Fears—Travelling Equipments—Passports—Coolie Costume—A Yedo
Diorama—Rice-Fields—Tea-Houses—A Traveller’s Reception—The Inn at
Kasukabé—Lack of Privacy—A Concourse of Noises—A Nocturnal Alarm—A Vision
of Policemen—A Budget from Yedo.
KASUKABÉ, _June_ 10.
FROM the date you will see that I have started on my long journey, though
not upon the “unbeaten tracks” which I hope to take after leaving Nikkô,
and my first evening alone in the midst of this crowded Asian life is
strange, almost fearful. I have suffered from nervousness all day—the
fear of being frightened, of being rudely mobbed, as threatened by Mr.
Campbell of Islay, of giving offence by transgressing the rules of
Japanese politeness—of, I know not what! Ito is my sole reliance, and he
may prove a “broken reed.” I often wished to give up my project, but was
ashamed of my cowardice when, on the best authority, I received
assurances of its safety. {32}
The preparations were finished yesterday, and my outfit weighed 110 lbs.,
which, with Ito’s weight of 90 lbs., is as much as can be carried by an
average Japanese horse. My two painted wicker boxes lined with paper and
with waterproof covers are convenient for the two sides of a pack-horse.
I have a folding-chair—for in a Japanese house there is nothing but the
floor to sit upon, and not even a solid wall to lean against—an
air-pillow for _kuruma_ travelling, an india-rubber bath, sheets, a
blanket, and last, and more important than all else, a canvas stretcher
on light poles, which can be put together in two minutes; and being 2½
feet high is supposed to be secure from fleas. The “Food Question” has
been solved by a modified rejection of all advice! I have only brought a
small supply of Liebig’s extract of meat, 4 lbs. of raisins, some
chocolate, both for eating and drinking, and some brandy in case of need.
I have my own Mexican saddle and bridle, a reasonable quantity of
clothes, including a loose wrapper for wearing in the evenings, some
candles, Mr. Brunton’s large map of Japan, volumes of the Transactions of
the English Asiatic Society, and Mr. Satow’s Anglo-Japanese Dictionary.
My travelling dress is a short costume of dust-coloured striped tweed,
with strong laced boots of unblacked leather, and a Japanese hat, shaped
like a large inverted bowl, of light bamboo plait, with a white cotton
cover, and a very light frame inside, which fits round the brow and
leaves a space of 1½ inches between the hat and the head for the free
circulation of air. It only weighs 2½ ounces, and is infinitely to be
preferred to a heavy pith helmet, and, light as it is, it protects the
head so thoroughly, that, though the sun has been unclouded all day and
the mercury at 86°, no other protection has been necessary. My money is
in bundles of 50 _yen_, and 50, 20, and 10 _sen_ notes, besides which I
have some rouleaux of copper coins. I have a bag for my passport, which
hangs to my waist. All my luggage, with the exception of my saddle,
which I use for a footstool, goes into one _kuruma_, and Ito, who is
limited to 12 lbs., takes his along with him.
I have three _kurumas_, which are to go to Nikkô, ninety miles, in three
days, without change of runners, for about eleven shillings each.
Passports usually define the route over which the foreigner is to travel,
but in this case Sir H. Parkes has obtained one which is practically
unrestricted, for it permits me to travel through all Japan north of
Tôkiyô and in Yezo without specifying any route. This precious document,
without which I should be liable to be arrested and forwarded to my
consul, is of course in Japanese, but the cover gives in English the
regulations under which it is issued. A passport must be applied for,
for reasons of “health, botanical research, or scientific investigation.”
Its bearer must not light fires in woods, attend fires on horseback,
trespass on fields, enclosures, or game-preserves, scribble on temples,
shrines, or walls, drive fast on a narrow road, or disregard notices of
“No thoroughfare.” He must “conduct himself in an orderly and
conciliating manner towards the Japanese authorities and people;” he
“must produce his passport to any officials who may demand it,” under
pain of arrest; and while in the interior “is forbidden to shoot, trade,
to conclude mercantile contracts with Japanese, or to rent houses or
rooms for a longer period than his journey requires.”
NIKKÔ, _June_ 13.—This is one of the paradises of Japan! It is a
proverbial saying, “He who has not seen Nikkô must not use the word
kek’ko” (splendid, delicious, beautiful); but of this more hereafter. My
attempt to write to you from Kasukabé failed, owing to the onslaught of
an army of fleas, which compelled me to retreat to my stretcher, and the
last two nights, for this and other reasons, writing has been out of the
question.
