THE SEVEN HERBS OF AUTUMN.
See Page [302].

HOME LIFE IN TOKYO

BY

JUKICHI INOUYE

WITH
NUMEROUS
ILLUSTRATIONS

TOKYO
1910

PRINTED BY
THE TOKYO PRINTING COMPANY LTD.

PREFACE.

The object of the present work is to give a concise account of the life we lead at home in Tokyo. I am aware that there are already many excellent works on Japan which may be read with great profit; but as their authors are most of them Europeans or Americans, and naturally look at Japanese life and civilisation from an occidental point of view, it occurred to me that notwithstanding the superabundance of books on Japan, a description of Japanese life by a native of the country might not be without interest. I believe it is the first time that such a task has been undertaken by a Japanese, for works in English which I have so far seen written by my countrymen treat of abstruse subjects and do not deign to touch upon such homely matters as are here dealt with.

The information I have endeavoured to convey in these pages is open, I fear, to the charge of scrappiness. It is unavoidable from the very nature of the work, the purpose of which is to select from the wealth of material in hand such matters as are likely to interest the general reader. I make no pretension to completeness or comprehensiveness of treatment.

I may also explain that I have confined myself in these pages to the depiction of life in Tokyo. To attempt to include the various customs that prevail in other parts of the country would to difficult and tedious. I felt that it would add materially to clearness and simplicity if I localised my observations; and it was only natural that Tokyo the capital should be selected for the purpose.

Finally, I would point out that I have made no distinction in the grammatical number of the Japanese words used in this book. It may at times puzzle the reader to find the same words occur, as in Japanese, in both the singular and the plural; but to the Japanese ear the addition of the English plural suffix seems to impair the euphony of Japanese speech.

JUKICHI INOUYE.

Tokyo, Japan,

September. 1910.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
Tokyo the Capital.

The youngest of the capitals—Yedo—The feudal government—Prosperity of Yedo—Its population—The military class—The Restoration—The new government—National reorganisation—Centralisation—Local government—Tokyo the leader of other cities—Struggle between Old and New Japan—The last stronghold of Old Japan.

[—Page 1.]

CHAPTER II.
The Streets of Tokyo.

The area and population of Tokyo—Impression of greater populousness—Street improvements—Narrow streets—Shops and sidewalks—Road-making—Dusty roads—Lamps and street repairs—Drainage—Street-names—House-numbers—Incongruities.

[—Page 12.]

CHAPTER III.
Houses: Exterior.

Name-plates—Block-buildings—Gates—The exposure of houses—Fires—House-breaking—Japanese houses in summer and winter—Storms and earthquakes—House-building—The carpenter—The garden.

[—Page 24.]

CHAPTER IV.
Houses: Interior.

The sizes of rooms—The absence of furniture—Sliding-doors—Verandahs—Tenement and other small houses—Middle-sized dwellings—The porch and anteroom—The parlour—Parlour furniture—The sitting-room—Closets and cupboards—Bed-rooms—The dining-room—Chests of drawers and trunks—The toilet-room—The library—The bath-room—Foot-warmers.

[—Page 40.]

CHAPTER V.
Meals.

Rice—Sake—Wheat and barley—Soy sauce—Mirin—Rice-cooking—Soap—Pickled vegetables—Meal trays—Chopsticks—Breakfast—Clearing and washing—The kitchen—The little hearth—Pots and pans—Other utensils—Boxes and casks—Shelves—The sink and water-supply—The midday meal—The evening meal—Sake-drinking.

[—Page 56.]

CHAPTER VI.
Food.

Japanese diet—Vegetables—Sea-weeds and flowers—Fish—Shell-fish—Crabs and other molluscs—Fowl—Meat—Prepared food—Peculiarities of food—Fruits—The bever—Baked potatoes and cracknel—Confectionery—Reasons for its abundance—Sponge-cake—Glutinous rice and red bean—Kinds of confectionery—Sugar in Japanese confectionery.

[—Page 71.]

CHAPTER VII.
Male Dress.

Japanese and foreign dress—Progress in the latter—Japanese clothes indispensable—Kimono—Cutting out—Making of an unlined dress—Short measure—Extra-sized dresses—Yukata—The lined kimono—The wadded kimono—Under-dress—Underwear—Obi—Haori—The crest—The uncrested haori—Hakama—Socks—How to dress Wearing of socks.

[—Page 82.]

CHAPTER VIII.
Female Dress.

Attempts at Europeanisation—Difference between Japanese and foreign dresses—Expense and inconvenience of foreign dresses—Japanese dresses not to be discarded—How the female dress differs from the male—Underwear and over-band—Haori—Hakama—Obi—How to tie it—The dress-obi—The formal dress—Home-wear—Working clothes—The sameness of form—The girl’s dress—Dress and age.

[—Page 94.]

CHAPTER IX.
Toilet.

Queues—Hair-cutting—Moustaches and beards—Shaving—Women’s coiffure—Children’s hair—“Inverted maidenhair”—Shimada—“Rounded chignon”—Other forms—The lightest coiffure—Bars—Combs—Ornaments round the chignon—Hair-pins—The hair-dresser—The kind of hair esteemed—Lots of complexion—Girls painted—Women’s paint—Blackening of teeth—Shaving of eyebrows—Washing the face—Looking-glasses.

[—Page 107.]

CHAPTER X.
Outdoor Gear.

Boots and shoes versus clogs and sandals—Inconvenience of foreign footgear—Shoes and boots at private houses—Clogs and sandals able to hold their own—How clogs are made—Plain clogs—Matted clogs—Sandals—Straw sandals—Headgear—Woman’s hood—Overcoats and overdresses—Common umbrellas—Better descriptions of umbrellas—Lanterns—Better kinds of lanterns.

[—Page 122.]

CHAPTER XI.
Daily Life.

Busy life at home—Discomforts of early morning—Ablutions—Off to school and office—Smoking—Giving orders—Morning work—Washing—Needlework—The work-box—Japanese way of sewing—Ironing—Remaking clothes—Home duties—Bath—Evening—Early hours.

[—Page 136.]

CHAPTER XII.
Servants.

The servant question—Holidays—Hours of rest—Incessant work—Servants trusted—Relations with their mistresses—Decrease of mutual confidence—Life in the kitchen—Servants’ character—Whence they are recruited—Register-offices—The cook—The housemaid—The lady’s maid—Other female servants—The jinrikisha-man—The student house-boy.

[—Page 150.]

CHAPTER XIII.
Manners.

Decline of etiquette—Politeness and self-restraint—“Swear-words”—Honorifics—Squatting—Kissing—Calls made and received—Rules for behaviour in company—Inconsiderate visitors—Woman’s reserve before strangers—Hospitality—Reticence on family matters.

[—Page 164.]

CHAPTER XIV.
Marriage.

Girls and marriage—Young men—The marriage ceremony—Match-making—Betrothal—The bride’s property—Wedding decorations—The nuptials—Wedding supper—Congratulations—Post-nuptial parties—Japanese style of engagement—The advantages of the go-between system—The go-between as the woman’s deputy—The go-between as mediator—Marriage a civil contract in Japan—No honeymoon—The Japanese attitude towards marriage.

[—Page 176.]

CHAPTER XV.
Family Relations.

The family the unit of society—Adoption—The wife’s family relations—The father—Retirement—The retired father—The mother-in-law—A strong-willed daughter-in-law—Tender relations—Domestic discord—Sisters-in-law—Brothers-in-law—The wife usually forewarned—The husband also handicapped—His burdens—Old Japan’s ideas of wifely duties—The Japanese wife’s qualities—Petticoat government—The wife’s influence.

[—Page 195.]

CHAPTER XVI.
Divorce.

Frequency of divorces—The new Civil Code on marriage and divorce—Conditions of a valid marriage—Invalid marriages—Cohabitation—The wife’s legal position—Her separate property—The rights of the head of the family—Care of the wife’s property—Forms of divorce—Grounds for divorce—Custody of children—No damages against the co-respondent—Breaches of promise of marriage—Few mercenary marriages—Widow-hunting also rare.

[—Page 208.]

CHAPTER XVII.
Children.

Child-life—Love of children—Desire for them—Child-birth—After-birth—Early days—The baby’s food—The “first-eating”—Superstitions connected with infancy—Carrying of babies—Teething—Visits to the local shrine—Toddling—Weaning—The kindergarten and primary school—The girls’ high school—The middle school—The popularity of middle schools—Hitting—Exercises and diversions—Collections.

[—Page 219.]

CHAPTER XVIII.
Funeral.

Unlucky ages—The Japanese cycle—Celebration of ages—Respect for old age—Death—Preparations for the funeral—The wake—The coffin and bier—The funeral procession—The funeral service—Cremation—Gathering the bones—The grave—Prayers for the dead—Return presents—Memorial services—The Shinto funeral.

[—Page 235.]

CHAPTER XIX.
Accomplishments.

Composition—The writing-table—Odes—Songs—The haiku—Chinese poetry—Tea-ceremony—Its complexity—Its utility to women—The flower arrangement—The underlying idea—Its extensive application—The principle of the arrangement—Manipulation of the stalks—Drawing water—Vases—Tray-landscapes—The koto—The samisen—Its form—Its scale—How to play it—The crudity of Japanese music—Its unemotional character.

[—Page 252.]

CHAPTER XX.
Public Amusements.

Pleasures—No-performance—Playgoing—The theatre—Japanese dramas—Gidayu-plays—Actors—A new school of actors—Actresses—Wrestling—Wrestlers—The wrestling booth—The wrestler’s apparel—The Ekoin matches—The umpire—The rules of the ring—The match-days—The story-tellers’ hall—Entertainment at the hall.

[—Page 269.]

CHAPTER XXI.
Feasts and Festivities.

Festivities in the old days—The New Year’s Day—The New Year’s dreams—January—February—The Feast of Dolls—The Equinoctial day—Plum-blossoms—Cherry-blossoms—The flower season—Peach-blossoms—Tree-peonies and wistarias—The Feast of Flags—The Fête of the Yasukuni Shrine—Other fêtes—The Feasts of Tanabata and Lanterns—The river season—Moon-viewing—The Seven Herbs of Autumn—October—The Emperor’s Birthday—Chrysanthemums and maple-leaves—The end of the year.

[—Page 287.]

CHAPTER XXII.
Sports and Games.

Hunting—Horse-racing—Fishing—Outdoor games—Billiards—Sugoroku—Iroha-cards—Ode-cards—Ken—Japanese chess—The moves—Use of prisoners—The game of go—Its principle—Camps—Counting—“Flowers-cards”—Players—How to play—Claims for hands—Claims for combinations made—Reckoning.

[—Page 305.]

ILLUSTRATIONS.

CHAPTER I.
TOKYO THE CAPITAL.

The youngest of the capitals—Yedo—The feudal government—Prosperity of Yedo—Its population—The military class—The Restoration—The new government—National reorganisation—Centralisation—Local government—Tokyo the leader of other cities—Struggle between Old and New Japan—The last stronghold of Old Japan.

TOKYO is the youngest of the great capitals of the world, for it was only in 1868 that the present Emperor of Japan left the old city where his ancestors had for centuries lived in seclusion and made the Shogun’s stronghold his new home and seat of government. It was a politic move; because though the Shogun had already resigned his office and surrendered the absolute authority he had exercised in the government of the country, there were still many among his followers who were unwilling to give up their hereditary offices. Had the Emperor then remained in Kyoto and there established his government, it would have been comparatively easy for these discontented partisans of the Shogun to foment an insurrection in the largest city of the Empire, which might assume serious proportions before it could be quelled, especially in those days when the means of communication and transportation were yet very primitive. Hence, it was decided to remove the central government to the possible hot-bed of disaffection and, by the strong arm of the newly-constituted administration, to nip in the bud all signs of rebellion. And so the Emperor and his Court forsook the city which had been the nominal capital for a thousand years and took up their abode in the great military centre which was known as Yedo; but when the Emperor arrived at the old castle of the Shogun, he gave it the name of Tokyo, or the Eastern Capital, to distinguish it from the late capital, Kyoto, which is on that account also spoken of by the people as Saikyo, or the Western Capital.

But Yedo itself was not very old. Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a renowned warrior, Ota Dokan by name, built a little castle in the village of Yedo. Not long after his death, his family became extinct and others succeeded to the lordship of the little castle. A century later, Tokugawa Iyeyasu, one of the most powerful daimyo, or territorial lords, at the time, became master of the Eight Provinces east of the Hakone Mountains and was on the point of establishing his government at Kamakura, the capital of the first line of Shogun, when he was persuaded by his suzerain, the Taiko Hideyoshi, who is best known to history for his invasion of Korea, to set up his headquarters at Dokan’s castle-town which possessed great strategic advantages over Kamakura. Accordingly, in 1590, Iyeyasu came to the village of Yedo and saw that the castle could be developed into a formidable fortress. At once he set to work rebuilding it on a gigantic scale. Bounded on the north and west by a low line of hills, on the south by the Bay of Yedo, and on the east by marshes, it was in those days of bows and arrows and hand-to-hand fights almost impregnable. Behind the hills lay the wide plain of Musashino, across which no enemy could approach unobserved, while it was equally difficult to make a sudden attack upon the castle from the sea or over the marshes. The castle covered upwards of five hundred acres within its inner walls. The swamp was reclaimed, and merchants, artisans, priests, and men of other crafts and professions were induced by liberal offers to settle in the new city. The reclaimed land soon became the principal merchant quarter.

In 1603, Iyeyasu became Shogun, or military suzerain of the country. The Shogun was appointed by the Emperor, who delegated to him the civil and military government of the land. The Emperor made the appointment nominally of his own will; but in reality he was compelled to confer the title on the most powerful of his subjects. It was to Iyeyasu but a confirmation of the influence he already wielded as the most formidable of all the territorial barons. And thus fortified by the Imperial nomination, he began at once to take measures for the general pacification of the country which had for years been plunged in a terrible civil war. His first step was to consolidate his power; and it was done with such success that the Shogunate remained in his family for two hundred and sixty-five years. This predominance of his family was in a great measure due to his skill in providing against those evils which had wrecked former lines of Shogun. All these dynasties had fallen through coalitions of powerful daimyo in different parts of the country and the consequent inability to cope with insurrections which broke out simultaneously in various quarters. To prevent such coalitions Iyeyasu created small fiefs around the territories of great daimyo and gave them to his own adherents, who acted as spies upon these daimyo and frustrated any attempts they might make at conspiracy. The territories along the great highway between Yedo and Kyoto he also apportioned among his followers, so that he had always a ready access to the Emperor’s city and could without difficulty control every movement of the Imperial Court. Another plan he formed towards the same end, though it was not actually carried out until the time of his grandson. This was the compulsory residence of the daimyo in Yedo for a certain term every other year; the time for reaching and leaving the city was fixed for each daimyo by the Shogun’s government. Their wives, with rare exceptions, remained permanently in Yedo and were practically hostages at the Shogun’s court.

The effect of this last measure was the increased prosperity of Yedo. All the daimyo were compelled to keep a house in the city. They built most of their palaces around the castle, and in the same enclosures were erected numerous houses for their retainers. Many daimyo had one or more mansions in the suburbs, not a few of which were noted for their size and their beautiful grounds. The most celebrated of these mansions is now the Imperial Arsenal, the garden of which is one of the sights of Tokyo; and another forms a part of the Palace of the Crown Prince and is also the place where the Imperial chrysanthemum party is given every autumn. The building of the daimyo’s mansions, the number of these lords being at the time about two hundred and fifty, naturally attracted merchants, artisans, and other classes of people from all parts of the country. And Yedo rose before long to be the most flourishing city in Japan. It set the example to all the other cities of the Empire, for the daimyo copied in their own castle-towns all that they found to their taste during their forced sojourn in Yedo. This leading position which the Shogun’s city held in the feudal days has been retained even in an increased measure by the capital of New Japan.

Some idea of the prosperity of Yedo may be formed from the fabulous accounts of its wealth current among the country-people, who believed that in the main streets of the city land was worth its weight in gold. But a more definite proof is to be found in the computations which were made from time to time with respect to its population. Estimates based upon official records in the early years of the Shogunate are very incomplete. Thus, we are told that there were in 1634, 35,419 citizen householders and twenty-three years later, as many as 68,051, which would give a citizen population, at the rate of 4.2 persons per household, of 148,719 and 285,814 respectively, an increase which is obviously too great for so short an interval. The first trustworthy computation is probably that for the year 1721, when the citizens and their families were said to aggregate about half a million and the military class, with their servants, were put at a little over a quarter of a million. Priests, street-vendors, and beggars with whom the city swarmed did not most likely fall much below fifty thousand, so that we may without any great error take the total population at eight hundred thousand. More than a century later, in 1843, that is, a few years before the outbreak of the dissensions which finally broke up the feudal government, the total population was calculated from similar sources at 1,300,000, of which 300,000 or nearly one quarter, belonged to the military class. Old European travellers put the population of Yedo at various figures ranging from a million and a half to three millions, but the above computation is probably as near the truth as we can hope to get; and in view of the fact that Yedo was a dozen years later torn by factions and was practically in a state of civil war, we may safely conclude that its population never exceeded that calculated for the year 1843.

