LIVING WITH THE JAPANESE
When my family and I reached Tokyo, the largest hotel in the city had
recently burned down. Since there are few “foreign” hotels in the
capital, and many foreigners had come for the cherry-blossom season, we
could not get a room. Fortunately I had a letter of introduction to a
Japanese business man, and when he had telephoned to every foreign hotel
he could think of, without success, he asked one of his employees to
give us lodging. The man sent word to his wife that we were coming, and
by and by we were taken to our host’s home in the merchant’s automobile.
The house was in Ushigome-ku, one of the most densely populated wards in
the Japanese capital. It was much like the homes of thousands of his
neighbors, resembling a large wooden box with a tile roof, and set back
from the street in a pretty little garden. Across the front of it was a
veranda, raised about two feet above the ground and carpeted with grass
mats, like those in the Japanese shops.
When we approached, the whole family came out to the edge of the veranda
to greet us. There was the old grandmother, the wife, and three
children, all dressed in kimonos and in their stocking feet. Even the
man, who had hurried home ahead of us, now wore a kimono. For, while
many of the business men of Japan, and the government officials, wear
European clothing at their offices, they change to their more
comfortable native costume when they get home in the evening. All the
family stood in a row and bowed very low to us several times, each time
rubbing their thighs with their hands, which is a form of Japanese
politeness. We had to sit down on the edge of the veranda and take off
our shoes. To go into a Japanese house with shoes on is very bad manners
indeed. We were ashamed to find that there was a hole or two in our
stockings. That never happens among the Japanese, for they know that the
feet of their stockings will be seen by other people many times a day.
When we had left our shoes on the ground along the edge of the veranda,
we went inside.
Downstairs this family had a small living room with a wooden floor. In
it were a foreign table and chairs, contrary to the Japanese custom.
Bowls of sweetmeats—candied fruits, preserved ginger, and other Japanese
delicacies—were set before us. The family were very kind, but as we
could not talk to them we had to do the best we could with signs. The
Japanese do not often use signs, and they had hard work understanding
ours. If we pointed at a thing, they might come and examine the finger
we were pointing with, rather than notice what we were pointing at. Our
little boy became very restless and wanted to run about the house. But
we had to stop him, because all the inside walls were made of paper and
he might have run through them.
[Illustration:
© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service
Japanese ladies in their best dress gathered about the tea service or
dinner, which is always eaten on the floor.
]
By and by we were taken to our room upstairs, reached by a very steep
and narrow stairway. It was large enough for a dozen people, yet there
was not a single piece of furniture in it, nor anything else! The floor
was covered with thick, soft grass matting, the walls were of rice paper
on little wooden frames, and the ceiling looked quite frail. On some of
the walls bamboos and flowers and birds were painted. These surroundings
interested us, but we were all hungry and we looked forward eagerly to
supper.
A Japanese Meal
Presently a servant girl entered noiselessly with three cushions and
laid them on the floor. We were expected to kneel on these instead of
sitting on chairs. Quite a time went by, and then the girl appeared
again, carrying a little table, with legs hardly a foot high. Before
long she slipped in a third time and brought us food. There was a small
wooden tub with a cover, which she placed on the floor beside the table.
On the table itself she put several dishes of strange looking food and,
kneeling down beside us, began to serve our dinner. When she took the
cover off the wooden tub we saw that it was full to the brim of steaming
hot rice. She ladled some of this into three bowls, using a wooden
scoop, and set them before us. There was no sugar, no milk, no water, no
salt and pepper, no butter, no bread; and there were no knives, forks,
or spoons. Instead, we were each given two slender sticks, like long
lead-pencils. Fortunately we also had a utensil made of porcelain that
looked something like a spoon, or our small boy, at least, might not
have been able to eat at all.
We were supposed to begin with bowls of soup, an almost raw egg in each.
Then we had stewed seaweed, black beans that rolled around as we tried
to pick them up one at a time with the chopsticks, and several other
things that were not at all like our American food. The pickled raw fish
we simply could not eat. Our distaste for this dish amused the servant.
She kept filling our rice-bowls from the wooden tub every time we had
eaten a few mouthfuls of the soft but almost dry rice. The Japanese
often eat five or six bowls of rice at a meal, and the servant could not
understand our small appetite for what in Japan takes the place of
bread. If you have been used to bread all your life you will be
surprised to find how hard it is to eat a meal without it. There is some
rather poorly baked bread in Japan, but outside the foreign hotels not
many people eat it.
