WANDERING IN JAPAN
“Set me down at the Sailors’ Home,” I ordered, stepping into the first
’rickshaw to reach me.
“No good,” answered the runner, dropping the shafts. “Sailor Home be
close.”
[Illustration: My ’rickshaw man whose picture I took from my seat in the
’rickshaw while seeing the sights of Tokio.]
However, I found a hotel beside a canal down near the harbor. The
proprietor, awakened from a doze, gurgled a welcome. He was an American
who had lived for some years in Nagasaki. The real manager of the hotel
was his Japanese wife, a lively woman who seemed to have a better head
for business than her husband. They had two interesting children, a boy
and a girl of twelve and ten. No American children could have been more
quick to see and act, or more whole-heartedly busy at their work and
play; no Japanese more polite of behavior. Already the father asked his
son’s advice in business matters of importance; and the mother depended
upon her daughter to look after the flower garden and the wardrobe.
[Illustration: Numadzu: A view of the fishermen along the river. Rows of
huge fish can be seen on the bank.]
I was given an airy chamber where I could have slept late next morning
had I not been awakened at daybreak by what seemed to be several shots
from a revolver. I sprang to the window, wondering what had happened. In
the yard below squatted the American-Japanese children, with a stick of
“punk” and a great bundle of fire-crackers. I had forgotten the date. It
was the Fourth of July, and Nagasaki was celebrating. All through the
day shots and explosions were heard about the city; nor was the racket
made entirely by Americans.
On other days the boy and girl of the hotel dressed exactly like their
playmates, and no sooner turned their backs on their father than they
began at once to speak the Japanese language. But on this American day
the boy wore a knickerbocker suit and leather shoes; his sister had laid
aside her kimono and wooden sandals to wear a short skirt and long
stockings. Instead of the fancy coil on top of her head, her jet-black
hair hung in two braids over her shoulders; and all that day they spoke
nothing but the English language.
Two days later I hunted up the railway station and took third-class
passage for Hiroshima. The train wound through a rolling country, here
circling the base of a thickly wooded hill, there clinging close to the
shore of a sparkling bay. Farm crops grew in every valley and on every
hillside. Peasants toiled in the fields; their neat cottages dotted the
landscape as far as the eye could see. We passed through village after
village. The stations were well built and bore the name of the town in
both Japanese and English.
The trains were like those of America, but every car was a smoker; for
tobacco is used by almost every man and woman in Japan. There were
ladies seated in the car, smoking pipes that looked like long
lead-pencils with bowls that held much less than the smallest thimble.
There were no dining-cars. At nearly every station boxes containing
rice, several boiled and pickled vegetables, one baked fish, and a pair
of chop-sticks only half split in two, were sold. The contents were
always the same; the price surprisingly low.
I reached Hiroshima at twilight, and left the train in company with two
English-speaking Japanese youths who had taken upon themselves the task
of finding me a lodging. The keeper of a hotel not far from the station
said that he had never housed a white man, but that he would for a
change. I bade my new acquaintances farewell.
[Illustration: Some street urchins near Tokio.]
The hotel office was paved with small stones from which a broad stairway
led upward. The keeper shouted a word of command. A smiling woman, short
and fat, with a wide sash wound round and round her waist, appeared on
the landing above and beckoned me to climb up. I caught up my bundle;
but before I had mounted two steps the proprietor sprang forward with a
scream, and, clutching at my coat-tails, dragged me back. Half a dozen
servant-girls tumbled wild-eyed into the office and joined the landlord
in scolding me. I had dared to start up the stairway without removing my
shoes!
I pulled them off. The keeper, grinning at their weight, added them to a
line of wooden sandals placed along the wall; and the stout woman led me
to a small room with a balcony opening on the street. Everything about
the place made me feel as if I were a giant among pigmies: the low
ceiling, covered with gayly painted dragons; the walls, mere sliding
screens of paper stamped with flowers and strange figures; the highly
polished floor of such light boards that they bent under my feet with
every step. With a flying start I could have run straight through the
house and left it a wreck behind me.
[Illustration: Osaka: One of her many canals.]
The room was entirely unfurnished. My hostess placed a cushion for me in
the center of the floor, and clapped her hands. A servant-girl slipped
in, carrying a tray on which was a tiny box of live coals, several
cigarettes, a joint of bamboo standing upright, and a pot of tea with a
cup and saucer. Having placed her burden at my feet and touched her
forehead to the floor, the maid handed me a cigarette, poured out tea,
and remained kneeling a full half hour, filling the tiny cup as often as
I emptied it.
When she was gone I picked up the joint of bamboo, fancying it contained
sweetmeats. It was empty, however, and I was left to wonder until the
hostess returned. When she understood my motions, she began to explain
by talking rapidly; but I shook my head. Then, with a wry face, she
caught up the hollow joint and spat into it. The thing was merely a
Japanese spittoon.
