[Illustration: OLD COURT COSTUME]
JINRIKISHA DAYS IN JAPAN
BY
ELIZA RUHAMAH SCIDMORE
“Waga kuni no Yamato shima ne ni idzuru hi wa;
Morokoshi hito mo, awoga zarameya.”
“In the ancient Yamato island, my native land, the sun rises;
Must not even the Western foreigner reverence?”
_Ancient Japanese Poem._
“I cannot cease from praising these Japanese. They are truly
the delight of my heart.”
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER.
_REVISED EDITION_
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902
Copyright, 1891, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
PREFACE
This book has only attempted to present some of the phases of the new
Japan as they appeared to one who was both a tourist and a foreign
resident in that country. No one person can see it all, nor comprehend
it, as the jinrikisha speeds through city streets and over country roads,
nor do any two people enjoy just the same experiences, see things in the
same light, or draw the same conclusions as to this remarkable people.
Japan is so inexhaustible and so full of surprises that to the last day
of his stay the tourist and the resident alike are confronted by some
novelty that is yet wholly common and usual in the life of the Japanese.
The scientists, scholars, and specialists, the poetic and the political
writers, who have written so fully of Japan, have omitted many little
things which leave the pleasantest impressions on lighter minds. Each
decade presents a new Japan, as the wonderful empire approaches nearer
to modern and European standards in living, and, in becoming one of the
eight great civilized world-powers, Japan has put aside much of its
mediæval and Oriental picturesqueness.
Bewildered by its novelty and strangeness, too many tourists come and go
with little knowledge of the Japan of the Japanese, and, beholding only
the modernized seaports and the capital, miss many unique and distinctly
national sights and experiences that lie close at hand. The book will
have attained its object if it helps the tourist to see better the Japan
that is unchanging, and if it gives the stay-at-home reader a greater
interest in those fascinating people and their lovely home.
Unfortunately, it is impossible, in acknowledging the kindness of the
many Japanese friends and acquaintances, who secured me so much enjoyment
and so many delightful experiences, to begin to give the long list of
their names. Each foreign visitor must equally feel himself indebted to
the whole race for being Japanese, and, therefore, the most interesting
population in the world, and his obligation is to the whole people as
much as to particular individuals.
Since the first edition of this book was published, the treaties have
been revised, extra-territoriality and the passport system have been
abolished, and a protective tariff adopted; the railway has been extended
to Nikko, to Nara, from end to end, and twice across, the main island;
foreign hotels have multiplied in seaports and mountain resorts; the
guide-book has been modernized, made more companionable and interesting,
and a vast literature has been added to the subject—Japan. The fall
in the price of silver, the adoption of the gold standard, and the
increasing army of tourists have more than doubled the cost of living
and of all the products of art industry. Japan has twice sent victorious
military expeditions to the mainland, and in the relief of the legations
and the occupation of Peking has proved her soldiers first in valor,
discipline, equipment, and in humanity to the conquered, and there was
abundantly displayed that high passion of patriotism which the Japanese
possess in greater degree than any other people.
Japan, six times revisited, is as full of charm and novelty as when I
first went ashore from the wreck of the _Tokio_.
E. R. S.
WASHINGTON, D. C., _March, 1890_.
