P^^«^£©£«Se®©seS5 I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. | Chap. .-.-i].s.i.fl..a.. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I T ^rr c no ^ n S -, ^t NINE YEARS IN NIPON. J___ NINE YEARS IN NIPON SKETCHES OF JAPANESE LIFE AND MANNERS BY HENRY FAULDS, L.F.P.S. Surgeon of Tsukiji Hospital, Tokio ; Member of the Royal Asiatic Society Boston CUPPLES & HURD, 94 BOYLSTON STREET ^«l<^^^ -^v^ y ^ TO MY FATHER THIS WORK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. PREFACE So many works have of late been written on Japan that perhaps the best apology for publishing a new one is that the public seem to wish for more. My aim has been to give in language as free as possible from pedantic jargon such an account of Nipon and its people as may instruct, without unduly boring my readers. A great deal more might have been written than I have here attempted, but fortunately strict limits were imposed upon me, and I sincerely hope that useful and interesting things only have found admission. I have been obliged to omit, most reluctantly, a large section in which I intended to give some account of the religious and moral systems which prevail in Japan, but, should this work succeed in finding a moderate measure of public approbation, I hope soon to expand my notes on these subjects into a separate volume. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. — Introductory. The Land — Its Contour — The Four Great Islands — Inland Sea — Rivers and Canals — Coast — Lighthouses — Harbours — The Black Stream — Climate — Flora and Fauna — Races, .... 9 CHAPTER II. — First Impressions of Yokohama. Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks — An Economical Lighthouse — ^Japanese Horror of Paint — Human Vultures — Yokohama and Its People — A Mushroom Settlement — Bird's-eye View — No Loafers — Human Hansoms — Building Stone — Straw Clothing — Tribute to "Toot- sicums " — A Motley Crowd, 25 CHAPTER III.— A Run on the Tokio Railway. Granny and the Engine — A Solid Road — Lady Smokers — Paddy Fields and Egrets — Fuji, the Peerless Mountain — A Clerical Cyclist — Quiet Resting Places — An Unpicturesque Metropolis — Silent Streets — Musical Groans, ....-.-. 37 CHAPTER IV.— Street Scenes. Shadow Pictures — Street Names — Esthetic Mud-pies — Kite Flying — A Hint for Arctic Explorers — Fishy Conduct of an English Professor — The Queen's English — A Japanese Crowd — A Baby Cook Shop, --. .- 46 CHAPTER v.— Life in Tokio. New Friends — Sir Harry Parkes — Mine Inn and its Master — A Hyper- Calvinistic Parrot — Plague of Frogs and Students — New Mode of "Running a Restaurant" — The "Great Workman" and his Little Ways — Charm against Leaks — Pic-nic and Fireworks — A New Mode of Signalling — Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies — A Japanese Tower of Siloam — Christmas in the Far East, - - 62 CHAPTER VI. — A Consultation in the Hills. A Rembrandtesque Scene — Novel Style of Drag — Daybreak on the Plains — A Remorseful Knight — Wayside Tea-houses — A For- midable Ferry — Buddha in Bronze — Presbyterian Church in the Hills — Dining in Public — A Doctor of the Old School — Scotch Service amongst Silk — Utility of Yawning, .... 76 CHAPTER VII. — A Consultation in the Hills {Continued), A Charming Bedroom — Landscape Gardening in Miniature — Duck's Eggs and Duty — Some World-forgotten Ones — Doctors sometinies differ — A Hint for Pious Busy-bodies — Religious Radishes — Tincture of Snake— Rays of Buddha— Midnight in a Forest— "Resources of Civilization" — A Suspicious Case — Ho^^y versus Timidity— Loving the Darkness, 86 X. Contents. CHAPTER VIIL— MiTAKE San— The Sacred Mount of THE Three Peaks. Bad Roads and Better Language — Spiders and Beetles — A Japanese Scarecrow — Night Storm in a Forest — A Dispirited Coolie — Sunday Quiet and Questioning — Buddhist Teaching and Modern Science — Passports and Preaching — A Picturesque School — Sick Cicadas — Art and Nature — Brambles and Barefeet, ... 94 CHAPTER IX. — Pilgrimage to Fugi the Peerless. A Village Festival — Butterflies and Cicadas — A Noisy Inn — River Scene — Silk — Dining on Hot Water — Mimicry in Spiders — A Mountain Pass — Tea and Tattle — A Tragic Pool — Dissolving Views — Spindle Whorl — An Exciting and Ludicrous Scene — Limbs of the Law — Curious Bridge — Pious Parishioners and a Prudent Rector, 107 CHAPTER X. — Pilgrimage to Fugi the Peerless ( G?;^//;/?^^^). Pretty Tree Frogs — Ancient Trees — Buddha-faced Woman — Peep into a Village School — Ai Fish — Sweet Scenery — Awe Inspiring Walk —Lava "Froth" and its Use— Mild Martyrdom— A Heavenly Vision — Mountain Lake — Volcanic Prairie Flowers — An Esthetic Jinrikisha Man— A Statuesque Stoat — Novel Tail-piece— Patriotic Bias — Fans versus Flies, - - - - - - - - I2I CHAPTER XI.— In a Cottage by the Sea. A Fair Breeze and Holiday Aspirations — Voyage of Discovery — Crabs and Canal Banks— A Marine Tunnel-borer — Snakes and Frogs — Stone Net-sinkers— Koi Fish— A Lovely Marvel of the Sea— A Dying Cuttle-fish, 136 CHAPTER XII. — Trip to the Tomb of Iyeyasu. Unpromising Start — Bridge of Japan — Suburbs of Tokio — An Amorous Ascetic — Flowering Palm Trees — A Brazen Serpent — Hotel Gossip and Pagan Devotions— Wonderful Avenue — Primitive Ploughs — Weeping Cherry Tree — A Quiet Priest and His Garden — Shrines and Saints — Uncountable Buddhas and Nature's Cynicism, - 147 CHAPTER XIII. — Nagasaki and the. Inland Sea. Yedo Bay — Matsuwa's Sacrifice — Rapid Currents— Fair Islands — Atmospheric Effects — A Tight Fit — Shimonoseki — The Resources of Christian Civilization — A Big Indemnity — Grand Sea Scene and Mai de Af^r— Nagasaki Harbour — Papenberg — Story of the Martyrs — Chinese Money Changers — Tortoise-shell Work — Schools and Missions, 164 CHAPTER XIV. — Ten Days on the Tokaido. On the Osaka Railway— Cold Water Cure for Sin— A Kaleidoscopic Cook— Hints for Travellers— Glimpses of Kioto, the Old Capital —Buddhists and their Bells— A Lantern-lit City and a Star-lit Hedge Salamanders and Singing Frogs— Snake-baskets and River-banks— On the Tokaido— Hakone Pass — A Volcanic Cup and some of its contents, I73 Contents. xi CHAPTER XV. — Japanese Philosophy of Flowers. Simplicity of Japanese Bouquets — Artless Art — A Floral Calendar — Flower and Tree Markets — Fruitless Sprays of Blossom — Place of Honour and its Decoration — Allusive Obscurity — "Heaven, Earth and Man" — Symbolism in Flowers — Art Training of the People, 190 CHAPTER XVL— The Language of Nipon. A Japanese Writer's Lamentation — Some Common Misconceptions — Pijin English and its Uses — The Lingua Franca of the Far East — A Big Alphabet — Chinese Tones — Iconographs or Picture- Words — No Declensions, Conjugations, nor Pronouns — Imper- fection of the Colloquial — Need of Linguistic Development — Capacity for Combinations — Suspected Sanskrit Affinities — Etiquette and Honorifics — Future of the Colloquial Language, - 201 CHAPTER XVIL— Schools. General Diffusion of Education in Japan — Educational Influence of Buddhism — Statistics — Duration of School Period — Genuine Accomplishments — Heroes of the School — Pens, Ink, and Paper — Introduction of Arabic Numerals— A Japanese Writer on Girls' Schools, 20S CHAPTER XVin. — A Glimpse of the Land of Neglected Education. The Carlyle and Thackeray of Japan — Bakin's Idea of the Genuine Gentleman — Geography of the Land — The Natives and their Strange Ways — Bad Schoolboys in Japan — Apprenticeship — Coddling and its Consequences — A Family Scene — Breaking the Indentures — On the Streets — Moral, 217 I I CHAPTER XIX.— My Garden and its Guests. A Dull Look-out — From Chaos to Cosmos — Shower of Frogs (?) — A Rare Hedge of Roses — How the Japanese treat Sick Trees — Painters and Pine-trees — Pine-boring Insect — Some Curious Spiders — A Fable fresh from Nature — Ants and Aphides — An Entomological Pharisee^Nest of the Mantis — Sons of the Prophets — A Flight of Dragon-flies — Moles and Worms — Curious Super- stition — Committee Fever and Dame Nature's Soothing Syrup, - 22^ CHAPTER XX. — Japanese Art in Relation to Nature. Absence of Degraded Conventionalism — An Exception Proving the Rule— Outlines of Fuji — The Bamboo in Art — Simplicity in Com- position — Flight of Birds — Spider's Web in Wood- work — Want of Truth in Greek Art — A Japanese Picture Gallery, - - - 238 CHAPTER XXL — The Philosophy of Heaven and Earth in a Nut-shell. Why Some Birds Fly Well and Others Badly — Guesses at Protective Imitation — A New Version of the Sphynx — Analogies of Nature and Man — Casting Away of Passion — The True Gentleman — The Eight Virtues — Some Wise Sayings, ------ 250 xii. Contents. CHAPTER XXII.— Homes of the People. Moated Castles in Miniature — Bird Rest or Torii — Grim Gateways — Keeping the Wolf from the Door — Primitive Stairways — Pebbled Courtyard — Hara-kiri, or the " Happy Despatch " — Wells and Water — A Poet and the " Morning Glory" — Paper Lanterns, Pillows, etc. — Mosquito Nets — Rats and Cats — The End of the Home— "Fire!" 257 CHAPTER XXIII. — How the Japanese Amuse Themselves. Artistic Toys — Cheapness, a Hygienic Advantage — Gardening in Miniature — Archaisms of the Toy World — Tough Picture-Books — Early Kinder Gartens — Dumb Oratory — Puppet Shows and the the Drama — Wrestlers and their Rewards, - - - - 271 CHAPTER XXIV. — Japanese Manners and Customs — Negative and Positive. Degraded Religions — Origin of some Fetishes — Superstitious Customs, 280 CHAPTER XXV.— General Survey : What I Think of Japan. Growth of Population — Promise of Improved Physique — "Bafe" Tea and Blankets — A Reasonable People — Over-Legislation about Shipping — Usurpation of the Shoguns — Growth of the Daimiates — Questionings — Japanese Whigs and Tories — D.read of Socialism — The Clan Unit — Moral Progress — Revisal of Treaties, - - 291 NINE YEARS IN NIPON. CHAPTER I Introductory. The Land — Its Contour — The Four Great Islands — Inland Sea — Rivers amd Canals — Coast — Lighthouses — Harbours — The Black Stream — Climate — Flora and Fatina — Races. fl APAN is the name usually given by English writers to a fertile and populous group of four great islands associated with a number of smaller ones, which lies in the far East almost where our artificial day begins, and whose people may perhaps therefore, not unreasonably, hope to form a natural link between those ^^ of East and West. Its area is rather '^ greater than that of the United Kingdom, and may be about 1 50,000 square miles, much of which still lies waste and uncultivated, though apparently capable of tillage. About one-fourth is forest land. Japan is washed on the east by the sluggish rollers of the Pacific, and on the west by the seas of Japan and lO Nine Years in Nipon. Okhotsk. The most westerly point is within an hour or two's sail of the Asiatic continent, and eastwards it is about 5000 miles distant from San Francisco. Comprising the crescent-shaped mainland, or largest island, which is not definitely named like the others — Kiushiu, Shikoku, Yesso, the Kurile Islands, and many others— it lies stretched from 24° to 50° 40' N. lat, and from 124° to 156° 38' E. long,— that is, speaking roughly, it lies diagonally in, and north of, the sub-tropical belt, and has northern points corresponding with Paris and Newfoundland on the one hand and southern ones placed like Cairo, Madeira, and the Bermudas ; or again, it cor- responds pretty nearly in latitude with the eastern coast line of the United States, adding Nova Scotia and New- foundland ; and the contrasts of climate in the latter island and in Florida are probably not more remarkable than those which are observed in the extreme northern and southern regions of Japan. By the almost U-shaped Suez canal route the distance is nearly 1 2,000 miles from Liverpool, but by the slightly arched San Francisco route the distance is greatly lessened, much of it being practically still further shortened by railway so that the journey can be accom- plished in a month. The general shape of the mass formed by the four great islands, which lie closely together separated only by the narrowest straits, has often been poetically compared by native writers to the curved form of a dragon-fly in flight. Perhaps to the common-place mind of the western bar- barian it may suggest the less romantic idea of a hen's foot with partly outstretched claws ! Introdtictory I r SEA OF J A PA N The four islands are — 1. KlUSHlU (''the nine counties"), of an irregular double-wedge shape ; its obtuse wedge lying to the north and the acuter one to the south, the mass being placed nearly at right angles to the so-called mainland. The Bungo Nada, a dangerous strait opening from the Inland Sea into the Pacific, separates it from the next, or 2. Shikoku (" the four provinces "), an irregular cres- cent lying southward from and parallel to the western part of the " mainland," having its concavity turned south- ward to the Pacific, while its convexity forms the southern boundary of the Inland Sea. 3. The (strictly-speaking) unnamed HONDO, or HON- SHIU, or mainland is considerably larger than the other three islands combined. It is almost divided into two 12 Nine Years in Nipon. portions by the large fresh water Lake Biwa and two cor- responding deep indentations on the north and south coasts respectively, or the bays of Wakasa and Owari. The western or smaller portion lying east-west is some- thing like a human foot with its toes pointing westward, the hollow of the arch forming the north boundary of the Inland Sea. The remaining portion is somewhat like an inverted axe, its handle pointing due north and the blade touching the western portion just described. 4. Yesso, the northernmost island, lies close to the mainland, being separated from it by Tsugaru strait, which can be crossed in an hour or so. It bears no very fanciful resemblance to a gigantic ray fish, steering eastward, with contorted tail pointing to the mainland. The chain of smaller islands trends from S.W., by N.E., forming a broken sinuous line with Saghalien — no longer politically a part of Japan — and the Aleutian islands. Saghalien was a possession of some value, and in 1875 was ceded to Russia in return for the comparatively worth- less Kurile islands, where sea-otters are obtained. The act of cession was very unpopular in Japan. The island is said now to contain about 4000 exiles chiefly of the male sex. They are sent by sea from Odessa, and the fatality on the way has been great. The Japanese government seem to have a fairly good claim to the small but interesting group of Loochoo (Liu-chiu) islands, but it is hotly contested by China. The people have more natural affinity in language and customs to Japan than to China, and would be more benefited by control from Tokio than from Pekin. Introductory. 1 3 The Bonins, called Ogasawara, were recently ceded by the British to Japan. The most striking geographical feature of Japan is the Inland Sea, which is certainly one of the beauties of the world. It is a long irregularly-shaped arm of the sea, with tides and rapid currents, of variable width and no great depth, studded with innumerable thickly-wooded islands. It may be entered from the Pacific by two straits, — Linschoten strait and Bungo nada, the navigation of the latter in certain seasons being especially dangerous and difficult. On the northern side the Inland Sea is entered from the Sea of Japan through the strait of Shimonoseki, which very greatly resembles the Kyles of Bute in its narrow sinuous passage and surrounding scenery of most romantic beauty. This is practically the shortest way from Yokohama to Nagasaki, Mr. Griffis to the contrary notwithstanding, and is the route now taken by the mail steamers of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company. This little question, however, led, in 1864, to much bloodshed and subsequent diplomacy, of which I shall have something to say in another chapter. The crescent of the narrow mainland, if the largest of the islands may be so called, presents its convex side to the Pacific Ocean, while the concavity is turned towards the sea of Japan and the newly opened kingdom of Corea. It is pretty clearly divided into somewhat irregular north-western and south-eastern slopes, with well-marked climatic differences, by a grand central range of great height, broken here and there by the strongly marked individuality of a still living, or but recently extinct, vol- cano, the whole forming a rough back-bone flanked with 14 Nine Years in Nipon. many spur-like ranges, water-carved, and often beautifully terraced along the river valleys, but nowhere, so far as has yet been observed, showing any direct effects of glacial action. The Central main line of railway is intended to run along the flanks of this rugged crest, far enough inland to be safe from attack by sea or destruction by flooding of the rivers, whose shifting beds form no very good formation for the long viaducts which would be required in another situation. Most of the larger rivers in the main- land curiously run a course tending almost north or south. The general contour of the land — its great narrow- ness — is such, indeed, that they must needs be short, but this direction gives them the greatest length possible. There are brief periods of excessively heavy rain, and so they are often then in fierce flood, carrying everything before them and leaving great plains of water-worn stones and gravel around their mouths, on which, after a time, soil has sometimes accumulated and great forests have grown. From their extreme shortness of course the chief commer- cial cities of Japan, even when placed on the banks of broad rivers, are always near enough to " taste the salt breath of the great wide sea." The geological structure of many of the rocks has also been favourable to the formation of numerous most pic- turesque waterfalls, which attract the traveller and have from ancient times been warmly admired and eulogised by native artists and poets. The rivers at a short distance from their outlets are rendered navigable chiefly by the courage, enterprise, and ingenuity of the boatmen, who are amongst the most daring and skilful in the world. Introductory. 