In time we became quite used to Japanese food, and liked some of it,
especially the omelets that are not very different from ours. But that
evening I am afraid we went to bed rather hungry, in spite of the
kindness of our hosts. It was a long time before we got to bed, too, and
to tell the truth what we finally lay down on were not really _beds_ at
all. The servant carried out all the food, all the dishes, and even the
table. While we squatted rather forlornly in the middle of the big bare
room, my son fell asleep, with his head on his cushion.
To pass the time we stepped to the half-open paper wall at the back and
looked across the garden and a little gorge behind the house, upon the
crowded ward of Ushigome. Hundreds of electric lights shone among the
thousands of little wooden houses, especially along the streets lined
with shops. There a great crowd seemed to be moving back and forth, for
we could hear the scraping of thousands of _geta_, mingling together
like a great chorus. Later I went out to one of the shopping streets and
found it completely filled with Japanese, all in their native costumes,
from one side of open shop-fronts to the other, so that it looked like
an endless river of people flowing back and forth.
How They Sleep in Japan
[Illustration:
Photo from Keystone View Co., Inc., of N. Y.
A Japanese bedroom, which will be a living room in the daytime. The
bed consists of quilts laid on the mat-covered floor, with a pillow
as hard as a brick to protect the women’s hair-dress.
]
But at last the servant came in again, this time bringing a huge armful
of thick quilts. She laid these, one on top of another, on the floor,
and placed at one end of the pile three hard little bags that seemed to
be filled with dry beans. These we were expected to use as pillows. The
Japanese are so fond of hard pillows that many of them use wooden ones.
Then she put up a huge mosquito-net, fastening its corners to the
corners of the room, which was almost completely filled with it. Before
she had quite finished, however, the grandmother came in and ordered her
to take all the quilts out again. Though we could not understand the old
lady’s words, we made out from her actions and her voice that she was
scolding the servant for having given guests from far-off America cotton
quilts instead of the best silk ones. The girl then brought beautiful
silk-covered quilts and made the bed all over again.
The grandmother gave us to understand that there was a bathroom
downstairs, and I decided to have a bath before retiring. I found a long
narrow room, with a wooden floor containing several little tubs. One
side was taken up by a large square wooden tank filled to the brim with
steaming water and almost five feet deep. This water was heated by a
fire under the tank, beneath the house, and it was so hot that I nearly
scalded a foot when I started to step into it. The Japanese like their
baths very hot, and they get used to bathing in water which an American
could hardly dip his hands in. Their way of bathing is to fill one of
the little wooden tubs with hot water from the tank, soap and scrub
themselves thoroughly, rinse, and then get into the tank and soak until
they look as if they had been boiled. When the soaking is finished, the
bather pours cold water over himself with another of the little wooden
basins, and dries and dresses himself. Several persons may use the tank
at the same time, but we do the same thing in our swimming pools.
When I returned to our room it seemed very “stuffy.” I found that the
servant had closed all the paper walls, and also the sliding wooden
walls on the outside of the house. These wooden walls are made of many
sections, and during the day are kept in narrow spaces partitioned off
for them at the corners of the house. At night everything is shut as
tight as a drum, for the Japanese think it is not good for the health to
let night air into a sleeping-room. I noticed that the bright electric
light hanging from the ceiling had not been turned off and remembered
that most Japanese do not like to sleep in complete darkness. There are
many people like that, in all lands, just as there are millions who shut
out the night air when they sleep.
As our family’s likes and dislikes were the opposite, I turned off the
light and found a way to open the wooden outer wall. But our hosts must
have been watching, afraid, perhaps, that some harm would come to us
under their roof. For I had hardly dropped asleep when I heard someone
come in, close the wall again, and turn on the light. I saw it was the
grandmother. Two or three times more I switched off the light and let in
some air, but the worried old lady would not let us run such risks. At
last I took the electric bulb out of its socket, and she finally seemed
to understand that we did not like to sleep in a lighted room. But I
could not find any way to persuade her to let the night air come in, and
we therefore had a very restless sleep.
