When just from school our faces and hands were as black as demons' with
ink. On my reaching home my mother would take care of the copy-books,
and send me straight to the kitchen to wash before I sat down to the
table. The vessel corresponding to the basin is made of brass. We have
not learned to use soap; old folks believe that it would turn our black
hair red like that of the foreigners. There is no convenience of faucet
or pump; each house has its own well in the back yard, even in the
city;--hence no water-works, no gas-works, and no fuss about plumbing;
the housewife must proceed to the well for water, rain or shine, and
struggle back to the kitchen with a pailful of it every time she needs
it.
The kitchen itself is not often floored; the range (of clay and of
different appearance from that, which is used here) and the sink stand
directly on mother earth under a shed-like roof which has been darkened
by smoke. The range has no chimney; not coal but wood is burned in it,
and all the smoke escapes from the front opening or mouth and fills the
entire kitchen, causing the dear black eyes of the amiable housewife to
suffuse with tears.
She has the small Japanese towel wrapped round her head to protect the
elaborate coiffure from the soot of years, that has accumulated
everywhere and falls in gentle flakes, snow-fashion, on things
universally. She works her pair of lungs at the "fire-blowing tube," a
large bamboo two or three feet long, opened at one end for a mouth-piece
and punched at the other for a narrow orifice. The imprisoned volumes of
smoke in the kitchen must crowd out through a square aperture in the
roof; if it be closed on a rainy day, they must escape through windows
or crevices the best they may.
The water when brought in from the well is emptied into a deep heavy
earthen reservoir of reddish hue standing near the sink. With a wooden
ladle I would dip out the water into the brass basin (sheet brass, not
solid), and wash myself without soap in the most rapid manner possible,
yearning eagerly for dinner. The towel is a piece of cotton dyed blue
with designs left undyed or dyed black. I grumbled, I confess, when my
mother sent me back for a more thorough washing; but with the utmost
alacrity I always saluted the very sight of viands.
Oftentimes I was late and was obliged to eat a late dinner alone; but
when all of our family sat down together, enough of life was manifested.
At one end my witty young brother provoked laughter in us with stuff and
nonsense; next him sat my younger sister, quiet and good. I assumed my
position between my sister and my father and mother, who sat together at
the head of the row. I forget to mention that my elder brother, whose
place must be next above me, had been ordered to keep peace in the
region of my merry little brother. My sister-in-law or my elder
brother's wife took her stand opposite us, surrounded by a rice-bucket,
a cast-iron cooking-pot, a teapot, a basket of rice-bowls, saucers, etc.
She it was who had to cook and serve dinner and wash dishes and take
care of her babies. It is this that renders a young married woman's lot
in life very hard in Japan, the principal weight of daily work devolving
upon her. After all this, if parents-in-law are not pleased with her she
is in imminent danger of being turned off like a hired servant, however
affectionate she may be toward her husband; and the husband feels it his
duty to part with her despite his deep attachment; so sacred is regarded
the manifestation of filial piety! Fortunately for my sister-in-law, my
mother, who has four daughters living with their husbands' relatives,
made every household task as light and easy as she could for her and
expressed sympathy when needed, knowing that her own daughters were
laboring in the like circumstances.
We do not eat at one large dining table with chairs round it; we sit on
our heels on the matted floor with a separate small table in front of
each of us. I remember my table was in the form of a box about a foot
square, the lid of which I lifted and laid on the body of the box with
the inner surface up. The inner surface was japanned red, the outer
surface and the sides of the box green. The convenience of this form of
table is, that you can store away your own rice-bowl, vegetable-dish and
chop-stick case in the box. Some tables stand on two flat and broad
legs, others have drawers in their sides. We do not ring the bell in
announcing dinner; in large families they clap two oblong blocks of hard
wood. Grace before meat was a thing unknown to us; my brother, however,
had a queer habit of bowing to his chopsticks at the close of meals. He
did it from simple heart-felt gratitude and not for show. In his
ignorance of Him who provideth our daily bread, he concluded to return
thanks to the tools of immediate usefulness. Chopsticks are of various
materials--bamboo, mahogany, ivory, etc.,--and in different
shapes--round, angular, slender at one end and stout at the other, etc.
In a great public feast where there is no knowing the number present, or
a religious fete where reverential cleanliness is formally insisted
upon, fork-shaped splints of soft wood are distributed among the guests
who rend them asunder into pairs of impromptu chopsticks. On the morning
of New Year's Day tradition requires us to use chopsticks prepared
hastily of mulberry twigs in handling rice-paste cakes called mochi,
which the people cook with various edibles and eat, as a sort of
religious ceremony.
Rice is the staple food. Vegetables and fishes are also consumed, yet no
meat is eaten. Partridge and game, however, were sanctioned from early
times as food or rather as luxuries. To cook rice just right--not too
soft nor too hard--is not an easy matter; it is considered an art every
Japanese maiden of marriageable age must needs acquire. The rice is
first washed in a wooden tub, and then transferred to a deep iron
cooking-pot with some water. The point lies in the question, how much
water is needed? Neither too much nor too little; there is a golden
mean. If the rice be cooked either the very least little bit soft or
hard the young servant-wife, for really that she is, is blamed for it.
The right amount of water is only ascertained by trial. No less puzzling
is the degree of heat to be applied to the pot, and the point at which
to withdraw the fuel and leave the cooking to be completed without any
further application of heat. These things I speak of not merely from
observation but from personal experience. When I was off at a boarding
school, which I may have occasion to speak of, I experimented in
boarding myself for a while; I learned there how to cook as at a young
ladies' seminary, as well as how to write and read.
Hot boiled rice we always have at dinner; at supper and breakfast we
pour boiling tea over cold rice in the bowl and are content. Tea is
boiling in the kitchen from morning till night. It is drunk with no
sugar or milk; indeed, the scrupulous inhabitants of the "land of the
gods" never dreamt of tasting the milk of a brute. If a babe is
nourished with cow's milk, it is believed that the horns will grow on
his forehead. When no palatable dishes are to be had we eat our rice
with pickled plums and preserved radishes, turnips, egg-plants and
cabbage. The preserves are not done up in glass jars; they are kept in a
huge tub of salt and rice-bran. During the summer months when vegetables
are plenty and cheap we buy a great quantity of them from a farmer of
our acquaintance. He brings them on the back of a horse. The poor
animal is usually loaded so heavily that only his head and tail are
visible amidst the mountain of cabbage leaves. Days are spent in washing
and scrubbing the roots and bulbs of the garden, many more in drying
them in the sun. House-tops, weather-beaten walls, fences and all
available windy corners are utilized in hanging up the vegetables. When
partly dried they are packed in salt and rice-bran and subjected to
pressure in bamboo-hooped wooden tubs, commonly by laying old millstones
on them. Being but partially dry, the vegetables deliver the remaining
moisture to the powder in which they are packed, and in course of time
the whole contents become soaked in a yellowish, muddy, pungent liquid.
Kōkŏ, as the vegetables are then called, can be preserved in this way
throughout the whole year. They are taken out from time to time, washed
and sliced and relished with great satisfaction. They are something that
is sure to be obtained in any house at any time; with cold rice and hot
tea they make up our simplest fare.
When I was late from school I made out my dinner with the rice and kōkŏ.
Frequently, however, my provident mother set aside for me something
nice.