaunt all that the shops can offer. The silk shops are filled with goods distracting to the foreign buyer, among which are the wadded silk wrappers, made and sold by the hundreds, which, being the contrivance of some ingenious missionary, were long known as missionary coats.

Benten Dori, the bargain-hunter’s Paradise, is a delightful quarter of a mile of open-fronted shops. In the silk shops, crapes woven in every variety of cockle and wrinkle and rippling surface, as thin as gauze, or as thick and heavy as brocade, painted in endless, exquisite designs, are brought you by the basketful. Each length is rolled on a stick, and finally wrapped in a bit of the coarse yellow cotton cloth that envelopes every choice thing in Japan, though for what reason, no native or foreigner, dealer or connoisseur can tell.

Nozawaya has a godown or fire-proof storehouse full of cotton crapes, those charmingly artistic fabrics that the Western world has just begun to appreciate. The pock-marked and agile proprietor will keep his small boys running for half an hour to bring in basketfuls of cotton crape rolls, each roll measuring a little over eleven-yards, which will make one straight, narrow kimono with a pair of big sleeves. These goods are woven in the usual thirteen-inch Japanese width, although occasionally made wider for the foreign market. A Japanese kimono is a simple thing, and one may put on the finished garment an hour after choosing the cloth to make it. The cut never varies, and it is still sewn with basters’ stitches, although the use of foreign flat-irons obviates the necessity of ripping the kimono apart to wash and iron it. The Japanese flat-iron is a copper bowl filled with burning charcoal, which, with its long handle, is really a small warming-pan. Besides this contrivance, there is a flat arrow point of iron with a shorter handle, which does smaller and quite as ineffectual service.

To an American, nothing is simpler than Japanese money. The yen corresponds to our dollar, and is made up of one hundred sen, while ten rin make one sen. The yen is about equal in value to the Mexican dollar, and is roughly reckoned at fifty cents gold United States money. One says dollars or yens indiscriminately, always meaning the Mexican, which is the current coin of the East. The old copper coins, the rin and the oval tempo, each with a hole in the middle, are disappearing from circulation, and at the Osaka mint they are melted and made into round sens. Old gold and silver coins may be bought in the curio shops. If they have not little oblong silver bu, or a long oval gold ko ban, the silversmith will offer to make some, which will answer every purpose!

When you ask for your bill, a merchant takes up his frame of sliding buttons—the soroban, or abacus—and plays a clattering measure before he can tell its amount. The soroban is infallible, though slow, and in the head of the educated Japanese, crowded with thousands of arbitrary characters and words, there is no room for mental arithmetic. You buy two toys at ten cents apiece. Clatter, clatter goes the soroban, and the calculator asks you for twenty cents. Depending entirely on the soroban, they seem unable to reckon the smallest sums without it, and any peddler who forgets to bring his frame may be puzzled. The dealer in old embroideries will twist and work his face, scratch his head, and move his fingers in the air upon an imaginary soroban over the simplest addition, division, and subtraction. At the bank, the shroff has a soroban a yard long; and merchants say that in book-keeping the soroban is invaluable, as by its use whole columns of figures can be added and proved in less time than by our mental methods.

By an iron bridge, the broad street at the top of Benten Dori crosses one of the many canals extending from the creek in every direction, and forming a net-work of water passages from Mississippi Bay to Kanagawa. Beyond the bridge is Isezakicho, a half mile of theatres, side-shows, merry-go-rounds, catch-penny games, candy shops, restaurants, second-hand clothes bazaars, labyrinths of curio, toy, china, and wooden-ware shops. Hundreds of perambulating restaurateurs trundle their little kitchens along, or swing them on a pole over their shoulders. Dealers in ice-cream, so called, abound, who will shave you a glass of ice, sprinkle it with sugar, and furnish a minute teaspoon with which to eat it. There are men who sell soba, a native vermicelli, eaten with pungent soy; and men who, for a penny, heat a big gridiron, and give a small boy a cup of batter and a cup of soy, with which he may cook and eat his own griddle cakes. There the people, the middle and lower classes, present themselves for study and admiration, and the spectator never wearies of the outside dramas and panoramas to be seen in this merry fair.

Pretty as she is on a pictured fan, the living Japanese woman is far more satisfying to the æsthetic soul as she patters along on her wooden clogs or straw sandals. The very poorest, in her single cheap cotton gown, or kimono, is as picturesque as her richer sister in silk and crape. With heads elaborately dressed, and folds of gay crape, or a glittering hair-pin thrust in the smooth loops of blue-black hair, they seem always in gala array; and, rain or shine, never protect those elaborate coiffures with anything less ornamental than a paper umbrella, except in winter, when the zukin, a yard of dark crape lined with a contrasting color, is thrown over the head, concealing the whole face save the eyes. A single hair-pin of tortoise-shell, sometimes tipped with coral or gold, is all that respectable women of any class wear at one time. The heavily hair-pinned women on cheap fans are not members of good society, and only children and dancing-girls are seen in the fantastic flowers and trifles sold at a hundred shops and booths in this and every street.

The little children are the most characteristically Japanese of all Japanese sights. Babies are carried about tied to the mothers’ back, or to that of their small sisters. They sleep with their heads rolling helplessly round, watch all that goes on with their black beads of eyes, and never cry. Their shaven crowns and gay little kimonos, their wise, serene countenances, make them look like cabinet curios. As soon as she can walk, the Japanese girl has her doll tied on her back, until she learns to carry it steadily and carefully; after that the baby brother or sister succeeds the doll, and flocks of these comical little people, with lesser people on their backs, wander late at night in the streets with their parents, and their funny double set of eyes shine in every audience along Isezakicho.

JAPANESE CHILDREN

These out-of-door attractions are constantly changing. Native inventions and adaptations of foreign ideas continually appear. “Pigs in clover” and pot-hook puzzles followed only a few weeks behind their New York season, and street fakirs offer perpetual novelties. Of jugglers the line is endless, their performances filling interludes at theatres, coming between the courses of great dinners, and supplying entertainment to any garden party or flower fête in the homes of rich hosts. More cunning than these gorgeously clad jugglers is an old man, who roams the vicinity of Yokohama, wearing poor cotton garments, and carrying two baskets of properties by a pole across his shoulders. On a street corner, a lawn, a piazza, or a ship’s deck, he sets up his baskets for a table, and performs amazing feats with the audience entirely encircling him. A hatful of coppers sufficiently rewards him, and he swallows fire, spits out eggs, needles, lanterns, and yards of paper-ribbon, which he twirls into a bowl, converts into actual soba, and eats, and by a magic sentence changes the remaining vermicelli into the lance-like leaves of the iris plant. This magician has a shrewd, foxy old face, whose grimaces, as well as his pantomime, his capers, and poses, are tricks in themselves. His chuckling, rippling stream of talk keeps his Japanese auditors convulsed. Sword walkers and knife swallowers are plenty as blackberries, and the phonograph is conspicuous in Isezakicho’s tents and booths. The sceptic and investigator wastes his time in the effort to penetrate the Japanese jugglers’ mysteries. Once, at a dinner given by Governor Tateno at Osaka, the foreign guest of honor determined to be cheated by no optical delusions. He hardly winked, so close was his scrutiny, and the juggler played directly to him. An immense porcelain vase having been brought in and set in the middle of the room, the juggler, crawling up, let himself down into it slowly. For half an hour the sceptic did not raise his eyes from the vase, that he had first proved to be sound and empty, and to stand on no trap-door. After this prolonged watch the rest of the company assailed him with laughter and jeers, and pointed to his side, where the old juggler had been seated for some minutes fanning himself.

CHAPTER III
YOKOHAMA—CONTINUED

In the Settlement, back of the main street, the Chinese have an ill-smelling corner to themselves. Their greasy walls and dirty floors affront the dainty doll dwellings across the creek, and the airy little box of a tea-house, whose lanterns swing at the top of the perpendicular bluff behind them. Vermilion paper, baggy clothes, pigtails, harsh voices, and vile odors reign in this Chinatown. The names on the signs are curiosities in themselves, and Cock Eye, tailor, Ah Nie and Wong Fai, ladies’ tailors, are the Poole, Worth, and Felix of the foreign community. Only one Japanese has a great reputation as dress-maker, but the whole guild is moderately successful, and prices are so low that the British and French houses of Yokohama cannot compete with them.

There is a large joss-house near the Chinese consulate, and at their midsummer, autumn, and New-year’s festivals the Celestials hold a carnival of lanterns, fire-crackers, incense, paper-flowers, varnished pigs, and cakes. The Japanese do not love these canny neighbors, and half the strictures of the passport laws are designed to limit their hold on the business of the country. The Chinese are the stronger and more aggressive people, the hard-headed financiers of the East, handling all the money that circulates this side of India. In every bank Chinese shroffs, or experts, test the coins and make the actual payments over the counters. The money-changers are Chinese, and every business house has its Chinese compradore or superintendent, through whom all contracts and payments are made. The Chinaman has the methodical, systematic brain, and no convulsion of nature or commerce makes him lose his head, as the charmingly erratic, artistic, and polite Japanese does. In many foreign households in Japan a Chinese butler, or head boy, rules the establishment; but while his silent, unvarying, clock-like service leaves nothing undone, the attendance of the bright-faced, amiable, and exuberant little natives with their smiles, their matchless courtesy, and their graceful and everlasting bowing is far more agreeable.

Homura temple, whose stone embankments and soaring roof rise just across the creek, is generally the first Buddhist sanctuary seen by the tourist coming from American shores. Every month it has its matsuri, or festival, but sparrows are always twittering in the eaves, children playing about the steps, and devout ones tossing their coppers in on the mats, clapping their hands and pressing their palms together while they pray. One of the most impressive scenes ever witnessed there was the funeral of its high-priest, when more than a hundred bonzes, or priests, came from neighboring temples to assist in the long ceremonies, and sat rigid in their precious brocade vestments, chanting the ritual and the sacred verse. The son, who succeeded to the father’s office by inheritance, had prepared for the rites by days of fasting, and, pale, hollow-eyed, but ecstatic, burned incense, chanted, and in the white robes of a mourner bore the mortuary tablets from the temple to the tomb. Homura’s commercial hum was silenced when the train of priests in glittering robes, shaded by enormous red umbrellas, wound down the long terrace steps and out between the rows of tiny shops to the distant graveyard. Yet after it the crowd closed in, barter and sale went on, jinrikishas whirled up and down, and pattering women and toddling children fell into their places in the tableaux which turn Homura’s chief street into one endless panorama of Japanese lower-class life.

Half-way up one of the steep roads, climbing from Homura to the Bluff, is the famous silk store of Tenabe Gengoro, with its dependent tea-house of Segiyama, best known of all tea-houses in Japan, and rendezvous for the wardroom officers of the fleets of all nations, since Tenabe’s uncle gave official welcome to Commodore Perry. When a war-ship is in port, the airy little lantern-hung houses continuously send out the music of the koto and the samisen, the banjo, bones, and zither, choruses of song and laughter, and the measured hand-clapping that proclaims good cheer in Japan. Tenabe herself has now lost the perfect bloom and beauty of her younger days, but with her low, silver-sweet voice and fascinating manner, she remains the most charming woman in all Japan. In these days Tenabe presides over the silk store only, leaving her sisters to manage the fortunes of the tea-house. Tenabe speaks English, French, and Russian; never forgets a face, a name, or an incident; and if you enter, after an absence of many years, she will surely recognize you, serve you sweets and thimble-cups of pale yellow tea, and say dozo, dozo, “please, please,” with grace incomparable and in accents unapproachable.

Both living and travelling are delightfully easy in Japan, and no hardships are encountered in the ports or on the great routes of travel. Yokohama has excellent hotels; the home of the foreign resident may be Queen Anne, or Colonial, if he like, and the markets abound in meats, fish, game, fruits, and vegetables at very low prices. Imported supplies are dear because of the cost of transportation. Besides the fruits of our climates, there are the biwa, or loquat, and the delicious kaké, or Japanese persimmon. Natural ice is brought from Hakodate; artificial ice is made in all the ports, the Japanese being as fond of iced drinks as Americans. Three daily English newspapers, weekly mails to London and New York, three great cable routes, electric lights, breweries, gas, and water-works add utilitarian comfort to ideal picturesqueness. The summers are hot, but instead of our eccentric variations of temperature, the mercury stands at 80°, 85°, and 90° from July to September. With the fresh monsoon blowing steadily, that heat is endurable, however, and the nights are comfortable. June and September are the two nyubai, or rainy seasons, when everything is damp, clammy, sticky, and miserable. In May, heavy clothing is put away in sealed receptacles, even gloves being placed in air-tight glass or tin, to preserve them from the ruinous mildew. While earthquakes are frequent, Japan enjoys the same immunity from thunder-storms as our Pacific Coast.

There is no servant problem, and house-keeping is a delight. Both Chinese and Japanese, though unfamiliar with western ways, can be trained to surpass the best European domestics. Service so swift, noiseless, and perfect is elsewhere unknown. Indeed, cooks as well as butlers are adjusted to so grand a scale of living that their employers are served with almost too much formality and elaboration. The art of foreign cookery has been handed down from those exiled chefs who came out with the first envoys, to insure them the one attainable solace of existence before the days of cables and regular steamships. There is a native cuisine of great excellence, and each legation or club chef has pupils, who pay for the privilege of studying under him, while the ordinary kitchener of the treaty ports is a more skilful functionary than the professional cook of American cities. Such cooks do their own marketing, furnish without complaint elaborate menus three times a day, serve a dinner party every night, and out of their monthly pay, ranging from ten to twenty Mexican dollars, supply their own board and lodging. The brotherhood of cooks help each other in emergencies, and if suddenly called upon to feed twice the expected number of guests, any one of them will work miracles. He runs to one fellow-craftsman to borrow an extra fish, to another to beg an entrée, a salad, or a sweet, and helps himself to table ware as well. A bachelor host is often amazed at the fine linen, the array of silver, and the many courses set before him on the shortest notice, and learns afterwards that everything was gathered in from neighboring establishments. Elsewhere he may meet his own monogram or crest at the table. Bachelors keep house and entertain with less trouble and more comfort than anywhere else in the world. To these sybarites, the “boy,” with his rustling kimono, is more than a second self, and the soft-voiced amahs, or maids, are the delight of woman’s existence. The musical language contributes not a little to the charm of these people, and the chattering servants seem often to be speaking Italian.

After the Restoration many samurai, or warriors, were obliged to adopt household service. One of these at my hotel had the face of a Roman senator, with a Roman dignity of manner quite out of keeping with his broom and dust-pan, or livery of dark-blue tights, smooth vest, and short blouse worn by all his class in Yokohama. When a card for an imperial garden party arrived, I asked Tatsu, my imperial Roman, to read it for me. He took it, bowed low, sucked in his breath many times, and, muttering the lines to himself, thus translated them: “Mikado want to see Missy, Tuesday, three o’clock.” When a curio-dealer left a piece of porcelain, Tatsu, always critical of purchases, went about his duties slowly, waiting for the favorable moment to give me, in his broken English, a dissertation on the old wares, their marks and qualities, and his opinion of that particular specimen of blue and white. He knew embroideries, understood pictures, and was a living dictionary of Japanese phrase and fable. A pair of Korean shoes procured me a lecture on the ancient relations between Japan and Korea, and an epitome of their contemporary history.

Social life in these foreign ports presents a delightful fusion of English, continental, and Oriental customs. The infallible Briton, representing the largest foreign contingency, has transferred his household order unchanged from the home island, yielding as little as possible to the exigencies of climate and environment. The etiquette and hours of society are those of England, and most of the American residents are more English in these matters than the English. John Bull takes his beef and beer with him to the tropics or the poles indifferently, and in his presence Jonathan abjures his pie, and outlaws the words “guess,” “cracker,” “trunk,” “baggage,” “car,” and “canned.” His East Indian experiences of a century have taught the Briton the best system of living and care-taking in hot or malarial countries, and he thrives in Japan.