Up with the Sun
We were not allowed to lie abed late in the morning. Almost before
daylight, we were awakened by a great banging and slamming, and found
the servants opening the outer walls and putting them away section by
section in the places for them at the corners of the house. The _shoji_,
or paper walls, were also opened all about us, and we felt so
embarrassed, lying on the floor in the center of the open house, that we
quickly rose and dressed. The tub of steaming rice, and some other food
much like that of the evening before, was brought in, and we did our
best to breakfast on a meal that was not in the least like the one we
would have had at that hour at home. It was delightful now to sit on the
soft mats and cushions—for the servant had carried off the quilts and
beanbags that had formed our bed—and look out into the garden, its
flowers and shrubs brilliant in the sunshine, a bird here and there
gaily singing.
We decided that there are pleasant and unpleasant things in every land.
When I am asked in which of the many countries I have visited I would
prefer to make my home, I answer that I would like to take certain
things from this country, and that country, and other countries, and put
them all together into one that would have only pleasant features and no
unpleasant ones. Some of the nice things I would borrow from Japan. For
instance, it seems very good to leave one’s shoes, with all the dust and
mud of the street, at the door rather than to bring them into the house.
Frail paper walls are fine when a bright sun is shining through them, or
when they can be opened wide on a pretty garden. But it is not so
pleasant to have to be careful all the time not to put your hand or your
elbow through the wall of the house! It is convenient to be able to fold
one’s bed and lay it away out of sight during the day, and furniture
sometimes is a bother. Still, one would like a few bureau drawers and
closets and hooks, instead of having to hang everything on the floor, so
to speak. Those of us who have not been trained to it from childhood
find it rather difficult, also, to squat on our haunches on a cushion
instead of sitting in a chair. When the average American man stands up
in a Japanese house he feels enormous, like Gulliver among the
Lilliputians. Perhaps the most unpleasant thing about Japanese living,
to us of the western hemisphere, is that there is never any privacy
about it. Nobody knocks and there are no doors to lock. Anyone in the
house may push aside the walls of your room and leave it no room at all!
Someone may even walk into the bathroom when you are taking a bath! The
Japanese think nothing of being seen without their clothing, perhaps
because they have lived all these centuries in paper houses, with
sliding walls. Then, too, the houses are seldom quiet. You can hear
everyone else every time he moves or speaks. So, though the Japanese are
not a noisy race, seldom quarreling and not much given to chatter,
people who mind noise will not enjoy living in a Japanese house.
Japanese Hotels
We never again lived in the home of a wholly Japanese family, but in
traveling about the country I stopped in many a Japanese hotel or inn
that was quite like that Tokyo home. The hotels for foreigners in Japan
are stone or brick or wooden buildings such as we have in America. I
always feel sorry, however, for the traveler through the Japanese Empire
who stops only in these, living much as he would at home. He misses a
great deal that is interesting by not staying in genuine Japanese inns,
which he would find not at all bad when he got used to them.
The typical Japanese hotel is a building much like one of the family
homes, except that it is larger. It has the same sliding paper walls,
the same wooden outer walls that can be pushed aside during the day. The
floors are covered with mats, the chairs are cushions and the beds are
quilts piled one on top of another. As in the home, the electric lights
are kept blazing all night and not a crack is left for the night air.
Let us suppose that we have just stepped off the train in some Japanese
city where there is no foreign hotel, or that we have decided to stay at
a Japanese inn. We might call the city Hiroshima, since that is where
all that is to follow first happened to me, many years ago. As I was
weary of sitting still on the train, I declined the offers of the half
hundred rickshaw-men at the station, and walked to the hotel. I knew I
should have to depend on the sign language there, but I thought I could
manage it. The front of the hotel I chose was wide open, with a raised,
mat-covered floor the whole length of it. I had hardly stepped up to
this when the hotel owner or manager, several young men who seemed to be
his assistants, and half a dozen servant-girls ran forward noiselessly
and all began bowing to me, over and over again. They were all smiling,
for it is a part of Japanese politeness to show only a happy exterior,
no matter how sad one may be.