In the above-mentioned estimate the military population of Yedo is put at 300,000. It was computed in the following manner:—There were in the country two hundred and sixty-seven daimyo, every one of whom had two or more mansions in Yedo. The total number of their retainers and servants, with their families, in fact, of all who depended for their subsistence upon these barons, was calculated at over 137,000. The immediate feudatories of the Shogun who all lived in Yedo, numbered 22,000; and they, with their families and servants, made up 160,000. From these figures the great influence wielded by the samurai in Yedo may be readily inferred.

Though Yedo thus prospered and the Shogun’s rule there seemed firmly established while thousands of samurai were ready to lay down their lives for his welfare, contentment was far from universal in the country. Some of the great daimyo whose ancestors had submitted to Iyeyasu only because of his overwhelming power, would have gladly raised the standard against his descendants if they had seen any chance of success; they knew that two centuries and a half of peace had enervated the Shogun’s court and luxurious habits corrupted his government and that it would not be a difficult task to crush him if they could form a coalition against him. But as yet they did not know whom to trust among their fellow-daimyo, and discontent smouldered ready to burst out at the first opportunity.

And that opportunity came in good time. The arrival of Commodore Perry’s squadron and the subsequent conclusion of treaties by the Shogun with the foreign powers are matters of history. Centuries of isolation had lured the nation into the belief that it could for ever remain free from all contact with the outside world; the treaties, therefore, came upon it as a rude awakening from its long-cherished dream, and the possible consequences of the opening of the country to foreign trade and intercourse naturally aroused all its fears. A strong agitation arose in denunciation of the Shogun’s act to which the Emperor’s sanction had not yet been given, and when orders came from Kyoto to abrogate the new treaties, the enemies of the Yedo government saw their opportunity; they turned to the sovereign who lived hidden from public gaze in his palace and knew that the salvation of their country could be brought only by the Emperor coming to his own again and assuming the direct government of his people. Leaders among these loyalists were the clans of Satsuma and Choshu, two of the most powerful in Japan, which were later joined by those of Hizen and Tosa, and many others. The Shogun did his utmost to suppress these risings; but being at length convinced, by his utter failure, of his own powerlessness, he resigned his office in 1867 and restored the reins of government into the hands of his sovereign.

The Emperor thereupon made Yedo his capital and to it flocked the men who had helped to overthrow the Shogun’s government. The small bands of the latter’s adherents who still offered resistance were soon overcome. The national government was reorganised by men from the loyal clans. Though the Shogun had been denounced for his friendly attitude towards foreigners, the new government was even more cordially disposed towards them. The truth is that though the Shogun’s enemies were at first all for the expulsion of foreigners out of the country, wiser heads among them soon came to understand that it would not be possible to get rid of these unwelcome visitors and return to the old state of isolation. This conviction was especially brought home to the great clans of Satsuma and Choshu when Kagoshima, the chief town of the former, and Shimonoseki, the seaport of the latter, were bombarded for outrages upon Europeans, one by a British fleet in 1863 and the other by combined squadrons of Great Britain, France, Holland, and the United States in the following year; and they saw that the only way for their country to preserve her independence and secure a footing in the comity of nations was to be as strong as those powers and advance in that path of civilisation which had given them such a commanding position in the world. But so long as the Shogunate stood, they let the anti-foreign agitation take its course; when, however, it fell and the way was cleared for a reorganised government, they set to remodelling it on western lines. Then commenced that process of national renovation which has astonished the world.

With the fall of the Shogunate and the reorganisation of the national government the feudal system was doomed; for such a programme as Japan had already sketched out for herself was incompatible with that medieval form of government. This fact was soon recognised by the daimyo of Satsuma and Choshu, who offered in 1868 to surrender their fiefs; the generous offer was gladly accepted and their example was followed by all the other daimyo. But for the time the ex-daimyo were all appointed governors of their respective fiefs so that they might aid in bringing their former subjects to a full sense of the new condition of things. Three years later, in 1871, the clans were abolished and the whole country was divided into prefectures. The daimyo and their retainers received government bonds in commutation of the incomes they had thitherto derived from their fiefs. The substitution of prefectures for clans was made with the object of breaking up the clan bias which was prejudicial to national unity and of giving the central government a more complete control over the provinces by the appointment to prefectural offices of high officials from Tokyo. For to prevent disaffection or crush open revolt in the provinces, it was necessary to centralise as much as possible the government of the country; and with all its precautions, the new government had to cope with several little uprisings, culminating in the Satsuma rebellion which spread over a greater part of the island of Kyushu and taxed its resources to the utmost. But when this was quelled, the country enjoyed absolute peace; no internal disorder has since taken place with the sole exception of a small local trouble in 1884.

The result of this centralisation was that Tokyo became the centre of the whole national life. Men seeking office hurried to it; students entered its schools; the trades and professions seemed to thrive only in the capital. The measures which the government took at the time tended still further to make Tokyo attractive. For the Restoration and the consequent national reorganisation were for the most part the work of the military class, or rather of the samurai of a few clans under the guidance of a small group of leaders. The country bowed to the inevitable; but the people had little or no voice in the matter. Whatever drastic measures the government might take, the nation at large could not at a word of command throw off the immemorial traditions in which it had been brought up; it failed to realise the drift of the new policy its leaders were entering upon. Consequently, the first and most important duty of the government was to guide its people in the path it had taken. New laws were published with minute instructions; schools of all kinds were established on the western plan, the higher colleges being located in Tokyo; model government factories were built in the environs of the city; in short, nothing that a paternal government could do was omitted to take the people by the leading-strings. The higher schools were soon filled; their graduates found ready employment. The country was ruled by a huge army of officials, who, taking as they did the place of the old samurai in the popular estimation, commanded respect and deference often out of proportion to the importance of their posts, which, with the comparatively high salaries they enjoyed in those days, made government service the most attractive of all occupations. In fact, in the early days, Tokyo may be said to have derived its enhanced prosperity from the superabundance of officials. Then too, men of the legal, medical, and other professions all opened practice in Tokyo; only in recent years when every rank has been overcrowded in the city, have they sought fresh fields in the provinces.

It was not long, however, before the evils of excessive centralisation began to make themselves felt; and when the task of national reorganisation was fairly complete, steps were taken towards decentralisation. Prefectural assemblies were opened in 1881 as a preliminary measure to the establishment of the national assembly. In 1888, local self-government was granted to provincial cities, towns, and villages, and everything was done to promote local prosperity. The close of the year 1890 saw the opening of the national diet. The war with China in 1894–5 and that with Russia ten years later brought on in either case a sudden activity in all departments of commerce and industry and gave a great impetus to railway enterprise. Many bogus companies, it is true, were formed at the same time, and their collapse was a serious set-back to the national economy. But the undoubted increase of commercial and industrial enterprises has served to relieve the pressure of population upon Tokyo. Osaka, for instance, which has for centuries been a great commercial centre, has within the last few years become as great a centre of industry, with a population exceeding a million. Kyoto, the old capital, remains somnolent; but Nagoya and the trade-ports of Kobe and Yokohama are forging ahead. In short, though Tokyo, as the capital, will probably remain the largest city in the Empire, it cannot be denied that it is not now so far in advance of the rest as it was a few years ago. This rise of great provincial cities is a necessary result of the growth of manufacturing industries which are bound, if the country is to prosper, to take the place of agriculture, which is too limited in its scope in a country of such a moderate extent as Japan. It is indeed but a repetition of the rise of the great provincial towns like Birmingham, Sheffield, and Manchester in England in the last century.

Still Tokyo must take the lead in all that pertains to the adoption of western civilisation. Osaka and other manufacturing cities will develop the inevitable but unwelcome phases of western industrialism. Already the labour problem looms before us, and the government must before long legislate on the question. There are also signs of socialistic agitation. But these questions do not affect Tokyo so seriously as other cities, for the factories on its outskirts are comparatively few and the land is too valuable for residential purposes to be occupied by manufactories.

Tokyo will remain what it has always been, the home of the best classes in every department of national life. It will always indicate the high-water mark of oriental culture and occidental influence. Here, as nowhere else, will be seen that antagonism of the two, the pressure of western customs and ways of life following on the heels of the sciences and practical knowledge we are eagerly imbibing from the West and the resistance of oriental traditions and usages, which refuse to admit a tittle more than is absolutely necessary to bring the country to a material and intellectual equality with the foremost nations of the world. To those who look below the surface nothing is more interesting in viewing the progress of Japan than this combination of radicalism and conservatism. The Japanese, for all his apparent love of innovation, still retains that stolid self-satisfaction usually associated with the oriental mind, though it is no rarer in the West. He has long recognised that his country must advance along the lines taken at the Restoration, but he would have the development take place without the sacrifice of the national characteristics which have marked his countrymen from time immemorial. The agitation which was set up some twenty years ago for the preservation of these characteristics by those who feared the mania for everything European which was then at its height would result in the obliteration of the qualities which have kept Japan in full vitality through the centuries, still finds an echo in his heart. The threatened sudden metamorphosis of those days was but a passing whim; the change is now slower and more subtle, and it is hard to mark the exact line at which the encroaching tide of European civilisation shall be made to stop. But the Japanese feels that the line must be drawn somewhere. The problem is certainly difficult to solve. It appears hardly possible to reap the fruits of the material and intellectual progress of the West and yet to shut out the moral and religious sources of that progress; but for all that, it would be premature to pronounce it impossible. For we have already done what seemed at first beyond the verge of possibility. Who, for instance, of the thousands who nightly thronged to the Savoy Theatre to laugh over the famous Gilbert and Sullivan opera, would have thought at the time that a few years thence their country would form a treaty of alliance with the land of Koko, Yum-yum, and Nankipoo? They would have flouted the very idea; but that alliance is generally regarded as a natural outcome of the recent course of events in the Ear East. Would it be, we wonder, a much harder task to discriminate the elements of European civilisation?

There are of course people who find their account in advocating the rapid adoption of everything European; but their utmost efforts notwithstanding, there is one citadel which will long resist their attacks and remain almost as purely Japanese as in the days of their forefathers. That impregnable citadel is the home; woman is in Japan as elsewhere the greatest conservative element of national life, and within her sphere of influence tradition reigns as supreme as ever. Globe-trotters who advise their friends to visit this country with as little delay as possible for fear that in a few years Old Japan would cease to be, do not reckon with our domestic life. Japanese women are as a class gentle, pliant, and docile; and these qualities stand them in good stead at home. Whether it be that they manage with all their demureness to twist their lords round their little fingers or that the latter are afraid that any change in home life would develop a new revolting woman who would refuse to be as submissive as they are at present, the fact remains that with the mass of the nation there has been little change in the conditions of domestic life. And what these conditions are and how little the influx of new ideas has affected the home of Old Japan, it is the object of the following chapters to relate.

CHAPTER II.
THE STREETS OF TOKYO.

The area and population of Tokyo—Impression of greater populousness—Street improvements—Narrow streets—Shops and sidewalks—Road-making—Dusty roads—Lamps and street repairs—Drainage—Street-names—House-numbers—Incongruities.

THE area of Tokyo is not so great as is generally supposed. The people of Yedo used to say that their city was ten miles square; but the extreme length, from north-east to south-west, of Tokyo which does not differ materially in its limits from the old city, is no more than eight miles. The actual area is only 18,482 acres, or nearly twenty-nine square miles. The population fell with the decline of the feudal government and was under a million in the early days of the new regime. The registered population returned to one million in 1884. The municipal census which was taken for the first time on the first of October, 1908, gave the settled population as 1,622,856, composed of 872,550 males and 750,306 females, and the number of families as 377,493. This took no account of the floating population which probably exceeds a hundred thousand; there is also a large population, not less than a quarter of a million, which the rise of rents and the facilities of electric-tramway communication have sent outside the administrative limits of the municipality; it forms, properly-speaking, a part of the population of the city.

Tokyo is therefore a great city; but the stranger who visits its streets for the first time usually gets an impression of an even greater populousness. For the streets are always in the evening teeming with young children; they are not gutter-snipes, but children of respectable parents, small tradesmen or private persons of slender means, who let them run about on the public road rather than romp in their narrow dwellings. But it is not the children alone who think they have a greater right of way over the roads than the public: for on summer evenings especially, men and women turn out of doors and walk about or sit on benches outside their houses. Shops are completely open and reveal the rooms within, so that whole families may be seen from the streets; and as most houses are of only one or two stories, people live for the most part on the ground-floor. Even in private residences of some pretensions, the thin wooden walls allow voices to be easily heard on warm days when the rooms are kept open. So that from the people he sees crowding the houses and the noises he hears on all sides, the stranger is often deceived into giving the city credit for a larger population than it actually possesses.

A STREET IN YEDO.
(FROM A PICTURE BY SETTAN, 1778–1843).

The streets themselves are worth notice. If the foreigner who comes to Japan expects to see in such a great capital the asphalt carriageway and paved sidewalk of his native country, he will be sadly disappointed, for Tokyo, with all its multitudinous thoroughfares, cannot boast even the boulevards and avenues of a European provincial town. In spite of the efforts of the Tokyo municipality, the streets are still narrow. Their total length is about six hundred miles, with a width ranging from one yard to fifty, the average being nine yards. It was decided twenty years ago to widen some three hundred miles of these roads, giving the largest a width of forty yards for carriageway with a footway on either side of six yards, and the smallest a carriageway of twelve yards and a footway one yard wide. The work is to be accomplished in ninety years. Improvements to this end are slowly going on. The fact is that the City Fathers missed a great opportunity in the early years of the new regime when, upon the desertion of the residences of the daimyo and other feudatories after the fall of the Shogunate, land could have been purchased for a song, for it went begging in the heart of the city at less than thirty yen an acre. Those who were wise enough to buy it have made big fortunes, for the same land now sells for a hundred thousand yen or more per acre. Now, however, the municipality cannot command sufficient funds to purchase the land needed for improvements along the streets proposed, but buys it up only when it is absolutely necessary to relieve the congestion of traffic; and elsewhere it waits patiently until a fire burns down the streets and clears the required space for it as, in that case, it will not have to give any compensation for the removal of the houses.

In the old days, the narrowness of the streets did not interfere with such traffic as was then carried on. The daimyo and others of high rank rode in palanquins, and officials went about on horseback; but the rest of the world walked. The citizens were not allowed to make use of other legs than their own. Those who had to go about much put on cheap straw sandals, which were thrown away at the end of their journey, so that they did not give a thought to the width or the state of the road as they had in any case to wash their feet afterwards; while others, of the common people, were, if they met a daimyo’s procession, thrust to the wall or oftener into the ditch, and they too cared as little for the width of the thoroughfare. And when a samurai met another in a narrow lane, it was by no means rare, if their sword-scabbards touched in passing, for an altercation to arise and be followed by bloodshed; but as brawls were in their way, they did not trouble themselves about the widening of the road. Pedestrians, moreover, could always pick their way in any street, and if they saw coming towards them a daimyo’s retinue or a company of swash-bucklers, they usually turned into a side-street. To the happy horsemen and palanquin-riders the size of a street was a matter of absolute indifference, for if those on shanks’ mare got in their way, it was their lookout. But luckily for these walkers there was little else for them to dodge, for vehicles were comparatively few. The only objects on wheels were handcarts and waggons drawn by horses or oxen. These waggons came from the country with bags of rice, fuel, and other necessaries, and were used, not for their speed which was a snail’s pace, but for their carrying power.

In these latter days, however, things have materially changed. Men to-day would be put to the blush by the hale old survivors of those pedestrian times, for they have gone to the other extreme. The conveniences of the jinrikisha, or two-wheeled vehicles drawn by men, and latterly of electric tramways have sapped all energy out of them, and we hear little nowadays of walking feats. There were in 1900 forty-six thousand jinrikisha in Tokyo; but the electric cars, which began to run a few years later, are driving them out of the city, for they are now less than one-half of that number. Still, the pedestrian has need to keep a good lookout on the road, for where, in the absence of footways, men, women, children, vehicles, and horses move about in an inextricable jumble, it is a matter for wonder that accidents are not more frequent. Besides the jinrikisha and electric cars, there are thousands of handcarts, some drawn by coolies and carrying objects of every description from household articles to stones for road-making and trees for gardens, and others drawn by milkmen with their milk-cans, by apprentices with their masters’ wares, by pedlars with various assortments to attract the housewife’s eye, or by farm-boys with vegetables fresh from the field. There are but a thousand waggons drawn by horses or oxen in Tokyo; but as there are twice as many more in the surrounding country, they are very much in evidence in the city since they make their presence unpleasantly obtrusive in narrow streets. These waggons, however, move slowly and give one time to get out of their way. In this respect they are better to meet than the carriages which drive on indifferent to the width of the road; in narrow streets the latter are preceded by grooms who hustle all loiterers out of the way. They are only less eagerly shunned than the motor-cars and the files of handcarts which move leisurely along with pink flags marked “ammunition” from the Imperial arsenal.

