Part 4 (2/2)
In the cities the tea-houses of the grander sort are the scenes of splendid entertainments. When a j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 gla.s.ses, 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 sake, 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 j.a.panese feasters go to work in marvellous fas.h.i.+on. 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 coa.r.s.e 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 sc.r.a.p 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 j.a.panese etiquette demands that he shall take home with him his share of the sc.r.a.ps of the banquet.
CHAPTER XVI
TEA-HOUSES AND TEMPLES (_continued_)
The j.a.panese are very fond of their temples, and visit them constantly.
They do this not only to pray to their G.o.ds, 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 wors.h.i.+ppers 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 wors.h.i.+ppers 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 G.o.ds. Everywhere may be seen the fat figures of the Seven G.o.ds of Wealth, the deities most beloved in every j.a.panese household. Then there are the G.o.d and G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess 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 sake 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 sc.r.a.p of paper, which sc.r.a.p is afterwards fastened to the bars of the grating in front of the figure of a G.o.d. A favourite G.o.d will have many thousand sc.r.a.ps 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 j.a.panese 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 G.o.d 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 j.a.panese 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.
CHAPTER XVII
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