1 5 Till recently little has been done to deepen river chan- nels or protect their banks except in the interest of agri- culture. In the lower reaches where broad alluvial plains of great fertility have been formed they are frequently intersected by numerous shallow canals for the most part of comparatively recent excavation, but some of them are many centuries old, and these, in the general absence of good roads, have been of immense service in keeping up cross communication throughout the country. The detritus brought down by the heavy rains is, in some parts of the country, enormous, and is the result of the rapid weathering of certain exposed and easily disin- tegrated rocks. Those are nearly devoid of vegetation, and masses may be seen peeling off and visibly crumbling into dust. The beds of the rivers and the bordering tracts on each side in thoseregions have thus sometimes actually been raised above the average level of the surrounding country, and in crossing the bed of the river you have to climb up an embankment which has often been strengthened arti- ficially by means of long " snake baskets " of bamboo, afterwards to be described. Such levees^ as geologists call them, are not unknown in other countries. They have been described to me by travellers as being common in the north of China, and there are examples in Italy and in the valley of the Missis- sippi. One or two of the rivers of Japan, such as the Sumida — on the banks of which Tokio, the capital, lies, and which is almost as broad as the Thames at Westminster — are worthy of note, and at the present day many a fair modern craft on Western lines may be seen, under the 1 6 Nine Years in Nipon. cheerful tap of hammers, taking shape on their banks. Here it may be mentioned that any particular appelation given to a river in Japan holds good only for a limited part of its course, so that it changes its name perhaps four or five times from its birth amongst the cloud-capped, pine-shaded mountains to its final nirvana in the ocean. For example, the river which passes through the city of Osaka changes its name four times within the city limits! The wide bays along the south-eastern coast are for the most part shallow, and a very slight elevation of the land would vastly increase the areas of the bordering plains, which are already very extensive. Such elevations have already notably taken place, as is shown by the presence of naturally deposited strata of recent sea-shells far above high water mark, while there are reliable indications that considerable elevation of the land has taken place even Vv'ithin the historic period. In spite of their shallowness and rapid silting, some of the rivers of Japan are capable of being so improved as to admit of the passage of steam vessels of the largest size, and there are fine natural inlets and one or two spacious bays, which form natural harbours of great excellence. To the wants of a large and progressive society, which nature has thus shown her readiness to favour, the Japan- ese Government are every year becoming more and more alive. What is still more promising, the people them- selves, greatly more active than their neighbours in China, show a laudable desire to initiate and carry out such local improvements as may promise to secure the fullest advan- tage to the community from nature's lavish gifts. Introductory. 1 7 One of the most interesting and characteristic features of the Industrial Exhibition held in Tokio, in 1882, was the splendid display of local maps and models illustrative of achieved or proposed undertakings in engineering, such as embankments, canals, breakwaters, etc. Many of them were of real value, showed scientific insight as to the economical application of ways and means, and were, as might have been expected, very attractive merely as works of art. Owing to geologically recent elevations of land the coast is usually steep and even precipitous. Its chief natural features, such as sunken rocks, capes, straits, entrances to bays and harbours, and the mouths of rivers, are now well-marked out with beacons, lights or lighthouses of modern construction. Some of the latter are of superior merit, and speak eloquently to the approaching mariner of the progress made in the country since the recent Restoration. I sincerely hope, in the interests of science, that the lighthouse keepers may be encouraged to use the good opportunity they enjoy of observing and recording the flight of birds during their periods of migration ; while they might also, as has been proposed, assist in forming a cordon of meteorological observers which might give valuable warnings to fisher- men and sailors of coming typhoons. The government surveyors seem to have followed our own charts for the coastline to begin with, and they are proceeding rapidly and carefully to fill in all needful details as to the interior. At Yokoska, in Yedo Bay, where the chief docks are, the coast tide is said only to 1 8 Nine Years in Nipon. rise about four feet on an average. In spring tides it rarely exceeds six feet, and in general the height of the flood-tide is never very great. In no mere Tennysonian dream, it may be said — ". . . The mist is drawn A lucid veil from coast to coast." This renders navigation in summer dangerous and diffi- cult, and fogs are deemed by experienced sailors to be the great scourge of Japan. Indeed, those malarious cloud- banks, laden with infectious germs, as they can almost now be proved to be, are probably as dangerous to the landsman as to the mariner. While the large area of land lying under shallow water during rice cultivation may have some share in the formation of those dangerous mists, we must seek for a wider and more general cause, and that is readily to be found in the great current (or rather currents) of warm water passing into a colder sea, which is called the Kiu'o sJiiwo, or Dark Tide or Current.* The yearly evaporation at the tropics of fully fourteen or fifteen feet of ocean water, causes the great equatorial current of the Pacific which moves westward at first, then splits into two streams, one of which curves northward to- wards the colder waters of the sea of Japan, but gives off minor eddying currents running at 30 to 40 knots around the greater islands of the empire. Where the cold waters meet them condensation of the water-laden air takes place with the resulting formation of great cloud banks. The *Not "Black River," as Eeclus translates it in The Ocean. (English edition, p. 82.) Introductory. 1 9 water appears to be of a deep, almost indigo blue colour, whence the name given to the stream by the Japanese. Fish occur in great numbers where the arctic current of fresher, lighter, and cooler water meets the warm salt stream from the south amidst great commotion. And these seem to be attracted by the myriads of minute organisms which the water there contains. The analogy of this great current to our own Gulf Stream has been pointed out, and there can be no doubt as to its great in- fluence on the climate of Japan. A difference of from 8 to 10 degrees centigrade may be observed in passing from its waters to the cold currents from the north, and the effect of this on the superjacent atmosphere is very marked. Sudden and severe changes of temperature are often noticed on the southern coasts of Japan, and even in Yedo Bay. They are evidently due to eddies or branch currents from the great streams of cold and warm waters which interweave themselves in the neighbourhood. In the northern island, which is rapidly being *'colonised" since the Restoration, the extremes of temperature are somewhat greater than in England. In the vicinity of Tokio the winter is usually clear and mild, with occasional sharp frosts and heavy falls of snow. In summer the heat is intensely oppressive for three months or so. The mean temperature is of little practical importance. The ther- mometer not seldom records a heat of 88° to even 97° Fah. in the shade, and even at night the heat remains so high that sleep becomes impossible, the air being muggy and no breath of wind stirring. The greatest heat is usually from the middle of June to early in September, but there are often brief periods of hot weather even in 20 Nine Years in Nipon. May. The cold in winter is much more severe on the north-western coasts, and the roads across the main island are often blocked with snow, so that communication is suspended for months. In such a summary sketch as this, it is impossible to say almost anything of the fauna and flora of Japan. Thome gives China and Japan a botanical district to themselves. The useful bamboo flourishes in all parts of the land, sugar cane and the cotton plant grow in the southern parts, tea almost everywhere. The tobacco plant, hemp, maize or Indian corn, mulberry for silk-worm food, rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, potatoes, yams, are all cultivated. The beech, the oak, maples and pine trees, in rich variety ; azaleas, camelias, etc., grow in moor and forest. Some of the more charac- teristic plants are wistaria, salisburia, cryptomeria, chrys- anthemums, and varieties of evergreens such as retinos- pora, now well known to all British gardeners. Many familiar wild flowers are to be gathered by hedgerow or mossy bank — such as violets, blue bells, forget-me-not, thyme, dandelion, and its allies. The woods are rich in ferns, amongst which the royal fern is conspicuous, orchids, creepers, lichens, mosses, fungi, and liverworts, while the aquatic flora is extensive. The beautiful lotus, though imported, may now fairly be considered as naturalised. There are many water-lilies, reeds, and rushes, some of which are of great utility. The mammalia of Japan are not numerous. In ancient times, before the dawn of history, two species of dwarf elephants existed in the plains around Tokio. There are many monkeys (Macacus) in some parts, and even in ex- Introductory. 2 1 tremely northern latitudes. Foxes abound, and are reverenced ; but it is said none are ever found in Shikoku. Wolves and bears are destructive in the north, and had at one time a more extensive field. There are wild antelopes, red deer, wild boars, raccoon dogs, badgers, otters, stoats, ferrets, bats (including a peculiar fruit bat), moles, shrews, and rats ; while the sea is specially rich in seals, sea-otters, and whales. The country has been found quite unsuitable for sheep, but goats thrive well, although not hitherto much favoured. Oxen are used for draught. Horses are small, but of fair quality, and the breed is being im- proved. The cats are often nearly tail-less. The dogs are of a low, half-wolfish breed. There are some three hundred birds known in Japan. Few of them are what we call song-birds, but the lark is at least one brilliant exception. Game birds are pretty plentiful, and are now protected. Insects are very numerous — no traveller will dispute that — and Japan is now greatly courted by entomologists, who have done much within the last few years to increase our knowledge of the treasures Japan has to yield to science in that department. Locusts are often destruc- tive, and mosquitoes are a great pest. Bees, the silk- worm, and the wax-insect are, however, highly appreciated. There are several kinds of lizards, a great variety of frogs, seven or eight snakes, including a deadly cerastes, and two or three kinds of tortoise. Edible turtles abound in the Bonins. The crustaceans are numerous and in- teresting, and of fish there is extraordinary variety, especially of marine species. Oysters are excellent and in great quantity, and Americans can revel in clam 22 Nine Years in Nipon. chowder. Cuttle-fish often rival the monsters described by Victor Hugo. Mr. Blakiston, who has given careful attention to the subject, notes that Japan contains, besides a peculiar fauna, other elements of a tropical and Eurasian character. He proposes to account for the first imported element, reptiles, insects, and bats, by the application of Darwin's ingenious supposition that drifted ancestors might reach such an island home through the aid of such a current as the Black Stream. The Eurasian larger mammalian element might reach Japan, Mr. Blakiston supposes, by the freezing over of the Tsugaru channel, which seems quite a reasonable idea. The fauna of the northern island Yesso thus stops abruptly at the channel which separates it from the rest of Japan ; and while many of the birds found on the mainland are peculiar to Japan, those found in Yesso are often identical with Siberio-Chinese species of the Asiatic continent. As to the Human members of the fauna, there are two well-marked races— the Japanese proper and the Ainos in Yesso, of whom there are only some ten thousand surviv- ing. The latter, in spite of a great deal of crude writing on the subject, cannot show any clear claim to be con- sidered the aborigines, are not necessarily older in their occupancy than the Japanese themselves, and were never very numerous. There is no evidence that they were ever greatly different from what they are now, and it may be considered tolerably certain that they are an un- important element in estimating the " pre-historic " traces of human life in Japan, which have a much closer relation to the present Japanese race. The Ainos have a language Introductory. 23 of their own, and are indeed in a sense anatomically distinct from the Japanese ; but of the so-called Ainos a large proportion, through inter-marriage probably, are almost undistinguishable from them, except by acquired language and customs. Some of them are rather hairy. As to the ethnological affinities of the Japanese, nothing is as yet very certain, and mere speculation is of no avail. They answer to that general conception most of us have formed of Mongoloi nations, but what a Mongol is exactly I do not pretend to know, and to call another race Mongoloid is only to deepen our ignorance immensely. According to far -Eastern cosmography there are six points of the compass, the zenith and nadir very logically being added to those with which we are familiar. With charming completeness and symmetry science, aided by tradition, has provided a theory of original migration from each one of those six points ; viz., the Soil (Buddhist view) ; America ; China or Accadia ; Africa, or the Malayan peninsula, or the Southern Isles of the Pacific ; Saghalien or Kamtschatka ; the Celestial Regions of the Sun. Practically there is now great apparent homogeneity of race — excluding the small gipsy-like tribe of Ainos — throughout the empire. I believe, however, that, as in Scotland, France, and Spain, there are faint traces of a long past fusion of once distinct ethnic types, which further study might yet clearly elucidate. The Japanese, in short, are a race of as yet unknown origin, comprising some thirty-seven millions speaking one language, of fair skinned, black-haired, pig-eyed, lithe, bright, good- humoured, revengeful, courteous, flighty, intensely pug- 24 Nine Years in Nipon. nacious little people, who tell you they came originally from heaven, and I sincerely hope they will all get back again. First Impressions of Yokohama. 25 CHAPTER 11. First Impressions of Yokohama. Tropical Fruits and Icy Decks — An Economical Lighthouse — Japanese Horror of Paint — Human Vultures — Yokohama and Its People — A Mushroom Settlement— Bird's-eye View — No Loafers — Human Han- soms — Building Stone — Straw Clothing— Tribute to " Tootsicums " — A Motley Crowd. THE pale yellow bananas, so like a mixture of honey and mealy potatoes, and the pine apples with their bluish green leaves, covered with peachy bloom, and their golden, ruby-tipped juicy scales, of which we thirsty travellers had laid in such liberal stores at Singapore and Hong Kong — which had long hung under the awning in hospitable but fast diminishing festoons — have passed away as a sweet vision of the sunny tropics. We have been steaming steadily now for a day or two, through a pale yellow sea, the colour of which, we are told, is due to the mud-laden waters of that euphonious stream, the Yang-tsze-keang ; the male passengers had given up their garments of white duck and were now — all but blue noses and red ears — encased in the thickest coats or cloaks they could fish out of their mouldy trunks ; for on these chill mornings in the end of February, when the daily scrubbing of the decks takes place, the salt water from the hose at once freezes hard on the clean planks, making a rather too slippery morning promenade. We are now in the latitude of Japan, and after two months' 26 Nine Years in Nipon. tedious pilgrimage, a day or two more and our weary journey will be at an end, and Japan, of which we have longingly dreamed so often, will be once and forever a genuine possession of our minds ! We have taken a V shaped course, whose angle almost touches the equator, and in the short space of sixty days have experienced, twice over, nearly all the changes the thermometer can indicate to us. On the third of March we passed on our starboard side Iwoga shima (sJiima means island), an active volcano, which was smoking away very vigorously from various crevices that seamed its dark sides. At night it forms an inexpensive lighthouse of the first order. Its chief peak was said in the chart to be 2469 feet high, but it struck me as being probably a good deal less in height, a statement which, of course, in the case of an active volcano does not in the least imply inaccuracy on the part of former observers. Faint through combined distance and haze hung in the air on the landward side, dreamy visions of fawn- tinted mountains patched with bright green, which we knew to be at last the land of our aims and hopes. As we entered the great and busy Bay of Yedo, a thick haze hung over all things, blending in one whitey grey sea and land and sky. We hailed the lighthouse which at once gives a sign to the approaching visitor of an alert and advancing civilisation ; got a pilot on board and were soon steaming gently up into Yokohama harbour through fleets of white-sailed junks and sanpans or small rowing-boats. Unlike those of China, they are usually unpainted, and we soon found this horror of paint to be almost a religious First Impressions of Yokohama. 27 principle with Japanese of the old school, of which more anon. The modern spirit, however, which in Japan is not always very " aesthetic," revels in penki, and can hardly get enough of it, either as to quantity or variety, laid on houses and furniture. A Chinaman loves to have an ever unwinking eye painted on the prow of his sanpan, and his standard joke is to explain to the enquiring stranger, with combined simplicity and terseness, " no got eye, no can see," and in the progressive style of rhetoric dearly loved by Confucius and his followers, he adds, demurely — "no can see, no can go." Now, curiously enough, the Egyptians long ago had a similar eye — that of Horus- — similarly placed on the prow of their galleys. In Japan, however, in place of an eye — which I have never seen there — a clever zoological compromise between an eel and a snake is painted in red, chiefly, at the bow, and this is usually the only trace of paint to be seen on the craft. As we drew nearer our intended place of anchorage the boats seemed to be drawn towards us by something almost like magnetic attraction. We could see them hastening afar, with attendant splash and shout to share in the spoil, like vultures swooping down on a stranded whale. The boatmen are exceedingly active, square-shouldered, squat little fellows with sinewy limbs ; as a rule, less tawny than I had expected to find them, although some of them were pretty dark-skinned. As their bodies were veiled with very little else than a damask-like pattern, in two or perhaps three colours, tattoed into their skin, one had a good opportunity of judging as to their degree of muscular development. The Japanese generally do not, 2S Nine Years in Nipon. I think, like so many of the Eastern races, form good subjects for artistic representation. Neither men nor women have much of the subtle grace and impressive dignity of form and gait that in the Indian and Arab races impress the western imagination so powerfully. ' ,^.There are, of course, exceptions to this general fact, but after again seeing and studying other races this impression which I formed at first was greatly strengthened. Grotesque and humorous portrayal of the human form, and reflected likenesses of the same in animals was inevitably and naturally the direction in which Japanese art-in relation to man had to assert itself, and in this line ,^it has never been greatly surpassed. Yokohama, where, of course, we arrived on a Sun- day, is not a very striking place in itself — a low swamp, ditched all over at right angles with broad, shallow, tidal canals, filled with a concentrated essence of sub-tropical drainage which the sea does its humble best, twice a day, to assist the authorities in rendering tolerable ; and bridged over at very frequent intervals with unpainted wooden structures not of a very endurable character ; a town of rapid weedy growth ; choked up with closely built hongs or warehouses, some really fine and well-stored western shops, a good hotel or two, acres on acres of bonded and free stores, custom- houses, banks, shipping offices, poisoning grog shops, two well built churches, tiny shops of Chinese money- changers, tasteful bungalows with pretty gardens, riff-raff lodging-houses, a spacious railway station, an anchorage wide enough for all the fleets of all the nations, and above First Impressions of Yokohama. 