Newfoundland to Cochin China

Early the next morning we climbed up some steps and passed into the lovely groves of Ueno Park. The evergreen trees are still here, but the avenue of cherry trees is bare and leafless, "which presents a uniquely beautiful sight during the blossom season, when the air seems to be filled with pink clouds," and you can scarcely pass under the trees for the showers of falling blossoms. A little farther on there is a sheet of water covered with flat green leaves, which three weeks ago was a mass of pink and white lotus bloom. The blossoming of the cherry, plum, lotus or chrysanthemum are looked upon by the Japanese as national festivals. In fact they are their only holidays, for they have no Sunday or day of rest. The Japanese may be said to have little or no religion. The upper classes never worship at all, and the lower orders are either Buddhists or Shintoists (Shintoism being the worship of many gods), but they practically only go to the temples to offer prayers, accompanied by money to the gods, if they have any special request to make, such as for a good harvest, or recovery from sickness.

There are many little tea-houses at Ueno Park, and waiting damsels smile in a friendly manner and beckon us in, but we cross the road and leave this pleasant corner of the park, where the simple people come to drink tea and amuse themselves, and pass under one of those solemn archways hewn out of single blocks of stone, a torii or bird's rest. They are such grand yet simple monuments of a dead past, and are found at the entrance to all the temples in Japan. We wander up the stone-paved avenue, through the solemn illness of the great cryptomeria avenue, towards the Buddhist Temple at the end. This Temple, with its neighbouring pagoda, is more than usually brilliant, being recently restored, but the charm lies in its surroundings—in the quiet fir groves, and the clumps of camellia trees, in the pink blossoms of the monkey tree, and the solemn cawing of the rooks, in the click-click of the wooden sandals of the dear little waddling ladies as they saunter along the pavement, with their close-shaven children by their sides, so exactly like the Japanese dolls we know at home. But in the centre of this peaceful scene is a switchback railway, whose noisy clatter profanes the stillness, but of which the Japanese are truly proud. We pass a fortune stone. It is old and chipped, covered with hieroglyphics and bespattered with dirty pellets of paper, which are chewed first into a pulp and then thrown at it. If they adhere, it is considered a lucky omen.

After quickly passing through the Museum, a white Moorish building erected for the Exhibition, and which is as dull as museums usually are, we had one of those fascinating drives through the streets to the shop of the most celebrated cloisonné maker in Japan, and by special appointment to the Mikado. There was nothing exposed in the shop front, but leading us to the inmost recesses at the back, one by one with reverent care, each article was produced from its wooden case and foldings of crêpe and cotton wool, and placed with justifiable pride before us, for this prince of designers, Namikawa, is the greatest living artist in Japan, and exists only for the production of the masterpieces of his art. The exceeding tenderness of the pale grey, darkening into lilac, forming the background for a cock whose plumage, faithfully delineated, is shown by the outline of every feather, the rose pink, the translucent yellow—it is impossible to convey the delicate tones of colour, or the life-like drawing of his plaques and vases.

We subsequently saw the many processes through which cloisonné passes, and it is not until you have seen the skill and delicate workmanship required, that you really begin to appreciate cloisonné. And the same may be said about lacquer, which requires knowing to be fully understood. First the vase must be fashioned in copper, then the designer must delineate from memory some intricate design of flowers or birds or landscape. This again has to be reproduced in tiny pieces of wire, pinched and twisted deftly into shape and soldered on to the copper. The interstices of the wire are filled in with the brilliant colours that we see in the saucers by the side of the workers, and the mixing of these is the secret which ensures success. Five times the colours are "filled," and five times burnt in the kilns, and then the polisher with his different coarsenesses of stones polishes it into a burnished and chaste work of art.