I left the Legation at 11 a.m. on Monday and reached Kasukabé at 5 p.m.,
the runners keeping up an easy trot the whole journey of twenty-three
miles; but the halts for smoking and eating were frequent.
These kuruma-runners wore short blue cotton drawers, girdles with tobacco
pouch and pipe attached, short blue cotton shirts with wide sleeves, and
open in front, reaching to their waists, and blue cotton handkerchiefs
knotted round their heads, except when the sun was very hot, when they
took the flat flag discs, two feet in diameter, which always hang behind
_kurumas_, and are used either in sun or rain, and tied them on their
heads. They wore straw sandals, which had to be replaced twice on the
way. Blue and white towels hung from the shafts to wipe away the sweat,
which ran profusely down the lean, brown bodies. The upper garment
always flew behind them, displaying chests and backs elaborately tattooed
with dragons and fishes. Tattooing has recently been prohibited; but it
was not only a favourite adornment, but a substitute for perishable
clothing.
Most of the men of the lower classes wear their hair in a very ugly
fashion,—the front and top of the head being shaved, the long hair from
the back and sides being drawn up and tied, then waxed, tied again, and
cut short off, the stiff queue being brought forward and laid, pointing
forwards, along the back part of the top of the head. This top-knot is
shaped much like a short clay pipe. The shaving and dressing the hair
thus require the skill of a professional barber. Formerly the hair was
worn in this way by the _samurai_, in order that the helmet might fit
comfortably, but it is now the style of the lower classes mostly and by
no means invariably.
[Picture: A Kuruma]
Blithely, at a merry trot, the coolies hurried us away from the kindly
group in the Legation porch, across the inner moat and along the inner
drive of the castle, past gateways and retaining walls of Cyclopean
masonry, across the second moat, along miles of streets of sheds and
shops, all grey, thronged with foot-passengers and _kurumas_, with
pack-horses loaded two or three feet above their backs, the arches of
their saddles red and gilded lacquer, their frontlets of red leather,
their “shoes” straw sandals, their heads tied tightly to the saddle-girth
on either side, great white cloths figured with mythical beasts in blue
hanging down loosely under their bodies; with coolies dragging heavy
loads to the guttural cry of _Hai_! _huida_! with children whose heads
were shaved in hideous patterns; and now and then, as if to point a moral
lesson in the midst of the whirling diorama, a funeral passed through the
throng, with a priest in rich robes, mumbling prayers, a covered barrel
containing the corpse, and a train of mourners in blue dresses with white
wings. Then we came to the fringe of Yedo, where the houses cease to be
continuous, but all that day there was little interval between them. All
had open fronts, so that the occupations of the inmates, the “domestic
life” in fact, were perfectly visible. Many of these houses were
road-side _chayas_, or tea-houses, and nearly all sold sweet-meats, dried
fish, pickles, _mochi_, or uncooked cakes of rice dough, dried
persimmons, rain hats, or straw shoes for man or beast. The road, though
wide enough for two carriages (of which we saw none), was not good, and
the ditches on both sides were frequently neither clean nor sweet. Must
I write it? The houses were mean, poor, shabby, often even squalid, the
smells were bad, and the people looked ugly, shabby, and poor, though all
were working at something or other.
The country is a dead level, and mainly an artificial mud flat or swamp,
in whose fertile ooze various aquatic birds were wading, and in which
hundreds of men and women were wading too, above their knees in slush;
for this plain of Yedo is mainly a great rice-field, and this is the busy
season of rice-planting; for here, in the sense in which we understand
it, they do not “cast their bread upon the waters.” There are eight or
nine leading varieties of rice grown in Japan, all of which, except an
upland species, require mud, water, and much puddling and nasty work.
Rice is the staple food and the wealth of Japan. Its revenues were
estimated in rice. Rice is grown almost wherever irrigation is possible.
The rice-fields are usually very small and of all shapes. A quarter of
an acre is a good-sized field. The rice crop planted in June is not
reaped till November, but in the meantime it needs to be “puddled” three
times, i.e. for all the people to turn into the slush, and grub out all
the weeds and tangled aquatic plants, which weave themselves from tuft to
tuft, and puddle up the mud afresh round the roots. It grows in water
till it is ripe, when the fields are dried off. An acre of the best land
produces annually about fifty-four bushels of rice, and of the worst
about thirty.
On the plain of Yedo, besides the nearly continuous villages along the
causewayed road, there are islands, as they may be called, of villages
surrounded by trees, and hundreds of pleasant oases on which wheat ready
for the sickle, onions, millet, beans, and peas, were flourishing. There
were lotus ponds too, in which the glorious lily, _Nelumbo nucifera_, is
being grown for the sacrilegious purpose of being eaten! Its splendid
classical leaves are already a foot above the water.