But the Ishmael of the streets of Tokyo was until lately the bicycle. A few years ago there were six thousand of these machines in the city; they were patronised by shop-apprentices who, with large bundles on their backs, scorched through crowded streets careless of accidents to themselves or others. These apprentices were therefore in the policeman’s black books; nor did the jinrikisha-man look upon them with any favour, for he regarded bicycling as an innovation intended to defraud him of his fares. But his hostility against the bicycle melted away when he was confronted by the electric car which has proved itself the most formidable of his foes. The bicycle, too, has suffered an eclipse; for apprentices and others of its patrons find it more expensive to keep it in repair than to travel by the car at the cost of a penny per trip. The motor-car also made its debut a few years back and the dust it raises and the smell of petrol it leaves in its track have brought upon it the anathema of all pedestrians; and though the police regulations prohibit a motor-car from traversing streets less than twelve yards wide, it runs merrily through lanes and small side-streets. It sometimes charges into shops and makes havoc among their merchandise. The pranks it plays in the hands of unskilful chauffeurs are not likely to lessen its unpopularity.

What with carriages, jinrikisha, waggons, handcarts, and bicycles jostling one another and men, women, and children threading their way through the labyrinth or fleeing before motor or electric cars, the more frequented streets of Tokyo present a confused mass of traffic; but in respect of actual numbers they are really less crowded than western streets of similar importance. The busy appearance is mostly due to the absence of sidewalks, and the bustle is increased by the wayfarers having to run to and fro to get out of the way of the vehicles. In streets provided with sidewalks one would expect less confusion; but as a matter of fact, people are so used to walking among vehicles of all sorts that they prefer sauntering on the carriageway to quietly pacing the sidewalks; and it is no uncommon experience to meet a company walking abreast in the middle of the road and dodging carriages while the sidewalks are almost deserted.

A SHOP IN TOKYO.

Sidewalks are not likely to gain in popularity until improvements are made in the arrangements of shops. There are no streets in Tokyo which are known as fashionable afternoon resorts, because the shops are so constructed that one cannot stop before them without being accosted by the squatting salesmen. Only in a few main streets are there regular rows of shops with show-windows against which one could press one’s nose to look at the wares exhibited or peer beyond at the shop-girls at the counter; but then business is not done in Japan over the counter, nor do shop-girls hide their charms behind a window, for the shops are open to the street and the show-girls, or “signboard-girls” as we call them, squat at the edge visible to all passers-by and are as distinctive a feature of the shop as the signboard itself. The goods are exhibited on the floor in glass cases or in piles, a custom which is not commendable when pastry or confectionery is on sale, for standing as it does on the south-eastern end of the great plain of Musashino, Tokyo is a very windy city, and the thick clouds of fine dust raised by the wind on fair days cover every article exposed and penetrate through the joints of glass cases, so that in Tokyo a man who is fond of confectionery must expect to eat his pound of dirt not within a lifetime, but often in a few weeks. If one stops for a moment to look at the wares, he is bidden at once to sit on the floor and examine other articles which would be brought out for his inspection, whereupon he has either to accept the invitation or move on. One seldom cares therefore to loiter in the street. The only shops that are often crowded by loiterers are the booksellers’ and cheap-picture dealers’.

But even more unpleasant than the narrowness of the streets is the state in which many of them are to be found. In a few streets the roadway has been dug up and pyramidal stones have been laid on the bed with the points up; they are then covered with earth and broken stone and finished with a top-dressing of gravel. They are not, however, rolled as steam-rollers have only lately made their appearance in Tokyo; sometimes small stone-rollers, about two feet in diameter, are drawn over the metal by a dozen coolies, but the work is inefficient as the pressure of such toy rollers is too slight to make any sensible impression. For the most part, therefore, newly-made roads are left to be levelled with the beetle-crushers of the long-suffering public. The municipality finds it the cheapest way. This is bad enough on the gravelled road, but the tortures it inflicts on men and beasts of burden, to say nothing of the rapid wear and tear of vehicles, are indescribable when the thoroughfare is repaired in the orthodox style. Whenever the road wants mending, cartloads of pebbles are, according to this method, brought from the beds of the rivers in the neighbourhood of Tokyo and scattered over the highway. They are laid evenly, but not levelled or rolled. The public press them down as they walk with their clogs, sandals, or boots; immediately any part is embedded in the soil, that path alone is used till it is beaten flat, so that one often sees a narrow path meandering in a wide stone-covered road, along which all traffic is carried on and the rest of the road is practically unused. When this path is beaten in and becomes hollow, more cartloads of pebbles are thrown upon it and the public recommence their patient task of road-levelling. But fortunately for them, they are materially aided in this benevolent work by the solstitial rains, which when they come down in torrents, soon bury the stones in the clayey soil, and for the nonce the people walk over it rejoicing until the municipality sets them a new task; or the rains have done their work but too well and the poor pedestrians find themselves wading through quagmire.

Indeed, quagmire is what we find in many streets after rain; for the supply of rubble is necessarily limited as it comes mostly from the rivers in and about the city, and consequently a majority of roads are left uncared for. These, after a heavy rain, are covered with a thick coating of mud, which when the sun has dried it, leaves behind deep ruts, making the roads more unpleasant to walk on than when covered with pebbles. In midsummer when the ridges of these ruts have been pulverised and blown in all directions so that one appears to be walking on sand, the roads are watered twice or more every day. The watering is done on high roads by coolies with small hand-drays out of which water is sprinkled spasmodically, and as the men stop from time to time to take breath, there are on many spots pools of water in which one can soil one’s footgear as effectually as on the rainiest day. But worse still is the watering done by private persons on the part of the road facing their dwellings. These merely ladle the water from their pails and sprinkle it in splashes, leaving in the middle of the street puddles for children to make mud-cakes in. In short, the great objection to the way in which the streets are watered in Tokyo is that it is too much for laying the dust, but not enough for flushing the roadway.

The pedestrian has therefore to be very careful in selecting the part of the road to walk on in both wet and fine weather. This is not very difficult in the daytime; but at night, especially when there is no moon, the task is hard to accomplish with success; for rarely are street lamps set up at the public expense, and in most streets the inhabitants have lamps for their own convenience over their front doors or gates; but the light of these lamps is very meagre as they are naturally not intended to guide the stray wayfarer over the road. But even these are of some service in streets of shops where the front doors are ranged pretty closely together; in roads, however, where there are only private houses, the gates being far apart, the lights are also at some distance from each other and the passenger has mostly to trust to his luck to keep himself clean. That luck, however, deserts him at times, for the repairs which the roads seem to undergo in every part of the city are astonishingly frequent. It is not the mere mending that is the cause of the trouble, but the constant pulling up of the roads for laying or repairing gas-pipes, water-pipes, and what not that so often brings one to an impasse. As, moreover, the authorities work independently of one another, a road which has been dug up for one purpose and filled in again, may be pulled up for another. Matters are not likely to improve in the near future, for before long the telegraph and telephone authorities must have a hand in digging up the road; at present the wires are overhead, but the poles are already overweighted and cannot be loaded much more without serious danger to traffic. Electric-light wires are equally menacing; and the situation is only aggravated where the electric cars run through crowded streets of the business quarters.

The wretched state of the roads after rain is undoubtedly due to imperfect drainage. The cross-section of the roads has little or no curvature or gradient, and the gutters, where they have been made, do not drain off and are only receptacles for muddy stagnant water. They are occasionally cleaned by heaping the mire on the roadside. And yet, curious to state, in spite of these insanitary methods, the rate of mortality in Tokyo is not so high as might be expected. It varies from twenty to twenty-five per thousand on the registered population and therefore must be less when the floating population is taken into account. It shows that Tokyo is not an unhealthy city, and when the municipality has carried out the plan it has made for a drainage system, the Japanese capital will probably compare favourably with most other great cities of the world.

There is one peculiarity about the streets of Tokyo which deserves mention, that is, the way they are named. Of course every thoroughfare has a name given to it; but it differs from streets in other countries in that name being the designation, not of the thoroughfare itself, but of the section or piece of land through which it runs. Thus, two or more thoroughfares which run through the same section are known by the same name; in a large section there may be a dozen streets running in all directions and bearing the same name. When a road runs on the boundary of two sections, the opposite sides would be known by different names, and a man walking in the middle of such a road would be perambulating two streets at one and the same time. Some of the larger sections, if regularly built, are divided on the main road into subsections by streets crossing them; but irregular streets are arbitrarily subdivided so that it is often very hard to find one’s way through them. As many sections are full of tortuous streets with turnings and alleys, the numbering of houses in a section is often complicated, and one seldom knows where the numbers begin or end. Frequently consecutive numbers are to be found in entirely different directions and in hunting up a number, one has to traverse the length and breadth of the section before one comes upon it.

The numbering of houses is further complicated by the fact that the same number is given often to dozens, and sometimes to hundreds, of houses. The explanation is that the numbering first took place while the great daimyo’s mansions were still standing; and when they were pulled down and cut up into smaller lots, these lots retained the same numbers. There are in Tokyo at least two of these great estates which have been divided into nearly a thousand house-lots. It is indeed hard to see how these houses could be renumbered, because in that case every division of an estate would necessitate the renumbering of the whole street, which, in a city like Tokyo where the sizes of houses are constantly changing, would be simply intolerable. Besides these divisions of mansions, we must take into account the frequency of fires. Changes take place not seldom after a fire in the number of houses in a street, and it would of course be impracticable to renumber the whole street whenever a portion of it is burnt down. Sometimes an additional designation, usually a second set of numbers, is given to a group of houses with the same street-number; but fancy names, such as are common in the suburbs of London, are hardly ever given to dwelling-houses. It may therefore be imagined that it is no light task to look up a friend in an unfamiliar quarter.

The stranger, then, who visits the streets of Tokyo will find much to arouse his curiosity in the open, windowless shops, the jinrikisha, the native dresses of men and women, the throngs of hawkers, and the ceaseless din of traffic; and at the same time, as he comes to Japan usually in search of the quaint and bizarre, he will perhaps be disappointed when he sees the countless overhead wires, the electric trams, omnibuses, and bicycles, European clothes of all shades and descriptions, and other encroachments of western civilisation, which he had hoped to leave behind him and which somewhat shock his artistic sense in their new surroundings. But these inæsthetic innovations he must put up with, for they are typical of the present stage of Japanese civilisation, and nowhere else are they more marked than in Tokyo. The herculean task Japan has set herself leaves her little leisure to consider its artistic effects; she is too much in earnest to waste a thought on the awkward cut of the habiliments she is donning; and only when she has so adapted herself as to fit them exactly, will she turn her attention to their frills and trimmings.

CHAPTER III.
HOUSES: EXTERIOR.

Name-plates—Block-buildings—Gates—The exposure of houses—Fires—House-breaking—Japanese houses in summer and winter—Storms and earthquakes—House-building—The carpenter—The garden.

WE have already said that the complicated way of numbering streets and the inclusion of a large group of buildings in one number make it hard to find any particular house. They necessitate a dreary going to and fro through a series of thoroughfares, which is very trying to one’s temper and would in most cases oblige one after a long search to give it up altogether, were it not for the circumstance that not only shops and private offices, but also nearly every private house, has a name-plate nailed over the front door or on the gate-post. If, therefore, we can, in the course of our wanderings through a street, alight upon the right number, we can generally find the house, provided there are not too many with the same number. The name-plate has usually inscribed on it the number of the house and the name of its occupant, and his title if he is a peer. Besides the name-plate, there is on the gate-post the brass-badge of the insurance company if the house has been insured, to enable the company’s private firemen to identify the house and give necessary assistance in case of a fire in the neighbourhood. The gate-post has also the telephone-number placarded in large figures for the telephone-rate collector’s convenience.

Shops and most mercantile offices open directly upon the street; but with respect to private houses there is no definite rule. Cheap houses are built in long blocks; of these the worst description is to be found in back courts; they are of one story, or if of two stories, the second has a very low ceiling. They are usually in a dilapidated condition and propped up on all sides; they are in fact our slums. The smallest of these houses is only twelve feet by nine. A block may be made up of a dozen such houses, six on either side with a wall running through the middle from end to end. It is a peculiarity of our tenement houses which have to be low on account of the frequency of earthquakes that they are thus divided vertically into narrow compartments and differ in this respect from the many-storied houses in the West, which are divided horizontally and occupied in flats. While the ground-rent is still comparatively low, this habitation in transverse sections, so to speak, is feasible for the poor; but even now, as the rent is steadily rising in all quarters, the tendency is to drive these humble dwellers outside the city limits. As it is, only in the poorer districts are these miserable houses to be seen; for in the busier quarters the ground-rent is already too high for them. But buildings in blocks are not all of the poorest kind, though it must be admitted that dwelling in a “long building,” as a block of this description is called, implies on the face of it life on a humble scale. In the old times well-to-do retainers, who had large houses of their own in the country, lived when in Yedo in the “long buildings” surrounding their lord’s mansion. Small shops are also built in blocks.

IN THE SLUMS.

Though many private houses in the business quarters have no gates, those of any pretensions in the residential districts where land is naturally cheaper, are mostly provided with them. It is not usual for professionals in humbler walks of life and for artisans to live within a gate; but officials and others of some social standing prefer to have one to their houses. Sometimes there is a single gate to a large compound with a number of small houses in it; in such a case the gate-post is studded with name-plates. Gates, too, vary in size and form. The most modest are no more than low wicker-gates which can be jumped over and offer no bar to intrusion. Others are of the same make, but stand higher so that the interior can be seen only through cracks. But the most common consist of two square posts with hinged doors which meet in the middle and are kept shut by a cross-bar passing through clamps on them. These gates may be of the cheapest kind of wood, such as cryptomeria, or may be massive and of hard wood. Another common kind has a roof over it with a single door which is hinged on one post and fastened on to the other and provided with a small sliding-door for daily use. The larger pair gates have also small side-doors for use at night when they are themselves shut.

A HOUSE AND A GATE.

After entering by the gate, we come to the porch; the distance between them varies with the size and exposure of the house. It is not true, as has been said by some writers on Japan, that in our houses the parlour and the garden invariably occupy the rear while the kitchen is in front. Their position depends upon the exposure of the house. No people short of savages probably lead a more open-air life than we do in our wooden houses. Our paper sliding-doors, which are our only protection against wind and cold in winter, admit both light and air; and we provide personally against the cold by wearing wadded clothing and huddling over braziers, while in summer all the sliding-doors are often removed to let the cool breeze blow through the house. It becomes, then, an important matter in building or selecting a house to see that its principal rooms are so arranged as to get the warm rays of the sun in winter and the cool breezes in summer. As both these are to be obtained from the south, the principal rooms are made to expose their open side to that direction. In winter the exposure of these rooms makes a vast difference in the consumption of charcoal as the sun shining through the open side warms the rooms more thoroughly than the braziers can do. Next to the south, the east is the favourite direction, as the east wind coming over the Pacific Ocean is milder than the north or west. The west wind, crossing as it does the snowy ridges of Central Japan, is cold in winter while the piercing rays of the westering sun make the rooms intolerably hot in summer; and the north wind is cold in winter and in summer breezes seldom come from that direction. In short, then, the principal rooms face the south, if possible, or south-east, or sometimes the east. As the garden is naturally in front of the principal rooms, its position depends upon theirs, and it is made to lie, if possible, on the south side of the house. If the gate is on the north side of the premises, it is close to the house; but if it is on the south side, the garden intervenes. It should, however, be stated that some people purposely make their principal room face north; their reason is that if the garden lay south of the house, the trees and plants in it would display their north or rear side to those within, and they are therefore willing to put up with the cold blasts from the north for the pleasure of looking at the front and sunny side of their plants.

A ROOFED AND A PAIR GATE.

