{2} This is an altogether exceptional aspect of Fujisan, under
exceptional atmospheric conditions. The mountain usually looks broader
and lower, and is often compared to an inverted fan.
{5} I continue hereafter to use the Japanese word _kuruma_ instead of
the Chinese word _Jin-ri-ki-sha_. _Kuruma_, literally a wheel or
vehicle, is the word commonly used by the _Jin-ri-ki-sha_ men and other
Japanese for the “man-power-carriage,” and is certainly more euphonious.
From _kuruma_ naturally comes _kurumaya_ for the _kuruma_ runner.
{14} Often in the later months of my residence in Japan, when I asked
educated Japanese questions concerning their history, religions, or
ancient customs, I was put off with the answer, “You should ask Mr.
Satow, he could tell you.”
{19} After several months of travelling in some of the roughest parts of
the interior, I should advise a person in average health—and none other
should travel in Japan—not to encumber himself with tinned meats, soups,
claret, or any eatables or drinkables, except Liebig’s extract of meat.
{27} I visited this temple alone many times afterwards, and each visit
deepened the interest of my first impressions. There is always enough of
change and novelty to prevent the interest from flagging, and the mild,
but profoundly superstitious, form of heathenism which prevails in Japan
is nowhere better represented.
{32} The list of my equipments is given as a help to future travellers,
especially ladies, who desire to travel long distances in the interior of
Japan. One wicker basket is enough, as I afterwards found.
{41} My fears, though quite natural for a lady alone, had really no
justification. I have since travelled 1200 miles in the interior, and in
Yezo, with perfect safety and freedom from alarm, and I believe that
there is no country in the world in which a lady can travel with such
absolute security from danger and rudeness as in Japan.
{46} In my northern journey I was very frequently obliged to put up with
rough and dirty accommodation, because the better sort of houses were of
this class. If there are few sights which shock the traveller, there is
much even on the surface to indicate vices which degrade and enslave the
manhood of Japan.
{79} I advise every traveller in the ruder regions of Japan to take a
similar stretcher and a good mosquito net. With these he may defy all
ordinary discomforts.
{87} This can only be true of the behaviour of the lowest excursionists
from the Treaty Ports.
{95} Many unpleasant details have necessarily been omitted. If the
reader requires any apology for those which are given here and elsewhere,
it must be found in my desire to give such a faithful picture of peasant
life, as I saw it in Northern Japan, as may be a contribution to the
general sum of knowledge of the country, and, at the same time, serve to
illustrate some of the difficulties which the Government has to encounter
in its endeavour to raise masses of people as deficient as these are in
some of the first requirements of civilisation.
{98} The excess of males over females in the capital is 36,000, and in
the whole Empire nearly half a million.
{115a} By one of these, not fitted up for passengers, I have sent one of
my baskets to Hakodaté, and by doing so have come upon one of the
vexatious restrictions by which foreigners are harassed. It would seem
natural to allow a foreigner to send his personal luggage from one Treaty
Port to another without going through a number of formalities which
render it nearly impossible, but it was only managed by Ito sending mine
in his own name to a Japanese at Hakodaté with whom he is slightly
acquainted.
{115b} This hospital is large and well ventilated, but has not as yet
succeeded in attracting many in-patients; out-patients, specially
sufferers from ophthalmia, are very numerous. The Japanese chief
physician regards the great prevalence of the malady in this
neighbourhood as the result of damp, the reflection of the sun’s rays
from sand and snow, inadequate ventilation and charcoal fumes.
{145} _Kak’ké_, by William Anderson, F.R.C.S. Transactions of English
Asiatic Society of Japan, January 1878.
{168} I failed to learn what the liquor was which was drunk so freely,
but as no unseemly effects followed its use, I think it must either have
been light wine, or light _saké_.
{216} I venture to present this journal letter, with a few omissions,
just as it was written, trusting that the interest which attaches to
aboriginal races and little-visited regions will carry my readers through
the minuteness and multiplicity of its details.
{218} The use of kerosene in matted wooden houses is a new cause of
conflagrations. It is not possible to say how it originated, but just
before Christmas 1879 a fire broke out in Hakodaté, which in a few hours
destroyed 20 streets, 2500 houses, the British Consulate, several public
buildings, the new native Christian church, and the church Mission House,
leaving 11,000 people homeless.
{241} I went over them with the Ainos of a remote village on Volcano
Bay, and found the differences in pronunciation very slight, except that
the definiteness of the sound which I have represented by Tsch was more
strongly marked. I afterwards went over them with Mr. Dening, and with
Mr. Von Siebold at Tôkiyô, who have made a larger collection of words
than I have, and it is satisfactory to find that we have represented the
words in the main by the same letters, with the single exception that
usually the sound represented by them by the letters _ch_ I have given as
_Tsch_, and I venture to think that is the most correct rendering.
{271} I have not been able to obtain from any botanist the name of the
tree from the bark of which the thread is made, but suppose it to be a
species of _Tiliaceæ_.
{273} Yoshitsuné is the most popular hero of Japanese history, and the
special favourite of boys. He was the brother of Yoritomo, who was
appointed by the Mikado in 1192 _Sei-i Tai Shôgun_ (barbarian-subjugating
great general) for his victories, and was the first of that series of
great Shôguns whom our European notions distorted into “Temporal
Emperors” of Japan. Yoshitsuné, to whom the real honour of these
victories belonged, became the object of the jealousy and hatred of his
brother, and was hunted from province to province, till, according to
popular belief, he committed _hara-kiri_, after killing his wife and
children, and his head, preserved in _saké_, was sent to his brother at
Kamakura. Scholars, however, are not agreed as to the manner, period, or
scene of his death. Many believe that he escaped to Yezo and lived among
the Ainos for many years, dying among them at the close of the twelfth
century. None believe this more firmly than the Ainos themselves, who
assert that he taught their fathers the arts of civilisation, with
letters and numbers, and gave them righteous laws, and he is worshipped
by many of them under a name which signifies Master of the Law. I have
been told by old men in Biratori, Usu, and Lebungé, that a later Japanese
conqueror carried away the books in which the arts were written, and that
since his time the arts themselves have been lost, and the Ainos have
fallen into their present condition! On asking why the Ainos do not make
vessels of iron and clay as well as knives and spears, the invariable
answer is, “The Japanese took away the books.”
{321} The duty paid by junks is 4s. for each twenty-five tons, by
foreign ships of foreign shape and rig £2 for each 100 tons, and by
steamers £3 for each 100 tons.
{328} The following very inaccurate but entertaining account of this
expedition was given by the _Yomi-uri-Shimbun_, a daily newspaper with
the largest, though not the most aristocratic, circulation in Tôkiyô,
being taken in by the servants and tradespeople. It is a literal
translation made by Mr. Chamberlain. “The person mentioned in our
yesterday’s issue as ‘an English subject of the name of Bird’ is a lady
from Scotland, a part of England. This lady spends her time in
travelling, leaving this year the two American continents for a passing
visit to the Sandwich Islands, and landing in Japan early in the month of
May. She has toured all over the country, and even made a five months’
stay in the Hokkaidô, investigating the local customs and productions.
Her inspection yesterday of the cremation ground at Kirigaya is believed
to have been prompted by a knowledge of the advantages of this method of
disposing of the dead, and a desire to introduce the same into England(!)
On account of this lady’s being so learned as to have published a
quantity of books, His Excellency the Governor was pleased to see her
yesterday, and to show her great civility, sending her to Kirigaya in his
own carriage, a mark of attention which is said to have pleased the lady
much(!)”