I
The foreign concession of an open port offers a striking contrast
to its far-Eastern environment. In the well-ordered ugliness of
its streets one finds suggestions of places not on this side of
the world,--just as though fragments of the Occident had been
magically brought oversea: bits of Liverpool, of Marseilles, of
New York, of New Orleans, and bits also of tropical towns in
colonies twelve or fifteen thousand miles away. The mercantile
buildings--immense by comparison with the low light Japanese
shops--seem to utter the menace of financial power. The
dwellings, of every conceivable design--from that of an Indian
bungalow to that of an English or French country-manor, with
turrets and bow-windows--are surrounded by commonplace gardens of
clipped shrubbery; the white roadways are solid and level as
tables, and bordered with boxed-up trees. Nearly all things
conventional in England or America have been domiciled in these
districts. You see church-steeples and factory-chimneys and
telegraph-poles and street-lamps. You see warehouses of imported
brick with iron shutters, and shop fronts with plate-glass
windows, and sidewalks, and cast-iron railings. There are morning
and evening and weekly newspapers; clubs and reading-rooms and
bowling alleys; billiard halls and barrooms; schools and bethels.
There are electric-light and telephone companies; hospitals,
courts, jails, and a foreign police. There are foreign lawyers,
doctors, and druggists; foreign grocers, confectioners, bakers,
dairymen; foreign dress-makers and tailors; foreign
school-teachers and music-teachers. There is a town-hall, for
municipal business and public meetings of all kinds,--likewise
for amateur theatricals or lectures and concerts; and very rarely
some dramatic company, on a tour of the world, halts there awhile
to make men laugh and women cry like they used to do at home.
There are cricket-grounds, racecourses, public parks,--or, as we
should call them in England, "squares,"--yachting associations,
athletic societies, and swimming baths. Among the familiar noises
are the endless tinkling of piano-practice, the crashing of a
town-band, and an occasional wheezing of accordions: in fact, one
misses only the organ-grinder. The population is English, French,
German, American, Danish, Swedish, Swiss, Russian, with a thin
sprinkling of Italians and Levantines. I had almost forgotten the
Chinese. They are present in multitude, and have a little corner
of the district to themselves. But the dominant element is
English and American, the English being in the majority. All the
faults and some of the finer qualities of the masterful races can
be studied here to better advantage than beyond seas,--because
everybody knows all about everybody else in communities so
small,--mere oases of Occidental life in the vast unknown of the
Far East. Ugly stories may be heard which are not worth writing
about; also stories of nobility and generosity--about good brave
things done by men who pretend to be selfish, and wear
conventional masks to hide what is best in them from public
knowledge.
But the domains of the foreigner do not stretch beyond the
distance of an easy walk, and may shrink back again into nothing
before many years--for reasons I shall presently dwell upon. His
settlements developed precociously,--almost like "mushroom
cities" in the great American West,--and reached the apparent
limit of their development soon after solidifying.
About and beyond the concession, the "native town"--the real
Japanese city--stretches away into regions imperfectly known. To
the average settler this native town remains a world of
mysteries; he may not think it worth his while to enter it for
ten years at a time. It has no interest for him, as he is not a
student of native customs, but simply a man of business; and he
has no time to think how queer it all is. Merely to cross the
concession line is almost the same thing as to cross the Pacific
Ocean,--which is much less wide than the difference between the
races. Enter alone into the interminable narrow maze of Japanese
streets, and the dogs will bark at you, and the children stare at
you as if you were the only foreigner they ever saw. Perhaps they
will even call after you "Ijin," "Tojin," or "Ke-tojin,"--the
last of which signifies "hairy foreigner," and is not intended as
a compliment.