“ToF. Howard Vyse, Esq.Kihi,Vagabond in the village of Torocmigawa,
“ToF. Howard Vyse, Esq.Kihi,Vagabond in the village of Torocmigawa,
“ToF. Howard Vyse, Esq.
“ToF. Howard Vyse, Esq.
Kihi,
Kihi,
Vagabond in the village of Torocmigawa,
Vagabond in the village of Torocmigawa,
You have, while in the service of the English merchant Telge, stolen 300 rio in his absence, which were kept in an unlocked box. As this is a great offence, you are sentenced to be beheaded.”
The execution-ground was close to the gate of the Legation at Yedo, and gory heads, fresh chopped off and stuck in clay, occasionally glared with glassy eyes upon the passer-by. Not far from Kanagawa was a burning-ground, not unlike a threshing-floor; and English travellers, with a taste for the horrible, used to make it an object for a ride, to inspect the human ashes which were strewn there.
But we have looked enough “on this picture” of Japan—it is time to look “on that.” Those travellers who first saw it in its gala-dress painted it as they found it, and in some respects have their glowing descriptions fallen short of the reality. They never heard of “lonins,” or experienced any “unsuitable occurrences.” They saw a population nude, peaceable, and contented, a landscape of fairy-like beauty, a sky unrivalled even in Italy; and they left before they had recovered from the charming surprise, or had time to appreciate the real value of attractions so novel and unlooked-for. And yet our author, after a residence of three years, writes:—
“But for this class of military retainers and Tycoon officials, high and low, both of which swarm in Yedo, it seems it might be one of the pleasantest places in the Far East. The climate is superior to that of any other country east of the Cape. The capital itself, though spreading over a circuit of some twenty miles, with probably a couple of million of inhabitants, can boast what no capital in Europe can—the most charming rides, beginning even in its centre, and extending in every direction over wooded hills, through smiling valleys and shady lanes, fringed with evergreens and magnificent timber. Even in the city, especially along the ramparts of the official quarter, and in many roads and avenues leading thence to the country, broad green slopes and temple gardens or well-timbered parks gladden the eye as it is nowhere else gladdened within the circle of a city. No sooner is a suburb gained in any direction, than hedgerows appear which only England can rival either for beauty or neatness, while over all an Eastern sun through the greater part of the year throws a flood of light from an unclouded sky, making the deep shadow of the overarching trees doubly grateful, with its ever-varying pictures of tracery, both above and below. Such is Yedo and its environs in the long summer-time, and far into a late autumn.”
Our author’s enthusiasm is not confined to inanimate nature in Japan. He too, in spite of the disaffection of a particular class, has an evident weakness for the country people, and gives us many pleasing traits of national character:—
“Reflections,” he says, “on the government and civilisation of the Japanese press upon the European every step he takes in this land, so singularly blessed in soil and climate, so happy in the contented character and simple habits of its people, yet so strangely governed by unwritten laws and irresponsible rulers.”
Again—
“Much has been heard of the despotic sway of these feudal lords, and the oppression under which all the labouring classes toil and groan; but it is impossible to traverse these well-cultivated valleys, and mark the happy, contented, and well-to-do populations which have their home amid so much plenty, and believe we see a land entirely tyrant-ridden and impoverished by exactions. On the contrary, the impression is irresistibly borne in upon the mind that Europe cannot show a happier or better-fed peasantry, or a climate and soil so genial and bountiful in their gifts.”
We must agree with our author, that institutions, however anomalous they may appear to us, must have some merit which can so satisfactorily secure “the material prosperity of a population estimated at thirty millions, which has made an Eden of this volcanic soil, and has grown in numbers and wealth by unaided native industry, shut out from all intercourse with the rest of the world.” So that Sir Rutherford, after all, gives quite as favourable a picture of Japan as any of the “hasty visitors,” the accuracy of whose first impressions he thus impugns:—
“Those writers,” he exclaims, “who, on the strength of a superficial observation, or a flying visit to Nagasaki, have led the credulous public in Europe and America to believe that the triumph of European civilisation in Japan is already secure, and that the Japanese Government is promoting it, must have been strangely deluded! As to progress and advance in the path of civilisation, the papers laid before Parliament at this period, in which I passed in review the progress made in the previous six months—the first after the opening of the ports under treaties in July last—must have given a very different impression.”
But this is a gloomy view of affairs not usual with our author; for a few pages later, remarking on the effect which foreign trade is likely to produce, he observes:—
“How soon such changes may come it is impossible to say, seeing what marvellous progress has marked the last seven years. Notwithstanding their long and resolutely-maintained isolation and exclusivism, carried even into their political economy, and cherished in the national mind as their ark of safety and the shibboleth of their independence, the day has arrived when a British Minister can take up his residence in the capital, and is received by the Tycoon, not as were the chiefs of the Dutch factory at Decima—long the only representatives of Europe—in days now long passed, and never, it is to be hoped, to return.”
In another place—
“They are a well-to-do, flourishing, and advancing people, and for generations and centuries have maintained a respectable level of intellectual cultivation and social virtues.”