Most houses in Japan are made of wood. In Tokyo only a little over one-eighth of the houses are made of other materials, that is, of brick, stone, or plaster, so that the capital may be said to be a city of wooden houses. It is therefore, needless to add, often ravaged by fire. In old Yedo fires were known as the “Flowers of Yedo,” being as much among the great sights of the city as the cherry-blossoms on the south-east bank of the River Sumida, the morning-glories of Iriya, or the chrysanthemums of Dangozaka, for which Tokyo is still noted. Under the feudal government occurred several fires which burnt down tens of thousands of houses, and even under the new regime disastrous fires are not unknown. On two occasions, in 1879 and 1881, over ten thousand houses were destroyed; but the last great conflagration took place in 1892 when four thousand buildings were devoured by the flames. Since then, though fires have been frequent enough, their ravages have been more limited, thanks to a more efficient system of fire-brigades and plentiful supply of water. During the last few years the average number of houses annually destroyed has been about seven hundred, which cover an area of seven and a half acres; and as the total area of buildings in Tokyo is three thousand seven hundred acres, the fires destroy every year one five-hundredth part of the city. The actual loss of property is not so great as might at first sight be supposed; for it is a notorious fact that houses in Tokyo are not so carefully constructed as in Kyoto and other cities, and the greater risks from fire incurred in the capital discourage the building of costly houses unless they are to stand on extensive grounds. Formerly it was calculated that the average life of a house was about thirty years; but now the lesser frequency of fires would give them a much longer lease. This is comforting to house-owners; but it must be confessed that wooden houses more than thirty years old are not pleasant to live in. The timber, unless extremely well-seasoned, becomes warped and the pillars of the house get out of the perpendicular, with the result that the sliding-doors refuse to close flat upon them but leave a space at the top or bottom through which the cold wind whistles at will in winter. This is the case even with carefully-built houses, while in others the defects are still more glaring. The jerry-builder’s hand is conspicuous in most houses to let, and the rent is high compared with the cost of construction. The landlords protest that they have to charge a high rent as whole blocks may be swept away in one night through malice or stupidity. And there is something to be said for their argument, especially as fire insurance is still far from universal, for it is strange when one comes to think of it that there are not more destructive fires. It is so easy to burn down a wooden house. A rag soaked with kerosene is enough to destroy any number of houses and is the favourite means with incendiaries who hope to steal household goods which are brought out in confusion into the street whenever there is a fire in the neighbourhood. Besides, a slight act of carelessness or neglect may lead to a terrible conflagration; a candle left too near a paper sliding-door was the origin of the great fire of 1892 already mentioned. Similarly, a kerosene lamp or a brazier overturned, a pinch of lighted tobacco or an unextinguished cigar-end, an over-heated stove or a piece of red-hot charcoal dropped on the floor, these are among the commonest causes of fires; and even the cheap Japanese matches, of which as the splints are not dipped in paraffin, at least half a dozen are needed to light a cigarette in the open air, are responsible for as many fires every year. Since such slight accidents may at any time lead to great disasters, the inhabitants, as they go to bed, are never sure, especially in crowded quarters, of still having a roof over their heads next morning. They may be aroused from their slumbers by the dreaded triple peal of the alarm-bell and find the neighbouring street or next door wrapped in flames, and just manage to run out of their houses with nothing but the clothes on their backs. We are, however, so used to the fire-alarm that if the peals are double to indicate that the fire is in the next district, we only get out of bed to look at it from idle curiosity and turn in again unless our house is leeward of the burning district or we have to run to the assistance of a friend there; and if the bell gives only single peals, which signify that at least one district intervenes between the burning street and the fire-lookout, we turn in our beds and perhaps picture to ourselves the lively time they must be having in that street. A fire is, on account of its uncertainty and suddenness, only less feared than an earthquake, and the general feeling among the citizens is that of insecurity.

There is, however, still another element of insecurity in wooden houses. House-breaking is by no means difficult in Tokyo. In the daytime the front entrance is generally closed with sliding-doors which can, however, be gently opened and entered without attracting notice unless some one happens to be in an adjoining room. The kitchen door is usually kept open, and it is quite easy to sneak into the kitchen and make away with food or utensils. Tradesmen, rag-merchants, and hawkers come into the kitchen to ask for orders, to buy waste-paper or broken crockery, or to sell their wares, so that there is nothing unusual in finding strange men on the premises. Sometimes these hawkers are really burglars in disguise come to reconnoitre the house with a view to paying it a nocturnal visit. At night, of course, the house is shut and the doors are bolted or fastened with a ring and staple, but very seldom locked or chained. As the doors are nothing more than wooden frames with horizontal cross-bars, on which boards less than a quarter of an inch thick are nailed, it would not be difficult to cut a hole with a chisel large enough for the hand to reach the bolt or the staple or to clear the whole space between the cross-bars for the body to pass through. But quieter methods are generally preferred. Single burglars usually come in by the skylight, closed at night by a small sliding-door, which does duty as chimney in the kitchen, or crawl under the floor which is some two feet from the ground, by tearing away the boarding under the verandah and come up by carefully removing the loose plank of the floor, under which fuel is kept in the kitchen. If the burglars are in a gang, they naturally come in more boldly than these kitchen sneaks. Once inside, the thief has the run of the house as all the rooms communicate by sliding-doors and are never locked, and the whole household is at his mercy. Since, then, houses are so easy of entry, it might be supposed that burglaries are very frequent in Tokyo; that such is not the case is probably due to the somewhat primitive methods pursued by these gentry and to the effective detective system of the police authorities. The strict police registration of every inhabitant and the easy access of all the rooms in a house make concealment very difficult, and the criminal is readily shadowed as he wanders from place to place throughout the Empire.

DOOR-FASTENINGS.

To this general insecurity from fire and burglary all wooden houses are subject; but if we take into consideration the actual number of homes which fall victims to them, we are compelled to conclude that though the feeling of insecurity may always be present, the chances of its being realised are somewhat remote, so that it is not so bad as it looks in these respects to live in the wooden houses of Tokyo. Fires are most frequent in winter from braziers being then in use and kerosene lamps being in requisition for longer hours every evening, and burglaries, too, increase in the same season from the sufferings of the poor being intensified. But in the summer heat the Japanese house is extremely pleasant. The whole house is open and lets the cool breeze blow from end to end; bamboo screens are hung in front of the verandah where it is exposed to the burning rays of the sun. On the second story we sit in thin cotton garments and feel the breeze all over the body, and look down upon the landscape garden before us or beyond at the peerless Mount Fuji on the south-west or at Mount Tsukuba on the northern edge of the Musashino plain. It is especially enjoyable when fresh from a hot bath, we squat or loll on the mats, fan in hand, and engage in desultory talk or in a quiet game until the sun sinks and wine and fish are brought before us. The Japanese house is an ideal summer villa when we can rest ourselves from the heat and dust of the busy city. But in the city itself it is far otherwise. The dust blows in with every gust, and the house, to be properly kept, must be swept several times a day. The narrowness of the streets and lowness of the ceilings give the shops in crowded quarters insufficient light, though more than enough of dusty air. But in winter we feel the inadequacy of wooden houses; it is next to impossible to keep out the cold effectually; a room never gets thoroughly warmed. The wind blows in through the crevices of the sliding-doors, for the edges on which these doors meet are flat and never dovetailed. The paper of the doors is porous, and through its pores the air gets in; there is certainly this to be said for it that in a Japanese room one need never fear asphyxiation, however much charcoal may be burning in the braziers. These braziers are for warming the hands and the face if one crouches over them; but for the body, we get the warmth from the abundance of wadded clothing. We can therefore keep fairly warm if we merely sit on the mats; but directly we move or stand up, the cold attacks us. Most Japanese are, however, used from childhood to these cold rooms and do not feel the chill. Many of them think nothing of sitting for hours in a cold draught.

A Japanese wooden house looks pretty when new; but after some years when the outside is weather-beaten, the pillars begin to warp and the walls to crumble, its charms, too, are on the wane. A well-built house may be comfortable for twenty or at most thirty years, after which it is uninhabitable without considerable repairs. The few private houses which still remain that were built before the Restoration are at best rain-proof, and afford little protection against wind. There are certainly public buildings, such as shrines and temples, which have survived many centuries and are not unfrequently picturesque as they peer through their groves; but a close inspection would soon reveal the repairs they have undergone, pillars repainted, roofs retiled, gable-ends regilt, and the interior generally renovated. There is wanting in Japanese dwelling-houses that poetical charm which age lends to brick and stone buildings in the West with their dark-stained casements and ivy-mantled walls; and time which mellows and imparts a deeper hue to stone dry-rots wood and saps it of its strength, and long before storms make any impression upon brick, the frame-house falls to the ground. But in Japan it is not merely wind and rain that houses have to contend against; the earthquake is the foe that makes them to totter. Every earthquake, by shaking them up, tends to loosen the joints and disturb the equilibrium of the building; and as a good many such shocks, about a hundred and fifty, occur in the course of a year, their combined effect is by no means negligible. Houses have therefore to be built with the possible effects of earthquakes in view.

The most obvious of the provisions against earthquake effects is the small height of the houses. Most dwelling-houses in Tokyo have only one or two stories; there are far more of the former than of the latter; and even of the latter kind, the upper story is usually much smaller than the lower. The floor stands about two feet from the ground; the ceiling is eight or nine feet in height on the lower floor and often less than eight feet on the upper. The outer walls sometimes rest on a low stone course; but the verandah is supported by short wooden pillars resting on stone slabs. The house, in fact, merely stands on a few stone slabs and courses and can, as is indeed sometimes done, be lifted bodily and removed to another site. Over the verandah, if there is a story above, a small roof projects to prevent the rain from blowing into, the rooms behind it. The housetop is never flat, but has a great rough-hewn beam for roof-tree with rafters on either side, which are covered with lath. Semicircular tiles are laid over the roof-tree with a thick substratum of mortar, while the slanting sides are covered with pantiles. The gutter is sometimes made of copper, but more commonly of bamboo or tinplate. The roof is built before the walls or the floor. First, the ground is levelled and the stone foundation made for the pillars. Meanwhile the pillars, joists, beams, and ties have been made, and are now set up and fitted. As soon as the frame is built, the roof is put on and covered for the while with matting so as to enable the workmen to work inside irrespectively of the weather. The verandahs, floors, ceilings, and grooves for sliding-doors are made. The carpenter’s work is then done; and the tiler is called in for the roof-tiles, the plasterer for the walls, and the joiner for the sliding-doors. The tiles are of a uniform size and generally of the same shape. The walls are made with a lathing or frame of slender bamboo, which is covered with clay and over it one or more coatings of plaster. In some buildings the coatings of the outer walls are replaced by clapboards, which are painted black if the wood is of an inferior quality or too weather-beaten. The paper-hanger is called in to paper the sliding-doors and the mat-maker comes to cover the floor with mats. The house is then complete.

A HOUSE WITHOUT A GATE.

In Japan there was neither an architect nor a builder as a distinct calling. Even now, ordinary dwelling-houses are not built by either of them; it is the carpenter who has charge of their construction. The carpenter’s is a dignified craft; he is called in Japanese the “great artificer,” and stands at the head of all artisans. In the building of a house, a master carpenter is called in; he prepares the plans, and if they are approved, he sets to work with his apprentices and journeymen. The other artisans, the tiler, the plasterer, and the joiner, work under him. He is not as a rule an educated man and knows his trade from having worked at it from apprenticeship; and for his diligence or intelligence he has been set up by his master, or it may be that he has found a wealthy patron, or more probably, he comes of a carpenter’s family and has succeeded his father. Making use only of the knowledge acquired during his term of apprenticeship or service as journeyman, the master carpenter has little occasion to display his inventiveness or originality, for he need only follow the time-honoured conventions which hold sway in his craft as in all other arts and crafts of the country. Hence, monotony is a distinctive mark of Japanese domestic architecture; there is a sameness of style in all our dwelling-houses. The chief and perhaps the only point upon which the carpenter has to bring his ingenuity to bear is the arrangement of the rooms. If he has a large site to build on, he will spread out the building so as to secure as much southerly or south-easterly exposure as possible without counteracting inconveniences; but if the site is confined, he has to change his plans accordingly. Much depends upon the lie of the land. His object is to have no rooms that are useless or inconvenient. This is not such an easy task as may appear at first sight in a house in which, with one or two exceptions, the rooms may be turned into any use; for the very indefiniteness of their disposal makes the problem more difficult to solve than in the case of a house in which a definite use is assigned to each room at the time of erection.

A GARDEN.

Convention also makes itself felt in the laying out of a Japanese garden, though a greater latitude is allowed to the gardener’s ingenuity. Still the principles remain unchanged. In a large garden we usually find a pond, dry if no water is available, and surrounded with rocks of various shapes, and a knoll or two behind the pond with pines, maples, and other trees, and stone lanterns here and there. A few flowering shrubs are in sight, but these are planted for a season; thus, peonies, morning-glories, and chrysanthemums are removed as soon as they fade, while corchoruses and hydrangeas are cut down leaving only the roots behind. The chief features of the garden are the evergreens like the pine, trees whose leaves crimson in autumn like the maple, and above all, the flowering trees like the plum, the cherry, and the peach. A landscape garden presents, when the trees are not in blossom, a somewhat severe or solemn aspect; we do not expect from it the gaiety which beds of flowers impart. Indeed, many European flowering plants have of late been introduced, such as anemones, cosmoses, geraniums, nasturtiums, tulips, crocuses, and begonias; but they still look out of place in a Japanese garden. Roses are sometimes planted, but they are almost scentless. The humidity of the climate appears to militate against the perfume of flowers.

CHAPTER IV.
HOUSES: INTERIOR.

The sizes of rooms—The absence of furniture—Sliding-doors—Verandahs—Tenement and other small houses—Middle-sized dwellings—The porch and anteroom—The parlour—Parlour furniture—The sitting-room—Closets and cupboards—Bed-rooms—The dining-room—Chests of drawers and trunks—The toilet-room—The library—The bath-room—Foot-warmers.

A Japanese room is measured, not by feet and inches, but by the number of mats it contains. A mat consists of a straw mattress, about an inch and a half thick, with a covering of fine matting which is sewn on at the edges of the mattress either by itself or with a border, usually dark-blue and an inch wide, of coarse hempen cloth. It is six feet long by three wide; this measure is not always exact, but may vary by an inch or more in either direction. When a house is newly built, the mat-maker comes to make mats to fit the rooms in it. But in spite of the variation, the size of a room is always given in the number of mats it holds, so that we never know the exact dimensions of a room. The smallest room has two mats, that is, is about six feet square; the next smallest is three-matted, or three yards by two. Four-matted rooms are sometimes to be found; but such rooms are unshapely, being four yards long by two wide. A room with four and a half mats is three yards square and has the half mat, which is a yard square, in the centre. The next size is six-matted, or four yards by three and is followed by the eight-matted, or four yards square. The ten-matted room is five yards by four and the twelve-matted is six yards by four. It is only in large houses that there are rooms with fifteen or more mats. In some restaurants and story-tellers’ halls we come upon rooms with a hundred mats. Some rooms have five or seven mats; but they are really of six or eight mats with the space of one mat occupied by a closet or an alcove. It will thus be seen that in most rooms the length is either equal to the breadth or at most only half as much again. This tends to make the proportion between the two somewhat monotonous.

A SIX-MATTED ROOM AND VERANDAH.

The commonest rooms are those with four and a half, six, or eight mats, that is to say, rooms which are three or four yards square or four yards by three. Such rooms would be very small in a house built in European style; there would hardly be elbow-room and one could not move an inch without knocking down some piece of furniture. But in a Japanese room there is but little furniture, and certainly none that one could bring down by knocking against it with the exception, perhaps, of the screen. Our rooms look very bare to foreigners and appear to lack comfort to those who have lived in European apartments; but from the Japanese’s point of view, rooms furnished in the approved European style suffer from excess of furniture and partake too much of the nature of a curiosity shop or a museum. This may be going too far; but there is undoubtedly something repugnant to the Japanese canons of taste to find all the art treasures of the house exhibited from day to day on the walls or in the corners of the rooms to which guests have access. The absence of movable furniture in a Japanese room, by allowing more free space, makes it look larger than a European room of the same size. We squat on the mats, and our line of vision, being consequently much lower than if we sat in a chair, gives the room a further appearance of greater size. The illusion is kept up by the lowness of the ceiling, which though seldom more than eight or nine feet high, seems to be loftier as we squat under it.