This time my shoes, and the _geta_ of the other guests, were put into a
kind of closet near the door; perhaps to prevent their being stolen, for
of course there are thieves in Japan, as in every other country. The
room to which I was taken upstairs was very much like that in the home
of our Tokyo hosts. Along one side of it was a little veranda
overhanging a large and busy street of the town. On the opposite side
was another veranda, above a pretty little courtyard which was
completely surrounded by the hotel. In this courtyard there were dwarf
pine trees and other small trees trained into strange shapes, a little
fountain with its jet of water flashing in the sunshine and, of course,
many flowers and some birds.
In Japanese hotels there are no dining rooms. Each guest has his dinner
served in his room, at any hour he likes. When he wants it, he merely
claps his hands together three times, and a _nesan_, or “older sister,”
appears. That is merely a polite Japanese name for the hotel servant.
She falls on her knees, bows her head almost to the floor matting, and
then goes to bring the dinner.
[Illustration:
© E. M. Newman, from Publishers Photo Service
Many Japanese homes, as well as hotels, parks and other public places,
have little ponds, fountains, evergreen trees, flowers, lanterns,
and other things to beautify them. This is the garden of the hotel
at Miyajima. (See Chapter XI.)
]
The food and the way it was served were much the same in that Hiroshima
inn as in the Tokyo home. The servant-girl kept filling my rice-bowl
before it was half empty, and as soon as I had drunk my tea from the
little cup without a handle, she poured out more. This time there was no
seaweed, but there were pickled radishes and lily bulbs, and a kind of
salad made of the heart of a small palm tree. One or two of the hot
dishes were so much like some we have in American restaurants that they
hardly looked strange at all. All the food was brought on a little
lacquered tray, except of course the tubful of steamed rice. Then the
dining service was whisked away again, and the quilt bed was made up.
A Scarcity of Furniture
There is little more furniture in a Japanese inn room than in one at a
home. Sometimes there is a kind of clothes rack, and a curious wooden
thing upon which to rest your elbow while you squat on a floor cushion.
Possibly there is a tiny writing desk without legs. If it is cold, the
servant will bring in a _hibachi_. This is a big brass vase or a square
wooden box, filled half with ashes and half with glowing charcoal, which
takes the place of a stove in heating a Japanese room. The Japanese have
no furnaces, and their houses have no chimneys. Yet all except the more
southern islands of the empire have real winters, with snow and ice.
Having only these poor little charcoal burners, the people would suffer
severely from the cold if it were not for another custom. As the weather
becomes colder and colder, they put on more and more cotton-padded
kimonos one outside another, so that in midwinter the Japanese look like
a much fatter race than they do in summer. Even so, their costumes,
their paper houses, and many of their customs are not suitable for
wintertime. This fact has made some scientists think that the Japanese
must originally have come from islands farther south, where it is always
summer.
Before turning off the light in my hotel room at Hiroshima, and crawling
into my stack of quilts, I noticed that the paper walls were painted not
merely with trees and flowers and birds, but with several upright rows
of Japanese letters. These were sacred texts or moral sayings taken from
the classics, or perhaps pretty poems, all meant to make the guest feel
more comfortably surrounded. In the morning the usual early noises
wakened me, for the Japanese do not believe in sleeping late, though
they often doze during the day.
All Expect Tips
When a guest in a Japanese hotel pays his bill, he must remember that
everyone who has in any way served him expects a tip, not even excepting
the owner or manager himself. Guests in Japanese inns often pay out as
much in presents to the people who have waited on them as they do for
the night’s lodging and food. The inn people will all be there to wish
the traveler good-by, just as they welcomed him, all standing in a row
at the door, bowing low and rubbing their thighs politely. In olden
times no guest ever left a _yadoya_, or Japanese inn, without also being
given a present. It might be a fan, a small towel with a bit of Japanese
scenery painted on it, or a brightly colored yard of cloth for carrying
small articles in the way they often are carried in Japan. But things
have grown so expensive in Japan, just as they have in other countries,
that now the innkeeper can hardly afford to give a departing guest any
souvenir more expensive than a tissue-paper napkin or a painted card.
Yet he cordially invites the guest to come again.
There are some things about Japanese hotels with which a fussy person
can find fault. There are a few things that are very annoying. But of
one thing the guest may be sure—there will be no indifference shown him
by the hotel people. All, from the manager to the coolie or _nesan_ who
tries to help him take his bath, will do their best to serve him
perfectly, foresee his wants, and keep cheerful and smiling in his
presence. Therefore one does not begrudge the tips.