Part 7 (2/2)
Immediately ahead of the anchorage is the small island of Desima, the most interesting portion of the city to Europeans. Previous to 1859 it was the only part of j.a.pan open to foreigners, and even then only to the Dutch, who, for upwards of 200 years, had never been allowed to set foot outside the limits of the island,--a s.p.a.ce 600 feet long by 150 feet broad--separated from the main land by the narrowest of ca.n.a.ls.
j.a.panese towns are laid out in regular streets, much after the fas.h.i.+on obtaining in Europe. The system of drainage is abominable, though personally, the people are the cleanest on earth, if constant bathing is to be taken as an index to cleanliness. The streets have no footpaths, and access to the houses is obtained by three or four loose planks stretching across the open festering gutters. As a natural result, small pox and cholera commit yearly ravages amongst the populace. Another great evil against good sanitation, exists in the shallowness of their graves. The j.a.panese have also a penchant for unripe fruits.
A native house is a perfect model of neatness and simplicity. A simple framework, of a rich dark coloured wood, is thrown up, and roofed over with rice straw. There is but one story, the requisite number of apartments being made by means of sliding wooden frames, covered with snow-white rice paper. The floor is raised off the ground about eighteen inches, and is covered with beautiful and delicately wrought straw mattresses, on which the inmates sit, recline, take their meals, and sleep at night. These habitations possess nothing in the shape of furniture; no fireplace even, because the j.a.panese--like Chinese--never use fire to warm themselves, the requisite degree of warmth being obtained by the addition of more and heavier garments. These abodes present a marked contrast to the Chinese dwellings, which, as we saw, were foul and grimy, whilst here all is cheerful and airy.
No house is complete without its tiny garden of dwarf trees, its model lakes, in which that curiosity of fish-culture, the many tailed gold and silver fish, are to be seen disporting themselves; its rockeries spanned by bridges; its boats and junks floating about on the surface of the lakes, in fact a j.a.panese landscape in miniature.
It seems the privilege of a people, who live in a land where nature surrounds them with bright and beautiful forms, to, in some manner, reflect these beauties in their lives. This people possess these qualities in an eminent degree, for a happier, healthier, more cheerful race, one will rarely see. Their children--ridiculously like their seniors from wearing the same style of garment--are the roundest, rosiest, chubbiest little pieces of humanity ever born. Everybody has a fresh, wholesome look, due to repeated ablutions. The bath amongst the j.a.panese, as amongst the ancient Romans, is a public inst.i.tution; in fact, we think too public, for both s.e.xes mix promiscuously together in the same bath, almost in the full light of day; whilst hired wipers go about their business in a most matter-of-fact manner. This is a feature of the people we cannot understand, but they themselves consider it no impropriety. A writer on j.a.pan, speaking of this says:--”We cannot, with justice, tax with immodesty the individual who, in his own country, wounds none of the social proprieties in the midst of which he has been brought up.” These bath-houses are perfectly open to the public gaze, no one evincing the slightest curiosity to look within, except, perhaps, the diffident sailor. It is very evident that Mrs. Grundy has not yet put in her censorious appearance in j.a.pan, nor have our western conventionalities set their seal on what, after all, is but a single act of personal cleanliness. ”_Honi soit qui mal y pense._”
Their mode of dress is an embodiment of simplicity and elegance. Both s.e.xes wear a sort of loose dressing gown, sometimes of silk--mostly so in the case of the fair s.e.x--crossed over the front of their bodies, allowing the knee perfect liberty to protrude itself, if it is so minded, and confined to the waist by a band. But it is more particularly of the dress of the ladies I wish to speak. The band circling the waist, and known as the ”_obe_,” is very broad, and composed of magnificent folds of rich silk, and tied up in a large quaint bow behind. A j.a.panese lady lavishes all her taste on the selection of the material and in the choice of colour, of which these bands are composed, and which are to them what jewellery is to the more refined Europeans. No ornament of the precious metal is ever seen about their persons. Their taste in the matter of hues is faultless; no people, I will venture to say, have such a perception of the harmonies of colour. Their tints are of the most delicate and charming shades the artist's fancy or the dyer's art can furnish, and often wrought in rich and elegant patterns. They are pa.s.sionately fond of flowers, the dark and abundant tresses of their hair being always decorated with them, either real or artificial. Their only other adornments are a tortoise-sh.e.l.l comb of delicate workmans.h.i.+p, and a long steel pin with a ball of red coral in the end, pa.s.sing through their rich raven hair. They use powder about their necks and shoulders pretty freely, and sometimes colour the under lip a deep carmine, or even gold, a process which does not add to their personal attractions. They wear no linen; a very thin chemise of silk crepe, in addition to the loose outer garment, is all their covering. But it must be remembered that the great aim of this people seems to be simplicity, therefore we wont too minutely scrutinize their deficiencies of costume; there is much to be said in its favour, it is neither immodest nor suggestive. The feet are clothed in a short sock, with a division at the great toe for the pa.s.sage of the sandal strap. These sandals or clogs are the most ungainly articles in their wardrobe. A simple lump of wood, the length and breadth of the foot, about two or three inches in alt.i.tude, and lacquered at the sides, is their subst.i.tute for our boot.