The size of a mat being, as already stated, roughly six feet by three, the yard has naturally become the unit by which other parts of a room or a house are measured. Thus, the sliding-doors are usually a yard wide. As these doors are always in pairs and move in two grooves each at top and bottom, there are a pair in grooves six feet long and two pairs in those of twelve feet; but in grooves nine feet in length there are either a pair or two, commonly the latter, in which case the sliding-doors are each three-quarters of a yard wide. The sliding-doors are of two kinds: the shoji, or paper sliding-doors, which are partitions admitting light, and the fusuma (also called karakami), or screen sliding-doors, which merely serve as partitions. The shoji consists of a wooden frame, an inch or more in thickness, with thinner cross and vertical pieces forming lattices about nine inches wide by five high. It is covered on the outside with thin rice-paper, which admits light but is not transparent. It is of use when there is light on one side as at the verandah or window or where a room or a passage would be too dark if fusuma were put up. The fusuma consists of a wooden frame with a few pieces within, which is pasted over on both sides with thick paper and covered with ornamental paper. It is quite opaque. The frame and lattices of the shoji are of plain white wood; but the frame of the fusuma is often varnished, though it may also be left plain. The fusuma has a small hollow handle, a few feet from the floor, which is sometimes highly ornamented.

The verandah is also usually three feet wide. It consists generally of long narrow planks ranged parallel to the grooves of the sliding-doors, though it is sometimes made up of wider pieces set at right angles to them. In the former case the planks, as they age, shrink and leave cracks between, which admit light when the outer doors or shutters are closed in the daytime. Bamboos are sometimes laid between the pieces to cover the shrinkage. The shutters run in grooves on the outer edge of the verandah. They are also three feet wide and kept in a receptacle at the end of the groove. The last one only is usually bolted. There are similar shutters at all the windows, which are also provided with paper sliding-doors and lattices or bars as precautions against house-breaking. When a verandah runs along more than one room, there are pillars on its outer edge just inside the groove of the shutters and opposite the pillars dividing the rooms. All sets of sliding-doors need a pillar to close against at either end.

The smallest houses are those in the slums which have only three yards’ frontage and a depth of four yards. The entrance, the space for kitchen utensils and the sink, and perhaps a closet or cupboard would leave room for little more than three mats, on which the whole family live; but as children spend all their playtime outside and come in only for meals, it is at night that the house is crowded, and even then as they sleep higgledy-piggledy, a couple or so of children do not inconvenience their parents to any appreciable extent. A two-roomed house is common enough and is not confined to the slums. A childless old couple, when the wife has to do the household work, find such a house large enough for them. Artisans also live in them. Three-roomed houses, too, are very common. Houses built in blocks are oftenest of this size. They are made up of the porch, the sitting-room, and the parlour or drawing-room. These three rooms are the essential portions of a house; and larger houses merely add to them. A visitor calls at the porch, the paper sliding-door is opened, he is invited to come in, he leaves his hat and greatcoat in the porch, and enters the parlour. The master, or in his absence his wife, entertains him there, while the rest of the family remain in the sitting-room. In cold weather the sliding-doors between the two rooms are closed; but in summer they are kept open, or frequently doors with reed screens within the frames are used. These admit the breeze and let the people in the other room be seen; but the fiction of their invisibility is kept up and those in the inner room are not obliged to greet the visitor.

In a four-roomed house the fourth room may be the servant’s room, if one is kept, a toilet-room, or a reserve room without any definite purpose. A five-roomed house may be taken as the smallest in which a man of the middle class would live. One living in a smaller house may be reckoned among that class; but five rooms are perhaps the fewest in which one can live with comfort if there are not too many children or dependants. A servant would be kept and a room assigned to her, though it would not be exclusively her own as much household work would be done there. The fifth room would be the anteroom or a private room where the family effects, especially the wardrobe, would be kept. Houses with more rooms are pretty numerous; but probably ten rooms may be put as the limit for the middle class proper, if they do not indeed exceed its means. The average size for that class may be given as seven or eight rooms. In such a house there would be, in addition to the three rooms first mentioned, the anteroom, the servant’s room, the room for the wardrobe, and one between the sitting-room and the kitchen or back-entrance where inferior callers, such as tradesmen, artisans, servants’ relatives, or former dependants would be received. The eighth room, if there is one, may be reserved for the father or mother of the master or his wife, who may be staying with them, the master’s private room, the children’s study, or the student’s room. As the rooms, with the exception of the porch, parlour, and perhaps the servant’s room, are not built with a definite object in view, they can be used in any way. This is in a sense convenient; but it has also this disadvantage that the very indefiniteness of their object often makes them inconvenient for any purpose, for in many houses there are rooms which cannot be utilised, sometimes owing to their exposure which makes them too cold or too hot for comfort or too dark to work in, and sometimes by reason of their position which renders them good only for passages from one room to another.

THE PORCH, OPEN AND LATTICED.

Although, as has already been stated, there is no hard and fast rule for the disposition of the rooms, the commonest is perhaps the following:—At the front entrance there is the porch; the ground in front of it may be open with only a roof projecting over it, or it may be enclosed by latticed doors. In the open porch there is a stone step where the footgear are taken off before entering, while in the closed one there is a wooden ledge for stepping from the ground on to the mats. The porch itself, which would correspond to the hall in a European-built house, is of two or three mats; here the visitor leaves his hat, greatcoat, and other articles which he would not take into the parlour. On one side of the porch may be the student’s room if there is one at all and on the opposite side the porch opens upon the anteroom. The size of this room depends upon that of the parlour; sometimes it is of the same size, but more frequently smaller by two or more mats. Thus, if the parlour is of ten mats, the anteroom has eight; and if the former has eight mats as is oftenest the case, there are six in the other. The anteroom opens upon the same verandah as the parlour; and the two rooms are separated only by sliding-doors, so that these doors may, when necessary, be removed and the two rooms run into one. Such a room, which would have from fourteen to eighteen mats, would be large enough for most purposes. The anteroom thus opens upon the porch on one side, upon the verandah on another, and upon the parlour on the third, and on the fourth it usually communicates directly or indirectly with the servant’s room. In large houses, however, there is a separate passage from the kitchen to the porch. Thus, the room is open on all sides though there may sometimes be a bit of a wall by the doors from the porch and the kitchen. The room has little furniture, except, perhaps, one or two framed pictures or writings over the lintels of the doors; and in rare cases there is an alcove by the wall. Cushions for callers are usually kept in a corner of the anteroom.

AN EIGHT-MATTED PARLOUR.

The parlour, the principal room of the house, is always kept tidy. It has an alcove, six feet long by three deep, consisting of a dais, a few inches high, of plain hard wood, which will bear polishing, though a thin matting is sometimes put over it. Not unfrequently, another piece of wood, generally square, forms the outer edge so that the thickness of the floor of the alcove can be concealed. The dais has a special ceiling of its own, or a bit of a wall, of plaster or wood, coming down over it a foot or more from the ceiling. On the dais is set a vase of porcelain or metal, bottle-shaped or flat, in which branches of a tree or shrubs in flower are put in, and on the wall is hung a kakemono, or scroll of picture or writing. These two constitute the main ornament of the room. New flowers are put in every few days and the kakemono is changed from time to time. This is the peculiarity of the kakemono as a piece of house decoration. We do not exhibit all our treasures in kakemono at the same time, but hang them one, two, or three at a time according to the size of the alcove and the kakemono themselves, so that the visitor calling at different seasons may delight his eyes with the sight of fresh pictures or writings each time he calls. The inmates, too, do not grow weary with gazing at the same pictures day after day, but enjoy the variety the seasons offer. To the Japanese it is a more artistic and pleasurable method of displaying his treasures than keeping them all, as it were, on permanent exhibition. The flowers, too, in the vases are arranged in an artistic style; their arrangement is an art which boasts many schools and professors and is considered an indispensable branch of a girl’s education. They are not thrown haphazard in a bundle into a vase and expected to give pleasure merely by the profusion of colours and forms, It may be a single stem or half a dozen with the flowers ranged in relation to one another after fixed canons of the art.

There are in the parlour as in the anteroom pictures or writings in frames over the lintels of the sliding-doors. On a line with the alcove and usually of the same length is another recess, with a small closet at the top or bottom where the kakemono and their cases are generally kept. In this recess there are, also, a pair of shelves at different heights and coming out from opposite walls, the free ends of which overlap each other a few inches. On these shelves some ornaments, usually curios, are placed. When unoccupied, the room is kept clear of any other object. When a visitor calls, even the cushion is brought from the anteroom for him to sit on, and then a small cup of tea set before him and a brazier if it is cold and if warm, a tabako-bon. The cushion is round or square; that for summer is made of matting, hide, or a thin wadding of cotton in a cover of hempen cloth, while for winter use the wadding is much thicker and the cover is silk or cotton. It is about sixteen inches at the side if square. The brazier is of various shapes and makes. It may be a wooden box with an earthenware case inside or with a false bottom of copper, or it may be a glazed earthenware case alone; the wooden box may be plain with two holes for handles, or it may be elaborately latticed; and sometimes a brazier is made of the trunk of a tree cut with the outside rough-hewn or only barked and highly polished. The tabako-bon, or “tobacco-tray,” is a small open square or oblong box of sandal-wood or other hard wood, which holds a small china or metal pan, three-quarters full of ashes, with a few tiny pieces of live charcoal in the middle to light a pipe with, and beside it a small bamboo tube with a knot at the bottom for receiving tobacco-ashes.

A VISITOR.

The sitting-room has little furniture. An indispensable article in it is the brazier, usually oblong, with a set of three small drawers one under another at the side and two others side by side under the copper tray filled with ashes, on which charcoal is burnt inside an iron or clay trivet. On this trivet is set a kettle of iron or copper. The iron kettle is made of thick cast-iron and kept on the trivet so as always to have hot water ready for tea-making: and the copper kettle is used when we wish to boil water quickly. Beside the brazier is a small shelf or cabinet for tea-things. Behind the brazier is a cushion where the wife sits; this is her usual post. There is also a cushion on the other side or the brazier, where the husband or other members of the house may sit.

A SITTING-ROOM.

As for the other rooms of the house, there is no fixed article of furniture as much depends upon the uses to which they are put. The general absence of furniture in the rooms, however, does not imply that we are absolutely without necessary articles of daily use. The principle on which we proceed is to keep in a room only such articles as are in constant use, the rest being put away as soon as they are done with and brought out again when they are needed. Hence, one of the most striking features of a Japanese house is the number of closets and cupboards in it. Indeed, next to the arrangement of the rooms, the most important consideration in selecting a house is the number of closets it contains. These closets are three feet deep and a yard or two in width. Considering the quantity of household goods that are put away in these closets, there is no inconvenience we feel so much as their scarcity.

There are no rooms specially set apart for sleeping. This absence of bed-rooms enables us to put up with fewer rooms than would be required in a European house for a family of the same size. There are no bedsteads. A bed consists of one or two mattresses, and one or two quilts according to the season, and a pillow. These beds are spread in any room that is handy and put away in the closets in the morning. The parents and the children, especially if young, sleep in the same room; and unless there is an out-of-the-way chamber where they can sleep in peace, their beds are made in the parlour. For if the beds are made in that room, the others can be swept and made ready for use while the family are still in bed. In the sitting-room breakfast can be got ready, while the anteroom can be used at once if a visitor calls, as he sometimes does very early in the morning or very late at night when the children have been put to bed. In a two-storied house an upstair room is often used as a reserve parlour, so that the anteroom need not be got ready for receiving callers at unseasonable hours. If the family is a large one, the rest shake down where they are least in the way. The rooms to sleep in every night are of course assigned to permanent members of the household; but country-cousins on a prolonged visit can be put to bed anywhere without much inconvenience. For the belated guest the bed is spread in the parlour and its usual occupants are driven into other rooms.

There is no special dining-room. The family take their meals in the sitting-room. If there is a visitor, a dinner-tray is set before him as well as before the host in the parlour; thus, there is no need to have a room set apart for dining. A Japanese at home, then, may remain all day in one room; he can sleep, take his meals, receive his friends, or study without once standing up, for the room changes its character with the articles that are brought into it.

A CHEST OF DRAWERS AND A TRUNK.

Articles of clothing are put into chests of drawers or wicker-trunks. Chests of drawers are commonly made in halves with two drawers each, put one upon the other and fastened by iron clamps. This is to facilitate their removal, a provision which is of importance where fires are frequent. The wicker-trunk has a lid which is as deep as the trunk itself and encloses it, and thus any amount of clothing may be put into it up to the joint depth of the two. The trunks are hidden away in the closets; but the chests of drawers, if they cannot be put into a closet without inconvenience as they are over three feet wide, are set in a corner or against a wall. Indeed, they are purposely put sometimes where they can be seen and become part of the furniture of the room. In large houses where there are godowns, or fireproof plaster storehouses, the chests are put in them, and only such as contain articles of daily wear for the season are kept in the house itself.

If the house is large enough, a special room is set apart for toilet; but even then, as the toilet-case and its appurtenances can be readily moved to any other room, the toilet-room is more useful for keeping the necessary articles than for the toilet itself. And from the way in which Japanese dresses are worn, that is, as nothing is put on over the head like a jersey or the feet foremost like the European nether garments, a Japanese woman can change her clothes without exposing her body, and it is possible for her to dress or undress in any part of the house. When she is going out with her children, she often manages to turn the house inside out by calling upon its inmates to help her and the children to dress. Tables or desks are set for children in a spare room or in a corner of one that is occupied; but there is no nursery, and the children pervade the whole house. They play wherever they please, and peace prevails only when they are out or asleep.

Nor is there a special room for books, for the library does not find a place as an important feature in a Japanese house. We Japanese are not a nation of readers. A man of ordinary education has studied the Chinese classics and read the legendary histories and quasi-romances of his country recounting the exploits of the favourite national heroes; he also reads the papers and some of the current literature; but his knowledge of books cannot be said to be wide or sympathetic. What books he has, if they are in the usual Japanese style of binding, are piled up in small wooden cases with lids in front. If he has a godown, he keeps the more valuable of his books in it and only brings out such as he may require at the moment; but there are not many, besides those with whom literature is a hereditary calling, with so many books as to need storing in godowns. Far more Japanese take to the composition of Chinese poems or Japanese odes as a refined pastime, while a still larger number lose their heads over games of go and chess. For these they use their private rooms more frequently than for reading and study.

Public baths are, on account of their great convenience, largely patronised in Tokyo; but in many private houses bath-rooms are also built. A bath-room of the ordinary size is three yards by two. The bath of the commonest kind is made of wooden staves bound together with metal hoops. It is oval in shape and inside the bath near the edge a thin iron cylinder with a grating at its lower end passes through its bottom. Into this cylinder live charcoal is put in to heat the water of the bath; and a small plank partitions the cylinder to protect the bather from being burnt by contact with it. Oblong baths are now made with thick wooden sides and a furnace at one end which is fed with coke or faggot. The ground of the bath-room is paved with stone or beaten down with concrete; and on it stands a movable flooring, a foot or more high, of narrow planks with open spaces between to allow the water to run down. The bath holds one person or at most two spare persons, and the water in it is deep enough to cover the crouching body. The bather always washes himself on the flooring and gets into the bath only to warm himself.

FOOT-WARMERS.

Sometimes a small square hearth is cut in the sitting-room or some other convenient room; and in cold season a wooden frame supported by four pillars is put over the hearth and covered with a large quilt. Live charcoal is put into the hearth and the family sit around it with their knees under the quilt or lie down with their feet stretched out to the hearth. At other seasons the wooden frame is removed and a small mat of the same size as the hearth is put over it. As the hearth cannot be moved about, most people prefer a portable foot-warmer, which is usually a square wooden box with openings at the top and sides; one of the sides slides open and through it an earthen pan of live charcoal is placed inside. A quilt is laid over it as in the case of the hearth. Another, made specially for putting in bed, is of earthenware with a rounded top, which takes some time to heat. As the ordinary cut charcoal is consumed too quickly, balls of charcoal dust are used in these foot-warmers.

CHAPTER V.
MEALS.

Rice—Sake—Wheat and barley—Soy sauce—Mirin—Rice-cooking—Soap—Pickled vegetables—Meal trays—Chopsticks—Breakfast—Clearing and washing—The kitchen—The little hearth—Pots and pans—Other utensils—Boxes and casks—Shelves—The sink and water-supply—The midday meal—The evening meal—Sake-drinking.

RICE is the staple food of the Japanese; and no other food-stuff stands so high in popular esteem, or has a tutelary deity of its own. This rice-god has more shrines than any other deity, for he is worshipped everywhere, in town and village, and often a small shrine, no bigger than a hut, peeps amid a lonely cluster of trees surrounded on all sides by rice-paddies, its latticed door covered from top to bottom with the ex-votos of the simple peasant folk. Under the feudal government the incomes of the territorial lords and their retainers were assessed, not in money, but in the quantity of rice that was annually brought into their granaries; and rice naturally became the standard for the valuation of all other commodities. The rice so garnered was subsequently converted into currency by exchange-brokers. Under the new regime, however, rice no longer holds the same pre-eminent position, but it still rules to a great extent the market for other goods. The fluctuations of its prices on the rice exchanges are eagerly watched by the whole nation; and references to the weather, especially in summer, invariably end in speculations as to its effect on the rice-crop, and the people put up unmurmuringly with the heavy solstitial rains because most rice-fields are paddies to which a plentiful supply of water is essential. Japan, in fact, is still an agricultural country, and the progress she has of late made in her manufacturing industry is not yet great enough to shake off the domination of agriculture, for no industrial problem agitates the nation so much as the annual question whether the country can produce its normal harvest of rice, which amounts to about two hundred and twenty million bushels.