A maid soon served supper. She brought first of all a table some eight
inches high; then a great wooden bucket brimming full of hard-packed
rice; and, lastly, several little paper bowls. One held an oily liquid
in which floated the yolk of an egg; another a small boiled turnip; a
third a sample of some native salad; at the bottom of a fourth lay, in
dreary loneliness, a pitiful little minnow. Of rice there was enough for
a squad of soldiers, but without it the meal could not have satisfied a
hungry canary.
As I ate, the girl poured out tea in a cup that held a single swallow.
Fortunately, I had already learned how to use chop-sticks, or I should
have been forced to eat with my fingers. As it was, it took a great deal
of skill to possess myself of the swimming yolk; and he who fancies it
is easy to balance a satisfying mouthful of rice on the ends of two
slivers has only to try it to discover his mistake.
I fancied I might have to sleep on the polished floor; but the
hotel-keeper’s wife glided in once more, and asked, by resting her head
in the palm of her hand, if I was ready to go to bed. I nodded, and at
her signal a servant appeared with a quilt of great thickness, which she
spread in the center of the floor. This seemed of itself a soft enough
resting-place; but not until six pudding-like covers had been piled one
on top of the other was the landlady content. Over this couch, that had
taken on the form of a huge layer-cake, the two of them spread a
coverlet,—there were no sheets,—and backed out of the room. They
returned shortly after dragging behind them a great net. While the
matron fastened the four corners of the top to hooks in the ceiling, the
maid tucked the edges under the stack of quilts, so that the net formed
a sort of tent over my bed. I crawled under it, and was soon asleep.
[Illustration: Horses are rare in Japan. Men and baggage are drawn by
coolies.]
How surprised I was when I awoke in the morning! It was broad daylight.
The sun was streaming in across the balcony, and the constant scraping
of wooden clogs sounded from the street below. But the room in which I
had gone to bed had entirely disappeared! I sat up with bulging eyes.
Under me was the stack of quilts, but all else was changed. The net was
gone, and I sat alone and deserted in the center of a large hall, the
front of which for its entire length opened on to the public street. The
change was no magician’s trick, though it was several moments before I
was sufficiently wide awake to understand what had happened. The
servant-girls had merely pushed together the screens that made the
walls.
[Illustration: Japanese children playing in the streets of Kioto.]
Later I managed to find the highway that led out of Hiroshima. It led
the way between bright green hedgerows, through village after village,
past many farm-houses and rice-fields. The air was fresh and cheering,
and I was often within sight of the bright blue arm of old ocean that
wound in and out along the coast. Now and then an ocean liner, awakening
memories of far-off lands, glided by. In shallow bays unclad fishermen,
too brown to sunburn, disentangled their nets and heaped high their
catches in wicker baskets.
It needed a very few hours on the road to teach me that the country
people of Japan are very curious—even more so than the Arab. I had only
to pass through a village to cause all business to stop. Workmen dropped
their tools, children forgot their games, girls left their pitchers at
the fountain, even gossips ceased their chatter—all to stare wide-eyed
if I passed on, to crowd around me if I paused.
[Illustration: Women do most of the work in the rice-fields of Japan.]
Wherever I stopped for a drink of water, the town rose in a mass to
watch my strange action. When I set the cup down they passed it
wonderingly from hand to hand. To stop for a lunch was almost dangerous,
for the crowd that collected at the door of the shop threatened to do me
to death under their trampling clogs. In the smaller villages the whole
population, men, women, and children, followed me out along the highway,
leaving the place as utterly deserted as if the dogs of war had been
loosed upon it. Once I passed a school at the recess hour. Its two
hundred children trailed behind me for a long mile, paying no attention
to the jangling bell and the shouts of their excited masters.
Partly by foot and partly by rail, I finally reached Kyoto, where I
spent a day. At the station next morning four yen were more than enough
for a ticket to Tokyo, with stopovers anywhere I chose. At Maibara a
squad of Russian prisoners, clothed in arctic cloaks and fur caps,
huddled in a sweltering group on the station platform. As long as the
train stood there not a sound of mockery rose from the crowd, and the
towns-people came in a continual procession to offer the silent fellows
baskets of fruit, packets of tobacco, and all manner of delicacies.
From Nagoya the railway turned southward, following the coast, so that
again I caught frequent glimpses of the ocean as we sped along, passing
through a country filled with rice-fields, where peasant women wallowed
in the water, clawing with bare hands the mud about the roots of the
rice plants. On slopes too steep to be flooded, long rows of tea bushes
stretched from the railway to the wooded tops of the hills.
I reached Yokohama at night, and stopped at the Sailors’ Home, certain
that in this city I could soon get work on some vessel going to my
native land. I squandered the seven yen I had left, and on a morning
late in July wandered down to the port to ask for work on some ship.