In the small foreign communities at Yokohama, Kobé, and Nagasaki the contents of the mail-bags, social events, and the perfection of physical comfort comprise the interests of most of the residents. The friction of a large community, with its daily excitements and affairs, the delights of western art, music, and the drama, are absent, and society naturally narrows into cliques, sets, rivalries, and small aims. If most residents did not affect indifference to things Japanese, life would be much more interesting. As it is, the old settler listens with an air of superiority, amusement, and fatigue to the enthusiasm of the new-comer. Not every foreign resident is familiar with the art of Japan, nor with its history, religion, or political conditions. If the missionaries, of whom hundreds reside in Yokohama and Tokio, mingled more with the foreign residents, each class would benefit; but the two sets seldom touch, the missionaries keep to themselves, and the lives of the other extra-territorial people continually shock and offend them. Each set holds extreme, unfair, and prejudiced views of the other, and affords the natives arguments against both.

Socially, Tokio and Yokohama are one community, and the eighteen miles of railroad between the two do not hinder the exchange of visits or acceptance of invitations. When the Ministers of State give balls in Tokio, special midnight trains carry the Yokohama guests home, as they do when the clubs or the naval officers entertain at the seaport town. With the coming and going of the fleets of all nations great activity and variety pervades the social life. In the increasing swarm of tourists some prince, duke, or celebrity is ever arriving, visitors of lesser note are countless, and the European dwellers in all Asiatic ports east of Singapore make Japan their pleasure-ground, summer resort, and sanitarium. That order of tourist known as the “globe-trotter,” is not a welcome apparition to the permanent foreign resident. His generous and refined hospitality has been so often abused, and its recipients so often show a half-contemptuous condescension to their remote and uncomprehended hosts, that letters of introduction are looked upon with dread. Now that it has become common for parents to send dissipated young sons around the “Horn” and out to Japan on sailing vessels, that they may reform on the voyage, a new-comer must prove himself an invalid, if he would not be avoided after he confesses having come by brig or bark. Balls, with the music of naval bands, and decorations of bamboo and bunting, are as beautiful as balls can be; picnics and country excursions enliven the whole year; and there are perennial dinners and dances on board the men-of-war.

Those East-Indian contrivances, the chit and the chit-book, furnish a partial check on native servants. The average resident carries little ready money, but writes a memorandum of whatever he buys, and hands it to the seller instead of cash. These chits are presented monthly; but the system tempts people to sign more chits than they can pay. This kind of account-keeping is more general in Chinese ports, where one may well object to receive the leaden-looking Mexicans and ragged and dirty notes of the local banks. When one sends a note to an acquaintance he enters it in his chit-book, where the person addressed adds his initials as a receipt, or even writes his answer. The whole social machinery is regulated by the chit-book, which may be a source of discord when its incautious entries and answers lie open to any Paul Pry.

Summer does not greatly disturb the life of society. Tennis, riding, boating, and bathing are in form, while balls and small dances occur even in July and August. At many places in the mountains and along the coast one may find a cooler air, with good hotels and tea-houses. Some families rent country temples near Yokohama for summer occupation, and enjoy something between the habitual Japanese life and Adirondack camping. The sacred emblems and temple accessories are put in the central shrine room, screens are drawn, and the sanctuary becomes a spacious house, open to the air on all sides, and capable of being divided into as many separate rooms as the family may require. Often the priests set the images and altar-pieces on a high shelf concealed by a curtain, and give up the whole place to the heretical tenants. In one instance the broad altar-shelf became a recessed sideboard, whereon the gilded Buddhas and Kwannons were succeeded by bottles, decanters, and glasses. At another temple it was stipulated that the tenants should give up the room in front of the altar on a certain anniversary day, to allow the worshippers to come and pray.

CHAPTER IV
THE ENVIRONS OF YOKOHAMA

The environs of Yokohama are more interesting and beautiful than those of any other foreign settlement, affording an inexhaustible variety of tramps, rides, drives, railroad excursions, and sampan trips.

At Kanagawa proper the Tokaido comes to the bay’s edge, which it follows for some distance through double rows of houses and splendid old shade-trees. Back of Kanagawa’s bluff lie the old and half-deserted Bukenji temples, crowded on rare fête days with worshippers, merrymakers, and keepers of booths, and at quieter times serving as favorite picnic grounds for foreigners.

On the Tokaido, just beyond Kanagawa, is the grave of Richardson, who was killed by the train of the Prince of Satsuma, September 14, 1862. Although foreigners had been warned to keep off the Tokaido on that day, the foolhardy Briton and his friends deliberately rode into the daimio’s train, an affront for which they were attacked by his retainers and severely wounded, Richardson himself being left for dead on the road-side, while the rest escaped. When the train had passed by, a young girl ran out from one of the houses and covered the body with a piece of matting, moving it in the night to her house, and keeping it concealed until his friends claimed it. A memorial stone, inscribed with Japanese characters, marks the spot where Richardson fell. Since that time the kindly black-eyed Susan’s tea-house has been the favorite resort for foreigners on their afternoon rides and drives. Susan is a tall woman, with round eyes, aquiline nose, and a Roman countenance—quite fit for a heroine. Riders call at her tea-house for tea, rice, and eels, prawns, clams, pea-nuts, sponge-cake, or beer, and insist upon seeing her. This Richardson affair cost the Japanese the bombardment of Kagoshima, and an indemnity of £125,000; but Susan did not share in the division of that sum.

According to one version Susan’s strand is the spot where Taro of Urashima, the Rip Van Winkle of Japan, left his boat and nets, and, mounting a tortoise, rode away to the home of the sea-king, returning by the same tortoise to the same spot. On its sands he opened the box the sea-king had given him, and found himself veiled in a thin smoke, out of which he stepped an old, old man, whose parents had been dead a hundred years. The fishermen listened to his strange tale, and carried him to their daimio, and on fans, boxes, plates, vases, and fukusas Taro sits relating his wonderful tale to this day.

Ten miles inland from Bukenji’s temples is the little village of Kawawa, whose headman has a famous collection of chrysanthemums, the goal of many autumnal pilgrimages. This Kawawa collection has enjoyed its fame for many years, the owner devoting himself to it heart and soul, and knowing no cooling of ardor nor change of fancy. His great thatched house in a court-yard is reached through a black gate-way at the top of a little hill, and the group of buildings within his black walls gives the place quite a feudal air. Facing the front of the house are rows of mat sheds, covering the precious flowers that stand in files as evenly as soldiers, the tops soft masses of great frowsy, curly-petalled, wide-spreading blooms, shading to every tint of lilac, pink, rose, russet, brown, gold, orange, pale yellow, and snow white. It was there that we ate a salad made of yellow chrysanthemum petals, most æsthetic of dishes. The trays of golden leaves in the kitchen of the house indicated that the master enjoyed this ambrosial feast habitually, and perhaps dropped the yellow shreds in his saké cup to prolong his life and avert calamities, as they are warranted to do. Beyond Kawawa lies a rich silk district, and all the region is marked by thrift and comfort, signs of the prosperity that attends silk-raising communities.

AT KAWAWA

From Negishi, where Yokohama’s creek debouches into Mississippi Bay, one looks across to Sugita, a fishing village with an ancient temple set in the midst of plum-trees and cherry-trees that make it a place of fêtes in February and April, when those two great flower festivals of the empire, the blossoming of the plum and the cherry, are observed. From the bluff above Sugita, at the end of the watery crescent, is a superb view of the Bay and its countless sharp, green headlands. Wherever the view is fine some Japanese family has encamped in a tateba, the least little mat shed of a house, furnished with a charcoal brazier, half a dozen teapots and cups, and a few low benches covered with the all-pervading red blanket. Their national passion for landscape and scenery draws the Japanese to places having fine prospects, and a thrifty woman, with her family of children, turns many a penny by means of her comfortable seat and good cheer for the wayfarer. Japan is the picnicker’s own country, whether he be native or foreign. Everywhere, climbing the mountain-tops, or crouching in the valleys, hidden in the innermost folds of the hills, or perched on the narrowest and remotest ledges overhanging the water, one finds the tea-house, or its summer companion, the tateba, with its open sides and simmering kettle. Everywhere hot water, tea, rice, fruits, eggs, cups, plates, glasses, and corkscrews may be had. These things become so much a matter of course after a time, that the tourist must banish himself to China, to value, as they deserve, the clean Japanese tea-house, and the view-commanding tateba with its simple comforts.

Sugita’s plum-trees bud in January, and blossom as mild days and warm suns encourage, so that the last week of February finds the dead-looking branches clothed with clouds of starry white flowers. The blossoming plum-tree is often seen when snow is on the ground, and the hawthorn pattern of old porcelains is only a conventional representation of pale blooms fallen on the seamed ice of ponds or garden lakelets. The plum is the poet’s tree, and symbolic of long life, the snowy blossoms upon the gnarled, mossy, and unresponsive branches showing that a vital current still animates it, and the heart lives. At New-years a dwarf-plum is the ornament of every home, and to give one is to wish your friend length of days. Ume, the plum blossom, has a fresh, delicate, elusive, and peculiar fragrance, which in the warm sun and open air is almost intoxicating, but in a closed room becomes heavy and cloying. The blossoming of the plum-tree is the first harbinger of spring, and to Sugita regularly every year go the court ladies, many princes, and great officials to see those billows of bloom that lie under the Bluff, and the pink and crimson clouds of trees before the old temple.

During the rest of the year little heed is paid to Sugita’s existence, and the small fishing village in the curve of the Bay, with its green wall of bluffs, is as quiet as in the days when Commodore Perry’s fleet anchored off it and Treaty Point acquired its name. With the blossoms Sugita puts on its holiday air, tea-houses open, tateba spring from the earth, and scores of low, red-blanketed benches are scattered through the grove, signals of tea and good cheer, equivalent to the iron tables and chairs of Parisian boulevards. Strings of sampans float in to shore, lines of jinrikishas file over the hills, zealous pilgrims come on foot, and horsemen trot down the long, hard beach. The tiny hamlet often has a thousand visitors in a day, and the pretty little nesans, or tea-house maids, patter busily about with their trays of tea and solid food, welcoming and speeding the guests, and looking—quaint, odd, and charming maidens that they are—like so many tableaux vivants with their scant kimonos, voluminous sleeves, ornate coiffures, and pigeon-toes.

Notwithstanding the crowds, everything is decorous, quiet, and orderly, and no more refined pleasure exists than this Japanese beatitude of sitting lost in revery and rapturous contemplation of a blossoming tree, or inditing a verse to ume no hana, and fastening the bit of paper to the branches. In this Utopia the spring poem is never rejected, nor made the subject of cruel jokes. The winds fan it gently, it hangs conspicuous, it is read by him who runs, but it is not immortal, and the first heavy rain leaves it a wet and withered wreck, soon to fall to the ground and disappear.

Just outside the temple door is a plum-tree whose age is lost in legend. Its bent and crooked limbs and propped-up branches sustain a thick-massed pyramid of pale rose-pink. The outer boughs droop like a weeping-willow, and their flowers seem to be slipping down them like rosy rain-drops. Poets and peers, dreamers and plodders, coolies, fishermen, and the unspiritual foreigner, all admire this lovely tree, and its wide arms flutter with poems in its praise. All around the thatched roof of the old temple stand plum-trees covered with fragrant blossoms—snow white, palest yellow, rose, or deep carnation-red. The sheltering hill back of the temple is crowded with gravestones, tombs, tablets, and mossy Buddhas, sitting calm and impassive in tangles of grasses and vines under the shadow of ancient trees. A wide-spreading pine on the crest of the hill is a famous landmark, whence one looks down on the flower-wreathed village, the golden bow of the beach curving from headland to headland, and the blue bay flashing with hundreds of square white sails. It is a place for poesy and day-dreams, but the foreign visitor dedicates it to luncheon, table-talk, and material satisfactions, and, perhaps, the warm sun and air, and the mild fragrance of the plum-blossoms aid and abet the insatiable picnic appetite.

All this part of Japan is old, and rich in temples, shrines, and picturesque villages, with a net-work of narrow roads and shady by-paths leading through perpetual scenes of sylvan beauty. Thatched roofs, whose ridge poles are beds of lilies, shaded by glorified green plumes of bamboo-trees, tall, red-barked cryptomerias, crooked pines, and gnarled camphor-trees, everywhere charm the eye. Little red temples, approached through a line of picturesque torii—that skeleton gate-way that makes a part of every Japanese view or picture—red shrines no larger than marten boxes; stone Buddhas, sitting cross-legged, chipped, broken-nosed, headless, and moss-grown; odd stone tablets and lanterns crowd the hedges and banks of the road-side, snuggle at the edges of groves, or stand in the corners of rice fields.

Fair as the spring days are, when the universal green mantle of the earth is adorned with airy drifts of plum and cherry-blossoms, the warm, mellow sunshine, glorious tints and clear bright air of autumn are even fairer. One may forget and forgive the Japanese summer for the sake of the weeks that follow, an Indian summer which often lasts without break for four months after the equinoctial storm. Except that Fujiyama gleams whiter and whiter, there is no suggestion of winter’s terrors, and only a pleasant crispness in the bracing and intoxicating air. Whew the maple leaves begin to turn, and a second rose-blossoming surpasses that of June in color, prodigality, and fragrance, autumnal Japan is the typical earthly Paradise. Every valley is a floor of golden rice stubble, every hill-side a tangle of gorgeous foliage. The persimmon-trees hang full of big golden kaké, sea and sky wear their intensest blue, and Fujiyama’s loveliness shines out against the western sky. In among the yellowing stubble move blue-clad farmers with white mushroom hats. Before the farm-houses men and women swing their flails, beating the grain spread out on straw matting. The rice straw, whether bunched in pretty sheaves, tied across poles, like a New-year’s fringe, or stacked in collars around the tree-trunks, is always decorative. Meditative oxen, drawing a primitive plough made of a pointed stick, loosen the soil for the new planting, and tiny green wheat-shoots, first of the three regular crops of the year, wait for the warm winter sun that opens the plum-blossoms.

Above and beyond Sugita is Minë, a temple on a mountain-top, with a background of dense pine forest, a foreground of bamboos, and an old priest, whose successful use of the moxa brings sufferers from long distances for treatment. A bridle-path follows for several miles the knife-edge of a ridge commanding noble views of sea and shore, of the blue Hakone range, its great sentinel Oyama, and Fuji beyond. The high ridge of Minë is the backbone of a great promontory running out into the sea, the Bay of Yeddo on one side and Odawara Bay on the other. Square sails of unnumbered fishing-boats fleck the blue horizon, and the view seaward is unbroken. Over an old race-course and archery-range of feudal days the path leads, till at a sudden turn it strikes into a pine forest, where the horses’ hoofs fall noiseless on thick carpets of dry pine-needles, and the cave-like twilight, coolness, and stillness seem as solemn as in that wood where Virgil and Dante walked, before they visited the circles of the other world.

A steep plunge down a slippery, clayey trail takes the rider from the melancholy darkness to a solitary forest clearing, with low temple buildings on one side. Here, massed against feathery fronds of giant bamboos, blaze boughs of fine-leafed maples, all vivid crimson to the tips. While the priests bring saké tubs, and the amado, or outside shutters of their house, to make a table, and improvise benches with various temple and domestic properties, visitors may wander through the forest to open spaces, whence all the coasts of the two bays and every valley of the province lie visible, and a column of smoke proclaims the living volcano on Oshima’s island, far down the coast.

Groups of cheery pilgrims come chattering down from the forest, untie their sandals, wash their feet, and disappear within the temple; where the old priest writes sacred characters on their bared backs to indicate where his attendant shall place the lumps of sticky moxa dough. Another attendant goes down the line of victims and touches a light to these cones, which burn with a slow, red glow, and hiss and smoke upon the flesh for agonizing seconds. The priest reads pious books and casts up accounts, while the patients endure without a groan tortures compared with which the searing with the white-hot irons of Parisian moxa treatment is comfortable. The Minë priest has some secret of composition for his moxa dough which has kept it in favor for many years, and almost the only revenue of the temple is derived from this source. Rheumatism, lumbago, and paralysis yield to the moxa treatment, and the Japanese resort to it for all their aches and ills, the coolies’ backs and legs being often finely patterned with its scars.