” ” _March, 1902_.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE NORTH PACIFIC AND YOKOHAMA 1
II. YOKOHAMA 10
III. YOKOHAMA—CONTINUED 20
IV. THE ENVIRONS OF YOKOHAMA 28
V. KAMAKURA AND ENOSHIMA 38
VI. TOKIO 43
VII. TOKIO—CONTINUED 53
VIII. TOKIO FLOWER FESTIVALS 65
IX. JAPANESE HOSPITALITIES 86
X. THE JAPANESE THEATRE 96
XI. THE IMPERIAL FAMILY 111
XII. TOKIO PALACES AND COURT 125
XIII. THE SUBURBS OF TOKIO 134
XIV. A TRIP TO NIKKO 140
XV. NIKKO 147
XVI. CHIUZENJI AND YUMOTO 162
XVII. THE ASCENT OF FUJIYAMA 175
XVIII. THE DESCENT OF FUJIYAMA 183
XIX. THE TOKAIDO—I 189
XX. THE TOKAIDO—II 197
XXI. NAGOYA 206
XXII. LAKE BIWA AND KIOTO 216
XXIII. KIOTO TEMPLES 226
XXIV. THE MONTO TEMPLES AND THE DAIMONJI 236
XXV. THE PALACES AND CASTLE 244
XXVI. KIOTO SILK INDUSTRY 255
XXVII. EMBROIDERIES AND CURIOS 267
XXVIII. POTTERIES AND PAPER WARES 277
XXIX. GOLDEN DAYS 285
XXX. SENKÉ AND THE MERCHANTS’ DINNER 296
XXXI. THROUGH UJI TO NARA 304
XXXII. NARA 320
XXXIII. OSAKA 331
XXXIV. KOBÉ AND ARIMA 340
XXXV. THE TEA TRADE 350
XXXVI. THE INLAND SEA AND NAGASAKI 358
XXXVII. IN THE END 368
INDEX 377
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
OLD COURT COSTUME _Frontispiece_
FUJIYAMA 5
JAPANESE CHILDREN 17
AT KAWAWA 30
THE SEMI’S CAGE 55
POETS BENEATH THE PLUM-TREES 67
A UYÉNO TEA-HOUSE 71
IRIS GARDENS AT HORI KIRI 75
AT KAMEIDO 79
IN DANGO-ZAKA STREET 82
TEA BLOSSOMS 83
CHOPSTICKS—FIGS. 1 AND 2 88
CHOPSTICKS—FIG. 3 89
THE NESANS AT THE HOISHIGAOKA 93
MATSUDA, THE MASTER OF CHA NO YU 94
DANJIRO, THE GREAT ACTOR 107
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 115
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 117
IN THE PALACE GARDENS 121
PLAN OF EMPEROR’S PRIVATE APARTMENTS 127
IMPERIAL SAKÉ-CUP 129
INTERIOR OF THE IYEMITSU TEMPLE 151
GATE-WAY OF THE IYEYASU TEMPLE 155
FARM LABORERS AND PACK-HORSE 163
PUBLIC BATH-HOUSE AT YUMOTO 171
THE SHOJO 213
THE GREAT PINE-TREE AT KARASAKI 219
THE TRUE-LOVER’S SHRINE AT KIOMIDZU 231
THE THRONE OF 1868 248
KABE HABUTAI 262
CHIRIMEN 263
EBISU CHIRIMEN 264
KINU CHIRIMEN 265
FUKUSA 270
MANJI 272
MITSU TOMOYÉ 273
IN NAMMIKAWA’S WORK-ROOM 288
PICKING TEA 305
IN THE KASUGA TEMPLE GROUNDS 317
PRIESTESSES AT NARA 324
FARM LABORERS 347
JINRIKISHA DAYS IN JAPAN
CHAPTER I
THE NORTH PACIFIC AND YOKOHAMA
All the Orient is a surprise to the Occidental. Everything is strange,
with a certain unreality that makes one doubt half his sensations. To
appreciate Japan one should come to it from the mainland of Asia. From
Suez to Nagasaki the Asiatic sits dumb and contented in his dirt, rags,
ignorance, and wretchedness. After the muddy rivers, dreary flats, and
brown hills of China, after the desolate shores of Korea, with their
unlovely and unwashed peoples, Japan is a dream of Paradise, beautiful
from the first green island off the coast to the last picturesque
hill-top. The houses seem toys, their inhabitants dolls, whose manner of
life is clean, pretty, artistic, and distinctive.
