OFFERING TEA TO A GUEST
OFFERING TEA TO A GUEST
When the Japanese housekeeper goes to market, she turns her attention, after the rice merchant's, to the fish and vegetable stalls. At the fish-stall nothing that comes out of the sea is overlooked. She buys not only fish, but seaweed, which is a common article of diet. It is eaten raw; it is also boiled, pickled, or fried; it is often made into soup. Sea-slugs, cuttle-fish, and other creatures which we consider the mere offal of the sea, are eagerly devoured by the Japanese.
At the vegetable-stall there will be a great variety of things for sale--beans, peas, potatoes, maize, buckwheat, carrots, lettuce, turnips, squash, musk- and water-melons, cucumbers, spinach, garlic, onions, leeks, chillies, capucams (the produce of the egg-plant), and a score of other things, including yellow chrysanthemum blossoms and the roots and seeds of the lotus. The Japanese eat almost everything that grows, for they delight in dock and ferns, in wild ginger and bamboo shoots, and consider the last a great tit-bit.
But to Europeans the Japanese vegetables seem very tasteless, and the chief of them all is very much disliked by Westerners. This is the famous daikon, the mighty Japanese radish, beloved among the poorer classes in its native land and abhorred by foreigners. It grows to an immense size, being often seen a yard long and as thick as a man's arm. When fresh it is harmless enough, but the Japanese love to pickle it, and Mrs. Bishop remarks:
"It is slightly dried and then pickled in brine, with rice bran. It is very porous, and absorbs a good deal of the pickle in the three months in which it lies in it, and then has a smell so awful that it is difficult to remain in a house in which it is being eaten. It is the worst smell I know of except that of a skunk!"
The pickle-seller's stall must not be forgotten, for the Japanese flavour their rather tasteless food with a wonderful variety of pickles and sauces. The great sauce is soy, made from fermented wheat and beans with salt and vinegar, and at times saké is added to it to heighten its flavour. This sauce is served with many articles of food, and fish are often cooked in it.
When the Japanese housekeeper reaches home again she finds that her servants have finished their simple duties. Englishwomen always wonder what there is in a Japanese house for servants to do. There are no fires to lay, no furniture to polish and clean, no carpets to sweep, and no linen to wash and mend; so Japanese servants spend much time chatting to each other, or sewing new kimonos together, or playing chess. As a rule, there are many more servants than are necessary to do the work. This is because servants are very cheap. There are always plenty of girls who are ready to fill the lower places if they can obtain food and clothes for their services, and the upper servants only receive small sums, sometimes as low as six or eight shillings a month.
If a servant wishes to leave her employment, she never gives direct notice to her mistress. That would be the height of rudeness. Instead she begs permission to visit her home, or a sick relation, or some one who needs her assistance. Upon the day that she should return a long and elaborate apology for her non-arrival is sent, saying that, most unhappily, she cannot be spared from her home or her post of duty. It is then understood that she has left.
In a similar fashion, no mistress tells a servant that she will not suit. A polite explanation that it will be inconvenient to accept her services at the moment is sent through a third party.
In the evening the whole family, servants included, gather in the main room of the house. The master and mistress sit near the hibachi (the stove) and the andon (the big paper lantern); the maids glide in and sit at a respectful distance with their sewing, if they have any. There may be conversation, or the master may read aloud from a book of historical romances or fairy stories; but the servants may laugh and chat as freely over joke or story as anyone.
When bed-time arrives the quilts come out of the cupboards, and are spread with due care that no one sleeps with the head to the north, for that is the position in which the dead are laid out, and so is a very unlucky one for the living. Then the little wooden neck-rests, which they use as pillows, are set in their places, and every one goes to bed. The Japanese day is over.
The children of Japan have many games, and some of these games are shared with them by their fathers and mothers--yes, and by their grandfathers and grandmothers too, for an old man will fly a kite as eagerly as his tiny grandson. The girls play battledore and shuttlecock and bounce balls, and the boys spin tops and make them fight. A top-fight is arranged thus: One boy takes his top, made of hard wood with an iron ring round it, winds it up with string, and throws it on the ground; while it is spinning merrily, another boy throws his top in such a way that it spins against the first top and knocks it over. So cleverly are the attacking tops thrown that the first top is often knocked to a distance of several feet. Other games are playing at war with toy weapons, hunting grasshoppers, which are kept in tiny cages of bamboo, and hunting fireflies. The last pastime is followed by Japanese of all ages, and the glittering flies are pursued by night, and struck down by a light fan.
Wherever there is a stream of water, the boys set up toy water-wheels, and these water-wheels drive little mills and machines, which the boys have made for themselves in the cleverest fashion.
Here is a group whose heads are very close together. Let us peep over their shoulders, and see what it is they watch so quietly and earnestly. Ah! this is a favourite trick. A small boy is setting a team of half a dozen beetles to draw a load of rice up a smooth, sloping board. He has made a tiny cart of paper, and filled it with rice. The traces of the cart are made of fine threads of silk, and he fastens the threads of silk to the backs of the beetles with gum.
Now he has his strange team in motion, and the beetles are marching up the board, dragging their load. The tiny faces in the ring of watchers are filled with deep but motionless interest. Not one dreams of stretching out a finger. There is no need to say, "Don't touch!" No one would dream of touching--that would be very rude. Japanese children manage their own games, without any appeal to their elders. It is not often that a dispute arises, but, should that happen, the question is settled at once by the word of an elder child. The decision is obeyed without a murmur, and the game goes on.