The prospect from Minë’s promontory is rivalled by that at Kanozan, directly across the Bay, one of the highest points on the long tongue of separating land. Here are splendid old temples, almost unvisited by foreigners, but the glory of the place is the view of the ninety-nine valleys, of Yeddo Bay, the ocean, and the ever-dominant Fujiyama. Every Japanese knows the famous landscapes of his country, and the mention of these ninety-nine valleys and the thousand pine-clad islands of Matsuyama brings a light to his eyes.

At Yokosuka, fifteen miles below Yokohama, are the Government arsenal, navy-yard, and dry docks, with their fleets of war-ships that put to shame the American squadron in Asiatic waters. The Japanese Government has both constructed and bought a navy; some vessels coming from Glasgow yards, and others having been built at these docks.

Uraga, reached from Yokosuka by a winding, Cornice-like road along the coast, is doubly notable as being the port off which Commodore Perry’s ships first anchored, and the place where midzu ame, or millet honey, is made. The whole picturesque, clean little town is given up to the production of the amber sweet, and there are certain families whose midzu ame has not varied in excellence for more than three hundred years. The rice, or millet, is soaked, steamed, mixed with warm water and barley malt, and left to stand a few hours, when a clear yellow liquid is drawn off and boiled down to a thick syrup or paste, or cooked until it can be moulded into hard balls. Unaffected by weather, it is the best of Japanese sweets, and in its semiliquid stage is twisted out on chopsticks at all seasons of the year. The older and browner the midzu ame is, the better. It may be called the apotheosis of butter-scotch, a glorified Oriental taffy, constantly urged upon one for one’s own good, and conceded by foreign physicians in Japan to be of great value for dyspeptics and consumptives. Though prepared all over the empire, this curative sweet is the specialty of Uraga; and the secrets and formulas held in the old families make for Uraga midzu ame, as compared with other productions, a reputation akin to that of the Grande Chartreuse, or Schloss Johannisberger, among other cordials or wines. Street artists mould midzu ame paste, and blow it with a pipe into myriad fantastic shapes for their small patrons; while at the greatest banquets, and even on the Emperor’s table, it appears in the fanciful flowers that decorate every feast.

CHAPTER V
KAMAKURA AND ENOSHIMA

The contemporary Yankee might anticipate the sage reflections of the future New Zealander on London Bridge were there left enough ruins of the once great city of Kamakura to sit upon; but the military capital of the Middle Ages has melted away into rice fields and millet patches. One must wrestle seriously with the polysyllabic guide-book stories of the shoguns, regents, and heroes who made the glory of Kamakura, and attracted to it a population of five hundred thousand, to repeople these lonely tracts with the splendid military pageants of which they were the scene.

The plain of Kamakura is a semicircle, bounded by hills and facing the open Pacific, the surf pounding on its long yellow beach between two noble promontories. The Dai Butsu, the great bronze image of Buddha, which has kept Kamakura from sinking entirely into obscurity during the centuries of its decay, stands in a tiny valley a half-mile back from the shore. The Light of Asia is seated on the lotus flower, his head bent forward in meditation, his thumbs joined, and his face wearing an expression of the most benignant calm. This is one of the few great show-pieces in Japan that is badly placed and lacks a proper approach. Seen, like the temple gate-ways and pagodas of Nikko, at the end of a long avenue of trees, or on some height silhouetted against the sky, Dai Butsu (Great Buddha) would be far more imposing. Within the image is a temple forty-nine feet in height; and through an atmosphere thick with incense may be read the chalked names of ambitious tourists, who have evaded the priests and left their signatures on the irregular bronze walls. An alloy of tin and a little gold is mingled with the copper, and on the joined thumbs and hands, over which visitors climb to sit for their photographs, the bronze is polished enough to show its fine dark tint. The rest of the statue is dull and weather-stained, its rich incrustation disclosing the seams where the huge sections were welded together.

A pretty landscape-garden, banks of blossoming plum-trees, and the usual leper at the gate-way furnish the accustomed temple accessories, and Buddha broods and meditates serene in his quiet sanctuary. The photographic skill of the priest brings a good revenue to the temple, and a fund is being slowly raised for building a huge pavilion above the great deity, like that which stood there three hundred years ago. During his six centuries of holy contemplation at Kamakura, Dai Butsu has endured many disasters. Earthquakes have made him nod and sway on the lotus pedestal, and tidal waves have twice swept over and destroyed the sheltering temple, the great weight and thickness of the bronze keeping the statue itself unharmed.

Kamakura is historic ground, and each shrine has its legends. The great temple of Hachiman, the God of War, remains but as a fragment of its former self, the buildings standing at the head of a high stone-embanked terrace, from which a broad avenue of trees runs straight to the sea, a mile and a half away. Here are the tomb of Yoritomo and the cave tombs of his faithful Satsuma and Chosen Daimios; and the priests guard sacredly the sword of Yoritomo, that of Hachiman himself, the helmet of Iyeyasu, and the bow of Iyemitsu.

In the spring, Kamakura is a delightful resort, on whose dazzling beach climate and weather are altogether different from those of Yokohama or Tokio. In summer-time, the steady south wind, or monsoon, blows straight from the ocean, and the pine grove between the hotel and shore is musical all day long with the pensive sough of its branches. In winter it is open and sunny, and the hot sea-water baths, the charming walks and sails, the old temples and odd little villages, attract hosts of visitors.

On bright spring mornings men, women, and children gather sea-weed and spread it to dry on the sand, after which it is converted into food as delicate as our Iceland moss. Both farmers and fishermen glean this salty harvest, and after a storm, whole families collect the flotsam and jetsam of kelp and sea-fronds. Barelegged fisher-maidens, with blue cotton kerchiefs tied over their heads, and baskets on their backs, roam along the shore; children dash in and out of the frothing waves, and babies roll contentedly in the sand; men and boys wade knee-deep in the water, and are drenched by the breakers all day long, with the mercury below 50°, in spite of the warm, bright sun. Women separate the heaps of sea-weed, and at intervals regale their dripping lords with cups of hot tea, bowls of rice, and shredded fish. It is all so gay and beautiful, every one is so merry and happy, that Kamakura life seems made up of rejoicing and abundance, with no darker side.

The poor in Japan are very poor, getting comparative comfort out of smaller means than any other civilized people in the world. A few cotton garments serve for all seasons alike. The cold winds of winter nip their bare limbs and pierce their few thicknesses of cloth, and the fierce heat of summer torments them; but they endure these extremes with stoical good-nature, and enjoy their lovely spring and autumn the more. A thatched roof, a straw mat, and a few cotton wadded futons, or comforters, afford the Japanese laborer shelter, furniture, and bedding, while rice, millet, fish, and sea-weed constitute his food. With three crops a year growing in his fields, the poor farmer supports his family on a patch of land forty feet square; and with three hundred and sixty varieties of food fish swimming in Japanese waters, the fisherman need not starve. Perfect cleanliness of person and surroundings is as much an accompaniment of poverty as of riches.

Beyond Kamakura’s golden bow lies another beach—the strand of Katase, at the end of which rises Enoshima, the Mont St. Michel of the Japanese coast. Enoshima is an island at high tide, rising precipitously from the sea on all sides save to the landward, where the precipice front is cleft with a deep wooded ravine, that runs out into the long tongue of sand connecting with the shore at low tide.

Like every other island of legendary fame, Enoshima rose from the sea in a single night. Its tutelary genius is the goddess Benten, one of the seven household deities of good-fortune. She is worshipped in temples and shrines all over the woody summit of the island, and in a deep cave opening from the sea. Shady paths, moss-grown terraces, and staircases abound, and little tea-houses and tateba offer seats, cheering cups of tea, and enchanting views. The near shores, the limitless waters of the Pacific, and the grand sweep of Odawara Bay afford the finest setting for Fujiyama anywhere to be enjoyed.

Enoshima’s crest is a very Forest of Arden, an enchanted place of lovely shade. The sloping ravine which gives access to it holds only the one street, or foot-path, lined with tea-houses and shell-shops, all a-flutter with pilgrim flags and banners. The shells are cut into whistles, spoons, toys, ornaments, and hair-pins; and tiny pink ones of a certain variety form the petals of most perfect cherry blossoms, which are fastened to natural branches and twigs.

The fish dinners of Enoshima are famous, and the Japanese, who have the genius of cookery, provide more delicious fish dishes than can be named. At the many tateba set up in temple yards or balanced on the edges of precipices, conch-shells, filled with a black stew like terrapin, simmer over charcoal fires. This concoction has a tempting smell, and the pilgrims, who pick at the inky morsels with their chopsticks, seem to enjoy it; but in the estimation of the foreigner it adds one more to the list of glutinous, insipid preparations with which the Japanese cuisine abounds. The great marine curiosity of Enoshima is the giant crab, with its body as large as a turtle, and claws measuring ten, and even twelve, feet from tip to tip. These crustaceans are said to promenade the beach at night, and glare with phosphorescent eyes. Another interesting Japanese crab, the Doryppe Japonica, comes more often from the Inland Sea. A man’s face is distinctly marked on the back of the shell, and, as the legend avers, these creatures incarnate the souls of the faithful samurai, who, following the fortunes of the Tairo clan, were driven into the sea by the victorious Minamoto. At certain anniversary seasons, well known to true believers, the spirits of these dead warriors come up from the sea by thousands and meet together on a moonlit beach.

Enoshima must have become the favorite summer resort of the region, had not the whole island been reserved as an imperial demesne and site for a sea-shore palace. When typhoons rage or storms sweep in from the ocean, billows ring the island round with foam, spray dashes up to the drooping foliage on the summit, the air is full of the wild breath and wilder roar of the breakers, while the very ground seems to tremble. The underground shrine of Benten is then closed to worshippers, and looking down the sheer two hundred feet of rock, one sees only the whirl and rage of waters that hide the entrance. When these storms rage, visitors are sometimes imprisoned for days upon the island. At low tide and in ordinary seas Benten’s shrine is easily entered by a ledge of rocks, the hard thing being the climb up the long stone stair-ways to the top of the island again. Guides are numerous, and an old man or a small boy generally attaches himself to a company of strangers, and is so friendly, polite, and amiable, that, after escorting it unbidden round the island, he generally wins his cause, and is bidden to maru maru (go sight-seeing) as escort and interpreter.

CHAPTER VI
TOKIO

The first view of Tokio, like the first view of Yokohama, disappoints the traveller. The Ginza, or main business street, starting from the bridge opposite the station, goes straight to Nihombashi, the northern end of the Tokaido, and the recognized centre of the city, from which all distances are measured. Most of the road-way is lined with conventional houses of foreign pattern, with their curb-stones and shade-trees, while the tooting tram-car and the rattling basha, or light omnibus, emphasize the incongruities of the scene. This is not the Yeddo of one’s dreams, nor yet is it an Occidental city. Its stucco walls, wooden columns, glaring shop-windows, and general air of tawdry imitation fairly depress one. In so large a city there are many corners, however, which the march of improvement has not reached, odd, unexpected, and Japanese enough to atone for the rest.

Through the heart of Tokio winds a broad spiral moat, encircling the palace in its innermost ring, and reaching, by canal branches, to the river on its outer lines. In feudal days the Shogun’s castle occupied the inner ring, and within the outer rings were the yashikis, or spread-out houses, of his daimios. Each gate-way and angle of the moat was defended by towers, and the whole region was an impregnable camp. Every daimio in the empire had his yashiki in Tokio, where he was obliged to spend six months of each year, and in case of war to send his family as pledges of his loyalty to the Shogun. The Tokaido and the other great highways of the empire were always alive with the trains of these nobles, and from this migratory habit was developed the passion for travel and excursion that animates every class of the Japanese people. When the Emperor came up from Kioto and made Tokio his capital, the Shogun’s palace became his home, and all the Shogun’s property reverted to the crown, the yashikis of the daimios being confiscated for government use. In the old days the barrack buildings surrounding the great rectangle of the yashiki were the outer walls, protected by a small moat, and furnished with ponderous, gable-roofed gate-ways, drawbridges, sally-ports, and projecting windows for outlooks. These barracks accommodated the samurai, or soldiers, attached to each daimio, and within their lines were the parade ground and archery range, the residence of the noble family, and the homes of the artisans in his employ. With the new occupation many yashiki buildings were razed to the ground, and imposing edifices in foreign style erected for government offices. A few of the old yashiki remain as barracks, and their white walls, resting on black foundations, suggest the monotonous street views of feudal days. Other yashiki have fallen to baser uses, and sign-boards swing from their walls.

Modern sanitary science has plucked up the miles of lotus beds that hid the triple moats in midsummer. From the bridges the lounger used to overlook acres of pink and white blossoms rising above the solid floors of bluish-green leaves; but the Philistines could not uproot the moats, which remain the one perfect feudal relic of Japanese Yeddo. The many-angled gate-ways, the massive stone walls, and escarpments, all moss and lichen-grown, and sloping from the water with an inward curve, are noble monuments of the past. Every wall and embankment is crowned with crooked, twisted, creeping, century-old pines, that fling their gaunt arms wildly out, or seem to grope along the stones. Here and there on the innermost rings of the moat still rise picturesque, many-gabled towers, with white walls and black roofs, survivors from that earlier day when they guarded the shiro, or citadel, and home of the Shogun.

The army is always in evidence in Tokio, and the little soldiers in winter dress of dark-blue cloth, or summer suits of white duck, swarm in the neighborhood of the moats. In their splendid uniforms, the dazzling officers, rising well in the saddle, trot by on showy horses. On pleasant mornings, shining companies of cavalry file down the line of the inner moat and through the deep bays of the now dismantled Cherry-Tree gate to the Hibiya parade-ground, where they charge and manœuvre. When it rains, the files of mounted men look like so many cowled monks, with the peaked hoods of their great coats drawn over their heads, and they charge, gallop, and countermarch through mud and drizzle, as if in a real campaign. Taking the best of the German, French, Italian, and British military systems, with instructors of all these nationalities, the Japanese army stands well among modern fighting forces. There is a military genius in the people, and the spirit of the old samurai has leavened the nation, making the natty soldiers of to-day worthy the traditions of the past.

A large foreign colony is resident in Tokio, the diplomatic corps, the great numbers of missionaries, and those employed by the Government in the university, schools, and departments constituting a large community. The missionary settlement now holds the Tsukiji district near the railway station; that piece of made ground along the shore first ceded for the exclusive occupation of foreigners. Besides being malarial, Tsukiji was formerly the rag-pickers’ district, and its selection was not complimentary to the great powers, all of whose legations have now left it. To reside outside of Tsukiji was permitted to non-officials in extra-territorial times only when in Japanese employ. Any who chose to live in Tokio were claimed as teachers by some kindly Japanese friend, who became responsible for the stranger’s conduct. Before the revision of the treaties with foreign powers, which compacts became operative July 17, 1899, a foreigner could not go twenty-five miles beyond a treaty-port without a passport from the Japanese foreign office issued after a personal application to his legation in Tokio. Each place which he wished to visit had to be named, and immediately upon his arrival at a tea-house, the district policeman called for the passport and registered the stranger. Any one attempting to travel without a passport was promptly escorted to the nearest treaty-port. European tourists had a formidable list of rules of conduct which their ministers exhorted them to observe—that they should not quarrel, deface monuments, destroy trees or shrubs, break windows, or go to fires on horseback. The American tourist was trusted to behave without such minute instructions, and at Kobé could visit the Kencho and ask a permit to visit Kioto without the intervention of his consul—a recognition of the freedom and independence of the American citizen, and a tribute to the individual sovereignty of his nation, concerning which a Japanese poet wrote:

“What are those strangely-clad beings

Who move quickly from one spot of interest to another

Like butterflies flitting from flower to flower?

These are Americans,

They are as restless as the ocean,

In one day they will learn more of a city

Than an inhabitant will in a year.

Are they not extraordinary persons?”

All the legations are now on the high ground in the western part of the city near the castle moats. All legation buildings are owned and kept up by their respective governments. The Japanese Government, having offered to give the land if the United States would erect a permanent legation, finally built and rented the present structure to the great republic before it was purchased.