There is a greater difference between the people of these idyllic
islands and of the two countries to westward, than between the physical
characteristics of the three kingdoms; and one recognizes the Japanese as
the fine flower of the Orient, the most polite, refined, and æsthetic of
races, happy, light-hearted, friendly, and attractive.
The bold and irregular coast is rich in color, the perennial green of
the hill-side is deep and soft, and the perfect cone of Fujiyama against
the sky completes the landscape, grown so familiar on fan, lantern, box,
and plate. Every-day life looks too theatrical, too full of artistic and
decorative effects, to be actual and serious, and streets and shops seem
set with deliberately studied scenes and carefully posed groups. Half
consciously the spectator waits for the bell to ring and the curtain to
drop.
The voyage across the North Pacific is lonely and monotonous. Between San
Francisco and Yokohama hardly a passing sail is seen. When the Pacific
Mail Steamship Company established the China line their steamers sailed
on prescribed routes, and outward and homeward-bound ships met regularly
in mid-ocean. Now, when not obliged to touch at Honolulu, the captains
choose their route for each voyage, either sailing straight across from
San Francisco, in 37° 47′, to Yokohama, in 35° 26′ N., or, following
one of the great circles farther north, thus lessen time and distance.
On these northern meridians the weather is often cold, threatening, or
stormy, and the sea rough; but the steadiness of the winds favors this
course, and persuades the ship’s officers to shorten the long course and
more certainly reach Japan on schedule time. Dwellers in hot climates
dislike the sudden transition to cooler waters, and some voyagers enjoy
it. Fortunately, icebergs cannot float down the shallow reaches of Bering
Strait, but fierce winds blow through the gaps and passes in the Aleutian
Islands.
Canadian Pacific steamers, starting on the 49th parallel, often pass near
the shores of Attu, the last little fragment of earth swinging at the end
of the great Aleutian chain. The shelter which those capable navigators,
Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine, had the luck to find in their memorable
journey, mariners declare to be Midway Island, a circular dot of land in
the great waste, with a long, narrow, outlying sand-bar, where schooners
have been wrecked, and castaways rescued after months of imprisonment.
The steamer’s course from San Francisco to Yokohama varies from 4500 to
5500 miles, and the journey takes from twelve to eighteen days. From
Vancouver to Yokohama it is but eleven days.
When the ship’s course turns perceptibly southward the mild weather of
the Japan Stream is felt. In winter the first sign of land is a distant
silver dot on the horizon, which in summer turns to blue or violet, and
gradually enlarges into the tapering cone of Fuji, sloping upward in
faultless lines from the water’s edge. One may approach land many times
and never see Fuji, and during my first six months in Japan the matchless
mountain refused to show herself from any point of view. Cape King,
terminating the long peninsula that shelters Yeddo Bay, shows first a
line of purple cliffs, and then a front of terraced hills, green with
rice and wheat, or golden with grain or stubble. Fleets of square-sailed
fishing-boats drift by, their crews, in the loose, flapping gowns and
universal blue cotton head-towels of the Japanese coolies, easily working
the broad oar at the stern. At night Cape King’s welcome beacon is
succeeded by Kanonsaki’s lantern across the Bay, Sagami’s bright light,
then the myriad flashes of the Yokosuka navy-yard, and last the red ball
of the light-ship, marking the edge of the shoal a mile outside the Bund,
or sea-wall, of Yokohama. When this craft runs up its signal-flag a
United States man-of-war, if there be one in port, fires two guns, as a
signal that the American mail has arrived.
Daylight reveals a succession of terraced hills, cleft by narrow green
valleys and narrower ravines; little villages, their clusters of thatched
roofs shaded by pine, palm, or bamboo; fishing-boats always in the
foreground, and sometimes Fuji clear-cut against the sky, its base lost
now and then behind the overlapping hills. In summer Fuji’s purple cone
shows only ribbon stripes of white near its apex. For the rest of the
year it is a silvery, shining vision, rivalled only by Mount Rainier,
which, pale with eternal snows, rises from the dense forests of Puget
Sound to glass itself in those green waters.
