Yedo and Tôkiyô—The Yokohama Railroad—The Effect of Misfits—The Plain of
Yedo—Personal Peculiarities—First Impressions of Tôkiyô—H. B. M.’s
Legation—An English Home.
H.B.M.’s LEGATION, YEDO, _May_ 24.
I HAVE dated my letter Yedo, according to the usage of the British
Legation, but popularly the new name of Tôkiyô, or Eastern Capital, is
used, Kiyôto, the Mikado’s former residence, having received the name of
Saikiô, or Western Capital, though it has now no claim to be regarded as
a capital at all. Yedo belongs to the old régime and the Shôgunate,
Tôkiyô to the new régime and the Restoration, with their history of ten
years. It would seem an incongruity to travel to _Yedo_ by railway, but
quite proper when the destination is Tôkiyô.
The journey between the two cities is performed in an hour by an
admirable, well-metalled, double-track railroad, 18 miles long, with iron
bridges, neat stations, and substantial roomy termini, built by English
engineers at a cost known only to Government, and opened by the Mikado in
1872. The Yokohama station is a handsome and suitable stone building,
with a spacious approach, ticket-offices on our plan, roomy waiting-rooms
for different classes—uncarpeted, however, in consideration of Japanese
clogs—and supplied with the daily papers. There is a department for the
weighing and labelling of luggage, and on the broad, covered, stone
platform at both termini a barrier with turnstiles, through which, except
by special favour, no ticketless person can pass. Except the
ticket-clerks, who are Chinese, and the guards and engine-drivers, who
are English, the officials are Japanese in European dress. Outside the
stations, instead of cabs, there are _kurumas_, which carry luggage as
well as people. Only luggage in the hand is allowed to go free; the rest
is weighed, numbered, and charged for, a corresponding number being given
to its owner to present at his destination. The fares are—3d class, an
_ichibu_, or about 1s.; 2d class, 60 _sen_, or about 2s. 4d.; and 1st
class, a _yen_, or about 3s. 8d. The tickets are collected as the
passengers pass through the barrier at the end of the journey. The
English-built cars differ from ours in having seats along the sides, and
doors opening on platforms at both ends. On the whole, the arrangements
are Continental rather than British. The first-class cars are
expensively fitted up with deeply-cushioned, red morocco seats, but carry
very few passengers, and the comfortable seats, covered with fine
matting, of the 2d class are very scantily occupied; but the 3d class
vans are crowded with Japanese, who have taken to railroads as readily as
to _kurumas_. This line earns about $8,000,000 a year.
The Japanese look most diminutive in European dress. Each garment is a
misfit, and exaggerates the miserable _physique_ and the national defects
of concave chests and bow legs. The lack of “complexion” and of hair
upon the face makes it nearly impossible to judge of the ages of men. I
supposed that all the railroad officials were striplings of 17 or 18, but
they are men from 25 to 40 years old.
It was a beautiful day, like an English June day, but hotter, and though
the _Sakura_ (wild cherry) and its kin, which are the glory of the
Japanese spring, are over, everything is a young, fresh green yet, and in
all the beauty of growth and luxuriance. The immediate neighbourhood of
Yokohama is beautiful, with abrupt wooded hills, and small picturesque
valleys; but after passing Kanagawa the railroad enters upon the immense
plain of Yedo, said to be 90 miles from north to south, on whose northern
and western boundaries faint blue mountains of great height hovered
dreamily in the blue haze, and on whose eastern shore for many miles the
clear blue wavelets of the Gulf of Yedo ripple, always as then,
brightened by the white sails of innumerable fishing-boats. On this
fertile and fruitful plain stand not only the capital, with its million
of inhabitants, but a number of populous cities, and several hundred
thriving agricultural villages. Every foot of land which can be seen
from the railroad is cultivated by the most careful spade husbandry, and
much of it is irrigated for rice. Streams abound, and villages of grey
wooden houses with grey thatch, and grey temples with strangely curved
roofs, are scattered thickly over the landscape. It is all homelike,
liveable, and pretty, the country of an industrious people, for not a
weed is to be seen, but no very striking features or peculiarities arrest
one at first sight, unless it be the crowds everywhere.
You don’t take your ticket for Tôkiyô, but for Shinagawa or Shinbashi,
two of the many villages which have grown together into the capital.