The English possess a whole colony of buildings in the midst of a large walled park, affording offices and residences for all the staff. Germany, Russia, France, and the Netherlands own handsome houses with grounds. The Chinese legation occupied part of an old yashiki until a beautiful modern structure replaced the “spread-out-house” of such picturesqueness, and iron grilles succeeded the quaint, old pea-green and vermilion gate-way.

The show places of Tokio are the many government museums at Uyéno Park, the many mortuary temples of the Tokugawa Shoguns at Shiba and Uyéno, the popular temple of Asakusa, and the Shinto temple at the Kudan, with its race-course and view of the city; but the Kanda, the Kameido, the Hachiman temples, many by-streets and queer corners, the out-door fairs, the peddlers, and shops give the explorer a better understanding of the life of the people than do the great monuments. Here and there he comes upon queer old nameless temples with ancient trees, stones, lanterns, tanks, and urns that recall a forgotten day of religious influence, when they possessed priests, revenues, and costly altars.

An army of jinrikisha coolies waits for passengers at the station, and among them is that Japanese Mercury, the winged-heeled Sanjiro, he of the shaven crown and gun-hammer topknot of samurai days. His biography includes a tour of Europe as the servant of a Japanese official. On returning to Tokio he took up the shafts of his kuruma again, and is the fountain-head of local news and gossip. He knows what stranger arrived yesterday, who gave dinner parties, in which tea-house the “man-of-war gentlemen” had a geisha dinner, where your friends paid visits, even what they bought, and for whom court or legation carriages were sent. He tells you whose house you are passing, what great man is in view, where the next matsuri will be, when the cherry blossoms will unfold, and what plays are coming out at the Shintomiza. Sanjiro is cyclopædic at the theatre, and as a temple guide he exhales ecclesiastical lore. To take a passenger on a round of official calls, to and from state balls or a palace garden party, he finds bliss unalloyed, and his explanations pluck out the heart of the mystery of Tokio. “Mikado’s mamma,” prattles Sanjiro in his baby-English, as he trots past the green hedge and quiet gate of the Empress Dowager’s palace, and “Tenno San,” he murmurs, in awed tones, as the lancers and outriders of the Emperor appear.

First, he carries the tourist to Shiba, the old monastery grounds that are now a public park. Under the shadow of century-old pines and cryptomeria stand the mortuary temples of the later Shoguns, superb edifices ablaze with red and gold lacquer, and set with panels of carved wood, splendid in color and gilding, the gold trefoil of the Tokugawas shining on every ridge-pole and gable. These temples and tombs are lesser copies of the magnificent shrines at Nikko, and but for those originals would be unique. On a rainy day, the green shadow and gloom, the cawing of the ravens that live in the old pine-trees, and their slow flight, are solemn as death itself; and the solitude of the dripping avenues and court-yards, broken only by the droning priests at prayer, and the musical vibrations of some bell or sweet-voiced gong, invite a gentle melancholy. On such a day, the priests, interrupted in their statuesque repose, or their pensive occupation of sipping tea and whiffing tiny pipes in silent groups around a brazier, display to visitors the altars and ceilings and jewelled walls with painstaking minuteness, glad of one ripple of excitement and one legitimate fee. Led by a lean, one-toothed priest, you follow, stocking-footed, over lacquer floors to behold gold and bronze, lacquer and inlaying, carving and color, golden images sitting in golden shadows, enshrined among golden lotus flowers, and sacred emblems. In one temple the clear, soft tones of the bronze gong, a bowl eighteen inches in diameter and a little less in depth, vibrate on the air for three full minutes before they die away.

Up mossy stair-ways, between massive embankments, and through a shady grove, the priest’s clogs scrape noisily to the hexagonal temple, where the ashes of Hidetada, the Ni Dai Shogun, Iyeyasu’s son, lie in a great gold lacquer cylinder, the finest existing specimen of the lacquer of that great art age. The quiet of Shiba, the solemn background of giant trees, the deep shadows and green twilight of the groves, the hundreds of stone lanterns, the ponds of sacred lotus, the succession of dragon-guarded gate-ways, and carved and gorgeously-colored walls, crowd the memory with lovely pictures. Near a hill-top pagoda commanding views of the Bay and of Fuji, stands the tateba of a cheerful family, who bring the visitor a telescope and cups of cherry-blossom tea.

A colony of florists show gardens full of wonderful plants and dwarf-trees, and then Sanjiro minces, “I think more better we go see more temples;” and we go, spinning past the giant Shiba gate and up the road to Atago Yama, a tiny temple on the edge of a precipitous hill-top, approached by men’s stairs, an air-line flight of broad steps, and women’s stairs, curving by broken flights of easier slope. A leper, with scaly, white skin and hideous ulcers, extends his miserable hand for alms, and picturesque, white-clad pilgrims, with staff and bell, go up and down those breathless flights. The tateba, with their rows of lanterns, where the nesans offer tea of salted cherry blossoms, that unfold again into perfect flowers in the bottom of the cup, overhang the precipice wall, and look down upon the Shiba quarter as upon a relief map.

A breathless rush of two miles or more straight across the city, past flying shops, beside the tooting tram-way and over bridges, and Sanjiro runs into Uyéno Park, with its wide avenues, enormous trees, and half-hidden temple roofs. The ground slopes away steeply at the left, and at the foot of the hill lies a lotus lake of many acres that is a pool of blossoms in midsummer. A temple and a tiny tea-house are on an island in the centre, and around the lake the race-course is overarched with cherry-trees. Great torii mark the paths and stairs leading from the shore to the temples above.

At Uyéno are more tombs and more sanctuaries, avenues of lanterns, bells, and drinking-fountains, and a black, bullet-marked gate-way, where the Yeddo troops made their last stand before the Restoration. Near this gate-way is the sturdy young tree planted by General Grant. Far back in the park stand the mortuary temples, splendid monuments of Tokugawa riches and power, though the most splendid, here as at Shiba, have been destroyed by fire.

When the Tokio Fine Arts Club holds one of its loan exhibitions in its Uyéno Park house, Sanjiro is inexorable, deposits his fare at the door-way, shows the way to the ticket-office, and insists upon his seeing the best work of the great artists. The noble club-men contribute specimens from their collections of lacquer, porcelain, ivories, bronzes, and kakemonos. Behind glass doors hang kakemonos by the great artists, and Japanese visitors gaze with reverence on the masterpieces of the Kano and Tosa schools. The great art treasures of the empire are sequestrated in private houses and godowns, and to acquire familiarity with them, to undertake an art education in semiannual instalments by grace of the Fine Arts Club, is a discouraging endeavor. It would be more hopeful to seek the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the British Museum, or Mr. Walters’s Baltimore galleries, which contain an epitome of all Japanese art. At the Tokio Club, however, works of Sosen and Hokusai, the two masters of the last century, are often exhibited. Sosen painted inimitable monkeys, and connoisseurs of to-day award him the tardy fame which his contemporaries failed to give. As a rule, foreigners prefer Hokusai to all other masters, and they search old book-shops in the hope of stumbling upon one of the innumerable books illustrated and sometimes engraved by this prolific genius. His genius never lacked recognition, and a century ago all feudal Yeddo went wild over his New-year’s cards, each one a characteristic and unique bit of landscape, caricature, or fantasy. His fourteen volumes of Mangwa, or rough sketches, and his One Hundred Views of Fuji are most celebrated; but wonderfully clever are his jokes, his giants, dwarfs, demons, goblins, and ghosts; and when he died, at the age of ninety, he sighed that he could not live long enough to paint something which he should himself esteem. After the visit to the club Sanjiro takes his patron to the tomb of Hokusai, in a near-by temple yard, and shows the brushes hung up by despairing and prayerful artists, who would follow his immortal methods.

East of Uyéno stands the great Asakusa temple, shrine of one of the most famous of the thirty-three famous Kwannons of the empire, the great place of worship for the masses, and the centre of a Vanity Fair unequalled elsewhere. Every street leading to the temple grounds is a bazaar and merry fair, and theatres, side shows, booths, and tents, and all the devices to entrap the idle and the pleasure-seeking, beset the pilgrim on his way to the sanctuary. In florists’ gardens are shown marvels of floriculture, in their ponds swim goldfish with wonderfully fluted tails, and in tall bamboo cages perch Tosa chickens with tail feathers ten and twelve feet long. Menageries draw the wondering rustics, and they pay their coppers for the privilege of toiling up a wood, canvas, and pasteboard Fujiyama to view the vast plain of the city lying all around it, and on timbered slopes enjoy tobogganing in midsummer. Penetrating to the real gate-way, it is found guarded by giant Nio, whose gratings are spotted with the paper prayers that the worshipful have chewed into balls and reverently thrown there. If the paper wad sticks to the grating, it is a favorable omen, and the believer may then turn the venerable old prayer-wheel, and farther on put his shoulder to the bar, and by one full turn of the revolving library of Buddhist scriptures endow himself with all its intellectual treasure.

The soaring roof of the great temple is fitly shadowed by camphor-trees and cryptomeria that look their centuries of age, and up the broad flagging there passes the ceaseless train of believers. One buys corn and feeds the hundreds of pigeons, messengers of the gods, who live secure and petted by all the crowds in the great enclosure, or pays his penny to secure the release of a captive swallow, that flies back every night to its owner. At the foot of the steps the pilgrim begins to pray, and, ascending, mumbles his way to the altar. The colossal money-box, which is said to gather in over a thousand dollars on great holidays, rings and echoes well to the fall of the smallest coin. The sides of the temple are open to the air, and the visitor may retain shoes and clogs, so that the clatter of these wooden soles, the pilgrims’ clapping and mumbling, mingle in one distracting roar.

Tame pigeons fly in and out through the open walls, and children chase each other across the floor; but behind the grating candles burn, bells tinkle, priests chant, and rows of absorbed worshippers clap, toss their coppers, and pray, oblivious of all their surroundings.

CHAPTER VII
TOKIO—CONTINUED

There are no such holiday-makers as the Japanese. The whole twelvemonth is fête-time, and the old year held three hundred and sixty-five festivals and anniversaries. All the great days of the Chinese calendar are observed, and the death-day of past sovereigns, instead of the birthday; while each religion, each sect, each temple, and each neighborhood has its own fête or matsuri, religious in its origin. Every night different temple grounds and different streets glow with lanterns and torches, an out-door fair is in full progress, and happy, laughing, chattering men, women, and children enjoy it all. The evening flower-fairs are as characteristic and picturesque as anything in Japan. The smoke of blazing flambeaux, the smell of the women’s camellia seed hair-oil, and the mingled odors from booths and portable restaurants, are not enticing on a hot night, but at least they offend in an “artless Japanese way.”

The booths along the whole length of the Ginza offer innumerable odd notions, queer toys, pretty hair-pins, curios, and indescribable trifles, every night in the year. The Japanese hair-pin, by-the-bye, is a dangerous vanity, the babies often twisting themselves into the range of its point, and the mothers impaling them on it in shaking them up higher on their backs and tightening the bands that hold them. The comic and ingenious toys, embodying the simplest principles of mechanics, and by the aid of a little running water, or the heat of a candle, performing wonderful feats, are such trifles of bamboo, thin pine, paper, or straw, as American children would destroy at a touch. Yet the more truly civilized Japanese little people play with them for weeks; and they toddle home with minute wicker cages of semi, or cicada, on one finger, content to hang them up and listen peaceably to the strident captives’ chirping mi-mi-mi all day long.

THE SEMI’S CAGE

The first week of March is gala time for the small girls of Japan, when their Hina Matsuri, or Feast of Dolls, is celebrated. Then do toy shops and doll shops double in number and take on dazzling features, while children in gay holiday clothes animate the streets. Little girls with hair elaborately dressed, tied with gold cords and bright crape, and gowns and girdles of the brightest colors, look like walking dolls themselves. The tiniest toddler is a quaint and comical figure in the same long gown and long sleeves as its mother, the gay-patterned kimono, the bright inner garments showing their edges here and there, and obis shot with gold threads, making them irresistible. Nothing could be gentler or sweeter than these Japanese children, and no place a more charming play-ground for them. In the houses of the rich the Dolls’ Festival is second only to the New Year in its importance. The family don their richest clothing, and keep open house for the week. The choicest pictures and art treasures are displayed, and with these the hina or images that have been preserved from grandmothers’ and great-grandmothers’ time, handed down and added to with the arrival of each baby daughter. These dolls, representing the Emperor, Empress, nobles, and ladies of the old Kioto court, are sometimes numbered by dozens, and are dressed in correct and expensive clothing. During the holiday the dolls are ranged in a row on a shelf like an altar or dais, and food and gifts are placed before them. The tiny lacquer tables, with their rice-bowls, teapots, cups, plates, and trays, are miniature and exquisite likenesses of the family furnishings. Each doll has at least its own table and dishes, and often a full set of tableware, with which to entertain other dolls, and amazing prices have been paid for sets of gold and carved red lacquer dishes, or these Lilliputian sets in wonderful metal-work. After the festival is over, the host of dolls and their belongings are put away until the next March; and when the beautiful images emerge from the storehouses after their long hiding they are as enchanting as if new. Nothing better illustrates inherent Japanese ideas of life and enjoyment, and gentleness of manners, than this bringing out of all the dolls for one long fête week in the year, and the handing them down from generation to generation.

On the fifth day of the fifth month comes the boys’ holiday. The outward sign is a tall pole surmounted with a ball of open basket-work, from which hang the most natural-looking fish made of cloth or paper. Such a pole is set before every house in which a boy has been born during the year, or where there are young boys, and some patriarchal households display a group of poles and a school of carp flying in the air. These nobori, as the paper carp are called, are of course symbolic, the carp being one of the strongest fish, stemming currents, mounting water-falls, and attaining a great age. Many of these nobori are four or five feet in length, and a hoop holding the mouth open lets them fill and float with as life-like a motion as if they were flapping their fins in their own element. In-doors, images and toys are set out in state array—miniature warriors and wrestlers, spears, banners, and pennants, and all the decorative paraphernalia that once enriched a warrior’s train. In all classes children’s parties and picnics prevail The schools are given up to out-door exercises, and every sunny morning processions of youngsters file by, with banners and colored caps to distinguish them, and go to some park or parade-ground for exercises, drills, and athletic games.

Besides the public schools maintained by Government, there are scores of private schools and mission schools. With its higher institutions reaching up to the Imperial University, with its special schools of law, medicine, engineering, science, and the arts, Tokio offers the best education to the youth of Japan. The public-school system is the equal of that of the United States, and the Government employs foreign teachers in even the remotest provincial schools. At a kindergarten the aristocratic pupils, with a repose of manner inherited from generations of courtly and dignified ancestors, trot in, in their little long-sleeved kimonos, like a Mikado opera company seen through the wrong end of an opera-glass, sit down demurely around low tables, and fold their hands like so many old men and women of the kingdom of Lilliput. There is no tittering, no embarrassment, nor self-consciousness; and these grave and serious mites will take the blocks from the teachers with a reverent bow and present them to other children with another formal salute, quite as their grandfathers might have done at court. In some of the girls’ schools the old Japanese methods are followed, and they are taught the traditional etiquette and the cha no yu, to embroider, to write poems, to arrange flowers, and to play the samisen. The koto, once almost obsolete, is restored to favor, and girls delight to touch this sweet-toned, horizontal harp.

The great summer festival is the opening of the river. This is the beginning of the nightly water fêtes on the Sumidagawa, and in the innumerable tea-houses that line its banks. This fête, appointed for the last week of June, is often postponed to the more settled season of July. Flat-bottomed house-boats, with open sides, awnings hung round with lanterns, and sturdy boatmen at either end of the craft, go up the river by hundreds and thousands at sunset, gliding out from the creeks and canals that everywhere intersect the city. The glittering fleet gathers in the broad stretch of stream lying between the Asakusa bashi and the Ryogoku bashi, and these two bridges are black with spectators. The rows of tea-houses lining both shores spread red blankets over the balcony railings, and hang row upon row of lanterns along balustrades and eaves. With their rooms thrown wide open to the water, they themselves look like great lanterns. Every room of every house has its dinner party, the tea-house of the Thousand Mats being engaged months before hand, and every maiko and geisha bespoken. Boats command double prices, and nearly every boat has its family group; little children in holiday dress, their elders in fresh silk, crape, gauze, or cotton kimonos, sitting on the red floor-cloth, each with a tray of dolls’ dishes, filled with the morsels of dainty things that make up a Japanese feast, and saké bottles circulating freely. The lines of lanterns shed a rose-colored light over all; and at one end a pretty maiko goes through her graceful poses, the company keeping time with her in rhythmical hand-clappings. Peddlers of fruit, candies, fireworks, and saké; performing jugglers, acrobats, and story-tellers; floating restaurants, theatres, side-shows, and boat-loads of musicians row in and out among the rest. Talk, laughter, and the wailing notes of samisens fill the air with a hum that swells to cheers and roars as the swift rockets fill the air with balls, fountains, sheaves, sprays, jets, and trails of light; or fiery dragons, wriggling monsters, rainbows, and water-falls shine out on the dark night sky. Although saké flows everywhere, there is no drunkenness or disorder to degrade these gentle, cheerful merrymakers.