Yokohama disappoints the traveller, after the splendid panorama of the
Bay. The Bund, or sea-road, with its club-houses, hotels, and residences
fronting the water, is not Oriental enough to be very picturesque. It is
too European to be Japanese, and too Japanese to be European. The water
front, which suffers by comparison with the massive stone buildings
of Chinese ports, is, however, a creditable contrast to our untidy
American docks and quays, notwithstanding the low-tiled roofs, blank
fences, and hedges. The water life is vivid and spectacular. The fleet
of black merchant steamers and white men-of-war, the ugly pink and red
canal-steamers, and the crowding brigs and barks, are far outnumbered
by the fleet of sampans that instantly surround the arriving mail.
Steam-launches, serving as mail-wagon and hotel omnibus, snort, puff,
and whistle at the gang-ways before the buoy is reached; and voluble
boatmen keep up a steady _bzz, bzz, whizz, whizz_, to the strokes of
their crooked, wobbling oars as they scull in and out. Four or five
thousand people live on the shipping in the harbor, and in ferrying
this population to and fro and purveying to it the boatmen make their
livelihood. Strict police regulations keep them safe and peaceable, and
the harbor impositions of other countries are unknown. On many of these
sampans the whole family abides, the women cooking over a handful of
charcoal in a small box or bowl, the children playing in corners not
occupied by passengers or freight. On gala days, when the shipping is
decorated, the harbor is a beautiful sight; or when the salutes of the
foreign fleets assembled at Yokohama are returned by the guns of the fort
on Kanagawa Heights, and the air tingles with excitement. Since the
annexation of the Philippines the American Asiatic fleet has been fully
occupied in that archipelago, and the vessels seldom visit Yokohama, or
remain for any time. The acquisition of Wei-hai-Wei gave the British
fleet a northern station, and that, with the perpetual break-up and
crisis in China, keeps those ships and the fleets of all nations closely
to that coast. Nagasaki’s coal-mines make it the great port of naval call
and supply in Japan.
[Illustration: FUJIYAMA]
A mole and protected harbor with stone docks has been built with the
money finally returned to Japan by the United States, after being
shamefully withheld for a quarter of a century, as our share of the
Shimonoseki Indemnity Fund. The outer harbor lies so open to the
prevailing south-east winds that loading and unloading is often delayed
for days, and landing by launches or sampans is a wet process. The Bay
is so shallow that a stiff wind quickly sends its waves breaking over
the sea-wall, to subside again in a few hours into a mirror-like calm.
The harbor has had its great typhoons, but does not lie in the centre
of those dreaded circular storms that whirl up from the China seas.
Deflected to eastward, the typhoon sends its syphoon, or wet end, to fill
the air with vapor and drizzle, and a smothering, mildewy, exhausting
atmosphere. A film of mist covers everything, wall-paper loosens, glued
things fall apart, and humanity wilts.
Yokohama has its divisions—the Settlement, the Bluff, and Japanese
Town—each of which is a considerable place by itself. The Settlement,
or region originally set apart by the Japanese in 1858 for foreign
merchants, was made by filling in a swampy valley opening to the Bay.
This Settlement, at first separated from the Tokaido and the Japanese
town of Kanagawa, has become the centre of a surrounding Japanese
population of over eighty thousand. It is built up continuously to
Kanagawa Bridge, two miles farther north, on the edge of a bold bluff,
where the Tokaido—the East Sea Road—leading up from Kioto, reaches the
Bay. In diplomatic papers Kanagawa is still recognized as the name of the
great port on Yeddo Bay, although the consulates, banks, hotels, clubs,
and business streets are miles away.
At the _hatoba_, or landing-place, the traveller is confronted by the
_jinrikisha_, that big, two-wheeled baby-carriage of the country,
which, invented by an American, has been adopted all over the East.