Apart from temples, there is not much to see at Tokio, but it is the streets which fascinate you so completely, that waking and sleeping you dream of these, and you want to be always out and amongst the bright life that flows through them. To get any idea of Japan you must always remember that everything is so ridiculously small. Life here is in miniature. Everything is lilliputian; beginning with the little houses, continuing with the little men and women and their tiny children, and ending with the little ponies, for there are no horses in Japan. And so to imagine a Japanese street, you must picture to yourself rows of little brown houses, many of only one storey, with large overhanging eaves. The interior is wide open and only raised one step from the street, and you look across the brightly burnished floor through the opening of the paper sliding screens, which are thrown back in the daytime, and catch pretty glimpses of the home life in the back yard. Many of the shops are hung with funereal-looking purple and black hangings, inscribed with white hieroglyphics giving the names and nature of their wares. You recognize the chemist's shop by the gold tablets setting forth the details of the pharmacopœia within. There are barbers' shops, with a half-shaven customer with upturned chin seated in the chair; drapers' with samples of bright-coloured stuffs hung round a revolving wheel outside; toy-shops where are sold those paper kites and tiniest of shuttlecocks, or hobgoblin horses and animals of impossible shape and size, with which the children play in the street. There are others hung with nothing but strings of straw sandals, or wooden clogs; grain shops where the clean white green and red seeds are sorted into baskets of samples. Here is one for the sale of saké, the brandy of Japan, piled up with huge barrels, and with those tapering blue and white bottles which we are accustomed to use for flower-vases, but which are really manufactured to hold this popular beverage. And then the china shops; they are an incessant delight, with their hundreds of dear little common blue and white rice bowls, their artistic tea-pots of pale green ware with a spray of apple blossom, their hibachis, or china flower-pots of deep blue, green or bronze ware, which are used for the hot ashes to light the pipe with, and are found on the floor of all tea-houses. Again, we must look at this stationer's, where that soft crinkled tissue paper is sold, and the brushes with which the Japanese write so swiftly and deftly, that the ink is absorbed without blotting into the paper. In Japan they do everything upside down. The horses stand with their tails in their mangers and their heads where their tails should be. Locks revolve contrariwise, and the carpenters plane towards, instead of away from the person. So with writing; they write from the bottom of the page to the top, and from right to left, and the number of their characters is appalling. You must know from 3000 to 4000 characters to write Japanese at all, and an educated man will require some 6000; and the disappointing thing is that when a foreigner has mastered this, the literature opened up to him offers no reward for his labour, as it practically does not as yet exist.

See this fruit shop, where bunches of pale grey-green water-grapes, brown pears, and plentiful supplies of green figs are spread temptingly out, interspersed with bunches of those luscious orange persimmons that melt in the mouth, and taste like a ripe apricot; this umbrella emporium, where paper umbrellas, oiled to make them waterproof, are open inviting inspection; a tea-shop, where the tea is kept in gigantic jars striped purple and green; a greengrocer's, with oblong sweet potatoes in their pink skins, and turnips of abnormal length; a basket shop, where bamboo baskets of every shape and size are to be had; or a fishmonger's, where the delicate pink and rainbow scaled fish, are exposed daintily for sale on bright blue and green china dishes. Nor must I forget the confectioners' shops, where from a tiny oven heated by charcoal, we see the most attractive little pink, green, chocolate and white sugared cakes turned out and placed in alternate rows on trays. It is most amusing to see the extreme economy of the heating arrangements. Four tiny pieces of charcoal, turned over and husbanded together by a pair of iron tongs, suffice to cook a meal. The Government do not allow shops to sell European and Japanese goods together, so that now and again you pass one full of Manchester atrocities, gaudy stuffs, ill-shaped English umbrellas, cheap lamps, boots, hats, and underclothing, which you turn away from, to seek once more the tasteful display of the native stores.

And what a medley of scenes there are, and what a flow of life confined in these narrow streets with their one-storeyed houses. Coolies harnessed by ropes to drays full of rice, answering one another with their musical patient cry of Huydah-Houdah; itinerant vendors with bamboo poles slung across the shoulder, and suspended trays filled with every imaginable variety of article; Buddhist priests with their shaven heads, and white dresses with flowing sleeves, covered with black crêpe.

Mingling with the crowd of dear little men and women in their graceful flapping kimonos, are the little girl "mothers," who at the age of ten bend their backs and have a baby brother or sister tied on. Happy babies they are, brown and contented, as are their scantily-clothed kindred, who obey an instinct of nature in making mud pies and dust castles by the roadside. Here is a closed van on wheels, painted black, being drawn by policemen. It is a "Maria" with a prisoner peering out between the bars.