Another game of which children are fond is that of painting sand-pictures on the roadside. A group of children will compete in drawing a sand-picture in the shortest time. Each has four bags of coloured sand--black, red, yellow, and blue--and a bag of white. The white sand is first thrown down in the form of a square; then a handful of black sand is taken, and allowed to run through the fingers to form a quaint outline of a man, or bird, or animal, upon the white ground. Next, the design is finished with the other colours, and very often a most striking effect is obtained by these child artists. "But the most extraordinary and most fascinating thing of all is to watch the performance of a master in sand-pictures. So dexterous and masterly is he that he will dip his hand first into a bag of blue sand and then into one of yellow, allowing the separate streams to trickle out unmixed, and then, with a slight tremble of the hand, these streams will be quickly converted into one thin stream of bright green, relapsing again into the streams of blue and yellow at a moment's notice."
There are many indoor games, and a very great favourite is the game of alphabet cards. This is played with a number of cards, some of which contain a proverb and some a picture illustrating each proverb. The children sit in a ring, and the cards are dealt to them. One of the children is the reader, and when he calls out a proverb the one who has the picture corresponding to the proverb answers at once and gives up the card. The first one to be rid of his cards is the winner, and the one who holds the last card is the loser. If a boy is the loser, he has a dab of ink or of paint smudged on his face; if it is a girl, she has a wisp of straw put in her hair. The game is so called because each proverb begins with a letter of the Japanese alphabet.
Japanese children have many holidays and festivals, and they enjoy themselves very much on these joyous occasions. With their beautiful dresses of silk shining in the sun, a crowd of them looks like a great bed of flowers. Mr. Menpes speaks of a merry-making which he saw: "It was a festival for girls under ten, and there were hundreds of children, all with their kimonos tucked up, showing their scarlet petticoats, and looking for all the world like a mass of poppies.... Two rows or armies of these girls were placed several yards distant from each other in this long emerald-green field, and in the space between them stood two servants, each holding a long bamboo pole, and suspending from its top a flat, shallow drum, covered with tissue-paper.
"Presently two young men teachers appeared on the scene, carrying two baskets of small many-coloured balls, which they threw down on the grass between the children and the drums. Then a signal was given, and all the girls started running down the field at full tilt towards one another, pouncing on the balls as they ran, and throwing them with all their force up at the paper drums.
"After a time, when a perfect shower of balls had passed through the tissue drums, quite demolishing them, a shower of coloured papers, miniature lanterns, paper umbrellas, and flags came slowly fluttering down among the children on to their jet-black bobbing heads and into their eager outstretched hands. Never have I seen anything more beautiful than these gay, brightly-clad little people, packed closely together like a cluster of flowers in the brilliant sparkling sunshine, with their pretty upturned faces watching the softly falling rain of coloured toys."
On the third day of the third month there is great excitement in every Japanese household which numbers a girl among its domestic treasures: for the Feast of Dolls has come, the great festival for dolls. On this day the most beautiful dolls and dolls' houses are fetched from the godown, where the family furniture is kept, and are on exhibition for a short time, set out on shelves covered with scarlet cloth.
FIGHTING TOPS
FIGHTING TOPS
These dolls are the O-Hina, the honourable dolls. They are kept with the greatest care, and in some families there are dolls which are centuries old. As each doll is dressed exactly in the costume of its age, and is furnished with belongings which represent in miniature the furniture of that age, such a collection has great historic value, and is used to teach the children how their ancestors looked and lived.
There are common dolls for the little girls to play with every day, but these elaborate ones, the honourable dolls, are stored with the greatest care. Many of them are very costly. The doll is not only beautifully made and dressed, but its house is furnished with the most exact imitations of every article of furniture and of every utensil. In wealthy families this toy furniture is made of the rarest gold lacquer, or of solid silver, or of beautiful porcelain. Not a single article, either of state or of usefulness, is missing, and it is the delight of a Japanese girl at the Feast of Dolls to use the tiny utensils of her toy kitchen to prepare an elaborate feast of real food which is set before her honourable dolls.
The beginning of a collection of such dolls is made as soon as a girl is born. Every girl-child is presented with a pair of these dolls, and as time goes on she gathers all the articles which go with them. These dolls are always her own. When she marries she takes them to her new home.
When the O-Hina Matsuri, the Feast of Dolls, draws near, the Japanese shops begin to be full of the little images used at that time. The poorer are of painted earthenware; the finer are of wood, with clothes of the richest materials. These images, together with tiny bowls, and pots, and stoves, and trays, are used to set off and decorate the surroundings of the Feast of Dolls. They vary very greatly in price. The coolie household may have a set-out which cost a few pence. The O-Hina of a great noble's house will often be worth a fortune, having hundreds of beautifully carved and dressed images to represent the Emperor and Empress and every official of the Japanese Court, with every article used for State functions, and every piece of furniture needed to deck a royal palace. Other sets of O-Hina represent great personages in Japanese history, perhaps a great Daimio and his followers, each figure dressed with strict historical accuracy, and provided with every feature proper to its rank and period.
The great festival for boys comes at the Feast of Flags. This is held on the fifth day of the fifth month. Every one knows when the Feast of Flags is near, for before every house where there are boys a tall post of bamboo is set up. Swinging from the top of each post is the figure of a huge carp, made of brightly coloured paper. If a boy has been born in the house during the year the carp is made bigger still. The body of the fish is hollow, and when the wind blows into it, it wriggles its fins and tail just like a fish swimming strongly. The Japanese choose the carp because they say it has the power of ascending streams swiftly against the current and of leaping over waterfalls. It is thus supposed to typify a young man breasting the stream of life, and thrusting his way through difficulties to success.
