Darkness visible—Nikkô Shops—Girls and Matrons—Night and Sleep—Parental
Love—Childish Docility—Hair-dressing—Skin Diseases.
I DON’T wonder that the Japanese rise early, for their evenings are
cheerless, owing to the dismal illumination. In this and other houses
the lamp consists of a square or circular lacquer stand, with four
uprights, 2½ feet high, and panes of white paper. A flatted iron dish is
suspended in this full of oil, with the pith of a rush with a weight in
the centre laid across it, and one of the projecting ends is lighted.
This wretched apparatus is called an _andon_, and round its wretched
“darkness visible” the family huddles—the children to play games and
learn lessons, and the women to sew; for the Japanese daylight is short
and the houses are dark. Almost more deplorable is a candlestick of the
same height as the _andon_, with a spike at the top which fits into a
hole at the bottom of a “farthing candle” of vegetable wax, with a thick
wick made of rolled paper, which requires constant snuffing, and, after
giving for a short time a dim and jerky light, expires with a bad smell.
Lamps, burning mineral oils, native and imported, are being manufactured
on a large scale, but, apart from the peril connected with them, the
carriage of oil into country districts is very expensive. No Japanese
would think of sleeping without having an _andon_ burning all night in
his room.
These villages are full of shops. There is scarcely a house which does
not sell something. Where the buyers come from, and how a profit can be
made, is a mystery. Many of the things are eatables, such as dried
fishes, 1½ inch long, impaled on sticks; cakes, sweetmeats composed of
rice, flour, and very little sugar; circular lumps of rice dough, called
_mochi_; roots boiled in brine; a white jelly made from beans; and ropes,
straw shoes for men and horses, straw cloaks, paper umbrellas, paper
waterproofs, hair-pins, tooth-picks, tobacco pipes, paper _mouchoirs_,
and numbers of other trifles made of bamboo, straw, grass, and wood.
These goods are on stands, and in the room behind, open to the street,
all the domestic avocations are going on, and the housewife is usually to
be seen boiling water or sewing with a baby tucked into the back of her
dress. A lucifer factory has recently been put up, and in many house
fronts men are cutting up wood into lengths for matches. In others they
are husking rice, a very laborious process, in which the grain is pounded
in a mortar sunk in the floor by a flat-ended wooden pestle attached to a
long horizontal lever, which is worked by the feet of a man, invariably
naked, who stands at the other extremity.
In some women are weaving, in others spinning cotton. Usually there are
three or four together—the mother, the eldest son’s wife, and one or two
unmarried girls. The girls marry at sixteen, and shortly these comely,
rosy, wholesome-looking creatures pass into haggard, middle-aged women
with vacant faces, owing to the blackening of the teeth and removal of
the eyebrows, which, if they do not follow betrothal, are resorted to on
the birth of the first child. In other houses women are at their toilet,
blackening their teeth before circular metal mirrors placed in folding
stands on the mats, or performing ablutions, unclothed to the waist.
Early the village is very silent, while the children are at school; their
return enlivens it a little, but they are quiet even at play; at sunset
the men return, and things are a little livelier; you hear a good deal of
splashing in baths, and after that they carry about and play with their
younger children, while the older ones prepare lessons for the following
day by reciting them in a high, monotonous twang. At dark the paper
windows are drawn, the _amado_, or external wooden shutters, are closed,
the lamp is lighted before the family shrine, supper is eaten, the
children play at quiet games round the _andon_; and about ten the quilts
and wooden pillows are produced from the press, the _amado_ are bolted,
and the family lies down to sleep in one room. Small trays of food and
the _tabako-bon_ are always within reach of adult sleepers, and one grows
quite accustomed to hear the sound of ashes being knocked out of the pipe
at intervals during the night. The children sit up as late as their
parents, and are included in all their conversation.
I never saw people take so much delight in their offspring, carrying them
about, or holding their hands in walking, watching and entering into
their games, supplying them constantly with new toys, taking them to
picnics and festivals, never being content to be without them, and
treating other people’s children also with a suitable measure of
affection and attention. Both fathers and mothers take a pride in their
children. It is most amusing about six every morning to see twelve or
fourteen men sitting on a low wall, each with a child under two years in
his arms, fondling and playing with it, and showing off its physique and
intelligence. To judge from appearances, the children form the chief
topic at this morning gathering. At night, after the houses are shut up,
looking through the long fringe of rope or rattan which conceals the
sliding door, you see the father, who wears nothing but a _maro_ in “the
bosom of his family,” bending his ugly, kindly face over a gentle-looking
baby, and the mother, who more often than not has dropped the _kimono_
from her shoulders, enfolding two children destitute of clothing in her
arms. For some reasons they prefer boys, but certainly girls are equally
petted and loved. The children, though for our ideas too gentle and
formal, are very prepossessing in looks and behaviour. They are so
perfectly docile and obedient, so ready to help their parents, so good to
the little ones, and, in the many hours which I have spent in watching
them at play, I have never heard an angry word or seen a sour look or
act. But they are little men and women rather than children, and their
old-fashioned appearance is greatly aided by their dress, which, as I
have remarked before, is the same as that of adults.
There are, however, various styles of dressing the hair of girls, by
which you can form a pretty accurate estimate of any girl’s age up to her
marriage, when the _coiffure_ undergoes a definite change. The boys all
look top-heavy and their heads of an abnormal size, partly from a hideous
practice of shaving the head altogether for the first three years. After
this the hair is allowed to grow in three tufts, one over each ear, and
the other at the back of the neck; as often, however, a tuft is grown at
the top of the back of the head. At ten the crown alone is shaved and a
forelock is worn, and at fifteen, when the boy assumes the
responsibilities of manhood, his hair is allowed to grow like that of a
man. The grave dignity of these boys, with the grotesque patterns on
their big heads, is most amusing.
Would that these much-exposed skulls were always smooth and clean! It is
painful to see the prevalence of such repulsive maladies as _scabies_,
scald-head, ringworm, sore eyes, and unwholesome-looking eruptions, and
fully 30 per cent of the village people are badly seamed with smallpox.