After running cheerily for several miles my men bowled me into a
tea-house, where they ate and smoked while I sat in the garden, which
consisted of baked mud, smooth stepping-stones, a little pond with some
goldfish, a deformed pine, and a stone lantern. Observe that foreigners
are wrong in calling the Japanese houses of entertainment
indiscriminately “tea-houses.” A tea-house or _chaya_ is a house at
which you can obtain tea and other refreshments, rooms to eat them in,
and attendance. That which to some extent answers to an hotel is a
_yadoya_, which provides sleeping accommodation and food as required.
The licenses are different. Tea-houses are of all grades, from the
three-storied erections, gay with flags and lanterns, in the great cities
and at places of popular resort, down to the road-side tea-house, as
represented in the engraving, with three or four lounges of dark-coloured
wood under its eaves, usually occupied by naked coolies in all attitudes
of easiness and repose. The floor is raised about eighteen inches above
the ground, and in these tea-houses is frequently a matted platform with
a recess called the _doma_, literally “earth-space,” in the middle, round
which runs a ledge of polished wood called the _itama_, or “board space,”
on which travellers sit while they bathe their soiled feet with the water
which is immediately brought to them; for neither with soiled feet nor in
foreign shoes must one advance one step on the matted floor. On one side
of the _doma_ is the kitchen, with its one or two charcoal fires, where
the coolies lounge on the mats and take their food and smoke, and on the
other the family pursue their avocations. In almost the smallest
tea-house there are one or two rooms at the back, but all the life and
interest are in the open front. In the small tea-houses there is only an
_irori_, a square hole in the floor, full of sand or white ash, on which
the live charcoal for cooking purposes is placed, and small racks for
food and eating utensils; but in the large ones there is a row of
charcoal stoves, and the walls are garnished up to the roof with shelves,
and the lacquer tables and lacquer and china ware used by the guests.
The large tea-houses contain the possibilities for a number of rooms
which can be extemporised at once by sliding paper panels, called
_fusuma_, along grooves in the floor and in the ceiling or cross-beams.
[Picture: Road-Side Tea-House]
When we stopped at wayside tea-houses the runners bathed their feet,
rinsed their mouths, and ate rice, pickles, salt fish, and “broth of
abominable things,” after which they smoked their tiny pipes, which give
them three whiffs for each filling. As soon as I got out at any of
these, one smiling girl brought me the _tabako-bon_, a square wood or
lacquer tray, with a china or bamboo charcoal-holder and ash-pot upon it,
and another presented me with a _zen_, a small lacquer table about six
inches high, with a tiny teapot with a hollow handle at right angles with
the spout, holding about an English tea-cupful, and two cups without
handles or saucers, with a capacity of from ten to twenty thimblefuls
each. The hot water is merely allowed to rest a minute on the
tea-leaves, and the infusion is a clear straw-coloured liquid with a
delicious aroma and flavour, grateful and refreshing at all times. If
Japanese tea “stands,” it acquires a coarse bitterness and an unwholesome
astringency. Milk and sugar are not used. A clean-looking wooden or
lacquer pail with a lid is kept in all tea-houses, and though hot rice,
except to order, is only ready three times daily, the pail always
contains cold rice, and the coolies heat it by pouring hot tea over it.
As you eat, a tea-house girl, with this pail beside her, squats on the
floor in front of you, and fills your rice bowl till you say, “Hold,
enough!” On this road it is expected that you leave three or four _sen_
on the tea-tray for a rest of an hour or two and tea.
All day we travelled through rice swamps, along a much-frequented road,
as far as Kasukabé, a good-sized but miserable-looking town, with its
main street like one of the poorest streets in Tôkiyô, and halted for the
night at a large _yadoya_, with downstairs and upstairs rooms, crowds of
travellers, and many evil smells. On entering, the house-master or
landlord, the _teishi_, folded his hands and prostrated himself, touching
the floor with his forehead three times. It is a large, rambling old
house, and fully thirty servants were bustling about in the _daidokoro_,
or great open kitchen. I took a room upstairs (i.e. up a steep
step-ladder of dark, polished wood), with a balcony under the deep eaves.