As the boys' day draws near, the shops become full of toys for them. There are images bought for boys as well as for their sisters; but boys' images are those of soldiers, heroes, generals, famous old warriors, wrestlers, and so forth. The old Japanese were a war-like nation, and the toys provided for their sons at the Feast of Flags were helmets, flags, swords, bows and arrows, coats of mail, spears, and the like. The Feast of Flags itself is held on the day sacred to Hachima, the Japanese God of War, and the favourite game on that day is a mimic battle.
The boys divide themselves into two parties, called Heike and Genji. These names represent two great old rival clans of the feudal days. Every Heike carries a red flag on his back, every Genji a white one. Each combatant also wears a helmet, consisting of a kind of earthenware pot. The combat is joined, and the small warriors hack at each other with bamboo swords. A well-directed blow will dash to pieces the earthenware pot, and the wearer is then compelled to own defeat. That side wins which breaks most pots on its opponents' heads, or captures most flags.
This display of weapons, with blowing of horns and trumpets, serves another purpose also; for on the fifth day of the fifth month the Japanese believe that Oni, an evil-disposed god, comes down from the heavens to devour boys, or to bring great harm to them. But he fears sharp swords, so the long swordshaped blades of the sweet flag are gathered from the edges of rivers and the sides of swampy rice-fields, and used as decorations. As a Japanese writer says: "Oni fears the sword-blade of the sweet flag, so that its leaves are everywhere. They are upon the festal table; they hang in festoons about the house, and all along the eaves. Boys wear them tied around their heads, with the white scraped fragrant roots projecting like two horns from their foreheads. So, and with the noise of bamboo horns, they frighten away the ogre god. For he fears horned men, and he dares not enter a house where so many swords hang from the eaves."
How would you like to go to a fair with a farthing, a whole farthing, to spend as you pleased? I think I can see some of you turning your noses up, and looking very scornful. "A farthing, indeed!" you say. "Pray, of what use is a farthing? I wouldn't mind going to a fair with a shilling, or even sixpence, but what could anyone do with a farthing?" Well, in Japan you could do a great deal. We must remember that Japan is a country of tiny wages; many of its workers do not receive more than sixpence a day, and a man who gets a shilling is well off. Tiny earnings mean tiny spendings, and things are arranged on a scale to meet very slender purses.
We will now see what sort of time O Hara San, Miss Blossom, and her brother, Taro San, Master Eldest Son, had at the fair one fine day in Nagasaki. In the morning they sprang up from their quilts full of excited pleasure, for they had been looking forward to this fair for some time. But they did not romp and chatter and show their excitement as English children would do. Their black eyes shone a little more brightly than usual, and that was all.
When they had whipped their rice into their mouths with their little chopsticks, they started for the fair, which was to be held in the grounds of a great temple. Of course, they were dressed in their best clothes. Both had new kimonos, and O Hara San had a very fine obi, which her parents had bought for her by denying themselves many little luxuries. Their father and grandmother went with them, but their mother stayed at home with the baby. Their father wore a newly-washed kimono, but his chief glory was an old bowler hat which a European gentleman had given to him. It had been much too large for him, but he had neatly taken it in, and now wore it with great pride. When they reached the fair they gave themselves up to its delights with all their hearts. There was so much to do and so much to see. Almost at once O Hara San and Taro were beguiled by a sweetmeat stall.
Each had five rin, and five rin make one farthing, or rather less, but we will call it a farthing for the sake of round figures. One rin apiece was spent here. The stall was in two divisions: one stocked with delicious little bottles of sugar-water, the other with pieces of candy, tinted bright blue and red and green. Miss Blossom went in for a bottle of sugar-water, and her brother for candies. But first he demanded of the candy-seller that he should be allowed to try his luck at the disc. This was a disc having an arrow which could be whirled round, and if the arrow paused opposite a lucky spot an extra piece of candy was added to the purchase. To Taro's great joy, he made a lucky hit, and won the extra piece of candy; he felt that the fair had begun very well for him.
While they drank sugar-water and munched candy, they wandered along looking at the booths, where all sorts of wonders were to be seen--booths full of conjurers, acrobats, dancers, of women who could stretch their necks to the length of their arms, or thrust their lips up to cover their eyebrows, and a hundred other curious tricks. The price of admission was one rin each to children, and finally they chose the conjurer's booth, and saw him spout fire from his mouth, swallow a long sword, and finally exhibit a sea-serpent, which appeared to be made of seal-skins tacked together.
When they left the show they came all at once on one of the great delights of a Japanese fair. It was the man with the cooking-stove, round whom children always throng as flies gather about honey. For the fifth part of a farthing you may have the use of his cooking-stove, you may have a piece of dough, or you may have batter with a cup, a spoon, and a dash of soy sauce. You may then abandon yourself to the delights of making a cake for yourself, baking it for yourself, and then eating it yourself, and if you spend a couple of hours over the operation the man will not grumble. As this arrangement combines both the pleasure of making a cake and playing with fire, it is very popular, and we cannot wonder that Taro took a turn, though Miss Blossom did not. She felt herself rather too big to join the swarm of happy urchins round the stove.
While Taro was baking his cake she spent her third rin on a peep-show, where a juggler made little figures of paper and pasteboard dance and perform all kinds of antics. Then they went on again. Each bought one rin's worth of sugared beans, a very favourite sweet-meat; and these they ate while they waited for their father and grandmother to join them at the door of a certain theatre where they had agreed to meet. Into this theatre was pouring a stream of people, old and young, men, women, children, and babies, for a great historical play was to be performed, and it would shortly begin. Soon their elders turned up, and their father took their last rin to make up the payment which would admit them.
