First View of Japan—A Vision of Fujisan—Japanese Sampans—“Pullman
Cars”—Undignified Locomotion—Paper Money—The Drawbacks of Japanese
Travelling.
ORIENTAL HOTEL, YOKOHAMA,
_May_ 21.
EIGHTEEN days of unintermitted rolling over “desolate rainy seas” brought
the “City of Tokio” early yesterday morning to Cape King, and by noon we
were steaming up the Gulf of Yedo, quite near the shore. The day was
soft and grey with a little faint blue sky, and, though the coast of
Japan is much more prepossessing than most coasts, there were no
startling surprises either of colour or form. Broken wooded ridges,
deeply cleft, rise from the water’s edge, gray, deep-roofed villages
cluster about the mouths of the ravines, and terraces of rice
cultivation, bright with the greenness of English lawns, run up to a
great height among dark masses of upland forest. The populousness of the
coast is very impressive, and the gulf everywhere was equally peopled
with fishing-boats, of which we passed not only hundreds, but thousands,
in five hours. The coast and sea were pale, and the boats were pale too,
their hulls being unpainted wood, and their sails pure white duck. Now
and then a high-sterned junk drifted by like a phantom galley, then we
slackened speed to avoid exterminating a fleet of triangular-looking
fishing-boats with white square sails, and so on through the grayness and
dumbness hour after hour.
For long I looked in vain for Fujisan, and failed to see it, though I
heard ecstasies all over the deck, till, accidentally looking heavenwards
instead of earthwards, I saw far above any possibility of height, as one
would have thought, a huge, truncated cone of pure snow, 13,080 feet
above the sea, from which it sweeps upwards in a glorious curve, very
wan, against a very pale blue sky, with its base and the intervening
country veiled in a pale grey mist. {2} It was a wonderful vision, and
shortly, as a vision, vanished. Except the cone of Tristan d’Acunha—also
a cone of snow—I never saw a mountain rise in such lonely majesty, with
nothing near or far to detract from its height and grandeur. No wonder
that it is a sacred mountain, and so dear to the Japanese that their art
is never weary of representing it. It was nearly fifty miles off when we
first saw it.
The air and water were alike motionless, the mist was still and pale,
grey clouds lay restfully on a bluish sky, the reflections of the white
sails of the fishing-boats scarcely quivered; it was all so pale, wan,
and ghastly, that the turbulence of crumpled foam which we left behind
us, and our noisy, throbbing progress, seemed a boisterous intrusion upon
sleeping Asia.
[Picture: Fujisan]
The gulf narrowed, the forest-crested hills, the terraced ravines, the
picturesque grey villages, the quiet beach life, and the pale blue masses
of the mountains of the interior, became more visible. Fuji retired into
the mist in which he enfolds his grandeur for most of the summer; we
passed Reception Bay, Perry Island, Webster Island, Cape Saratoga, and
Mississippi Bay—American nomenclature which perpetuates the successes of
American diplomacy—and not far from Treaty Point came upon a red
lightship with the words “Treaty Point” in large letters upon her.
Outside of this no foreign vessel may anchor.
The bustle among my fellow-passengers, many of whom were returning home,
and all of whom expected to be met by friends, left me at leisure, as I
looked at unattractive, unfamiliar Yokohama and the pale grey land
stretched out before me, to speculate somewhat sadly on my destiny on
these strange shores, on which I have not even an acquaintance. On
mooring we were at once surrounded by crowds of native boats called by
foreigners _sampans_, and Dr. Gulick, a near relation of my Hilo friends,
came on board to meet his daughter, welcomed me cordially, and relieved
me of all the trouble of disembarkation. These _sampans_ are very
clumsy-looking, but are managed with great dexterity by the boatmen, who
gave and received any number of bumps with much good nature, and without
any of the shouting and swearing in which competitive boatmen usually
indulge.
The partially triangular shape of these boats approaches that of a
salmon-fisher’s punt used on certain British rivers. Being floored gives
them the appearance of being absolutely flat-bottomed; but, though they
tilt readily, they are very safe, being heavily built and fitted together
with singular precision with wooden bolts and a few copper cleets. They
are _sculled_, not what we should call rowed, by two or four men with
very heavy oars made of two pieces of wood working on pins placed on
outrigger bars. The men scull standing and use the thigh as a rest for
the oar. They all wear a single, wide-sleeved, scanty, blue cotton
garment, not fastened or girdled at the waist, straw sandals, kept on by
a thong passing between the great toe and the others, and if they wear
any head-gear, it is only a wisp of blue cotton tied round the forehead.
The one garment is only an apology for clothing, and displays lean
concave chests and lean muscular limbs. The skin is very yellow, and
often much tattooed with mythical beasts. The charge for _sampans_ is
fixed by tariff, so the traveller lands without having his temper ruffled
by extortionate demands.