29 all, Fuji now gleaming in its snowy surplice like a solemn priest before the altar of God. The foreign residences, quite home-like and tasteful, are built on the " bluff" — the sea-ward, wave-eaten margin of a gently undulating fertile plateau which marks the level of the ancient coast, and affords pleasant and tolerably healthy sites for numerous cottages and villas built when military protection was needed and afforded at the " treaty ports," and when foreign trade was much better and more hopeful than it is supposed to be now. The gardens are delightful to look at, and one sees here many plants growing openly which are quite rare in the British Isles. From the bluff you may get a good view of the native town, spread out on the reclaimed swamp of plain below, which we can also see to be bounded all round by the edge of the plateau which forms this same bluff We can see the busy harbour, dotted with ever-moving small craft, among which float several great ironclads of different flags, and many of the largest sized cargo, passenger steamers, and sailing vessels. Round the mar- gin of the bay sweeps with firm geometric curve the Tokio railway and the centre of the channel is crowded with large white-winged junks, slowly making their way up with a favouring breeze to the great metropolis of the Mikado's Empire. Turning to the west, Fuji rises to a height of about 13,000 feet from behind a frowning mass of ^ lofty dark hills which are sharply silhouetted against its dazzling snowy sides. They terminate a long rugged range which rises in the blue distance far north of Tokio. Let us now, descending by an abrupt flight of stone 30 Nine Years in Nipon. steps, or staggering down one of the steeply-graded roads that connect the low-lying native town with the bluff, take a peep at the streets and at the people who are moving so actively about in them, for in Japan there are almost no native loafers to be seen. Every one has, or at least pretends to have, some means of gaining a living by industry. It is true, we shall not see unsophisticated Japan as we might have seen it, even here, a few years before, but neither do we think can it now be seen by living eye almost anywhere in the empire, so great and sudden and far-reaching has been the Unloading a Rice Junk. By a Japanese Artist. influcnce of thc once greatly dreaded " black ships," and the lore and merchandise they brought with them for good or ill. Probably the first thing that strikes the new comer as thoroughly Japanese is the jinrikisha or " man-power- carriage." It is a kind of tiny hansom in which one or two may ride, and is drawn by one man or by two, — tandem fashion, — and not a bad means of locomotion it proves to be if only the springs are good and the roads in tolerable order. I have gone a continuous journey of about 500 miles in this way, and at a most rapid rate. Those little "Pull- man-cars," as they have been facetiously called, are used by everybody, and are to be found everywhere through- out the country, and indeed even in some norts of China and India. They were, however, unknown till the "foreigners" came, and are usually said to have been invented by an American in Yokohama. It is very First Impressions of Yokohama, 31 difficult to believe that an American ever did anything of the kind. Photographs may still be seen showing the first transition from the old familiar idea of the mi-koshi or sacred car to the more modern light carriage. It was certainly at first a vehicle of the clumsiest and most primitive kind, even when thus improved, and had no springs of any kind ; but perhaps the American " inventor " did not know about springs. They are often gaudily painted or lacquered and adorned with tragic subjects from Japanese mythology, tradition or the stage. In wet weather a hood made of a tough, almost untearable and evil-smelling oiled paper, without opening for light or ventilation, is drawn over the guest — as the hire is delicately called — while he is perhaps trundelled rapidly along in a direction quite opposite to that desired by him. Nobody, however, is supposed to lose temper on such occasions, and certainly the coolies themselves rarely do so, even when much time is lost. On the way to the Tokio railway terminus — the word " station " is now almost Japanese — you pass a number of rather stately edifices, built generally of a soft, easily- carved pale green or marbled tuff, which has the double merit of always looking well without the meretricious adornment of paint, and of resisting fire for a long time — rarely long enough, alas ! to resist the heat of those awful general conflagrations which are so common in the wooden built towns of old Japan. This lava stone also, I think, weathers much more slowly than its crumbly texture would seem to threaten, but there are many varieties. It is supposed to have been chiefly formed by the sub- marine deposit of masses of pumice stone from north- 32 Nine Years i7i Nipon. ward flowing currents when the low-lying land was submerged, as we know it to have once been. When your biped in harness at last holds out with well-feigned disgust the dirty little bit of government paper, which is only twice his proper fare, and utters tor- rents of hopelessly unintelligible abuse, you look with im- perturbable calmness over the hurrying crowds hastening to take their railway tickets or their seats. If the day is wet and cold, short cloth capes, often of fine broadcloth, or little check woollen shawls are worn by the men, while the humbler classes use tippets of plaited grass with broad leaves, or of rushes with the pointed ends turned out and downwards so as to shed the rain, which it does pretty effectually. Strangely enough, the same kind of grass coat is worn in the pro- vince of Minho, in Spain, but why this primitive-looking garment should in Japan have long been called mino is a fact which has not received any explanation. Many of the passengers also are clad in oiled paper waterproofs — black, dark green, or of the natural dirty- brownish yellow colour ; • while nearly all of them have heavy clumsy paper umbrellas, gaily coloured, and often with symbolic designs painted upon their covers. I think they are pretty safe curios to send home to admiring country cousins, but don't be too sure about anything when travel- ling. I bargained once for similar articles of great novelty of appearance, while travelling in the valleys of British Bhootan, but found that they had all been manufactured in Glasgow, whither I was proposing to send them ! Men and women, boys and girls, all wear very short indigo or white cotton socks hooked at the side like boots^ First Impressions of Yokohama. 33 leaving the great toe apart from the rest in order to give hold to the latchet of the straw sandals which the peasants, artizans, and poor wear, or of the high- toothed wooden pat- tens which the better-off clumsily clatter about in. They are of various patterns, some resembling our clogs, others are lacquered and of rather elegant design. The noise of the wood-shod feet of passengers emerging from an arriving train reminds one of a regiment of cavalry pas- sing. Other and sweeter associations seem to have been sometimes re-called. I remember reading a love song, in which the heart of a sighing swain is made to leap with tender joy as the dear little tootsicums of his adored one come " pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat ! " down the alley. I think that poet had genuine imagination. Rarely, very rarely now (1873), you may see a depressed and mournful samurai^ or knight of the two-swords, with basin - shaped hat, the prominent and richly-adorned hilt of his keen razor-like blade sticking out from his silken girdle, with which in better days he had ever been ready to maintain the honour of his lord ; and beside it, cross - wise, another little one almost like a stiletto, with which he was even now ready in a moment to defend his own, in the saddest ^ ^ , and, to us westerns, strans^est way. Few A Samurai. ' ^ o • out of Japan have any idea of the dis- tress that multitudes of those often unwise, but in many respects cultured, noble, and high-minded men have had to endure before they could bring themselves to part with a trusty weapon, which had been notched and bent in 34 Ni7ie Years in Nipon. many a fray, to some cold curio hunter. Those knights of the so recent feudal age of Japan are fast falling into other ways, hiring themselves out as common servants, or going, often rashly, with their slender savings into mean trade. What an un- worked mine is here for the future Walter Scott of Japan ; stores of living feudal romances in this prosaic nineteenth century of ours ! The costumes of the people in this evidently transi- tional period, are very amusing and suggestive. The most original combinations of Eastern and Western ideas occur in every few yards of our progress, more notable usually than picturesque or pleasing. You may thus see an intelligent young fellow, perhaps a clerk in a merchant's office, with the newest style of felt hat from Paris or London, an antique Japanese robe of silk, wooden pattens of great height, and a common bath- towel carefully wound around his neck for a comforter ; if the gilded price ticket happens to remain on it, so much the more ornamental ! It was not at the time of which I speak at all unusual to see some important official going to dine in full dress — that is, with European " claw-ham- mer coat " and white kid gloves, w^hile his feet were shod with pattens ; or you might meet a thoroughly respect- able citizen of weight and presence going along the prin- cipal streets on a hot day in New European " store- clothes," with nether limbs enveloped only in a cool white cotton garment, not usually made visible to the general public. Varieties of dress tend to become badges indica- tive of business or profession, and it has been interesting to watch the crystallising process going on here, the very First Impressions of Yokohama. 35 same one by which our English wigs of different periods are like fossils indicating, say, the chronological strata in which particular offices had their origin. The government officials of inferior grades delight in a cap of western shape, the marines dress like our British marines, the pupils of the Imperial College of Engineering wear Scotch bonnets, while the medical students in the University appear in those neat dark blue caps which adorn the crania of peripatetic German bands in our country. The country people, farmers or rural shop-keepers, have the most characteristic appearance, and are most interest- ing to visitors. They struck me as being considerably less in stature than the denizens of the towns, an im- pression which their stoop and sandalled feet does not wholly account for. In rain and in sunshine the rustics, who are always a target for city witlings everywhere, wear odd-looking, palm-leaf hats a yard or thereabouts in diameter, and in wet weather they thatch themselves in the peculiar grass overcoat I have already mentioned, which makes them look like so many hedgehogs. The country women, never very remarkable for beauty, are not seen at their best when staring and grinning with widely-open mouths as the foreign barbarians pass, more especially when their teeth are duly blackened after marriage. They wear light blue figured cotton handker- chiefs, tied in a clumsy knot round their heads. The young girls delight in scarlet, or other bright-coloured underskirts. I suppose there may be about twenty millions of those humble, good-natured toilers in the fields, and civilization is slowly but very surely reaching them too. It is curious 36 Nine Years in Nip07i. to notice how those simple people bow profoundly to the gold-laced guard before they can presume to enter the car beside which he seems to stand sentry. Sometimes the unsophisticated traveller would leave his pattens outside on the platform, as he had been wont courteously to do on entering a house, expecting to find them lying there when he should arrive at his destination ! There is a fair sprinkling in the crowd of fat, prosperous Chinamen, who somehow contrive to handle most of the money which passes out from or into Japan, of English or American "mashers" of both sexes doing the tour round the world, and getting done pretty well themselves ; and not a few smart-looking, elegantly dressed Japanese, with gold chains of rather extravagant dimensions, who have exhausted the resources of European civilization, mastered all philosophies, sciences, and religions, and now come back to their countrymen, perhaps to teach what they be- lieve — if they believe anything at all. A Run on the Tokio Railway. 37 CHAPTER III. A Run on the Tokio Railway. Granny and the Engine — A Solid Road — Lady Smokers — Paddy Fields and Egrets — Fuji, the Peerless Mountain — A Clerical Cyclist — Quiet Rest- ing Places — An Unpicturesque Metropolis — Silent Streets — Musical Groans. O we are at last to ride to Yedo in a railway train ! While we are waiting on the platform a group of most diminu- tive country women, who have come from afar to witness the wonders of the treaty port, are gazing with mingled awe and admiration on a handsome little engine gleaming with burnished brass, which is engaged in making up the train for Tokio. One of them, who is very old and garrulous, and who speaks with a quaint patois^ calls it a jokisen (steam-ship), and whenever it approaches she runs off screaming and laughing alternately, like the simple old girl she is ! O baa san (granny) has evidently just seen the railway train for the first time. It is rather wonderful, however, to observe how stolidly the majority of the people seem to accept and appropriate the new ideas and appliances from the west as mere matters of course. Still there remains in the steam engine for a long ,g Nine Yeai's in Nipon. time a great fascination for the Japanese mind. The toy- shops are full of pictures in which a railway train is the central object of attraction, and an intelligent medical student from the country told me with great glee, that he had secured lodgings from which he could see the trams glide past every day. The line is now a double one, and passenger trains of some eight or ten carriages, first, second, and third classes, leave either terminus every hour or so. The traffic is not only considerable, but the return on the mileage is said to be unusually good. The line, con- structed by British engineers, is, on the testimony of a distinguished American railway constructor, "as firm as a rock"; the gauge is somewhat narrower than the usual narrow British guage ; the engines are of British build, somewhat too light, perhaps, but effective and extremely ele-ant in appearance, while the carriages, with the ex- ception of those in the third class, have the seats arranged lengthwise, like our tramway cars. The first class cars are sub-divided into three small compartments, the cen- tral one opening into the other two. Entrance is made as in American cars, from either end of the carriage, but the platform is narrow. Semaphore signals are used on the block system, somewhat imperfectly carried out, it seemed to me. The intermediate stations are very well planned and built, and iron foot-bridges cross the track, which is fenced in all the way along. There have been very few railway casualties of any kind-omitting, of course, deliberate suicides, which are painfully common- and hardly one of those accidents shows any special tendency to carelessness or inefficiency on the part of A Run on the Tokio Railway. 39 Japanese officials or workmen. Already the railways in the country have begun to work a social revolution, more strongly cementing the family already united so closely bringing communities into closer and more frequent con- tact, developing pilgrimages to obscure shrines, and stim- ulating commerce in farm produce. Above all, railway precision is communicating a notion of the importance of the minuter divisions of time, especially in relation to business appointments, for not long ago the twelve periods of two hours into which the day was divided was the only diurnal division of time met with in daily life. Little square green cushions are supplied for about a penny a run, which are a great convenience to third-class passengers not blessed with much adipose tissue. After our arrival in Yokohama we lost little time in getting our luggage cleared by the custom-house authori- ties, whom we found stringent in their examination, but civil. We then made our way in a train of jinrikishas to the terminus of the railway for Tokio. The company of our fellow-travellers would have been much more agreeable without the odious and depressing stink of coarse and ill- flavoured tobacco which filled the compartment. The pipe- bowl is fortunately very small, but its employment is just all the more frequent. Handsomely dressed and, I believe, quite respectable young girls, leaving their pattens on the floor, tucked up their white-stockinged feet on the matted seats, and proceeded to puff away with great solemnity and sweetness. The conversation seemed to consist chiefly of ejaculations and pufls of smoke, and certainly to one who had only acquired certain phrases and a few useful vocabularies on the voyage out, could .Q Ni7te Years in Nipon. not possibly prove either intelligible or interesting. The first station on the way is Kanagawa. Commodore Perry, of the United States, made his treaty— the first one entered into with western foreigners in recent times after long centuries of seclusion— in 1854, at the then miserable little fishing village of Yokohama or Cross Strand, It was thought by the timid Japanese authorities to be safely separated by a wide and barren marine swamp from the metropolis at the head of the Bay of Yedo. In 1859, however. Sir Rutherford Alcock and the Hon. Townsend Harris, ministers of the United States, gained a conces- sion in Kanagawa, across the swamp, and three miles nearer the Shogun's great city of Tokio, and here practically modern foreign relations with Japan may be said to have begun. For various reasons Yoko- hama regained its ground, and Kanagawa is now little but a low and populous suburb of Yokohama, although the official documents of the British Government still, somewhat strangely for so radical a country, continue to give Kanagawa its full dignity. Leaving it to its full but fruitless enjoyment, we dash through a cutting, pasta series of beautifully wooded eminences, and are out into the open country. It seems to be one vast fertile plain of moist paddy fields, laid out in small squares, like the map of the United States, through which a few snowy-plumed egrets may be seen stalking, and on our right, seen through a sombre fringe of dark green pines, lies, spread out, the grand Bay, through whose foam-flecked azure fleets of white- sailed junks are sawing their way. Away beyond rich loamy fields of leeks and garlic, rise A Run on the Tokio Railway. 