Every now and again we meet a funeral. The coffin is a square deal box, slung on bamboo poles, for the deceased has been placed in it in a sitting posture with the knees up to the chin. It is only another form of the economy of material, that forms such an especial feature in all things Japanese. However, this people understood long before we did, the use of lovely wreaths of coloured flowers, to mitigate the gloom of mourning, and the coffin is hung with them. Ancestor-worship takes a prominent part in Japanese religion, and now we understand at last the use of those elaborate gold and lacquer cabinets, with outer and inner folding doors, that you so often see in England. These cabinets are intended as the shrines where the little golden memorial tablets, in the form of small gravestones, and engraved with the name of the deceased, are kept at home. The deceased is always given a posthumous name, as, not believing in the immortality of the soul, but rather in its transmigration into an animal, they say that he has ceased to exist altogether, and has changed his state and lives under a new name. These memorial cabinets are found in all the houses of the upper classes.

The pictures that we know of these little Japanese ladies are the most faithful reproductions. Wrapped tightly round in their kimonos, with the bunch of the obi formed by its folding over at the back, their figures take the graceful bend and curve we see pourtrayed. The loose flowing sleeves, and the soft folds around the neck, and open at the throat, are so pretty. Their underclothing consists of several loose garments of crêpe, which is the material exclusively used by the upper classes, and their hips are so tightly bound that no European woman could stand it. They treat their hips as we do our waists, their object being to be perfectly straight. When this was explained to me, I understood how it was that an extra breadth is put into the kimonos bought by Europeans. It is curious that, though the Japanese bathe so frequently, they are not particular as to changing their underclothing. The women wear white stockings with a pocket for the great toe, and "getas" formed of a sole of wood, perched on two high clogs of the same, and kept on by a leash. Thus, when they enter a house, they leave their clogs at the door, and go about on the spotless matting in their stockings. As they sit and eat off the floors, they cannot allow the dirt of outside boots to be brought in, and all Japanese houses are scrupulously clean.

The kimonos of ladies are made in delicate quiet-toned stuffs of pale grey or fawn colour; but simple as some of them appear, the stuffs of which they are made are so costly that, even unembroidered, they will cost as much as 300 dollars. And then their obis, those broad sashes of the richest brocades and satins—on them they lavish all their pride and money, and they often descend as heirlooms in a family. The dressing of their hair is one long-continued source of admiration; it is such black glossy hair, and the coils are so immaculately smooth. There are but two styles of headdress for the whole country—one for the married ladies, and one for the single; and so you can always distinguish their state in life at a glance. The married women have it dressed in a single extended roll, with inlaid combs and coral-headed pins placed round; whilst the unmarried ladies wear their hair divided by a silk or gauze ribbon into two flat coils placed on either side of the head, and have still more decoration in the way of glass bead pins. And as to the little girls, they are the counterpart of their mothers, and from the earliest ages wear theirs in a similar manner. It used to be the custom for married women to have their teeth blackened, to prevent their receiving admiration from men other than their husbands; but this is dying out, and you now only see old married women in country districts following this obsolete fashion. No Japanese woman ever walks. She shuffles, she scuffles, she tippets along, balancing on her high-heeled getas; but step out the necessary stride for a walk, no, they cannot do that, for their kimonos are so narrow that they cannot move otherwise than with their knees knocking together. They are not pretty, these meek, gentle-looking, brown-skinned creatures, yet their sweet deprecating manners are very attractive. They are excellent mothers; more excellent wives, in their complete subjection and utter want of initiative. The sum total of their education is implicit reverence and obedience, first to parents, subsequently to husbands; and at the Peeress' school at Tokio, we are told that they are so afraid that the modern education given there to the daughters of the nobles will militate against this ideal, that particular lectures are given on the subject.

The men, so long as they wear the native dress, are dark, pleasant-looking little men; but when you see them, as you frequently do now, with a kimono surmounted by a brown or black pot-hat, a solar topee, or even a tweed stalking-cap, they are positively evil and unpleasant to look at.