Sir Rutherford, in his desponding mood, cites, as an instance of the obstructive and unprogressive policy of the Government, that they refused to accept an offer made by Europeans to run monthly a steamer for them between their own ports; but he writes more sanguinely when he gives us an account of a visit he paid to the Government steam-factory at Nagasaki:—
“I could not but admire the progress made under every possible difficulty, by the Japanese and Dutch combined, in their endeavours to create in this remote corner of the earth all the complicated means and appliances for the repair and manufacture ultimately of steam machinery.”
There he found them making moderator lamps, and farther on there was a forge-factory in complete working order, with a Nasmyth’s hammer.
“And here we saw one of the most extraordinary and crowning testimonies of Japanese enterprise and ingenuity, which leaves all the Chinese have ever attempted far behind. I allude to a steam-engine with tubular boilers, made by themselves before a steam vessel or engine had ever been seen by Japanese—made solely, therefore, from the plans in a Dutch work.”
After this we do not think that the idea which our author ridicules, of the possibility of railways and steam communication in Japan, is so very absurd; considering all that he has undergone, it is not to be wondered at that he should occasionally take a gloomy view of the people and the country. Generally he is sanguine and complimentary, and nobody has had better opportunities of judging. He has visited the northern island, ascended Fusama, spent some weeks at a Japanese watering-place, where he found “peace, plenty, apparent content, and a country more perfectly and carefully cultivated, and kept with more ornamental timber everywhere, than can be matched even in England.” He made an overland journey from Nagasaki to Yedo, which lasted thirty-three days, and the incidents of which form one of the most interesting features of the book. There is an admirable description of a Japanese play, which, judged by the light of the future, seemed to be a rehearsal of the tragedy about to be perpetrated a fortnight later on Sir Rutherford himself. Occasionally the party traversed the territory of a hostile daimio; on these occasions the inhabitants shut themselves up. Thus, at Nieno, a daimio’s capital—
“As we advanced through the streets we found every house and every side-street hermetically closed, not a whisper was to be heard, nor the face of a living being to be seen. The side streets were all barricaded and shut out of view by curtains spread on high poles. His own house, which we passed, was similarly masked by curtains. Even in the adjoining villages no women or children were to be seen.”
These daimios are always followed by large bodies of armed retainers in their journeys through the country, and, as the last murder of our countryman proves, are not to be met without danger. On one occasion, says our author,
“Mr De Wit and I were riding abreast, and without any escort, having left them far behind, when, seeing rather a large cortege filling up the road as we turned an angle, we drew to one side of the road in single file. No sooner did the leading officer observe the movement than he instantly began to swagger, and motioned all the train to spread themselves over the whole road; so that all we gained by our consideration and courtesy was to run the risk of being pushed into the ditch by an insolent subordinate.”
Runners always precede these trains, calling upon the people to prostrate themselves; and the nobles are so accustomed to this act of homage that a European refusing to perform it incurs a great risk. Our author enters into great detail in the account he gives us of the habits and mode of life of the common people, for they alone come under the observation of the stranger; and we may regard the work before us as the most exhaustive description of the country and the people which we could expect from the pen of a foreigner. It is, moreover, admirably illustrated, and the reader cannot fail to rise from its perusal more thoroughly enlightened in all that concerns the singular people of whom it treats, than he could hope to be by all the previous works which have appeared on the same subject from the days of the Jesuit fathers. We had marked many passages illustrative of the everyday life of the Japanese, and some graphic descriptions of those scenes which are most characteristic and remarkable; but we have dwelt so long on the political considerations which have been suggested to us by the remarks of the author, that we can only commend his social sketches to the notice of the reader. The account of Sir Rutherford’s audience with the Tycoon is highly entertaining, and the effect of the actual ceremony must have been ridiculous in the extreme. The attitude of a Japanese in the presence of a superior almost amounts to prostration. In one room were “more than a hundred officers in grand official costume, all kneeling, five and six deep, in rows, perfectly mute, and immovable as statues, their heads just raised from the floor.” This attitude, when adopted by a crowd, is rather striking, perhaps, than ludicrous; but when the crowd begin to walk, the effect must be eminently absurd:—
“The most singular part of the whole costume, and that which, added to the head-gear, gave an irresistibly comic air to the whole presentment, was the immeasurable prolongation of the silk trousers. These, instead of stopping short at the heels, are unconscionably lengthened, and left to trail two or three feet behind them, so that their feet, as they advanced, seemed pushed into what should have been the knees of their garments; besides this, they often shuffle on their hands and knees.”
The performances of the jugglers, wrestlers, and top-spinners in Japan have already been constantly alluded to, but our author’s experiences surpass those of former spectators:—
“One of the most delicate of the performances consisted in making a top spin on the left hand, run up round the edge of the robe at the back of the neck, and down the other arm into the palm of the right hand, still spinning. Another, again, was to toss a spinning-top into the air and catch it on the hem of the sleeve without letting it fall. A third was to fling it high in the air and catch it on the bowl or the angle of a Japanese pipe, pass it behind the back, flinging it to the front, and then catch it again.”
Certainly an importation of Japanese top-spinners would make the fortune of any Barnum who could induce them to leave their country with the certainty of their being obliged to rip themselves up on their return. Let us hope that the discontinuance of this last trick may be one of the first-fruits of the introduction of Western civilisation into Japan.