41 steeply-sloping wooded bluffs of no great height, whose bosky sides are dotted with unpainted Shinto or vermillion- coloured Buddhist shrines, and stained with sweet patches of pale rose-coloured early plum blossom ; while far above these rise the dark masses of the Oyama range, crowned with the lofty truncated cone of Fuji, still white with the winter's snow, and matchless in the delicate grace of its almost flawless curves. There is a tradition, still widely believed in Japan, that it bursts from the solid earth in a single night, making by way of compensation a great gap in the land which became the magnificent fresh-water lake Biwa, of which we shall hear again. One cannot refrain from speaking and thinking of Fuji while living anywhere almost within sixty miles of it. It forces itself upon one's notice, and is always beautiful from any point of view and under almost any sky. Two German scientists give its height, — Mr. Knipping at twelve thousand two hundred and thirty-four English feet, and Dr. Rein at twelve thousand two hundred and eighty-seven feet. My brother-in-law, Mr. R. Stewart, of the Imperial Japanese survey, found it by his measure- ment to be twelve thousand three hundred and sixty- five feet. Messrs. Satow and Hawes mention that the Japanese suppose that the sand brought down during the day by the pilgrims goes up again at night ! At Kawasaki the river is spanned by a fine iron viaduct of great length, and the plain which seems to have been formed as a delta (in the wider sense of the word) is some twelve or fourteen miles broad where the railway crosses. The lower part of it was a few 42 Nine Years in Nipon. years ago flooded over a very large area, with disastrous results. There are numerous pretty little villages and quiet hamlets on the way to Tokio which seem to be mostly the abodes of fishermen, workers in straw, or shopkeepers dependent on the simple wants of an agricultural popula- tion. Here and there we get a glimpse through its bordering pine trees of a famous imperial road, — the Tokaido, — dusty and ill kept, as most roads in Japan are. You cannot read very much of a good old romance with- out finding yourself " located," as Yankees say, on some part of this great thoroughfare, or at least on one similar to it, where so much of the romantic life and knightly activity of the ancient empire found its expression. But much of its glory departed after the Shogun fell, and the railway has since arisen and shrieked its doom along with that of feudal Japan. It forms still a pleasant drive, and one esteemed clerical friend cycles it with great gusto even in the dustiest weather. On the railway you pass several populous villages with well-managed stations, through the turnstiles of which crowds are all day coming and going, to worship at some famous or family shrine, or to do business of some kind ; priests of every Buddhist sect ; pilgrims clad in white, with tinkling bells; fussy western-dressed officials or foreign sportsmen with gun, bag, passport — and whisky flask. Sometimes a little rural graveyard, with grey stones, lichened o'er with creamy or orange, pale pink or dark brown growths, reminds us of quiet holy spots amidst the hills of dear old Scotland. Peaceful farm steadings with steep-thatched roofs A Run on the Tokio Railway. 43 are embosomed, even at this early season, in dense clumps of dark green foliage (of the previous summer), through which feathery sprays of the lighter-tinted bamboo rise with bold curve, and droop towards earth again in a graceful sweep. The deep rosy pink of the frequent plum tree gives a warm summer-like blush to the woods, and the vegetable gardens are even now by no means lacking in rich young verdure of the most varied forms and tints. As we draw near the Mikado's capital, bluffs, similar to those we left behind us at Yokohama, draw in towards the shore, showing well the water-worn margin of the old upraised sea-coast which bounded the bay when much of the great plain still lay under its blue waters. Near the point where the railway touches it again lies an old shell-heap which has excited a good deal of heated discussion as to its antiquity. Others are still in course of formation of a more modern type, a few miles nearer the city. After some fifty minutes run over a smooth road, we pass at length through a lofty and leaky cutting, alongside of the Tokaido (which here becomes a busy street, full of vivid pictures of Japanese life and manners), into Tokio. The line sweeps along the curve of the Bay on an embankment, from which you view the line of rude forts, built by the aid of French military engineers, but now superseded by one or two silent " krupps " which lurk among the trees somewhere about the mouth of the river. As we first approach the straggling group of mean build- ings called Tokio, I must candidly confess my feeling was one of great surprise and disappointment. Imagine a grey expanse of dirty sea- water, dotted with dirty-looking grey junks, and bounded by a grey wilder- 44 Nine Years in Nip on. ness of dirty shingle, covering dingy wooden houses, with nothing to relieve the eye, save here and there, at great intervals, a bosky clump of trees rising from a fragment of the old higher coast-line I have already mentioned, and shading the lofty tent-like tiled roof of a colossal temple. This wide waste of wooden structures seems in the thin smoky haze to merge into the horizon, while the sky-line is broken by a straggling big chimney or two which honestly do their best, by intermittently belching forth funereal plumes of hideously black smoke, to impart to this stagnant capital a commercial appearance. But is this quiet, sleepy-looking county town on a large scale Yedo, " the largest city in the world " of our infallible school geographies ? Certainly its 700,000 or so of in- habitants contrive to keep themselves wonderfully well out of observation. The population has, indeed, been often stated at a much higher figure than I have just given, and an important Japanese official recently referred in public to the city as containing a million of inhabitants. Complete reliance, I am fully persuaded, cannot be given to the statistics on this point ; but even those pro- perly do not refer to the city itself as containing a million of people, but to the municipal district administered by the Tokio/?/, which is much more extensive than the city and includes some islands far out at sea. I think I have never been in any city — always excepting, of course, dear little St. Andrews — whose citizens made so little noise — a fact which can only be partly explained by the vastness of the area over which it is spread, and by the great network of broad canals connecting the moats of the castle with the bay itself, an arrangement which has to a A Run on the Tokio Railway. 45 large extent rendered cartage unnecessary. The two- wheeled carts in use are very primitive in structure. They are usually drawn by two men, in slight attire, aided by other two or more pushing behind. They move very rapidly along, as you will find if you try to keep pace with them, in long swinging steps, to the accompani- ment of a shrill " hoich ! how ! " which, in every variety of tone and key, breaks the almost painful stillness of the thoroughfares. In the suburbs chiefly may be also seen great trains of bullock carts and of heavy-laden pack- horses, which are chiefly used for far inland and mountain traffic. Near the station, which is well built, there is a fine Japanese bank built of variegated volcanic stone, a stone arched bridge, rows of stores, and stretching away through the centre of the city lies the Tori or chief boulevard, built of stucco covered brick. Light tramway cars now run from one end of the city to the other at very moderate fares, and are largely patronised, especially by artizans and shopkeepers, who seem all to be after business of some kind. This once fine street is, however, losing its characteristic regularity ; a wretched pavement of common red bricks trips up the pedestrian clattering along in his wooden pattens. When we arrived in the spring of 1874, its double row of pines, acacias, and plum trees — which latter were in full bloom — formed a sight of rare and touching beauty in the very heart of so large and populous a city. ^5 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER IV. Street Scenes. Shadow Pictures-Street Names-Esthetic Mud-pies- Kite Flying— A Hint for Arctic Explorers-Fishy Conduct of an English Professor-The Queen's English— A Japanese Crowd— A Baby Cook Shop. A GREAT deal of Japanese life is passed in the streets, and can best be seen there. In the good times for which old-fashioned Japanese people sigh, much more of the domestic doings were visible to the public than would now be considered comely or proper ; but at all events there is little of that morbid concealment of private life which is so marked a feature in other Eastern countries. The houses are open from floor to roof in warm weather, and concealment is nearly impossible ; and at night, when the paper windows are drawn closely together, you may see many a painful tragedy or side- splitting comedy enacted in shadow by the unconscious inmates. Japanese caricaturists have, indeed, not been slow to seize and utilize this salient feature in the national life, and comic silhouettes or shadow-pictures are to be seen in any print-shop or bookseller's window. The cities of Tokio and Osaka are intersected with canals, and the bridges which cross them are necessarily numerous. They are often named in a very grand and poetical style: the " Bridge of Eternal Life," the "Fairy Assembly Bridge," and so on. A blind alley is called a Street Scenes. 47 " bag street." So great is the love of nature amongst the people of Japan, that it is said some two-thirds of the streets in Tokio are named after natural objects ; a ten- dency which is amply illustrated by the whole decorative art of the country. Mr. Griffis has pointed out that great battlefields — and Japan has not been without them — are not commemorated in this way, nor do we find many names of heroes handed down to an admiring posterity in association with particular streets ; although popular wrestlers and fencing masters, priests and nuns, and one famous English pilot (Will Adams), have been thus im- mortalised. Passing along " Shipway Street " into " Lance and Arrow Street," let us see what we can find to interest, amuse, and instruct us. As we go out by the garden-gate, our cook's little girl (we have all men cooks here), O Tsuru, or Miss Crane, as she is called, is busy making, not mud pies, but a pretty little artificial garden, with bits of rock arranged with sloping strata, as in nature ; a rounded mountain, furrowed as if by centuries of rainfall, with tidy, tasteful walks, shaded by gnarled twigs of pine, and brightened with cleverly contrasted half-open buds of azaleas of various tints. A few blades of bamboo grass, curved by careful art, complete a very pleasing little landscape, which occupies just about one foot square ! It is common to speak of such manifestations of art-feeling in Japan as instinctive. I am not sure that I know what is meant by the term. I can understand, however, that certain ancestral tendencies and habits may be repeated, and in favourable circumstances emphasized in the offspring. . S Nine Years in Nipon. In regard to Japan, this almost unerring art-sense is demonstrably of comparatively recent origin, and was due primarily to foreign teaching. Art education of a most effective but informal kind, through diffusion of cheap il- lustrated books, has since then helped to develop taste for natural beauty, which had, of course, some existence before it could be developed. We are recalled from this digression by strange whirring sounds high up in the air, which remind us of the seolian harp. They are caused by "singing kites," which are of all shapes: such as a baby in Japanese long clothes, an eagle with pinions expanded and tail spread out, the hideous face of an ogre, or they may assume the form of a gaudy flower, or of a swallow-tailed butterfly. They are kept steady by two long tails, one at each of the lower corners; and the radiant juvenile who is the happy possessor of a good high-flyer, manages it deftly, sending it up as far as his store of cord will permit without moving more than a yard or two from his starting point. Great is the good nature shown by the jinrikisha men, as I have witnessed with ever-increasing wonder when on my professional rounds, if their faces are brought into sharp and sudden contact with kite-strings. Much dexterity is shown by passers-by in avoiding contact by a timely duck, and by the kite-flyers also in piloting the strings ; but whenever an accident occurs, however annoying it would be to us, it seems rather rarely to evoke even a frown, far less an angry word, or theological recrimination. It is reported that in ancient times large kites were used to aid spies in estimating the forces of the enemy, Street Scenes. 49 just as among ourselves balloons have been used in modern warfare. A law existed in Tokio which enacted that kites were not to be made larger than a certain moderate size, the fear being that the Shogun's castle might be inspected from the city by conspirators. One of the most pleasing contributions by a medical writer in Japan (alas ! no more) to the Japan Weekly Mail, de- scribes a blind boy flying a kite in Tokio : — " Who shall describe the sight — who adequately pourtray our blind boy, as he stands with body bent forward and quivering with delight, as the kite tugs and strains to get away — his poor lustreless eyes widely distended, his cheeks flushed, his lips parted and trembling with excitement, and every involuntary muscle of his hands in action, as his fingers play with the string, along which he has surely projected his whole soul to the toy amongst the clouds ? ' Hi ! Hi ! Stand aside ! ' * It is of no use, my friends with the nori- mon (sedan-chair), you address yourselves to a mere out- line of a boy ; the substance is far away above you at the end of that string, and cannot hear, call you never so loudly.' " On a certain day in the year, many huge, brightly- coloured objects may be seen floating, or rather wobbling over the city. They represent enormous carp-fish, are made of thin painted cloth, and are hollow, so that the wind fills them and gives them a very lively appearance. They usually indicate the happy arrival during the pre- ceding year of a male child, but are displayed where a family contains boys, though none of them may be re- cently born. A learned English professor in Tokio somewhat 50 Ni7ie Years in Nipon. scandalised his portentously dignified colleagues in the university precincts, by displaying over his door a very large specimen in commemoration of his first-born. It defied the breezes of Japan, and the more potent sneers of his less fortunate fellows, for an unusually long period. In many quiet by- streets you may see women staining or dyeing cloth in the open air. It is a very simple process, and no attempt is made to produce " fast " colours. Chemicals are used also to ex- tract the colour in patterns. It is interesting to Woma7i Dyeing. (Japanese Sketch.) pCCp lUtO the VarioUS shops as we pass along the busy thoroughfare. The floors are covered with a fine kind of grass matting, padded underneath, and you have to take off your shoes respectfully, or apologize for not doing so, which latter form has come to be painfully common amongst " bar- barians " from the West. There are all kinds of European nick-nacks for sale, or more frequently clever imitations of them ; ready-made clothes of latest Parisian fashion, fire-engines, patent medicines, scientific apparatus, great numbers of a curious new stove invented by a J apanese, made of a frothy kind of glassy lava, the iron door of which is very appropriately fitted with a common Street Scenes. 51 wooden knob ! Paisley shawls and Brussels carpets ; Bass's beer and Epps's cocoa ; ancient suits of armour ; decanonised Buddhist saints, and rusty American sewing machines. The Japanese merchant is not above taking les- sons from the despised " hairy foreigner," and there are some rare specimens of the Queen's English to be found now and again in this realm of literature. Here is a veritable one, not at all improved for the sake of effect : — NOTICE. SHOE MANUFACTURER. Design at any Choice. The undersigned being engaged long and succeeded with their capacity at shoe factory of Isekats, in Tokio ; it is now established in my liability at undermentioned lot all furnishment will be attended in moderate term with good quality. A n order is acceptable^ in receive a post, being called upon the measure and it will be forwarded in furnish. U. INOYA, No. 206, 5th St. Motomachi. When the foreigner, who is a new arrival, stands for a little at a shop window, he is sure to be immediately surrounded by a rather big crowd, eager to hear his blunders in the language, and to observe how skilfully the wily vendor of curios eases him of his paper money. I have often thought what a boon it might be to the ethnologist were he able by some invisible and instan- taneous process to secure facial types by multi-photographs like those with which Mr. Dalton has recently so interested 52 Nine Years in Nipon. the scientific world. Well, after all, is that not just what caricaturists like Leech and Du Maurier, Caldecott and Ralston have done for us in regard to the types of English society? No limited number of photographs could give us a better idea cf Tommy Atkins than Ralston's few strokes convey. And so too one might with skill and true artistic intuition ideally combine the untutored concep- tions of their race left by native artists. Look around at the calm unsmiling and stolidly attentive faces which compose the crowd. First there is a row of little girls, each with a very uninteresting baby, carried pick-a-back, and fastened by a kind of girdle used specially for that purpose. The wretched little urchin is toasted in the sun all day, and when asleep, as it usually is, its poor little noddle hangs over just like a drooping poppy bud, and is jerked helplessly about with every motion of the playful nurse. Japanese children are not usually weaned till about four years of age, and very often not then. The youngest children have their heads care- fully shaved all over, while those a little older have tassel- like portions hanging down at the " four corners," or have a monk-like fringe left all round the shaven pate. I long ago came to the conclusion that these various styles of hair-cutting are clearly survivals from the castes of Hinduism, the notion of which symbolism Buddhism, however improbable it may appear at first sight, brought over from India to the Far East. There are numerous examples of a similar kind which cannot be appropriately brought forward in this chapter. Close beside us there is a group of very slovenly infantry soldiers, with coal-scuttle shakoes, unbrushed Street Scenes. 