NAGOYA
In this day of French uniforms, Gatling-guns, and foreign tactics, it is
only in Nagoya that the garrison occupies the old castle; the fortress,
with its gates and moats, remains unchanged, and the bugle-calls echo
daily around the quaintly-gabled citadel. In the great parade-grounds
outside the deep inner moat rise foreign-looking barracks and offices,
and dumpy little soldiers in white-duck coats and trousers and visored
caps stand as sentries on the fixed bridges, and in the portals of the
huge, heavy-roofed, iron-clamped gate-ways. Of course these guards should
be men in old armor, with spears and bows, and the alarms should be
given on hoarse-toned gongs or conch-shell bugles, as in feudal days.
Instead, the commandant of Nagoya has on his staff young nobles of old
feudal families, who speak French, German, or English, as they have
been taught in foreign military schools. A dapper little lieutenant, in
spotless gloves and an elaborately-frogged white uniform, conducted us
along the deep moat, over the bridge, and under the great gate of the
citadel, whose stones, timbers, and iron clampings would defy a dozen
mediæval armies. Gay chatter about _la belle Paris_, which the little
lieutenant had learned to adore in his student-days, echoed under the yet
more ponderous inner gate, and the ghosts of the old warriors must have
groaned at the degeneracy of their sons.
Below the frowning citadel is an old palace, wherein the son of Iyeyasu,
the first Prince of Owari, lived in state and entertained the Shogun’s
messengers. The empty rooms are musty and gloomy from long neglect, but
the beautifully-carved and colored ceilings, and the screens and recess
walls, decorated by famous artists with paintings on a ground of thinnest
gold-leaf, remain the sole relics of his splendor.
The great donjon tower of the citadel, rising in five gabled stories,
is surmounted by two golden dolphins, the pride of Nagoya. Made over
two hundred years ago, each solid goldfish is valued at eighty thousand
dollars, and many legends are attached to them. A covetous citizen once
made an enormous kite wherewith to fly up and steal the city’s treasures,
but he was caught and put to death in boiling oil. The golden pets
were never disturbed until one of them was taken down and sent with the
Government exhibits to the Vienna Exposition in 1873. On the return
voyage it sank to the bottom of the sea with the wrecked steamer _Nil_.
Like the old lacquers and porcelain, the golden dolphin suffered no sea
change, and, after a few months’ immersion, was brought up and returned
to its high perch on the tower, while all Nagoya rejoiced to see it
flashing in the sun once more.
The donjon tower is a fine example of the old architecture, and the
massive joists of keyaki would build barracks for twenty regiments.
Inside the tower is an inexhaustible well, called the “Golden Water,”
which, in time of siege, would enable a rice-provisioned garrison to hold
out for years. Up a stair-way of massive timbers one climbs, half in
darkness to the top, to look down upon the broad Nagoya plain, the blue
bay, and the busy port of Yokkaichi opposite, in the sacred province of
Ise.
Commercially, Nagoya is best known as the centre of a great pottery and
porcelain district, Seto in Owari being as famous as Staffordshire in
England. In the Seto suburb porcelain clay is found, and silica exists
in large quantities a few miles away. From the castle tower one sees the
smoke of continuous lines of kilns surrounding the valley, and all the
ware is sent in from these villages to Nagoya for distribution. Here the
finest egg-shell porcelain, rivalling the French ware, is made, much
of it going to Yokohama to be decorated for the foreign market. Seto
itself has given its name to all porcelain, and especially to the pale,
gray-green ware so commonly used in Japanese households. Old green Seto
ware is highly esteemed, both for its soft tinting and its peculiar
glaze, suggesting jade or lacquer to the touch more than hard, kiln-burnt
porcelain. The bulk of the commoner heavy porcelain is decorated here
for the foreign market—men, women, and small boys mechanically repeating
the monstrous designs in hideous colors, which they ignorantly suppose
to represent western taste, and which the western world accepts as “so
Japanese.” Modern Owari is least desirable and least Japanese of all the
wares of Japan, but as thousands of dollars pour annually into Nagoya
for these travesties of national art, their manufacture and export will
still go on. Recently the Seto potteries have been turning out large
tea-caddies, with double or pierced covers, by tens of thousands, daubing
them with the discordant colors of cheap foreign mineral paints. Across
the ocean they are called Japanese rose-jars, although the rose was
unknown in Japan until the entrance of foreigners, and the rose-jar and
the _pot-pourri_ it contains would greatly astonish a Japanese. But as
Nagoya and Seto are made rich and happy by badly decorated porcelain
tea-caddies, industry gains if art loses.
Thirty thousand Nagoyans are engaged in the manufacture of a cheap
_cloisonné_ enamel, ship-loads of plaques and vases with one unvarying
hard, pale-blue ground being exported annually. The powdered porcelain
from Seto’s imperfect pieces forms the base of the enamel used, and the
two industries work together economically.