A SHRINE OF THE RICE-GOD.

Rice, however, certainly deserves the solicitude the whole nation feels for it; for it is not only the principal food-stuff, but it is also the grain from which the national drink is made. Sake is produced by the fermentation of rice, and contains about fourteen per cent of alcohol. Though foreign wines are now imported into the country and beer is also brewed in large quantities, sake is still the principal alcoholic beverage in Japan; almost all other drinks which were in use in the old times were either varieties of sake or contained it as their chief ingredient.

Among other cereals that are largely used are barley and wheat. The former is now much in request for brewing beer; and as it is more digestible than rice, a mixture of the two is eaten by many families in Tokyo. Wheat is mostly used as flour; it enters into many dishes as well as cakes. It is a popular favourite when it is made into macaroni, though in this respect it is eclipsed by buckwheat.

But in point of utility the soy bean comes next to rice, for our soy sauce which enters into almost all dishes is made from the bean, wheat, and salt. So extensively is this sauce employed that table salt is comparatively little needed. The bean is also the principal ingredient in miso, which is a mixture of the soy bean, steamed and pounded, with rice-yeast and salt. This miso is largely used in making soup; and soups into which it does not enter are usually flavoured by boiling shavings of sun-dried bonito and straining them off.

Mirin is a sweet variety of spirit, made by straining a mixture of sake, steamed rice, and a spirit distilled from sake lees. It is largely used in boiling fish and other food. Vinegar is made in various ways from rice, barley, potato, or sake lees.

The cooking of rice is a delicate process. It is first well washed overnight by rinsing it again and again until the water is quite clear, and emptied into a basket to strain. In the morning it is put into a deep iron pot which rests on a round earthen hearth or range by a flange around it; then, water is poured in, the actual amount requiring nice adjustment so as not to make the rice too soft or too hard, and next a thick wooden lid is put on. A few faggots are lit under the pot; but as soon as the rice begins to spurt, the fire is withdrawn, and the pot is allowed to cool slowly and equably; it is next lifted off the hearth and set on a straw-stand. When the rice has stood long enough to be of the same temperature and consistency throughout, the lid is removed and the rice transferred into a cylindrical wooden tub. Well-boiled rice is soft, but its grains have a lustre and are distinct from one another so that any single grain can be picked up with chopsticks. Excessive heat would have burnt the parts nearest the sides of the pot, while sudden heat would have produced rice of unequal consistency.

After the rice-pot is removed, another pot is put over the hearth for making miso-soup; if the kitchen range is double-hearthed, the remainder of the faggots lit for the rice is transferred to the neighbouring hearth over which the soup-pot is hung before the rice-pot is removed from the other. Miso-soup contains strips of garden radish, edible seaweed (alopteryx pinnatifida), bean-curd, egg-plant, or other vegetables according to the season. These two, the rice and the soup, are all the cookery required in the morning. There must of course be hot water for tea.

An invariable accompaniment at Japanese meals is the pickled vegetables. The commonest of these is the garden radish which has been pickled in a paste of powdered rice-bran and salt until it assumes a rich golden hue. Greens are also treated in the same way until their colour is dulled. But garden radishes, greens, small turnips, and egg-plants are also sprinkled over with salt and pressed for a few days. A few slices of these vegetables, after being thoroughly washed to get rid of the bran or salt, are always served at a meal. Most foreigners consider their smell nauseous; but to a Japanese a meal, however rich or dainty, would appear incomplete without these vegetables, pickled or salted. Kōkō or kōnomono, which is the common name for them, means “fragrant article,” and it is believed by many foreigners that the name was given them on the lucus a non lucendo principle; but the Japanese has no such aversion to their smell. The repugnance of strangers to these pickles is similar to the attitude of most Japanese towards cheese, the taste for which would require as much cultivation as that for kōkō on the part of one to whom both articles are foreign.

The breakfast is, then, very simple. Sometimes the family take their meals together at a large low table which is set before them at each repast; but often a small tray, about a foot square and standing six inches or more high, is placed before each member. In the left corner of the tray near the person before whom it is set, is a small china bowl of rice, while on the right is a wooden bowl of miso-soup, A tiny plate of pickled vegetables occupies the middle or the farther left corner, while any extra plate would fill the remaining corner. This plate also holds something very simple, such as plums preserved in red perilla leaves, boiled kidney bean, pickled scallions, minute fish or shrimps boiled down dry in soy sauce, a pat of baked miso, or shavings of dried bonito boiled in a mixture of soy and mirin.

A MEAL-TRAY.

The chopsticks are laid between the rim of the tray and the bowls of rice and soup. They vary in length, those for women being shorter than those for men but longer than children’s; their length may, however, be put at between eight and ten inches. Some are square in section, while others are round; but most of them taper towards the tip which is either rounded or pointed. The commonest kind is of cryptomeria wood, others are of lacquered wood or of bone, and the best are of ivory. Many of them are also tipped with German silver. Chopsticks may appear at first hard to manage; but their manipulation is not really difficult when one comes to see the way in which they should be handled. They are held near the upper or thicker end in the right hand. One chopstick is laid between the thumb and the forefinger and on the first joint of the ring finger which is slightly bent, and held in position by the basal phalanx of the thumb; this chopstick is almost stationary. The other is laid near the third joint of the forefinger and between the tips of that and the middle finger which are kept together, and is held down by the tip of the thumb; it is, in short, held somewhat like a pen, only the pressure of the thumb is much lighter, for if it were heavy, the force put into it as the chopstick is moved would relax the pressure on the other stick and cause it to drop. The tip of the thumb serves, therefore, only as a loose fulcrum for moving the stick with tips of the fore and middle fingers, while the upper half resting on the last joint of the forefinger is allowed free play. The most difficult part is the use of the thumb; beginners press the stationary chopstick too hard and make the tip of the thumb so stiff that the other chopstick cannot be freely moved. It is quite easy, when one gets used to the thing, even to move the stationary chopstick a little at the same time as the other. The tips of the chopsticks must always meet. In the hand of a skilled user a needle may be picked up with them; but it is quite enough for ordinary purposes if we can pick a fish or take up a grain of boiled rice.

HOW TO HOLD CHOPSTICKS.

When the breakfast trays are brought, cups of tea are poured. The tea drunk at meals is common tea, which as it consists of old leaves, may be taken in any quantity without affecting the nerves. A handful of the leaves is thrown into an earthen tea-pot and hot water poured into it; and the pot is set over a fire to keep it hot. The infusion is of a reddish-yellow hue and is almost tasteless. The cups used are generally cylindrical, like mugs without the handles, and are assigned one to each member of the family. The china rice-bowls are also permanently given to the members. When the tea has been sipped, the bowl of rice is taken up and brought near the mouth, and a small quantity is separated with the chopsticks and eaten. In eating rice, the chopsticks scoop it up and bring it to the mouth as it would take too much time to pick it up grain by grain. Alternately with rice, the soup is sipped, and the condiments are also picked a little at a time with the chopsticks. Two or more helpings of rice are taken; as it is considered unlucky to eat only one bowlful, at least two are eaten even though the second may be a small dose consumed for form’s sake. One or two helpings of the soup are also taken; but it is not good form to ask for a second helping of the vegetables and other condiments on the tray. Rice is brought in the cylindrical tub into the room and served out there; but the soup is kept over a fire in the kitchen and the wooden bowls are taken there for the second helping. The last bowl of rice is often eaten with tea poured into it, and the bowl is brought to the mouth and the rice pushed into it with the chopsticks. It is, we may mention in passing, only the rice-bowl, besides those containing soup, tea, and other liquid or semi-liquid food which cannot be picked up with chopsticks, that is brought to the mouth; all other dishes are kept on the tray and the food is taken up with the chopsticks. Finally, the rice-bowl is filled with tea only to wash down any grains of rice that may be left in it.

A MEAL.

This finishes the breakfast. It does not take more than ten or fifteen minutes; indeed, people pride themselves upon their quickness at meals, especially at breakfast, as it implies that they have no time to dawdle over their food, which is taken solely to ward off hunger and maintain their health and strength. But it must be admitted that indigestion not unfrequently follows these hurried meals, to which children are early taught to habituate themselves by parental instruction and by a proverb which puts quickness at meals as an accomplishment on a level with swiftness of foot. When the breakfast is over, the trays, plates, and other utensils are taken back into the kitchen, washed, and put away until they are needed for the next meal. The wooden tub of rice is put into a straw casing in winter to prevent its getting cold and hard and on a stand in a cool, breezy place in summer to keep it from sweating.

Let us next turn to the kitchen and see how it is arranged. The kitchen varies very much in size; but the commonest range from six to sixteen square yards, that is, it would, if it were matted, hold from three to eight mats. But the floor is usually entirely boarded, though in a large kitchen a mat or two are laid for the servants to sit on. There is a space of ground at the entrance for leaving clogs in, and another on which the sink is set. The most prominent feature of the kitchen is the hearth for cooking rice. It is made of a shallow wooden box, on which a square plaster casing is built with a round hole at the top and an aperture at a side. On the hole the rice-pot is put; and the side-opening is used for feeding the hearth with small faggots which are kept in a cavity under the wooden box. The hearth is as often as not double, and over the other hole the soup-pot is set. The plaster between the two holes is often replaced by a copper boiler for boiling water with the heat of the faggots under the two pots. Over the hearth is a skylight in the roof, for the part of the house where the kitchen is situated is always one-storied; and a sliding shutter is moved up and down along the incline of the roof and fastened by a cord. The skylight is useful on a fine calm day as an outlet for the smoke of the hearth; but when a wind blows against the roof or the rain comes pouring in, it has to be closed at the time when it is most needed, for if the skylight is closed, the windows are also shut, with the result that the smoke spreads over the whole house. In some houses, therefore, chimney-flues have taken the place of skylights, which are, moreover, as has already been observed, among the burglar’s favourite means of ingress.

THE KITCHEN.

For ordinary cooking purposes a small hearth of plaster, stone, or iron is used. It is round or square, and larger at top than at bottom. The top is open with an earthen grating at a few inches’ depth from the edge, and an ash-box underneath, which has an outlet at the side for raking out the ashes and fanning the fire. But little charcoal is needed as the space between the grating and the bottom of the pot is very limited. Near the larger hearth is a black earthen pot with a lid, into which half-burnt charcoal is put and extinguished with water; and when they are dry, these half-burnt pieces are used for lighting fresh charcoal with as they catch fire much more readily. For stirring and clearing the hearth, we use a shovel with a long wooden handle and a pair of long iron rods which are held like chopsticks to pick up pieces of charcoal or cinders. The tongs which are used for braziers are much shorter and made of iron, copper, or brass; they are also used like chopsticks and are indeed called in Japanese “fire-chopsticks.” A hollow bamboo tube with a knot at one end which has a little hole in the centre takes the place of bellows.

Besides the iron pots for making soup and other food on a large scale, which are set on the great hearth, we have small pots and pans for the little hearth. The pots have semicircular handles of metal, the ends of which are hooked into holes on opposite sides of the pots, while the pans have wooden handles fitting into sheaths at the side. They all have wooden lids. Fish and other food are roasted on an iron netting, about a foot square, which is put over the little hearth. When a fish is roasted, the fat melts and drops into the fire, raising large volumes of oily smoke and emitting a smell which fills the whole house. One can always tell, when a mackerel pike, for instance, is being roasted, long before one enters the house.

A SKYLIGHT AND THE KITCHEN-GOD.

For transferring rice into a tub or a bowl a wooden spatula is used, while soup and other food which cannot be picked up with chopsticks are put with a wooden spoon into bowls or on plates. For gravy a small earthen spoon is used. Kitchen knives are of three kinds: the square for common use, the triangular for dressing fish, and the long narrow-edged one for cutting thin slices of fish. The dresser is a thick, two-legged board, at which one has to kneel or squat. There are also bamboo baskets for carrying vegetables and other food which require to be washed; but those things which are eaten without first washing and must therefore be kept free from dust are brought home in a round wooden box with a lid and a handle. For pounding soft objects there is an earthen mortar shaped like an inverted cone, with rough ribbed sides, against which the objects are rubbed with a wooden pestle.

Uncooked rice is kept in a large box in a corner of the kitchen and is measured out whenever needed with a square wooden measure. Charcoal is brought in straw bags and emptied into a box under the floor of the kitchen or kept in an outhouse, and is in either case brought out for use in a bamboo or cane basket lined with paper. Soy is usually sold in wooden kegs as it does not change with time; but the poor buy it in half-pint bottles. Sake, on the other hand, is apt to grow sour, especially in hot season, and is bought in long-necked bottles holding a few pints; but if there are heavy drinkers in the family or many guests to entertain, casks are laid in. Pickled vegetables are made in old sake-casks which are put in a corner of the kitchen, often on the ground.

Around the kitchen are shelves, open or with doors, on which the services and utensils are kept. The sets for use when there are guests are carefully wrapped in paper or cotton and stored in special boxes in the kitchen or some other room. There is no pantry; but as every preparation is served separately in a bowl or on a plate, the quantity of crockery in a Japanese kitchen is very great. There is a shelf high upon the wall near the large hearth, dedicated to the kitchen deity, to whom offerings of rice and flowers are daily brought.

The sink, which is of wood, usually lies level with the kitchen floor, and one either squats on the floor or stands on the ground before it. Here all kitchen utensils and services are washed, everything in fact, except the kettles of copper, bronze, or iron, which are never washed but grow mellow by being patted with pieces of cloth steeped in hot water. Beside the sink are an earthen jar to hold water for washing and a wooden pail for drinking water, but there is really no difference in the quality of the liquid in the two receptacles as it has in either case been drawn from the well. The wells are either private or public; in the latter case, they are used by the whole neighbourhood, a small tax being levied for their maintenance, and are the favourite resorts for the exchange of scandals. As these wells have all wooden sides and a square wooden flooring where washing is done, they present a far from cleanly appearance, and the water is as often as not contaminated, especially in the crowded quarters of the city. The Tokyo municipality undertook some years ago to supply pure water, and as water-pipes have been laid throughout the city, the wells are rapidly disappearing in Tokyo.

A WELL.

As we have described the general appearance of the kitchen, we will now return to the sitting-room. The breakfast things have been removed; but preparations have before long to be made for the midday meal. If the master of the house is not at home, or indeed even if he is, unless he has a visitor, the meal is very simple. It may consist of some vegetable soup, boiled vegetables, such as carrots, burdocks, turnips, or pumpkins, or dried or cured fish, like salmon, sardines, herrings, or mackerel, or perhaps fresh fish boiled, basted, or roasted. There may be the same condiments as at breakfast.

The evening meal is the principal repast of the day. It may not differ materially from the midday meal, though fresh fish is more frequently served then than at noon. The fish may be boiled in a mixture of mirin and soy, be put into a soup made with an infusion of dried bonito shavings, be roasted on the iron netting with a sprinkling of salt or repeated coatings of soy, or be taken raw in thin slices. This raw fish is a peculiarly Japanese dish. A side of a fish, after removing the bones, is cut into thin slices and served with grated garden radish and eutrema, the latter in its hot taste being something between ginger and mustard, and also with a boiled yellow chrysanthemum. The fish is soaked in a little plat of soy in which the radish and eutrema have been mixed. The raw fish, especially if it is the sea-bream, is a delicacy which is highly appreciated in Japan, though many Europeans who relish raw oysters recoil from the very idea of eating any fish uncooked.

People who take sake have it usually with their evening meal, though some, of course, drink it at every repast and between meals as well. It is, however, the custom to take it in the evening when the day’s work is done. It is brought in a little china bottle which has been put into a boiling kettle and warmed. It is taken hot, and its effects are naturally more rapid than when it is taken cold, and pass off as rapidly. It is poured into a tiny cup; and as one sips it cup after cup, it warms one up quickly, but when its effects pass off, it is apt to give one a chill; hence, a man who goes to sleep immediately after drinking sake, needs more bedding than usual to avoid a cold on awaking. Another peculiarity in sake-drinking is that we take it with fish or other dishes at the beginning of a meal, and when we have done with it, we take rice. This drinking on a empty stomach helps to make it effective; and the Japanese way of drinking produces a quick but brief state of exhilaration.

CHAPTER VI.
FOOD.