53 clothes, and badly made foreign shoes, trodden down at the heels. Their faces are flushed with wine ; they seem disposed to be rude, and carry side arms which they are not at all unwilling to use readily when crossed in any way. At a short distance, a pair of gentlemanly and substantial-looking gens d'armes, with revolvers and sabres, are keeping calm eyes on the soldiers. A pair of enor- mous black spectacles, accompanying a squat little police- man in dark blue, with naval cap adorned with white cotton sun-shade, and what looks like a window roller under his arm, are glaring fiercely at the crowd, and giving emphasis to the frequent gruff command in Japanese to " move on there !" We obey the order meekly, to the shopkeeper's disgust, and turn our eyes to the street again, which is crowded with jinrikishas, cavalry, ricketty 'busses of the most primitive construction ; neat and well-appointed tramway cars ; a rare kago or sedan chair, with a yellow flag carried in front, denoting that a case of cholera or small-pox is being conveyed to the hospital ; water- men with buckets of water, " full of holes," like Paddy's stocking, which di- vide the misery of dormant dust into one of flying dust, plus mud. These men carry their load across the shoulder. Japanese Waterman. by means of a pole laid 54 Nine Years in Nipon. To each end of the pole a bucket is attached, but the originahty of the Japanese mode of distributing the burden is this — a shorter pole is placed across the other shoulder nearly at right angles to the long pole, and one end of it is used to lever up the weight on one side, the other end being grasped by the free hand. The weight is thus thrown more evenly over both sides of the body. Immense loads are carried in this way, and with great agility, as a certain springiness which aids quick walking, is thus imparted. A little further along, at a point where the main street forks, a great display of some kind is being made. A newly-finished building is gaily decorated with flowers and flags — not the uniform glare of turkey red with which the British householder lavishly resolves to let the world know he wishes to be thought happy on some festive occasion, not that, but a really graceful design of great simplicity. Below the gay streamers, green nodding plumes of bamboo and dark pine branches brightened with festoons of golden oranges, rises a stately pyramid of brand new straw-covered tubs of rice-beer, which a thirsty public are invited for the day to partake of freely to their heart's content. It is a shop-opening, and in this way luck and the good wishes of the community are hoped for by the enterprising merchant A good-humoured crowd is elbowing its way across the pavement in two streams ; one pale and rather solemn, yet eager-eyed with some pleasures of hope beaming on their faces ; the other flushed, facetious, and rather drowsy. Here is something which, I think, is sure to interest a new comer. It is a peripatetic cook-shop for children, and Street Scenes. 55 consists of two long complicated lacquer-boxes, slung at the ends of a strong pole, and laid across the shoulders in the manner already described. The bearer of the beneficent burden stops at the corner where the crowd is, sets his little charcoal oven fire going in a trice, and very soon the clean copper plate which forms the oven is quite hot enough to begin business with. A large bowl of sweet paste, in a fluid state, forms the chief part of his stock. There is soon a group of hungry children — and in Japan, as elsewhere, children are always hungry — round the tiny stall, purchasing little saucers full of the enticing stuff. Each pours his purchase out on the heated copper, form- ing such shapes as his own taste or ingenuity may devise, and in an instant it is hard, crisp and brown, to be scraped off in due time by means of a little spoon with which the vendor supplies them. It is really a great treat to watch the children at this useful pastime ; the very youngest managing his or her property most expertly, and all doing their work quietly, courteously and very methodically, with amazingly little bumping, driving or brawling. These itinerant cooks are usually called letter-toasters (monji yaki), because in old times they formed with their paste Chinese characters. The thirty odd thousand of those useful symbols of thought, did not however present sufficient variety for the juveniles of Japan. A greater genius still has since stepped upon this mun- dane scene. But here I feel it would be almost profane to attempt to improve on a description by the late Dr. Purcell of the English Legation, which appeared many years ago in the columns of the Japan Mail: — "The Ameya combines painting and modelling together. He 56 Nine Yeai's i7i Nip on. carries about with him his studio and appliances, and is prepared to execute any order, be it never so difficult. He'll stick you a bit of his tenacious barley gluten on a bamboo joint ; and puff — f — f — f — it's a white glistening balloon — pinch it in at the middle, fashion off the mouth, draw out a bit for a cord, wind it quickly twice round, and back again, tie it into a bow knot, and you have as well-shaped a gourd in a few moments as nature ever took months to produce. ' Please, sir ! I want a couple of rats nibbling a bag of barley.' Ah ! My chubby little master, that'll surely puzzle him you think. Not a bit of it. He does not even stop to consider how it is to be set about, but takes in a twinkling out of drawer No. 2, a lump of his plastic material of just the proper size. This he kneads, and rolls up again, and when of the right consist- ency dusts it with rice flower, to prevent it clinging to his fmgers, and then, giving it a pyramidal shape, pinches out a bit at each side of the apex, snips out with scissors a pair of ears, lengthens out the snout, pulls out a tail a- piece, fashions the cone in the middle into a bag, a couple of dots for the eyes of the rats, a streak of red paint underneath them, a bar of blue below that again, a puff of gold dust and — ' Now my little boy, where's your coin ? Your rats are finished.' " To try and puzzle the old artist by devising difficult commissions for him to execute, is a favourite game with the youngsters. He is equal to any call on his ingenuity, however, whether he be required to fashion a monkey swinging by one hand from a branch, whilst it encircles a little one with its disengaged arm ; a pair of rats in deadly combat with their tails as weapons ; or a frog on its hind Street Scenes. 57 legs, daintily pointing his toes and shading himself from the sun under a mushroom which he uses as an umbrella : — no flight of imagination seems too high for him. The thought once conceived, his execution of it is marvellously- rapid." I have often watched artists of this kind, and the above description is very true to fact. Sometimes the aineya indulges in loftier flights by way of advertisement, and I saw one quickly fashion a bouquet of bright coloured flowers and golden cereals, of some artistic merit apart from the narrow limitations the vehicle imposed on his skill. Another very modest class of artists may be seen seated on the curb - stones, offering to dash off fine sepia, indian ink or water colour drawings — often with much grace and felicity — for little more than the price of the paper ; while a third set are engaged in cutting out of boxwood private seals in the ancient Chinese characters just as we have our monograms. Great antiquarian interest is attached to those humble engravers, for we see there being repeated the veritable first step the Chinese took, long before the western world was yet awake, in the art of printing. The characters were first engraved singly, and the ink used in those old times was simply brick dust, mixed with water — rice water probably. Does this not carry us back to the engraved brick tablets of still earlier times ? I think that possibly the discovery that one of these tablets when accidentally pressed upon left an im- print of reddish brick dust may have been the very first step in typography. The barbers' shops are numerous in all the large towns. D 58 Nine Years in Nipon. The honest citizen loves to have a clean shave and the latest gossip, albeit the barbers recently received solemn official instructions to report to government all they might hear of an interesting nature — a regulation which gives a powerful stimulus to one's imagination regarding the capacity of government generally. A clean shave in Japan is rather an extensive operation ; it includes a broad strip of the scalp over which is folded and knotted a column of stiffly glued hair, like a little door handle. The whole arrangement reminded me always of a Scotch curling stone. The ears and nostrils, outside and in, are carefully scraped with the razor. The children require a good deal of attention also, as I have already hinted, and many are the variations of style in hair dressing. Many now adopt our western ideas as to hair cutting, and I have been consulted by a lofty official as to the best way to develope a pair of good " Dundreary " whiskers. The usual barber's sign is our own plate and pole, but Japan- ese ingenuity has far outstripped our sober knights of the scissors and razor. The primary significance of the sym- bol which raises the art to the dignity of a branch of sur- gery has been ignored, and the pole has been looked upon simply as a vehicle for the display of gorgeous combina- tions oi penki (oil paint). In place of our simple band of tape used by the chirurgeon of old, to stanch bleeding after the proper number of ounces had been withdrawn from the patient's peccant veins, we have rings and other orna- mental displays of colouring, while the flat rounded knob at the top, which the victim had to grasp may, in Japan, become a spike or even a star. Such facts may seem too trivial to record, but to the Street Scenes. 59 archaeologist nothing is common which seems to throw light on the workings of the human mind as displayed in the evolution of symbolism. From barber to beer-shop is an easy step. The national drink of Japan is a fermented decoction of rice called sake^ of slightly intoxicating properties, and not very pleasant flavour. Wines, white and red, are now made from the juice of the grape, and English and German beer, not to mention the appropriate labels, are manufactured in Japan. Even in former days before brandy and other strong foreign drinks became naturalised a rather potent kind of spirit was distilled from rice. The wares are contained in bright clean tubs labelled with such titles as " The blooming flower ; " " Great gold- fish," with suitable trade mark ; " The good luck-peony," or " The wine of three virtues," warming the skin, filling the belly, and soothing to sleep. Curiously enough, the ordinary Japanese wine-shop displays a bush (of sugi^ a kind of cedar), as a sign, which recals our old saying, " good wine needs no bush." Whether the custom, like the use of the barber's pole, came over from the West long ago, no one can at present tell. Here is a literally exact copy of a sign-board in the city which helps to indicate the rapid advance being made in civilization : — A Brief Account of Nindoshiu. This is an intoxicating liquol made from alcohol mixed with other things and flavoured with honey- suckles flower. It has a very sweet taste and is somewhat strong, it resembles whiskey and is good for any one — It 6o Nine Years in Nip07i. has an effect of exciting the mind and promoting the health of withered persons. In 1878 it has obtained a high reputation in the International Exhibition of Paris. Ladies and gentlemen we wish you would take a cup of it and know what we say is quite true." Not being disposed to rank as " withered persons " just yet, we pass by to look for something else of interest. Many of the back lanes of this great city are alive with poultry. They are mostly of a small, rather elegant breed, the cocks having magnificent tail feathers, which curve gracefully. The best of them now fetch good prices from fanciers in Europe and America. The stoats make inroads upon them at night, however, and indeed it is not unusual to meet one of these animals in a back lane, even at midday. Foxes also, from the sacredness of their claims, are allowed the run of the city, but are much more rarely seen abroad. Here and there you find fish-shops, which add to the sale of more perishable stock, that of live gold and silver carp. Those may be seen partitioned of into separate troughs, according to price, etc., in all stages of growth and development. Some may be surprised to hear that young gold-fish are almost all quite black. Many varie- ties have been cultivated by breeders through careful selection of promising types, and some of those varieties fetch fabulous sums — if they are only ugly enough ! I was consulted as to a disease which was spreading amongst the stock of a large salesman of carp. It had been caused by the voracity of a tiny parasite, the Argulus foliaceiis which, almost contrary to the usual phenomena of parasitism, possesses a highly specialised and beautifully Street Scenes. 6 1 complex structure, transparent as crystal. It is one of the most beautiful objects I have ever seen in the microscope, and may be kept under observation for a long time. It has two powerful suckers by which it fastens itself to its victim, and then unsheathing a long, hollow, rapier-like probe of extreme sharpness, it drives it into the unhappy gold-fish, and thereby sucks no small advantage. It is also armed with a series of powerful hooks, and by means of its flat, fringed, oar-like limbs, it can propel itself at will from one feeding-ground to another. The cleansing of the streets is greatly assisted by armies of large, raven-beaked crows (Corvtis japonensis^ Bp.)^ and rather kingly-looking black-eared kites (Milvtis melanotis^ F. & S.) which may be seen in myriads, on a calm day, circling at a great height above the city. They have a curious guttural, tremulous cry, similar to that of the kites about Calcutta, to whose habits they very closely conform. A butcher in our vicinity used to amuse himself by throw- ing tit-bits to the kites, which caught them with great accuracy, although their movements were often tumultuous and clumsy. Sometimes they are caught by means of a piece of meat placed in the centre of a running loop, which is drawn tight when the bird alights. I saw one of them trapped in this way by a boy. After it had taken to flight and had gone the full length of its tether, it fell suddenly to the ground like a stone, its pinions remaining all the time fully outstretched, and its tail expanded. It remained in the same position, looking at the group that surrounded it with unabashed dignity — fallen, but as proud as Lucifer. 62 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER V. Life in Tokio. New Friends — Sir Harry Parkes — Mine Inn and its Master — A Hyper- Calvinistic Parrot — Plague of Frogs and Students — New Mode of "Running a Restaurant" — The "Great Workman" and his Little Ways — Charm against Leaks — Pic-nicand Fireworks — A New Mode of Signalling — Charm for Finding Drowned Bodies — A Japanese Tower of Siloam — Christmas in the Far East. N arriving in the city we were not long in making acquaintances, our first call being on Bishop Williams of the American Epis- copal Church, who received us very kindly. The Bishop — a model of scholarly Christian modesty — is now the oldest missionary in Japan, having arrived in 1859, at the opening of the treaty ports. We had an introduction, amongst others, to Mr. Henry Dyer, Principal of the Imperial College of Engineering, whose hospitality we enjoyed for some time. The college was just getting into excellent working order, and the energetic and far-seeing Principal was still busy carrying out schemes of enlargement, and establishing practical workshops of all kinds affiliated to the central institution — a plan which was afterwards ex- tended to embrace a very large portion of the circle of artistic and scientific industry. Indeed, Japan had very thoroughly wakened up to her dire need of light and leading in all such departments of Life in To Ho. 63 practical usefulness, and hence it became possible for able men who knew their own minds to carry out great plans for education and other things, almost by a stroke of the pen. Now, however, there are many efficient and even distinguished native young engineers in Japan, who have literally nothing to do. Time will mend this condition, perhaps ; but much capital is needed to carry out the im- provements—the roads, railways, and harbours of which the government know very well the importance. Since Mr. Dyer's return to this country the college h^sH5^een under the genial guidance of a distinguished^ scientist. Dr. Divers, and is nobly sustaining its reputation for original and genuine work. As a loyal subject of the Queen, I paid my respects to His Excellency Sir Harry S. Parkes, whom I found very accessible, as he takes considerable interest in the philan- thropic efforts of his countrymen. No one would ever suppose that Sir Harry is one of the oldest foreign resi- dents in the Far East. He is a fair auburn-haired, fine-looking, unmistakeably E7zglish, man, not very tall, just in his prime, and re- minded me of George Eliot's description of Grandcourt's appearance. He has, of course, the clever little diploma- tic stutter which belongs to official Englishmen generally, and knows exactly when to leave a sentence unfinished, or to wind it off in a rapid series of little inarticulate coughs, which may be interpreted in any one of half- a-dozen ways, and usually wrongly. Sir Harry, in spite of one or two errors, has been of vast service to the young Empire of New Japan, while no one has suspected him of being inattentive to the commercial ^4 Nine Years in Nipon. interests of his own countrymen. He is capable of taking a broad cosmopolitan view of affairs, but is essentially and typically a British minister ; and we could not have in China — where he now is — at the present crisis in her his- tory, an officer more thoroughly alive and intelligent to- wards our own interests, or more likely to serve in a broad and lasting manner the higher interests of that vast and, I believe, most friendly empire. We soon took up our quarters in the apology for a hotel which then existed in the " foreign concession." * The owner— peace be to his once rubicund visaee o — was an Irish-American, whom evil-tongued rumour credited with having suddenly left Shanghai, after some one had died of a dose of lead improperly administered. Apart from the absurdity of leaving such a port as Shanghai hastily, under such circumstances, as an extenuation, at least, I may be allowed honestly to testify that he was never able to hit any of the neighbours' dogs, even at short range, during my period of observation, and he used to practise pretty often — before dinner time. When he was fairly asleep, which he generally was about midday, it is fair to state that he seemed disposed to live quietly and peaceably with his guests and neigh- bours. The same, however, could hardly be said of a parrot of hyper-calvinistic tendencies which he possessed, and which never seemed to sleep at all, and whose conversa- tion on Saturday night and early on Sunday morning, when billiards and beer were in great request, was rather loud *The very limited territory attached to each treaty port on which foreigners may build is so called. Life in Tokio. 65 than edifying. Its frequent and vigorous condemnation of the company in the strongest of pulpit language, was usually greeted with hoarse roars of drunken laughter sufficient to drive away any possibility of associating the holy day with rest and peace. By-and-bye we succeeded in securing at an exorbitant rent a little barrack-like wooden building, erected,.! think, for some French soldiers, the chief objection to which was a plague of frogs. They were " fat and full of sap," and seemed never to be happy imless when getting under one's feet. At night they kept the sour reedy swamp which was honoured with the title of " compound," vocal with their hoarse paeans. Here sonie doctors' apprentices, thirst- ing for Western lore, scented me out from afar, and would patiently appear at break of day, tapping gently at our bed-room door, or, peering in at the open front and back windows, would salute us with a very deferential ohayo (good morning). This ought no doubt to have been very pleasant from a social point of view, but it takes a little while to acclimatize one's self to new phases of man- ners. Patients soon followed in daily growing numbers, and for a long time, till my medical work had been fully organised in suitable premises, neither my wife nor I knew what privacy was. The surroundings soon told on us both pretty severely. After several unsuccessful efforts had been made, the foreign consuls agreed to ask the Japanese government to allow a sale of the land assigned for the purpose by treaty, and we got a promise from them to do so in the following year. Meanwhile, through a Japanese Christian, we had already been able to rent the buildings of the extinct 66 Nine Years in Nipon. " Cosmopolitan Restaurant," a rather pretentious edifice seated on the bank of a romantic artificial lake. It had to be taken down and rebuilt on another site with many alterations. It is an amusing thing to hear of one in Japan buying an eligible family residence with fine wooded policies, and to see the stately mansion tottering along on a platform resting on barrows, to the inspiring groans of a body of half-naked but tattoed carpenters, while it is followed, perhaps, by a nodding grove of solemn cypress or gloomy pine trees ; but something like this you may often see in Tokio. And yet many things that seem strange to us in Japan may have been quite familiar to our ancestors. In Henry if.'s time it was decreed that the house of the individual who harbours a heretic shall be carried out of the town and burned. Stilly more remarkable is the resemblance which the framework of an ordinary Japanese house bears to that of an English one of the olden times. According to the History of the Preston Guilds English houses, like those in Japan, were formed of a wooden framework, the interstices of which were formed of clay mixed with straw. Each piece of wood in the framework was usually tenoned fitted into a mortice, and fixed by a wooden peg. The framework was put together by the builder before it was taken to the site. The corresponding parts were also numbered, just as we find them in Japan at the present day, and the rest of the description fits almost word for word. Sir Rutherford Alcock, in his Art and Art Industries of Japan (p. i6), ascribes the want of architecture in Japan to the instability of the soil. But earthquakes here are not, so far as I can find, so much Life in Tokio. Gj more common or more severe than in Italy, where archi- tecture, on the contrary, has always attained a very high state of development. Still, the frequency of earthquakes and their pretty general distribution over the country, may well be supposed to have had some deterrent effect, as hybrid Buddhism has in other countries reared grand edifices of a solid and abiding character. The daiku, or carpenter (literally " great workman "), is usually dressed in tight pants of blue cotton, a short blouse, a girdle, blue cotton socks, and straw sandals. One is reminded here, too, of our own past, and the cos- tume is exceedingly like that worn by what, I suppose, were Anglo-Saxon workmen about the time of the Nor- man conquest. The latter, as ancient tapestries illustra- tive of the period show, seem also to have gone about their work in a somewhat similar way to the Japanese carpenter of to-day, who uses his feet to steady the plank he is sawing, and sits down deliberately to his work. As the great toe is free, a " finger " — if the term be allowable — being made for it in the sock, a certain firmness of grasp is maintained. The daiku also cuts with the saw on the pull stroke, and so the blade does not buckle. This method, I believe, gives good results with fine " key- hole " and other thin and narrow saws, but for common work the weight of the body is necessary, and it is also said to be easier to saw to line by our own method. The carpenters are reputed to be afraid of the god of metal. Certainly, they use his products rather badly. We could never, for instance, get them to put in a screw- nail by any other process than driving it in by main force with a hammer. It was of no use to apply the counsel 68 Nine Years in Nipon. the butcher gave to good Tom Pinch — " Meat must be humoured, not druv," and so right smash went the biggest screw-nail into the finest piece of wood-work. It was amusing to see those nimble w^orkmen, whom I had daily to superintend, running up the light scaffold- ings which are of pine, or sometimes even of flexible bam- boo. They were almost as agile as monkeys, and seemed to me to grasp with the whole foot, as hard-shoed races cannot do. Very seldom do they fall, and judging from my own experience as a surgeon, they do not often hurt themselves severely, even when falling from a consider- able height Indeed, their great temperance — as com- pared with our own workmen — is largely the cause of their comparative immunity from severe injuries, along with the fact that few buildings are made of stone, and none are lofty except " pagodas " and temples. Their superior nimbleness, however, is, I am sure, one element in the case. At the ends of the ridge-tiles a tinted plaster ornament, like the conventional curly foam-crested waves of Japanese art, was wrought to form a charm against the entrance of water. So the tilers said, at all events ; but I formed a suspicion that perhaps the motive might be read the other way, as the roof always leaked dreadfully just about that very spot. The 20th of July being the great festival of the Kawa- biraki, or " opening of the river," and a general holiday in the city, we made a pic-nic party, including some very prettily-dressed Japanese girls attending a mission-school, and sailed to the festive scene in the gondola of Japan — a miniature unpainted copy of Noah's ark, clean and Life ill Tokio. 6g generally very compact, as the cramp in your unaccustomed legs will soon enable you to testify. The boatman sculls from the side while standing upright The broad and rather dingy river was quite livel}^ with similar crafis similarly laden, and the tinkle of the inevitable sarnisen — a kind of guitar — was " sounding sounding " everywhere. On holiday and festive occasions such as this, young maidens dress in loose, prettily-figured robes, with great wide necks. The folds are always made studiously grace- ful, as even our own artists have learned, and books are sold showing the folds and attitudes, considered to be aesthetic and fashionable. The outer robe is fastened with a stiff, plain silk or, it may be, richly brocaded girdle tied in a careful and pro- minent bow behind. The robe opens at the bosom, dis- closing the well-powdered neck, and the parallel edges of a series of pale-coloured vests made of the most delicate crape silks, and with skilfully contrasted hues. A medi- cal man has opportunities of discovering many little secrets about dress ; and just as the lofty man about town, when knocked over by a plebeian cab, has been found by his horrified medical attendant to indulge in "dickies," so I may be allowed here to whisper that those costly strata of silk garments which are the wonder and admiration of the unsophisticated foreigner, are, in modern times, simply very narrow folds of the required material laid together so as to produce a fictitious appearance of great expendi- ture with the minimum of outlay. During the day fireworks are let off, which form cloudy patterns high up in the air and give forth paper prizes of curious shapes, in pursuit of which crowds of city urchins 70 Nine Years in Nipon. may be seen rushing frantically with their loins girded. Those smoke-clouds are often tinted beautifully, and assume fantastic shapes. The substance used to produce the effect is the dried dung of the she wolf — for wolves still abound In the northern parts of the empire. The powder SEA OF. JAP- Oshima PACIFIC OC£AN is said to cause a dense white smoke which hangs together for an unusual time. I have thought that a similar kind of fireworks might be used for military or other signalling through the day, and might often also give valuable indications as to the direction of currents of air in Life in Tokio. 71 balooning, or for general meteorological purposes. I have seen them break high above low-lying fleecy clouds in the city, and to take a different course from the latter, thus clearly indicating two currents of wind. After the " river-opening," which was first celebrated in Kioto the capital of the country, and still is with more meaning than in Tokio, summer comes in apace, and during the twenty-one days following, the people used to leave the hot and dusty city for the cool breezy banks of the Sumida, which, in the upper reaches, are lined with tea-houses, looking into the river, their verandahs almost overhanging the once limpid and wholesome stream. When passing along any of the narrow streets in a neigh- bourhood where the population is dense, every room seemed to be filled with perspiring citizens, nearly naked, and lying outstretched, fanning themselves or trying to persuade themselves that they were asleep. At night, during the extremely hot season, the people seem to keep walking in little parties about the streets, which are kept moist and as cool as may be by the stagnant water from the gutters being sprinkled about from time to time. I am not sure that the effect is at all unhealthy. The samisens are kept also going all night to tremulous vocal accompaniments. This period might perhaps be called the dog-days, but I have never known a single case of a mad dog in Japan, although I have had to treat numberless cases of bites from angry dogs. Turkey is said also to enjoy a like immunity, and this has been ascribed to the prevalence of a certain tick which greatly infests the gs there. Strangely enough, a similar parasite is one ^2 Nine Years in Nipon. of the greatest afflictions to dog-fanciers in Japan, but I am not prepared to give any opinion on the relation of the two facts. Our housefactor's children got bitten by white mice, about this time, and the sorrowing relatives told me that in Japan this was always fatal. I did what I could for them, but my advice was not closely followed. One child quickly died; the other suffered for more than a year, but seemed to be recovering when last under my observation. The disease, which was thought to be allied to hydrophobia, seemed to be well known in Japan, but I never saw another case of the same kind. The canals near us were usually lively in the hot days with schoolboys bathing, and frequently there would be a shout and a sudden rush of people ; an hour or so afterwards a pale little limp and lifeless corpse would be dragged out, still clutching firmly a tuft of chara or other water-weed, under the cruel coils of which the swiftly out-rushing tide had dragged the poor child. Often with sore heart I tried to get some- thing done to prevent those pitiful accidents, as people called them, but almost in vain. On one occasion the body could not at all be found. The bystanders, though not for lack of advice, were at their wits' ends, when I heard some solemn old wiseacre propose that the excellent old charm of placing a cock on a raft and setting it afloat should get a trial. Of course the cock must needs crow when it came to the spot. Some men waded into the canal, pushing the raft about in all directions, and at last baffled in their project, let it go. By-and-by it got aground, and master chanticleer, in coi^mptuous silence, leaped nimbly ashore amidst the loud ^^tairean laughter / Life in Tokio. 73 of the crowd. The wise propounder of the scheme had meanwhile quietly slipped away. I must candidly add that the raft had never been pushed across the spot where the body was afterwards found lying, in fact nearly opposite the place where the raft had stuck fast. On many of those hot days happily there blew a strong cooling breeze from the sea, which made life tolerable. The air was laden with fine salt spray, and at night great indigo-coloured banks of cloud regularly massed them- selves over the hills to the north-west of Tokio. Sheets of silent violet lightning would keep flitting over them till a very late hour, — the forked lightning being invisible behind the outer stratum of vapour, and the distance being too great for the thunder to be heard. This never ceased to be a very impressive phenomenon in spite of its regularity. Sometimes violent thunderstorms burst near us, and once, while at dinner, a terrible crash led me to look out to the river, where I saw that the tall mast of a junk, the most prominent in the bay as the storm swept towards Tokio, had been split right down from top to heel. I got a little boat and pulled off to see if medical help were needed. No one had been hurt, but in the hold the grim old skipper was bowing his head solemnly, while with clasped hands he muttered some prayers or incantations. He seemed greatly annoyed to find his vessel the object of so much sudden curiosity, for crowds of idle gazers had put off from shore, and many were commenting pleasantly on the probable wickedness of those on board, just as they would have done in a good Jewish or Christian country, a matter which furnished me with a theme for some whole- some and, I trust, edifying remarks. E 74 Nine Years in Nipon. Tokio was not without its gaieties, and the visit of some prince or ex-president, now and then, found the sombre capital ready to indulge in a great feast of lanterns — and champagne. The preparations for General Grant's reception were on an unusually lavish scale. The shop- keepers told us gravely that they had received strict orders from the government not to part with any soap or tooth- brushes meanwhile, lest those useful articles should be required for official purposes during the work of festivities. The outlay at last became so extravagant that a serious remonstrance was sent in anonymously to government on the subject. Indeed the feeling was generally entertained by respectable citizens that the irresponsible expenditure of money raised by taxation must henceforth be carefully watched. I believe this little episode, which did not attract very much attention, has been felt to mark an important stage in the history of Japanese political progress. Whether the soap was all used or not remains doubtful, but it was whispered that some official hands remained pretty dirty after all ! What I have to say of Japanese amusements will be said farther on. Christmas was a great time for hugging memories of the lands we came from. The amount of home feeling which so many " Anglo-Saxon " children claiming origin from both sides the " mill-pond," excited in the hearts of case- hardened old residents, was very touching and beautiful,, and, I am sure, altogether purifying in its influence. While might we sigh with the laureate — " We live within the stranger's land, And strangely falls our Christmas eve " — the_^eason itself was usually cold, clear, and bracing — Life in Tokio. 75 often a bright blue sky above us, while the hard ground rung beneath our feet, and under the shade of green bam- boos skaters might be seen gliding on good ice merrily. On a wet day the rows of hooded jinrikishas, grouped in some lantern-lit compound shadowed with sub-tropical foliage, did not suggest an English Christmas at all till the little fair-haired ones emerged from the dingy oil- paper covers of their vehicles in gay evening-dresses, as an accomplished lady friend once remarked — "just like so many butterflies from the chrysalis." •j^ ' Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VI. A Consultation i7t the Hills. A Rembrandtesque Scene — Novel Style of Drag — Daybreak on the Plains — A Remorseful Knight — Wayside Tea-houses — A Formidable Ferry — Buddha in Bronze — Presbyterian Church in the Hills — Dining in Public — A Doctor of the Old School — Scotch Service amongst Silk — Utility of Yawning. ONE day, in the summer of 1879, having had a sudden call to go into the interior to see an aged silk grower in consultation with his native doctor, I found myself at midnight, after a hard day's work, drowsily con- templating a scene which might have sprung to life from Rembrandt's canvas. A quaint, old-fashioned Japanese hostelry, outside of which lay, as if they were never to move again, a dusty, dingy, beggarly array of much be- painted and bepatched vehicles, on which had accumu- lated the dust and mud of every journey they had made since first they issued in coats of bright scarlet some time after the dawn of civilization from the builder's yard. I soon noticed that there were others like myself, with strong faith and small bundles, ready to commit their precious souls to those frail tenements of clay. A fat old woman, with strong Tory tendencies, much local know- ledge of routes, coaches, and hours — one never speaks of minutes in travelling by coach in Japan, and only of hours as a figure of speech — and a formidable array of square dark green bandboxes of split bamboo, for the care and A Consultation in the Hills. 77 transit of which roads, drivers, and waiters, seemed to have been specially called into existence ; a wizened' irresolute looking old man, with a " guid gaun " law suit in the city, who was always nervously preparing for a smoke, but had perhaps run out of tobacco ; a group of portly people in "silk," whose talk was too pro- fessionally technical to be well understood by a foreigner ; a few morbidly well-behaved, nicely-dressed, and unemo- tional children; a rather merry, red-faced old boy, with a foreign hat on, who had many hospitable city friends to say sayonara (good-bye) to him ; and a quiet, important, clean-shaved man (a local dignitary) with a piping voice ;— such was the group of intending travellers that seemed to gravitate around one frail vehicle— crankier than any of the others it seemed to me— by the solemnis- ing influence of one common destiny. At last 12.30, our hour for leaving, was indicated by my infallible pocket- chronometer ; but silence— broken only by the abortive attempts of the old man to start his pipe— reigned around. Now and again a nonchalant stable-boy, with, dark blue skin-tights, would appear with a paper lantern that sent gross caricatures of us all dancing like fiends on a back- ground of ruddy fire, while the varied features of each face were emphasised with such deep shadows that you felt some great tragedy was in preparation. At length there was a decided stir in the courtyard, the clatter of hoofs and the sweet accents of irate grooms broke upon our grateful ears, while the erst silent streets began to echo the hoarse bray of approaching bugles, in clumsy juvenile and tentative strains that would have driven mad an English guard of the good old coaching days. Two yS Nine Years in Nipon. raw-backed and bare-ribbed ponies were yoked to the crazy vehicle, one of whose wheels was really not quite circular, and dispensed with the need for springs, of which however there were home-made substitutes. The climax, however, was reached in the drag. My object in this work is to pourtray Japan as it is * and not to invent amus- ing things. Well, it consisted simply of an old Wellington boot of tough texture, which had probably seen much previ- ous service, pressed against the wheel by means of a wooden pin, round which, with the boot, a rope was twisted. Like Captain Cuttle's watch, it had the disadvantage of requiring somewhat frequent adjustment, but thus aided it did its work marvellously well. The vehicle in front of us, going so far the same way, came to grief outside of the city, and we had to give the good-natured occupants some help. There was no grumbling and no blame cast on any one. After hours of hard galloping — our horses being changed every seven miles or so — and rough, painful jolting through sleeping suburban hamlets and gloomy woods, we began at last to have faint glimpses of the landscape, over which the soft grey dawn was now shed- ding a cold silvery radiance, that seemed to owe nothing to the sun. We were dashing along a vast and fertile plain through which roll several broad branches of the grand river which pours itself into the bay of Yedo, at the city which used to bear that name. This great flat, loamy, garden-like expanse, was gleam- ing with golden patches of the sesamum orientate — very * The railway, since the period above mentioned, has been carried along the route herein described. A Consultation in the Hills. 79 like the mustard plant — which filled the air with a some- what heavy but agreeable odour not unlike honey. Sometimes a bright purple flush of wild clover broke in strikingly through the monotonous check-tartan of green and yellow ; or a pool of still water, dotted with broad lotus leaves, or quivering with frogs, flashed its glory through broad blades of blooming iris. Everywhere the poor, hard-wrought peasants, in preposterous umbrella- like hats, and literally thatched with straw which made them look when stooping exactly like porcupines, were damming up runnels of water for their rice fields, or trying to urge sluggish and most unpicturesque oxen to drag a wooden plough through the stiff clods. It was curious to observe that this most primitive-looking engine was exactly like the ancient pekton of the Greeks, yet telegraph- posts were near enough for the wearied oxen to rub them- selves on, while not many miles away you might see the steam plough at work. Such is modern Japan ! Here and there a snowy egret, in sharp and dazzling contrast to the dark ooze of the paddy-fields, might be seen poking its long greenish yellow beak into the mud, through which the first green promise of harvest was timidly peeping. The whole atmosphere, and even the damp dewy ground itself, seemed to vibrate with the cheerful crek-kek-kek-kex of the frogs — an old and heart- inspiring music, which has never wanted admirers. As the purple hills seemed to rise and draw nearer to us, we came at last to the end of this part of our journey ; for the carriage road ended, for us at least, at a notable little place called Kumagai, where a fair was being held when we arrived. The town is named after a famous So Nine Year's An Nip on. warrior of ancient times who, by the rules of warfare, had to behead a tender young captive who had shown great gallantry. In bitter remorse, and with an utter disgust to- wards his profession, the grim old soldier afterwards shaved his 'head and became a priest, famous for learning and sanctity. The festival which we witnessed was held in his memory. After a very short pause here we were off again, this time in the now world-famed jinrikisha, — rattling along narrow horse paths, between rigged fields of tender green buckwheat or Indian corn ; resting now and then for a minute or two at one of the houses by the wayside. These were always musical with the soft tinkling of glass ornaments which convey most grateful suggestions of rest and coolness to the ears of the wearied, hot, and dust- stained traveller. There is usually a wooden bench placed under a spreading vine or cucumber tree. At one of them I got a little tea-girl to warm up a bottle of cold soup, which thoughtful hands had stowed away for me. It was put into a very fishy, but otherwise clean copper, which always gives a nice metallic flavour to Western dishes, and I dined sumptuously — the sweets coming first, then soup, fish being served last of all. Off again, now through drizzling and depressing rain, which increased at last into a thunderous downpour, making the roads anything but pleasant or easy to travel over. Two rivers, now terribly swollen by the rain, had to be crossed, and this was done by means of flat and frail boats, worked by pole-oars of strong, but alarmingly flex- ible bamboo. A rope of rudely twisted straw was stretched between the banks — some parts of which had been recently washed away — and was used by the boatman A Consultation in the Hills. 8i to propel his scow by grasping it hand over hand. At one point the risk seemed terrible ; but after a hard and painful struggle, we landed safely on the other side. One of those torrents is lined by huge ruddy-purple boulders from the famous volcano called Asama Yama, whose cloud-wrapped peak, from which the whitish yellow smoke of continual burning rises in slow curling wreaths, is an object of most impressive grandeur. A short walk through field-paths, embanked with homely stone " dykes," and crossed by a thousand streams fretted by tiny water-wheels and shaded by brakes of the slim and tapering bamboo, — over which the magnificent wistaria hung its pale lavender festoons of drooping blos- soms — brought us to the mountain town of Kiriu, where my patient lived. It is a solid comfortable-looking place, with a well-made street sloping mountainwards, and claims as its "parish church" a dignified old temple, in the wide court of which the calm-faced image of Buddha rears in bronze its majestic height, from a granite pedestal, resting on finely chiselled lotus leaves. In the background there is an extensive grave-yard, filled with costly and richly carved stones, lichen-stained and moss- grown, shaded from the sun by many lofty trees of long •82 Nine Years in Nip on. growth. One of those trees is fully six feet in diameter, and must, I suppose, have put forth its first tiny rootlets about the time of our Cromwell. The people in Kiriu seemed all* to be engaged in the silk trade in one way or another, and had a wonderfully well-to-do appearance. I at once called on the pastor of the Presbyterian (native) Church, and was happy to find that he was an old Tokio friend of mine. After some talk we went through mud and rain to see the patient. His house was on the hillside, and was approached through two broad high-walled courts, with large outer buildings, in which spinning, weaving, and the various other operations of silk culture might be seen busily going on. Many tiresome but most courteous preliminaries having been gone through, I was taken to see the poor old sufferer, across a broad court-yard lying in deep water, for the rain still fell in torrents. After prescribing, I had a long and interesting talk with him ; and then, tired and hungry, laid myself down on the clean soft straw-matted floor of a quaint little room which was assigned to me. A Japanese meal is quite a curiosity even to the accustomed foreigner, because you never know what may be served up. Sometimes the sweetest-looking crape paper napkins are given to you. They are, of course, only used once, and a custom so pleasant might well be imitated at home. They are far from costly. I have never enjoyed stewed monkey yet, but it was a favourite dish in Japan a few years ago. Recent Darwinian teaching has, perhaps, led to a recoil from such cannibalism ! I don't know how others feel in such circumstances, but hungry as I was, it was difficult to enjoy food under the alert and A Consultation in the Hills. 83 inquiring eyes of a polite crowd of Japanese. My prehensile operations with knife and fork began to appear, to myself at least, unbearably vulgar and absurd. While I was finishing with some chocolate, in came the old family physician, who, since the new regime, no longer wears his sword, which was intended, I suppose, to convey the idea of professional dignity and destructiveness. The old gentleman did not seem quite pleased to find his preserves poached upon, and we had a little fencing in which he came off well, having read Western books with some care. His conceit was thoroughly national, but had not a very solid foundation. A suitable opportunity occurring, I quickly but firmly told him aloud, with the publicity he had courted, what had best be done, and prescribed some well known remedies. He had not heard of them evidently, but tried to put a good face on the matter. The crowd saw fun brewing, and " chaffed " the poor old gentleman rather sorely. He asserted that he had on his shelves all that the Government professors in Tokio hospitals prescribed, implying perhaps that my notions were a little antiquated. A pawky-looking old Christian servant of the silk grower finally silenced him, by saying dryly that he could not of course be expected to know about such remedies if he had never heard of them before, at which the crowd grinned, and the old doctor filled his pipe very quietly. I had been asked to address the Christians, and had begun to wonder when my chance to do so would come. I found that the old doctor was a difficulty. To hold such meetings might at that time have been thought illegal ; in- deed, Christianity itself is still formally under ban, although ^4 Nine Yeaj's m Nipon. the highly civilised central Government is disposed formally to adopt liberal views. Beginning to suspect what the difficulty was, and perceiving that the doctor was a hard old nut to crack, and not very favourable to religion of any kind, I told the pastor that it would be better to invite unbelievers to hear what was to be said. We then moved into a large room, into which three others with sliding partitions opened. At one end a somewhat im- posing pulpit, composed of boxes covered with red cloth, had been erected. The large hall— for such it seemed— was dimly lit by candles placed on tall candlesticks, and I could see that the sick man had been able to '' take up his bed," which he had spread on the floor, and was look- ing up with earnest and wistful face. The audience was, to my surprise, very large. I conducted a simple service, such as we have in Scotland, and preached on the first commandment. No preacher ever had a more attentive and eager audience. I was glad to see, listening with sharp and critical attention, the old doctor and his son, the latter being a polite and pleasant youth, with long black locks falling like a thick veil over his bashful face, which he shook back with a jerk every now and again. After bringing the service to a close, I had a good deal of conversation with the people on the subject of the one true God, idolatry, etc., and was glad to see that they had an intelligent grasp of our teaching. No difficulties were urged, but suspense was alleged by them as the most be- coming attitude meanwhile. How thoroughly Eastern this is. One would enjoy hard fighting better. After sundry hints, I again got to the little room I was to occupy, a large part of the congregation accompanying A Constdtation in the Hills, 85 me to light their tiny pipes at the charcoal brazier placed in the middle of the company, and continue the conversa- tion. I was really ready for a meal now, and had to share my slender store of cocoa with those who were curious to taste the foreign stuff. It was now late, or rather early, but no signs of my being able to retire to rest were apparent. After long forbearance, and one or two polite hints which were as politely and dexterously fended, I ventured on a highly original course not provided for in Japanese etiquette, and which I would modestly recommend to travellers in the Far East similarly placed. I stretched myself, and gave one most unmistakeable yawn, which a deaf man in the next house might easily have heard. A bomb-shell bursting in the apartment could not have more quickly dispelled its tenants. In a couple of minutes one of the domestics appeared with a pile of silk-covered cotton quilts for bedding, and in a few minutes more, in spite of the picturesque cirri and ciumili of coarse tobacco that floated over my quiet couch, I was sleeping the sleep of the just. S6 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VII. A Co7isiiltation in the Hills (Continued). A Charming Bedroom — Landscape Gardening in Miniature — Duck's Eggs and Duty — Some World-forgotten Ones — Doctors sometimes differ — A Hint for Pious Busy-bodies — Religious Radishes — Tincture of Snake — Rays of Buddha — Midnight in a Forest — "Resources of Civilization" — A Suspicious Case — Toddy versus Timidity — Loving the Darkness. Y bedroom opened on two sides into adjoining- and much larger apartments by partitions of open woodwork, like windows with panes of tissue paper instead of glass, a system which allows of a good deal of wholesome ventila- tion, especially in cold weather. One side of the room was plastered very smoothly and evenly with a warm iron grey cement, while trunks of young spruce firs, stripped of their bark and leaving a glossy clean surface like silk, did duty as posts. As such posts are always carefully selected with a view to ornament they gave the room an elegant air of primitive simplicity idealised, which I think is a chief and very subtle charm in a well planned Japanese house. The floors were of course covered with the usual thick, finely woven, and in this case, scrupulously clean straw mats bordered with coloured tape. My room opened into one .of those mar- vellous little courts of some three or four yards square, containing a most effective suggestion of the margin of A Consultation in the Hills. 8/ an impenetrable forest from which there projects into a pebbly lake teeming with gold fish, a most geologically- correct cape, down which rushes a foaming cascade, and on whose sunny banks bask some metallic blue-tailed lizards and a sluggish turtle. You might cross to the island of well-cropped turf and find there an ancient stone lantern, stained by the grandest of colourists — Time — with every richest hue of velvetty moss and slow craw- ling lichen. Afterthe clattering of sliding shutters had subsided, I had a hearty breakfast of duck's eggs — hard boiled — rice, biscuits, and the inevitable straw-coloured tea, and then passed on to the pitifully monotonous little group of blear-eyed, crippled, and occasionally leprous humanity that dogs the steps of a medical missionary. It is curious how hopeless sufferers are dragged, as if by some strange selective mag- net, from their retreats in dim sombre valleys, untrodden by the ordinary visitor, dark hovels and lonely garrets, all forgotten of the great busy world whom they can no longer serve. Here was the old doctor again, clean shaven and hair newly trimmed, grinning as sardonically as ever but vastly more polite in speech, looming in the background generally, perhaps alert enough as to what was doing, but in a most elaborately disengaged manner tapping with ever varying gesture on the edge of the brazier with that everlasting pipe of his. His distress was so apparent that I was compelled to comfort the good old man by drawing him out publicly — for by this time we were the centre of a considerable crowd — by finding what he did know, and we parted pleasantly, both of us with the happy feeling that we had taught as well as learned. 88 Nine Years in Nipon. After visiting a few sick folk in the neighbourhood who were bedridden, accompanied by my former guide I started on my return journey through fields of mulberry, the people in the crowded court-yard ducking a wave of compliments like a patch of sedges under a strong gale. Then we got into our carriage and pair (of men) and were away through narrow pathways cut through golden sweetly scented acres of sesamum, past sloppy rice fields into the mud of which men and boys were treading cut grass and weeds for manure ; then rattling across rough wooden culverts, or splashing through gleaming pools which the rains had formed. Our way lay past an interesting cave naturally formed, I think, in a very hard rock which scratched glass, and not far from it we saw a famous temple, Me-no-ma Shoden. In the spacious grounds were numerous stalls adorned with toys, ornaments for rustic belles, and sweetmeats. The whole neighbourhood was gay with a festive display of flowers and paper lanterns. What struck me most was a very ample preaching hall, open at the sides and adorned — not with the commandments of Buddha or the precepts of Confucius, but with pictured advertisements of the trades to which the pious patrons were severally devoted. The idea seemed a singularly happy one, and I venture to offer the sugges- tion to some of those good people who give their energies to church bazaars. In Japan it is usual, by the way, to give credit for larger subscriptions than are actually received. At the gate there was a curious carved stone pillar, round which a horribly grinning elf was slyly peeping at the passing devotee — truly a clever A Consultation in the Hills. 89 piece of rural work. The crest on all the temple adorn- ments was forked radishes rampant with limbs entwined. The temple, I was told, belonged to a corrupt Shinto cult, tainted with Buddhism. The posts were lacquered red like those of Buddhist temples, while within was dis- played the mirror, of which I have said something in another chapter. I have a manuscript copy of the engrav- in<.s in a famous old work, the Butsu-zo-dmi, which contains a Buddhist figure like the Hindu Ganesa, with an elephant's head. He holds in one hand a trident, and in the other a forked radish-like plant. As I struck off from the main road by a mountain path, a fine large snake of a species I had not previously cap- tured, became a victim, and I soon had it comfortably settled in a bottle of alcohol which I secured in an oil shop, under the somewhat veiled [oxm oi amkohoru, as the letter / is awanting in the copious alphabet of Japan. I was generally credited by an inquisitive public with the manufacture of medicine. At Kumagai we found the last coach to Tokio had left hours ago, and the hotel-keepers drew doleful pictures of the state of the road, which, truly enough, was at that time infested with gangs of murderous brigands. I could not afford to delay, and after lavish inducement had been offered, prevailed on two brawny coolies to contract to take me into the city by daybreak. After a hurried supper, I parted with my kind guide who, as I have said, was an old servant of the patient I had been asked to visit. It was clear to me that there was some concern for my safety, and that the two men who drew me were not without some apprehensions. However, I felt that I must go, and that 90 Nine Years in Nipon. the risk might after all be very slight. By-and-by the shadows on the hills deepened — " The sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : At one stride comes the dark " — lowering summer thunder-clouds gather about the hills we had come from, and they throb with pale purple sheet lightning. The rayons du crepuscle, too, which some suppose to be due to a lofty stratum of suspended ice- particles, stretch their long bows of indigo, alternating with rose, across the zenith from west to east They are often in the east called the " rays of Buddha." We stopped for a long time at the entrance to a dreaded forest which stretched in one almost unbroken expanse to near the city. Close by the little tea-house where the men were refreshing themselves, was a wood-cutter's hut, from whose dimly-lighted room came a hard, soul-piercing cough, which sounded to a trained ear like a funeral knell. The crescent moon was bending down through a strip of lemon-coloured sky to the western horizon, when I again took my seat, the men warning me that now came the place of danger. As a mild precaution, having no armour, I buckled up a large, very knobby stone into my handker- chief, placed it " convanient," and began to admire the grand woodland scenery, dimly lit by stars and a setting moon. It was highly fascinating, and the sense of lurking danger kept me awake and served to give a certain piquancy, but it at last grew monotonous. By-and-by I glided quietly from the sombre forest with its impenetrable shadows, into a trim railway station, and was off at express speed through gas-lit villages merry A Consultation in the Hills. 91 with the whirr of giant factories, across magnificentviaducts which spanned lordly rivers crowded with great vessels ; over points with many a bump and crash, and at last with a sudden bang — into a magnificent terminus, with palatial hotel and crowds of welcoming friends ? — no ; but after I had rubbed my eyes very well for a minute or so — off the main road altogether, and into the forest itself, the shafts of my vehicle on the ground, and my trusty varlets stand- ing a little apart from me, and indulging in vehement whispers. I clutched my formidable ballista, assumed a dramatic attitude, and prepared, in the solemnising lan- guage of public bodies, " to take such steps as the cir- cumstances might seem to call for." I at once saw that in the first place, at least, I had to deal with allies — not foes. They had quenched their paper lanterns, and besought me to remain silent, while they crouched with hands at ears listening intently. There was a faint sound from along the road, which soon resolved itself into a vehicle of some kind, drawn by two horses, galloping madly in our rear. I was still in great doubt as to what the whole thing meant, when the vehicle swept up, and the two men who were with me leaped into the road with a sudden shout. The driver pulled up in fear at first, friendly salutations ensued, and anon a sleepy man tumbled out. At this precise moment I candidly admit that I believed myself to have fallen into a fatal trap, stood with my back against a thick trunk, and took a much cooler last glance (as I really thought) at mother earth than I had supposed at all possible for anybody to do in the circumstances. In a moment I recognised in the drowsy man my recent guide, who lost no time in telling me that he could not 92 Nme Years in Nipon. sleep after his usual " wee drap " of rice-whisky for think- ing of me lying murdsred in this wood, after I had been committed to his care. The faithful old fellow had got out of bed, communi- cated his superstitious dread, or rather toddy nightmare, to the townfolks, and had, at considerable expense to his wealthy master, engaged the vehicle which my coolies only recognised when close to us. That his dread was not quite imaginary I fully comprehended, when I read a few days afterwards in a native newspaper a vivid and trustworthy account of the stoppage of two coaches near that very spot, in daylight, by armed bands of robbers, who wounded the driver and guards and made the passengers stand and deliver. At the post-town close by, and at the same time, the banker and several well-to-do people had their throats cut by robbers. I rewarded my two men liberally, took my seat in the little car, and was soon jolting along merrily, to the accompaniment of some lively tales of murder and robbery by the old man, who waxed garrulous. I arrived in Tokio just before day- break. The streets were deserted, dark, and silent ; but here and there might be seen a broken-down old rascal, with a broken-down and very dirty jinrikisha, doing night work. I engaged one for my bag, and found that his story was a commoner one than many old residents may suppose. He had taken to drink, could no longer get respectable day-work, and so busied himself dragging slowly along, with legs trembling as much from disease as old age, red-faced old Japanese gentlemen who had been " dining out," or spending a day at the theatre, and on A Consultation in the Hills. 93 whom blind fortune had smiled a little more favourably than on himself So ended my consultation visit to Kiriu. ^ISBE.J.S^~ 94 Nine Years in Nipon. CHAPTER VIII. Mitake San — TJie Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. Bad Roads and Better Language — Spiders and Beetles — A Japanese Scare- crow — Night Storm in a Forest — A Dispirited Coolie — Sunday Quiet and Questioning — Buddhist Teaching and Modern Science — Passports and Preaching — A Picturesque School — Sick Cicadas — Art and Nature — Brambles and Barefeet. AFTER a hard day and night's work we got off one morning in the hot season long before daybreak with our pale sick-worn little ones. We were quickly hurried through dark miry streets, by mossy walled moats, and through weary long drawn suburban rows of wooden dwellings, the inhabitants of which were just stirring up into activity. Now and again our perspiring jinrikisha men would stop to have a thimble-like cup of pale tea, a tiny pipeful of tobacco, and a spasmodic colloquy, chiefly composed of very significant but to Western ears mild ejaculations about the quality of the roads which, according to the profession, must be under- going very steady deterioration. Poor fellows ! I wonder when some Japanese Thomas Chalmers will be able to solve the problems which they suggest to one. Soon the sun rose laughingly, and then hospital cares, and the raw, clammy mist seemed to vanish together. The children began to be amused with the flowery hedge rows, the patient oxen, and the noisy village festivals in which the Japanese are always commemorating, with gay Ian- The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 95 terns and merry processions, some old dead emperor or the birth-day of his great grand uncle ! By-and-by we stopped to give our men a meal and rest Some kind farm people in the neighbourhood brought sweets and tempting fruits and vegetables, with now and then some gay flowers, and the children got out to wander amongst the luxuriant vegetation of the garden- like fields through which our road passed. It was won- derful to see how their eyes opened with a new delight when they discovered a great gaudy spider, which began clumsily to vibrate her curious zig-zag netted web to avert attention, or when they happened to uncover a bevy of copper-brown beetles cropping the tender vine leaves. At last with ruddier cheeks and brighter eyes than we had seen for a long time, they came running to announce an as- tounding discovery. It was a curiosity of the quaintest kind — a real Japanese scarecrow, which of all the — but I fear a description would hardly be suitable for these grave pages. We are soon off again with greater speed. One coolie has sold out his contract, and a new man joins our com- pany, with strange, guttural " slangy " Japanese which none of us can understand very well. After some hours we stopped for dinner at a pretty little wayside tea-house, with big, fat gold-fish and a grand Scotch " burn " foam- ing and tearing through mossy boulders. I distributed here a good number of books to the villagers who flocked to see us. Off again ! for miles along a very broad and leafy avenue, with a ditch running through its centre, on and on till we all began to nod, and awoke to find our- selves being heavily dragged at night through a dreary 96 Nine Years in Nipon. wood, with rain pouring upon us in violent torrents, and even our poor coolies invisible in the gloom, save when a flash of lightning lit up the murky scene. Our men all began to be afraid, and it required all my available wits to keep them up, and to keep them together. Sometimes we had to stop and halloo for five or ten minutes on the others, as we could not find any definite path, and one of the coolies fairly broke down in spirits. He never entirely recovered his cheerful disposition, and I think had been overcome by superstitious dread chiefly. We had two hours of this work in the dark wet forest, but at last arrived at a cheery place of human voices and flitting shadows. There are worse places than a clean Japanese inn after such a dismal night, and we all fully appreciated its com- forts. We had intended to reach the hills that Saturday night, but I was not sorry to find so comfortable a Sabbath resting-place on the way. I arranged, with some caution on account of certain regulations, to have a meet- ing, and went out to see about me. Ome is a large and very pretty market town with an avenue of trees then in full bloom, gnarled pine and cherry, with some plum trees and crape myrtles, running up its main street. It lies at the base of the hills, which are grandly wooded just where the sparkling river which supplies Tokio with water breaks from its enclosing valleys and runs joyfully down to the plains. The town lies on one of the boulder-strewn ter- races left by the ancient river. There are no clear evidences of glaciation. It boasts of a fine temple to which you climb by a very lofty and dangerously steep flight of stairs. The people seemed to be better built and The Sacred Mount of the Three Peaks. 97 rather healthier than those of the plain around Tokio, and their oxen were notably large and sleek. We went to the temple, and there found a great many children playing about the shrines, with whom we con- versed, giving away numerous copies of a little illustrated life of Joseph, the only suitable work which had been published. Not far off I stumbled on a finely- carved piece of Sanscrit — which might probably be one of those mantras or charms which the de- graded Buddhism of the Far East is too prone to lean upon, but my slight knowledge of Sanscrit was of little avail in its interpretation. On coming down to the town again, a kind, hearty old woman, seeing that our little ones were thirsty, asked us into her clean little hut, and presented each of us very gracefully with a cup of deliciously cool spring water, such as the wealth of Tokio could not buy in that city. Gracious old heathen woman, may thy kind and gentle deed be remembered to thee on that Great Day ! In the evening I had prepared to address a good audience, and at the hour appointed came down to a large room of the tea-house opening into the street, which had been kindly offered to me. I was amused to witness the discomfiture of my old cook when we looked round on an array of empty mats, for I am sure he had puffed the proceedings very thoroughly and conscientiously. I tried to assure him that the audience would be all right, and From a Natizie Sketch. 9^ Nine Years in Nipon. that we should have a full house. I got the children to the door and began to talk to them playfully in English. It was irresistible. Respectable people, with small bank accounts even, who were loungingabout as if waitingappoint. ments, of course quite unconscious of anyproposed meeting, would condescend to pause in passing and laugh for a little at the gibberish, so we bagged them all. We began with about thirty people, and before I had read a portion of Scripture the room was quite full. Some noisy young Japanese lads — from the city probably — began audibly to criticise in not very polite terms the doctrine of the cross ; but they were soon stabbed into silence by a polite but oblique thrust which the audience appreciated heartily, and some of them sneaked in to join us. By-and-by the head official, with a small party, peeped in as he was pas- sing, and stood patronisingly to look on from above the rest who were seated. Curiously enough I proceeded just then to speak of our holy religion requiring proper respect to be paid to those in authority, and was glad to see that he waited till the end. For fully two hours I had as closely attentive an audience as any one could wish for. I told the main facts of the life of Christ, just as we may suppose them to have occurred in the view of a heathen observer ; of how claims of divinity had roused the hatred of the Jews against Him, of His peculiar trial by mixed judicial forms acquitting Him of moral guilt, but condemn- ing Him for calling Himself God ; of His strange and terrible death, burial, and reported resurrection. I went on to examine the evidence of the latter, and told how the civilised races of the West had soon been compelled to 1 he Sacred Moimt of the Three Peaks. 99 accept it as a glorious fact, full of hope for all men. When I spoke of the resurrection, they did not laugh as others did of old, but a very fine-looking, pale old woman with silvery hair, sitting beside her fat, prosperous, jolly-faced husband, and drinking in all that was said with great eagerness — stopped me in the most courteous Japanese manner to say, that although I was a foreigner she had understood very well what I had been saying, but that she could not quite understand my meaning when I spoke of Jesus rising from the dead after having been laid in His grave ! I had all my books cleared off very quickly, and could have disposed of many more. Questions about them were freely asked. Long after I had retired for the night I could hear murmurs of conversation on the subject of the religion of Yasu, which was till recently a synonym for every kind of horrible sorcery. Before leaving I was asked to send some one to teach them more about our religion ; but when Mr. Miura, a very able native preacher, went out, he does not seem to have got very much encouragement in fact, and speedily returned. I did not quite agree with him as to this course, as no actual opposition had been offered, and such would now, I am happy to say, be illegal in Japan, where all peaceful religions are tolerated. It is right to add, that this place is in the diocese of a Buddhist bishop, who holds that the earth is flat, and who has been mobbed, it appears, in Yokohama by lads of modern tendencies for teaching such an absurd doctrine. In my first address and before knowing anything about this, I laid down very dogmatic- ally, contrary opinions, and appealed to scientific text- 100 Nine Years in Nipon. books to support my statements, although I am not quiet clear yet as to the immediate connection of that subject with Christianity. However, I have faith in the truth of these things ultimately helping us, and the people are beginning to find that we are more accurate and trustworthy in ordinary matters than their own teachers are. It is as yet very difficult to organize regular evangelistic work in the interior, not on account of any bigoted intolerance of our teaching, but simply from the fact that passports are needed for foreigners, and the only objects which have been legitimised are " scientific research " and " health." I have never gone out except on bona fide errands of the one class or the other. I am sure, how- ever, that it was not the intention of the Japanese government to restrict us in propagating Christianity by this regulation, but simply to prevent large mercantile transactions being imposed on simple country folks outside of the treaty ports. There can therefore be nothing wrong or illegal, as some who are uninformed have supposed, in seizing passing opportunities to proclaim the gospel of Christ. The legality of this course is not now questioned by the authorities at all. I trust, however, that such a modification of the existing treaties may soon be made as shall perm^it, not only the unfettered use of our tongues in the interior, but the organization of regular tours for the purpose of pleading our cause. The Japanese government have shown a very excellent spirit, and are largely tolerant. It remains for our press and high of^cials on their part to show a somewhat more sympathetic and conciliatory disposition than has sometimes prevailed. TJie Sacred Moitnt of the Three Peaks. loi We left the pretty town of Ome early, and had a delightful journey past peach orchards and through the rising valleys till we came under the solemn shadow of those " great protuberances " which, in spite of Dr. Samuel Johnson, will always awe and cheer the heart of any genuine warm-blooded Scotchman. The river here was seen through tangled bamboo brake and fresh scented pines to run far below us, through great white plains of pebbles luminous in the sun. It was studded too with clumsily picturesque water-mills, built on huge boats which are strongly moored to the banks, but are ready to be let slip if need be, when the rain floods raise them. Numer- ous rafts of roughly cut wood are floated down from the mountain forests to the populous plain. The road, for a rural mountain road, is very good, and is built up with huge water-worn stones of great geological variety. At one place far from any large village, a very spacious school has been built in the new foreign style, but with Swiss-like and romantic modifications — ^just such a place as one's boyish memories must cling to with^love. I have visited several of those new schools which are spread all over the country, and have been quite pleased to witness the marked efficiency of some of them. What is needed more than anything now is fresh and good text-books suited to the changed times and new life of the country. The Japanese have adopted many translations of our own best text-books, but not a few of them are quite unnatural grafts upon Japanese civilization. Now as^^l^mission schools are being opened all over the country toj which we have access, something of this kind might very soon be attempted, with reasonable prospects of success. It may 102 Nine Years m Nipon. surprise and please many to hear that in Japan there is not only now an official Sabbath-day of rest, which is spreading its influence wider and wider, but that the government text-books also are often theistic, and might even on account of an obscurity in the language be thought monotheistic. Some may think that this is rather, however, an example of the shallow eclecticism that has so largely characterized the recent progress of Japan. But neither theism nor monotheism are quite fresh and foreign to the Far East. My wife and the children were packed tightly into /^«^