The jinrikisha (or _kuruma_, as the linguist and the upper class more
politely call it) ranges in price from seventeen to forty dollars, twenty
being the average cost of those on the public stands. Some thrifty
coolies own their vehicles, but the greater number either rent them from,
or work for, companies, and each jinrikisha pays a small annual tax to
the Government. An unwritten rule of the road compels these carriages to
follow one another in regulated single file. The oldest or most honored
person rides at the head of the line, and only a boor would attempt to
change the order of arrangement. Spinning down the Bund, at a tariff
so moderate that the American can ride for a week for what he must pay
in a day at home, one finds the jinrikisha to be a comfortable, flying
arm-chair—a little private, portable throne. The coolie wears a loose
coat and waistcoat, and tights of dark-blue cotton, with straw sandals
on his bare feet, and an inverted wash-bowl of straw covered with cotton
on his head. When it rains he is converted into a prickly porcupine by
his straw rain-coat, or he dons a queer apron and cloak of oiled paper,
and, pulling up the hood of the little carriage, ties a second apron
of oiled paper across the knees of his fare. At night the shafts are
ornamented with a paper lantern bearing his name and his license number;
and these glowworm lights, flitting through the streets and country
roads in the darkness, seem only another expression of the Japanese
love of the picturesque. In the country, after dark, they call warnings
of ruts, holes, breaks in the road, or coming crossways; and their
cries, running from one to another down the line, are not unmusical. To
this smiling, polite, and amiable little pony one says _Hayaku!_ for
“hurry,” _Abunayo!_ for “take care,” _Sukoshimate!_ for “stop a little,”
and _Soro!_ for “slowly.” The last command is often needed when the
coolie, leaning back at an acute angle to the shaft, dashes downhill at
a rapid gait. Jinrikisha coolies are said even to have asked extra pay
for walking slowly through the fascinating streets of open shops. If you
experiment with the jinrikisha on a level road, you find that it is only
the first pull that is hard; once started, the little carriage seems
to run by itself. The gait of the man in the shafts, and his height,
determine the comfort of the ride. A tall coolie holds the shafts too
high, and tilts one at an uncomfortable angle; a very short man makes
the best runner, and, with big toe curling upward, will trot along as
regularly as a horse. As one looks down upon the bobbing creature below a
hat and two feet seem to constitute the whole motor.
The _waraji_, or sandals, worn by these coolies are woven of rice straw,
and cost less than five cents a pair. In the good old days they were
much cheaper. Every village and farm-house make them, and every shop
sells them. In their manufacture the big toe is a great assistance,
as this highly trained member catches and holds the strings while the
hands weave. On country roads wrecks of old waraji lie scattered where
the wearer stepped out of them and ran on, while ruts and mud-holes are
filled with them. For long tramps the foreigner finds the waraji and the
_tabi_, or digitated stocking, much better than his own clumsy boots,
and he ties them on as overshoes when he has rocky paths to climb.
Coolies often dispense with waraji and wear heavy tabi, with a strip
of the almost indestructible _hechima_ fibre for the soles. The hechima
is the gourd which furnishes the vegetable washrag, or looffa sponge of
commerce. The snow-white cotton tabis of the better classes are made an
important part of their costume.
Those coolies who pull and push heavily loaded carts or drays keep up a
hoarse chant, which corresponds to the chorus of sailors when hauling
ropes. “_Hilda! Hoida!_” they seem to be crying, as they brace their
feet for a hard pull, and the very sound of it exhausts the listener. In
the old days people were nearly deafened with these street choruses, but
their use is another of the hereditary customs that is fast dying out.
In mountain districts one’s chair-bearers wheeze out “_Hi rikisha! Ho
rikisha!_” or “_Ito sha! Ito sha!_” as they climb the steepest paths, and
they cannot keep step nor work vigorously without their chant.