Fires are among the thrilling but picturesque experiences of city life, confined chiefly to the winter months. The annual losses of Japan through conflagrations are very great, and Tokio has been destroyed many times. The flimsy little straw-matted, wooden houses are always ready to blaze; and if a lamp explodes, a brazier upsets, or a spark flies, the whole place is in flames, which leap from roof to roof until the quarter is kindled. Each time a burned district is rebuilt the streets are widened, a measure which preserves property but ruins picturesqueness, for the broad thoroughfares, lined with low, unpainted buildings, make the modern Japanese city monotonous and uninteresting.

The diminutive Japanese dwellings, of toy-like construction, rest on corner posts set on large rocks, and made stable by their heavy roofs of mud and tiles. Fires are stemmed only by tearing down all buildings in the path of the flames, which is done as easily as a house of cards is overturned. A rope, fastened to one of the upright corner posts, brings the structure down with a crash, while the heavy roof covers it like an extinguisher. The ordinary city house or shop may have twelve feet of frontage, and even a second story seldom raises the roof more than fifteen feet from the ground. To hear of a thousand houses being burned in a night is appalling, but a thousand of these Lilliputian dwellings and their microscopic landscape gardens would not cover more area than two or three blocks of a foreign city.

Each section or ward has a high tower or ladder, with a long bell, and from this lookout the watchman gives the alarm or the near policeman sounds the fire-bell. Pandemonium follows, for a more excitable being than the Japanese does not exist, and the fire-bell’s clang is suggestive of many sad and terrible experiences. Besides the municipal fire brigade with their ladders and hand-pumps, each ward maintains private watchmen and firemen. These watchmen roam their beats from dusk to daylight, jingling the loose iron rings on the tops of their long staffs. Throughout the night the watchman’s clinking rings are heard at half-hour intervals or oftener. The policemen, on the contrary, go about quietly, lurking in shadow to pounce upon malefactors; and foreigners, mistaking the fire-guardian for the constable, have pointed many jokes at his noisy progress.

When the alarm-bell clangs, friends rush to help friends in saving their effects, and thieves make the most of the opportunity. Blocks away from the fire agitated people gather up mats, screens, bedding, clothing, and cooking utensils, and hurry from the neighborhood. Then does the simplicity of Japanese life justify itself. No cumbrous furniture is rolled out, to be broken in the transit; no tables, chairs, or clumsy beds are ruined in the saving. One small hand-cart holds the roll of wadded comforters and gowns that compose the bedding of the family, their clothing, and their few other effects. The sliding paper-screens are slipped from their grooves, the thick straw-mats are taken from the floor, and the household departs, leaving but the roof, corner posts, and rough floor behind them. Processions of these refugees stream away from the burning quarter, and the heart of the spectator goes out to the poor people, who, with so little, live so cheerfully and suffer so bravely.

The emblems or rallying banners always carried by native fire-companies astonish foreign eyes. Glorified drum-majors’ sticks, gigantic clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds, balls, crescents, stars, or puzzles, are borne aloft by the color-bearer of the detachment, who stands in the midst of smoke, sparks, and the thickest of the hurly-burly, to show where his company is at work. Thrilling tales are told of these Casabiancas remaining on roofs or among flames until engulfed in the blazing ruins.

Sometimes carpenters begin to build new habitations on the still smoking ground, stepping gingerly among hot stones and tiles. The amazing quickness with which Japanese houses rise from their ashes defies comparison. In twelve hours after a conflagration the little shop-keepers will resume business at the old stand. Fire insurance is not suited to this country of wood and straw dwellings; but thatched roofs are giving way to tiles in the cities, and brick is more and more used for walls. Stone is too expensive, and, in this earthquake country, open to greater objections than brick. The stone walls sometimes seen are a sham, the stones being thin slabs nailed on the wooden framework of a house, like tiles or shingles, to rattle down in a harmless shower when the earth heaves and rocks. Steam fire-engines are unknown, and hand-grenades are inevitably forgotten in the excitement of a conflagration.

Earthquakes, though frequent, are fortunately not severe, and only one catastrophe has been suffered since the convulsions of 1854 and 1855, which the malcontents attributed to the wrath of the gods at the spectacle of foreign barbarians entering the country. The old myth, that the earth—meaning the islands of Japan—rests upon the back of a huge fish, whose writhings cause these disturbances, places the head of the leviathan beneath Yezo, its tail under the southern island, and its vital and active body below Yokohama and Tokio. Now the Government has a seismologist on its university staff, and each tremor or palpitation is accurately recorded, the average number reaching four hundred annually. Kobé and Kioto seldom experience even the slightest motion, but in the vicinity of the capital one becomes fairly accustomed to the unpleasant visitation. A slight disturbance sets lamps and chandeliers vibrating; with a heavier rock all bric-à-brac not wired fast to cabinets, mantels, or tables, slides to the floor; and a harder shock loosens tiles, wrenches timbers, and sends brick chimneys, not boxed in wood or sheet-iron, crashing through the roofs. A small house rattles as if the earthquake fish had come out of the sea and seized it as a terrier does a rat. Pebbles grate in garden paths, tall evergreens snap their tops like switches, bells ring, clocks stop, and people rush frantically to open spaces or streets.

The Japanese seldom drink water, although they splash, dabble, or soak in it half the time; yet men who are working in moats or lotus-ponds, grubbing out the old roots or stalks, and dripping wet to their waists and shoulders, will quit work on rainy days. In Yokohama harbor, coolies who load and unload lighters, and are in and out of water continually, often refuse to work when a shower begins; but a wet day brings a new aspect to the streets, and fair weather has no monopoly of picturesqueness. The unoccupied women with babies tied on their backs, an apparently large leisure class, are always gadding about the town with the aimless unconcern of hens, taking no account of the weather, and enjoying the open air regardless of the barometer. Children are equally indifferent, and jinrikisha coolies, although they draw the hoods and tie their passengers in snug and dry with oil-paper or rubber aprons, trot along cheerfully, with their too scanty cotton garments more abbreviated than ever. They substitute for an umbrella a huge flat straw plate of a hat, and instead of putting on galoches, they take off even their straw sandals and run barefooted, tying up the big toe with a bit of rag or wisp of straw, apparently by way of decoration. Those pedestrians who wish to be stately and dry-shod thrust their bare feet into a half-slipper arrangement of wood and oil-paper, perched on two wooden rests three inches high, adding this cubit to their stature.

When the rain-drops patter the shops are a delight, and the great silk bazaars of Echigoya and Dai Maru, the Louvre and Bon Marché of Tokio, are as entertaining as a theatre. Both occupy corners on great thoroughfares, and have waving curtains of black cloth, with crest and name in white, as the only wall or screen from the street. The one vast open room of the first story is revealed at a glance. The floor proper of this great apartment, raised a foot and a half from the stone walk surrounding it, is covered with the usual straw-mats, the uniform glistening surface extending more than sixty feet either way. Here and there salesmen and accountants, the book-keepers being also cashiers, sit at low desks, where they keep their sorobans, money, and curious ledgers. There are no shelves nor counters, and in groups on the mats sit women with beautifully-dressed hair, and men in sober silk garments, inspecting the heaps of rainbow fabrics strewn about them. Small boys bring out arm-loads and baskets of silks from the godowns, for no stock is ever in sight until the purchaser asks for it. It is etiquette for these small boys to hail and cheer the arriving and departing customer, and they drone out some nasal chorus. We once lifted the street curtain at Dai Maru’s on a rainy day to find the whole matted area deserted of customers. Immediately the battalion of small boys sprang to their feet, and, deafening us with a chanted canticle, hurried to the corner where a steaming bronze urn, various tea-caddies, and a shelved box full of tea-sets provide patrons with cups of amber-tinted nectar. For an hour these myrmidons ran to and fro, baskets were carried back and forth, and gold brocades supplied sunlight and rainbows for a gloomy day. All these precious brocades come in lengths of four and a half yards for the broad obis or sashes that are one secret of her looks in the toilet of a Japanese woman. Those woven of silk alone are as thick as leather and soft as crape, and the massed gold threads, while glistening like plates of chased metal, give stiffness but not hardness to the fabrics. When the woof threads are left in thick, shaggy loops on the under side, not cut away in any economical fashion, these are yesso nishikis, the choicest of all Japanese stuffs, and valued from sixty to one hundred and twenty dollars for the single obi length.

The Nakadori is a half-mile-long street of curio and second-hand shops, which just before the New Year contain their best bargains, and no one can hold to the safety of his jinrikisha through that straight and narrow path, beset by every temptation of old porcelains, lacquer, and embroideries. Peddlers will gather from these shops and carry packs twice their own size, to spread their contents out in the room of a customer. Their wares are so tempting and cheap that the beholder cannot resist them, after a reformation of prices, and that peddler who comes twice has marked his victim for his own. On certain days of the week a rag fair is held on the Yanagiwara. Vendors in rows half a mile long sit under the willow-trees on the canal bank, with neat piles of old clothing, scraps of cloth, and ornaments for sale. Between Shiba and the railway station is a rag alley, a Petticoat Lane of old clothing, but most of it is foreign and unpicturesque, even in the flying glimpses to be caught from a jinrikisha.

In curio-hunting the experienced buyer invariably replies takai, “too much,” to whatever price the dealer names. If intent on the bargain he may add takusan takai, “altogether too much.” Osoroshi takai, or tohomoni takai, “inexpressibly, unspeakably dear,” sometimes serves to abate the price by reason of the dealer’s amazement at hearing those classic and grandiloquent words brought down to common usage.

Once I visited the most charming of old-clothes shops, one where theatrical wardrobes were kept; but Sanjiro could not, or would not remember it, and I never returned. The shopmen were sober and serious automata, whose countenances were stolid and imperturbable, and one might as well have bargained with the high-priest for the veil of the temple, as have offered them less than they asked. They sat, smoked, and cast indifferent glances at us while baskets of gorgeous raiment were borne in, and affected to look up the prices in a book of records. After baiting me long enough, and bringing me to raise my offer, the trio of partners would suddenly clap their hands, say something in concert, and deliver me the article. It was all as precisely ordered and acted as a set scene on the stage, and I longed in vain to assist at other acts in the unique drama.

CHAPTER VIII
TOKIO FLOWER FESTIVALS

With all its foreign sophistications, flower worship has not died out in the Japanese capital. The calendar is divided into the time of the camellia, the plum, the cherry, the wistaria, the lotus, the chrysanthemum, and the maple. Orange blossoms and tea blossoms alone are omitted among the special flower festivals, and the Japanese as naturally refer to the time of the cherry blooming or of maple-leaves, as we to spring or autumn. They infuse into these festivals a sentiment and feeling, a spirit and gayety, inherited from generations of flower-loving ancestors, who made their æsthetic pilgrimages year after year to see the acres of wonderful flowers in the different suburbs of each city. By the old calendar, the first unfolding of the plum-trees, the true awakening of the seasons, marked the new year. In the change from the Chinese method of reckoning to the Gregorian, the Japanese January fell to a churlish mood of nature, when only late chrysanthemums, camellias, and in-door dwarf-trees can bloom. But every door-way is then arched with evergreens and flowers; pine and bamboo, bound with braided straw ropes, are set before the house; tassels of rice straw are festooned across the eaves, and lanterns hang in rows. The emblematic rice-cake, prawn, orange, and fern-leaf are fastened above the lintel, the handsomest screen is brought forward, and more emblems and a large bowl for cards are set out at the entrance. This is the season when all debts are paid, while general visiting and feasting occupy three days. Everybody says to everybody else, Shinen ome deto, “I wish you a happy New-year;” or, Man zai raku, “Good-luck for ten thousand years.” Everybody sends his friend a present—a basket of fruit, or a dumpling of red beans or rice dough, wrapped in ceremonial paper. The streets of Tokio, crowded with merrymakers and lighted at night by thousands of lanterns and torches, hold out-of-door fairs without number, and from palace to hovel run sounds of rejoicing; yet this joyous homage to the spirit of life is paid in midwinter, when snow-flakes may shroud the blooming camellia-trees, though the clear, bright Indian-summer weather often lasts until after the new year. Winter, a long calamity elsewhere in the same latitude, is only the disagreeable incident of a few weeks in Central Japan. A fortnight, a month, of melting snows, cold rains, and dull skies, and lo! the branches of the withered, old black plum-trees are starred with fragrant white flowers. For a few days a hazy calm hushes the air, sounds are veiled, light is softened, and spring has really come, no matter how many sullen relapses it may suffer before the glorious April cloud-burst of cherry blossoms decks the empire in wreaths of white and pink, and fills the people with joy. And this linked sweetness long drawn out, this gentle season of delight, lasts from the bursting of the plum blossoms in February to the end of the nyubai, or rainy season of June.

POETS BENEATH THE PLUM-TREES

Beyond Kameido’s wistaria-bordered lake are ancient plum groves, whose trees—old, gnarled, twisted, black, and lichen-covered, propped with poles and stone posts—writhe and twist over the ground in contortions which explain their name—the Gwariobai, or the couchant dragon-trees. This Ume Yashiki was once the villa of a Shogun’s favorite. Its buildings, fences, and hedges are gray with age, its stone tablets, moss-grown and something in the hoary antiquity of the place subdues one’s pulses. The long cry of a hidden boatman in the creek beyond the high camellia hedge is the only sound that breaks the silence. People sit on the red-covered benches, women in soft-toned crapes walk under the strange skeleton shadows like moving figures of a dream, and children flash among the black trunks brilliant in their gay garb. Often one sees visionary old men sitting lost in reverie, and murmuring to themselves of ume no hana, the plum blossom. They sip tea, they rap out the ashes from tiny pipes, and slipping a writing-case from the girdle, unroll a scroll of paper and indite an ode or sonnet. Then, with radiant face and cheerful muttering, the ancient poet will slip his toes into his clogs and tie the little slip to the branches of the most charming tree. The well-bred spectators do not push upon the fluttering scroll, as my impetuous fellow-countrymen would do, but with a decent dignity read and criticise the praises of the blossoms and the solemn stillness of the old yashiki.

The veriest Gradgrind could not be indifferent to the poetic charm of the Japanese spring-time, wherein the setting of the buds, their swelling, and the gradual unfolding of sakura, the cherry blossoms, are matters of great public concern, the native newspapers daily printing advance despatches from the trees. Even more beautiful than the plum-tree festival is the Tokio celebration of the blossoming of the cherry, and gayer than the brilliant throngs are the marvellous trees. From the wild, indigenous dwarf seedling of the mountains have been developed countless varieties, culminating in that which bears the pink-tinged double blossoms as large as a hundred-leafed rose, covering every branch and twig with thick rosettes. A faint fragrance arises from these sheets of bloom, but the strange glare of pinkish light from their fair canopy dazzles and dizzies the beholder. The cherry-blossom Sunday of Uyéno Park is a holiday of the upper middle class. One week later, the double avenue of blossoming trees, lining the Mukojima for a mile along the river bank, invites the lower classes to a very different celebration from that of the decorous, well-dressed throng driving, walking, picnicking, and tea drinking under the famous trees. No warning to keep off the grass forbids their wandering at will over the great park, every foot of whose ground is historic, whose trees are ancient, whose avenues are broad and winding, and whose woods are as dark as the forest primeval. Temple bells softly boom, ravens croak, and happy voices fill the air.