In they went, and took possession of their place. The floor of the theatre was divided by little partitions, about a foot or so high, into a vast number of tiny squares, like open egg-boxes. In one of these little boxes our friends squatted down on the floor, and the grandmother began to unpack the bundle which she had been carrying. This bundle contained a number of cooking-vessels and an ample supply of rice, for here they meant to stay for some hours to see the play, to eat and drink, and enjoy themselves generally.
The father filled his pipe, lighted it at the hibachi, and began to smoke, as hundreds more were doing all round them. Each box contained a family, and each family had brought its cooking-pots, its food, and its drink; and hawkers of food, of pipes, of tobacco, of saké, and of a score of other things, rambled up and down selling their wares.
THE TOY SHOP
THE TOY SHOP
When the play began every one paid close attention, for it was a great historical play, and the Japanese go to the theatre and take their children there in order to learn history. There are represented the old wars, the old feuds, the struggle of Daimio against Daimio--in short, the history of old Japan. When an actor gave pleasure, the audience flung their hats on the stage. These were collected by an attendant, and kept until the owners redeemed them by giving a present. For six hours O Hara San and Taro sat in their little box, laughing, shouting, eating, and drinking, while the play went on. Then it was over, for it was only a short play, at a cheap theatre. "Ah!" said their father, "when I was a boy we had real plays. We used to rise early and be in the theatre by six o'clock in the morning. There we would stay enjoying ourselves until eleven at night. But now the decree of the Government is that no play shall last more than nine hours. It is too little!"
The children quite agreed with him as they helped their grandmother to gather the pots and pans and dishes which were scattered about their box. Then each took the wooden ticket which would secure the shoes which they had left outside with the attendants, and went slowly from the theatre. When they had obtained their shoes and put them on, Miss Blossom and Master Eldest Son strolled slowly homewards through the fair. They had not another rin to spend--their farthing's worth of fun was over.
About a fortnight after the fair, on a fine windy afternoon, there was a holiday, and Taro, with his father and his younger brother Ito, turned out to fly kites. Some of their neighbours were already at work flying kites from the roofs of the houses or from windows, but our friends wanted more room than that, and went up to a piece of higher ground behind their street. Here they joined a crowd of kite-flyers. Every one was out to-day with his kite, old and young, men of sixty, with yellow, wrinkled faces, down to toddlers of three, who clutched their strings and flew their little kites with as much gravity and staidness as their grandfathers. Before long O Hara San came up with the baby on her back, and he had a bit of string in his tiny fist and a scrap of a kite not much bigger than a man's hand floating a few yards above his head.
But Taro was a proud boy this afternoon. He was about to fly his first big fighting kite. It was made of tough, strong paper, stretched on a bamboo frame five feet square, a kite taller than his own father. The day before Taro had pounded a piece of glass up fine and mixed it with glue. The mixture had been rubbed on the string of his kite for about thirty feet near the kite-end and left to dry. Now, if he could only get this string to cut sharply across the string of another kite, the latter cord would be severed, and he could proudly claim the vanquished kite as his own.
Kites of every colour and shape hovered in the air above the wide open space. There were square kites of red, yellow, green, blue, every colour of the rainbow; many were decorated with gaily-painted figures of gods, heroes, warriors, and dragons. There were kites in the shape of fish, hawks, eagles, and butterflies. Some had hummers, made of whalebone, which hummed musically in the wind as they rose; and as for fighting kites, they were abroad in squads and battalions. In one place the fight was between single kites; in another a score of men with blue kites met a score with red kites and the kites fluttered, darted, swooped, dived this way, that way, and every way, as they were skilfully moved by the strings pulled from below. Now and again one of them was seen to fall helplessly away and drift down the wind; its string had been cut by some victorious rival, and it had been put out of the battle.
Taro had his kite high up in the air very soon; it flew splendidly, and for some time he was very busy in trying it and learning its ways, for every kite has its own tricks of moving in the air. Then suddenly he saw a great brown eagle sailing towards it. He looked up and saw that a boy named Kanaya was directing the eagle kite towards his own, and that it was a challenge to a fight. Taro accepted at once, and the combat was joined.
Kanaya brought his eagle swiftly over Taro's big square kite, brightly painted in bars of many colours, but Taro let out string and escaped. Then he swung his kite up into the wind and made it swoop on the eagle. But Kanaya was already winding his string swiftly in and had raised his kite out of reach of the swoop. And so they went on for more than an hour, pursuing, escaping, feinting, dodging, until at last the eagle caught a favourable slant of wind and darted down so swiftly that Taro could not escape. The strings crossed, and the upper began to chafe the lower savagely.
Taro tried to work his kite away, but in vain. The eagle string was strong and sharp. At the next moment Taro felt a horrid slackness of his string; no more could he feel the strong, splendid pull of his big kite. There it was, going, falling headlong to the ground. Kanaya had won. Nothing now remained to Taro but to take his beating like a Japanese and a gentleman. With a cheerful smile he made three low bows to his conqueror. Kanaya, with the utmost gravity, returned the bows before he ran away to secure the kite he had won.
Now, there had been a very interested and attentive observer of this battle in Ito, Taro's younger brother. Ito never said a word or moved a muscle of his little brown face when he saw his brother defeated and the big kite seized in triumph by Kanaya. But his black eyes gleamed a little more brightly in their narrow slits as he let out more string and waited for Kanaya to begin to fly again.