The front of the house upstairs was one long room with only sides and a
front, but it was immediately divided into four by drawing sliding
screens or panels, covered with opaque wall papers, into their proper
grooves. A back was also improvised, but this was formed of frames with
panes of translucent paper, like our tissue paper, with sundry holes and
rents. This being done, I found myself the possessor of a room about
sixteen feet square, without hook, shelf, rail, or anything on which to
put anything—nothing, in short, but a matted floor. Do not be misled by
the use of this word matting. Japanese house-mats, _tatami_, are as
neat, refined, and soft a covering for the floor as the finest Axminster
carpet. They are 5 feet 9 inches long, 3 feet broad, and 2½ inches
thick. The frame is solidly made of coarse straw, and this is covered
with very fine woven matting, as nearly white as possible, and each mat
is usually bound with dark blue cloth. Temples and rooms are measured by
the number of mats they contain, and rooms must be built for the mats, as
they are never cut to the rooms. They are always level with the polished
grooves or ledges which surround the floor. They are soft and elastic,
and the finer qualities are very beautiful. They are as expensive as the
best Brussels carpet, and the Japanese take great pride in them, and are
much aggrieved by the way in which some thoughtless foreigners stamp over
them with dirty boots. Unfortunately they harbour myriads of fleas.
Outside my room an open balcony with many similiar rooms ran round a
forlorn aggregate of dilapidated shingle roofs and water-butts. These
rooms were all full. Ito asked me for instructions once for all, put up
my stretcher under a large mosquito net of coarse green canvas with a
fusty smell, filled my bath, brought me some tea, rice, and eggs, took my
passport to be copied by the house-master, and departed, I know not
whither. I tried to write to you, but fleas and mosquitoes prevented it,
and besides, the _fusuma_ were frequently noiselessly drawn apart, and
several pairs of dark, elongated eyes surveyed me through the cracks; for
there were two Japanese families in the room to the right, and five men
in that to the left. I closed the sliding windows, with translucent
paper for window panes, called _shôji_, and went to bed, but the lack of
privacy was fearful, and I have not yet sufficient trust in my
fellow-creatures to be comfortable without locks, walls, or doors! Eyes
were constantly applied to the sides of the room, a girl twice drew aside
the _shôji_ between it and the corridor; a man, who I afterwards found
was a blind man, offering his services as a shampooer, came in and said
some (of course) unintelligible words, and the new noises were perfectly
bewildering. On one side a man recited Buddhist prayers in a high key;
on the other a girl was twanging a _samisen_, a species of guitar; the
house was full of talking and splashing, drums and tom-toms were beaten
outside; there were street cries innumerable, and the whistling of the
blind shampooers, and the resonant clap of the fire-watchman who
perambulates all Japanese villages, and beats two pieces of wood together
in token of his vigilance, were intolerable. It was a life of which I
knew nothing, and the mystery was more alarming than attractive; my money
was lying about, and nothing seemed easier than to slide a hand through
the _fusuma_ and appropriate it. Ito told me that the well was badly
contaminated, the odours were fearful; illness was to be feared as well
as robbery! So unreasonably I reasoned! {41}
My bed is merely a piece of canvas nailed to two wooden bars. When I lay
down the canvas burst away from the lower row of nails with a series of
cracks, and sank gradually till I found myself lying on a sharp-edged
pole which connects the two pair of trestles, and the helpless victim of
fleas and mosquitoes. I lay for three hours, not daring to stir lest I
should bring the canvas altogether down, becoming more and more nervous
every moment, and then Ito called outside the _shôji_, “It would be best,
Miss Bird, that I should see you.” What horror can this be? I thought,
and was not reassured when he added, “Here’s a messenger from the
Legation and two policemen want to speak to you.” On arriving I had done
the correct thing in giving the house-master my passport, which,
according to law, he had copied into his book, and had sent a duplicate
copy to the police-station, and this intrusion near midnight was as
unaccountable as it was unwarrantable. Nevertheless the appearance of
the two mannikins in European uniforms, with the familiar batons and
bull’s-eye lanterns, and with manners which were respectful without being
deferential, gave me immediate relief. I should have welcomed twenty of
their species, for their presence assured me of the fact that I am known
and registered, and that a Government which, for special reasons, is
anxious to impress foreigners with its power and omniscience is
responsible for my safety.
While they spelt through my passport by their dim lantern I opened the
Yedo parcel, and found that it contained a tin of lemon sugar, a most
kind note from Sir Harry Parkes, and a packet of letters from you. While
I was attempting to open the letters, Ito, the policemen, and the lantern
glided out of my room, and I lay uneasily till daylight, with the letters
and telegram, for which I had been yearning for six weeks, on my bed
unopened!
Already I can laugh at my fears and misfortunes, as I hope you will. A
traveller must buy his own experience, and success or failure depends
mainly on personal idiosyncrasies. Many matters will be remedied by
experience as I go on, and I shall acquire the habit of feeling secure;
but lack of privacy, bad smells, and the torments of fleas and mosquitoes
are, I fear, irremediable evils.