In Nagoya town are shops filled with the charming Banko ware, made across
the bay at Yokkaichi, which still retains all its old merits, unaltered
by the demands of foreign markets. Banko teapots worked out of sheets of
thin clay, pressed, folded, cut, and patterned in white mosaic or glazed
designs in low relief, resemble nothing so much as bits of soft painted
crapes stretched over hidden frames, and these fragile, unglazed pieces
are all the more pleasing in the midst of Nagoya’s keramic nightmares.
Nagoya being a little off the line of tourist travel, its curio shops
are not entirely stripped of their best things. As Owari’s princes
exchanged porcelains liberally with the daimios of Hizen and Kaga,
some rare pieces of old Imari and Kutani are often chanced upon, as
the impoverishment of great families, and the rage for foreign dress
and fashions, tempts the better class to part with heirlooms. Whole
afternoons wore on as we made our way into the graces of certain curio
dealers, that they might disclose their jealously-guarded treasures.
These old men of Nagoya have a real affection for the beautiful things of
the past, made before any foreign demands had corrupted and debased the
native art. Once convinced of the intelligent interest of their customer,
the owners proudly open the godown, and the swords, the lacquer, and
the porcelains appear, and, lifted from their boxes, stripped of cotton
and silk wrappings, are set forth. These old dealers are men wholly of
the past, who meditate and smoke long over an offer, and if they agree
to the price solemnly and slowly clap their hands as a ratification of
the terms. Four times we passed by the largest curio shop in Nagoya, led
by the tea-jars and boxes in the front to suppose that it was only the
abode of a tea-merchant. When we had accidentally bought some choice tea
there, we were invited back to a court, where two godowns were crowded
with old porcelains and lacquer. Near by was another shop where arms,
armor, Buddhas, altar-pieces, saints, images, carvings, candlesticks,
koros, robes, trappings, and all the paraphernalia of priests, temples,
warriors, and yashikis were heaped up on the floor and hung overhead.
The coolies had been anxious about our rate of progress on the last
Tokaido days, fearing to miss the great matsuri of the Nagoya year,
which, celebrating the deeds of the founder and patron saints of the
city, has been maintained with great pomp and splendor for centuries. The
procession was to take four hours in passing, and our landlord engaged
places for us in the house of a shoe-dealer in the main street. The
dealer in _geta_ and _dzori_ dealt only in those national foot coverings,
but, yielding to foreign fashions, had set up a sign of
“SHOES THE SHOP.”
The sliding screens of the front wall of the room over the shop were
removed, and bright-red blankets thrown over the ledge and spread out on
the eaves of the lower story. All the houses were open and decorated in
this same way, and lanterns hung in rows from the eaves and from upright
posts at the door-way.
The worthy shoe-dealer’s blankets and lanterns were just like his
neighbors’, but when three foreigners appeared at the low balcony,
then the multitude stopped and stared open-mouthed at that unusual
spectacle, and we divided popular interest with the procession as long
as we remained there. Policemen were perplexed between their duty of
making the crowds move on and their own pleasure of having a look at
the strangers. Soldiers from the garrison stared by hundreds, and
the policemen requested them to depart, as well as the rustics and
townspeople. Policemen rank much higher, in a way, than the soldiers, the
guardians of the peace being nearly all descendants of the old samurai,
the two-sworded, privileged retainers of feudal days, while the common
soldier is enlisted from the farm laborers; and one quickly sees how much
more regard the lower classes have for the _gunsa_ than for the soldier.
The procession began with high ornamental wooden cars, or _dasha_, set
on wheels hewn from single blocks of wood, and drawn by ropes, to which
every pious person was supposed to lend a hand. Regular coolies were
engaged for the steady wheel-horse work, and sang a wild chorus as men
with stout sticks pried the clumsy wheels up for the first turn. The
corner posts and upper railings of the dasha are lacquered in black or
red, and finished with plates of open-work brass, or elaborately-gilded
carvings. The sides are hung with curtains of rich old brocade or painted
cloth, and the railed top is a stage, on which puppet-shows and tableaux
represent scenes from mythology and legend. On one car Raiden, the red
Thunder God, mounted on a rearing charger, shook his circle of drums, and
Suzume, the priestess, repeated her sacred dance before the cave. Comic
scenes took best with the audience, however, and the jolly old _shojo_,
men who come up from the bottom of the sea for a revel on shore, wearing
mats of bright red hair and gowns of gorgeous brocade, were received with
greatest favor. They ladled out saké from a deep jar, and finally stood
on their heads on the rim of the jar and drank from the depths. There
were only twelve dasha in line, but they stopped every fifty feet while
the puppets were put through their performances.
Succeeding the cars came a daimio’s train, preceded by heralds in quaint,
mediæval costume, and presenting every phase of the old-time parade.
