One is immediately struck, on landing at Kobe--and continually after--by
the littleness of Japan. The little flimsy houses, the little flimsy
shops, the small men, the toylike women, the tiny children, as numerous
and like unto each other as the pebbles on the shore--these are
everywhere. But although small of stature the Japanese men are often
very powerfully built and many of them suggest great strength. They are
taking to games, too. While I was in the country baseball was a craze,
and boys were practising pitching and catching everywhere, even in the
streets of the cities.
Littleness--with which is associated the most delicate detail and
elaborate finish--is the mark also of modern Japanese art. In the
curiosity shops whatever was massive or largely simple was Chinese. Even
the royal palaces at Kyoto are small, the rooms, exquisite as they are,
with perfect joinery and ancient paintings, being seldom more than a few
feet square, with very low ceilings. I went over two of these palaces,
falling into the hands, at each, of English-speaking officials whose
ciceronage was touched with a kind of rapture. At the Nijo, especially,
was my guide an enthusiast, becoming lyrical over the famous cartoons of
the "Wet Heron" and the "Sleeping Sparrows."
In India I had grown accustomed to removing my shoes at the threshold
of mosques. There it was out of deference to Allah, but in Japan the
concession is demanded solely in the interests of floor polish, and you
take your shoes off not only in palaces and houses but in some of the
shops. It gave one an odd burglarious feeling to be creeping noiselessly
from room to room of the Nijo; but there was nothing to steal. The place
was empty, save for decoration.
There is a certain amplitude in some of the larger Kyoto temples, with
their long galleries and massive gateways, but these only serve to
accentuate the littleness elsewhere. In the principal Kyoto temple I had
for guide a minute Japanese with the ecstatic passion for trifles
that seems to mark his race. A picture representing the miracle of the
"Fly-away Sparrows," as he called them, was the treasure on which he
concentrated, and next to that he drew my attention to the boards of the
gangway uniting two buildings, which, as one stepped on them, emitted a
sound that the Japanese believe to resemble the song of Philomela. To
me it brought no such memory, and the fact that this effect, common in
Japan, is technically known as "a nightingale squeak," perhaps supports
my insensitiveness.
If old Japan is to be found anywhere it is in Kyoto--in spite of its
huge factory chimneys. In Tokio, complete European dress is common in
the streets, but in Kyoto it is the exception. Tokio also wears boots,
but Kyoto is noisy with pattens night and day. Not only are there
countless shops in Kyoto given up to porcelain, carvings, screens,
bronzes, old armour, and so forth, but no matter how trumpery the normal
stock in trade of the other shops, a number of them have a little glass
case--a shop within a shop, as it were--in which a few rare and ancient
articles of beauty are kept. A great deal of Japan is expressed in this
pretty custom.