Not the Bois, the Cascine, or the Thier Garten can vie with Uyéno on this blossom Sunday. Down every path and avenue are vistas of flowery trees, lofty and wide-spreading as vast oaks and elms, and through their snowy branches shine thousands of other snowy branches, or countless solitary trees gleaming against green backgrounds. The wide lotus lake below Uyéno reflects the white wonder that encircles the race-course, and the temple roofs on the tiny islands are smothered in pink branches. Under the great grove of cherry-trees tea-house benches are set close, and there the people lunch and dine and sup; and though saké flows freely, the most confirmed drinker is only a little redder, a little happier, a little more loquacious than the rest. Czars and kaisers may well envy this Oriental ruler, whose subjects gather by thousands, not to throw bombs and riot for bread or the division of property, but to fall in love with cherry-trees, and write poems in their praise. At the cherry-blossom season especially his inborn passion for flowers and landscapes shows itself in prince, poet, peasant, merchant, and coolie. Tattered beggars gaze entranced at the fairy trees, and princes and ministers of state go to visit the famous groves. Bulletins announce, quite as a matter of course, that Prince Sanjo or Count Ito has gone to Nara or Kioto, a three days’ journey, to see the blossoming trees; which is as if Bismarck or Gladstone should interrupt his cares of state to undertake a pilgrimage to a distant rose show.

A UYÉNO TEA-HOUSE

Later in the season the carefully tended trees in the palace grounds put forth their blossoms, and sovereign and courtiers hang poems on their branches, while the spring garden party gathers the whole court circle under the aisles of bloom in the palace grounds of Hama Rikiu. Every citizen who has a garden gives an out-door fête, and flower-bordered cards invite guests to see the native sakura, or the cerisiers of the diplomatic set.

The celebration of the Mukojima, an avenue along the east bank of the Sumidagawa, lined for more than two miles with double rows of cherry-trees, belongs to the lower ten thousand. On Sunday, which is officially a day of rest, the water is dotted with hundreds of boats, and solemn little policemen keep the holiday-makers moving along the shore. Friends recognize each other in the crowd by some distinctive article of clothing. One procession of jinrikishas will land a group with heads tied up in gayly-figured towels all alike, or bits of figured cotton folded as collars around the necks of their kimonos. Boat-loads of men, partly disguised by their queer head-dresses, are sculled and poled along the banks, shouting and singing, clapping and strumming the samisen, with an entire abandon that is the wonder and envy of the Anglo-Saxon. Every reveller has his saké gourd, or tiny tub slung over his shoulder, which he empties and refills, as long as his money and consciousness last. Every man offers friend, neighbor, and stranger a cup of the cheering spirit. One booth in three is a saké stand, and pyramids of straw-covered saké tubs stand before every tea-house. This saké, or rice brandy, tastes and looks like the weakest sherry, although it scents the air with alcoholic fumes. Made everywhere in Japan, the saké distilled from the rice of the broad Osaka plain is most esteemed by connoisseurs for a peculiarly delicate flavor. As it is the one liquor that does not improve with age, the newest is the best, and is kept in wooden tubs closed with spigots, and drawn off into open-mouthed porcelain bottles, which are set in hot water if warm saké is desired. The Japanese drink it from little shallow porcelain or lacquer cups that hold barely a tablespoonful, but by repetition they imbibe pints. Its first effect is to loosen the tongue and limber the joints; its second to turn the whole body a flaming red.

Mukojima’s carnival rivals the saturnalia of the ancients. This spring revel affords another resemblance between this æsthetic people and the old Romans, and one half expects to find a flower-crowned statue of Bacchus in some lovely little landscape garden beside the Mukojima. Men dance like satyrs, cup and gourd in hand, or, extending a hand, make orations to the crowd—natural actors, orators, and pantomimists every one of them. But, with all this intoxication, only glee and affection manifest themselves. No fighting, no rowdyism, no rough words accompany the spring saturnalia; and the laughter is so infectious, the antics and figures so comical, that even sober people seem to have tasted of the insane cup. At night lanterns swing from all the rows of tea-houses, booths, and fairy branches, and interminable Japanese dinners are eaten, with beautiful maiko and geisha posing and gliding, twanging the samisen and tsuzumi drums, their kimonos embroidered with cherry blossoms, hair-pins, and coronals of blossoms set in the butterfly loops of blue-black hair. Then the rain comes, the petals fall, and those snow storms not from the skies whiten the ground.

IRIS GARDENS AT HORI KIRI

For a week in June, jinrikishas spin up this leafy tunnel to the iris fêtes at Hori Kiri, where in ponds and trenches grow acres of such fleur-de-lis as no Bourbon ever knew. Compared with the cherry-blossom carnival, this festival is a quiet and decorous garden party, where summer-houses, hills, lakes, armies of royal flowers, and groups of visitors seem to be consciously arranging themselves for decorative effects.

After the season opens, flower festivals crowd one another, and the miracles of Japanese floriculture presently exhaust the capacity of wonder. One of the most superb of their productions is the botan, or tree peony, whose fringed and silken flowers, as large as dinner-plates, show all delicate rose and lilac shades, a red that is almost black, and cream, pale yellow, straw color, and salmon hues of marvellous beauty. At the Ikegami temples, the Nichiren priests display with pride their botan, now three hundred years old, whose solid trunk and wrinkled bark uphold a multitude of stately blossoms. Azaleas, fire-red, snow-white, salmon-pink, and lilac, crowd every garden, and the mountains and wild river-banks are all ablaze with them in May.

Then, also, the wistaria, the fuji, is in bloom, and at the Kameido temple makes an eighth wonder of the world. Every householder has his wistaria trellis, generally reaching out as a canopy over some inlet, or, as at Kameido, forming the roofs of the open-air tea-houses edging the lake. The mat of leaves and blossoms overhead casts thick, cool shadows, and the long, pendent purple and white flowers are reflected in the water. Blossoms two and even three feet long are common, and only a great swaying tassel four feet in length draws a “Naruhodo!” (wonderful) from the connoisseurs. Whole families come to spend the day on the borders of the little lake, sipping amber tea, tossing mochi to the lazy goldfish, or sitting in picturesque groups on the low platforms under the canopies of flowers fluttering with poems and lanterns. The temple is ancient, and the grounds are full of tiny shrines, stone lanterns, tablets, and images, and dwarfed and curiously trained pine trees, with a high, hump-backed little bridge, over which, in the old days, only priests and grandees might walk. Golden carp, venerable old fellows, three or four feet in length, show an orange nose now and then above the surface of the pond. The people call these pets by clapping their hands, and the golden gourmands swim from one horn of plenty, filled with mochi, or rice-cakes, with which they are fed, to another. At Kasukabe, on the Oshukaido, north-east of Tokio, is the most famous wistaria in the empire. The vine is five hundred years old, with pendent blossoms over fifty inches long, and trellises covering a space of four thousand feet, and thither poets and pilgrims reverently go.

In August occurs the one great lotus show now seen in Tokio, when the lake below Uyéno Park shows acres of bluish-green plates of leaves starred with pink and white blossoms, and the enchanted beholder looks down from the bridges and tea-houses of the little islands straight into the heart of the great flowers. The castle moats no longer show their acres of lotus, and the mimic salutes no longer ring around the citadel, as when those myriad blossoms of Buddha opened with a gentle noise under the first warm rays of the sun. There is a lovely lotus-pond back of the Shiba pagoda, just seen as the jinrikisha whirls along the shady avenue skirting it, but the lotus of the moats was the summer glory of Tokio. The flower was not alone to blame for malarial exhalations, as the contest still rages between the two sides of the city, as to whether the vapors from the moats, or those from the exposed mud flats and made ground of the Tsukiji section, are most pernicious.

AT KAMEIDO

The festival of the kiku, or chrysanthemum, in autumn, decks the whole empire with red, white, and yellow flowers. The sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum is the imperial or government crest; and the Emperor’s birthday, the third of November, coming in the height of the season, is made a gala-day in every province, and the occasion of gorgeous flower shows. The Western mind is filled with envy to discover that the wide-spreading, spicy flowers selling here for a few coppers each, cost as many dollars under new names across the water. Dango-zaka, dismissed with a line in the guide-book, is more picturesquely Japanese in autumn than any other suburb of Tokio. A community of florists tend, prune, dwarf, and cultivate their chrysanthemum plants in obscurity until the blossoming time makes Dango-zaka a gay fair. The unique productions of their gardens are set pieces of flowers on a gigantic scale. Under matted sheds, which are so many temporary stages without footlights, groups with life-sized figures are arranged, whose faces and hands are of wax or composition, but whose clothes, the accessories, and scenery are made of living flowers, trained so closely over a framework that the mechanism is not even suspected. The plants forming the flower-pieces are taken up with all their roots, wrapped in straw and cloths, propped up inside the skeleton framework, and watered every day. The flowers, drawn to the outside and woven into place, produce a solid surface of color, and are shaded with the most natural effects. The tableaux represent scenes from history and legend, and from the latest plays, or even illustrate the last emotional crime of the day. Here are seen whole mountain-sides of flowers, with water-falls of white blossoms spreading into floral streams; and chrysanthemum women leading chrysanthemum horses, ridden by chrysanthemum men across chrysanthemum bridges. Gigantic flowers, microscopic flowers, plants of a single blossom, and single plants of two hundred blossoms, have bamboo tents to themselves. Touters invite one to enter, proprietors chant the story of their pictures, and the side-show, the juggler, the fakir, and the peddler make the bannered and lanterned lanes a gay and innocent Babel. All classes visit Dango-zaka, and wander together up and down its one steep street, and in and out of the maze of gardens, paying a copper or two at each gate-way. Giants and saintly images forty and fifty feet high are enshrined in mat pavilions as lofty as temples, and to these marvellous chrysanthemum creatures the phonograph has lately added its wonders.

IN DANGO-ZAKA STREET

The Japanese listen politely when foreigners tell that they have seen chrysanthemums just as large in America. Mere size is not all that they attempt, since these wizard gardeners can easily spread the petals to any diameter they fancy; grow the chrysanthemum on a stem six feet or nine feet high as easily as dwarf it to a blooming mite two inches tall, growing in a thimble-pot. Every season, some new fantasy in petals is presented, and the foliage of the chrysanthemum is as carefully considered as the blossom in Japan. With one question about the green leaves adorning the stem of the foreign chrysanthemum, Dango-zaka people can silence the braggart barbarian, who usually has to admit that no one thinks of the foliage in the West, and that he himself never noticed it before. The unkempt foliage of Chinese and Occidental chrysanthemums would not be tolerated in a Japanese flower show, where the leaves of the plant must be distributed, the composition balanced according to the rules of flower arrangement—that art beyond all arts, the last to be expounded to the Philistines, who consider the biggest bunch the best bouquet, and for a last barbaric touch introduce milliners’ bows of aniline-dyed ribbons to their monstrosities in floral arrangement. The touch of Western vulgarization is complete when the poetic and descriptive names of Japanese chrysanthemums are changed to suit the Western taste. The lovely white “Frozen Moonlight,” “Fuji’s Snows,” “Dashing Spray,” “Moonlit Waves,” and “Hoar Frost” become “the Mrs. John Smith” or “the Mrs. Peter Brown.” The coolie, who draws the visitor’s jinrikisha, is as voluble over the flowers as any of his patrons, and quite as discriminating an admirer. Instead of stopping to rest after his long pull to that hilly suburb, he follows his passenger, pointing out beauties and marvels, approving and exclaiming with contagious enthusiasm.

TEA-BLOSSOMS

In November, with the brilliant maple-leaves, the floral year ends. The coquette sends her lover a leaf or branch of maple to signify that, like it, her love has changed. Both the tea-plant and camellia are in bloom, but there is no rejoicing in their honor, and flower-worshippers count the weeks until the plum shall bloom again.

CHAPTER IX
JAPANESE HOSPITALITIES

Among Japanese virtues stands hospitality, but, until the adoption of foreign dress and customs by the court nobles, no Japanese allowed his wife to receive general visitors, or entertain mixed companies. The Japanese is, consequently, a born club-man, and makes the club-house a home. The Rokumeikwan, or Tokio Nobles’ Club, is the most distinguished of these corporations. Its president is an imperial prince, and its members are diplomats, nobles, officials, rich citizens, and resident foreigners. The exquisite houses and gardens of the smaller, purely Japanese clubs, are perfect specimens of native architecture, decoration, and landscape gardening. By an arrangement of sliding screens, the houses themselves may afford one large room or be divided into many small ones, besides the tiny boxes in which are celebrated the rites of cha no yu, or ceremonial tea.

Their elaborate dinners, lasting for hours, with jugglers, dancers, and musicians between the courses, are very costly. Rich men display a Russian prodigality in entertaining, which was even greater in feudal times. A day or two after arriving in Japan it was my good-fortune to be a guest at one of these unique entertainments, given at the Koyokwan, or Maple Leaf Club-house, on the hill-side above the Shiba temples. We arrived at three o’clock, and were met at the door by a group of pretty nesans, or maids of the house, who, taking off our hats and shoes, led us, stocking-footed, down a shining corridor and up-stairs to a long, low room, usually divided into three by screens of dull gold paper. One whole side of this beautiful apartment was open to the garden beyond a railed balcony of polished cedar, and the view, across the maple-trees and dense groves of Shiba, to the waters of the Bay was enchanting. The decorations of the club-house repeat the maples that fill the grounds. The wall screens are painted with delicate branches, the ramma, or panels above the screens, are carved with them, and in the outer wall and balcony-rail are leaf-shaped openings. The dresses of the pretty nesans, the crape cushions on the floor, the porcelain and lacquer dishes, the saké bottles and their carved stands, the fans and bon-bons, all display the maple-leaf. In the tokonoma, or raised recess where the flower-vase and kakemono, or scroll picture, are displayed, and that small dais upon which the Emperor would sit if he ever came to the house, hung a shadowy painting, with a single flower in a bronze vase.

Before each guest were set the tabako bon, a tray holding a tiny hibachi with live coals lying in a cone of ashes, and a section of bamboo stem for an ash-receiver. Then came the tea and sweetmeats, inevitable prelude to all good cheer. Next the nesans set in front of each guest an ozen, or table, not four inches in height, on which stood a covered lacquered bowl containing the first course, a tiny cup of soy, or piquant bean sauce, in which to dip morsels of food, and a long envelope containing a pair of white pine chopsticks. The master of the feast broke apart his chopsticks, which were whittled in one piece and split apart for only half their length, to show that they were unused, and began a nimble play with them. In his fingers they were enchanted wands, and did his bidding promptly; in ours they wobbled, made x’s in the air, and deposited morsels in our laps and upon the mats alternately. The nesans giggled, and the host almost forgot his Japanese decorum, but the company patiently taught us how to brace one chopstick firmly in the angle of the thumb and against the third finger. That stick is immovable, and the other, held like a pen with the thumb and first and second fingers, plays upon it, holding and letting go with a sureness and lightness hardly attained with any other implements. The supreme test of one’s skill is to lift and hold an egg, the round surface making a perfect balance and firm hold necessary, while too much force applied would cause disasters.

FIG. 1

FIG. 2

FIG. 3

Innumerable courses of dainty dishes followed, accompanied by cups of hot saké, which our host taught us to drink as healths, offered by each one of the company to the others in turn, rinsing, offering, filling, and raising the cup to the forehead in salutation, and emptying it in three prescribed sips. Custom even requires one to offer a health to the nesans, which they receive with a modest and charming grace.

Midway in the feast three charming girls in dark crape kimonos, strewn with bright maple-leaves, slipped the screens aside and knelt on the mats with the koto, samisen, and tsuzumi drum, on which they played a prelude of sad, slow airs. Then the gilded panels disclosed a troop of dazzling maiko in soft blue kimonos brocaded with brilliant maple-leaves and broad obis of gold brocade, the loops of their blue-black hair thrust full of golden flowers, and waving gold fans painted with gay maples. To the melancholy accompaniment of the geisha, they danced the song of the maple-leaf in measures that were only a slow gliding and changing from one perfect pose to another. Watching these radiant creatures in their graceful movements, we were even deaf to the soft booming of the temple bells at the sunset hour, and the answering croak of the mighty ravens.

