Part 2 (2/2)
Sea-slugs, cuttle-fish, and other creatures which we consider the mere offal of the sea, are eagerly devoured by the j.a.panese.
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, cuc.u.mbers, 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 j.a.panese eat almost everything that grows, for they delight in dock and ferns, in wild ginger and bamboo shoots, and consider the last a great t.i.t-bit.
But to Europeans the j.a.panese vegetables seem very tasteless, and the chief of them all is very much disliked by Westerners. This is the famous daikon, the mighty j.a.panese radish, beloved among the poorer cla.s.ses 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 sake 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 j.a.panese housekeeper reaches home again she finds that her servants have finished their simple duties. Englishwomen always wonder what there is in a j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 s.h.i.+llings 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 a.s.sistance. 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 j.a.panese day is over.
CHAPTER X
j.a.pANESE GAMES
The children of j.a.pan 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 shuttlec.o.c.k and bounce b.a.l.l.s, 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 gra.s.shoppers, which are kept in tiny cages of bamboo, and hunting fireflies. The last pastime is followed by j.a.panese 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 fas.h.i.+on.
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. j.a.panese 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 ill.u.s.trating 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 j.a.panese alphabet.
j.a.panese children have many holidays and festivals, and they enjoy themselves very much on these joyous occasions. With their beautiful dresses of silk s.h.i.+ning 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 ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 b.a.l.l.s, which they threw down on the gra.s.s 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 b.a.l.l.s as they ran, and throwing them with all their force up at the paper drums.
”After a time, when a perfect shower of b.a.l.l.s had pa.s.sed through the tissue drums, quite demolis.h.i.+ng 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 cl.u.s.ter of flowers in the brilliant sparkling suns.h.i.+ne, with their pretty upturned faces watching the softly falling rain of coloured toys.”
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