Ito had succeeded to the possession of Taro's old kite. It was less than two feet square, but it flew well, and Ito had also anointed his string with the mixture of pounded glass and glue, and was ready for combat Within ten minutes Kanaya was flying once more, and now he had Taro's kite high in the air. He had put away his own big brown eagle, and was flying the kite he had just won. He had scarcely got it well up when a smaller square kite came darting down upon it from a great height. Ito had entered the lists, and a fresh battle began.
It was even longer and stubborner than the first, for Ito's kite, being much smaller, had much less power in the air; but Ito made up for this by showing the greatest skill in the handling of his kite, and quite a crowd gathered to see the struggle, watching every movement in perfect silence and with the deepest gravity. Suddenly Ito pounced. He caught a favourable gust of wind, and swung his line across Kanaya's with the greatest dexterity. Saw-saw went the line, and at the next moment the great kite went tumbling down the wind, and Kanaya and Ito exchanged the regulation bows. Then the latter looked at his brother without a word, and Taro ran to seize his beloved kite again.
"It is yours now, Ito," said the elder brother, when he came back.
"Oh no," said Ito; "we will each keep our own. I am glad I got it back from Kanaya."
When Taro and Ito went home that night with their kites, they were glad to sit down and rest, for they had been running about until they were quite tired. When they had eaten their suppers of rice from their little brown bowls of lacquer, they begged their grandmother to tell them a story, and she told them the famous old story of Momotaro, beloved of every child in Japan. And this is what she told them: Once upon a time an old man and an old woman lived near a river at the foot of a mountain. Every day the old man went to the mountain to cut wood and carry it home, while the old woman went to the river to wash clothes. Now, the old woman was very unhappy because she had no children; it seemed to her that if she only had a son or a daughter she would be the most fortunate old woman in the world.
Well, one day she was washing the clothes in the river, when she saw something floating down the stream towards her. It proved to be a great pear, and she seized it and carried it home. As she carried it she heard a sound like the cry of a child. She looked right and left, up and down, but no child was to be seen. She heard the cry again, and now she fancied that it came from the big pear. So she cut the pear open at once, and, to her great surprise and delight, she found that there was a fine baby sitting in the middle of it. She took the child and brought it up, and because he was born in a pear she called him Momotaro.
Momotaro grew up a strong, fine boy, and when he was seventeen years old he started out to seek his fortune. He had made up his mind to attack an island where lived a very dreadful ogre. The old woman gave him plenty of food to eat on the way--corn and rice wrapped in a bamboo-leaf, and many other things--and away he went. He had not gone far when he met a wasp.
"Give me a share of your food, Momotaro," said the wasp, "and I will go with you and help you to overcome the ogre."
"With all my heart," said Momotaro, and he shared his food at once with the wasp.
Soon he met a crab, and the same agreement was made with the crab, and then with a chestnut, and last of all with a millstone.
So now the five companions journeyed on together towards the island of the ogre. When the island was reached they crept up to the house of the ogre, and found that he was not in his room. So they soon made a plan to take advantage of his absence. The chestnut laid itself down in the ash of a charcoal fire which had been burning on the hearth, the crab hid himself in a washing-pan nearly full of water, the wasp settled in a dusky corner, the millstone climbed on to the roof, and Momotaro hid himself outside.
Before long the ogre came back, and he went to the fire to warm his hands. The chestnut at once cracked in the hot ashes, and threw burning cinders over the ogre's hands. The ogre at once ran to the washing-pan, and thrust his hands into it to cool them. The crab caught his fingers and pinched them till the ogre roared with pain. Snatching his hands out of the pan, the ogre leapt into the dusky corner as a safe place; but the wasp met him and stung him dreadfully. In great fright and misery the ogre tried to run out of the room, but down came the millstone with a crash on his head and killed him at once. So, without any trouble to himself, and by the help of the faithful friends which his kindness had made for him, Momotaro gained possession of the ogre's wealth, and his fortune was made.
Then the grandmother told them of Jizo, the patron saint of travellers and children, the helper of all who are in trouble.
Everywhere by the roadside in Japan is found the figure of Jizo. Sometimes a figure of noble height, carved in stone or in the living rock, sometimes no more than a rough carving in wood, he is represented as a priest with kindly face, holding a traveller's staff in his right hand and a globe in his left. He stands upon a lotus-flower, and about his feet there lies a pile of pebbles, to which pile each wayfarer adds a fresh pebble.
And the old grandmother bade the children never pass a figure of Jizo without paying it the tribute of a pebble, for this reason: Every little child who dies, she said, has to pass over So-dzu-kawa, the river of the underworld. Now, on the banks of this river there lives a wicked old hag who catches little children as they try to cross, steals their clothes from them, and sets them to work to help her in her endless task of piling up the stones on the shore of the stream. Jizo helps these poor children, and every one who throws a pebble at the foot of this shrine also takes a share in lightening the labour of some little one down below.
Another favourite story is that of Urashima, the fisher-boy. Urashima was a handsome fisher-boy, who lived near the Sea of Japan, and every day he went out in his boat to catch fish in order to help his parents. But one day Urashima did not return. His mother watched long, but there was no sign of her son's boat coming back to the shore. Day after day passed, and Urashima was mourned as dead. But he was not dead. Out on the sea he had met the Sea-God's daughter, and she had carried him off to a green, sunny land where it was always summer. There they lived for some time in great love and happiness. When it appeared to Urashima that several weeks had passed in this pleasant land, he begged permission of the Princess to return home and see his parents.