Chinese sages and instructors, Korean prisoners, falconers and priests
walked in line after the daimios, who were mounted on horses half hidden
in clumsy but beautiful old trappings. The men in white silk gowns and
lacquer hats, who took the daimios’ places at the head of the line, are
descendants of those great families of the province, whose members have
ridden in Nagoya’s matsuri parades for centuries. After them came an
endless line of men in armor, the suits of mail being either heirlooms of
the wearers or provided from the rich stores of such things owned by the
temple. The armor surpassed the treasures of curio shops, and the dents
and cuts in the cuirasses and helmets attested their antiquity. Having
sat from eleven o’clock until three in the upper room with the family
of the shoeman, we parted with elaborate expressions of esteem on both
sides, and with such bows and prostrations from them that we wondered how
our guide would contrive to slip a gift into their hands.
[Illustration: THE SHOJO]
Nagoya maiko and geisha are celebrated throughout Japan for their
beauty, grace, and taste in dress, and a geisha dinner is as much a
property of Nagoya as the golden dolphins of the old castle. At ours
we engaged two geisha to sing and play, and four maikos to dance in
their richest costumes. As the guests were Japanese the feast was made a
foreign dinner of as many courses as our guide and magician, Miyashta,
could conjure from Nagoya’s markets and the Shiurokindo’s kitchen. Our
three friends rustled in early, clad in ceremonial silk gowns, each
with his family crest marked in tiny white circles on the backs and
sleeves of his _haori_, or coat. At every praise of Nagoya, which the
interpreter repeated to them on our behalf, they rose from their high
chairs and bowed profoundly. At table the play of the knife and fork
was as difficult to them as the chopsticks had once been for us, but
they carried themselves through the ordeal with dignity and grace, and
heroically ate of all the dishes passed them.
Towards the end of the dinner a gorgeous paroquet of a child appeared on
our open balcony. Her kimono was pale blue crape, painted and embroidered
with a wealth of chrysanthemums of different colors. Her obi, of the
heaviest crinkled red crape, had flights of gray and white storks all
over its drooping loops, and the neck-fold was red crape woven with
a shimmer of gold thread. Her face was white with rice powder, and
her hair, dressed in fantastic loops and puffs, was tied with bits
of red crape and gold cord, and set with a whole diadem of silver
chrysanthemums. She came forward smiling with the most charming mixture
of childlike shyness and maidenly self-possession, becoming as much
interested in our curious foreign dresses as we in her splendid attire.
Presently, against the background of the night, appeared another dazzling
figure—Oikoto, the most bewitching and popular maiko of the day in
Nagoya. She, too, was radiant in gorgeously-painted crape, a red and gold
striped obi, and a crown of silver flowers. Oikoto had the long, narrow
eyes, the deeply-fringed lids, the nose and contour of face of Egyptian
women. Her hand and arm were exquisite, but it was her soft voice, her
dreamy smile, and slowly lifted eyelids that led us captive. Oikoto san
and the tiny maiko fluttered about the table, filling glasses, nibbling
sweetmeats, answering questions, and accepting our frank admiration with
grace incomparable. Two more brilliantly-dressed beauties entered, and
with them the two geisha and their instruments. One of the geisha, O Suwo
san, was still a beauty, who entered with a quiet, languid grace and
dignity, and whose marvellous black eyes had magic in them.
The geisha struck the samisens with the ivory sticks, the wailing chorus
began, and there succeeded a fan-dance, a cherry blossom-dance, and
an autumn-dance, the four brilliant figures posing, gliding, moving,
turning, rising, and sinking slowly before our enchanted eyes. One dance
demanded quicker time, and the dancers sang with the chorus, clapping
their hands softly and tossing their lovely arms and swinging sleeves.
The three gentlemen of Nagoya joined in that pæan to the cherry blossoms
and the blue sky, accenting the verse with their measured chanting; and
one of them, taking part in a musical dialogue, danced a few measures in
line with the maiko very well and gracefully.
The closing dance—a veritable jig, with whirls and jumps, rapid
hand-clapping, and chanting by the maiko—ended in the dancers suddenly
throwing themselves forward on their hands and standing on their heads,
their feet against the screens.
“That is what we call the foreign dance: it is in foreign style, you
know. You like it?” asked the interpreter on behalf of our guests; and
our danna san had the temerity to answer that it was very well-done, but
that it was now going out of fashion in America.
After the seven dances the maiko stood in a picturesque row against the
balcony rail and fanned themselves until supper was brought in for them
and set on low tables, whereon were placed many cups and bowls and
tiny plates, with the absurd bits and dolls’ portions that constitute a
Japanese feast.
The incongruous and commercial part of the geisha and maiko performance
came in the shape of a yard-long bill, on which were traced charges
of seventy-five cents an hour for each maiko, which included the two
accompanists, and the jinrikisha fares to and from the entertainment.
Unwritten custom required of us the supper for the performers, and a
little gratuity or souvenir to each one.
When we begged the lovely Oikoto for her photograph, she proudly brought
us one which showed that exquisite creature transformed into a dowdy
horror by a foreign gown and bonnet, which the Nagoya photographer keeps
on hand for the use of his customers.