Japanese diet—Vegetables—Sea-weeds and flowers—Fish—Shell-fish—Crabs and other molluscs—Fowl—Meat—Prepared food—Peculiarities of food—Fruits—The bever—Baked potatoes and cracknel—Confectionery—Reasons for its abundance—Sponge-cake—Glutinous rice and red bean—Kinds of confectionery—Sugar in Japanese confectionery.

IT will be seen from the foregoing chapter that the Japanese diet consists almost entirely of fish and vegetables. It is true that we also eat domestic and other fowls, and in Tokyo and other large towns a quantity of beef and pork, and horseflesh as well, is consumed; but their consumption is insignificant compared with the part fish and vegetables play in the Japanese culinary art.

We have a great variety of vegetables. The commonest and most useful of them is the garden radish, which is pickled or salted, boiled almost dry with mirin, sugar, and bonito shavings, put into soup, or grated to flavour raw or fried fish. Carrots and turnips, the burdock and the arrowhead are also boiled and served by themselves or together on a plate. We boil or put into soup the potato, the yam, and the taro, of which we have several varieties. Cucumbers are either pickled or served raw with pepper and vinegar. The egg-plant and the melon are also pickled or put into soup. We pickle or boil the onion, scallion, spinach, and lettuce. The kidney, horse, and other beans are in great favour and dressed in various ways. Mushrooms and several other fungi growing on trees or on rocks are served with fish or vegetables. The bulb of the tiger-lily and the rhizome of the lotus are boiled; the former is very soft, but the latter is hard and indigestible. The bamboo-shoots, when very young, become soft on boiling and are much in demand in April; but they grow fast and soon become too hard. Rice boiled with bits of bamboo-shoot is a favourite food in that month. The water-shield is held by some people to be a delicacy, while others esteem as highly the common bracken, snake-gourd, and water-pepper.

Sea-weeds are also in great demand. Of these the principal are the konbu (laminaria japonica), which is largely exported into China, and the laver, which is obtained in thin sheets and taken with soy alone or with rice rolled in it. The cherry-flowers and the chrysanthemums are also articles of food; the former are salted, put into hot water, and served in place of tea, while the latter, always the yellow variety, are either fried with a coating of kuzu (pueraria Thunbergiana) or boiled in brine and pressed.

Japan is especially rich in fish, as is to be expected from her extensive coast-line and great length from north to south. There are said to be about six hundred varieties of fish in the waters surrounding the country. Of these the one which is held in highest esteem is the tai, a species of the sea-bream (pagrus cardinalis). It is served in various ways; indeed, so numerous are these ways that there is extant an old Japanese book entitled “The Hundred Excellent Methods of dressing the Tai.” It may be boiled, roasted, basted, salted, or taken raw. Most other fish may be similarly treated, though they may not be considered so delicate. For being taken raw in thin slices, the fishes esteemed next to the tai are the plaice, gilthead, tunny, and bonito. Others are mostly preferred boiled. Among the commonest of these fishes are the gurnard, Prussian carp, common carp, wels, flying-fish, mackerel, frigate mackerel, horse-mackerel, mackerel pike, trout, rock-trout, white-bait, sand-fish, goby, sting-ray, sword-fish, sardine, salmon, sole, hair-tail, goose-fish, cod, half-beak, yellow-tail, grey mullet, shark, and sea-eel. The salmon comes to Tokyo salted, while the herring is sun-dried. The sardine and mackerel pike are usually roasted. The eel is treated only in one way; it is split from gill to tail, the back-bone is extracted, and the head cut off; the two sides are laid out flat and bamboo skewers are passed through them, and they are roasted over a fire, being from time to time dipped in a gravy of mirin and soy. Tokyo is especially noted for eels served in this way. The loach is also split and the bones are extracted; it is served in a pan over a hot-water bath, with eggs and chips of burdock.

RAW FISH, WHOLE AND SLICED.

There are also many kinds of shell-fish in Japan. Of the univalves the principal are the sea-ear and top-shell, while among the bivalves are the oyster, clam, sea-mussel, razor-shell, cockle, swan-mussel, otter-shell, and rapana. They are mostly boiled; the clam and sea-mussel, and others with comparatively thin shells are served in a bowl of slightly-flavoured hot water, which can hardly be called soup. The oyster is always shelled and served by itself or with eggs.

Crabs, squills, lobsters, shrimps, and prawns are abundant. The cuttle-fish and octopus are very common articles of food, and the pond-snail is appreciated by some people. Sun-dried cuttle-fish are also very common; they are flat and hard, and are cut into slices which are roasted and dipped in soy.

Of fowls the variety is somewhat limited. We have of course the domestic fowl. The most esteemed of all fowls is the crane, after which come Bewick’s swan, the heron, wild goose, wild duck, common duck, pheasant, quail, pigeon, woodcock, and water-rail, while among the smaller birds are the sparrow, lark, and siskin. As we do not use a knife and fork at table, all fowls have to be cut up before they are served. A favourite way is to serve them in small slices in soup; but they may also be brought in with vegetables on a plate. The commonest method with the domestic fowl and duck is to boil them in small slices in a shallow pan with bits of onion in a gravy of soy, mirin, and sugar. The pan has a small hollow at a side, into which the gravy runs so as not to saturate the meat too much. The small birds are served whole, and when chopsticks fail, the hands and teeth are brought into requisition.

It is only of recent years that we have begun to eat beef and pork; but we have in Tokyo a large number of shops where they are sold. There are two kinds of such shops; one is the regular butcher’s, while the other is a sort of restaurant where beef is served in the same manner as the domestic fowl and duck above mentioned. Here sake and rice are also obtainable. There are many restaurants in European style; but the cuisine in most of them is non-descript and the dishes are confined to the simplest kind. The absence of mutton, moreover, sadly limits, the range of plats.

Though cooking is mostly done at home, no small quantity of prepared food is bought for the meals. The most important of such food is the bean-curd. For this the soy bean is soaked in water, ground, steamed, and strained; and the liquid is allowed to coagulate by the addition of brine and then pressed in a square box with a cotton-cloth bottom until the water has been drawn off, leaving behind a soft white curd. This curd is cut into small slices and put into soup in the morning; it is sometimes thrown into hot water, and as soon as it is warmed, dipped into a mixture of soy and mirin and eaten. It is also fried. Indeed, the bean-curd shares with the tai the distinction of having a special treatise dealing with a hundred ways of dressing it. Another favourite breakfast food is the steamed peas, which are eaten with mustard. Plums which have softened and reddened by being preserved in perilla leaves are often, after extracting the stones, boiled with sugar until they become gelatinous. Boiled beans, the egg-plant preserved in mustard, and ginger in perilla leaves are common breakfast condiments. Fish and vegetables coated with flour and fried in rape-oil are favourite articles of diet. Commonest among fried vegetables are sweet potatoes, leek, and lotus rhizomes, while lobsters similarly served are highly esteemed. Another favourite is the flesh of sturgeon minced very fine, seasoned with sake and salt, and baked. It is made into a roll with a hole through the centre or is semi-cylindrical with a flat side.

It will thus be seen how completely our diet differs from the European; and it is no matter for wonder that the other conditions of life should be as dissimilar. Many Europeans in Japan find our meals unsatisfying; but at the same time there are not a few Japanese who do not feel that they have had a full meal unless they finish up a European dinner with rice and-pickled vegetables. There is certainly far greater sustaining power in European food, and our medical authorities urge a more extensive use of animal food besides fish. Rice and vegetables, it is true, fill the stomach; indeed, one may even feel surfeited, and yet in a short time the strain disappears and hunger returns. For this reason coolies and others engaged in severe physical labour take four or more meals a day. Pickled vegetables are indigestible; but as they are indispensable at every meal, the natural result is that dyspepsia is one of the commonest ailments that a Japanese is subject to. It should, however, be added that it is not pickled vegetables alone that are responsible for this prevalence of dyspepsia; for the Japanese, and more especially the citizens of Tokyo, probably take more food between meals than any other people, and that too at irregular intervals.

As there is no dessert at a Japanese meal, fruits are commonly eaten at odd hours, especially by children. In the early months of the year we have the apple and the orange. The former is mostly cultivated in Yezo, the most northerly of the larger islands, while the latter comes mainly from the southern section of the main island. Oranges are all mandarins with or almost without pips; of these there are many varieties, and some of them are very sweet. The shaddock is also very common. There are different kinds of citrons; but they are seldom eaten by themselves, being like the lemon mostly used to flavour dishes. Strawberries there are in plenty; but they are mostly watery and lack sweetness owing to the great humidity of the Japanese climate, which spoils both fruit and flower, depriving one of taste and the other of fragrance. Cherries have recently been introduced and cultivated in many localities; for the Japanese cherry-tree is grown solely for its beautiful flowers and its fruit is too small to be eaten. The Japanese plum-tree is also reared for its flowers, but produces fruit in large quantity; it is hard, and is eaten raw with a little salt to counteract indigestion, pickled in vinegar, or preserved in perilla leaves. The Japanese apricot is inferior to the English apricot and nectarine; and so is the peach which is pointed at the top and hard-druped. Figs are always eaten raw. The loquat tastes fairly good, but its large stones leave but little to eat; and the pomegranate is open to a similar objection that it is too full of seed for enjoyment. The Japanese pear is different to the European species; it has not the peculiar shape of the latter, but looks like a large pippin in shape and colour, only that it is speckled all over with minute greenish-white spots; it is juicy but comparatively hard. Acorns of different kinds of oak are parched and shelled. Our chestnuts do not differ from the European. They are roasted or boiled unshelled; but when they are shelled and boiled soft, they form part of an important dish at Japanese dinners. Grapes, too, are plentiful; they are fair, though of course inferior to European hot-house grapes. Bananas we get from the Bonin Islands and pine-apples from Formosa. But the best of all Japanese fruits is the persimmon; it is a peculiarly Japanese fruit. There are many varieties, some of which are delicious. Some of the larger sort are thrown into empty sake-casks and left to mellow, while others are peeled, dried, and preserved in sugar.

As the second meal of the day is taken at noon and the last at sundown, it is not unusual, especially in summer, to have something at three or four o’clock. When there are artisans or labourers at work in the house, they are always given tea with some food about that hour; and if there is a visitor, a lady or a friend of the family, its women folk generally manage to have this bever. It may be no more than confectionery; but the most common food taken on such an occasion is sushi, which is a lump of rice which has been pressed with the hand into a roundish form with a slight mixture of vinegar and covered on the top with a slice of fish or lobster, or a strip of fried egg, or rolled in a piece of laver. As the lumps are small, being seldom more than two or three inches long, several of them are set before each person. The favourite fish for the purpose is the tunny, though others are also largely used. Another common dish for the bever is the soba, which is a sort of macaroni made of buckwheat; in its simplest form it is brought on a small bamboo screen laid on a wooden stand; it is dipped, before eating, in an infusion of bonito shavings flavoured with a little soy and mirin, to which small bits of onion and Cayenne pepper have been added. The macaroni is also boiled with fried lobsters, fowl, or eggs and served in bowls. Wheaten macaroni is also dressed in the same manner; it is much thicker than that of buckwheat.

SUSHI AND SOBA.

But it is in winter evenings that there is a great deal of eating to while away the dreary hours after the early supper. Children, students, and others to whom inexpensiveness is a consideration, take to sweet potatoes which are boiled in slices or baked whole or in pieces. Another article, equally in favour for its cheapness, is a kind of cracknel made by baking and dipping small disks of rice or wheaten flour in soy. Parched peas rolled in salt or sugar and roasted acorns and chestnuts are also much in demand.

The variety of confectionery is very great. This is due to two causes. First, it is the custom to take a present with us when we go to visit a friend whom we have not seen for some time or to pay our respects to a superior. It may be some fruit in season, or a box of eggs, a brace of wild ducks or geese, or a case of beer, handkerchiefs, or, indeed, any article conceivable; but the commonest is confectionery. If one goes to ask a favour or express thanks for a service rendered, or to keep oneself in the other’s good books if he is a superior, where, in short, some personal advantage is sought immediately or prospectively or has been gained, one naturally makes presents of some value; but if it is only to pay the compliments of the season and merely to remind the other of one’s existence, articles of slighter value, such as confectionery, are given. In the latter case the recipient makes to the other a similar present when he returns the call. This exchange of presents takes place among friends, especially at the end of the year. So general is the custom that on a man with a wide circle of acquaintances these gifts about the New Year’s tide entail serious expenses. He may of course send to a friend a present he has received from another; but he has to be very circumspect how he disposes of such presents, for it sometimes happens that this repeated passing on of a gift from one person to another ends in its reverting to the original donor in a condition by no means improved by its frequent journeys. Similar presents are made in midsummer, though the custom is not so general as at the other season.

The second reason for the variety of confectionery lies in the custom of setting some cake before a visitor. When any one calls and is shown in, tea is brought before him together with a plate of confections. The tea is of course drunk, but the cake is more frequently left untouched; it ought in that case to be wrapped in paper and given to the visitor to take home, but the rule is not always observed and the cake is often left to do duty before successive callers until it becomes too stale for presentation. In a family with children, they generally manage to make away with it as soon as the visitor is gone. When, however, a doctor is called in, the cake is always wrapped in paper and given to him; and the doctor takes it as a matter of course.

These two customs, then, naturally create a large demand for confectionery of all kinds. The most common cake for making a present of is a sort of sponge-cake. It is not of Japanese origin, but appears to have been introduced by the Spaniards in the early days of foreign intercourse more than three centuries ago. It is put in a cardboard or wooden box; and, in view of the custom above referred to of passing a present on from one to another until it grows stale, the best confectioners in Tokyo now put on the box the date of its sale so that their reputation may not suffer through the deterioration of their confection by its repeated travels. The precaution, however, is hardly necessary as the custom is too widely known for any one who receives musty sweetmeats to accuse their maker of dishonesty.

A BOX OF SPONGE-CAKE.

The bulk of confectionery is made of rice, red beans, millet, or sugar. Glutinous rice is steamed, pounded in a wooden mortar into a pasty consistency, and left to cool. This is made into little cakes, which are boiled and eaten with greens in soup at the beginning of the year and are at other times baked and dipped in soy and sugar. But for making confectionery, the pounded rice is not allowed to cool as it is, while hot, soft enough to take any shape. It usually forms the outer cover of dumplings filled with a sugary mixture. The red bean is boiled, pounded, and strained through a coarse cotton bag to get rid of the skin, though the latter is sometimes retained, in which case the straining is unnecessary, and finally mixed with sugar. This red bean jam is the most important ingredient of Japanese sweetmeats as there is in our confectionery no other equivalent of the fruit jam. Sometimes, however, other beans are substituted for it, especially when a white jam is needed. The red-bean jam is also used in making red soup into which small rice dumplings are thrown; this soup is much in demand, especially in winter, to while away the tedium of long evenings. The red bean is also boiled with rice to give it a colour; the red-bean rice is eaten in old-fashioned families three times a month, on the first, fifteenth, and twenty-eighth. A kind of white candy is made from a mixture of glutinous rice and rice-yeast. Agar-agar, or the Bengal isinglass, which is obtained from a seaweed, is used for making jellies. Starch extracted from the root of the kuzu (pueraria Thunbergiana) is also much employed in confectionery.

Numerous as are the confections made, the more common among them are the following, which may of course be varied by the addition of other ingredients. A kind of Turkish delight is made from a mixture of glutinous rice, syrup, and white candy, boiled and brought into proper consistency by throwing in a little kuzu starch. By steaming a mixture of red beans, sugar, wheat, and kuzu, we get a sweet dark-red cake, which is almost as popular as the sponge-cake. A mixture of glutinous rice steeped in water and rice-yeast left overnight in a hot-water bath is, after being strained and steamed with a small quantity of wheat, made into little balls around a lump of red-bean jam. This is also a very common confection. Caramels are made with long beans or peanuts inside. By boiling a mixture of agar-agar and sugar for some time over a slow fire, we get a soft, translucent jelly which is put into a mould and afterwards cut up.

There are many others of a similar composition, often coloured, flavoured, or peculiarly shaped; but their principal ingredients are the articles already mentioned. Japanese confectionery is noticeable for the large quantity of saccharine matter it contains, which varies, except in rare cases, from one to three fourths of the whole composition. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that indigestion is a frequent result of a too free indulgence in Japanese confections.

CHAPTER VII.
MALE DRESS.

Japanese and foreign dress—Progress in the latter—Japanese clothes indispensable—Kimono—Cutting out—Making of an unlined dress—Short measure—Extra-sized dresses—Yukata—The lined kimono—The wadded kimono—Under-dress—Underwear—Obi—Haori—The crest—The uncrested haori—Hakama—Socks—How to dress Wearing of socks.