"They will be sorrowing for me," he said. "They will fear that I am lost, and drowned at sea." At last she allowed him to go, and she gave him a casket, but told him to keep it closed.
"As long as you keep it closed," she said, "I shall always be with you, but if you open it you will lose both me and this sunny summer land for ever."
Urashima took the casket, promised to keep it closed, and returned home. But his native village had vanished. There was no sign of any dwelling upon the shore, and not far away there was a town which he had never seen before. In truth, every week that he had spent with the Princess had been a hundred years on earth, and his home and native village had passed away centuries ago, and the place where they had stood had been forgotten. In his despair, he forgot the words of the Princess, and opened the forbidden box. A faint blue mist floated out and spread over the sea, and a wonderful change took place at once in Urashima. From a handsome youth he turned to a feeble and decrepit old man, and then he fell upon the shore and lay there dead. In the box the Princess had shut up all the hours of their happy life, and when they had once escaped he became as other mortals, and old age and death came upon him at a bound.
Tea-houses and temples run together very easily in the Japanese mind, for wherever you find a temple there you also find a tea-house. But tea-houses are not confined to the neighbourhood of temples: they are everywhere. The tea-house is the house of public entertainment in Japan, and varies from the tiny cabin with straw roof, a building which is filled by half a dozen coolies drinking their tea, to large and beautiful structures, with floors and ceilings of polished woods, splendid mats, and tables of ebony and gold.
The tea-house does not sell tea alone. It will lodge you and find you dinners and suppers, and is in country places the Japanese hotel. If tea-houses sold tea and nothing else it is certain that European travellers would be in a very bad way, for there is one point they are all agreed upon, and that is that the tea, as a rule, is quite unpalatable to a Western taste. However, it does not matter in the least whether you drink it or not as long as you pay your money, and the last is no great tax--about three halfpence.
A BUDDHIST SHRINE
A BUDDHIST SHRINE
When a traveller steps into a tea-house the girl attendants, the moosmes, gay in their scarlet petticoats, kneel before him, and, if it is an out-of-the-way place, where the old fashions are kept up, place their foreheads on the matting. Then away they run to fetch the tea. Japanese servants always run when they wish to show respect; to walk would look careless and disrespectful in their eyes. The tea arrives in a small pot on a lacquer tray, with five tiny teacups without handles round the pot. There is no milk or sugar, and the tea is usually a straw-coloured, bitter liquid, very unpleasant to a European taste. But if a cup be raised to the lips and set down, and three sen--a sen is about a halfpenny--laid on the tray, all goes well, and every one is satisfied. This bringing of tea to a visitor is universal in Japan. It is not only done in a tea-house, where one would expect it, but on every occasion. A friendly call at a private house produces the teacups like magic, and when a customer enters a good shop, business matters are undreamed of until many little cups of tea have been produced; and if the customer has many things to buy and stays a long time, tea is steadily brought forward in relays. If you don't care for your tea plain, you may have it flavoured with salted cherry blossoms, but that is not considered an improvement by the Westerner, who longs for sugar and milk. If you wish to stay for the night at a tea-house, a room is made for you by sliding some paper screens into the wall and ceiling grooves, and a couple of quilts are laid on the floor to form a bed. That is the whole provision made in the way of furniture if you are off the beaten track of tourists: the rest you must provide for yourself.
In the cities the tea-houses of the grander sort are the scenes of splendid entertainments. When a Japanese wishes to give a dinner to his friends he does not ask them to his house; he invites them to a banquet at some famous tea-house. There he provides not only the delicacies which make up a Japanese dinner, but hires dancing girls, called geisha, to amuse the company by their dancing and singing.
A foreigner who is asked to one of these Japanese dinners finds everything very strange and not a little difficult. At the doors of the tea-house his boots are taken off, and he marches across the matting, to do his best to sit on his heels for a few hours. This gives him the cramp, and soon he is reduced to sitting with his back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him. He can manage in this way pretty fairly.
There may be a table before him, or there may not. If there is a table, it will be a tiny affair about a foot high. There will be no tablecloth, no glasses, no knives and forks, no spoons, and no napkin. He will be expected to deal with his food with a pair of chopsticks. When these are set before him, he will see that the two round slips of wood are still joined together. This is to show that they have never been used before. He breaks them apart, and wonders how he is going to get his food into his mouth with two pencils of wood.
The feast begins with tea served by moosmes, who kneel before each guest. Each wears her most beautiful dress, and is girded with a huge and brilliant sash. After the tea they bring in pretty little white cakes made of bean flour and sugar, and flavoured with honey. The next course is contained in a batch of little dishes, two or three of which are placed before each guest. These contain minced dried fish, sea slugs floating in an evil-smelling sauce, and boiled lotus-seeds. To wash down these dainties a porcelain bottle of saké, rice-beer, is provided.
The unhappy foreigner tastes one dish after the other, finds each one worse than the last, and concludes to wait till the next course. This is composed of a very great dainty, raw, live fish, which one dips in sauce before devouring. Then comes rice, and the chopsticks of the Japanese feasters go to work in marvellous fashion. With their strips of wood or ivory they whip the rice grain into their mouths with wonderful speed and dexterity, but our unlucky foreigner gets one grain into his mouth in five minutes, and is reduced to beg for a spoon.
The next course is of fish soup and boiled fish, and potatoes appear with the fish; but, alas! the fish is most oddly flavoured and the potatoes are sweet; they have been beaten up with sugar into a sort of stiff syrup. Next comes seaweed soup and the coarse evil-smelling daikon radish, served with various pickles and sauces.