These maiko and geisha, professional dancers and singers, are necessary to any entertainment, and are trained to amuse and charm the guests with their accomplishments, their wit, and sparkling conversation; lending that attraction, brightness, and charm to social life, which wives and daughters are permitted to do in the Occident. The maiko dances as soon as she is old enough to be taught the figures and to chant the poems which explain them; and when she begins to fade, she dons the soberer attire of the geisha, and, sitting on the mats, plays the accompaniments for her successors and pupils. Until this modern era, the geisha were the most highly educated of Japanese women, and many of them made brilliant marriages.

Long before the beautiful band had finished their poem and dance of the four seasons, twilight had fallen. Andons, or saucers of oil, burning on high stands inside square paper lantern frames, made Rembrandtesque effects. Everything was lost in shadow but the figures of the maiko moving over the shining mats. One tiny girl of thirteen, belonging to the house, slipped in and out with a bronze box and snuffers, and, kneeling before the andons, opened the paper doors to nip off bits of the wicks. The child, a miniature beauty, was grace itself, gentle and shy as a kitten, blushing and quaintly bowing when addressed.

It was six hours after the entrance of the tabako bons before the guests rose to depart. All the troop of maidens escorted us to the door, and after endless bows and farewells, sat on the mats in matchless tableaux, their sweet sayonaras ringing after us as our jinrikishas whirled us down the dark avenues of Shiba.

Cha no yu might well be a religious rite, from the reverence with which it is regarded by the Japanese, and a knowledge of its forms is part of the education of a member of the highest classes. Masters teach its minute and tedious forms, and schools of cha no yu, like the sects of a great faith, divide and differ. The cha no yu ceremony is hedged round with the most awesome, elaborate, and exalted etiquette of any custom in polite Japanese life. Weddings or funerals are simple affairs by comparison. The cha no yu is a complication of all social usages, and was perfected in the sixteenth century, when it was given its vogue by the Shogun Hideyoshi. Before that it had been the diversion of imperial abbots, monarchs retired from business, and other idle and secluded occupants of the charming villas and monasteries around Kioto. Hideyoshi, the Taiko, saw in its precise forms, endless rules, minutiæ, and stilted conventionalities a means of keeping his daimios from conspiracies and quarrels when they came together. It was an age of buckram and behavior, when solemnity constituted the first rule of politeness. Tea drinking was no trivial incident, and time evidently had no value. The daimios soon invested the ceremony with so much luxury and extravagance that Hideyoshi issued sumptuary laws, and the greatest simplicity in accessories was enjoined. The bowls in which the tea was made had to be of the plainest earthen-ware, but the votaries evaded the edict by seeking out the oldest Chinese or Korean bowls, or those made by some celebrated potter. Tea-rooms were restricted to a certain size—six feet square; the entrance became a mere trap not three feet high; no servants were permitted to assist the host, and only four guests might take part in the six-hour or all-day-long ceremony. The places of the guests on the mats, with relation to the host, the door, and the tokonoma, or recess, were strictly defined. Even the conversation was ordered, the objects in the tokonoma were to be asked about at certain times, and at certain other times the tea-bowl and its accompaniments were gravely discussed. Not to speak of them at all would be as great an evidence of ill-breeding as to refer to them at the wrong time.

The masters of cha no yu were revered above scholars and poets. They became the friends and intimates of Emperors and Shoguns, were enriched and ennobled, and their descendants receive honors to this day. Of the great schools and methods those of Senké, Yabunouchi, and Musanokoji adhere most closely to the original forms. Their first great difference is in the use of the inward or the outward sweep of the hand in touching or lifting the utensils. Upon this distinction the dilettanti separated, and the variations of the many schools of to-day arose from the original disagreement. To get some insight into a curious phase of Japanese social life, I took lessons in cha no yu of Matsuda, an eminent master of the art, presiding over the ceremonial tea-rooms of the Hoishigaoka club-house in Tokio.

There could be no more charming place in which to study the etiquette of tea drinking, and the master was one of those mellow, gentle, gracious men of old Japan, who are the perfect flower of generations of culture and refinement in that most æsthetic country of the world. In the afternoon and evening the Hoishigaoka, on the apex of Sanno hill, is the resort of the nobles, scholars, and literary men, who compose its membership, but in the morning hours, it is all dappled shadow and quiet. The master was much pleased at having four foreign pupils, and all the hill-side took an interest in our visits. We followed the etiquette strictly, first taking off our shoes—for one would as soon think of walking hob-nailed across a piano-top, as of marring the polished woods of Japanese corridors, or the fine, soft mats of their rooms with heel-marks—and sitting on our heels, as long as our unaccustomed and protesting muscles and tendons permitted.

THE NESANS AT THE HOISHIGAOKA

First, bringing in the basket of selected charcoal, with its pretty twigs of charred azalea coated with lime, Matsuda replenished the fire in the square hearth in the floor, dusted the edges with an eagle’s feather, and dropped incense on the coals. Then he placed the iron kettle, filled with fresh water from a porcelain jar, over the coals, and showed us how to fold the square of purple silk and wipe each article of the tea-service, how to scald the bowl, and to rinse the bamboo whisk. For cha no yu, tea-leaves are pounded to a fine powder, one, two, or three spoonfuls of this green flour being put in the bowl, as the guests may prefer a weak or a strong decoction. Boiling water is poured on the powder, and the mixture beaten to a froth with the bamboo whisk. This thick, green gruel, a real purée of tea, is drank as a loving-cup in the usu cha ceremony, each one taking three sips, wiping the edge of the bowl, and passing it to his neighbor. The measures and sips are so exact that the last one drains the bowl. Made from the finest leaves, this beverage is so strong that a prolonged course of it would shatter any but Japanese nerves.

MATSUDA, THE MASTER OF CHA NO YU

It is in the precise management of each implement, in each position of the fingers, in the deliberation and certainty of each movement, that the art of cha no yu lies, and its practice must be kept up throughout the lifetime of a devotee. Even with all the foreign fashions, the old ceremonial rites are as much in vogue with the upper classes as ever, and the youth of both sexes are carefully trained in their forms.

Much less pretentious and formal are the eel dinners with which Japanese hosts sometimes delight their foreign friends, as well as those of their own nationality. Even Sir Edwin Arnold has celebrated the delights of eels and rice at the Golden Koi, and there are other houses where the delicious dish may be enjoyed. When one enters such a tea-house, he is led to a tank of squirming fresh-water eels, and in all seriousness bidden to point out the object of his preference. Uncertain as the lottery seems, the cook, who stands by with a long knife in hand, quickly understands the choice made, and seizing the wriggling victim, carries it off to some sacrificial block in the kitchen. An eel dinner begins with eel-soup, and black eels and white eels succeed one another in as many relays as one may demand. The fish are cut in short sections, split and flattened, and broiled over charcoal fires. Black eels, so called, are a rich dark brown in reality, and the color is given them by dipping them in soy before broiling; and white eels are the bits broiled without sauces. Laid across bowls of snowy rice, the eels make as pretty a dish as can be served one, and many foreigners besides the appreciative English poet have paid tribute to their excellence. An eel dinner in a river-bank tea-house, with a juggler or a few maiko to enliven the waits between the courses, is most delightful of Tokio feasts.

CHAPTER X
THE JAPANESE THEATRE

“Saturated with the refinements of an old civilization,” as Dr. Dresser says, and possessing all other arts in perfection, it is not surprising that the Japanese drama should be so well worthy of its people. The theatre has reached its present development slowly and with difficulty. Caste distinctions hindered its rise, actors ranking next the eta, or outcast class in feudal days, and the play-houses of such degraded beings lying under ban. Only the middle and lower classes patronized them, nobles never attending any public exhibitions, and all women being excluded.

In the golden age of the Tokugawas the drama began to win recognition; theatres were built by the Shogun; the marionette shows, the first departure from the No Kagura, gave way to living actors and realism succeeded. In the great social upheaval and rearrangement of classes following the Restoration, actors rose a little in social esteem and gained some rights of citizenship. But another quarter of a century will hardly rank the dramatic with the other arts and honor its interpreters. Noblemen now attend the theatre, but actors never receive an invitation to their clubs. A few years since, Tokio founded an association for the improvement of the theatre, and the development of the histrionic art of the country in its own distinctive way. Viscount Hijikata and Viscount Kawawa were elected president and vice-president of this Engei Kyokai, but little is known of its actual work.

Instead of farce or recitative prologue preceding the play, come one or two acts of classic pantomime or character dance, or an interlude of this kind in the middle of the drama. These classic pantomimes resemble the No Kagura simplified.

This No dance, or lyric drama, is the dramatic form current before the seventeenth century. Bordering on the religious, it suggests the Greek drama, and the passion and miracle plays of mediæval Europe. Originally, the No was the pantomime festival dance of the Shinto temples, fabled to have been first performed by Suzume before the cave of the Sun Goddess. The sacred dance is still a temple ceremonial, and the dances of the Shinto priestesses at Nikko and Nara are famous. In time the No became the entertainment of honor in the yashikis of the great, and princes and nobles took part in the solemn measures when greater princes were their guests. To the slow and stately movements of the dancers, and their play with fan and bells, dialogue was added, and an exaggeration of detail and etiquette.

The No is wholly artificial, the movements of the actors being as stiff, stilted, and measured as the classic idiom in which the dialogue is spoken, and the ancient and obsolete ideographs which set forth the synopsis of the action. Confined to the yashikis and monasteries, the No was the entertainment of the upper classes, who alone could understand its involved and lofty diction and intricate symbolism. While the bare arguments of plays and dances are as familiar as fairy tales or folk-lore, only scholars of great attainments can read their actual lines, and the full translation of a No programme for the Duke of Edinburgh, on his visit to Japan, busied the interpreters of the British Legation for days, with the aid of all the old native poets and scholars in Tokio.

The No is a trilogy, occupying four or five hours of three successive days. The first set of scenes is to propitiate the gods; the second to terrify evil spirits and punish the wicked; and the third to glorify the good, beautiful, and pleasant. The dramatis personæ are gods, goddesses, demons, priests, warriors, and heroes of early legend and history, and much of the action is allegorical. By a long gallery at the left the actors approach the elevated pavilion or platform of the stage, which is without curtain or scenery, and almost without properties. The audience sits upon the matted area surrounding the three sides of the stage. Flute, drum, and pipes play continuously, and a row of men in old ceremonial dress sit statuesque at one side of the stage, chanting and wailing the explanatory chorus throughout the performance. In the great scenes the actors wear masks of thin lacquered or gilded wood, and valuable collections of such ancient dance masks are preserved in temples and yashikis. The costuming is superb, the old brocade and cloth-of-gold garments showing the court costumes of centuries ago, and the great families and monasteries hold their ancient No costumes as chiefest treasures.

The actors enter at a gait that out-struts the most exaggerated stage stride ever seen, the body held rigid as a statue, and the foot, never wholly lifted, sliding slowly along the polished floor. These buckram figures, moving with the solemnity of condemned men, utter their lines like automata, not a muscle nor an eyelash moving, nor a flicker of expression crossing the unmasked countenance. Their tones are unspeakably distressing, nasal, high-pitched, falsetto sounds, and many performers have ruined and lost their voices, and even burst blood-vessels, in the long-continued, unnatural strain of their recitatives. The children who take part equal the oldest members in their gravity and woodenness. In some delightful scenes the demons, with hideous masks and abundant wigs of long, red-silk hair, spread deliberate and conventional terror among the buckram grandees, and, stamping the stage wildly, leaping and whirling, relieve the long-drawn seriousness of the trilogy. It is only when the performers are without masks that the scene is recognized as intentionally a light and amusing farce, while the roars of the audience are elicited by stately, ponderous, and time-honored puns, and plays upon words that a foreigner cannot appreciate.

Fine representations of the No may be seen at the Koyokwan club-house in Tokio, and in the audiences one beholds all the bureaucracy, the court circles, and a gathering of aristocratic families not elsewhere to be encountered.

The existing theatre and the legitimate drama are not yet three centuries old, and the name shibai, meaning turf places, or grass plot, implies the same evolution from out-door representations that the occidental drama had. There is no Shakespeare, nor Corneille, nor, indeed, any famous dramatist, whose works survive from an earlier day, to align the stage with literature and make its history. Authorship is rarely connected with the plays, and authors’ royalties are unknown. Many of the novels of Baku have been dramatized, but most often anonymously. Plays are usually written in the simpler hirakana, or running characters, in which light romances and books for women are written, and this fact alone shows the esteem in which dramatic literature is held. Incidents in history, lives of warriors, heroes, and saints furnish themes for the drama, and all the common legends and fairy tales are put upon the stage. That great classic, the affecting history of the “Forty-seven Ronins,” is always popular, and the crack-brained heroisms of the days of chivalry fire the Japanese heart notwithstanding its passion for the foreign and modern. The trials, tortures, and miracles of the early days of Buddhism, and the warlike histories of the great feudal houses, furnish tragedies and sensational and spectacular plays without end. There are, also, romantic melodramas, emotional dramas, and comedies of delicious humor and satire.

New plays, while rare, are not theatrical events, and first nights by no means indicate success or failure. The play is tried on the audience, changed, cut, and altered as actors, manager, scene-painter, carpenter, and patrons desire, without consideration of the author’s rights or feelings.

I once asked a great star who had written his play.

“I do not understand,” said the tragedian; and a bystander explained that the manager had cut reports of a theft, a murder, and a shipwreck from a newspaper, and, discussing them with the star, evolved the outlines of a connected play and decided on the principal scenes and effects. A hack writer was then called in, who, under dictation, shaped the plot and divided it into scenes. The managerial council elaborated it further, allotting the parts, and the star then composed his lines to suit himself. In rehearsal the play was rounded, the diction altered, and each actor directed to write out his own part, after which a full transcript was made for the prompter.

As to the authorship of the play of the “Forty-seven Ronins,” he said: “That is our country’s history. We all know the story of their lives and glorious deaths, and many novelists and poets have written of them.”

“But who made it into a drama?”

“Oh, every theatre has its own way of representing the different scenes, although the great facts are historical and cannot be misrepresented, now that the Tokugawa’s ban against the play is removed. Danjiro plays it in one way, and other actors have their versions, but none of them play it the same at every engagement, nor repeat just the same acts on every day of an engagement.”

With dramatic authorship so vague and uncertain, the origin or author of any play is far to seek. Revivals and rotations of the old favorites constitute a manager’s idea of attractions, a new scene or two, a novel feature, and some local picture or allusion being enough to satisfy the most blasé patron. No accurate libretto nor printed book of the play can thus exist, but the illustrated programmes give a pictorial outline of it—a veritable impressionist sketch, noting its salient features, and leaving all details to time and imagination. There are no dramatic unities, no three-act or five-act limitations, and no hampering laws of verse and rhythm. An orchestra and half-concealed chorus explains, heralds, and lauds the action, a survival of the No gradually disappearing with other things before the demand for shorter hours and briefer plays.

Women do not appear on the Japanese stage, female parts being played by men, who often make these roles their specialty, cultivating and using their voices always in a thin, high falsetto. The make-up, the voices, gait, action, and manner of some of these actors are wonderful, and Genoske, the greatest impersonator of female characters, when dressed for the part of some noble heroine, is an ideal beauty of the delicate, aristocratic type. Outside the great theatres, in plays and side-show entertainments, that may be compared with our dime museums, a woman is occasionally found on the stage; and, a few years ago, a Tokio manager amazed the town with the performances of a company made up entirely of women. In the interludes, where jugglers and acrobats entertain the audience, women are sometimes seen, and, in time, plays will be cast for both sexes, and female stars will shine. The infant prodigy is known to the Japanese stage, and in some wonderfully pretty and affecting scenes in the “Ronins” little children utter their lines and go through their parts with great naturalness.