A stranger in the streets of Tokyo cannot but be struck by the number of Japanese, especially men and boys, who are dressed in European clothes. The western costume, if less picturesque, is certainly more handy than the Japanese; it allows a greater freedom to the limbs, whereas in the latter the long sleeves are apt to be caught by knobs and corners and the skirt is always in the way when we wish to run or walk fast. For this reason the European male dress is largely worn in schools, government offices, and private places of business, which are built in a style more or less foreign and furnished with chairs, benches, and tables; for squatting is uncomfortable with foreign clothes and, whatever the dress may be, is a more complicated way of resting ourselves than sitting in a chair, besides requiring a greater effort when we wish to rise. But there are further reasons for the favour which European clothes enjoy in Japan. They last much longer than Japanese, for silks wear out pretty quickly if they are constantly in use and are, moreover, torn more readily. If they are soiled, they have to be taken to pieces, washed, perhaps redyed, and remade. Besides, a Japanese outfit of fair quality is more costly than a European suit. And as the custom stands in Japan, we have to provide ourselves with several Japanese suits; whereas so many changes are not needed of European clothes, in respect of which the Japanese people, as a whole, have not yet learned to discriminate so rigidly as when their national costume is concerned. A man may, in fact, wear the same frock-coat all the year round and make it last long by taking as great care of it as he does of his Japanese clothes. All things considered, then, European clothes are both more handy and economical, and on that account preferred to Japanese on business and ceremonial occasions.

In the early days of the new regime when European clothes were comparatively rare and not unfrequently worn rather as a sign of their wearers’ progressive spirit than for their convenience, it was considered sufficient if they were simply European, no account being taken of their cut or style. A man in a tweed cutaway or serge lounge suit found ready access to an evening party or a semi-official gathering. But as time went on, the frock-coat became the usual dress on such occasions; still, silk hats were not yet generally worn, and bowlers remained the common wear. The evening dress was the official suit and was worn at one time even in the morning, if there was an official ceremony at such early hours. It is only within the last decade that silk hats have come into vogue; and they are now worn with the frock-coat or evening dress at all parties and social gatherings. But as they are still only worn at social functions, they last a long time, and at garden parties silk hats of all ages and styles may be seen.

The rapid encroachment of European clothes into Japanese society is undeniable; and if we may judge from the steady increase of tailoring establishments in Tokyo and elsewhere, they seem destined to command a still greater popularity. But there appears to be little ground for the prediction often made by European writers that the national dress is doomed. For so long as Japanese houses remain radically unchanged and we are forced to squat on the mat, Japanese clothes cannot be dispensed with. European clothes are not comfortable to squat in; as the body cannot be kept quite straight, the collar presses on the throat, the waistcoat gets creasy, the trousers soon become baggy about the knees, and the socks are but a poor protection against the cold since they cannot be hidden as under the skirt of the Japanese dress. In a room warmed only by a small brazier, we feel the winter chill more severely in European clothes than in Japanese. In summer no one who has once worn the Japanese yukata would willingly take it off, for it is the slightest possible consistent with decency as it is nothing more than a single unlined dress. It is the coolest imaginable. Other Japanese summer clothes are only less cool than the yukata. Hence, a Japanese of the upper or middle class has usually to provide himself with both European and Japanese suits, that is, if he wears European clothes at all, and is put to double expenses in the matter of clothing. And to be completely equipped in both requires no light purse.

The ordinary Japanese dress is shaped like a gown with hanging sleeves. As the exact shape of the kimono, as it is called, appears unknown to those who have never seen it, we will here explain how a kimono is made.

The kimono is made out of a piece of silk, cotton, or hemp cloth, usually eleven inches wide and about thirty-five feet long. Cloths are always made of nearly the same measure or of double the length just mentioned, that is, if they are for making kimono. The length and width may vary slightly, cotton cloths being for instance smaller than silk. The cloth is cut out into two pieces each for the body, the sleeves, and the gores, and one for the band and sometimes another for the upper band, or into seven or eight pieces in all. The body pieces are each ten feet long and the sleeve pieces three feet and a half, so that the two pairs take up twenty-seven feet; they are of the same width as the original piece. The remainder is cut into two strips, usually six and five inches wide, of which the former is cut in two lengths of four feet three inches each, if possible, for the gores and the latter into a strip, five feet eight inches long, for the main band, the remainder being used, if needed, for the upper band.

We now pass on to the making of the male unlined kimono, as naturally it is of the simplest form. In the first place, the length of a kimono varies with the size of the wearer; it is not only his height, but his condition as well, that has to be taken into consideration, for broad shoulders, a thick chest, and rounded hips require more cloth, longitudinally and laterally, than a body of the same height but with less flesh. The usual length is about four feet six inches for the average Japanese whose height is five feet three or four inches. The two body pieces are first placed side by side and sewn together half the length, the edge sewn in being about half an inch; and then at the end of the seam the pieces are cut two inches and a half and folded down at that width all along to the free ends, so that when they are spread out, there is a channel five inches wide along half their length. They are then folded in two so that the free halves are exactly over the sewn halves. The outer edges are then sewn from the end up to a point a foot and five inches below the fold. The sewn halves form the hind part and the free halves the front of the kimono. Next, the pieces for the gores are sewn on from the end along the free edges of the body pieces. The skirt is stitched, and the kimono, which is now an inch or so less than five feet, is tucked in to the required length at the hips where the tucking would be concealed under the obi, or sash. The edge of each gore is stitched to a certain height which depends upon the length of the kimono, and from this point to the top of its juncture with the body piece the gore is turned, and the triangle thus formed is folded again and again so as to be enclosed in the band which is next sewn on over the folded edges of the gores and round the breast and neck of the body pieces. The band itself is made by folding the band piece lengthwise into two and turning in the edges. The upper band which serves as an anti-macassar is then sewn over the main band around the neck. The sleeves have in the meantime been sewn into oblong pieces a foot and seven or eight inches long by ten inches wide. The outer edge has been sewn together for nine and a quarter inches from the bottom, the remainder being hemmed round to allow the hand to pass through; and the inner edge, of which two and a half inches have been stitched at the lower extremity, is now sewn on to the body piece.

The dress is now complete. Sometimes when the cloth is slightly short of measure, it cannot be made in the way just described. The body pieces are taken at lengths which admit of but little tucking at the hips; and the gores are cut slantwise, leaving no triangular pieces to be folded in. But in that case, when the dress is remade, the same parts of the gores will be exposed, whereas if the gores are oblong, they can be reversed so as to expose the parts which were formerly folded in and are therefore practically new.

THE KIMONO, REAR AND FRONT VIEW.

These dresses can be taken to pieces and remade so long as the cloth is not worn out; and as they can be made to fit most persons by judicious tucking in or letting out, they are often washed and remade for others than the original wearer. As the maximum length of the body pieces is about ten feet, a cloth of the usual length would be too short for those who measure more than four feet ten or eleven inches from the nape of the neck to the ankles. A spare person, five feet eight inches in height, might just manage to make himself a dress out of a cloth of the usual length; but a man of a greater stature or of the same height with more flesh would have to get a cloth specially woven for him or buy a double length. Moreover, if a cloth is too short for the height, it would also be in all probability too narrow for the sleeves, which would then require a strip to be sewn on to cover the arms.

The unlined dress of coarse bleached cotton, known as yukata or bath-dress, is the simplest and most comfortable for summer wear. It is worn immediately next to the skin without underwear of any kind, and is washed whole every few days in midsummer. It is commonly white or blue with stripes, spots, or other simple designs. If the dress is of silk, hemp, or of a better kind of cotton, an underwear of bleached cotton is put on. This resembles the kimono in form, only that it is much shorter, coming down only to the thighs, and has open sleeves and no gores. The unlined kimono is worn when one goes out in summer; the yukata is mostly for home wear or put on for a walk in the evening. The unlined clothes are worn through midsummer from the middle of June until the latter half of September.

The lined kimono differs from the unlined in having a lining, which is usually of dark-blue silk or cotton. The lining is first made separately from the covering, and its pieces, which are similar to those of the other with a slight shrinkage in the measurement to allow for its being the inner side, are stitched together, except at the edges of the sleeves, skirt, gores, and the inner border of the body pieces, which are sewn on to the corresponding parts of the outer cloth. The band of the latter covers both cloths; and at the opening of the sleeves a stiff piece of cloth trims the edges as that part is apt to be rapidly worn out from the movement of the wrist. The underwear is the same as in the case of the unlined kimono. The lined kimono is worn for a shorter time than the unlined, in fact, for about a month at the transition from the unlined kimono to the wadded and vice-versa. The lined kimono was not recognised by the old-time etiquette which did not sanction any intermediate dress between the unlined and the wadded; but of its comfort as a demi-saison costume there can be no question.

The wadded kimono is the most important of all as it is worn for a longer period than the others. It is simply the lined kimono wadded, and is made similarly to it. When the two halves, the outer and the inner, have been stitched separately, they are first joined together at the skirt, turned inside out, and spread on the floor. The wadding is then put on the outer half, the lining is brought over and sewn on, and finally the whole dress is turned back the right side out. The lining is made narrower than the covering as it remains inside, but is slightly longer to allow for the bulge of the wadding. The wadding may be of floss-silk as when it is desired to keep the dress thin and light; or it may be of ginned cotton with a thin coating of floss-silk; the floss-silk is needed because if the wadding were only of cotton, it would fall in the course of time and gather at the skirt, whereas the floss-silk adheres to the cloth with such pertinacity that part of it oozes out through the texture of the cloth and forms little white lumps on the outside.

The wadded clothes are worn double in midwinter. The under-dress is of slightly smaller dimensions than the upper. It is usual to make its body of a less stiff material than the other, for if it were as stiff or thick, it would be uncomfortable to wear. Hence, the gores, the skirt, the band, and the wrist-ends of the sleeves, that is, the visible portions, are made of stiff stuff; but the rest is of softer silk or cotton.

Under the lower kimono is worn a doublet, thickly wadded and coming down to the knees. It is made of inferior silk and has a black silk band. Under this is the same underwear as in the case of the lined kimono. The doublet has sleeves like the kimono. The merino undershirt is now frequently worn instead of the Japanese underwear; it is certainly warmer than the other which lets the wind and cold enter through its open breast and sleeves, but it cannot be said to add to the picturesqueness of the national costume. Merino drawers are also worn; they are useful as the skirt is often on a windy day blown aside and exposes the legs to the cold.

THE OBI, SQUARE AND PLAIN.

The obi, or sash, is about four inches wide and varies in length from twelve feet and a half to fourteen. It is usually of the same material on both sides and can be worn either side out. It is stitched along one edge and stiffened with a padding. This is the regular sash, commonly called the square obi; but when we are at home, go out for a walk, or visit an intimate friend, we prefer another kind of sash, which is a piece of white crêpe, about ten feet long and varying in width from a foot and a quarter to two feet, and stitched at the ends to prevent their fraying. It is much more comfortable than the other.

The haori, or outer coat, is worn over the kimono. It comes down only to the knees or a little lower. It has no gores in front like the kimono. The neck-band runs down to the skirt. The haori is open in front and the band falls straight from the shoulders on both sides, so that there is no need for gores in front which are required only for folding over; but there is a narrow gore on either side coming down from the lower extremity of the sleeve to the skirt. The sleeves of the haori are just large enough to enclose those of the kimono. At the skirt the body pieces are turned in and form the lining of the lower part of the haori; and so the full length of a cloth, that is, about thirty-five feet, is taken in the same way as in the making of the kimono. The upper part of the haori and the sleeves are lined with another material; that for the upper part is often of bright colours or embroidered; it is, in fact, the only portion of the male dress where the usual rule of sober colours is not strictly adhered to, and people who aspire to be chic sometimes use for the lining a more expensive material than the outer cloth. Unlined haori which are made of silk gauze or similar thin stuff for summer wear, are woven shorter than the others to dispense with the skirt-lining. The haori for winter wear is sometimes wadded with a thin layer of floss-silk. About fifteen inches down the neck, a small loop of the same material as the haori is stitched on to the band on either side, and to this a silk cord is fastened and tied in the middle to keep the haori from slipping off. Sometimes the cords are made in a knot or a bow and fastened to the loops by hooks at the ends.

THE HAORI.

The haori worn on a visit or on formal occasions is usually black and adorned with the family crest. The crest is found on three or five parts of the haori, one in the middle of the back over the seam, and one each on the back of the sleeve, and if there are five crests altogether, one each on the breast of the body piece between the band and the sleeve. The crest is of various forms and is about an inch from end to end. It is invariably white; the white cloth is specially dyed for the purpose so that the crest is the only portion left undyed; but sometimes ready-dyed cloths with white disks for the crests are bought, when the crests have to be drawn on them, or if they have no such disks, the crests are sewn on.

Haori for common wear have no crests and are plain, twilled, or striped and of sombre hues, though not necessarily black. Those for home wear are often much longer than ordinary haori and are thickly wadded with cotton. They are also without crests.

The hakama is a sort of loose trousers. Either leg is made by joining along the nape five pieces of cloth about a yard long, four of which are of the full width of the cloth and the fifth of half that width. The skirt is sewn by turning in the edge three times to stiffen it. The two legs are joined in such a manner that the half-width pieces form the inner side and the lowest point of the fork is about twenty-two inches from the skirt. In front a longitudinal plait is made an inch or so to the left so that its edge is in the middle; two more plaits are made to the left and two to the right, and a third on the latter leg under the middle fold. A similar but deeper plait is made behind on either leg, that on the right having its edge in the middle. These plaits are not stitched, but merely hot-pressed so that they can be opened at will; and as they are much deeper at the skirt than at the top, they give free play to the legs when walking and make the hakama appear to fit more closely than it would without them. The upper half of the hakama is open at either side, the fork at which is of about the same depth as that in the middle. The top of the front half which is about a foot wide, is sewn on to the middle of a band which is folded and turned in to the width of half an inch and is about eleven feet long, thus leaving a free end five feet long on either side of the front half. The back, the top of which is narrower than that in front, is surmounted with a piece of thin board on which the cloth is pasted with starch mucilage. This board has also a narrow band, two feet long, on each side. The hakama is lined or unlined, but never wadded.

THE HAKAMA.

Socks are made with a thick cotton sole and a cover of common cotton or calico, black or white, which comes up only to the ankle-bone. They are split between the big toe and the next for holding the thong of the clogs. They are kept from coming off by two or three small metal clasps catching a cord behind the heel.

SOCKS.

Now the Japanese suit is complete. In summer we wear the yukata, or the coarse unlined cotton kimono, at home, or an unlined dress of cotton or other material with underwear when we go out. We always put on our clothes by folding the left over the right. The clothes are folded one by one, that is, the underwear is first folded left over right, over it the doublet, and lastly the kimono which, if double, are folded in pairs. The principle in putting them on is that their bands shall alternate right and left and the folds form gradations widening with the outer garments, so that from the bands one can tell the quantity of clothing a man has put on. We wind the obi over the kimono. If it is the unlined crêpe, we merely wind it round and either tuck in the ends under the folds or tie them behind; but if it is the square obi, we leave behind one end about ten inches long and winding the obi twice round, fold the other end, the tip of which is tucked under the fold, at such a length that a foot or so of the doubled end is left over. The two ends are tied together in a double knot with the two extremities slanting upward one on each side of the knot. The knot is tied behind over the spine, the obi being wound just above the hips. Over the kimono we wear the haori. The haori is neither a greatcoat nor a coat properly so called; for we wear it on all occasions and indoors, and yet we may on informal occasions take it off without breach of good manners. Indeed, a man who walks abroad without a haori would be in an entirely different position to one who goes about in shirt sleeves. The crested haori, which is invariably worn on formal occasions, is a ready means of identification; and accordingly, when we are unwilling to attract attention or to risk recognition, the uncrested is commonly put on. The hakama is worn when we have to be properly dressed, on occasions, that is to say, when one would wear a frock-coat or an evening dress; at schools and in government offices the hakama is indispensable when Japanese clothes are worn. In putting on a hakama, the front band is first brought flush with the upper edge of the obi and the ends are each passed once and half round the body and tied behind under the knot of the obi; and then the board at the back is perched over the same knot to prevent its slipping down, and the ends of its bands are tied in front.

The socks are worn with all clothes except the yukata; but many people go about barefooted, save in winter. The white is the colour worn on formal occasions; but the black is popular as it wears better than the other and does not betray the dirt when it is soiled. Only young children wear socks of other colours, such as red and yellow.

CHAPTER VIII.
FEMALE DRESS.

Attempts at Europeanisation—Difference between Japanese and foreign dresses—Expense and inconvenience of foreign dresses—Japanese dresses not to be discarded—How the female dress differs from the male—Underwear and over-band—Haori—Hakama—Obi—How to tie it—The dress-obi—The formal dress—Home-wear—Working clothes—The sameness of form—The girl’s dress—Dress and age.