Among the other oddments is a dish of nice-looking plums. Our foreigner seizes one and pops it in his mouth. He would be only too glad to pop it out again if he could, for the plum has been soaked in brine, and tastes like a very salty form of pickle. As he experiments here and there among the wilderness of little lacquer bowls which come forth relay upon relay, he feels inclined to paraphrase the cry of the Ancient Mariner, and murmur: "Victuals, victuals everywhere, and not a scrap to eat!" When at length the dinner has run its course the geisha, in their beautiful robes of silk and brocade and their splendid sashes, come in to sing and dance. Europeans are soon tired of both performances. The geisha, with her face whitened with powder, and her lips painted a bright red, and her elaborately-dressed hair full of ornaments, sits down to a sort of guitar called a samisen and sings, but her song has no music in it. It is a kind of long-drawn wail, very monotonous and tuneless to European ears. The dancing is a kind of acting in dumb show, and consists of a number of postures, while the movements of the fan take a large share in conveying the dancer's meaning.
When our foreigner starts home from this long and rather fatiguing entertainment, he finds that he has by no means finished with his dinner. On his way to his carriage he will be waylaid by the little moosmes who have waited upon him, and their arms will be filled with flat white wooden boxes. These contain the food that was offered to him and left uneaten, and Japanese etiquette demands that he shall take home with him his share of the scraps of the banquet.
The Japanese are very fond of their temples, and visit them constantly. They do this not only to pray to their gods, but to enjoy themselves as well, for the temple grounds are the scene of great fairs and festivals. If you visit a temple on the day of some great function, you will find its steps outside packed with rows upon rows of clogs and umbrellas, placed there by the worshippers inside. You enter, and find the latter seated on the floor, and if the service is not going on at the moment they are smoking and chatting together, and the children are crawling about in the crowd.
When the service is over the worshippers disperse to find a cool spot in the temple grounds to eat their simple meal. In front of the temple stands a wooden arch, called a torii. Sometimes the temple is approached through a whole avenue of them of various sizes. The building is of wood, sometimes small, sometimes very large, and is usually surrounded by booths and tea-houses. At many of the booths may be purchased the figures of the more popular gods. Everywhere may be seen the fat figures of the Seven Gods of Wealth, the deities most beloved in every Japanese household. Then there are the God and Goddess of Rice, who protect the crops, and who are attended by the figures of foxes quaintly carved in wood or moulded in white plaster. The Goddess of Mercy, with her many hands to help and save, is also a favourite idol.
At another spot you find peep-shows, stalls at which hairpins, paints, and powder-boxes, and a thousand other trifles, are sold; archery galleries, where you may fire twenty arrows at a target for a halfpenny; booths, where acrobats, conjurers, and jugglers are performing, and tea-houses without number, where the faithful are sipping their tea or saké and puffing at their tiny pipes.
The young girls are fond of purchasing sacred beans and peas and rice at a stall set up under the eaves of the temple. With these they feed the temple pigeons, who come swooping down from the great wooden roof, or the sacred white pony with the blue eyes which belongs to the holy place. On the steps sit rows of licensed beggars, who will pray for those who will present them with the tenth part of a farthing. But prayers may also be bought from the priests, prayers written upon a scrap of paper, which scrap is afterwards fastened to the bars of the grating in front of the figure of a god. A favourite god will have many thousand scraps of paper fluttering before it at one time.
Many of the temple gardens are of very great beauty and interest. There can be seen many of the marvels of Japanese gardening--tiny dwarf trees, hundreds of years old, and yet only a few inches high, or tall shrubberies cut and trained to represent a great junk in full sail, or the figure of a god or hero.
At certain times of the year when the temple orchards are in blossom, great throngs visit them simply to enjoy the delicate beauty of the scene. The plum-blossom appears in February, and the cherry-blossom in April or May. Later in the year the purple iris is followed by the golden chrysanthemum. High and low, all crowd to see the beauty of a vast sweep of lovely blossom. A poor Japanese thinks nothing of walking a hundred miles or more to see some famous orchard or garden in its full flowering splendour.
From his earliest years this love of natural beauty has been a part of his education. As a child he has taken many a trip with his father and mother to admire the acres of plum or cherry blossom in a park or temple-garden; as a man he lays his work aside and goes to see the same spectacle with redoubled delight.
"For his heart is in Japan, with its junks and Fujisan,And its tea-houses and temples, and the smiling rickshaw-man."
We have heard of Fujisan, the famous mountain; we have talked of tea-houses and temples; and now we must say something about the rickshaw-man or boy, a very important person indeed in Japan. He is not important because of riches or rank, for, as a rule, he is very poor and of the coolie order; he is important because he is so useful. He is at one and the same time the cabman and the cab-horse of Japan. He waits in the street with his little carriage, and when you jump in he takes hold of the shafts himself and trots away with you at a good speed.
The jin-ri-ki-sha, to give it its full name, means man-power carriage, and is like a big mail-cart or perambulator. There is a hood of oiled paper to pull up for wet weather, a cushion to sit on, a box for parcels under the seat, two tall slight wheels, and a pair of shafts. If the rickshaw-boy is well-to-do in his business, his carriage is gaily lacquered and painted with bright designs, and however poor he may be, there will be some attempt at decoration.