Viscount Okabé, so long Minister in London, took us for a drive in the afternoon, and then we had time, before a pleasant dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Fraser at the British Legation, to go to the Theatre.

The corridor is covered with piles of sandles and umbrellas, whilst from the adjoining kitchens come savoury and nauseous smells. The floor of the Theatre slopes upwards from the stage, and is divided into square compartments, neatly matted, and intended for family boxes. The galleries are divided in the same way. And here groups of ladies and gentlemen are encamped for the whole day, for a Japanese theatre begins at 9 a.m. and lasts for ten hours; nor is this all, for the same piece may be continued from day to day, and last for six weeks. It is now five in the afternoon, and yet the audience maintain a deep interest and breathless gaze on the stage.

This is the outline of the story. The lank, die-away lady we see trailing across the stage has retired to a wood, with a rill of crystal water, to live in a temple, there, to mourn the death of her father in a war. The young man who was (unknown to her) his murderer, passes casually along and she falls in love with him. This love-making, in the drawling nasal accents, and its tediously slow movements, is most unreal, and as they drink the loving cup of saké together, the father's disapproving spirit, in a rushing flame of fire, blazes up from the temple. Darkness drowns the applause, and warriors rush on the scene and begin to fight the maiden, who mesmerizes them, until one by one they fall at her feet.

The orchestra is represented by five musicians, perched up on a rock. I may say at once that, artistic as is the nature of the Japanese, their idea of music is absolutely nil. It consists of a series of grunts and groans, or of nasal notes in a bass key, or of falsetto in a high one.

But the interest lies to us in the audience, who, in the interval of twenty minutes, eat their evening meal. Some have brought their food with them, and nearly all their own china tea-pots, for a constant supply of tea. Others buy theirs, and are provided with a succession of little wooden bowls piled on each other, and for which they have to pay the usual theatre price of ten cents, or double the ordinary one. In each box there is a hibachi, or china bowl full of hot ashes, where they light their pipes, for men and women are continually smoking, and their pipes have the smallest bowl, the size of a thimble—two whiffs and it is empty again; but it is sufficient for their modest wants.

September 26th.—I am writing in the most delightful real Japanese house, far away in the midst of these beautiful mountains of Nikko.

The thin wooden frame of the house is covered with luminous parchment paper, and these are the walls that divide us from the outside world. They are not permanent ones, for they slide back one behind the other, a succession of paper screens, until the house is open to the street and there is only the shell of a habitation left in the roof, and one paper wall behind. The second-floor storey (if there is one) is marked by a long balcony running completely round, and here in cupboards at either end are kept the wooden shutters that slide into grooves and close in the balconies, in winter and at night, and give to all the houses the dull appearance of a blank wooden wall at sundown. Inside, the roof and floors are of white wood, and the latter is covered with spotless matting; but I am glad to say that there are European concessions here, in the shape of a table, chair, and washstand and bed, on which is laid a clean starched kimono to go to the bath in. In a Japanese house we should find no furniture at all. Their rooms are absolutely bare; they eat, sit and sleep on the floor, and from out of a cupboard in a recess will come the "futons," or thick wadded quilts, and the square piece of wood with a hollow for the neck, where a soft wad of paper is inserted, and which is used for a pillow by the ladies to save their elaborate headdress from getting deranged. As they cannot dress their hair themselves, it is only done occasionally, and must thus be considered even when sleeping.

The construction of these houses is so delightfully simple, for, excepting the polished ladder which leads upstairs, there is no plan of the rooms. They are made larger or smaller, more or less, according to the want of the hour, by means of those successions of sliding screens, and a little pushing and sliding will make the large room you are using, into five or six smaller ones in a second. These tea-houses are charming in their compact simplicity, their faultless cleanliness, and particular neatness.