Yedo is hardly seen before Shinagawa is reached, for it has no smoke and
no long chimneys; its temples and public buildings are seldom lofty; the
former are often concealed among thick trees, and its ordinary houses
seldom reach a height of 20 feet. On the right a blue sea with fortified
islands upon it, wooded gardens with massive retaining walls, hundreds of
fishing-boats lying in creeks or drawn up on the beach; on the left a
broad road on which _kurumas_ are hurrying both ways, rows of low, grey
houses, mostly tea-houses and shops; and as I was asking “Where is Yedo?”
the train came to rest in the terminus, the Shinbashi railroad station,
and disgorged its 200 Japanese passengers with a combined clatter of 400
clogs—a new sound to me. These clogs add three inches to their height,
but even with them few of the men attained 5 feet 7 inches, and few of
the women 5 feet 2 inches; but they look far broader in the national
costume, which also conceals the defects of their figures. So lean, so
yellow, so ugly, yet so pleasant-looking, so wanting in colour and
effectiveness; the women so very small and tottering in their walk; the
children so formal-looking and such dignified burlesques on the adults, I
feel as if I had seen them all before, so like are they to their pictures
on trays, fans, and tea-pots. The hair of the women is all drawn away
from their faces, and is worn in chignons, and the men, when they don’t
shave the front of their heads and gather their back hair into a quaint
queue drawn forward over the shaven patch, wear their coarse hair about
three inches long in a refractory undivided mop.
Davies, an orderly from the Legation, met me,—one of the escort cut down
and severely wounded when Sir H. Parkes was attacked in the street of
Kiyôto in March 1868 on his way to his first audience of the Mikado.
Hundreds of _kurumas_, and covered carts with four wheels drawn by one
miserable horse, which are the omnibuses of certain districts of Tôkiyô,
were waiting outside the station, and an English brougham for me, with a
running _betto_. The Legation stands in Kôjimachi on very elevated
ground above the inner moat of the historic “Castle of Yedo,” but I
cannot tell you anything of what I saw on my way thither, except that
there were miles of dark, silent, barrack-like buildings, with highly
ornamental gateways, and long rows of projecting windows with screens
made of reeds—the feudal mansions of Yedo—and miles of moats with lofty
grass embankments or walls of massive masonry 50 feet high, with
kiosk-like towers at the corners, and curious, roofed gateways, and many
bridges, and acres of lotus leaves. Turning along the inner moat, up a
steep slope, there are, on the right, its deep green waters, the great
grass embankment surmounted by a dismal wall overhung by the branches of
coniferous trees which surrounded the palace of the Shôgun, and on the
left sundry _yashikis_, as the mansions of the _daimiyô_ were called, now
in this quarter mostly turned into hospitals, barracks, and Government
offices. On a height, the most conspicuous of them all, is the great red
gateway of the _yashiki_, now occupied by the French Military Mission,
formerly the residence of Ii Kamon no Kami, one of the great actors in
recent historic events, who was assassinated not far off, outside the
Sakaruda gate of the castle. Besides these, barracks, parade-grounds,
policemen, _kurumas_, carts pulled and pushed by coolies, pack-horses in
straw sandals, and dwarfish, slatternly-looking soldiers in European
dress, made up the Tôkiyô that I saw between Shinbashi and the Legation.
H.B.M.’s Legation has a good situation near the Foreign Office, several
of the Government departments, and the residences of the ministers, which
are chiefly of brick in the English suburban villa style. Within the
compound, with a brick archway with the Royal Arms upon it for an
entrance, are the Minister’s residence, the Chancery, two houses for the
two English Secretaries of Legation, and quarters for the escort.
It is an English house and an English home, though, with the exception of
a venerable nurse, there are no English servants. The butler and footman
are tall Chinamen, with long pig-tails, black satin caps, and long blue
robes; the cook is a Chinaman, and the other servants are all Japanese,
including one female servant, a sweet, gentle, kindly girl about 4 feet 5
in height, the wife of the head “housemaid.” None of the servants speak
anything but the most aggravating “pidgun” English, but their deficient
speech is more than made up for by the intelligence and service of the
orderly in waiting, who is rarely absent from the neighbourhood of the
hall door, and attends to the visitors’ book and to all messages and
notes. There are two real English children of six and seven, with great
capacities for such innocent enjoyments as can be found within the limits
of the nursery and garden. The other inmate of the house is a beautiful
and attractive terrier called “Rags,” a Skye dog, who unbends “in the
bosom of his family,” but ordinarily is as imposing in his demeanour as
if he, and not his master, represented the dignity of the British Empire.
The Japanese Secretary of Legation is Mr. Ernest Satow, whose reputation
for scholarship, especially in the department of history, is said by the
Japanese themselves to be the highest in Japan {14}—an honourable
distinction for an Englishman, and won by the persevering industry of
fifteen years. The scholarship connected with the British Civil Service
is not, however, monopolised by Mr. Satow, for several gentlemen in the
consular service, who are passing through the various grades of student
interpreters, are distinguishing themselves not alone by their facility
in colloquial Japanese, but by their researches in various departments of
Japanese history, mythology, archæology, and literature. Indeed it is to
their labours, and to those of a few other Englishmen and Germans, that
the Japanese of the rising generation will be indebted for keeping alive
not only the knowledge of their archaic literature, but even of the
manners and customs of the first half of this century.