Their walk is a shuffling gait, the knee bent and always in advance of the body.
The married women have a curious custom--now fast dying out--of blacking their teeth and plucking out their eye-brows to prevent, as their husbands say, other men casting ”sheep's eyes” at them.
The males of the coolie cla.s.s are very scantily clad, for all that they wear is the narrowest possible fold of linen around the loins; but, as if to compensate for this scarcity of rigging, they are frequently most elaborately tattooed from head to foot.
A j.a.panese husband does not make a slave of his wife, as is too often the case amongst orientals; she is allowed perfect liberty of action, and to indulge her fancy in innocent pleasures to an unlimited extent.
Her lord is not ashamed to be seen walking beside her, nor does he think it too much beneath him to fondle and carry the baby in public. They are excessively fond of their children; the hundreds of toy shops and confection stalls about the streets bearing testimony to this.
The old custom of dressing the hair, which some of the men still affect, is rather peculiar. A broad gutter is shaved from the crown of the head forward, whilst the remaining hair, which is permitted to grow long, is gathered and combed upwards, where the ends are tied, marled down, and served over (as we should say in nautical phraseology) and brought forward over the shaven gangway.
One other custom I must mention, the strangest one of all: they have a legalized form of that vice which, in other countries, by tacit consent, is banned, but which even the most refined people must tolerate. But what makes it more strange still is, that no inconsiderable portion of the public revenue is derived from this source. The government sets aside a certain quarter in every city and town for its accommodation, gives it a distinct and characteristic name, and appoints officers over it for the collection of the revenues. I thought it not a little significant on landing for the first time in j.a.pan to find myself and ”rick-sha” wheeled, by the accommodating coolie, right into the heart of this quarter. The advances of the fair s.e.x are likely to prove embarra.s.sing to the stranger, for, before they are married, they are at liberty to do as they please, and do not, by such acts, lose caste or forfeit the respect of their friends and neighbours.
Here, as in the Indian Seas, our _laundresses_ are men, the cleanest and quickest washers we have encountered in the voyage. As an instance of their despatch, they will take your bedding ash.o.r.e in the morning, and by tea-time you will receive it ready for turning in, the blanket washed and dried, the hair teazed and made so soft that you would scarcely fancy it was the same old ”doss” again.
Though the women do not wash our clothes, they do what is far harder work, _i.e._ coal our s.h.i.+p. We were surprised, beyond measure, to see women toiling away at this dirty, laborious calling. And the j.a.panese women are such little creatures, too! There was, however, one exception, a woman of herculean strength and limb, looking like a giantess amongst her puny sisters, and fully conscious of her superior muscular power.
This lady, stripped to the waist as she was, would, I am sure, intimidate the boldest mariner from a too close acquaintance with her embrace. They belong to the coolie cla.s.s, a distinct caste in j.a.pan, wear a distinguis.h.i.+ng badge on their clothing, form a community amongst themselves, and rarely marry out of their own calling.
At noon these grimy Hebes, Hercules as well, all tripped on board to dine, the upper battery offering them all the accommodation they required; each carried with her a little lacquered box, with three sliding drawers, in which was neatly and cleanly stowed her dinner--rice, fish, and vegetables; taking out all the drawers, and laying them on her lap, with a pair of chop-sticks, she soon demolished her frugal meal. After a whiff or two at a pipe, whose bowl just contained enough tobacco for two draws, she was ready to resume her work.