The great theatre of Tokio is the Shintomiza, a long, gabled building, ornamented above the row of entrance doors by pictures of scenes from the play. The street is lined with tea-houses, or restaurants, for a play is not a hap-hazard two-hour after-dinner incident. A man goes for the day, carefully making up his theatre party beforehand, the plays generally beginning at eleven o’clock in the morning, and ending at eight or nine in the evening. After a short run the hours during which the great actors appear and the great stage effects are made become known, and the spectator may time his visit accordingly. It is bad form for a Japanese of position to go to the theatre door, pay for a box, and enter it. He must send a servant, at least a day beforehand, to one of the tea-houses near the theatre to engage its attentions for the day, and through its agency secure a box. The tea-house people are the ticket speculators in league with the box-office. At the proper hour, the party assemble at the tea-house, and give orders for the lunch, dinner, and frequent teas to be served during the day. The tea-house attendants conduct them to their box, and at each intermission come to see what is wanted, bringing in at the dinner-hour the large lacquer chow boxes with their courses of viands, that their patrons may dine comfortably where they sit. Everybody smokes, and each box has its little tabako bon, with its cone of glowing coals to light the tiny pipes, the rat-tat of the pipes, as the ashes are knocked out, often making a chorus to the action.

Theatre buildings are light and flimsy wooden structures, with straw-mats and matting everywhere. They are all alike—a square auditorium with a sloping floor, a single low gallery, and a stage the full width of the house. The floor space is divided into so-called boxes by low railings, that serve as bridges for the occupants to pass in and out. Visitors always sit on the floor, each box being six feet square and designed for four people. The gallery has one row of boxes at either side, several rows facing the stage, and behind them a pen, where the multitude stand and listen, paying one or two coppers for each act. This gallery of the gods is called the “deaf seat,” but the deaf hear well enough to be vociferous. The theatre-goer takes a check for his shoes, and racks hanging full of wooden clogs are the ornaments of the foyer. Within the building are booths for the sale of fruits, tea, sweets, tobacco, toys, hair-pins, photographs of the stars, and other notions, so that a box-party need not leave the house in pursuit of any creature comforts. The ventilation is too good, and the light and open construction invites wintry draughts.

Charges are made in detail, and the following is one bill presented for a party of seven at a Yokohama theatre. No charge was made for the two family servants, who came and went at will.

Received payment,

Fukkuya.

There is always a drop-curtain, generally ornamented with a gigantic character or solitary symbol, and often nowadays covered with picturesque advertisements. Formerly, so much of the play was given by day that no footlights and few lamps were used. In those good old days a black-shrouded mute hovered about each actor after dark, holding out a candle at the end of a long stick to illuminate his features, that the audience might see the fine play of expression. With the adoption of kerosene the stage was sufficiently lighted, and the Shintomiza has a full row of footlights, while the use of electricity will soon be general. The black mutes act as “supers” throughout all plays where changes are made or properties manœuvred while the curtain is up.

The actors enter the stage by two long, raised walks through the auditorium, so that they seem to come from without. These raised walks, on a level with the stage and the heads of the spectators in the floor boxes, are called the hana michi, or flower-walks, and as a popular actor advances his way is strewn with flowers. The exits are sometimes by the hana michi and sometimes by the wings, according to the scene.

The miniature scale of things Japanese makes it possible to fill a real scene with life-like details. The stage is always large enough for three or four actual houses to be set as a front. The hana michi is sufficiently broad for jinrikishas, kagos, and pack-horses, and with the illumination of daylight the unreality of the picture vanishes, and the spectator seems to be looking from some tea-house balcony on an every-day street scene. Garden, forest, and landscape effects are made by using potted trees, and shrubs uprooted for transplanting. The ever-ready bamboo is at hand and the tall dragon-grass, and the scene-painters produce extraordinary illusions in the backgrounds and wings. Some of the finest stage pictures I have seen were in Japan, and its stage ghosts, demons, and goblins would be impossible elsewhere. In the play of “Honest Sebi” there was a murder scene in a bamboo grove in a rainy twilight that neither Henry Irving nor Jules Claretie could have surpassed; and in “The Vampire Cat of the Nabeshima,” or “The Enchanted Cat of the Tokaido,” a beautiful young woman changed, before the eyes of the audience, to a hideous monster, with a celerity more ghastly than that which transforms Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde.

Japanese theatres use the revolving stage, which has been their original and unique possession for two centuries. A section of the stage flooring, twenty or thirty feet in diameter, revolves like a railway turn-table, on lignum-vitæ wheels, moved by coolies below stairs, who put their shoulders to projecting bars, as with the silk-press. The wings come to the edge of this circle, and at a signal a whole house whirls around and shows its other rooms or its garden. Sometimes the coolies turn too quickly, and the actors are rolled out of sight gesticulating and shouting. The scenery is painted on wings that draw aside, or on flies hoisted overhead. Curiously enough, the signal for opening the curtain is the same as that used at the Comédie Française—three blows on the floor with a big stick.

The Japanese theatre of to-day is given over to realism and the natural school, and Jefferson and Coquelin are not more quietly, easily, and entirely the characters they assume than Danjiro, their Japanese fellow-Thespian. The play is a transcript of actual life, and everything moves in an every-day way, though Japanese manners and customs often seem stilted, artificial, and unnatural to the brusque Occidental, with his direct and brutally practical etiquette. Pathos is always deep and long drawn out, and the last tear is extracted from the eyes of audiences quick to respond to emotional appeals. Tragedies are very tragic and murders very sanguinary. Death is generally accomplished by edged tools, and the antics of the fencers, the wonderful endurance of the hacked victims, and the streams of red paint and red silk ravellings that ooze forth delight the audiences, who shout and shriek their “Ya! Ya!” and “Yeh! Yeh!” The swordsmen are often acrobats and jugglers in disguise, who enliven the extended slaughters with thrilling tours de force. Seppuku, the honorable death, or hara-kiri as it is most commonly known, is always received with breathless interest and wild applause, and the self-disembowelling of the hero, with a long last oration, still seems to the Japanese something fine and heroic and the most complete revenge upon an insulting foe.

The detail and minuteness with which everything is explained, and the endless etiquette and circumlocution, are thoroughly Japanese. Little is left to the imagination in their dramatic art, and an ordinary play has more sub-plots and characters than one of Dickens’s novels. With the rapid adoption of new customs, the theatre is becoming the only conserver of the old life and manners.

If the Japanese stage has its blood-and-thunder and its tank drama, it has also its millinery play. The costumes alone are often worth going to see, and the managers announce the appearance of historic brocades and armor worthy of museums. Danjiro owns and wears a sacred coat of mail that belonged to one of the Ronins, and his appearance in it is the signal for the maddest applause. Such treasures of costume and of armor are bequeathed from father to son, and from retiring star to favorite pupil. As tokens of high approval rich and noble patrons send to actors rare costumes, swords, pipes, and articles of personal use. Excited spectators even throw such tributes upon the stage. One approving foreigner, seeing the rain of hats, coats, obis, and tobacco-pouches, once tossed his hat down. Later the manager and the actor’s valet returned the hat and asked for ten dollars, as those seeming gifts from the audience were merely pledges or forfeits, to be afterwards redeemed by money under the star’s regular schedule of prices. As protests availed nothing, and the whole house only roared in derision when he said that he had wished Danjiro to keep the battered derby as a souvenir, the enthusiast paid his forfeit.

DANJIRO, THE GREAT ACTOR

The audience is as interesting a study as the players, each little square box being another stage, whereon the picturesque drama of Japanese life is enacted. Trays of tea and sweetmeats and single teapots are constantly supplied to the spectators by attendants, who tread the narrow partition rails between the boxes like acrobats. Whenever the curtain closes there is a swift scurrying of these Ganymedes to the boxes, while the children climb upon the partition rails and the hana michi, or run about the theatre, even romping upon the stage itself, and peeping under the curtain to see what the carpenters are hammering; all with perfect ease and unconsciousness.

Visiting the star in his dressing-room is a simple commercial transaction. The actors make a fixed charge for receiving such visits, deriving a regular income from this source. Danjiro’s dressing-room is high up among the flies back of the Shintomiza stage, with a window looking down upon it, so that he needs no call-boy. He often shouts down to the stage himself, and has the action of the play delayed or hastened, according to his toilet or his humors. Nothing could be more scornful and indifferent than Danjiro’s treatment of the high-priced visitors to his dressing-room. Fulsome flattery, if offered with the florid and elaborate Japanese forms, will mollify him, and the old fellow—eighth idolized Danjiro in succession—will finally offer tea, present a hair-pin to a lady, or write an autograph on a fan in his most captivating stage daimio manner. When making up for a part, the great actor sits on the mat before a large swinging mirror. Except for a character face little disguise is used, as daylight spoils its effect. Three or four meek valets wait upon this spoiled and whimsical old autocrat, and the whole theatre staff attends. The value of his wardrobe, kept in immense covered bamboo baskets, is very great, and its care a serious matter. Part of it was once stolen, and when the whole Tokio police force succeeded in restoring it Danjiro announced that he could never again wear what the touch of a thief had defiled.

Genoske, fourth of his name and line, and Sodanje, a cousin of Danjiro, equally prove the heredity of Japanese genius, and are favorites of the Tokio public. Young actors pay the great stars for the privilege of joining their companies, and studying their methods. Danjiro is said to receive three thousand dollars from the Shintomiza theatre for the year or season, which lasts from early fall until after the cherry blossoms. His connection with the Shintomiza is like that of a sociétaire with the Comédie Française. Yet he plays in other Tokio theatres, has filled engagements in other cities, and everywhere receives from perquisites, fees, and gifts more than the amount of his salary.

The Japanese artist is fully aware of the aid ingenious advertising may lend to genius. Drawing-room engagements do not yet contribute a part of the income of a great actor; but such a one was once brought to drink tea at a foreign house, and obligingly recited from his great roles, and through the interpreter, talked most interestingly to us of his art and stage business. In a few days the native newspapers, the vernacular press, as the British dailies term it, contained accounts of a great entertainment offered this favorite actor by some foreign residents, and the simple afternoon tea of six people was lost to view in the description of the elaborate banquet and attending crowd.

The Government exercises a certain censorship of the stage, as of the press, suppressing an obnoxious play, and arresting manager and company if necessary. No allusions to present political events are allowed, and the authorities permit the expression of no disturbing ideas. The Tokugawas exercised this censorship towards the play of the “Forty-seven Ronins,” because its main argument and many of its scenes reflected too clearly the corrupt practises of the Shogun’s court. Even its name was changed, and, until the Restoration, it was presented as the Chiushingura (Loyal League), and the scenes strayed far from historic fact. Since the new era, managers advertise their representations as most closely following the actual records, and every fresh contribution from historian or antiquarian is availed of.

CHAPTER XI
THE IMPERIAL FAMILY

European sovereigns and reigning families are parvenus compared to the ruler and the imperial house of Japan, which shows an unbroken line from the accession of Jimmu Tenno, the first Emperor in 660 B.C., down to the present son of Heaven, Mutsu Hito, one hundred and twenty-first Emperor of his line.

During the feudal period, the Emperors, virtually prisoners of their vassals, the Shoguns, lived and died within the yellow palace walls of Kioto, knowing nothing of their subjects, and unknown by them. After death, each was deified under a posthumous appellation, and there his history ceased. Too sacred a being to be spoken of by his personal name, at the mention of his title all Japanese make an unconscious reverence even now. When his patronymic was written, it was purposely left incomplete by the omission of one stroke of the writing-brush. In the spoken language, the ruler is the Shujo, the Heika, or the Tenno, while in the written language he is the Tenno, the Kotei, or the Mikado. The Empress is the Kogo in both the spoken and the written language, and the honorific sama follows all of these imperial appellations.

Mutsu Hito, the most significant figure in Japanese history, was born in the Kioto palace, November 3, 1852, and, taught and trained as imperial princes had been before him, succeeded to the throne after the death of his father, February 13, 1867. In the following autumn the Shogun sent in his formal resignation, gave back the supreme power to the rightful ruler, and retired to Osaka. In February, 1868, the Emperor, not yet sixteen years of age, received the foreign envoys in the Kioto palace with uncovered face; then, defeating the rebellious Shogun at Osaka, removed his capital to Yeddo, and chose the name Meiji (enlightenment), to designate the era of his reign.

As seen at the rare court functions, at military reviews, and races, the Emperor is easily the central figure. Taller than the average of his race, and possessing great dignity and majesty, his slow, military step and trailing sword effectually conceal the unequal gait rheumatism sometimes obliges. He wears a trimmed beard, and his features, more decided and strongly marked than is usual with the aristocratic type of Japanese countenance, wear a calm and composure as truly Oriental as imperial. In public he wears the uniform of generalissimo of the army, a heavily-frogged and braided one of dark-blue broad-cloth in winter, and of white duck in summer, with a gold-mounted sword and many decorations. In recognition of the honors and orders conferred upon him by other royalties, the Emperor bestows the cordon and jewel of the princely Order of the Chrysanthemum. The Order of the Rising Sun is given for merit and distinguished services, and its red button is worn by many foreigners as well as natives.

Of late, the Emperor has abandoned his attempts to learn English and German, and relies upon interpreters, but he reads translations of foreign literature with great interest. When he passes through the streets, he is received with silent reverence, an advance guard of police and a body-guard of lancers escorting him. While his own people never shout or cheer, he accepts very graciously the foreign custom, and bows an acknowledgment to the hurrahs that sometimes greet him at Yokohama. While the Emperor has been absorbed in the changing affairs of state during the two decades of his reign, he still seems, in comparison with European sovereigns, to dwell in absolute quiet and seclusion. Often, for weeks together, he remains within the palace grounds, where he has riding courts, archery, and rifle ranges, well-stocked fish-ponds, and every means of amusing himself. Disliking the sea, he has no yacht, a chartered mail-steamer or man-of-war carrying him to naval stations or new fortifications, when the railroad is impracticable. His mountain palaces and remote game preserves he never visits.

Immediately after establishing his court at Yeddo, the boy-Emperor returned to Kioto to wed Haruko, daughter of Ichijo Takada, a kugé, or court noble of the highest rank. The marriage was solemnized by some Shinto ceremony within the temple of the palace, a ceremony so sacred and private that no Japanese even conjectures its form.

The Empress Haruko, born May 29, 1850, was educated in the strictest conventions of old Japan, and taught only the Chinese classics, her own literature and poetic composition, the use of the koto, the forms of cha no yu, needle-work, and the arrangement of flowers—a broad and most liberal education for a maiden even of high degree.

Upon her marriage, an extraordinary life opened before the little Empress, demanding a very unusual activity and study, courage, adaptiveness, and comprehension. She is poetic as well as practical, and her poems are not only traced on imperial screens and kakemono in autograph characters, but several of them have been set to music as well.

Even now, her Majesty is more delicately pretty than her younger sisters, although for years an invalid. She is short in stature, slender, and small, with the long, oval face and refined features of the ideal aristocratic type of Japanese beauty. At her marriage, she shaved her eyebrows, painted two shadowy suggestions of them high up on her forehead, and blackened her teeth, in accordance with Japanese custom; but after a few years, she ceased to disfigure herself in this way. It was an event, in 1873, when she gave her first audience to the envoys’ wives. It cost the court chamberlains months of study to arrange for the appearance of the Emperor and Empress together, to reconcile the pretensions of their suites as to rank and precedence, and to harmonize the Occidental, chivalrous ideas of deference to women with the unflattering estimate of the Orient. When, on the day of the declaration of the new constitution (February 11, 1890), the Emperor and Empress rode side by side in the same state carriage through the streets of Tokio, and when, that night, he offered his arm to lead her to a twin arm-chair in the state dining-hall, a new era was begun in Japanese history.

The Empress has her secretaries and readers, and gives a part of each day to informal audiences. She visits her schools and hospitals, and makes liberal purchases at charity bazaars. She exercises in the saddle within the palace grounds, and drives in a brougham with half-drawn curtains, her men on the box wearing a dark-blue livery with red cords and facings, silver buttons, and cocked hats.

IN THE PALACE GARDENS

One of the two annual imperial garden-parties is given when the chrysanthemums are in bloom, and the other at the time of the cherry blossoms. The etiquette of these is quite simple, although an appearance at one is still equivalent to a presentation at court. A few days before the festivity each guest receives a large chrysanthemum-bordered card: