I shall never forget the delight of our first drive in Tokio. It was enough to be drawn swiftly and silently along in the midst of those broad white roads, shaded by avenues of graceful willows, and see all the strangely fascinating life of every-day Japan passing swiftly by, without going to see anything in particular. For the motion of these jinrikishas, the only practicable mode of progression in Japan, is delightfully easy and pleasant. The coolies in their dark blue cotton breeches and loose jacket and large mushroom-shaped hats, go at an easy trot of six miles an hour, and they will do forty miles in one day. This patient, toiling, perspiring race never seem to tire, and their bare brown legs, with their large muscular development, with sinews and veins standing out, and their high regular action, trot as steadily as the rough docile ponies. Their feet are bare, or covered with a straw sandal, kept on by a ribbon passed round the great toe. We see many shops hung with hundreds of these sandals. Their cost is infinitesimally small, but the roads are strewn with cast-off ones, for they only last for a few journeys.
We are driving along by the Inner Moat; for there are three separate moats surrounding the Castle, and then crossing over a bridge we pass under an ancient stone gateway, and find ourselves, between this and another one, equally massive and with iron-plated doors studded with nails. We are shut in by these curious walls of obsolete masonry. Huge blocks of granite are piled up obliquely, one resting on the other for support, without being filled in by earth or mortar. They are broader at the base, slope inwards, and stand by their own weight. Again and again we came upon these Titanic walls in the ancient buildings of Japan, and never ceased wondering how they were first placed in position and then held so, for centuries. Passing through the second archway, we are in a great open space, and above us are the white walls and brown crinkled roofs of the Mikado's palace. There is the grey stone bridge lighted by clusters of electric lamps, across which the 121st Mikado and the successor of the Shoguns passes to the palace, around which linger mysteries leaving the imagination free to picture the interior, for it is invisible to everyone. The authors of that delightful "Social Departure," it is true, saw it, but they dare not record how the permission was obtained. It is said that Mr. Liberty was the last to see this enchanted abode, but then his visit was from a professional view, to give his opinion on the decorations, as one of the great æsthetic decorators of the day.
The office of the Imperial Household, whither we were bound to call on Monsieur Nagasaki, the Emperor's Master of the Ceremonies, lies under the Imperial Palace. The sentry at the gateway stopped us, but after some parleying we were allowed to proceed on foot, as none but titled Japanese are allowed to pass in a jinrikisha. The officer who accompanied us was typical of the politeness which is the pleasantest feature of the Japanese, and requested a souvenir of our visit in a visiting card. In coming away we passed the Minister of Justice in a victoria, with a jinrikisha roped behind, containing his detective.
Tokio is one of the ten largest cities in the world, and with its population of 1,400,000 spread out over an extended area, the distances are great. It has tramways, drawn by the diminutive ponies, and an ear-piercing horn heralds an antique omnibus in the principal thoroughfares. It has electric light, gas, and telephones. Nor is it wanting in handsome public buildings and offices like the Admiralty, the Ministry for Foreign and Home Affairs. The Houses of Parliament are a skeleton of poles, for, just completed last year, they were burnt down immediately and are now rebuilding. We are passing an enclosure with rows of white-washed buildings, little barracks, suited to the little soldiers we see marching bravely along in the streets, and crowned with the sixteen-petalled chrysanthemum, the royal insignia, which is everywhere and on everything.
Before the afternoon light fails we visit the temples at Shiba Park, the park being a grove of trees under which picturesque groups of children and nurses wander, or ladies stroll about, with their jinrikishas following them.
The entrance to this succession of mortuary chapels, where the remains of the 7th and 9th Shoguns are buried, is by a gorgeous gate of red and green and gold—a gate such as we grew to be familiar with, in the ceaseless succession of temples in Japan, for all these Buddhist shrines have a wearisome sameness in common, however beautiful they may individually be. There is a quiet court inside, filled with rows of stone pillars, with a circular pagoda with open holes at the top. They are lanterns offered as a mark of respect by the Daimyos or great nobles to their master. Every August, from the 12th to the 16th, lights are kept burning there to entice the spirits to return during their time of wandering, and not to journey by mistake to hell. Another stone court with more lanterns, and a pagoda-erection to a Minister of War, whither, should a war occur, they hope his spirit would return to watch over it and bring them luck.
We approach the Temple, with its black roof of crenellated copper, and the overhanging eaves, from each up-curved point of which hangs a tinkling bronze bell, and we can see that this sombre outside is only a wooden shell to preserve the gilding and brilliant colours of the exterior.
Our feet are bound up in cotton shoes, and we enter by a side door into an exquisite little sanctum, where the roof is all of lacquer, inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and the panels on the walls are carved in marvellous repoussé work, with flowers and animals. A softened light comes through the open door, and the gold and red and blue and green, melt into a harmony of rich colouring, whilst the petal of each flower, the stalk of every leaf, the plumage on the wings of the birds, stand out in startling relief; and these panels represent storks, with their long red legs, doves with their silver-grey plumage, parrots with red and green tails, and peacocks with fan-spread tails. Or there are such flowers as the sacred lotus, the emblem of Buddhism, the chrysanthemum and the pink peony. One panel of exceptional beauty, is an exquisite spray of tiger lilies, carved in high relief. Tradition says that this was so greatly esteemed by the Shogun, and that the two nails we see were used to hang a cover over it, that no one should see it but himself. The priest throws open the golden trellis-work of a shrine, and shows us three memorial tablets with the Shogun's names inscribed on them. Around it there is a collection of china vases, paper lanterns, and lacquer stands. Passing behind the screen formed of bamboo bound with silken cords, we come to a square room covered as usual with matting, and with the same florid decoration, where there is a row of lacquer boxes each tied up with a cord. They contain the Buddhist books, and are used for the daily prayers.
Through a grove of glossy-leaved camellias we pass, and mount up some flights of ancient steps to another temple. This is the Praying Room in front of the Shogun's Tomb, and is only entered by the Mikado and Archbishop, when they come to worship the great departed on the day of his decease. We pass behind this, and ascend yet more moss-grown steps, to the tomb of the Great Shogun, which is surmounted by a bronze urn, and enclosed within stone parapets and iron railings. The tomb bears the three-leaved asarum, which is the crest of the House, and is seen on many buildings of the date of that dynasty. Since the fall of the Shoguns—or military usurpers of executive power—and the re-establishment to the Imperial City of the present dynasty of Mikados, it has been replaced by the Imperial Chrysanthemum. All is so quiet and solemn here, and the memorial above the tomb is so simple, as compared with the magnificence that goes before, that as Mitford says, "The sermon may have been preached by design, or it may have been by accident, but the lesson is there." The 9th, 12th and 14th Shoguns are buried at Shiba, and their three temples, their three praying rooms, and their three bronze urns, stand in precisely similar lines with the one we are at present by.
In the evening we take jinrikishas and go into the native quarters. If Tokio is charming in daylight, it is simply a fairyland at night. There are no lamps, save for a few electric beacons, that send out their far-reaching flashes over all the city, but the streets are lighted by innumerable pendulous drops of light, that dance and quiver and dart about, and cross and disappear quickly round corners. They are the paper lanterns which hang from the shafts of hundreds of jinrikishas, or are carried by pedestrians, for everyone in Japan carries his own lantern after dark; and some are pale pink and others red or blue. Now their soft light is reflected on the waters of the moat, or glides quickly and noiselessly round the stone ramparts and reappears like glow-worms on the other side. Now we pass the crimson light streaming out of the little box-like police station, or the barrow of the street vendor with the bulb of light shining mysteriously from behind his hanging curtains. Soft even light falls across the street from the windows of opaque paper, and we can trace the shadows crossing them. Then as we stealthily fly past, we see the dark interior of a shop lighted by a single lamp, under which squats a Rembrandt-like figure, intently working, for in these busy human hives late at night and early morning sees them still at work, or again the leaping flames of fire in the centre of the floor light up a family group. Then there is the street vendor, with his flaring torches, and his wares spread out against a wall. There is a festival held in some particular street, lighted with lunging designs of crimson paper lanterns, slung from bamboo poles, to the god of writing. Then as we return home through the dark quiet alleys, we hear the frequent and melancholy sound of the bamboo flute of the blind shampooer, as he feels his way, stick in hand, along the street. He sounds but two notes, but they have the wail of a world of sorrow in them, that goes to the heart.
Early the next morning we climbed up some steps and passed into the lovely groves of Ueno Park. The evergreen trees are still here, but the avenue of cherry trees is bare and leafless, "which presents a uniquely beautiful sight during the blossom season, when the air seems to be filled with pink clouds," and you can scarcely pass under the trees for the showers of falling blossoms. A little farther on there is a sheet of water covered with flat green leaves, which three weeks ago was a mass of pink and white lotus bloom. The blossoming of the cherry, plum, lotus or chrysanthemum are looked upon by the Japanese as national festivals. In fact they are their only holidays, for they have no Sunday or day of rest. The Japanese may be said to have little or no religion. The upper classes never worship at all, and the lower orders are either Buddhists or Shintoists (Shintoism being the worship of many gods), but they practically only go to the temples to offer prayers, accompanied by money to the gods, if they have any special request to make, such as for a good harvest, or recovery from sickness.
There are many little tea-houses at Ueno Park, and waiting damsels smile in a friendly manner and beckon us in, but we cross the road and leave this pleasant corner of the park, where the simple people come to drink tea and amuse themselves, and pass under one of those solemn archways hewn out of single blocks of stone, a torii or bird's rest. They are such grand yet simple monuments of a dead past, and are found at the entrance to all the temples in Japan. We wander up the stone-paved avenue, through the solemn illness of the great cryptomeria avenue, towards the Buddhist Temple at the end. This Temple, with its neighbouring pagoda, is more than usually brilliant, being recently restored, but the charm lies in its surroundings—in the quiet fir groves, and the clumps of camellia trees, in the pink blossoms of the monkey tree, and the solemn cawing of the rooks, in the click-click of the wooden sandals of the dear little waddling ladies as they saunter along the pavement, with their close-shaven children by their sides, so exactly like the Japanese dolls we know at home. But in the centre of this peaceful scene is a switchback railway, whose noisy clatter profanes the stillness, but of which the Japanese are truly proud. We pass a fortune stone. It is old and chipped, covered with hieroglyphics and bespattered with dirty pellets of paper, which are chewed first into a pulp and then thrown at it. If they adhere, it is considered a lucky omen.
After quickly passing through the Museum, a white Moorish building erected for the Exhibition, and which is as dull as museums usually are, we had one of those fascinating drives through the streets to the shop of the most celebrated cloisonné maker in Japan, and by special appointment to the Mikado. There was nothing exposed in the shop front, but leading us to the inmost recesses at the back, one by one with reverent care, each article was produced from its wooden case and foldings of crêpe and cotton wool, and placed with justifiable pride before us, for this prince of designers, Namikawa, is the greatest living artist in Japan, and exists only for the production of the masterpieces of his art. The exceeding tenderness of the pale grey, darkening into lilac, forming the background for a cock whose plumage, faithfully delineated, is shown by the outline of every feather, the rose pink, the translucent yellow—it is impossible to convey the delicate tones of colour, or the life-like drawing of his plaques and vases.
We subsequently saw the many processes through which cloisonné passes, and it is not until you have seen the skill and delicate workmanship required, that you really begin to appreciate cloisonné. And the same may be said about lacquer, which requires knowing to be fully understood. First the vase must be fashioned in copper, then the designer must delineate from memory some intricate design of flowers or birds or landscape. This again has to be reproduced in tiny pieces of wire, pinched and twisted deftly into shape and soldered on to the copper. The interstices of the wire are filled in with the brilliant colours that we see in the saucers by the side of the workers, and the mixing of these is the secret which ensures success. Five times the colours are "filled," and five times burnt in the kilns, and then the polisher with his different coarsenesses of stones polishes it into a burnished and chaste work of art.
Apart from temples, there is not much to see at Tokio, but it is the streets which fascinate you so completely, that waking and sleeping you dream of these, and you want to be always out and amongst the bright life that flows through them. To get any idea of Japan you must always remember that everything is so ridiculously small. Life here is in miniature. Everything is lilliputian; beginning with the little houses, continuing with the little men and women and their tiny children, and ending with the little ponies, for there are no horses in Japan. And so to imagine a Japanese street, you must picture to yourself rows of little brown houses, many of only one storey, with large overhanging eaves. The interior is wide open and only raised one step from the street, and you look across the brightly burnished floor through the opening of the paper sliding screens, which are thrown back in the daytime, and catch pretty glimpses of the home life in the back yard. Many of the shops are hung with funereal-looking purple and black hangings, inscribed with white hieroglyphics giving the names and nature of their wares. You recognize the chemist's shop by the gold tablets setting forth the details of the pharmacopœia within. There are barbers' shops, with a half-shaven customer with upturned chin seated in the chair; drapers' with samples of bright-coloured stuffs hung round a revolving wheel outside; toy-shops where are sold those paper kites and tiniest of shuttlecocks, or hobgoblin horses and animals of impossible shape and size, with which the children play in the street. There are others hung with nothing but strings of straw sandals, or wooden clogs; grain shops where the clean white green and red seeds are sorted into baskets of samples. Here is one for the sale of saké, the brandy of Japan, piled up with huge barrels, and with those tapering blue and white bottles which we are accustomed to use for flower-vases, but which are really manufactured to hold this popular beverage. And then the china shops; they are an incessant delight, with their hundreds of dear little common blue and white rice bowls, their artistic tea-pots of pale green ware with a spray of apple blossom, their hibachis, or china flower-pots of deep blue, green or bronze ware, which are used for the hot ashes to light the pipe with, and are found on the floor of all tea-houses. Again, we must look at this stationer's, where that soft crinkled tissue paper is sold, and the brushes with which the Japanese write so swiftly and deftly, that the ink is absorbed without blotting into the paper. In Japan they do everything upside down. The horses stand with their tails in their mangers and their heads where their tails should be. Locks revolve contrariwise, and the carpenters plane towards, instead of away from the person. So with writing; they write from the bottom of the page to the top, and from right to left, and the number of their characters is appalling. You must know from 3000 to 4000 characters to write Japanese at all, and an educated man will require some 6000; and the disappointing thing is that when a foreigner has mastered this, the literature opened up to him offers no reward for his labour, as it practically does not as yet exist.
See this fruit shop, where bunches of pale grey-green water-grapes, brown pears, and plentiful supplies of green figs are spread temptingly out, interspersed with bunches of those luscious orange persimmons that melt in the mouth, and taste like a ripe apricot; this umbrella emporium, where paper umbrellas, oiled to make them waterproof, are open inviting inspection; a tea-shop, where the tea is kept in gigantic jars striped purple and green; a greengrocer's, with oblong sweet potatoes in their pink skins, and turnips of abnormal length; a basket shop, where bamboo baskets of every shape and size are to be had; or a fishmonger's, where the delicate pink and rainbow scaled fish, are exposed daintily for sale on bright blue and green china dishes. Nor must I forget the confectioners' shops, where from a tiny oven heated by charcoal, we see the most attractive little pink, green, chocolate and white sugared cakes turned out and placed in alternate rows on trays. It is most amusing to see the extreme economy of the heating arrangements. Four tiny pieces of charcoal, turned over and husbanded together by a pair of iron tongs, suffice to cook a meal. The Government do not allow shops to sell European and Japanese goods together, so that now and again you pass one full of Manchester atrocities, gaudy stuffs, ill-shaped English umbrellas, cheap lamps, boots, hats, and underclothing, which you turn away from, to seek once more the tasteful display of the native stores.
And what a medley of scenes there are, and what a flow of life confined in these narrow streets with their one-storeyed houses. Coolies harnessed by ropes to drays full of rice, answering one another with their musical patient cry of Huydah-Houdah; itinerant vendors with bamboo poles slung across the shoulder, and suspended trays filled with every imaginable variety of article; Buddhist priests with their shaven heads, and white dresses with flowing sleeves, covered with black crêpe.
Mingling with the crowd of dear little men and women in their graceful flapping kimonos, are the little girl "mothers," who at the age of ten bend their backs and have a baby brother or sister tied on. Happy babies they are, brown and contented, as are their scantily-clothed kindred, who obey an instinct of nature in making mud pies and dust castles by the roadside. Here is a closed van on wheels, painted black, being drawn by policemen. It is a "Maria" with a prisoner peering out between the bars.
Every now and again we meet a funeral. The coffin is a square deal box, slung on bamboo poles, for the deceased has been placed in it in a sitting posture with the knees up to the chin. It is only another form of the economy of material, that forms such an especial feature in all things Japanese. However, this people understood long before we did, the use of lovely wreaths of coloured flowers, to mitigate the gloom of mourning, and the coffin is hung with them. Ancestor-worship takes a prominent part in Japanese religion, and now we understand at last the use of those elaborate gold and lacquer cabinets, with outer and inner folding doors, that you so often see in England. These cabinets are intended as the shrines where the little golden memorial tablets, in the form of small gravestones, and engraved with the name of the deceased, are kept at home. The deceased is always given a posthumous name, as, not believing in the immortality of the soul, but rather in its transmigration into an animal, they say that he has ceased to exist altogether, and has changed his state and lives under a new name. These memorial cabinets are found in all the houses of the upper classes.
The pictures that we know of these little Japanese ladies are the most faithful reproductions. Wrapped tightly round in their kimonos, with the bunch of the obi formed by its folding over at the back, their figures take the graceful bend and curve we see pourtrayed. The loose flowing sleeves, and the soft folds around the neck, and open at the throat, are so pretty. Their underclothing consists of several loose garments of crêpe, which is the material exclusively used by the upper classes, and their hips are so tightly bound that no European woman could stand it. They treat their hips as we do our waists, their object being to be perfectly straight. When this was explained to me, I understood how it was that an extra breadth is put into the kimonos bought by Europeans. It is curious that, though the Japanese bathe so frequently, they are not particular as to changing their underclothing. The women wear white stockings with a pocket for the great toe, and "getas" formed of a sole of wood, perched on two high clogs of the same, and kept on by a leash. Thus, when they enter a house, they leave their clogs at the door, and go about on the spotless matting in their stockings. As they sit and eat off the floors, they cannot allow the dirt of outside boots to be brought in, and all Japanese houses are scrupulously clean.
The kimonos of ladies are made in delicate quiet-toned stuffs of pale grey or fawn colour; but simple as some of them appear, the stuffs of which they are made are so costly that, even unembroidered, they will cost as much as 300 dollars. And then their obis, those broad sashes of the richest brocades and satins—on them they lavish all their pride and money, and they often descend as heirlooms in a family. The dressing of their hair is one long-continued source of admiration; it is such black glossy hair, and the coils are so immaculately smooth. There are but two styles of headdress for the whole country—one for the married ladies, and one for the single; and so you can always distinguish their state in life at a glance. The married women have it dressed in a single extended roll, with inlaid combs and coral-headed pins placed round; whilst the unmarried ladies wear their hair divided by a silk or gauze ribbon into two flat coils placed on either side of the head, and have still more decoration in the way of glass bead pins. And as to the little girls, they are the counterpart of their mothers, and from the earliest ages wear theirs in a similar manner. It used to be the custom for married women to have their teeth blackened, to prevent their receiving admiration from men other than their husbands; but this is dying out, and you now only see old married women in country districts following this obsolete fashion. No Japanese woman ever walks. She shuffles, she scuffles, she tippets along, balancing on her high-heeled getas; but step out the necessary stride for a walk, no, they cannot do that, for their kimonos are so narrow that they cannot move otherwise than with their knees knocking together. They are not pretty, these meek, gentle-looking, brown-skinned creatures, yet their sweet deprecating manners are very attractive. They are excellent mothers; more excellent wives, in their complete subjection and utter want of initiative. The sum total of their education is implicit reverence and obedience, first to parents, subsequently to husbands; and at the Peeress' school at Tokio, we are told that they are so afraid that the modern education given there to the daughters of the nobles will militate against this ideal, that particular lectures are given on the subject.
The men, so long as they wear the native dress, are dark, pleasant-looking little men; but when you see them, as you frequently do now, with a kimono surmounted by a brown or black pot-hat, a solar topee, or even a tweed stalking-cap, they are positively evil and unpleasant to look at.
Viscount Okabé, so long Minister in London, took us for a drive in the afternoon, and then we had time, before a pleasant dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Fraser at the British Legation, to go to the Theatre.
The corridor is covered with piles of sandles and umbrellas, whilst from the adjoining kitchens come savoury and nauseous smells. The floor of the Theatre slopes upwards from the stage, and is divided into square compartments, neatly matted, and intended for family boxes. The galleries are divided in the same way. And here groups of ladies and gentlemen are encamped for the whole day, for a Japanese theatre begins at 9 a.m. and lasts for ten hours; nor is this all, for the same piece may be continued from day to day, and last for six weeks. It is now five in the afternoon, and yet the audience maintain a deep interest and breathless gaze on the stage.
This is the outline of the story. The lank, die-away lady we see trailing across the stage has retired to a wood, with a rill of crystal water, to live in a temple, there, to mourn the death of her father in a war. The young man who was (unknown to her) his murderer, passes casually along and she falls in love with him. This love-making, in the drawling nasal accents, and its tediously slow movements, is most unreal, and as they drink the loving cup of saké together, the father's disapproving spirit, in a rushing flame of fire, blazes up from the temple. Darkness drowns the applause, and warriors rush on the scene and begin to fight the maiden, who mesmerizes them, until one by one they fall at her feet.
The orchestra is represented by five musicians, perched up on a rock. I may say at once that, artistic as is the nature of the Japanese, their idea of music is absolutely nil. It consists of a series of grunts and groans, or of nasal notes in a bass key, or of falsetto in a high one.
But the interest lies to us in the audience, who, in the interval of twenty minutes, eat their evening meal. Some have brought their food with them, and nearly all their own china tea-pots, for a constant supply of tea. Others buy theirs, and are provided with a succession of little wooden bowls piled on each other, and for which they have to pay the usual theatre price of ten cents, or double the ordinary one. In each box there is a hibachi, or china bowl full of hot ashes, where they light their pipes, for men and women are continually smoking, and their pipes have the smallest bowl, the size of a thimble—two whiffs and it is empty again; but it is sufficient for their modest wants.
September 26th.—I am writing in the most delightful real Japanese house, far away in the midst of these beautiful mountains of Nikko.
The thin wooden frame of the house is covered with luminous parchment paper, and these are the walls that divide us from the outside world. They are not permanent ones, for they slide back one behind the other, a succession of paper screens, until the house is open to the street and there is only the shell of a habitation left in the roof, and one paper wall behind. The second-floor storey (if there is one) is marked by a long balcony running completely round, and here in cupboards at either end are kept the wooden shutters that slide into grooves and close in the balconies, in winter and at night, and give to all the houses the dull appearance of a blank wooden wall at sundown. Inside, the roof and floors are of white wood, and the latter is covered with spotless matting; but I am glad to say that there are European concessions here, in the shape of a table, chair, and washstand and bed, on which is laid a clean starched kimono to go to the bath in. In a Japanese house we should find no furniture at all. Their rooms are absolutely bare; they eat, sit and sleep on the floor, and from out of a cupboard in a recess will come the "futons," or thick wadded quilts, and the square piece of wood with a hollow for the neck, where a soft wad of paper is inserted, and which is used for a pillow by the ladies to save their elaborate headdress from getting deranged. As they cannot dress their hair themselves, it is only done occasionally, and must thus be considered even when sleeping.
The construction of these houses is so delightfully simple, for, excepting the polished ladder which leads upstairs, there is no plan of the rooms. They are made larger or smaller, more or less, according to the want of the hour, by means of those successions of sliding screens, and a little pushing and sliding will make the large room you are using, into five or six smaller ones in a second. These tea-houses are charming in their compact simplicity, their faultless cleanliness, and particular neatness.