It was at four o'clock this afternoon that we arrived at Nikko, and drove from the station through the end of the great cryptomeria avenue, past the village, until the jinrikisha was suddenly shot round a corner, down a narrow passage, and stopped at the courtyard step of the Suzuki Hotel. Here quite a little crowd of bowing attendants received us with many deep salaams, and sucking-in of breath; one relieved me of an umbrella, another of a cloak, and another of a book, and went before us, encouraging us with graceful gesticulations and faces wreathed in smiles to enter the house, impressing us in an indescribably charming manner that we were showing them but too much honour in doing so. Of course we drank tea—it is the first ceremony on entering any Japanese house; and then came the second one—the solemn ceremony of the bath.

Bathing is the passion and pastime of the Japanese, and they bathe as often as two or three times a day. In all towns there are public baths, where, in the evening, the population meet to gossip and take a bath for the modest price of two cents. Not long ago men and women in a state of nature bathed together, but Government has forbidden this now. However, we visited one where a wall separated the bath, but still left the entrance to both open to the public view. In villages there will be a tub or barrel outside every door, and one evening we saw a man preparing his bath, with a fire kindling under the zinc bottom of his tub. They take their baths as hot as 110° Fahrenheit, and for some unexplained reason foreigners find that cold or lukewarm baths are unsuited to the climate, and adopt the native temperature. The rule at hotels is that the first arrival is entitled to the first use of the bath.

To take up the thread of the story, we left Tokio at eleven this morning, the Foreign Office sending a carriage to take us to Ueno station.

Through groves of cryptomeria, maple, fir, willow, wild cherry and Spanish chestnuts we travel. Past great clumps of bamboo, which to see only is to be able to picture the mighty growth of their graceful, feathery foliage; by picturesque villages, with their angular brown thatched roofs crowding low down over their mud-wattled walls, nestling amongst banyon groves interspersed with persimmon trees, bare of leaves but laden with bunches of golden fruit. Then we emerge on to the open country, where the cultivation is so exquisitely neat that it resembles a succession of kitchen gardens. There are no hedges, and no grass, but the whole land is taken up by small patches of onions, turnips, maize, millet, sweet potatoes, and the broad caladium-like leaf of another species of potatoes, whose English equivalent to the Japanese name I failed to discover. These alternate with rice fields, where the bright yellow tells of the ripening and bursting of the grain. The soil is rich and black, and labour is done by hand-spade, but the absence of pasture strikes us. However, there are few cows or oxen, and no sheep, numberless experiments failing to rear them; and the ponies live on chopped straw, beans and the refuse of grain.

An hour before reaching Nikko we pass into the mountains. It is such a picturesque, well-wooded range, this Nikko chain of mountains, and they all bear that peculiar Japanese characteristic of rising straight out of the plain, ending with sharp three-sided cones, and like all else in this country, though lofty, they are on a small scale, toy mountains that seem to fit in with the miniature picture.

We had time after our arrival at Nikko, and before dusk, to pass through the village, across the wonderful red lacquer bridge, and following a grass path to come to a Waterfall. On the rock opposite is inscribed the word Hammôn, and the legend goes, that as no one could, as we see, possibly cross the fall to write it, an artist threw his pen at the rock and it inscribed this Sanskrit word. And now in the growing twilight we pass along under the shadow of a row of mutilated grey idols, each squatted on his pedestal with crossed hands, looking over the stream. I counted 120 figures, but no two people have ever been known to make the same number. At the head of this solemn avenue of gods there is a larger one facing the others. They are supposed to be the Judges before whom the spirits of the departed pass, and are judged whether they shall go to heaven or hell; and hence they are covered with many paper labels, the prayers of relatives for the deceased, that grace may be granted them by the gods. It is a solemn tribunal, with its presiding judge, and each face is different in expression, and yet they are such mobile, expressionless faces, as if to represent a dispassionate and unbiassed judgment.

After dinner we adjourned into an empty room, when a man appeared with a card, and before we could look round the whole room was full of merchants producing out of their cotton bundles, beautiful carved ivories, bronzes, silver, china, lacquer, and furs, for Nikko produces excellent ones. They are so persuasive, and ingratiate their wares all round into your hands, that it is with difficulty we escape; and making our airy chambers a little less so by having the shutters run out of their cupboard, we are soothed to sleep by the wailing sounds of the samisen, that comes from the brightly-lighted little tea-house on the opposite hill.