At night every rickshaw is furnished with a pretty paper lantern, circular in form, about eighteen inches long, and painted in gay designs. These look quite charming as they bob here and there through the dusk, their owners racing along with a fare. The rickshaw is as modern as the bicycle. The first one was made less than forty years ago, but they sprang into favour at once, and their popularity grew by leaps and bounds. The fact is that the rickshaw fits Japan as a round peg fits a round hole. In the first place, it opened a new and money-making industry to many thousands of men who had little to do. There were vast numbers of strong, active young fellows who leapt forward at once to use their strength and endurance in this novel and profitable fashion. Then, the vehicle was suited to Japanese conditions, both in town and country.
In town the streets are so narrow and busy that horse traffic would be dangerous. In fact, in many places a horse is so rare a sight that when one trots along a street a man runs ahead, blowing a horn to warn people to clear out of the way. But the rickshaw-boy dodges through the traffic with his little light carriage, and runs over no one.
Then, in the country the roads are often very narrow, and sometimes very bad--mere tracks between fields of rice. Here the rickshaw is of great service, owing to its light weight and the little room it requires.
As a rule, the rickshaw is drawn by one man and holds one passenger; but it has often to contain two Japanese, for the pair of them will fit snugly into the space required for one Englishman. If the traveller wishes to go fast, he has two human horses harnessed to his light chariot. Both run in front till a hill is reached, when one drops back to push behind.
Wherever you arrive in Japan, whether by steamer or by train, you will find long rows of rickshaw-boys waiting to be hired. They are all called boys, whatever their age may be. Until a possible passenger comes in sight, the queer little men, many of them under five feet in height, stand beside their rickshaws, smoking their tiny little brass pipes with bowls about half as big as a thimble. Their clothes are very simple. They wear a very tight pair of short blue drawers and a blue tunic, upon the back of which a huge white crest is painted, the distinguishing mark of each boy. An enormous white hat the size and shape of a huge basin is worn on the head; but if the day becomes very hot the hat is taken off, and a wisp of cloth bound round the forehead to prevent sweat from running into the eyes. As for sunstroke, the rickshaw-boy has no fear of that.
When you step into sight, a score dart forward, dragging their rickshaws after them with one hand and holding the other up to draw your attention, and shouting, "Riksha! Riksha! Riksha!" You choose one, and step in. The human steed springs between the shafts, raises them and tilts you backwards, and then darts off, as if eager to show you his strength and speed, and prove to you what a good choice you have made.
Away bounds the little man, and soon you are bowling along a narrow street where a passage seems impossible, so full is it of boys and girls, men and women, shops and stalls. There may be a side-walk, but then, the shopkeepers have taken that to spread out their wares, or the stallkeepers have set up their little booths there. So the people who want to go along the street, and the boys and girls who want to play in it, are all driven to the middle of the way.
Here and there your rickshaw dodges, working its way through the crowd. Now the man pauses a second lest he should run full-tilt over a group of gaily-dressed little girls, each with a baby on her back, playing at ball in the road. Half a dozen others are busy with battledores and shuttlecocks, and the gaily-painted toys drop into your carriage, and you are expected to toss them out again to the mites, who will bow very deeply and with the profoundest gravity in return for your politeness; then something flutters over your head, and you see that two boys and an old man are sitting on the roof of a house about as high as a tool-shed, trying to get their kites up. And you say to yourself that it is lucky that there are no horses, for the quietest beast that ever lifted a hoof would bolt here and charge through the whirl and uproar and the rain of dropping shuttlecocks and bouncing balls.
Another fine thing about rickshaw-riding is that no one can call it expensive. While the boy goes, you pay him about sevenpence an hour; while he waits you pay him rather less than twopence-halfpenny an hour, and you can have his services for a whole day for about half a crown. But some of them will try to cheat you in places where foreigners are often met with, and will put a whole twopence an hour on the regular price.
This is very sad, and causes the rickshaw-boy to be looked upon as a tradesman; he is not allowed the honour of being regarded as a servant and the member of an honourable profession--one who puts his master's interests before his own. But, as a rule, the foreigner who employs the same rickshaw-boy comes to look upon him as a guide, philosopher, and friend. He will tell you where to go and what to do; he knows all the sights, and can tell you all about them. If you go shopping, he will come in and see that you don't get cheated any more than you are bound to be. If you go on an expedition, he will find out the best tea-house to stay at, he will cook for you, wait on you, brush your clothes, put up the paper screens to form your bedroom, take them down again, see that the bill is reasonable, pay it, and fee the servants--in short, he will manage everything, and you have only to admire what you have gone to see.
Wherever you stop on a jaunt, whether it is some famous temple or some lovely park, there is sure to be a coolie's tea-house handy, and he takes the opportunity of refreshing himself. He dives into the well under the seat and fetches out his lacquer box full of rice. He whips the rice into his mouth with chopsticks, and washes it down with the yellow, bitter Japanese tea. Then he sits and smokes his tiny pipe until you are ready to go on.
The Japanese farmer is one of the steadiest workers in the world; he tills his patch of land, day in, day out, with untiring industry. He works seven days a week, for he knows nothing of the Sabbath, and only takes a day off for a fair or a festival when his land is in perfect order and he is waiting for the crop.
Almost the whole of the land is turned over with the spade, and weeds are kept down until the whole country looks like a neatly-kept garden. Many crops are grown, but the chief of them all is rice, and when the rice crop fails, then vast numbers of people in Japan feel the pinch of famine.
In order to grow rice much water is needed, so the fields are flooded from a river or canal near at hand, and the plants are set in the soft mud. This work is carried out by men or women who wade in slush above their knees, and it is a very dirty and toilsome task. The women tuck their kimonos up, and the men cast theirs aside altogether. After planting, this work in deep slush and clinging mud must be repeated three times in order to clear away the water-weeds which grow thickly around the young rice-plants.