The European concession occupies the most picturesque position in Nagasaki, from which city it is separated by a creek, well known to our blue-jackets, spanned by two or three bridges. On either side of this strip of water a perfect cosmopolitan colony of beer-house keepers have a.s.sembled, with the sole intention of ”bleeding” the sailor, and upon whose well-known devotion, to the shrine of Ba.s.s and Allsop, they manage to ama.s.s considerable fortunes.
Before leaving Nagasaki I would ask you to accompany me to one of the temples, that known as the Temple of the Horse, being, perhaps, the best. It is rather a long distance by foot, but Englishmen, at least according to j.a.panese ideas, have too much money to walk when they can ride, so to keep up the national conceit, but more for our own convenience, we jump into an elegant little carriage, or ”_jin-riki-sha_,” literally ”_man-power-carriage_,” but in sailor phrase ”johnny-ring-shaw,” or short ”ring shaw.” Away we go, a dozen or more in a line, over the creek bridge, past Desima, which we leave on our left hand, and soon we are in the heart of the native city, and traversing what is popularly known as ”curio” street. At this point we request our human horses to trot, instead of going at the mad speed usual to them, in order that we make notes of j.a.panese life by the way. We pa.s.s many shops devoted to the sale of lacquer ware, for which the j.a.panese are so justly famed, catch glimpses of unequalled egg sh.e.l.l, and Satsuma china, made of a clay, formed only in this neighbourhood, and which, thanks to the European mania for collecting, fetch the most fancy prices; get a view of silk shops, full of rich stuffs and embroideries. Here an artist tinting a fan or a silk lantern; there a woman weaving cloth for the use of her household and everywhere people plying their various callings on the elevated floors of their houses. I should say needle making amongst these people is a rather laborious undertaking, and one which requires more than an ordinary amount of patience. The wire has first to be cut the desired length, then filed to a point at one end and the other flattened ready for the eye to be drilled, and finally the whole has to be filed up and smoothed off, and all by one man. The j.a.panese are but indifferent sewers, all their seams exhibiting numerous ”holidays.”
Pretty children, with their hair clipped around their heads like a priest's tonsure, sport around us, but are not intrusive. Each child has a little pouch attached to his girdle, which, we are informed, contains the address of the child's parents, and also an invocation to the little one's protecting G.o.d, in case of his straying from home. We meet with cheerful looks and pleasant greetings everywhere. The gentle and musical ”_o-hi-o_,” ”_good day_,” with its softly accented second syllable, and as we pa.s.s the earnest ”_sayonara_,” the ”_au revoir_” of the French, tell us very plainly we are no unwelcome visitors, whilst their bows are the most graceful, because natural, and therefore unaffected, actions it is possible to conceive.
We notice, too, that numbers of the males are in full European costume, which generally hangs about them in a most awkward manner, reminding one of a broom-handle dressed in a frock coat. Others, again, don't discard the national dress altogether, but compromise matters by putting on, in addition to their long gown, a European hat and shoes, which, if anything, looks worse still. The ladies have not yet adopted the European style which, perhaps, they have sense enough to see, is far more complex and inconvenient than their own. Of this much I am certain that no mysterious production of Worth would be more becoming, or suit them better than their own graceful, national dress.
At our imperative ”_chop_, _chop_,” jack's sole stock-in-trade of that intellectual puzzle, the Chinese language, and which he finds equally serviceable this side the water, our Jehus start off like an arrow shot from a bow. What endurance these men possess, and what limbs!
After a pleasant half-an-hour's ride, a sudden jolt indicates we are at our destination.
We alight at the base of a flight of broad stone stairs leading to the temple, and which we can just discern at a considerable alt.i.tude above us, peeping out of the dark shadow of a grove of firs. Arches of a curious and simple design, under which it is necessary to pa.s.s, are the distinguis.h.i.+ng features of a kami or sintoo temple, and perhaps of j.a.pan itself, as the pyramids are characteristic of ancient Egypt.
Two uprights of bronze, stone, or wood, inclined to each other at the summits, and held in position by a transverse beam piercing the pillars at about three feet from their tops. Over this again is another beam with horn-like curves at the ends, and turned upward, and simply laid on the tops of the shafts. The approaches to some of these temples are spanned by hundreds of such structures, which, when made of wood and lacquered bright vermillion, look altogether curious.
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