TEA-HOUSES AND TEMPLES
Tea-houses and temples run together very easily in the Japanese mind, for
wherever you find a temple there you also find a tea-house. But tea-houses
are not confined to the neighbourhood of temples: they are everywhere. The
tea-house is the house of public entertainment in Japan, and varies from
the tiny cabin with straw roof, a building which is filled by half a dozen
coolies drinking their tea, to large and beautiful structures, with floors
and ceilings of polished woods, splendid mats, and tables of ebony and
gold.
The tea-house does not sell tea alone. It will lodge you and find you
dinners and suppers, and is in country places the Japanese hotel. If
tea-houses sold tea and nothing else it is certain that European travellers
would be in a very bad way, for there is one point they are all agreed
upon, and that is that the tea, as a rule, is quite unpalatable to a
Western taste. However, it does not matter in the least whether you
drink it or not as long as you pay your money, and the last is no great
tax--about three halfpence.
[Illustration: A BUDDHIST SHRINE]
When a traveller steps into a tea-house the girl attendants, the moosmes,
gay in their scarlet petticoats, kneel before him, and, if it is an
out-of-the-way place, where the old fashions are kept up, place their
foreheads on the matting. Then away they run to fetch the tea. Japanese
servants always run when they wish to show respect; to walk would look
careless and disrespectful in their eyes. The tea arrives in a small pot
on a lacquer tray, with five tiny teacups without handles round the pot.
There is no milk or sugar, and the tea is usually a straw-coloured, bitter
liquid, very unpleasant to a European taste. But if a cup be raised to the
lips and set down, and three sen--a sen is about a halfpenny--laid on the
tray, all goes well, and every one is satisfied.
This bringing of tea to a visitor is universal in Japan. It is not only
done in a tea-house, where one would expect it, but on every occasion. A
friendly call at a private house produces the teacups like magic, and when
a customer enters a good shop, business matters are undreamed of until many
little cups of tea have been produced; and if the customer has many things
to buy and stays a long time, tea is steadily brought forward in relays.
If you don't care for your tea plain, you may have it flavoured with
salted cherry blossoms, but that is not considered an improvement by the
Westerner, who longs for sugar and milk. If you wish to stay for the night
at a tea-house, a room is made for you by sliding some paper screens into
the wall and ceiling grooves, and a couple of quilts are laid on the floor
to form a bed. That is the whole provision made in the way of furniture if
you are off the beaten track of tourists: the rest you must provide for
yourself.
In the cities the tea-houses of the grander sort are the scenes of splendid
entertainments. When a Japanese wishes to give a dinner to his friends
he does not ask them to his house; he invites them to a banquet at some
famous tea-house. There he provides not only the delicacies which make up
a Japanese dinner, but hires dancing girls, called geisha, to amuse the
company by their dancing and singing.
A foreigner who is asked to one of these Japanese dinners finds everything
very strange and not a little difficult. At the doors of the tea-house his
boots are taken off, and he marches across the matting, to do his best to
sit on his heels for a few hours. This gives him the cramp, and soon he is
reduced to sitting with his back against the wall and his legs stretched
out before him. He can manage in this way pretty fairly.
There may be a table before him, or there may not. If there is a table, it
will be a tiny affair about a foot high. There will be no tablecloth, no
glasses, no knives and forks, no spoons, and no napkin. He will be expected
to deal with his food with a pair of chopsticks. When these are set
before him, he will see that the two round slips of wood are still joined
together. This is to show that they have never been used before. He breaks
them apart, and wonders how he is going to get his food into his mouth with
two pencils of wood.
The feast begins with tea served by moosmes, who kneel before each
guest. Each wears her most beautiful dress, and is girded with a huge
and brilliant sash. After the tea they bring in pretty little white cakes
made of bean flour and sugar, and flavoured with honey. The next course is
contained in a batch of little dishes, two or three of which are placed
before each guest. These contain minced dried fish, sea slugs floating in
an evil-smelling sauce, and boiled lotus-seeds. To wash down these dainties
a porcelain bottle of saké, rice-beer, is provided.
The unhappy foreigner tastes one dish after the other, finds each one worse
than the last, and concludes to wait till the next course. This is composed
of a very great dainty, raw, live fish, which one dips in sauce before
devouring. Then comes rice, and the chopsticks of the Japanese feasters go
to work in marvellous fashion. With their strips of wood or ivory they whip
the rice grain into their mouths with wonderful speed and dexterity, but
our unlucky foreigner gets one grain into his mouth in five minutes, and is
reduced to beg for a spoon.
The next course is of fish soup and boiled fish, and potatoes appear with
the fish; but, alas! the fish is most oddly flavoured and the potatoes are
sweet; they have been beaten up with sugar into a sort of stiff syrup. Next
comes seaweed soup and the coarse evil-smelling daikon radish, served with
various pickles and sauces.
Among the other oddments is a dish of nice-looking plums. Our foreigner
seizes one and pops it in his mouth. He would be only too glad to pop it
out again if he could, for the plum has been soaked in brine, and tastes
like a very salty form of pickle. As he experiments here and there among
the wilderness of little lacquer bowls which come forth relay upon relay,
he feels inclined to paraphrase the cry of the Ancient Mariner, and murmur:
"Victuals, victuals everywhere, and not a scrap to eat!"
When at length the dinner has run its course the geisha, in their beautiful
robes of silk and brocade and their splendid sashes, come in to sing and
dance. Europeans are soon tired of both performances. The geisha, with
her face whitened with powder, and her lips painted a bright red, and her
elaborately-dressed hair full of ornaments, sits down to a sort of guitar
called a samisen and sings, but her song has no music in it. It is a kind
of long-drawn wail, very monotonous and tuneless to European ears. The
dancing is a kind of acting in dumb show, and consists of a number of
postures, while the movements of the fan take a large share in conveying
the dancer's meaning.
When our foreigner starts home from this long and rather fatiguing
entertainment, he finds that he has by no means finished with his dinner.
On his way to his carriage he will be waylaid by the little moosmes who
have waited upon him, and their arms will be filled with flat white wooden
boxes. These contain the food that was offered to him and left uneaten, and
Japanese etiquette demands that he shall take home with him his share of
the scraps of the banquet.