The first thing that impressed me on landing was that there were no
loafers, and that all the small, ugly, kindly-looking, shrivelled,
bandy-legged, round-shouldered, concave-chested, poor-looking beings in
the streets had some affairs of their own to mind. At the top of the
landing-steps there was a portable restaurant, a neat and most compact
thing, with charcoal stove, cooking and eating utensils complete; but it
looked as if it were made by and for dolls, and the mannikin who kept it
was not five feet high. At the custom-house we were attended to by
minute officials in blue uniforms of European pattern and leather boots;
very civil creatures, who opened and examined our trunks carefully, and
strapped them up again, contrasting pleasingly with the insolent and
rapacious officials who perform the same duties at New York.
Outside were about fifty of the now well-known _jin-ti-ki-shas_, and the
air was full of a buzz produced by the rapid reiteration of this uncouth
word by fifty tongues. This conveyance, as you know, is a feature of
Japan, growing in importance every day. It was only invented seven years
ago, and already there are nearly 23,000 in one city, and men can make so
much more by drawing them than by almost any kind of skilled labour, that
thousands of fine young men desert agricultural pursuits and flock into
the towns to make draught-animals of themselves, though it is said that
the average duration of a man’s life after he takes to running is only
five years, and that the runners fall victims in large numbers to
aggravated forms of heart and lung disease. Over tolerably level ground
a good runner can trot forty miles a day, at a rate of about four miles
an hour. They are registered and taxed at 8s. a year for one carrying
two persons, and 4s. for one which carries one only, and there is a
regular tariff for time and distance.
[Picture: Travelling Restaurant]
The _kuruma_, or jin-ri-ki-sha, {5} consists of a light perambulator
body, an adjustable hood of oiled paper, a velvet or cloth lining and
cushion, a well for parcels under the seat, two high slim wheels, and a
pair of shafts connected by a bar at the ends. The body is usually
lacquered and decorated according to its owner’s taste. Some show little
except polished brass, others are altogether inlaid with shells known as
Venus’s ear, and others are gaudily painted with contorted dragons, or
groups of peonies, hydrangeas, chrysanthemums, and mythical personages.
They cost from £2 upwards. The shafts rest on the ground at a steep
incline as you get in—it must require much practice to enable one to
mount with ease or dignity—the runner lifts them up, gets into them,
gives the body a good tilt backwards, and goes off at a smart trot. They
are drawn by one, two, or three men, according to the speed desired by
the occupants. When rain comes on, the man puts up the hood, and ties
you and it closely up in a covering of oiled paper, in which you are
invisible. At night, whether running or standing still, they carry
prettily-painted circular paper lanterns 18 inches long. It is most
comical to see stout, florid, solid-looking merchants, missionaries, male
and female, fashionably-dressed ladies, armed with card cases, Chinese
compradores, and Japanese peasant men and women flying along Main Street,
which is like the decent respectable High Street of a dozen forgotten
country towns in England, in happy unconsciousness of the ludicrousness
of their appearance; racing, chasing, crossing each other, their lean,
polite, pleasant runners in their great hats shaped like inverted bowls,
their incomprehensible blue tights, and their short blue over-shirts with
badges or characters in white upon them, tearing along, their yellow
faces streaming with perspiration, laughing, shouting, and avoiding
collisions by a mere shave.
After a visit to the Consulate I entered a _kuruma_ and, with two ladies
in two more, was bowled along at a furious pace by a laughing little
mannikin down Main Street—a narrow, solid, well-paved street with
well-made side walks, kerb-stones, and gutters, with iron lamp-posts,
gas-lamps, and foreign shops all along its length—to this quiet hotel
recommended by Sir Wyville Thomson, which offers a refuge from the nasal
twang of my fellow-voyagers, who have all gone to the caravanserais on
the Bund. The host is a Frenchman, but he relies on a Chinaman; the
servants are Japanese “boys” in Japanese clothes; and there is a Japanese
“groom of the chambers” in faultless English costume, who perfectly
appals me by the elaborate politeness of his manner.
Almost as soon as I arrived I was obliged to go in search of Mr. Fraser’s
office in the settlement; I say _search_, for there are no names on the
streets; where there are numbers they have no sequence, and I met no
Europeans on foot to help me in my difficulty. Yokohama does not improve
on further acquaintance. It has a dead-alive look. It has irregularity
without picturesqueness, and the grey sky, grey sea, grey houses, and
grey roofs, look harmoniously dull. No foreign money except the Mexican
dollar passes in Japan, and Mr. Fraser’s compradore soon metamorphosed my
English gold into Japanese _satsu_ or paper money, a bundle of yen nearly
at par just now with the dollar, packets of 50, 20, and 10 sen notes, and
some rouleaux of very neat copper coins. The initiated recognise the
different denominations of paper money at a glance by their differing
colours and sizes, but at present they are a distracting mystery to me.
The notes are pieces of stiff paper with Chinese characters at the
corners, near which, with exceptionally good eyes or a magnifying glass,
one can discern an English word denoting the value. They are very neatly
executed, and are ornamented with the chrysanthemum crest of the Mikado
and the interlaced dragons of the Empire.
I long to get away into real Japan. Mr. Wilkinson, H.B.M.’s acting
consul, called yesterday, and was extremely kind. He thinks that my plan
for travelling in the interior is rather too ambitious, but that it is
perfectly safe for a lady to travel alone, and agrees with everybody else
in thinking that legions of fleas and the miserable horses are the great
drawbacks of Japanese travelling.